Going crazy because of a test.

Monday

Today my teacher basically bursted out in pure enthousiasm.
She asked me what I did during the weekend and I told her that I talked with friends from the Netherlands.
When I told my teacher about a situation I’m currently in concerning 2 certain guys she just kept asking me questions.
She even sushed the class because you wanted to ask me more questions.
My teacher seriously loves gossip and drama plots so she was really excited about this.
My whole class was clapping and yelling stuff while I was telling the story.
Everyone was so interested.
When the teacher asked the class who had the most fun weekend every single one of my classmates agreed about the fact that it was me.

Today Ajusshi made the funniest comment I have ever heard from him.
Because he is lazy and never studies the teacher always makes him study in the classroom after school.
Today he was trying to talk his way out of it.
He even tried pulling sad faces and fake crying.
He told the teacher he would die if he had to study today.
Then his amazing acting began.
He pulled a sad face, made his voice sound extra dramatic and said:
Teacher.. I Have.. a mother, father, sister, brother.
I have.. a family.
It was like he was quoting some sad movie he saw before.
How can someone be so dramatic about having to study after school?
This guy is incredible.

Thursday
Today I had a test but I failed it miserably because I didn’t study this certain chapter.
Instead I spent my time talking to people online.
I’m not sure why I thought it was a good idea to not study for a day.
I have to study almost every day because otherwise I cannot keep up with the pace.
Today two of my Japanese classmates asked me to have lunch.
We went for lunch together and I ordered Kimchi Bokkeumbap.
I immediately regretted my choice because they had so many different delicious dishes.
Today I studied after school in our classroom with 2 of my Japanese classmates.

Friday
Today I had my test and therefore I stood up earlier than normally so I could buy food and coffee.
I normally don’t drink coffee but because I didn’t wanted to be tired I drank coffee.
When I received my test I thought: Is this it?
REALLY? I studied for 2 weeks for this?
Like 85% of the test was multiple choice and therefore really easy.
I think I did very well on this test and I definitely got over 80%
There were 20 minutes left but I was already done and still shaking from the coffee I drank.
After that I had a Korean oral exam.
I feared this exam for my life but since I prepared well the day before it went pretty smoothly.
After I finished a huge weight fell off my shoulders.
Everyone was so hyped and happy about finishing the test.
After that it was time to change dorms.
We had to change dorms because in our dorm they’re going to do some construction work.

Everyone was carrying their stuff down and the elevator was entirely packed.
But I liked how everyone was working hard in order to get everything to the other dorm fast.
I actually talked to quite some people today which before I didn’t really do.
After the dorm change I went with Nozomi and Ayaka to have some Korean BBQ.
I finally got to have my beer.
I really wanted to drink alcohol SO bad after I finished my test.

Sam Yuk Gu. QUICK! COME, GO.

Monday
Today was a really fun class.
We learned how to say verbs and certain words towards elders using the se yo on the end.
Which you can use for people that are higher than you but also as a way of asking something politely.
The teacher said we could ask our friends to do something using please.
Please sing, please dance ect.
Everyone chose Ajusshi.
Ajusshi had to dance, sing, kiss the classboard, get hit by the teacher, talk in enlish and a lot more.

I lost a game of ‘’Sam, Yuk, Gu’’ which is a game including numbers.
You have a row of people and you have to count until someone makes a mistake.
You can’t say any number with a 3, 6 or 9 in it.
You have to clap instead.
I lost this game so I had to sing.
I chose a Korean song and as you might have expected I chose a song I knew the lyrics to.
Even if I die I can’t live without you by 2AM.
It was quite the embarrassing experience but thanks to my Noraebang experiences I didn’t sound that bad.

Tuesday
Today we learned more about numbers and for some reason I do quite well at Korean numbers so I liked this class.
We had to do some math and tell the teacher the answers in Korean which was double as hard.
Not only do you have to do math but you also have to think about the numbers in Korean.

Ajusshi sang a song in Korean that my classmate Puong was practicing.
Actually, he is quite good at singing so I am surprised every time.
Last week he sang a song by Westlife in class and it was really not that bad.

We were supposed to have a test but they postponed it to next Friday which I really don’t like.
I’ve been studying a lot and know I feel it has been for nothing.
I guess I will study some more.
Next Friday we also have to move out of our dorm and move to a different dorm because of construction.
So after we finish the test we must leave as soon as possible to prepare to move our stuff.
For some reason this is only for a day which means : I’m gonna pack all my stuff in my suitcase and I’ll be ready to go.

Wednesday
As usual we had revision of the last couple of chapters like we normally do on Wednesdays.
I don’t think anything funny really happened besides the fact that everyone was almost falling asleep on this day.
Probably because the weather was so hot the day before, many people couldn’t sleep.

I started going to the gym with my roommate today.
I can’t believe I am actually going to a gym now since normally I really dislike going there.
Exercising is definitely fun but I like it so much better when doing sports instead of just going to this area to lift weights and run on a treadmill.
 But hey.. It’s free so why the heck not.

Thursday
Today was the day that we learned about what to say when in a restaurant and it was also the day that I spilled my coke.
All over my desk and the floor.
Basically the rest of my classmates had to come rescue me.
Nok Hwa was holding my schoolbooks and Yen Sha was providing me with tissues.
(By the way their names look so weird if I try and write it down in English)
Then the teacher told Hwi Hao to get some tissues from the toilet and he went in the slowest pace possible.
Then he came back with a giant mop and tissue and he started cleaning it.
Everyone was like “Where the hell did he find that mop’’.
Then the teacher was like: “Thank you Cleaning Ajusshi!’’
And I had to laugh about that for 5 minutes even during class because everything about this situation was so funny.

Friday
Today we FINALLY learned how to use the word because in a sentence in Korean.
I’ve been waiting for this day because I always want to tell people WHY I do something and I was never able to do that.

Today Ajusshi got made fun of again since he still doesn’t understand a lot of Korean.
The teacher was teaching us the word for ‘’fast’’.
So suddenly she screamed SHAI HWI HAO COME HERE FAST NOW!
NOW COME FAST THIS WAY!
But ofcourse he didn’t understand a word she was saying so he was looking at us like : “WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO’’.
Then he stood up and slowly walked towards the teacher while she was screaming. WALK FASTER FASTER!
So he ended up walking through the whole room slowly not understanding what he was supposed to do.
Then the teacher said: “GO!”. So he went back to his chair but then the teacher screamed “OK FAST NOW COME HERE!” and then he ran towards the teacher.
I can’t believe this took 5 minutes for him to understand.

At a certain point in class we had to write our answers on the school board and everybody wrote their answers really small except for Ajusshi who used font size 72.

Study, My Charming Roommate and World Cup issues.

Monday
Today was a really fun day for class.
Even though we studied a hard subject.
We had to study about object or place positions like : in the box, in front of the box, behind the box and so on.
I think this is not easy and I definitely need more time to study.
Recently I have been worried about my studies more because every time I finish class I feel like I should have studied more the day before.
I end up doing more fun stuff than I actually study.

Today our teacher had the usual powerpoint where you have to answer the questions.
One question was : How is Hwi Hao (Ajusshi)?
So I said Fun and Loud and the whole class chuckled.
Ayaka said bad and bad!
The funny thing about this is that Ajusshi had NO idea what was going on so he kept looking at everyone confused and he was trying to ask Li Soo Rin what was happening.
The great thing was that Soo Rin never answered so everyone just kept laughing at the confused Ajusshi.

After that the teacher asked us questions about where in the room an object was or who was sitting next to us.
Then the teacher asked Ami:
What is behind you?
Ami looked behind here and said ‘’nothing’’.
But the teacher was like ‘’NO! There is definitely something.’’
So everyone started to look if there was something behind Ami that she could’ve missed.
Suddenly the teacher started to make horror movie sounds (the sound that usually plays when there is someone behind you).
It was so cool how Ami wasn’t even scared.
She just said: “There is no ghost..’’

Tuesday
I swear we are getting tests almost every single day now.
I never scored under 70% so far but still every time I finish a test I feel like I could’ve done better.
Most of the time they are stupid mistakes where I had the correct answer to begin with but then I changed it in the end and got it wrong.

We have a big test coming up next Friday.
It’s a test where we have to be able to write, read, understand and be able to say everything that is in chapter 1 – 13.
Which means half of the book.
At the end of the course we get a test for the remaining 15-30 chapters.
I have to study hard if I want to pass this course.

Today my roommate said there would be a guy coming over and asked me if I minded.
Of course I didn’t mind but I was kind of curious about this guy and about her ‘’relationship’’ with this guy.
I thought to myself : ‘’I wouldn’t even care if a whole group of Chinese guys would come in.
Which for some reason.. happened.
I swear at some point there were like 5 guys in our room.. and the guy that she mentioned was there fixing her Wifi.
I thought it was the funniest thing ever.
My roommate is obviously that kind of girl : a girl who uses her charm to get guys to fix her computer.
It was like she told him ‘’You can see our room and my roommate if one of you fixes my Wifi’’

Wednesday
On Wednesday we had one of the student teacher.
I now realize that I forgot to mention this earlier: For some reason we sometimes have student teachers who observe during our lessons.
I guess they thought training them with foreigners is better than to train them with kindergarten students.

I had to get used to her style of teaching since my other 2 teachers are always so energetic and they talk really really loud.
So this way I have to make less effort to understand because the words are almost being yelled at you.
Which I actually prefer.
But of course this teacher is just a student and I think it was her first time with an actual class and she did well regardless.

I planned to go bowling with Nozomi and her friends but somehow we weren’t able to meet.
I was a bit late (about 3 or 4 minutes) because I had to go to the bank to get money otherwise I couldn’t even go bowling.
Because I didn’t have any contact information I wasn’t able to reach her and I couldn’t find her anymore.
I was pretty frustrated because I couldn’t believe they would leave at 2 exactly.
But there was no point in waiting more because I already explored the area we were supposed to meet for like 20 minutes so eventually I gave up and went to Daegu Downtown instead.
Where I bought some really cheap but cute clothes.

I bought an orange shirt and some permanent name pens at Hottracks so I could design my own Netherlands shirt, which I could wear during the World Championships.

Friday
After class I quickly went  to the spot I always go to for Wifi and made a reservation in a hotel.
Why?
Because my country had to play their first match against Spain and I really wanted to see it.
The dorm has a curfew and you basically can’t do anything after midnight and wifi doesn’t really work in my room either.
So I went towards Daegu downtown again and checked in the hotel.
I went to this hotel every year so far since the rooms are really cheap for what you get.
The rooms are spacious, there is a giant TV, there is a computer and the beds are really comfortable.

I planned to go to a certain E-mart that was really near to my hotel because on the website of KTO (Korean Tourism Organisation) it said they had records and I really wanted to go to a different place than Hottracks in Daegu Downtown. The hottracks in Seoul have a bigger collection and I was able to find less known groups that I like there. But here in Daegu it’s really hard to find for example : the new N-Sonic album.
But when I finally got to E-mart and saw the record section that wasn’t even a meter big I was really disappointed.
I really have to find a CD-store, an old school one where I can maybe also find some No Brain (Korean Punk Band) CD’s.
I’ll have to research some more on this.

I went back to the Dongseongno area and ate some food at Burger King.
I wasn’t really in the mood for any Korean food but in the end I was kind of disappointed I went to Burger King again.
Maybe I should’ve just gotten pasta somewhere instead.
Then I went for Noraebang again.
I seriously love Noraebang and it’s a good way for me to improve on my Korean.
This way I can improve myself on my hangul reading and my pronunciation.
Because the words come so fast I really have to concentrate to be able to pronounce them correctly and at the right time.
I paid 10.000 won but suddenly when my time was almost over this women came in and asked for my passport.
I left my passport at my hotel and I was confused why she wanted it in the first place.
It’s just noraebang.
But then she said she wanted to know my age so I figured I would just show her my Health Insurance card and after that she quickly left.
I am 23 you guys, c’mon.
Why would a foreigner even come here alone when they’re under 20?

So then I went back to my hotel to rest a bit and to sleep because I wanted to wake up before 4 AM so I could see the match.
the Netherlands versus Spain.
So I was ready to watch, it was 4 AM.
I remember Spain making the first goal.. and then.. I fell asleep.
I can’t believe I fell asleep.
I woke up at 8 o’clock because of a horrendous stomach ache and I realized I missed the other 75 minutes of the match. Since Spain made the first goal I was already expecting we would’ve lost because I fell asleep with that image.
Then I went online to check the score and..
5-1 victory for the Netherlands.
WHAT HAPPENED while I was asleep? I had to watch the recap to see it for myself.
5 terrific goals from our side, the crowd going wild and the players freaking out.
I missed all that.
I still can’t believe I fell asleep.

Saturday and Sunday.
To be honest I planned to do a lot on the weekend but in the end my stomach ache got so bad that I didn’t do any of those.
So instead I spent my time skyping and studying for my test as well.
Sorry.. I wish I could’ve done more interesting stuff on my weekend but in the end it didn’t go as I wanted it to go.
Too bad..

Korean food with Lianshi

On Sunday I didn’t really do anything special.
I just slept for a long while.
My roommate asked me to have lunch together so we went off campus.
Too bad on Sunday a lot of places seem to be closed.
We settled for Jindap.
It was so delicious.
I noticed that my roommate didn’t even touch the kimchi or the pickled radish.
I guess even if your Asian you still might not like certain things of a different Asian country’s cuisine.
Until now I like almost every Korean dish so far.
I’m not that crazy about Bimimbap though but it’s not like I can’t eat it.

By the way.
I look like an idiot because of my sunburns.
Because I wore a sleeveless top that goes all the way up to the neck but has open shoulders I now have these ridiculous marks on my back.
I’m still trying to figure out how I am going to tan the rest of my skin when the sunburn completely disappears.
Tanning easily is not always a plus.

After my roommate and me ate our lunch we went to this coffee place.
My roommate proposed the one that had Free wifi.
I ordered Kiwi juice and she ordered Lemon ice tea.
After we got out drinks we just sat down like a couple of social awkward losers though.
She researched Exo. I researched Block B.
My kiwi juice tasted amazing though, probably going to go back there soon.

When we got back outside my roommate explained to me that because she had Lemon ice tea she has to stay out of the sun. She immediately used her umbrella to hide from the sun.
She told me that because she drank something with a lot of vitamin C the sun would easily adapt to your skin and you will tan quicker and become darker skinned.
That’s quite funny because I heard that lemon has a bleaching effect on hair.
Of course not dramatically but for example: if you are blonde your hair will turn a bit lighter blond eventually.
At least.. that’s what I’ve heard.

By the way.
You guys must be like ‘’WHY DO YOU KEEP CALLING HER ROOMMATE, when she obviously has a name’’
Right.
Her Chinese name is easy to pronounce but hard to write.. I guess I will give my own little twist to it.
From now on I will refer to her as : Lianshi because that’s what her name sounds like to me when people pronounce it.
It’s actually written as Li Yuan Xi but hey my Chinese isn’t the best.

Like 3 hours later we ordered chicken together but it was WAY too much for us too finish.
We had more than half left and we couldn’t eat any more.
Wow. That was a waste of food and money.
Even though I couldn’t eat a lot it was still really good.

Duryu Saturday

On Saturday I figured I would explore Daegu some more.
I have been to quite a few Daegu tourist attractions but somehow I never went to Duryu Park before.
Duryu Park seemed like a good choice.
By the way, remember how that lady said they would disinfect our floor on Saturday at 9?
NOPE, never happened.
I was in my room until somewhat over 10 and no one ever showed up.
Anyway.
I headed off to Yeungnam University by bus.
Luckily I knew how to get there because of the Daegu Bank thing from last time.
I took the metro to Duryu and got off.
I could’ve sworn I’ve been to this station before though..  (2012 maybe?)
But I couldn’t remember for what.

(BY THE WAY)
RANT!
I don’t understand how our dorm cafeteria works!
It shouldn’t be open on Saturdays but sometimes it is and I NEVER know how that works.
So today I expected it to be open like last week but it wasn’t and I was craving Naengmyun so bad.
WHY. WHY do places and people never do what their signs says.
Maybe I just missed the overruling signs again.. I don’t know..

It came in quite handy that we studied places in Korean class because that helped me get to the right exit.
On my way to Duryu park I came across E-world, which is Daegu’s amusement park.
I always thought it was on top of some big mountain but that seemed like a big joke when I actually walked past there.
It’s a large hill at most and it can’t even be compared with a mountain.
I really want to go there some time but to be honest it’s quite expensive.
And it’s kind of weird to go to an amusement park by yourself.

I walked past a park and I figured HEY.. this must be Duryu park.
This is a park.. I’m in Duryu.. it should make sense right?
I really wish they did a better job on directions for it though.
When I was walking towards the ‘’park’’ I was not even sure if it was the actual park.
To this point I’m still not quite sure.
Why?
Well it’s probably because I had quite high expectations of this park since it’s probably the most well-known park in Daegu.
But.. it didn’t live up to my expectations.
The temple in Duryu Park is beautiful though.
It’s on a hill and that means the view Is just amazing.
Other than that.. Daegu University Campus is a better ‘’park’’ if you ask me.

Another thing that I DID like about Duryu Park is the option to be able to rent a bike.
The place was full with people riding bikes everywhere.
It kind of reminded me of my home country in a way.
People seemed to be having a lot of fun and children were trying so hard to ride their bikes as fast as they could.
I figured if I just walked In a circle I would be able to get back to the place I got off.
Boy was I wrong.
I spent my time walking back the long way with nothing but gas stations and tire shops.
Streets full of hairdressers and Telecommunication stores.

When I was FINALLY going in the right direction I came across a Homeplus.
I figured they might have a CD store in there.
Again, a disappointment.
BUT! I was able to find a Korea World championships shirt!
Of course I bought it.
I figured.. “Hey, If I am going to spend the whole summer in Korea.. might as well support the team.’’
Luckily Korea and the Netherlands are not in the same group! HAHA.
That would be terrible.
Now I think of it.. I have to figure out what time and when the matches for my country are.
When not supporting Korea, I will be supporting my own country of course.

When I came back from the park I only realized how sunburned I was until I got back to my dorm.
I think I have never been THAT sun burned before.
Duryu Park! YOU ARE NOT WORKING WITH ME HERE.

Anyway.. I was so tired that I went to sleep pretty soon after that.. IN COMPLETE PAIN.

Noraebang friday

Friday I had another day off so I decided to spend my Friday like a Saturday so I went to Daegu downtown again.
I wanted to walk to Gugi since I was out of ideas for new restaurants that might be good.
And.. I didn’t went inside primal so.. I got lost and didn’t end up finding it.
I decided to check out Lotte Young Plaza instead.
I like this place so much more than Debec.
Debec is such an old lady place to go compared to Lotte Young Plaza.
The style of the clothing and bags there fits my style much more and the price range seems to be a bit lower as well.
They even have an arcade and a movie theatre there.
I was kind of hoping to find a CD store in there as well.
But I ended up being left In complete disappointment instead.

I ate some KFC since they did have KFC in there and I spend an hour on wifi..
And then I figured.
Today Is the day I’m going to Noraebang alone.
My mood was getting worse by the minute anyway.
After going on facebook I just felt more sad so I went to the place I usually go with Jinjoo and Eunji for Noraebang.
At that point I didn’t even care about language barriers anymore.
I figured that if I put my finger up and say one I would be fine.
I said yes a couple of times and gave the guy 10.000 won.
The guy made sure I went into the right booth since “ten’’ could still be hard for foreigners.
In English.
But hey! Nice that he made the effort.
So I spend 10 minutes trying to remember how it went and I ended up changing settings which kind of messed up my first hour.

I chose so many Punk, Emo and Rock songs to sing.
I sang so loudly that I even managed to lose some of my voice within the first hour.
After that I sang many sad 2AM songs wholeheartedly since 2AM always seem to capture my feelings.
Then I picked out the few Korean songs that I know the lyrics to.
Old songs from SHINee and Beast.
Some old songs from the 90s from H.O.T and DEUX.
Some pop songs from *NSync, Gotye and Adele.

I sang/rapped a few Eminem songs and was able to do pretty well at Stan and Without me.
For some reason I was able to rap almost all the lyrics for Without Me leaving me completely surprised.

I ended up spending more than 2 hours by myself in Noraebang but I didn’t mind at all.
I can sing all the songs I like and nobody is there to see me sing like an idiot.
Which Is great.

When I finished I went to the bathroom only to find out they only have squat toilets.
Which I never really know how to use..
I mean.. you have to pull of your pants completely if you even want to use those, right?
Maybe I should do some research on this..
Anyway.
I returned the microphone and headed to the Disco ppang ppang area because I knew they had bathrooms.
On my way out I played a game of Punch ball again and beat the high score 2 times.
I always score up to 8200 and more which is a good score for a girl don’t you think?
The funny thing is that I’m even able to beat quite a few Korean guys with this game.

I headed back to my dorm right after and went to sleep almost instantly.

Busan

Wednesday I didn’t really do anything worth mentioning so I’m just going to skip to Thursday.
On Thursday we went to Busan with the class.
And I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked outside the window that morning because the sky was pretty dark and really clouded.
Yet we were still going to Busan (To the beach ect) so I was really surprised.
Everyone from our class was in the bus except Li Soo Rin.
No Idea why.

Anyway one of the teachers started a long dialogue about our trip to Busan which was ALL in Korean.
So I understood half of the story.
Knowing time is essential for going on a trip if you have a planning you have to follow..
Yet telling the time in our book is more than a chapter away..
So I just depended on the paper I got which had all the times and locations on them.

The bus trip took about 2 hours to get to Busan so I ended up sleeping a lot of the time.
We went to the dragon temple first.
I’ve been here with Minji 2 years ago (2 times actually).
One time in the evening when the temple was already closed and one time during sunset which was really beautiful.
I remembered the route quite well and since I already saw a lot of the things there I made my way to the actual temple really quickly.

I was amazed about how everyone seemed to be much closer than in classes.
I took a lot of pictures with my classmates.
I took a picture with the Vietnamese guy I mentioned earlier.
And I even took a picture with my roommate.
I still have to ask everyone to send me their pictures.

After the dragon temple we went to Haeundae beach and it felt SO weird to me.
Normally I only go to Haeundae during festival season so now that the huge stage, sunny weather and loads of people were missing.. it felt different.
There were still enough people there because this weekend will be the Sand Sculpture festival and they were still getting everything ready for opening on Friday.
This way we were still able to see a few sand sculptures.

I went to the market together with my Japanese classmates.
It surprised me how we were still able to communicate using Korean, a bit of Japanese and a bit of English. We went to this place who sold a variety of stews and a lot of side dishes for 5000 won.
It seemed like a good deal so we went in.
Apparently it was a good deal because when we went in we ran into our teachers.
The teachers chose the exact same restaurant to have lunch.
I am not lying when I say our entire table was full of food!

For some reason I can handle spicy food so much better than I did 2 years ago.
My classmate Ami had a bit of trouble with the Kimchi Jjigae because it was quite spicy.
Maybe because it’s one of my favourite dishes I’m able to handle it well.

After that we explored the market some more and saw people preparing their seafood as fresh as they could: still living.
We returned to Haeundae bach to go to Apec house (BUT I SWEAR MY TEACHERS PRONOUNCE IT LIKE EPIC HOUSE)
I kind of expected a lot since I heard the view there was supposed to be pretty amazing.
While waiting we came across Ajusshi.
Ayaka told him that he was NAPPEUDA! (which means bad)
But he just repeated the word and nodded.
Ayaka turned to me and said : “He doesn’t understand.”
To which I agreed since.. it’s Ajusshi.
It’s what he does every single day.
So I spent a few minutes laughing because Ajusshi is so clueless.
If Ajusshi was on the Chinese Blue’s Clues (TV show), he would be a perfect Steve.

We walked the same road as I did in 2012 with my friends.
Good feelings of nostalgia came over me when we walked along the sea.
It was good since we were able to talk to our teacher some more and we could actually practice the Korean that we knew.
When we got to Apec house.. it seemed promising.
Until we got inside that is.
Because almost everything near the window is off limits, you are not even able to make photos of the beautiful view.
Which sucked.
We went through the whole thing pretty quickly and in the end we were even late.
We picked up the rest of the people at Haeundae and we continued our journey back towards our school.

When I got back to my dorm I seriously had SUCH a long conversation with my roommate about so many different subjects. I swear we talked for like 2 hours.
It turns out my roommate is better in English than I thought.

Even though the weather wasn’t that nice.. I still had a great time with my classmates.
I can’t wait till the next excursion.

When School and dorm are both fun.

Monday.
Every day waking up seems to get a bit harder.
It seems I got over my jetlag completely..
When I still had my jetlag it was so much easier to get up.
Nowadays I even struggle going to sleep.
When I turn I feel like I’m COMPLETELY sideways since the mattress is more like a thin leather sofa mattress (If that even makes sense).
And this leather sofa mattress doesn’t bend WHAT SO EVER.
It’s completely rock solid it seems and believe me when I say that I normally don’t have any issues with hard mattresses.. ACTUALLY I prefer those.
But since a few days I’ve been struggeling with it quite a lot.
I feel like I’m a sad beached shark when I can’t sleep.

Today I dreaded a test since we had A LOT of new stuff to learn and I only really studied on Sunday.
Luckily it wasn’t that hard and I was able to answer a lot of questions.
In the past we got one test back but recently we have not been getting back our test results..
ALSO how important are these test results? Are they actual tests? Or are they just there to be able to see If we are progressing fine or not.
Either way. I study almost every day (except for last Friday and Saturday.. L) so I never get in trouble for that anyway.

Luckily today we only did a recap on what we have learned the previous week.
That gives me the chance to catch up on my study.
And I studied for 1,5/2.0 hours which is a lot in my opinion because I’m not used to that anymore.
I’ve been in London for 5 months for internship and the only thing I had to do there were assignments.

Tuesday.
Today we FINALLY learned the days of the week.
This is good for me since I don’t have to look like an idiot every time the teacher tells us something about events on the campus.
And hey.. I mean it’s useful how to say ‘’I’m going to the library’’ and stuff.. BUT knowing the days of the week should’ve been one of the first lessons.
It seems to me that all the grammar rules are based on the last consonant.
If there is a last consonant it’s THIS and if there is no last consonant it’s THAT.
The last consonant has a lot of influence on the Korean grammar.

Ajusshi was being funny again.
We got this sheet of paper with questions on it about our personal tastes:
What day do you like? What song do you like? What food do you like? And so on.
Ajusshi however thought that it was all connected to the days of the week so he wrote :
What food do you like? :Friday tastes good.
What kind of fruit do you like? : I like Monday.
But the most suprising was what he wrote at What is your favorite song?
Ajusshi likes the song about bears.
The teacher was like : “REALLY? You like this song?”
To which Ajusshi said yes to wholeheartedly. He is a special guy indeed.

Believe it or not this was our last class of the week.
Tomorrow there is a Korean holiday.
Thursday we are going to Busan.
Friday there is another Korean holiday.
Which means 4 days off and 1 day of fun in Busan which is absolutely the best.
Luckily for us the teacher decided to give us more homework because of that.
Seriously my class is amazing, I’m starting to like my class more and more every day.

I signed up for a pencil case making event after class so I went there and sat next to Ami, who is one of my Japanese classmates.
We unwrapped the packages and started to bend the carton we got.
Then we were supposed to tape the ends together so both cartons looked like cases.
After that we taped the magnets to the cases.
We were supposed to put the thin pieces of paper on the cases with glue and put LOADS of glue on it. The teacher was literally like : “PUT MORE GLUE, That’s pretty!’’.
So I put loads of glue and glued all the paper to the cases.
Then they gave us small pieces of paper with our name written on it to put on the insides of our cases. After that we decorated our cases using the leftover pieces of paper.
It had to dry for a LONG time.
So now you have 2 cases which you can put in/over each other to make it a pencil case.
I think I am going to decorate my case with stickers and Block B later because I don’t really have the traditional kind of style.
It was fun to make the pencil case and I am so glad I signed up.

After that I took a nap and a shower.
Somehow me and my roommate always nap together.
WE ARE NAP SISTERS.
Then I went to the cafeteria to get some food.

I met one of the Vietnamese guys who used to be in my class but now he is in a different class because he studies level 1 but on a higher level (1.5)
I asked him if I could sit with him to which he agreed.
This guy’s English is so good, better than a lot of Korean’s I met. It must be because this guy studies International Business and therefore he had to study English a lot in the past.. and ALSO probably because he actually USES his English. He speaks it without hesitation.
His accent is really cute. Conclusion: Vietnamese guys who speak English are cute!
Plus he is a handsome guy.
Really? Am I sure that I’m not just in some kind of drama again?
Have I been casted as a main role again in a different drama?
Last time I checked I felt like I was in some kind of teacher student love story because my supervisor is so handsome and is able to speak English well.

I swear while typing this blog I am laughing so much because something really funny happened when I got back to my dorm.
Today we got inspection and the lady who was inspecting our room was trying to tell me something.
I thought.. Luckily my roommate is a level 3 student so she will be able to understand the whole story or at least some of it.
But when the lady looked at my roommate she had the funniest face ever.
She literally looked like “What the F are you trying to say -_-?’’
And I had to hold my laughter in the whole time because her face was too funny.
So I figured hey.. I have to make this work using a bit of Korean, a bit of English and a whole lot of body language.
So what I got out of it was : Saturday they are going to disinfect the floor at 9 AM so we have to make sure we are up and we need to get all of our stuff of the floor.
AND we had to change the room password today, which my roommate did.
After the lady left I just burst out in laughter and my roommate looked at me with a huge smile.
We talked in English and we worked it out easily.
I really don’t get my roommate sometimes.
At first it was like : ‘’Can you speak in Korean?’’ but now it’s much easier to communicate in English together. 

Differences.

Because today is Sunday, the most boring day of my week I kind of wanted to do something different.
I want to talk about things I never seem to understand here in Korea.

First is:
Why are there brightening formulas in cosmetics?
Why do Korean ladies want to maintain their pale skin during the summer?
In Europe tanning is way more popular.
People want to be tan. Tan is considered pretty.
I even saw people getting teased that kept having really pale white skin during the summer.
Their legs would be compared to jugs of milk and what not.

Why are there so many couples?
I SWEAR I never in my life have seen so many couples like here in Korea.
Is this some sort of trend nowadays? That everyone needs to be couple.
When I’m walking around in the Netherlands there are definitely a lot of couples but.. girls and guys still go out with their friends a whole lot.
Separately.
Do girls or guys kind of ditch their friends once they date someone?
It’s a huge mystery to me.

Why do almost all Korean girls wear short sleeved shirts instead of sleeveless tops?
It’s summer.. so why would you not dress in a way your able to cool down a bit?
And IS IT REALLY ABOUT THE ARMFAT?
These people don’t seem to sweat either.
Even though I come across a guy exercising his armpits are not even sweaty.
He’s just wearing his grey shirt without any sweat spots what so ever.
And then I find myself asking myself another question:
Because Korean people don’t seem to sweat do they kind of hold the heat inside their body?
They seem to be having  a lot more issues with the heat than me.
I mean.. YES I am sweating like crazy but other than that it doesn’t really bother me.

Are people here serious when they say they are tired or hurting?
I’m really confused about this one:
I know Korean people in general are really hard workers but it seems like even when doing the slightest bit of exercise like walking up a lot of stairs in a row.. I see people hitting their legs because their legs seem to hurt.
They also seem to go to a doctor really quick if they are hurting or whatever.
While my remedy would always be just to stay at home and to take it easy.
Are they really tired? Or is this just a way of the urge of wanting to express emotions?
Wanting to talk about being tired as a subject?
As a foreigner I’m often surprised because I don’t feel tired at all even when doing the exact same thing they do.
Makes me wonder.. Are they eating okay? Are they having enough of sleep?
Please you guys.. take good care of yourselves. Don’t exhaust yourself too much.

Why are the beggars in the street always men?
I SWEAR Ajumma’s are the people that make South Korea a better place.
These women work SO hard and before and after work they still take care of their family.
I  have never seen a women out on the street begging.
Is it because women think they cannot deal with having this image?
Is their family SO important to them that they rather work in a restaurant washing the dishes?
They are so amazing.

I’ll leave it this for now.
I’m sure I will have more to talk about on a different day.

Jungangno Saturday

So It’s finally weekend.
Yesterday me and my roommate stayed up till 03:30 AM because we are so hardcore.
Just kidding.
We didn’t have wifi for 3 hours so she went to her friend’s room a lot and I spent my time doing everything but stuff on the internet.
Writing letters, writing postcards, writing my blog.
So basically I just spent my time writing.
And in the background there was kpop, all night long.
Because my roommate and I are cool like that.

I woke up late and when I woke up I instantly started getting ready because obviously I wanted to go to Daegu Downtime since it was Saturday and I didn’t want to waste my sunny Saturday staying inside.
First I went to Daegu Bank to put money on my card.
Since I have my very own Daegu Bank account I can deposit and withdraw my money at pretty much every ATM. YAY No more issues with not able to find Global ATM’s.
And did I mention that I can also use my bank card as a transportation card?
I put 50.000 won on my account and then took 40.000 out so I still had 10.000 left as transportation money.
I took the bus and used my card for the first time.
I was confused whether or not my card worked since it said something weird.
BUT the bus driver didn’t say anything so I figured it was okay.

So I got off at Ansim which is also a metro station.
Because it was so hot I decided not to take the long bus route but use the metro instead because I won’t die from heat going by metro.
Then I realized when I wanted to check my balance that I didn’t have money on my card at all.
Putting money on your bank account or using the transportation card are apparently different.
So hey.. free busride.. I guess.
Then I put money on my card and was able to travel by card.
I got off at Jungango and I went upstairs to exit the station.

This guy was walking behind me looking like a huge loser so I already had a feeling that I was going to have a hard time.
So there were about 5 gates you could exit.
I picked the second one and put my card on the sensor but somehow it didn’t take it.
Leaving me stuck because the doors closed in front of me.
And what does that guy do?
SOMEHOW He decides to take the SAME exit as me and he just walks ahead almost bumping into me and then I was stuck between doors and a person.
Then says ‘’Oh.’’
O M G. How can someone be such a loser and be SO clueless to not pay attention to whatever is going on.
I hate guys like that.

I walked into the underground shopping mall and saw that there was a huge sale at the Face Shop.
Somehow Suzy’s(Miss A) face is EVERYWHERE.
Even on the packages of hair dye wearing a different wig in each picture.
I mean.. Yes Suzy is pretty and I like her but come on..
It looks pretty stupid.
Did I mention that Korean face and hair products are pretty damn amazing?
I mean.. They are not cheap but they do their job pretty well.

After that I just went random places in hope to find something new or interesting.
I found a Disco pang pang room and I decided to watch because the guy who does the commentary is usually hilarious and he makes fun of the people in it.
But today I saw something completely new.
They had 2 cute guys running around and sometimes they would enter the ride.
This one guy started to walk in the middle, then run and then he made a flip while the ride was still spinning. It was SO cool.
I didn’t ever see it before and I was so impressed.
I guess that’s their way of luring girls on the ride.

There was also a punching game so I decided I would try.
I tried that machine so many times in Busan and I always got really high scores.
When I tried the machine I was even able to break the high score with about 8500 points.
I love to see people reactions when I give a right hook.
I didn’t ever consider myself strong but I’m still able to deliver a decent score for a girl.

I decided to hang out In the memorial park for a while since it was SO HOT outside.
It made me happy to see all the people so relaxed and the children seemed to have a lot of fun playing in the water.
I got hungry after a few hours so I decided to walk arount and see what I wanted to eat.
I didn’t really feel like Korean food so I ended up just going to the MCdonald.
You know.. the food there is never really delicious but hey sometimes you just want to eat a burger.

Because it was a Saturday there were many street performances.
I stopped by a dance competition on the stage in front of Debec.
I even saw some foreigners entering the competition which made me really excited.
They also had solo battles which featured a mix of hiphop, locking and break.
It reminded me of the days I used to breakdance a lot and was experimenting with styles like Popping and Housing.
I still kind of want to get back into that.

I stil can’t believe it was 36 degrees today.
Even though it was really really hot outside it didn’t feel like 36 degrees.
More like a 30..
I managed to get a bit more tan, finally.

Ajusshi is the essence of fun in our classes.

Monday:
So today started a new week of more learning Korean!
I really liked the lesson today because we got to learn more about each other’s culture.
Our teacher prepared a PowerPoint where we had to say:
This person is Japanese or This person is Chinese.
So basically she had all these pictures of ‘’famous people’’ and we had to say the sentences out loud.
There were some historical people from Asia who I never even have heard about before.
Blame it on the lack of learning the history of Asian countries at schools in the Netherlands.
And the teacher picked someone really interesting from the Netherlands.
So interesting that I didn’t even know who he was.

So this Van den Holken or whatever this guy is called..
(The hangul for this name was so weird I couldn’t even figure out the last bit of his surname)
is apparently some famous baseball player who plays for a team in Daegu.
His pitch is so good that he had a great influence on the team’s score.
But.. he is not famous in the Netherlands. Well.. Maybe if you are really into baseball, you would know him.
But he is famous in Korea, apparently.
I really have to research this guy.

Next up were flags.
The people from the countries of which the flag appeared on the screen had to put their hand up.
Our teacher added a cool segment to this lesson by letting everyone say ‘’Hello” in their own language which was a lot of fun!
Then came the flag of.. the United Kingdom.
Ajusshi was like: WHAT ARE YOU DOING? THIS IS YOUR FLAG.
Yes. Indeed Ajusshi still thought I was from the United Kingdom even though we spent a week together in class and everyone had to say where they were from like 10 times.
I was surprised that the teacher added my flag, actually.
A lot of the times the Netherlands are left out in Korean learning material.
Why is that Korean people? Hmmm? Why?
Didn’t we sent you Guus Hiddink!? You should add us to the list of countries in all the Korean books!
Joking.
But really. I would appreciate it if you did.

Next up was capitals.
The teacher added pictures of a famous place in the capital.
To be honest I didn’t even recognize my own capital.
Why you ask?
Because our teacher took a REALLY old picture of The Dam in Amsterdam.
So old that there was a horse with carriage in the background.
I’m sure that I wasn’t even born when this picture was taken.
My teacher was SO surprised that I didn’t recognize it.
If only she took one of the recent pictures so I didn’t have to embarrass myself in front of my class.
But hey. That’s okay.
I did well on all the other countries and managed to impress my classmates with the knowledge of Geography and Culture.

After that we learned more grammar.
I love grammar actually.
Because understanding grammar makes you able to fully understand the structure of sentences in different languages.

The teacher told us we would have a test the next day so.. STUDY HARD!
Which I did.

Roommate report: ..

Tuesday
Today I had my first test so I made sure I studied the day before.
It turned out to be 2 tests so I got 2 different scores.
When I finished my tests I felt quite good about it but half an hour later when we revised stuff that we learned on Monday I definitely thought I screwed up.
Because I realized the mistakes I made on the first test I began calculating and I thought I would have gotten 60% at most.
But when the teacher gave back the tests I saw the results: for the first one I had 80% and the second one was 100%!

Of course Ajusshi failed his tests miserably: not even 10%.

Today nothing interesting really happened.

Roommate report: ..

Wednesday
Today we had a different teacher: Kim Mi Ra.
(Oh I forgot to tell you: I have teacher Kim Jeong Uk on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and teacher Kim Mira on Wednesday and Friday)
And the lesson turned out to be very hard since today we were studying places.
She gave us a list with 25 different places like : Supermarket or Restaurant and it was a bit too much for me to memorize.
Because not only did we had to use verbs (which I still wasn’t sure about half of them) we had to use all the previous stuff we learned together in a sentence with a place.
So basically:
Wilson drinks coffee in the coffee shop.

Since Ajusshi is sitting next to me I get to hear his random comments on everything all the time.
Today he commented “This is bullshit’’, ‘’This is so bad’’ and “I want to kill myself’’.
And all of that in a Chinese accent which makes it sound way more dramatic than it actually is.
It kind of reminds me of my friend Cheng back home (Cheng is Chinese but he is able to speak English very well).
Except for the fact that Cheng’s English is so much better than Ajusshi’s.
I figured that Ajusshi learned English while watching movies like Pulp Fiction.
I guess by watching action movies he learned to say stuff like that.

Today we had to do another conversation.
I was kind of worried since he is still not able to read hangul very well and he tends to rush his Korean so he constantly stutters so I always have to hold in my laughter.
And this guy never studies.
When he talks it’s like:
Father.. ,  .. eets.. , eits.. , eats.. , rice.. , at.. , the resto.. ,  restu.. , restaurant.
So all the teams started to do their conversations and we were unfortunately last.
I heard Ajusshi gulp next to me out of fear and we both had to laugh because it felt like some comedy movie.
Then he was like : “DON’T WORRY! I WILL TAKE CARE OF THIS’’ and somehow we managed to have an actual conversation.
But in the end when we had to write everything down he still wrote down : I eat noraebang.
Ajusshi is unpredictable.

By the way.. I’m not sure if I ever explained the word Ajusshi for people who are not that into Korea.
Basically an Ajusshi is a middle aged man starting from like 30 and up.
This Chinese guy however, is 23 just like me.
When the teacher scolds him she uses Ajusshi to make fun of him.

This was an interesting lesson to say the least.

Roommate report : SHE CAME BACK HALLELUJAH. She went to Seoul for a week! And she went to a K-pop concert so she showed me all the cool stuff she bought.
And I finally learned all the members of Exo because of her.
I’m not sure if she just went and ditch school or if she actually had a week off or whatever.
Either way. I’m glad she is back so I don’t have to worry about her getting into teenage prostitution anymore.

Thursday:
We got another test, hurray.
I knew most of the answers because I actually study every single day.
Today we talked about places we were going which came in handy because Korean people always seem to ask:
"WHERE ARE YOU GOING?'' and "WHERE ARE YOU NOW?"

Ajusshi moved his table away from me today to sit next to a chinese girl.
When I came back into the classroom he waved at me saying.
''HELLO! I moved.''
"You know, I am Chinese! She is Chinese! WE ARE CHINESE!''
And I quickly realized that he probably moved because then when he is not paying attention someone can actually tell him what is going on.

Today was the day I bonded more with my roommate.
She was watching different k-idol programs on youtube and when she was watching the new Beast reality show she just nearly died laughing.
She was like: "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS?" I didn't even realize it was Beast until she asked me.
And then we ended up watching the first episode of the series together.
We laughed MANY times, it was a good day.

Friday
Today was such a hard lesson and I had quite a hard time so that means I have to study more during the weekend which I'm not looking forward to that much.
We learned how to say: This is small and That is big.
Luckily for me the teacher gave us like more than 30 different possibilities which I have to try and remember.
For some reason 2 girls in our class already seem to know this stuff but I can't figure out if they just selfstudy a lot or if they are just repeating the lessons.

Today Pyeon helped me out.
I thought I had to pay money because one of the teachers (I'm gonna call her Shinji because she reminds me of Shinji from Koyote) said something about money and she showed me an amount.
But in the end I found out that they wanted to refund me the money and therefore I needed a bank account.
So Pyeon helped me get a bank account at Daegu Bank ( O M G SO AWESOME) so I could eventually retreive the money.
So I know I have my own bankbook amd my own Daegu bank card that also works as a transportation card.

Later on I told the teacher that she reminded me of Shinji.
I'm still not sure if she was offended or not because she was laughing but she also blurted out THAT SHINJI IS FAT!
I was so suprised because I like Shinji and think she is definitely a natural beauty.

Not only is she good at singing she also did a great job on acting in High Kick 1 and when watching those series I kept thinking that she looked so pretty.
Then I started a conversation between all the teachers in the teachers office about Shinji as I walked out.

I wanted to go to Daegu station so I could see Beagles again, the duo that plays music in Donseongno but they would've played 8 or 9 and it takes more than an hour to get there.
More than an hour getting back as well and I would have to leave 22:30.
It didn't really work out.
Then I thought of going to a restaurant myself but that seemed kind of lonely for a friday evening alone.
I also considered going to noraebang to sing all the songs I wanted to but it the end I didn't go there either.
I pretty much just spent my time on the internet talking to people.

Peace event

Saturday.
On Saturday I didn’t really do a lot considering the fact that I almost had to sleep on the street the day before.
You would expect me to go out and do fun stuff on Saturday but I just didn’t feel like it.

I was walking back from the student union area to my dorm as I heard someone whistling to me.
Asian people might not know what I’m talking about unless you are an Asian living in America or Europe or whatever.
I’ll explain either way : You might have seen a movie where some builders are whistling at some pretty girl walking by.
It’s that kind of whistle that goes : Phietphew.
And I just know. This person whistling at me can NOT be Korean since Korean people (or probably Asian in general) don’t do this.
So I decided to walk some more and look back after 10 seconds.
And I saw.. some black kid who looked like he was 16.

I was so offended.
I might look like I’m 18 or whatever but I am 23 years old (24 Korean age) and I do not feel comfortable being whistled at by some kid who is probably more than 4 years younger than me.
It’s annoying and embarrassing.

Sunday.
I got invited to a Peace event on Sunday somewhere earlier that week.
A girl named Sarah (I think her name is Saebom cause that’s how she’s called on Kakaotalk) approached me on the street and convinced me to go.
I thought : Why not? Since I didn’t have anything to do on Sunday anyway!
I didn’t know much about the event besides that it was supposed to take place in Daegu’s Citizen’s Hall at 15:30.
Until.. I got a katok from Sarah saying they changed the place and time: Somewhere in Suseong at 15:00.
I got instructions from her on how to get there: I had to take the bus towards Yeungnam University (840) which was already a mystery to begin with.
I went to the bus stop but the sign said it went towards the wrong direction so I went to the opposite road. But when I talked to the bus driver he said it was the opposite stop. (EVEN THOUGH THE SIGN SAID DIFFERENT) I am still confused about this matter.
Is this some Sunday shift routine? If someone knows.. please tell me.
Again the rule : bus drivers words are holy.

From Yeungnam I saw supposed to take the subway towards Daegu Bank station, which I did.
On the way there I got approached by the second Jezus girl by now.
They’re the people who come to you with flyers about Jezus and God and what not.
So out of politeness I took her flyer (and because it’s in English it might be funny to read)
From Daegu Bank I was supposed to meet Sarah at 14:30 but I was late 15 minutes..
So I katok’d Sarah and she told me I had to take a bus there.
Mind the fact that it was already 15:00 and the ceremony already began.
So I walked up to the bus 403 and I had to get off at Dusan community centre.
While I was looking for the right stop on the sign, two girls asked me where I wanted to go.
I showed them my katok from Sarah and they said they were going there as well!
That was so convenient because I could just follow them to my destination.
We got off at Dusan Community Centre and I got to talking with one of the girls.
I think her name was Eunjo, but I might have gotten it wrong.
But I’m just going to call her Eunjo for the rest of this post.
We talked about all kinds of stuff.

We went towards the peace event and there were SO many people there.
On the screen was the founder of the peace association and everyone was cheering loudly.
Eunjo translated for me: He has traveled 10 times across the world in 2 years to speak to religious leaders and country’s leaders to convince them to sign a peace agreement.
Apparently he got them to sign the declaration of world peace last year the 25^th of May.
This year was the first anniversary for this event.
I’m surprised I never even heard about this, because this seems like a very big thing if you are able to convince leaders of religions to sign a declaration of world peace.
Apparently this event was broadcasted on a lot of different places in Korea.
The event itself on the screen was in Seoul but some of the commentary was being broadcasted by Busan.

Because of the Sewol ferry disaster the colors of the event were yellow.
Many people carried around the balloons saying : Cheer up Korea! And You are our leader of peace!
After the speeches of the association in Seoul they continued the speeches of speakers in Daegu:
An High school student, Followers of the association from Congo and the Philippines and an University student.
After the speakers they had a choir which was very nice.
They sang their songs loudly and with a lot of enthusiasm.

After the choir they invited everyone to do a walk around the giant lake.
Everyone carried their signs and balloons and marched behind the marching band.
People were waving around their balloons and signs while many photographers took their photos.
It was amazing to see how many joined this march around the lake.
You were able to see people with yellow balloons from all the way across the lake.
While walking I talked a lot to Eunjo about her studies and about many Korean idols and actors.
Of course we also talked about food and about the Netherlands.
Then we also talked about Deux, S.E.S and H.O.T.
She laughed and she told me : “You’re exactly like a Korean!”

After the march Eunjo took me to the bus stop since I still wanted to go to Kyobo bookstore and see if there were any interesting non-fiction books.
So I went to Kyobo and I found no interesting non-fiction books.. bummer.
Well actually I did, but they were too expensive.
So after that failure I went to Gugi since I go there at least once every year.
They’re a really good fusion restaurant in the Donseongno area and they’re not expensive.

So I went home and took the right bus!
WOO!

Roommate report: Do I even have to tell you..?

Monday to friday, not so much routine.

20-05
Today we learned more consonants and vowels.
In my current class : the beginner class, there are only 8  students (including me).
The other people that were in my class before seem to be in different classes now.
No idea why. Probably because they already have done level one before.
So now it’s me, 3 Japanese girls, 1 Mongolian girl, 1 Vietnamese girl and 2 Chinese (a boy and a girl).
The Vietnamese girl (Nok Hwa) has a backpack with.. weeds on it and they look like the weed leafs the Dutch are familiar with, if you know what I’m saying.
It kind of makes me laugh because the girl wearing the backpack is such a cute and tiny girl.

Roommate report : My roommate left and didn’t return before I went to sleep. I’m kind of worried.

21-05
The more days pass by, the faster the learning pace seems to go.
Today we finished the Korean alphabet and we now progressed to more words and little sentences.
The sentences we learned today are mainly things the teacher would say like:
‘’Look here’’ or ‘’Read this’’.

The Chinese guy is so funny.
Today he almost fell asleep during class but his arm somehow slipped on his desk and the noise woke him up.
Me and the Chinese girl were almost dying because of laughter.
This guy is so clueless but yet so macho.
I didn’t know that combination was even possible.

Roommate report: My roommate is still gone but today I found out her toothbrush was missing so she is probably on a stay-over school trip.

22-05
We learned so many things in class today.
Finally, we progressed on to grammar and that meant I finally got some answers to many questions I had regarding the difference between writing and pronunciation.
In Korean some things you write a certain way are not pronounced the way they are written.
That got me to thinking “If you do not pronounce a word the way it is written, why would you even bother to write it that way!?’’
And then a sense of reality got through to me : ‘’In Dutch.. you will witness even more difficulties regarding this subject’’.
I shouldn’t complain.
In fact.. I should be thankful that Korean easier than Dutch.

Today we also learned classroom words like: desk and chair.
Oh, I forgot to mention the fact that the teacher made us all pick cards.
Each card had a different number on them: 1 to 8.
We had to sit in the order of the numbers (probably so we will be triggered to talk to different people)
But there was no number 8 present: (Guess who was late for class today?)
Right..
Ajusshi from China.
He came at 11 because apparently he drank too much the day before.
Our Chinese girl replied the teacher : Sha Hwi Hau (his name looks like this in hangul) meori apayo.
Yes. In fact our Chinese Ajusshi was dealing with a severe hang-over.
When he came in he was scolded by our teacher.. but that didn’t stop him from playing around with his cellphone.
The teacher took his phone.
Luckily for him the teacher was putting the word descriptions (if that makes sense) on objects in the classroom.
And maybe you can guess what one of the words was..
Yes, it was indeed: PHONE!
This led to Ajusshi’s phone being taped to the school board and was turned into a learning material.
Convenient for us, but not so much for him.

Then the word air conditioner showed up and for your information: our aircon is located on the ceiling.
Luckily we had a man in our class : Ajusshi.
So he got onto the chair and… was still too short to reach it.
So we laughed at him.
Then, he tried jumping up to the ceiling.
Which worked.. for a while, that is.
Then Ajusshi figured it was too much work for him to put it back and transformed himself to:
AIRCON AJUSSHI.
It was a fun class.

Roommate report: WHY IS SHE STILL GONE? Where could she have gone to?

23-05
These days I’m wearing my high heels more often.
I want to be pro in walking in them like a lot of other Korean girls.
Wearing high heels to school: SKIT!

Today to my surprise Ajusshi showed up in time.
And he had to sit next to me (number one) since there were no other seats because there were a few teachers in training joining us for class today.
We repeated the stuff we learned the days before and learned useful phrases like:
Is this a chair? Yes, it’s a chair.
And Is this a desk? No it’s not a desk. It’s a chair.

Then it was time to team up with the classmate next to us and ask each other questions to work out which object we were talking about.
We got a paper with pictures of different objects but mine had half of the description and the classmate would get a paper with the other half of the descriptions.
That’s why you had to ask which item it was.
I had to team up with Ajusshi, but he didn’t know the hangul for many objects so I had to check his paper many time to know what the guy was trying to tell me.
The teachers in training were watching us and laughing.
(In the end, I got a compliment from Ajusshi: Te told me that I’m smart because I can read all the hangul!)

Then after that inconvenience, we had to ask our other classmates these questions.
We could pick the classmate we wanted to ask the question ourselves.
Everyone did well.
Of course Ajusshi had to perform one of his clueless creative tricks.
He tried to ask Li Soo rin (The Chinese girl) a question but he couldn’t remember a certain word for what he was pointing at. I can’t remember which object he was holding but this is how it went:
Ajussi (Looking as confused as ever) stuttering:
 Is..This… THIS… T H I S.. and then he blurted out: LI SOO RIN?
He held his object in the air while asking : Is this Li Soo rin?
Li Soo rin looked at him and was like NO, YOUR NOT SUPPOSED TO ASK LIKE THAT!
The whole class was dying of laughter.
And the teacher was like : Yes.. Sha Hwi Hau, VERY creative.
So Li Soo rin just went a long with it saying: No, that is not Li Soo rin. That is a ..

When class ended I quickly went to eat something and I also had a shower.
I wanted to go to Daegu station (aka Donseongro!) for shopping.
It was a good idea to explore the Donseongro area because I got to see many sides of that area:
The traditional, the mixed cuisine, the trendy and the expensive
I bought a few CD’s(2 new : BTS and 4Minute and 2 second hand : Super Junior M and Mika Nakashima as Nana) and some more stationery.
I had some ddeokbeokki which was absolutely DELICIOUS, but so damn spicy.

When walking back to Daegu station I came across a large group of people and in front of the large group of people were about 6 people and 2 policemen.
I didn’t understand much about was going on but while watching the lady I understood this:
“HE HIT ME, LIKE THIS LIKE THIS’’ while hitting the policeman.
It crossed my mind : If this happened in the Netherlands, police would not just stand there while someone hits them.. I think.
The large group of people were such sensatie zoekers.
My mom always uses this word when she describes people who like drama and stand around to see what happens.
If you translate it directly to English it would be : sensation seekers.
In Korea the number of sensatie zoekers is quite big and it surprises me every time.

I took the wrong bus home (well it was the right bus.. but it had the wrong destination)
Then we got to the end of the route and I told the bus driver in Korean : This is not Daegu University?
THANK GOD FOR KOREAN CLASS.
He told me to sit down and dropped me of at Hanyang street and told me the bus I had to take.

Unfortunately. I didn’t listen.
This is a very important thing I will tell you : Busdriver’s Advice is HOLY.
Atleast.. maybe only in Korea. BUT DON’T EVER FORGET THIS.
I learned the hard way:
I took another wrong bus (on the stop it said Daegu University but it was probably the LONG route) and instead of sitting it through I got off at the middle of nowhere since it was the last stop.
I can’t even remember where but it was close to Ulseong.
Which is like more than 30 min north of Daegu University.
I panicked.
I was in the middle of NOWHERE and it was after 11 and I didn’t know when the last bus would come because I didn’t see stops with information on them anywhere.
And.. The dorm closes at 00:00.
I walked about for 10 minutes and the only thing that came to my mind was to wait for a taxi to pass by ( I saw one earlier, so there were definitely a few driving by)
So I waited for a taxi and waved my hands like an idiot.
I got in and told the taxi driver my destination.
It was hard but I managed to talk to him with the few Korean I could speak.

In the end I didn’t have enough money (5000 won short) so I asked the driver to stop at the main gate so I could get some money from the ATM.
Unfortunately that didn’t take any foreign cards.
Luckily on my way there I already figured out what I would do if my plan didn’t work.
I had some money in my room, in my dorm.
I explained to the driver : My card doesn’t work! BUT! I have money in my dorm and I got him to drive to my dorm.
I told him to wait and left my bag in the car so he wouldn’t think I was running away.
I quickly grabbed 10.000 won and returned to the car quickly.
I apologized for the inconvenience  and gave him the money.
He didn’t seem to care that much as he probably doesn’t really get customers in such a quiet place at that time.
I made it to the dorm just in time at 23:40.

Long story short : Perfect way to HAVE TO speak in Korean and Bad way to have to spend money.

Roommate report : Yep, she's still gone.

First schoolday

Because it was my first schoolday I woke up early, not intentionally though.

I was quite nervous because I was supposed to take a placement test.
The security guy told me we would meet at 8:40 so the new students could go there together to prevent people from getting lost.

So this lady came and she was speaking Japanese because all the other people there were Japanese.
And I went up to the security guy and said: "Should I go with them?" because I didn't want to stand there in complete confusion while the lady kept calling out Japanese names.
He told me to go with them and so I did.

The lady took us to the placement test but a teacher came (She turned out to be MY teacher) and said NO!
You are Sadea right? No you won't take a test.. just come with me!
So we headed out to a different room.. a classroom.
About 10 people were already in class.
Vietnamese, Chinese, Mongolian and.. me.
Just kidding. I didn't tell you about the one American guy who got to class quite late.
More than half of our class apparently failed their course and they had to start over with level one again.

We started with.. hangul, of course.
Which I already knew.
Luckily for me I actually did learn some new stuff and my class is pretty funny.

The American guy (Jess) who sat next to me started to communicate with me writing messages on his hangul sheet.
As if in a movie he wrote : "Have you eaten already" and I shook my head.
To which he erased his message and wrote: "Wanna join us for lunch?".
So I said yes(because I aint no party pooper, okay!)

After class we went from some lunch.
I ordered the same as Jess: some Japanese style chicken katsu.
I got to talk to my classmates some more which was really nice.

A classmate asked me : Do you have a boyfriend?
I said: I don't have one.
Then he called out : WHY!?
And I said: haha.. why? I don't know.
(You might think: HEY, WHAT ABOUT THAT GUY IN LONDON HUH?)
Yes. It's true.
I like him, wel actually more than just like him.. butttt..
Because we can't be together like we used to, we broke up.

ANYWAYS. My blog is about Korea, okay.
Let me continue:

After class I went to the study hall.
You would think that the main activity in the study hall is studying, BUT YOU ARE WRONG!
Because I experienced that Korean people seem to do everything there but studying.
Well maybe. 1/3 of the time. but they spent their other 2/3 doing other stuff:
Sleeping, Texting, Being with their boyfriend or girlfriend and more.
So I studied for a while but in the end I didn't remember a lot of the sentences I was stuyding.
I definitely have to change my way of studying.

The stuff in the school shop is pretty expensive.
I wasn't gonna pay more than 10.000 won for a huge bottle of shampoo so I decided I would go to the street near Daegu Catholic University:
Hayang-ro, which is the nearest place with a lot of shops and restaurants.
I went to Daisoo and got my stuff there : Large bottle of shampoo, showergel and a little bottle of conditioner, everything for under 8000 won.
Even though I had to spend 2400 won on the bus in the end I definitely saved money.
Effort over convenience.

By the way : on my way to the bus I saw Pyeon.
He was with like 3 foreign girls so I kind of ignored him.
I thought: "This guy.. looking like a player, definitely not gonna talk to him".
It might not have been like that at all but I dont like it when someone "collects" foreigners.
And you know.. the fact that it was all girls made a difference as well.

Overall : My first schoolday was a success.

Birthday

Today was my birthday and I was supposed to celebrate it with my friends Jinjoo and Eunji which meant: Back to Daegu station!
My roommate got back at about 12 and I overslept, kind of.
So I quickly packed my stuff and rushed to the bus station.
Yes. It took another hour.
Luckily for me Korea charges 1200 won for bus trips and it doesn’t matter where you get off.
You still pay 1200 won.
Exactly the same system as in London, besides.. cheaper.

Before I met up with my friends I went to Kyopo book stores and bought some Korean books for self-study.
I also went to the second hand book/cd store and found 2 2AM CD’s for really cheap.
I paid about 13.000 won and normally you pay that amount for new CD’s.
Really cheap!
I also got a new phone case since I really needed a new one.

Then I met up with Jinjoo and Eunji.
We ate chicken and we talked loads about the Netherlands and about their upcoming trip.
To be honest it looked like a pizza but instead of on top all the ingredients were underneath the cheese.
It was really good.
I even got some presents: Hair mist and a bracelet!

I asked them why Korean girls never really wear sleeveless shirts or tops.
Apparently it’s because Korean girls worry about arm fat.
Which I found really surprising.

Then we went for Noraebang and it turned out that I forgot a lot of lyrics to a lot of songs.
BLAME LONDON.
After that we went to UNIQLO for Eunji and she bought some t-shirts.
Then we went and made some photo stickers and after that we went to Hottracks so I could buy some Letter paper.
I still can’t believe they have a whole wall dedicated to writing letters.
It’s a good thing.

Then I had to head home.
Which took me just an hour this time since I didn’t get off at the wrong stop.
I got home quite late (around 10) and I was so tired so I just went to bed ‘’early’’ while my roommate was watching her Chinese series in the background.

Dorm Life

I took the KTX to Dongdaegu station and I got picked up by a taxi driver holing a Daegu University sign.
He took me to the university which still took about 30 minutes from Dongdaegu station.
I got there and I was already surprised about how big the campus was.
When I got out I was greeted by a guy named Cheon.
I Think his full name was Cheon Taekyung or something but I can’t really remember because I was jetlagged and everything went so fast.
We went together to the reception and I met the security guy who is a really jolly happy go lucky guy.
I got room 1416 and they said I will be sharing the room with a Chinese girl.
But she wasn’t there.
He has to open the door manually because she wasn’t there and she was the only one who knew the password.
I dropped of my stuff and Cheon began the tour.

He took me to so many places.
Laundry, Cafeteria, Fitness Centre (WAIT WHAT?), Doctors post, more Cafeterias, Stationery shop and a lot more I can’t even remember.
After all the basic stuff he took me to Jongchan’s office.
And I got to meet the guy behind the Uhm’s and Yeah’s.
Of course it had to be a really good looking Bilingual guy who’s English sounds like it’s been taught by some university in the US.
Not to mention the office looked exactly similar to the teacher office of Korean high school dramas.

After that I was off into the campus alone and hoped I would still know the way back.
Which I did, eventually.
I made my way back and asked the security guy to open the door for me since my roommate was still away.
Me and the security guy went up and we heard from other girls that my roommate is actually in China right now.
LOL.
So the security guy reset the password and told me to tell my roommate the new password when she comes back.
The only thing I know about my roommate is : She’s Chinese and she likes kpop.
And there is a giant bag of nuts in our room so I reckon she really likes nuts.

After that I just went to sleep because I was awake for more than 24 hours.
So I quickly just unpacked my stuff.
I didn’t even bother to shower because I just wanted to sleep even though it was like 17:30
So I slept for a long time.

I woke up quite early on Saturday but I just went back to sleep until like 10:00.
I was still amazed that I’m basically living in Daegu now.
Due to jetlag I woke up many times during the night, but overall I feel very happy.
I prepared my backpack and got ready to go to the cafeteria.
I ordered one of my favorite dishes which is Kimchi jjigae (Kimchi stew)
First you have to purchase a ticket  through a mysterious ticket machine.
I swear I have never seen such a thing in a cafeteria before.
And you are supposed to give your ticket to one of the kitchen ajummas and they will prepare it for you.
Luckily the cafeteria food isn’t that expensive.
Because I was too tired and hungry I was not able to eat properly and I had trouble holding my chopsticks.

I found out how big the campus actually is.
I explored the campus for a bit and I’m kind of finding my way around now.
Without getting lost all that much.

Because I had literally nothing to do I went to Donseongro.
This is THE street to go to for shopping.
I katok’d my friend Junhwan and asked him when he is gonna play music again.
He said : Today! Please come, 5 o’clock!
This was another good reason to go to Daegu central.
Because I was at Daegu university I had to take a bus to Daegu station, which takes about 1 hour!
I went shopping at Daisoo (which is a Japanese chain store) for some school supplies and things I might need for my room.
After that I waited until 5 o’clock and I met my friend Junhwan.
He is in a group called Beagles and I met him last year when I saw him playing guitar on the street.

I was so surprised : When people were walking past me I could hear them talking:
‘’Wow, It’s Beagles!’’ and some girl even called her friends saying: ‘’Come quickly! Beagles are here!’’
I guess Beagles got much more famous since last year.
They played loads of new songs and many requests from the audience.
Jihoon didn’t have his usual instruments this time.
Instead he used buckets and other stuff to play his music which worked out fine!

At 7 o’clock I went back home and took the bus back.
Unfortunately I got out at the wrong stop : Daegu Catholic University.
On the sign it said I had to walk 5 stops and I thought : ‘’How long could that actually take?’’
It took one hour, walking, in the dark, alone.
But as always, I managed and didn’t even get lost.

On my way to the dorm :
I saw Pyeon, who is btw not named Cheon who just got back from the swimming pool.
I got mistaken for some random Korean girl. (See.. quarter Korean right there)

Flight to Korea, 2014 edition.

So at 6 o’clock on the 15th I woke up, because obviously I had to get ready form my flight.
Travelled to Schiphol, blocked a couple of people with my giant suitcase along the way and got there about 3 hours before my flight actually even left.
I still can’t believe it : I could already check in my baggage at the Lufthansa counter ( The time went I went with Finnair in 2012 it wasn’t even open yet and there was a giant cue already to begin with ).
It was so peaceful at the item check thing that I didn’t even had to wait for more than 5 minutes.
So long story short : I just got there and I was in the airport maybe 30 minutes later.
Which meant: I had to wait for 2,5 more hours.
That turned out to be fun though because they changed the gate about 3 times.
I found out about the second change late, so I had to rush to my gate and when I got there they started boarding.
My timing was on point.

So I boarded a half empty plane because there were so many seats still available and I sat down on the place I was supposed to next to a really good looking German business guy.
YES, just my luck (:
It took about 1 hour to get to Munich.
I got off and I walked around in completely confused for a while.
This didn’t matter because My flight was at 16:05 and I was already there around 13:10.
Then I went through passport control just to get it over with.. and then I got to my gate thinking.. “Hey, these people don’t look Korean”.
But it turned out there was a flight to Croatia at the same gate an hour before the one to Incheon.
So I walked around aimlessly for 1,5 hours looking for Starbucks and what not.
Which in the end I never found because apparently if you go through passport control, there is no more Starbucks.
Great.

So I manipulated the Wi-Fi a few times.
Basically you can only go on the internet for 30 minutes with one certain e-mail and you didn’t even have to log in.
So I changed my e-mail a few times and ended up getting 2 hours of free Wi-Fi anyway.
Then it was time to board.. a half empty plane again.
So that caused people to sit everywhere and the stewardess told me I could sit at different places because the plane was so empty anyway.
So the couple next to me got their precious ‘’alone’’ time.
Whatever.
I’m just bitter because the guy I like is still in London.
So what?

This ajumma got to lay down on 2 seats which was fine because I wasn’t able to sleep anyway.
Maybe drinking Red Bull wasn’t the best choice after all.
And loads of the Korean people already slept after the first hour which I still think is pretty amazing.
These people are able to sleep almost instantly anywhere, it seems.
I really didn’t like that Lufthansa didn’t even have 1 Korean movie in there which was a damn shame.
Finnair had a couple of Korean movies which was sooooo nice.
This will definitely be a reason to choose Finnair or Korean Air instead in the future.
So I ended up just watching the Lego movie instead.
Everything about that is indeed awesome.
SPACESHIP!
After that I watched 12 years as a slave which gave me goose bumps even after the first time the word “Nigger’’ was said.
Luckily for me they repeat this word throughout the whole movie.
I absolutely dislike this word and that kind of approach on black people to begin with.
So this storyline was pretty heavy on me.
Then I looked at pictures on my laptop for another hour.. somehow and watched some Community.
After that I somewhat slept and then it was time to get up for breakfast.
We landed at Incheon at about 9:25 and from there things went quickly.

I was greeted by a very happy man of border control.
He’s like : ‘’Ah! You always go to Korea every year since 2012 and always around the same time!’’
‘’Do you have Korean friends or relatives?’’
I loved how he instantly thought I might even have Korean relatives.
I guess I do kind of consider myself to be a quarter Korean anyway.. Haha.
You would think this is a joke, but I swear my mom even says this.
Anyway.
The man looked so happy that he didn’t even bother to look at my other document that much.
I just had to take fingerprint scans and I swear this time they didn’t even take a picture.
Maybe they still have the ones from previous years.

I walked out to the luggage place and they already started releasing luggage before I even arrived there.
Yes I swear Incheon airport has the fastest luggage service EVER.
I got my luggage put some stuff from my backpack to my suitcase and I went off.
I quickly took out some money at the nearest ATM trying to avoid ALL taxi drivers (which I did).
And quickly went towards the high express train to Seoul station.
Actually my first time ever even taking this.

I got to Seoul station in about 45 minutes and I bought KTX tickets to Dongdaegu right after.
Luckily for me the train from 12:15 still had seats.
Then after I had to call Yun Jongchan which is basically the guy responsible for the language program.
I try to call with payphone (Hint: Look for a giant group of military guys)
But I didn’t have more than 500 won change and there were like 10 military guys in line for 4 different phones already.
So I decided to just call Jongchan from my mobile.
Skit!
This word you guys just have to get used to, it’s a word I use went I want to say that I don’t care AT ALL.
I loved how Jongchan used words like : Uhm and Yeah like he was just a friend.
I guess people here are way less formal when it comes to foreigners.
Which I really like.

After that I bought some food and went to my KTX train.
I WASN’T ABLE TO GO FOR KIMCHI JJIGAE AT SEOUL STATION AND ITS MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE ARGH.