number one

hello there,

so i plan to write in this cafe to keep updates of my life, interesting stories, funny encounters, insights i have learned, discoveries i have made, accomplishments, paintings, sculptures, victories, and books that i have written.

so i guess let me start from the start. i arrived here on January the 5th 2009. it is now January the 18th(i would attempt to explain how many days it has been but i would get it wrong somehow), however most likely still the 17th where you are. Already i have a new perceptive i guess, while it is Sunday morning here, you are enjoying your Saturday evening.

This whole time difference idea makes communicating with home interesting. Usually i would be communicating with friends or family or people I don’t like in the same time zone. So for example if it was 3am and I could not sleep, I would also be talking to a person in a similar mind state as me; slightly incoherent. Now as I talk to my slightly incoherent friends, I am enjoying the evening with the nice satisfaction of a meal. This makes talking to people slightly more fun, and sometimes more interesting. Mother or father feel free to try this out, if you can manage to stay up until 3am 

Okay since this is a first post kinda thing, I should mention some of my sub pair abilities -- my incompetence’s. First I am a rambler, i cant spell well, my grammar is probably often scattered, and my thoughts can get slightly messy at times. Ahhhh and I am a pretty sarcastic person and a little to quirky at times, I try to tone it down when I am writing but sometimes I cant help myself.

So I have started school now. I learn Korean from 9am to 1pm everyday Monday through Friday. My class is about 12 students, the demographics are 4 Japanese (with little English speaking ability, I mean almost none), 1 Japanese (with Chinese, English, and Japanese fluency), 1 Japanese (with decent English ability), 1 French (English and French ability), 1 Russian (English and Russian), 1 Ukrainian (managed to miss more then 75% of classes so far, but can speak English), 2 Chinese (no English), and me. 8 girls and 4 boys. It’s a fun class. Last week we all went to dinner together, everyone in the class is very outgoing, and seems to be much more worldly then me.

Although my class is 12, there are over 250 students in the morning program, so over the quarter I am sure I will meet many more people.

I also finally got a bank account and a mobile phone here. I had to wait to get an alien registration card which took about 10 days. So next week I plan to meet up with some of my friends who live in Korea!

This is quite a long post now, but I should at least tell you about my teacher. For 3 hours we have one teacher and for one hour we have a pronunciation teacher who only speaks Korean to us. My main teacher is very funny. She is older grandma level, but she is the funniest lady. She is quirky and mumbles a lot, and is a very cute little lady. A few stories, we went around the class room telling where are from countries where one of the first things we learned to say in Korean. So this Japanese girl said she was from Hiroshima Japan. Our teacher immediately made a big body motion imitating an atomic bomb going off, the girls was slightly shocked, but then just smiled and laughed a little. Then she was teaching us how to say India, and imitated Gandhi and yoga. She sings and dances to Korean Pop groups like Wonder Girls and Bi (rain) (just think of grandma singing the newest miley cyrus song and dancing). She found out that one of the students is 17 and started signing (I am 16 going on 17). She throws water on the floor next to the chalk board at least once everyday because its to dry in our classroom (I guess its common in Korea, but it seemed like this crazy ridicules idea when she first did it). Or maybe I am just too used to the suburban life of Bellevue school districts, or the rain in Seattle. She is not great at English, and seems how half the class cannot speak English anyways she often imitates things. Let me tell you her imitation of a pig is amazing. First of all the different noises that animals make in different languages is quite amusing in it of itself. I mean growing up you would think animals make the same sounds in different countries, but that is just not the case.

Well I think that is enough rambling for one day.

But let me also inform you that fruit in korea is the best in the world I think. At home I can goto the fridge and get an apple out anytime, but the chances that the apple is crisp is about 1 in 5. In Korea they don’t accept bad fruit, so every apple is amazing. Also don’t eat apples at night because it is bad for your digestive system, or so I am told. We eat fruit at least twice a day in Korea, and when I return I think I might miss the fruit the most. Persimmons are evening growing on me, although they smell like armpits.

Oh and I am quite mad at myself, or kinda, or I don’t really know what to think. Last night, saterday evening, I went to a wedding for one of Hyung Rim’s teachers (Sung Il’s wife, the mother of the family I am staying with, She is a Professor and a Principal of a kindergarten.) So after the weeding there was food. And one of the dishes was Dog. Sung Il immediately pointed it out to me, making me a little nervous. I guess before I explain the story, before I left I kind of made a pact with myself to be adventurous on foods. There is not many times when I can eat live octopus and having to kill it in my mouth so it doesn’t suck on me. anyways, I did not eat the dog. I still don’t know if I should have, I am mad at myself for not trying it because it was a perfect opportunity, but then I don’t know if I really wanted to eat it. Then again why not, I eat all other meats. I don’t know, it just is one of those things that will bother me and keep me awake all throughout the night for months.

Hope all is well back in the land of rain.