Adventures in Korea: 바쁘다!

So it's week three of the six week program, which means one thing:

Midterms!

Which (somewhat) explains why I haven't been posting this week. Or at least provides a convenient excuse for my laziness. Last I left off was the weekend, so we can start there. But, I do have to study Korean, so it will be a shorter blog post, for that I apologize.

So, Saturday I went to Yeouiro for my US Korean teacher Soyoung's wedding. It was my first time navigating the subways by myself, and took three transfers and around an hour of travelling. I did it though! Soyoung told me her English speaking friend would meet me outside of the subway station at noon and we could walk to the wedding together, since I didn't know where the place was, but 12:30 rolled around and he hadn't showed up. So my minimal Korean skills came in handy and I asked for directions to the name of the building Soyoung had provided me with (turns out it was a gigantic building I could see from the subway stop the entire time, of course..). I got to the building, but it was 15 stories and I had no clue which one the wedding was on. While attempting to comprehend the floor directory, Soyoung's friend came in, saw me, and apologized for being late and we went up to the wedding. Soyoung was in a fancy room sitting on a chair so that people could go and have their photos taken with her. We did, and said hello for a short while but there was a lot for her to do so it didn't last very long. We stayed for part of the ceremony, wherein some of Soyoung's high school students sang, which was really cute, then I headed back to Anam.

Sunday, Lily and I went to the Korean War Memorial in Samgakji as part of our homework for Korean Mass Media and Popular Culture class. I didn't expect much, but I was blown away. It was gigantic; a building surrounded by a man-made lake, humongous statues, and old planes, tanks, and submarines. We walked around the outside, admiring the statues, looking at all of the planes, before going into the three story building. The building was filled with weapons and artifacts from the Korean war (and in one section, Vietnam as well), as well as memorials for the fallen soldiers and historical information. While admittedly it was heavily biased towards the South Korean side of the war, it was still very cool to see.

Monday, for lunch I went with Ana and Lily to a Japanese restaurant. The food was good, and quite different from the spicier Korean style meals I've begun to grow accustomed to. It was shrimp, egg, and onion over rice, and while I don't know anything about Japanese food other than sushi and therefore have no idea if it's authentic, I can say it was tasty. Afterwards we went to a cafe until class started. It's crazy, food here is so cheap, for most meals I pay the equivalent of <$5, but the cafes keep more American style prices, so you can pay more for a coffee drink than you do for an entire meal (which, as a matter of fact, I did today). After classes, I ran into Philomena, Polly, Torkel, and Peter about to leave to go to a pasta restaurant, and joined them. We couldn't find the pasta restaurant so instead decided to eat at a Chinese restaurant. We left the ordering to Philomena and Polly, since they're native Chinese speakers, which worked out well because all of the food was delicious! We had meat on sticks that cooked over hot charcoal at the table, as well as some sort of sweet/spicy pork dish, sweet eggplant dish, a cabbage dish, and a spicy pork dish boiled at the table. There was tons of food, and it was the most expensive meal I've eaten since I've been here (which is saying something, because it was about the equivalent of $12 a person and we couldn't even finish everything) but it was all really tasty. Somehow during the conversation, we started talking about our languages. Polly gave Peter, Torkel and I all Cantonese names (mine came from the words for "beautiful" and "silk", which I thought was nice). Then we were talking about different accent marks in the languages, and all had a good laugh when Polly said that the sounds made by the accent marks in Swedish were "sexy". After dinner, we got icecream at, get this, Baskin Robbins. And in case any of you were wondering, the Baskin Robbins here is right next to a Dunkin Donuts, too. I got walnut ice cream, which was tasty enough to remind me of home, but different enough to make me feel like I'm not cheating by eating non-stereotypically-Korean food.

Today, after classes I went with a group to a pizza/pasta restaurant. It was the first time I've had "Western" food since arriving in Korea, which admittedly was a nice break. Although, it was still pretty different from American style pizza/pasta. We ordered an appetizer, a dish of "cream oven spaghetti" pasta, and two pizzas between the seven of us. The first pizza was pretty standard; regular crust, cheese, meats, vegetables, etc. The second pizza, however, was very different from what I'm used to. The crust was filled with sweet potato puree, instead of red sauce it had some kind of spicy/tangy sauce, and was topped with vegetables and shrimp. Surprisingly, I really liked it, moreso even than the more "typical" pizza. I'm pretty sure none of us had eaten such a high amount of carbs in one sitting since arriving here though, so it left us somewhat uncomfortably full and ready for a nap.

However, no naps were had, because now it's time to study for midterms!