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!

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 :) 

Korean Class

For those of you who don't know why I'm in Korea, it's to learn Korean. I think it's about time that I introduce you a little bit more to my Korean class. Below is my current teacher. We had two other teachers before the midterm, but after the midterm exam period we got a new teacher who teaches us every day from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. 

TEACHER!

We have three books. A grammar/vocab text book, a workbook, and a reading comprehension book. I'm in the Intermediate 2-B class. The class isn't difficult, but it is definitely improving my Korean writing (spelling, grammar) as well as increasing my vocabulary — the exact reasons why I came. Below are some pictures of my classmates. Enjoy!

Classmates. You can see our textbook on the bottom of the picture.

Yes, we get a little distracted sometimes. 

The end. 

Old Friends, New Friends :)

This update is just... a lot of things jammed together. Hahah. At least there's pictures :)

So last weekend, Michelle Cho came back to Korea :) I haven't seen this girl in over a year, but she says she promises to be back this summer. 

Haewon, Me, Michelle, Judy, Aram

Emilie & Christine eating after church for Erin 사모's birthday.

 

Then on Thursday, I got to hang out with Judy and Haewon @ 이대, which is Ewha Women's University, an all-female university right next to my school. It's soo pretty there. 

Judy, Haewon, Me :) 

Pretty ladies!

I'll have a more cohesive entry soon, I promise. Bye!

MIDTERMS!

No pictures today. Sorry :)

It's midterm week! Yikes! This morning I had my first one, Chinese Characters, and I think I did OK. I messed up on a few for sure, but I think I can still pull off an A-.

And now I'm getting ready for two more that I have tomorrow. Both are very word-heavy, with short answers and two short essays for one and three or four longer-ish essays for the other class. My right hand is going to be so cramped tomorrow. Blahblahblah. They shouldn't be too difficult since I've been keeping up with the readings and I'm a huge history buff (it's a lot of history). 

Wednesday I have a 3-minute 이야기 or speech that I have to make in front of the class. Except it's not really supposed to be a "speech" but more like "storytelling." So I don't have to memorize it that well, thus I'm not stressed about that yet either. I should be fine if I just practice it a few times tomorrow and then again on Wednesday. 

Then Thursday and Friday I have a lot of Korea testing. Except I'm really not too stressed about that either. Hahaha. I'm doing pretty well in my Korean class and I understand all the grammatical patterns. There's definitely a few vocabulary words I'm going to have to go over, but it shouldn't be too difficult. 

See? Isn't it nice knowing that I'm not failing all my classes while I'm in a completely new environment? :) 

That's all for now. Hope you all are having a good week!

Black Day

So in Korea, April 4 (4/14) is Black Day. I told you guys about White Day, right? So Black Day is the day where singles go out and get 자장면 (or 짜짱면), which is black.. noodle... dish... SO DELICIOUS. See picture below. 


I know I'm not single, but since my boyfriend is really really far away, I thought I was justified in going out to eat some black noodles with my friends :) Here we are, beginning our journey to our quest to find the black noodles! 

Isn't it pretty?? Check out the cherry trees on the hillside. And below, you can see all the budding leaves on the streets. 

Chung and Victoria are ready for their foodz.

Tina and me with our green chopsticks!

Forest path around sunset time. Cool. :) More updates coming soon!

Yesterday was Monday

So I've started this new thing yesterday where I walk around campus every afternoon and explore. Because I think I'm gaining weight -_____- and because I don't want to sit on my butt every day while the weather gets nicer. So yesterday I got to take lots of pretty pictures! 

More green is popping up everywhere.

 

More pretty flowers. 

GORGEOUS CHERRY BLOSSOMS. AHHHH

LOOK HOW PRETTY THEY ARE.

PRETTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These white flowers are bomb too. They're a type of magnolia. This above picture was actually taken after my walk. This was after my Korean class ended and a bunch of Emmaus girlies and I went out to eat. This is in front of Mary's 하숙집. 

This was our dinner. It was 찜닭, like chicken marinated in soy sauce. And then we added dumplings and ramen into the mix too. It was really good, but we got a really small size -___- Bad idea. 

Hanna, Mary, and Arum

Joanna, Me

The end!

Sunday Update

So this weekend was super fun and super busy. Saturday morning I met up with Christine, who went to my summer program in Korea 2 years ago. We caught up on our lives AKA we talked about boys. Hahahah. 

Then for lunch I met up with another Christine and we had really good donkatsu and then we found this awesome WAFFLE PLACE. It was only 1,000W or 80 cents. It was basically a waffle with whipped cream inside and syrup drizzled on and then folded. SO GOOD. 

And then on Sunday, I went to church. We have gorgeous godly ladies over here :)

After service/fellowship/Bible study/games (electricity!!), we went over to Seoul National University where they had a park. I just checked out the gorgeous flowers. 

And both Christine AND Joanna came to JSEM/New Philadelphia today so I was super happy. Yay!

I just finished studying for my next Chinese characters quiz which is in 10 hours. Woo hoo! It definitely takes up the bulk of my studying, but it's nice to know that I'm learning something while I'm here. I guess I've learned over 100 characters now? 150? 

So now it's time for my beauty sleep. Bye :)

Boo. I made a mistake.

It's not really a big deal. But I just realized that I set my camera to the WRONG DATE. So all my pictures since the beginning of the trip have the wrong date stamp on it. Boo. Oh well. I fixed it now so all my pictures will be right. 

So I just wanted to give an update that had pictures. I had a 한자 or Chinese characters test today. I think I did pretty well, so that was good. Then after a break I had Korean class. It just so happened that today was the commemoration of the 50th year of the Korean Language Institute, so we got free 떡 (dduk) or rice cakes. Yummy! 



I used to hate hate HATE 떡. I didn't like the texture or whatever the weird stuff on the inside was. But now I love it and I ate it all in class. Muahahah.

After class, a lot of the students from the Korean class and some other people from our dorm went out to eat 자장면. Here's us on the way to go eat. Look at the pretty yellow flowers!!!



Here's us at the restaurant. That's David, Kohei and Jackie.

And of course, the FOOD. So delicious. 

Then we went out to get dessert @ baskin robins. Yum yum for pistachio almond!

The end :) Hopefully more to update soon!

A short little entry

Hey, everyone. Hope all of you are doing well :)

It's now APRIL and the weather is still pretty chilly. I think it's mostly because of the wind. If there were no wind, then it would be quite warm. The days are supposed to be getting warmer though, which is awesome. 

Not too much to update here. Still going to classes and such. I guess I'm just getting busier! Update soon?

The weather outside is frightful

The weather's been pretty cold lately. I had to bust out my brown Gap coat again. Today actually was quite warm and very nice. Below are just some of the spring flowers I've been noticing around campus. Enjoy and since the weather's warming up even more, hopefully the cherry blossoms will start blooming soon!!

 

Yellow flowers by my dorm. 

On the path to the main part of campus. Lots of green :)

Check out that skyyyyy. 

A pretty building with pretty flowers in front of it. 

I can't wait till the ivy greens start to pop out and make everything GREEN!

A lot of pink flowers. Yeah sorry I don't know any names. 

More pink flowers!

Fin.

Hannah sitting in her room.

Another Date with Pia

Sorry sorry that it's been a while. But don't worry, faithful readers, I'm still alive and armed with another entry. I'll slowly catch up, I promise. :)

So last Monday, the 16th of March, I met up with Pia again. We got yummy sushi @ a sushi place that had a conveyer belt. AND IT WAS SO GOOD.

Yes, that's SEARED SALMON. So good. 

And I have no idea what this was but it was heavenly as well. 

We take the best pictures, for sure :)

Then we went searching for waffles for dessert. We ended up at Beans&Berries. Above is my cute cafe latte where they made me a heart. Yummy. 

Our WAFFLE. The fruit here is amazing, by the way. The strawberries in Korea are definitely better than the strawberries in America. They're way juicier. 

Someone (my dad) asked me if I'm gaining weight because all I post are food pictures. Silly, daddy. I actually walk A LOT around here. Walking to the nearest subway station takes a good 20 minutes. And walking to my dorm from the closest bus stop takes 5 minutes up a really steep hill and walking from the subway station takes a good 10 minutes up another steep hill. So it's balancing out. I think. ... So far... Hahahah. 

More updates soon. :) It's turning into spring here so expect a lot of flower pictures soon!!!! So excited. K bye. 

Another update.

I'm waiting for my laundry to finish drying. The laundry machines here are pretty weird. The washer told me it'd take 40 minutes, and when I came back 35 minutes later, it told me that it had 30 more minutes to go. And I left my clothes in the dryer for an hour and they're still pretty wet. So while I'm waiting for my clothes to finally dry, here's an update :)

I am enjoying ALL of my classes, which is wonderful. I'm taking a Chinese Characters class where we basically learn about 25 characters a class. And it's a lot of characters, and she goes really fast, and there are a ton of people who obviously know their Chinese characters sitting in the class to get an easy A, but it's fine. I'm going to learn Chinese characters! Rawr! I need to make flash cards...

I'm also taking Traditional Korean Society and Modernization. It sounds really boring, I know, but the professor is this Canadian anthropologist who is in love with Korean culture and definitely has the outsider perspective, which I definitely wanted to have. And he's hilarious. We're going to cover a lot of Korean traditions, institutions and social issues, so it's basically history + culture all mashed together. My favorite. 

I'm also taking a Politics of North and South Korean class and I love this one too. It's super relevant with all of the N. Korea missile talks that are flooding the front pages these days. In addition, the professor is one of those scattered ones who's absentminded but supercool. He basically made giant books for us with all of our readings and carried them up the giant hill. He's awesome. 

And finally, I'm taking a Korean class. I love my Korean class. Everyone is so chill, and we have people from England, Indonesia, Japan, America, everywhere. We have two teachers: one for MWF, another for TTH, and my T/TH prof is really cool. I'll get to meet the MWF one and hopefully he/she will be awesome as well. 

And now.. PICTURES.

THIS IS BANANA MILK. THIS IS WHAT I LOVE AND I FINALLY GOT TO HAVE SOME SO YUM. Except the price went up. Last time I was here it cost 600W, but now it costs 1,000W. Lame. Inflation =\

A cute placemat! I went to Emmaus Christian Fellowship, which was amazing. I'll write more about it later as I get to know it more. I had an awesome time of fellowship and eventually we went out to eat. Yum yum. 

This was my table! Bryan, Joe, Joanna (yes, KCM people, that's Joanna), and ME! Hooray now you guys know I'm still alive. I'll update again soon :)