I want to speak briefly about my Korean classes at SNU before I unveil this week's adventures. This week, we learned all of the Hangul letters and sounds. I didn't count how many there are exactly, but there are plenty! Some of the sounds seem very similar to each other, so distinguishing the difference can be challenging. Overall, I would say that now that it's not too tricky if you practice a lot. The class style is run in a way that reminds me a lot of how my Mandarin classes in high school were run. There is a lot of listening and repeating so that we can learn to properly emulate the sounds of the language. We also spend time working with dry erase boards so that our handwriting is improving as well. Looking ahead to next week, we will start to learn basic introductions, and move on to more advanced topics. The class moves very quickly, but we have a lot of material to learn. I think it is a good level of difficulty to allow us to learn, but not be too stressful.
Tuesday after class, I went to the COEX Aquarium inside of the COEX mall. I thought that it was a pretty big aquarium, but I am told that visiting other aquariums in Seoul will make this one seem much less big and exciting. We got to see all kinds of fish and other creatures. They even had an exhibit of those little fish that eat off dead skin cells from your hands and feet. I was hesitant to try it, but it turned out to be very relaxing once I got used to the feeling. I was a bit surprised to find bunnies and squirrels housed in the aquarium, and nobody had a very good explanation as to why the land dwellers were there.
When we got to class Wednesday, we found out about a mandatory meeting regarding the language buddy program at SNU. It was annoying to only find out about the meeting earlier that day, but it wasn't actually a big deal. Now we are all wondering when we will have more afternoon meetings sprung on us without warning. The meeting turned out to be pretty fun. I met me language buddy, Jieun, for the first time. She is a fourth year economics student at SNU, and she wants to help me learn Korean because last year she was an exchange student in Ireland, where she says having a language partner to help her with English was good. We will meet once or twice a week to to practice the Korean I have learned so far and answer any questions I might have.
After the meeting, I went with two of my classmates, Carina from Germany and Daria from Russia, to visit the Deoksugung Palace, one of the royal palaces located in Seoul. It's not the biggest one, but it seems pretty big to me. We are actually very lucky because for the entire month of July, the Korean government has made entry into the royal tombs and palaces free for everyone! I am sure that we will make it around to all of the other palaces and some of the tombs before it is time to leave. The palace was very beautiful. A lot of the architecture reminded me of what I saw in the Forbidden City in China, but the landscape had more trees and gardens than I remembered in China. There was also a huge fountain in approximately the center of the palace that created an even more scenic feel amid the big city.
On Thursday, I went with Joy (from Singapore) to meet up with some of her friends to walk around one of the many underground shopping centers in Seoul. This shopping center looked exactly like an outdoor market, but it was underground at one of the subway terminals. You can buy anything imaginable there: clothing, furniture, dishes, artwork, and even food. It took us a few hours to walk around and explore the entire shopping terminal. By the time we made it to the end, we were all very hungry. Fortunately, we were right next to a sushi bar. While I've had sushi numerous times before, this was my first time eating at one of the sushi bars where the sushi was delivered by a conveyor belt. We had a lot of fun watching the sushi go around, trying to guess what was in all of them.
After the sushi, Joy and her friends discovered that I had never eaten, or heard of for that matter, bingsu. They were quite shocked, and demanded that we all go get bingsu. For those who don't know, bingsu is a dessert that is popular in Korea in the summer, consisting of finely shaved ice with assorted toppings. It is traditionally topped with red beans, but now dessert shops serve it with a wide variety of dessert or fruit toppings. We got bingsu with chocolate on top. While I was hesitant at first, it turned out to be incredibly delicious. It looks like ice cream, but doesn't have the same heavy cream taste or feel since its base is shaved ice. It took four people to finish the whole thing!
Friday classes for our language program are going to be fun cultural field trips instead of the usual language learning. This Friday, we went to a cooking school and learned how to make Talkalbi (spicy marinated chicken) and Japchae (stir fried rice noodles with peppers and mushrooms). There were a lot of steps, but they weren't too hard. The end result turned out to be very delicious!
The class was held in the Ewha Women's University area, which is a nice area to walk around and hang out. After class, Carina, Daria, Joy, and myself went out to explore the area. The university campus itself as well as the surrounding area is very nice. We walked around for most of the afternoon. The streets around the university are narrow, so the tall buildings provided a nice shade that kept us from getting too hot. We also made plans to help me celebrate the Fourth of July since it (obviously) isn't a big day in Seoul.
Traffic was really heavy going back home Friday afternoon, so it took much longer than I anticipated. I did make it home in time to meet my host family's cleaning lady. She is from the Philippines, and although she has lived in Korea for 10 years still doesn't speak Korean (she is very fluent in English). I'm very fascinated that people live in this country for so long without knowing any of the language. She isn't the only person I've met in that kind of a situation.
For dinner, we ate really delicious spicy cold noodles called kolbaengi bibimkuksu. I got to try sea snails for the first time. Some of them are a little bit chewy, but overall not too bad. I guess the actual name for this kind of sea snail translates to turbo, which I had never heard of before. It took me a while to figure out that turbo is a kind of sea snail. After dinner, my host family wanted to celebrate the week with bingsu, so I got to enjoy even more bingsu! This time, we had the traditional red bean bingsu and also a strawberry bingsu. The red bean bingsu is pretty good, but it doesn't taste like a dessert to me. The strawberry bingsu, on the other hand, was a very good dessert!
I had an incredible week here in Seoul. It's hard to believe that week one is over already, but at the same time.. the week was packed full of fun and adventure! It's even more fun to explore with my classmates than all alone. It will be interesting to see how our Fourth of July celebration turns out, but I am sure it will be a memorable day!
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