finally got around to uploading some pics from Seoul to my flickr account. check them out here!

i just finished my midterms last thursday and friday. we had 4 tests; reading, writing, speaking, and listening. i did well on the writing and reading, but averaged a C for the speaking and listening… those two are the toughest for me. i understand the grammar so far, but putting together sentences quickly is tough. and trying to understand what people say when they speak very quickly is also very hard. i just need to practice more and more.

today we got 2 new 선생님 (teachers). during the 3rd hour of class, a second teacher comes in to teach us reading. the new teachers seem great.

hmm, what else is new… oh yeah, i’ve had a few chances to get some one on one speaking practice with some friends. this has been helpful, but i need to do it a lot moreso–daily even. many times when i see my Korean friends, we seem to only speak in English. and if there are groups talking, i have a hard time trying to say something in Korean since i’m slow at it. i also worry (which i shouldn’t) that i may be interupting a deep conversation amongst them with some question like “what kind of food do you like?” i think i will try to set up more language practice meetings with my friends so i can get better at it. i have two set for this week, and am going to try to only speak in Korean.

not much else has been going on here. the weather has been getting colder, and i’m in need of getting some more sweaters and a scarf or two. the mornings walking to school is much colder than in the afternoons. but i remember in february it got very cold here!

well, before i left for Korea, i told many people how i hoped to update my website very often with stories of living here, but i haven’t done a very good job at that yet

so it’s been over a month living here. i started school a few weeks ago and really like it! there are over 1000 students here at Yonsei University trying to learn Korean. they split everyone up into 12-13 students per class. the class is 4 hours per day with 3 breaks in between. during the 3rd hour, a different teacher comes in to teach reading. the toughest part of the class for me is memorizing the vocabulary and understanding the speaking parts because it is spoken very fast. i think with more vocab knowledge, as well as practice, i’ll be able to understand the speaking better. my class is a mix of American, Japanese, Mongolian, Spanish, German and Italian. the teacher tries to keep everything spoken in the class in Korean, but sometimes she has to briefly explain things in English. she knows a bit of Japanese too. the Mongolian guys have difficulty with both the Korean and the English… and those without English as their first language have to do some double translating when the teacher explains something in English. the class is very fast-paced, and i worry about even missing a few minutes of the class or i’ll fall behind.

life outside of class has been good for the most part. i still need help finding places to get specific items, and i’m always at a loss when people say “where do you want to eat?” since i don’t know everything that’s offered in this area, so i usually just say “whatever you guys want,” though i tend to always crave samgyeopsal i still want to try a lot of places to eat here. in my area, there are many many restaurants. and regarding western restaurants/places, there’s a Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Baskin Robbins and an Outback Steakhouse all within 10 minutes walking from where i live. there are tons of PC bang’s (internet cafe’s mainly used for playing computer games), cafe’s, DVD bang’s (basically a place you can rent a dvd and watch it in a small room there instead of at home. many residents here in college town don’t have dvd players, or even tv’s. i think mainly because the apartments are soo small), and Norae bang’s (karaoke room’s–”bang” means room in Korean. these are different than in America, where it’s a small room rented out that you and your friends can go in and sing karaoke in, and not have to worry about a large crowd of strangers laughing at you when you try to sing).

my “1 room” apartment is small compared to the US, but my cousin said it’s one of the biggest he’s seen when he was here before. i saw some others when i was looking for an apartment, and it is definitely larger than any others i saw. though i pay around $607 US per month for it. it came with AC, a somewhat old tv, bed, rice cooker, small fridge, small single stove, 2 closets, a desk, a washer (no driers in most of Korea ), and a microwave. i can get groceries at the Grand Mart, but it doesn’t always have the same foods as in America. their only lunch meat here seems to be ham (i miss turkey… supposedly Subway Sandwiches are here somewhere). The fruit here is much costlier than in America. so when Korean’s offer fruit to you, it has a bigger meaning than “wanna apple?” a pack of 4 large nice Fuji apples from Grand Mart cost like $9 or $10 i think. and fruit tends to be the dessert after meals in the home. Fuji apples, grapes, nectarines (which they call peaches), peaches, persimmons, pineapple, and strawberries. i’ve always liked eating fruit a lot, but eating it after a big meal really tastes good

there are many differences to America and many similarities i’ve noticed here. the garbage system is very different. it’s very hard to find public garbage cans on the streets. they’re very very big on recycling, but it’s understandable with the small small country and millions of people. instead of having a garbage can you put out on the street to be collected once a week, you have to go and buy specific plastic garbage bags (which are cheap). there’s a bag for only food waste, and a bag for all non-food and non-recycling waste. and for recycling, you can use any plastic bag. when you go shopping at places, you have to pay extra for plastic/paper bags when you make purchases (only about $0.10). i think this helps cut down on waste. i need to still get a shopping bag i can reuse instead of gathering a nice collection of Grand Mart bags. oh and if the garbage collectors find that you put recycling in the normal garbage bag, and they look through it and find your name/address on something, they will send you a fine to pay (around $100 or so). at restaurants, napkins are very scarce. they exist, but sometimes the table you sit at has only 2 to 4 napkins, and they’re small. you can ask for more, but i think this is another thing to do with trying to keep the waste to a minimum. another difference is the people here tend to use washers only and no driers. they hang their clothes to dry. i’m still not used to this at all… the washers have a spin dry setting that basically dries the clothes enough so they come out damp, but this also causes tons of wrinkles, so i’m always ironing walking around Sinchon (an area in Seoul where i live) is interesting. most of the people walk slower than me (i know it’s cause i’m tall and my strides are longer than most…), but in America, i tended to walk slower than most people… the traffic and driving here is very crazy! i never thought i’d miss California traffic, but i’m definiately glad i don’t drive here. many drivers run red lights, and they drive down very narrow streets and come within a couple of feet from people walking. they’ll slow down if people are in the way, and sometimes honk, but you really have to make way for the drivers around here. i’m used to it now, but was pretty surprised when i first experienced seeing people drive here. everyone seems to be used to it and just move out of the way when cars come by. and there are tons of motor scooters here too–mostly for food/item delivering. and they will drive anywhere they can–sidewalks, streets, crosswalks. i even saw one drive into a restaurant (which was empty at the time). they zig-zag through crowds all the time too.

i will try to write more about stuff here soon, but i’m tired and need to get to bed now…

my small Korean (one room) apartment i miss some of the conveniences from home; oven, dryer, larger bathroom… but this is actually a larger size apartment than others i saw. it’s also a short 20 minute walk from my school, 10 minute walk to the subway and a 20 minute walk to my church. there are tons of places to eat at and shop at around here. and also tons of people–they like to drive much faster than i do, and tend to walk much slower than i do

when traveling abroad, you will discover other countries use a different range of voltage than that of the US. in South Korea, they use 220V which is way different than the 110V in the US. they also use a different plug outlet (two small thin prongs). making sure whatever electronic device from the US you plug into an outlet here can handle 220V seems obvious, but that didn’t stop me from attempting to try getting my Xbox 360 to work here…

the Xbox 360 has a large power supply brick that says it can only handle 110V input. i had purchased a voltage converter from Best Buy that worked as well as using a rock to convert voltage (unfortunately, i didn’t discover this until i had moved to Seoul, so i doubt i can get a refund…). i also purchased a couple of plug adapters for those electronic devices that can handle 220V input (like my laptop). anyway, i tried the voltage converter first, and the Xbox 360 turned on for maybe 2 seconds, and then nothing worked. so i thought “hey, i’ll try the plug adapter and see if that may work.” don’t try this…. plugging it into the wall caused sparks to fly out of the plug adapter. the result was i now had a broken Xbox 360 power supply and a broken plug adapter. thankfully this was the worst that happened and nothing more like a fire or injury. and since then i have purchased a Korean Xbox 360 power supply that works just fine with 220V as well as the US Xbox 360 my friend bought me a real voltage converter that works great too!

so learn from my dumbness; if the input range does not include the voltage you want to use, then it won’t work and you can easily destroy the device or do something worse…

Walking to David’s (성률) house from 아차산 (Achasan) station. Sorry it’s such a shaky video…

well, i’m finally here in Seoul after an 11 hour flight from Seattle that seemed to go faster than i thought it would. Korean Air is nice with many free recent movies to watch i’ll back up a bit to explain some stuff; i quit Sega back on August 1st (sorry guys), and then moved up to my parents house in Washington state where i stayed for almost 4 weeks. i spent most of my time reorganizing things i brought with me, making many address changes, and then packing everything for the big move. one handy thing to get if you decide to move, are vacuum seal bags that can compress clothing very well. but now i have a very wrinkly wardrobe

so anyway, i made it here last friday night and met up with David (성률) and Hyeyun (혜윤). they took me into Seoul from the airport (which is actually in Incheon). Hyeyun had to meet up with her boyfriend, so David, me, David’s mom, sister and 2 friends went out for dinner at some BBQ place which was good. David’s friend, Cheongeun, let me use his extra cell phone until i can get my own. i was feeling exhausted and went to bed soon after i got back.

yesterday, David and his girlfriend helped me to learn how to find my way to and from the subway station near his house. the neighborhoods here are very maze-like–no easy grid system. and it’s definitely a challenge when you don’t know the language too! on the subway, David helped me understand how the whole spider-web works. i’ve only been used to BART in California, so having now to deal with 12 different subway lines all crossing over each other is pretty tough too. especially with the transfer stations. a lot of the signs have english for the subway stops helps, but it’s still pretty complex. we went to a department store, then got sushi, and then wandered around David’s university. it feels much much safer in this big city at night (from where i’ve been so far) than in San Francisco (sorry to say).

today i made my way alone to the subway and rode it a ways to meet up with Hyeyun who helped me find where my church was at. she didn’t stay, so i was on my own. thankfully, some of the missionaries there were from the US and helped translate for me. i was able to introduce myself in Korean. it was probably clunky sounding, but they seemed to understand for the most part. a few people there know some english to hold conversations. the bishop there already found an older couple who just got a new apartment and are willing to rent out one of the 3 extra rooms to me for about $300 a month. i will be checking it out next sunday. David told my friday night that he thinks all the apartments near Yonsei University (where i’ll be going to school) are either way too expensive, or are already taken… so i was feeling a bit stressed about where i can live, but now with this new opportunity, i feel much much less worried about everything. David and his family are very very kind and generous, but there house is too small for another person and i don’t want to overstay my welcome. actually, all the Koreans i’ve met so far have been very kind and helpful to me

i’ll try to take some pics and get them uploaded soon

the other day on my way out to work, i walked out into the garage and saw my roomate’s cat, Jin, lounging on top of his car just hanging out. it surprised me cause i’ve never seen him lounging there. he likes to lounge in some odd places sometimes. like outside in the dirt, on the bathroom counter, halfway inside a room, etc.

i decided a while back after visiting Korea back in February to look into the possibility of going to school there to learn the Korean language. actually, only after a few days of being there, i started having thoughts of either teaching English there or studying Hangul (the Korean language). i really liked it there, but it may have mostly been the vacation to a new country… whatever the feeling at that time, when arriving back in the US, i’ve been craving to go back and have been studying Hangul on and off ever since. i applied to Yonsei University and was accepted to the fall semester! the plan is to move to Seoul at the end of August, stay with the Hong family, which are very cool, and then search for an apartment and take care of other things like Alien ID, Student Visa, bank account, etc. for a few weeks before the semester starts near the end of September. everything is falling into place so far. i still have a big list of things to take care of in the next few months. i’m excited about it and a bit nervous–mainly i worry about getting everything taken care of when i’m over there and also hopefully not getting lost in the giant city of Seoul…

Yonsei has a one and a half year language program split into 6 semesters with an optional 7th semester afterwards. it’s 4 hours per day, 5 days a week. i’ll probably look for a job after getting the hang of the language enough. it should be an interesting adventure i also want to make some “tutorials” on how to move to Korea and go to school once i get settled to help out anyone else who may be considering it

the real Lego Indiana Jones is coming soon, but for now you can check out this funny reenactment:

too funny!