OYYY!!! (taekwondo screaming sound)

Hi everyone! I have just gotten back from taekwondo class and am taking a breather before hopping in the shower so I am presentable at a boxing meeting we have tonight. Taekwondo is soooo cool. There are about 8 black belts in our class so they all went to the side to work with one TA while the other was helping us improve. I kept seeing them do all these high kicks out of the corner of my eye! Took a lot of work to stay focused on my moves but its not that hard since it is so much fun. It is all taught in Korean but I hear the same words repeatedly and am beginning to know what action is associated with them. The funniest part is the little definitions i make up in my head to remind me. For instance the word for one of our hitting moves sounds a lot like tomahawk (i have no idea what it actually is), which reminds me of an axe so i think of the swinging axe motion which is similar to the arm motion. Each class i get less and less of a step behind, which is awesome!

This weekend Emily, Tina, Jonathan, Reed, Queree, and I had a good time hanging out with Heri. Heri works at Season 3, which is a hof we frequent. It has sparkly booths and shiny things hanging down from the ceiling, so quite the sight. It is a nice place to go, get some food, drink some soju, and just hang out together. Heri is always working there so she has gotten to know us. She doesn't really speak English but we somehow formed this relationship with her. One night she texted me and asked if we could all go out together! We were so excited because since she is always working we wanted to be able to spend more time with her. So we all went out, had a crazy night. Very oddly she kept insisting that with us she wasnt married. Not really sure how to take this one... But she did say that the reason she liked us is because we seemed so honest, and pure. She said there is this perception that foreigners are snobby and sleazy and that she was so surprised when she met us because we weren't and that we changed her perception. That made me so happy to hear! One of my main goals is to promote a positive American image and this is concrete evidence that we are making progress. We ended the night at about 6 am after a long noraebang (노래방, karaoke) session. It was a great time : )

A different night Reed, Emily, Tina and I were out and all of a sudden I heard Spanish behind me. I was really confused because when I turned around it was a table of all Koreans. When you go out to bars though it is not uncommon for tables to interact (expecially since we're foreigners). Korean drinking culture is alllllll about the games and a funny and common penalty is to go take a shot with someone at a different table. So anyway, it isn't weird that I just turned around and joined their table and started talking to them. Turns out they had all met in Guatemala because of their parent jobs. Most of them spoke English, to varying degrees, some didn't at all but since they spoke Spanish we communicated just fine. I was shocked to say the least. I have been told that Koreans are rather good at pronouncing Spanish, (both phonetic languages? similar sounds? i dont know..) who knew? Before long we had completely merged tables, were having a good time, and exchanged numbers. But just another typical night : )

Last Wednesday we went to a really cool performance called Nanta. You may have heard of it because it has traveled all the way to Broadway it is so popular. It is a cooking/drumming/comedy show. Its more drumming than anything but they use knives, vegetables, pots, pans, whisks, and what not to make the beat. And everything is infused with comedy. It was entertaining and they were really cooking on the stage! it smelled soooooooo good. The premise was that the owner of a cooking company gives these three cooks and extremely difficult menu to whip up in an hour for a wedding when the owner's nephew comes and the owner assigns him to the cooking team, but he has no idea what he is doing. The whole performance ends with an epic drumming session. Definitely recommend.

My bodybuilding class is getting pretty hard! The frustrating thing is that what we are quizzed on is not what we learn in class. My professor posts powerpoints of 35+ exercises for each muscle group (so far we have arms and shoulder) and we have to memorize all of the exercises and the muscles they work. In class we never use muscle names, right now we are learning about energy systems and lactic acid build up. I guess I wouldn't mind it if we were learning in more steps. Like first we learn the muscles, then we learn the work outs but it just seems like a lot and we are all in the dark pretty much, its just what you can figure out on your own. I am really enjoying the class though. Since I am not even getting Colby credit for it there is absolutely zero pressure to pass but also since im the only white person i dont want to look lazy. but its a one credit class (a normal class here is 3)!! come on. I think the professor is awesome though, I am lucky he is teaching such a low level class or I definitely wouldn't be learning this much.

Tomorrow we find out if my program is going to Japan or not. We are planned for a 4 day trip April 29 - May 2. Suzanne, out resident director, is planning another trip just incase Japan falls through. We don't know where this other trip would be but if I had to guess I think it would be Jeju. We need visas for China and there is no where else that is close. I am hoping Hong Kong and then I could see LUKASSSS!! (who i miss terribly) but its a hike. I really hope we can go to Japan because i have been to Jeju and don't really think it would be fun without the warm weather. Plus I like all the memories I have there with Danielle, Peter, Bob, and Loan. How could you possibly top that trip? Especially traveling in an American mob on a tiny island...I dont know. Going to Japan would be fun because there are two Colby students there that I know who have an apartment in Osaka (which is where our trip is planned to go) so it would be awesome to have a local connect. We will see, fingers crossed.

This is my last week of no 9 am classes. I am a little worried because I am increasingly turning nocturnal. I have no issue with just staying up till 5am and sleeping till 4pm. I have to set an alarm for my 1 pm classes, even my 3 pm classes. I have never been like this! I am hoping this Korean class is going to whip me into regular human being time, but more likely I will just get used to sleeping a lot less. Oh well, im young, i can deal with it.

Lukas is coming at the end of May, which is REALLY EXCITING!! i miss him so much!! He left half way through August last summer and has been in China/Hong Kong the whole entire time. I definitely talk to him the most out of anyone since we gchat or skype almost everyday but I can't wait to see him in person! Him and his cousin are traveling around when he is done with school. Stop 1 is Seoul and Stop 2 is Japan but he might just do the whole time in Korea, a lot is up in the air regarding Japan. Anyway I am going to compile a list of places they could stay. I just cant believe were finally going to hang out after all this time....10 months! aish! but i still have 2 more months to wait...until then i will be doing my thing!!

until later!

Feeling Chicken?

It would appear my crazy lifestyle has finally caught up with me; i am miserably sick. Good news for you guys though because maybe I will actually post now. And if I had to get sick I guess now would be a good time. My Korean class starts April 1st and is everyday from 9-1. Up until now I haven't had to get out of bed until 12 30 at the earliest, which has translated into staying up all hours. But alas, this will certainly not fly when I have early class everyday and perhaps being sick will slow me down enough to actually go to bed and have a routine to some extent. And I think it is enough time that I won't be sickly my first full week. Even right now my roomate is sick and we are just sitting here taking turns coughing, sniffling, blowing our noses, and chugging water. Quite the sight.

But anyway classes are going well. I am in a perpetual state of soreness and have been taking an ungodly amount of naps. My body is just getting used to this crazy physical schedule I have...5 scheduled works outs in 3 days! ay ay ay! Not to mention the lifting I am theoretically doing on my own but we don't even have our book for body building so I'm gonna ease into it.

In swimming class the other day a Korean girl turned to me and noticed my necklace and said oh is it arabic? and my face just lit up!! i was stunned! as if i couldnt be surprised anymore she then proceeds so sound it out and then figures out it is my name! I was amazed! Turns out she lived in egypt for 18 years so she knows a tiny bit of arabic. I am so excited I have a class with her.

Also a funny thing in swimming class happened that reminded me of where I am. We had all gathered at one end of the pool and our professor was going to explain something to us. There was a bench and one guy sat on it but all of the other guys were hitting him and the professor yelled at him! I instantly knew he was the idiot who didn't give the only seats to the three girls in the class. I think it was more of a gender thing than a foreigner thing, but you never know. But everyone was just so appalled that he hadn't given it to us, and even though there was more room on the bench we were the only ones who sat on it. In my bodybuilding class too we often have pair exercises/stretches, like crunches, and the TAs won't let males and females be partenered with each other. I was surprised because it was the young college students who were enforcing this. But at the same time in my taekwondo class we do the same thing and the TAs don't say anything about male/female partners, and we do much more "racy" exercises than in body building. I guess it really depends on the person, his/her upbringing, how deep the Confucian values penetrate for their family and their life. Although I can confidently say every Korean operates on Confucian values.

My dad has been asking me a lot of questions about food since I am no longer in a homestay and fending for myself. There is a restaurant called Ddalgi (딸기, means strawberry) right next to our dorm that we frequent. It is super cheap and super good. I always get bulgogi (불고기), which is marinated beef, over rice with a raw egg. The egg gets cooked because it is served in a stone pot (dolsot, 돌솥) that is ssuuuppper hot. It doesn't taste eggy at all, more of just makes the rice and meat not dry. Its my favorite. There is also a really cheap restaurant in the Korean Language Institute, which is connected to our dorm underground. They have soups, sweet and sour chicken, pork cutlet, curry, whatever. So we go there a lot as well.

Sometimes we make our own food. In the basement of our dorm is a conveinence store that is open 24/7!! Its the greatest. I have precooked rice and huge thing of soy sauce in my room that i can just throw in the microwave whenever. Also in the basement is a hgue room that is equivalent to eight kitchens so we have resources to cook. All too often we eat ramyeon (라면), Korean ramen. Its instant noodles but more flavor and some of them are real spicy. A tub of ramyeon is only 1,000 won ($.88), so a pretty sound economic choice. Some people put eggs in there ramyeon too but not my favorite. Another favorite for cooking is mandu (만두), aka dumplings. Some you can even just nuke, pretty nice.

However NOTHING beats the meat buffet. You pay one flat rate (6500 ~ 8000 won, $5.77~$7.11) and sit at a table with the grill in front of you and just goooo to town. There is an area with all of the different kind of meats, an area with all of the banchan (반찬, side dishes) like lettuce, bean sprouts, sauces, kim chi, noodles, rice, rice cakes, everything you can imagine. You just take whatever you want and bring it back to your table. The catch is you have to pay for what you don't eat, pretty good system. Jonathan and I go there after boxing and eat pounds of meat. I have no idea how they make a profit but it is actually heaven for me.

I will leave you all with a less pleasant culinary thought. At one bar we go to there is "the hammer game." Each person gets a nail but the hammer has a really skinny thin head, more just like a line. The nail goes into this wood table and you go around attempting to hit your nail. The last person to get his/her nail all the way in loses. On St. Patrick's Day we were playing and we made the penalty for losing was a shot titled Mexican Chicken. I lost. Unfamiliar with Mexican Chicken?

tequila.
raw egg.
tobasco.

Never a Dull Moment

Hi everyone!

First of all, Korea is totally fine (earthquake wise). We didn't feel or see anything fortunately.

Life continues to be great. This past week I have caught up with two friends, Max and Cheol. Believe it or not Max and I met on a roof in Jordan. When we started talking it just naturally came up that I was going to Korean next semester and he was too! Max is studying at Seoul National University, which is number one in the country (Yonsei is number two). Max came to Sinchon and we had Galmaegisal (갈매기살), which translates to seagull meat. It's not actually seagull meat, despite my friend Yuri's insistance, but rather just a specific cut of pork. You cook it over a fire right in front you and have all the fixins (lettuce, different sauces, bean sprouts, onions, etc.). Afterwards we got waffles with ice cream (nothing unusual for me and Emily). It was great to hang out with Max! We mixed it up with a little arabic, he got to meet two of my CIEE friends, Emily and Tina, and he is just such a funny guy, we had a good time : )

Cheol is a friend from the Hubo Lab last summer in Daejeon. However, he graduated with his masters in January so he isn't in the lab anymore but in Seoul! You would think I would see him more than Jungwoo who is in Daejeon but Cheol is super busy working on starting his business so I saw him for the first time last Wednesday. He brought a friend from high school and a girl he had met through sean and alex (the guys from drexel working in hubo). None of us knew each other except for Cheol so we had a great night of getting to know each other. We had one of my favorite dishes; its chicken and hot sauce and rice cakes and noodles and cabbage all cooked together in a dish infront of you. We then went to a different place where we had pomegranate makkoli!! Makkoli is a rice wine but I didnt know that fruit could be added to it. Actually our server brought the pomegranate to our table, squeezed it right there, and then poured it in. I learned a lot of Korean getting to know you/drinking games. The girl Cheol brought, Queree, and I really hit it off! We spent the whole night laughing together. I needed a cultural exchange partner for a seminar and she said she would be mine! I am really looking forward to hanging out with her more : )

Jonathan is a CIEE guy from Austin, Texas. It is a little spooky but him and I appear to be exactly the same person except for the fact he is a boy and from TX (I hope my dad is jumping off a bridge considering he wouldn't even let me apply for college in TX). Anyway, Jonathan and I went on an intense hookah bar search, since I knew they existed in Korea because I had been in Daejeon (and if it's in Daejeon it MUST be in Seoul). Love that wireless internet. We went to a place in Hongdae (the clubbing district right next to Sinchon). It was so exciting!! It cost 10,000 won ($8.80) which is about three times the cost in Jordan but hey, still cheaper than the US. We got cherry and mango (aka cherrango), which was super tasty. Oh i just thought of another difference between me and Jonathan: he can blow smoke rings : (

Classes are beginning to get into full swing. We had out first time in the pool and I have never felt greater! Didn't realize how much I missed it! It is a swimming 1 class so a lot of it was getting comfortable in the water, like playing rock paper scissors under water and who ever wins gets to take a breath! that was fun. We also did a lot of swimming back and forth but since it is a large class and there is only five lanes we have to swim across the five lanes, so not a very long distance. Regardless it was great. The professor came up to me and said I could swim and that I didn't need to take this class but I just said I loved swimming and wanted to anyway : ) And now that I think about it the last time i remember being in a swimming class my parents abandoned me and i sat on the side of the pool crying the whole time. So i am sure there is more that I can learn.

Oh man...we had the first body building class, which was assessments. We went out to the soccer field and did jumping jacks, push ups, sit ups, sprints, squats, stretches, you name it. At the end of the class he told us we were all really out of shape and it is a huge problem because we are sports majors (well for the majors) and as a result instituted minimum requirements to pass the class. 50 push ups, 50 sit ups in a minute, benching 80% of our body weight (i think there will be a different percentage for girls), and certain running times. It is nice to have a challenge to push towards. I think the whole class was sore the next day, despite it was supposed to be an "easy" class.

Directly after assessments I have to get to the exact opposite side of campus in ten minutes, and it is a BIG campus. I was running, had already mapped out the fastest route, and was still five minutes late to class. I came in sweating, completely red and chugging my water bottle, great impression for my teacher. I actually have to make the same run to get to body building but that professor has been letting us out a few minutes early so I can make it in time. Never a dull moment...

I also signed up for the boxing club. I had no intention of joining the boxing club, I was just perusing club day with my friend Jonathan. When we walked up to the tent I couldn't say no to the look on the guy's faces, they were soooooo excited at the thought of me boxing. It will be fun for sure. We had our orientation, which was a 20 minute presentation in Korean but me, Jonathan, and another CIEE student Reed got english version afterward. This is going to be my strangest, but probably most fun, semester ever.

Right now I am about to go get some food with CIEE people, Emily, Tina, Reed, and Jonathan and then go to the COEX aquarium. I have already been there but it is just so awesome I am excited to go again. Of course this involves getting dressed so I need to get on that! Hope everyone is well, whereever you are!

3 weeks in 1200 words!

wow it has been waaaay too long since my last post but i guess that is just a testament to how fast my life feels now! Classes started last wednesday and the week before that was jam packed with orientation activities. There hasn't been a single moment where I have doubted coming here, i am having that much fun. Although maybe that means I am not challenging myself enough but I am ok with that for now.

Yonsei is located in Sinchon (pronounced Shin-chon), an area with lots of bars, restaurants, noraebangs (karaoke), food stands, and shopping. Man for the first two weeks of orientation I think I went out every single night!! More noraebang in the past two weeks than in my whole entire life. We even went to a DVD bang (bang means room, pronounced more like bong) where you are in a room with a really big couch about five feet away from a huge screen. We watched the original Grudge 2 (aka Japanese version). I am lucky to have such an awesome group of people on my program. It's funny, it took us weeks, even months, in Jordan to get as close as me and my core group here just because we didn't have alcohol in the mix. Just the facts of life, its a social lubricant, not to mention carrying your friends home brings us that much closer. Man I was so excited to start classes to have some stability!

My classes so far are AWESOME. I am soooo happy I decided to take those sports classes. So far I have gone to body building and swimming. Both times I walked into a room of about 30 Koreans, with two other females in the room. Almost all Korean names have three syllables so when the professor is taking roll he goes "blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, elizabeth lerret, blah blah blah, blah blah blah..." it's pretty funny. I like being the only foreigner. I will have no choice but to make Korean friends (not that I wouldn't choose to but it makes it a lot easier to escape the international bubble). Plus the attention amuses me and gives me a further push towards interaction.

For each of my class meetings in bodybuilding the first hour will be theory, that is memorizing bones and muscles, nutrition, how exercising works, bodily effects, rumors and myths, and whatever else the professor throws at us. We will have a quiz every week. The second hour is our practical time where we are in groups and hit the gym. I am really excited. I get to learn all of the cool medical/biological stuff without having to write a lab report! a dream come true. The professor was working hard to warn me that this class is not just gym time and specifically for sport majors but that just made me even happier. He actually did one of his PhDs at Harvard. Additionally, he asked me infront of the class where I was from, and obviously I said Cambridge, MA. A girl a row infront of me whips around and says she went to Matignon! I was shocked. So we can have come cambridge pow-wows in that class sometime.

So far I have been using my unscheduled time to hang out with my friends in Daejeon. Last friday I took a bus and my friend Jungwoo picked me up at the bus stop. We checkout the lab (and General Tso, the new lab dog), picked up Jeongsoo and went out to meet up with Alex and Sean, two guys from Drexel I met at the Atlanta conference after Korea last year. Even Taejin, who is always either playing starcraft or out with girls, left a girl to come say hang out with me, which if you knew taejin feels pretty monumental. did you know that Korea has this service where you call someone up and they will come drive your car for you if you are too drunk?!? its brilliant!! makes it that much easier to stay safe. the next morning jungwoo and i drove back to seoul so even though it was only 13 hours in Daejeon, it was probably my favorite 13 hours so far. I missed those guys like crazy!

Actually Jungwoo has a friend from high school that went to UMass Amherst! Last night the three of us went out to dinner and we ate pig heart, stomach, and intestines (and god knows what else was in there). The heart and intestines were reallllly good. The stomach looked like black brain coral and it was ok, just not my favorite. Micheal was suupper cool. He works for Samsung doing sport management-y sort of things and travels a lot to go to sports events around the world. I had a great time so I hope we chill again.

Just last night I stayed up until 8 am finishing a Korean drama. My god those things are addicting! This one is called Secret Garden. It is about a rich, snobby president of a department store who falls in love with a poor stuntwoman. On top of getting her to stand his presence, family and class issues, they end up switching bodies every time it rains. I had quite the emotional night watching the last 7 episodes (and they are all a SOLID hour+). I laughed, cried, smiled, squeaked into my pillow. There is a total of 20 episodes that i have watched in maybe 4 days. My roomate woke up this morning when I was watching the very last two minutes. she is learning all too well about me : )

My roomate's name is Jinsol and she is super chill. Actually I thought she wasn't coming until April so I was making no effort to keep the room clean (classic...). I came home one day to see the door open and boxes and the first thing out of my mouth is just "I am soooooooooooo sorrrrry." The room was a mess but secretly in my head i was so thankful i had done laundry that morning because it was strewn every which way across the room. But regardless we get along really well. She even said that I could come with her when she goes to visit her family in Gwangju. That would be really awesome since I haven't really seen Korean family life besides being at Jungwoo's house for an all of ten minutes.

I am a little annoyed that my Korean class doesn't start until April, but I signed up for that. It really isn't a problem, I just wanna impress my Korean friends and start attempting to talk with them in Korean. But since I will have class for four hours every day I know I will learn quickly.

When I first got here, everything I experienced was in contrast to Jordan. But now these experiences are standing on their own as I get more used to being here. wow i have been here almost a month! i cant believe it! i hope the rest of the semester doesn't go this fast. but if that means having less fun...fat chance : )