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I'm at the airport. Boarding in an hour. Leaving in an hour and a half. 11 (12?) hour flight. Arrive at airport.

Almost home :)

ONE MORE WEEK

Sorry I haven't updated for a while. I've been studying for finals and now I'm taking them. So far, so good, though, and not too stressed. Took my Chinese Characters test. Didn't do as well as I hoped I would, but that's okay. My 3-minute speech for Korean went well, though!

Two more finals Tuesday. First is my essay for North and South Korean Politics. Second is Part 1 of my Korean final, which is "reading" and "listening." Shouldn't be too bad. 

In other news, I now have six angry red bug bites on my leg. I hate mosquitoes. The two on my right leg are fading, which is good. I guess I just can't wear shorts for a while :(

K gotta go back to studying! Bye!

A few tidbits

So nothing spectacular has been going on, but I really wanted to do an update so I just compiled a few things that I've been doing during the last week or so.

First things first. FOOD. Hahahah. Haven't had a food post in a while, right? The first one is 피자 닭갈비, aka Pizza Chicken Meat or AWESOME. Hahah. So I love 닭갈비 (basically spicy boneless dark meat pieces of chicken with veggies), but we wanted a little twist, so we went to a place that has pizza-style. So this one also had mozzarella cheese, olives, bell peppers and onions sprinkled on top. So good. 

We cleaned it up. Hahahah. 

Then tonight, my familia had dinner @ Cafe Minto to celebrate the end of the semester . Seven girls ate two bowls of pasta, three bowls of 떡복기, which is like spicy rice cakes. So delicious. 

Been going to church, too, and seeing too many people dress alike. 

We also take sticker pictures and make Chung wear ridiculous headbands.

Emmaus Girlies :):):)

And.. we also study :D. Melissa, Ashley and my favorite place to study is @ Princeton Square. The environment is so conducive to studying. Work work work!

AND CHECK IT OUT! They have a USC Banner! Fight on!

end

Sports Day!

So on Sunday the 31st (yes, a long long time ago), Emmaus held a Sports Day competition. It was four teams vying for the top trophy :)

Me + Hanna wearing our cool Emmaus Campus Ministry shirts! Thanks to P. Marcus for designing it :D

Our team, with the pink accented using my super camera. Aram, Judy and Nie Nie holding up the "BRIDEZILLA" flag/cape/awesomeness!

Judy and I practicing for the 3-legged race! Second place in our heat! Woo!

Getting into her zone for the Spoon Race!

The Wednesday Night teams :) Erin Samo + Mat!

Aka the Watermelon Teams!

end :)

Nearing the end...

Wow. Two more weeks and I'll be back in the states. That's so weird. So yes, ladies and gents! I shall be back in the good ol' U.S. of A. on June 22. And I'm ready to be home. I want some blue skies, Mexican food, a comfy queen-sized bed (aka my bed at home), less crowded streets, and see my friends and boyfriend. To actually see them would be nice, rather than just talking on the phone or viewing a projection on a screen. No bueno.

So it's EXCITING that it's only two more weeks. It also means that I have finals coming up. I really only care about one class — my Chinese characters class. I really really want an A in this class, and it's probably the only class where I won't get an A. Boo. I'm doing pretty well in Korean, and I'm quite sure I'm doing fine in my other two classes. But hanja is sooo difficult because now it's 300 characters that all blur together. Is it 13 strokes or 14? I have one that's 23 strokes. But actually, it's the ones that have less than 10 strokes that are the hardest. 

I have two other finals. One is my Korean final, which has multiple parts. Listening, reading, speaking, overall. Shouldn't be too bad, but I have to give a 3-minute speech again and I have to write it sometime soon. My other is for my North+South Korean Politics class, which has a giant essay. I should be fine on that since it's history and I'm good at history, even if I'm not a huge fan of this class. 

And finally, I have a final paper I have to write. I thought it would be due next week, but apparently it's due June 23, which is... after I come back... I'm supposed to upload it onto the school server, but I don't trust the school server so I'm going to try finishing it up this weekend or something. I haven't started and it's 10 pages long... I guess 10 pages isn't really that long though, so maybe that'll be okay. 

I just want to do well. Yeah all my classes are pass/fail, but still! I want to do well!

That's my situation right now. Actually, a lot of people from ANC are coming this summer, and so I might meet up with some of them, which will be amazing! I can't wait to come back and see you all soon :) 

National Museum of Korea

So on... Saturday (the real Saturday), my family plus my cousin's mom and grandparents went to the National Museum of Korea. It was actually really cool. 

The interior of the museum. 

There's no entrance fee to the museum, which is awesome. Getting an audio player thing is less than $3, which is also amazing. Even though it was a weekend, it wasn't busy at all. There was lots to see. I posted a few of my favorite pics below. Enjoy :)

I want these earrings. Look how intricate they are. No idea when they were made, but yeah. So pretty (and heavy)!

A shell mask. Cool huh? Made by some of the earliest settlements on the Korean peninsula. 

Part of the 한글 or "Korean Language" exhibit. Showing the 11,000+ character combinations that you can use in Korean. Lucky for Koreans, most of the combos don't even exist. Korean is actually pretty easy to learn; really systematic. The grammar is very different from English and the pronunciation is difficult, but reading is easy peasy. 

I was reaaally excited to see the celadon-ware. This was one of my favorites. A teapot. Check out the intricate design and the beautiful green color. They don't know how to make that color anymore =\ Lost over time. 

I think this was a bronze incense burner. 

A 10-story pagoda. Ridiculous, yeah? That's my dad looking up at it. SO TALL. 

These are my parents :) We're on the 3rd story of the museum. 

Yay end!

OMG new hair

I got a perm today! Yay! Check it out!!

Look how happy I am! Yay!

A President's Funeral

So the day I went to the restaurant (see previous post) was FRIDAY, the 29th. It was also the day of the funeral for former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun. Read about his death here. But if you want the gist of it. 

Roh was under investigation for bribery charges during his presidency, which was from 2002-2007. He was questioned by prosecutors and committed suicide a few days later by jumping off a cliff while hiking near his retirement home. It was shocking for the whole nation. 

And it also showed me how insane this nation is. All day, every day, they showed pictures of former President Roh and people mourning his death. People crying, more people crying, even more people crying. And it wouldn't be so weird if it wasn't for how they had treated this guy before. He had such a low approval rating when he was president, and after. People hated him. They protested his rule like crazy. He was even impeached. Then when he died, the pendulum swung the other way. People who thought he was a traitor by possibly accepting bribes, now thought he was a hero and did the honorable thing. READ THIS ANALYSIS BY THE NEW YORK TIMES HERE. 

So later that night, after most of the official festivities were done, my dad decided to take my family to the place where they were held to see if anything else was still going on. And it definitely was. 

There were tons and tons of people EVERYWHERE. Holding candles, crying, murmuring quietly, etc. 

A Korean custom in Korea, to bow to the picture of the deceased.

There were so many people lining up to bow to this one. I guess it was the "official" one? Or the one everyone wanted to bow at. It was INSANE. 

We went around 9:45, 10 p.m., and there were so many people. They blocked off the street in this major intersection in the city so people could sit around. There were people sitting in circles, talking and/or listening to people speaking into a giant speaker system. The speechgivers were talking about the ex-president and how he was awesome and how horrible the current administration is. There were a lot of very left-wing people out there. 

More people sitting. 

Left-wing propaganda, telling people to impeach/hate the current president. 

People sitting around. 

And like any good Korean political gathering, there were plenty of riot police around. There was actually a march and shots were fired into the air. I'm pretty sure they weren't bullets, but man it's pretty scary to have a bunch of Korean people run like a mob towards you. Wish I got that on video...

Eventually the police turned on these giant lights to blind people and/or to tell people to calm down. 

The face of former President Roh. His party's color was yellow. May he rest in peace. 

Food Adventure with Family!

Best part about hanging out with my parents? Well, I guess it's actually the second best because the first best is being able to be with my parents. So the second best is... EATING!!!! 

We met up with my mom's friends family and we went to this delicious restaurant in 홍대 or Hongdae, named after the arts university in the area. It's got a lot of cute places to eat and so we went to one called 어머니가 차려주는 식탁 or The Table that Mother Prepares [for you to eat]. YAY! 

Super cute, yeah?

Basically it's a lot of traditional Korean foods with modern twists. It came out in about 10 courses. I didn't upload pictures of all of them — I just put up my favorites. But wow, I was so SO full by the end. 

Delicious salad with tofu slices and an (edible) peony on top. 

This one was super interesting. The folded green and white slices are thinly sliced pieces of rice cake, kind of like the rice paper they give you at all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ restaurants but thicker and slightly tougher. Take a slice (using chopsticks of course) and then take some of the salad and place it in the middle of the rice paper slice. Then wrap it, dip it in the sweet sauce, and mmm. So good. 

This is the modern twist of the 삼겹살, or the Korean equivalent of bacon, but way better because it's fattier. It was so good. It was so soft and tender and greasy. It was on top of this delicious salad and if you ate it together it was the perfect combination of meat and veggies. 

Isn't the presentation of this one awesome? Look at the heart! 

The food looks like fried stuff, and yes it is, but it's not your typical tempura. Inside the one that looks like shrimp is actually ginseng. I thought it would taste so weird, but it was actually quite good. And the other fried food is two slices of eggplant, held together with mashed shrimp. Yummmm. 

Then this is your typical 갈비, or Korean meat, right? WRONG. It's the most tender, best marinated meat ever. And to "heat" it, they lit it on fire. Yes. FIRE. And yes it's sitting on top of rocks and spruced with some kind of pine leaf or whatever. 

To finish the meal, we have greens mixed with rice and spicy sauce. I was about to die by this time because my stomach was so full. 

To finish it off, a nice cup of coffee, plus watermelons+oranges in the background.

So that was another entry. No pictures of me, but y'all are more interested in the food anyway, right? Wow I'm hungry. More updates soon :)