it was one year ago today when i arrived here in Korea. it doesn’t seem like that long ago actually. i remember being a bit worried when i first came here; will i be able to find an apartment? will i get all the school stuff figured out? will my friends be at the airport to pick me up? well, everything worked out after i arrived. my friends were at the airport and they helped me get set up with an apartment, bank account, Visa change, etc. i’m very thankful for the friends i’ve met here who have helped me get adjusted to living here. actually, there wasn’t much of any culture shock when i came here. maybe it’d be different if i had moved to the more country parts of Korea, but here in Seoul it’s very similar to the big cities in the US (except for the big language difference).

the time passed very fast. i’m not too great at the Korean language yet, but i can communicate somewhat with people better than when i first started. i’ve gained some good friends from language exchange and English tutoring, and also met many from my church at different events and dance practice. it’s been a good experience

learning Korean is taking a bit longer than i thought it would. i had to retake the level 2 course, and might have to retake the level 3 too. i’ll probably be here for another year, and then i’ll be looking for a job where i can hopefully use this language i’ve been learning. i’m earning a little money from the English tutoring, but it’s not enough to cover the bills i pay here, so i’m going through a lot of my savings. hopefully it’ll work out after i finish

Angry Whopper

first the Whopper Jr. was angry, and it seemed like all was better since all signs of the Whopper Jr. being angry had disappeared from the local Burger King. but now the normal Whopper and Steakhouse burger are angry! you are probably asking “why are these hamburgers angry?” well, according to the Korean on the poster, it says “When life is angry…! It’s a really burning taste! New Angry Whopper.” the translation may sound a little odd, but i think Burger King is trying to get people to eat an angry burger if their life is angry XD

the burgers have added “Angry Sauce” and “Spicy Mushrooms” which, according to Burger King, when combined causes anger. my friend said “i’d be angry too if i found those extra things on my Whopper!” (he dislikes mushrooms). i’m curious to try it, but the price is a bit high: 6900 won for the Angry Whopper combo and 8600 won for the Steakhouse combo. that comes out to be $5.60 and $7 respectively. maybe i’ll just try the sandwich without the combo extras…

since Burger King has “angrified” some of its hamburgers, it got me thinking of other emotionally charged food they could create. maybe something like “Apathetic Onion Rings” or “Bored Salad” for those times when you are feeling apathetic or bored.

Crowded Myeongdong

it’s already august! i’ve been living in Korea now for almost a year. the time is flying by very quickly! the level 3 semester at school is halfway over. i did so-so on the midterms… Listening is still the hardest and i got a 50% score Reading was a 65.5%, Speaking was a surprising 78% and on the Writing test i got an 81%. i think the biggest reason for the low scores is not studying the many many new words well enough. also, comprehending everything very quickly is tough to do… but the words are the killer; i’ll study words and think i know them, but then when i hear them spoken, i have no idea what the word is. i guess i just need more practice. unless i can get in the 90% range for the finals, i’m thinking i may have to retake level 3. even though i’d like to pass it and move on to level 4, i’m partially thinking it would be more beneficial to take level 3 again. or maybe i’m just making up excuses?

i caught the new Harry Potter movie here. i really enjoyed it a lot, and have been wanting to watch it again, but i probably won’t get a chance until it comes to DVD–too busy and also other movies i want to see too. at Korean theatres you can get a 1-4 page flier promoting the movie. i usually grab a flier of the movies i’ve watched here. this is the flier for Harry Potter.

Harry Potter flier

Harry Potter flier inside

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Smoothie King

it’s a little over midnight right now. Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is on TV, but muted while i listen to some Assemblage 23 music and study. it’s raining outside, and will supposedly rain all of next week. it’s the middle of the first of two big rainy seasons here. the weather is in the 80’s which isn’t usually bad, but the humidity here is very high. actually, walking around outside isn’t too bad, but once i walk indoors where the temperature is cooler, i suddenly feel very very hot XD i’m thankful for air-conditioning!

i did some studying today, and then during the evening, i went to dance practice at my church. we learned cha-cha, which i’ve learned before. it was still fun and i got to meet some new people. we have a great dance teacher who is an amazing dancer! she’s taught us cha-cha, jive and also rumba i’ve been going to these practices every Wednesday and Saturday. Wednesdays we have been practicing for a performance some of us will give at a big event/meeting/gathering thing at church. it should be fun doing the performance, and hopefully i won’t get nervous XD

changed the music to Iris, and might change it again before i finish this post…

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Typical day in class

i (finally) passed level 2 and began a short vacation last friday. the class was alright for the most part. the teachers were great and fun. i also liked my classmates, but they tended to be pretty loud and talked or slept a lot during class. this was a bit frustrating when trying to pay attention to the teacher’s lesson, especially when they would interupt the teacher with a dumb question about how to spell a word so they can finish writing their text message XD (can you tell it annoyed me?) well, not all of their antics were annoying–a lot were very funny and i laughed a lot with them all. the teachers were good-natured about it all too even when they were trying to keep order.

so i have another week and a few days until i start level 3. i’m a little worried because all i’ve heard about it is that it’s tough XD i’ve been doing “language exchange” with a friend from church twice a week which has been very helpful. although i’m still not able to process quickly many of the things she says in Korean…

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while eating some instant curry tonight, i thought about (finally) adding an entry to my site. so then i got looking for a picture to go along with the entry , so it wouldn’t look so bland, and i found some old pics of the actual type of curry i’m eating. this then led me to finding more pictures of food, and so i decided to make this entry dedicated to food-related pics. anyway, on to the food pics:

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i’m amazed at how fast the time here has gone by… i haven’t updated my site for a long time. i’ll try to recap what’s been going on lately.

school:

i finished level 2! yay! but didn’t do well on the midterms and the finals weren’t too good either… long story short; i didn’t score high enough to pass the class, so now i’m retaking it. i just started the new semester yesterday and so far i feel much more comfortable in the class. i can understand the teachers when they speak a lot better then the first time i started level 2. so i think it should be good this 2nd time and i plan on getting an A!

vacation:

after the 2nd semester ended, i had just under 2 weeks of vacation here. a friend from the US was also on his spring break and flew out here to visit. he stayed here for a few days and we traveled to see Seoul Tower, a Korean Folk Museum next to Lotte World, saw the DMZ along with traveling inside one of the tunnels the North Korean’s were digging, visited the Changdeokgung palace, which was the secondary palace for the king, and also did some various wandering arounds in Seoul.

after the time here, we hopped on a plane for a short trip to Taipei in Taiwan which was also a lot of fun! in Taipei, we visited the Taipei 101 building which is super-duper tall! and we also visited the BIG National Palace Museum with lots of old old Chinese art and other things. we saw the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall which was very big. while we were there, we got bombarded by some high school kids who seem to love talking to foreigners. they said they were doing a report on foreigners and asked us questions about Taipei/Taiwan, and then proceeded to want to take many pictures with us. i was able to give them my camera to get a picture of all of us too hehe. it was fun! after we were walking away, i saw them rushing over to another foreign guy to get pictures with him too XD we also met up with some of my friend’s co-worker friends at Intel who he has met on various business trips out there and ate lunch together. the trip was a lot of fun overall, but unfortunately i was still playing catch-up on sleep from the previous studying for finals the week before… so that tiredness plus the huge amount of walking we did really wore me out XD

Silly Taiwan Highschoolers

i took a lot of pictures and have been uploading them to my flickr page. i’ll be making separate posts with these, but you can check out all the pics now if you want here.

other things:

hmm, what else has been going on? the weather here in Seoul has been warming up–it’s usually in the 40’s and low 50’s now. i’ve been really hooked on Lost and 24 and squeeze in time to watch these in between studying.

i’ve been wanting to do some other things here lately. mainly revolving around art/creativity. i haven’t done much in the way of drawing/designing anything for a long time now, and i’ve been craving it. if i figure out how to better manage my time here, i’d like to maybe make some short comics about “Korean life” and/or do some more webpage designing.

hmm, that’s it for now. i’ll try to post more often