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Today begins the last week of my classes for the semester. I don’t know how to feel
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봄의 벚꽃
spring is a beautiful season here in korea. finally being able to walk outside under the sun’s warm rays while admiring the blooming cherry blossoms. lately it’s been raining a lot though, but I’m glad that at least the cold winter is finally gone.
I’ve been spending a lot of time with my KLI classmates. i’m really glad to have such amazing classmates this semester. most of them are from japan, and they asked me to help them practice their english. i didn’t realize how difficult english is until i tried teaching it. actually, i’m pretty sure that most of the sentences that I’m writing is violating some sort of english grammar rule. i’m pretty sure that past sentence i just wrote was incorrect too. anyway, yeah my KLI classmates are pretty cool
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the middle of the end! 2 months left.
since school started, I’ve just been oh so busy!
I have a midterm tomorrow, which is the one of the only reasons why I’m updating. not because I haven’t done it in a long time, but because I don’t want to study. yeah
so I joined a club called ALC, or active listeners club. it’s basically a couple korean students who want to practice their english abilities. the people are nice, and the over all atmosphere tends to be really… nice. i can’t think of any other word.
I don’t know if you heard or not, but apparently majority of clubs here in korea have something called an MT, or membership training. basically, it’s a retreat where they “train” you (and your liver) to be a member of the club (mostly your liver). you basically just play drinking games all night until you pass out. i don’t really understand why, but the whole time we were drinking a mixture of every liquid that we had at the time mixed together in a pot. it ended up turning into a blueish brown color
soju, beer, cola, fanta, and gatorade. yey.
and this is where we slept LOL
other than that, I have to perform a cover of sistar’s ma boy for a showcase that they’re having next month. at first we were pretty pumped about it, and now I just want to get it over with. i’m performing it with henry and stella. we need to practice more often, otherwise I’m pretty sure we’re going to look ridiculous when we get on stage. videos soon to come! not really.
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beginning of a new semester
orientation for the new semester was the other day. I didn’t go, just because I knew it would be pointless and very boring. instead, I met up with Leah before she went back home! we had lunch, talked, shopped. it was nice. later in the day, I went to Mentors Club’s buddies night. I don’t think I talked a lot (or at all) about mentors club earlier in the blog, but basically it’s a club to help the international students settle in. It’s how I met Khoua and some other amazing people.
through mentors club, we’re placed in these groups which they call cells. each cell has a mentor, and we’re also paired up with a buddy. mentors club is actually a really good organization, but some people really dislike it. I don’t really understand why, but whatever. well, after meeting up with Leah, we had buddies night with our cells. we ate dinner together, then had some dessert, and then went to BAR FLY. oh god.. barfly… why..
we all hate barfly, but deep inside we all kind of love it. it’s really gross. bar fly. it’s like this bar/club where bad things happen and .. it’s.. well… it’s that place we never want to go to, but always end up going to by the end of the night. that place where the bathroom tends to flood because of the vomit everywhere, and there’s people who are way too drunk dancing on the tables. you know, the place that tends to start smelling like a mixture of B.O. + vomit + alcohol.. and it gets a little musty, so you try to escape by going outside, but outside there’s people passed out and there’s still vomit everywhere and people are being drunk and loud and YEAH that’s bar fly. damn you 2,000 won shots (about $2?)
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Ryan Vasquez
SK Global House Room #230
50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, Korea 120-749here’s “my” address for the rest of my time here. It’s the address of a friend living in the dorms. I don’t know the address for the place I’m staying at now, and even if I were to ask the ajumma, it would probably be in Korean. it’s much easier this way! don’t worry, anything addressed from somebody that Ryan doesn’t know will be forwarded to me
cool beans
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ice fishing
I finally got the chance to go ice fishing a couple weeks ago. before I came to Korea, I was watching a program on some Korean network about these ice festivals that take place during the winter. I was watching with my grandma, and she told me that I should definitely try ice fishing while I’m here. WELL, I DID IT. It was pretty amazing. well, not really. to be honest it was pretty boring. we didn’t catch any fish either LOL. it’s okay though, because later we got to eat fish that other people caught for us YAYAY!
we travelled about an hour and a half away from seoul into some place which seemed pretty country like. it was great, besides the fact that I only had my card and not a sufficient amount of cash to buy the bus ticket back. note to self: when traveling to a more rural area, bring cash. cards are not accepted everywhere
anyway, we were trying to fish from these holes that have already been drilled from a frozen lake. we didn’t actually know what kind of fish we were fishing for at the time, but it turned out that the only fish we could catch in the lake were these tiny fish, whose name I don’t remember
THESE!
which later turned into these
this is the tiny hole that I was trying to catch fish from using this plastic fishing rod thing
호규 and joanna are having SO MUCH FUN
this is ryan holding his rod ;D
lindsey is sthuper excited
WE LOVE ICE FISHING!!!
this picture pretty much sums up the day
we also had the chance to eat “sashimi” aka whole LIVE MOVING tiny fish, which are seen in the picture above of the tiny fish in the bowl. will post video soon!
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Carrie누나
since September, I’ve been assigned a language and culture exchange partner through my program, who I am to meet up with every week. her name is Carrie. up until last week, we’ve been meeting every weekend to practice speaking in both Korean and English. she’s helped me a lot with my Korean, and since September, I feel like her English has improved a lot. now, she’s studying abroad in Australia in the hopes to become a fluent English speaker.
good luck, Carrie누나! I really miss you! I am looking forward to the one day that we will meet again and be able show-off to each other the result of our hard work.
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하숙집
I know I’ve moved A LOT, but this is the LAST TIME. I promise. I moved into a hasook jib (하숙집), which is like a private boarding house. the ajumma that owns it cooks us breakfast and dinner. it’s really nice! apparently, there was a wait list for guests to stay at the hasook jib because the ajumma is known to cook really bomb food. I’ll take pictures later because I got phone jacked and I need to buy a cable for my camera. UGH. I want to take pictures of the awesome food too, but I think it might be a little bit rude to do so. idk
by me losing my phone also means I’ve lost some pictures as well. I can’t update my beautiful blog with my beautiful pictures :( this is not supposed to be a depressing post. BUT really, it doesn’t bother me at all. this just means I need to take more pictures for the ones that i lost. YEY
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paris baguette is evil
one of my friends mentioned that my tumblr posts are pretty depressing, so sorry for that but I just thought that I would let ya’ll know about the new paris baguette that just opened up nearby our dorms.
there’s this little bakery that’s owned by an elderly couple. they’re both so friendly and cute, and they always welcome us with a smile when we walk in to buy some baked goods.
all of a sudden, a paris baguette opened up right next door. paris baguette is a large chain company that sells baked and confectionary goods. of all places to open up a chain bakery, why next to this little shop that hardly seems to get any business as is? the bakery is open from morning until late at night, and the whole time it’s only this elderly couple running the store.
the other week, I was walking back to the dorms with a group of friends late at night. at this time, the paris baguette was still in construction. as we pass by the local bakery, the elderly man who runs the store stepped outside for a moment. he walked up to the paris baguette, looked through the window, bowed his head and walked back into the bakery. it was truly a heart breaking scene. since then, we’ve been trying to make an effort to buy bread when we can from this local bakery. it will break my heart if this bakery closes because of the paris baguette opening next door.
personally, I refuse give any of my business to paris baguette
this is a picture of the local bakery that I screen capped via google maps. the paris baguette opened to the right of it
but anyway, to top off the depressing post of the day
*drumroll*
I lost my iphone. YAY!
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n/ate is here! but khoua is gone :(
WAE. it’s so quiet without khoua around. but on the bright side, nikki and leah made it here! YAY! they’re pretty far away though. well I guess it’s not too bad. it takes me probably a little over an hour to get there.
meh
