Adventures in Korea: 생일

So last I posted was Tuesday, and quite a bit has happened since then!

Wednesday, I met up with Ana and Lily for lunch, we ran into Polly outside of Woodong hall and she came with us. Polly and Ana were both feeling a little under the weather, so we ate at a traditional Korean porridge shop. The porridge here is savory, with meat and vegetables in it. Mine was spicy with seafood, it was really good and I think the perfect thing to eat when sick (though I wasn't really sick anymore, which is why I got the spicy kind). Afterwards, Ana, Lily and I went to a Cafe while Polly went to the Health Clinic to buy some medicine for her cold. I had my Korean midterm that day, so I tried to get some last minute studying in. Over all, I didn't do as great on my midterm as I'd hoped, but that just means I'll study harder next time. This class has been really intense for me, Korean class back at my home university was very relaxed, but here the class is taught entirely in (very rapid) Korean, and we blow through a chapter of the book every two days or so. I've already learned so many new grammar rules (I will most likely do something, I will maybe do something, I'd like to do something, I should do something, I have tried something/you should try something, I wanted to do something but then something else happened and I could not do that thing, etc. So many new ways of conjugating verbs!), as well as new vocabulary. It's strange, I know my Korean has improved a lot since coming here, but at the same time I feel worse about it. Back at IUP, my context for learning Korean was so different, as long as I knew everything in the class, I felt okay, but here, not only is the class so much more difficult, but I'm constantly surrounded by constant reminders of how little of the language I actually know. It's somewhat disheartening, but also really encourages me to want to learn more. Anyways, after classes, I met up with Kirsty, Peter, Torkel, and Leon and we went to go find somewhere for dinner. We ended up going back to the Chinese restaurant from earlier, where Kirsty (who lived in Hong Kong as a child) was able to pick out some good foods for us (though less than last time, we learned our lesson about ordering too much food).
Peter's birthday was the next day, Thursday, so Polly and Philomena set up a small "surprise party" for him. The plan was to meet at the downstairs lobby of CJ House (the dorm they all live in, though I'm in Frontier House) a little bit before midnight and then go up to his room and surprise him with cake and flowers at midnight. However, that plan changed slightly when an RA saw me, Polly, Leon, and Torkel in the lobby and asked for our IDs that showed we lived in CJ house. Torkel and I live in Frontier House, and she told us we had to leave. We asked if she could please just let us stay, and she kept saying no and we had to leave, but we just kind of stood there staring at here and not responding while she repeatedly told us to get out, until I think she finally realized that she couldn't actually do anything to get us to leave other than ask and gave up and said we had ten minutes, and had to stay in the lobby. By then, the rest of the group had come downstairs and we decided we'd change the plan and stay down there while Polly went up and got Peter to come downstairs. She did, and we all gave him flowers that Philomena had bought and sang happy birthday, while he ate a piece of cake Polly had picked out from his favorite bakery. Eventually, the RA came back and told us it was quiet hours now and we seriously had to leave, so we finally obliged her and left.

The next day, after classes Peter had invited a group of about 15 of us out to dinner in Myeongdong, his treat, which he said was customary in the Netherlands to do for your birthday (ironically, he said, the opposite of "going Dutch"). We met at Woodong hall after classes, then decided to go back to the dorms to drop off our bags. After figuring we were already going back to the dorms anyways, the girls (myself included) all decided to change clothes to wear something nice for the birthday celebrations. We took the subway, which took about 30 minutes, and after three transfers arrived in Myeongdong. Although it was around 8pm, it seemed light outside because of all of the night life and bright neon signs. We walked to the restaurant, where we were split up into four tables all in a row due to the size of our group. Ana and I were at a small table together, and we ordered a meal set that came with spicy octopus, mussels, bulgogi, and sesame leaves (for wrapping the octopus in). I love spicy foods, but the octopus was a little spicy even for me. Even Ana, who's Korean and accustomed to spicy food, was having some trouble. The flavor was really good though. It was also my first time eating sesame leaves, which have a very strong, somewhat lemony, peppery taste. Really hard to describe. Peter had made one of the stipulations in treating us to dinner that we all had to sing a birthday song for him in our native language. Everyone sung happy birthday in English and Korean (though Ana and Han were the loudest for that one, while the rest of us stumbled over the lyrics), Peter's Singaporean roommate and I sung in German, Philomena in Mandarin, Kirsty and Polly in Cantonese, Torkel in Swedish (turns out their birthday song has like 8 verses too), and probably a few other versions sung that I can't remember. We had a very large and very diverse group! Peter stood up, thanked us, and then sung the Dutch version for us to hear, which was cool. Afterwards, our stomachs were all burning a bit from the spicy food, so we went to find a place that sold ice cream. We found one, and ordered some bowls of frozen yogurt to split. During all of this, Han and Polly snuck off from the rest of the group, and returned with a large green tea and sweet potato cake for Peter, and we subjected him to more singing and photos before we all dug in. Polly also presented him with the URL for a blog she'd created where we all signed in and posted Happy Birthday messages. She even tracked down his family on Facebook and had them post! (If you're curious, http://peter23rd.xanga.com/ ). Eventually, the workers at the ice cream shop came and told us they were about to close so we had to go. We wanted to go to a bar, but we couldn't find one in Myeongdong, so we decided to go back to Anam and go to a bar there. It was around midnight, so the subway was about to close and we decided to stop and get taxis. It was raining, so we all stood with our umbrellas and tried to flag them down. For about thirty minutes we stood on the side of the road, either getting passed by completely, or having them pull over, ask where we wanted to go, and then speeding off when we told them. Ana kept telling us how rude all of the taxi drivers in Korea were, which I fully believe after a half hour in the rain. Finally we flagged one down that would take us, so four of us got in while the other five waited for the next taxi. We all managed to arrive safely (and still rather cheaply, about $5 a person). We went to Han's favorite bar, where we ordered a bottle of vodka, some Cranberry juice and Tonic water and went to town. Polly suggested we play a game called "First Impressions", where we divide up by gender (which we had already inadvertently done, with the five guys on one half of the long table, and us six girls on the other), then assign the members of the opposite gender group numbers, then give them situations and have them vote who out of our group would be most likely to do that thing using the numbers they assigned us, then at the end we have to try to guess our own numbers. It was really fun, and funny too. Finally, at 3am we left. We were going to go back to the dorms, but instead decided to buy some rice wine and soju from a convenience store and sit outside of Frontier House and drink and talk some more. At this point, about half the group left, so it was just me, Peter, Torkel, Leon, Polly, Kirsty, and Ana (who I had told could stay in my dorm for the night since my roommate was gone and she lived about 40 minutes away). We stayed and talked for a while, until at around 5:30 when I said I was tired and was going to go up to bed. The subways reopened at 5:30, so Ana decided she'd just go back home. It was a fun and very memorable night!

The next day, I woke up to pounding on my door at 10am, I stumbled out of bed, exhausted, not even bothering to put on my glasses, and found a little old Korean cleaning lady outside of my door. I let her in, and she cleaned my bathroom and left. I immediately went back to sleep until 4pm. It was the most I've slept in a very long time, but the week prior I was up every night late studying for midterms, then waking up at 7am for my 9am class, so I think it was much needed. I sent out a message to everyone on facebook seeing if anyone wanted to get dinner later, and at 8pm, Peter, Polly, Philomena, Kirsty, Blair (another Marylander!) and I went out. We grabbed some Korean food, then went to Cafe Bene and got some gelato and waffles. It was a nice, relaxing change of pace from the night before.

Today, I've just been trying to get some homework and such done, so not much exciting to write about. I've officially been here a whole three weeks now. It's strange to think in another three weeks I'll be on a plane back home. For once, I'm hoping time drags instead of flies.