I love people; "I want Alisha to come to Korea Again"

My favorite thing about studying abroad is meeting people. I have a few pen pals that I have kept in touch with, and I have met three while I've been here. Saturday I met Yulim for the first time, and had a blast. First we went to the Garak Market, a huge produce and fish market, to walk around. We weren't sure what to do, and it was already 1:30 so alot of the market was closed, but i was curious so we went. She thought it was entertaining when people stopped us and asked her where I was from and what I was doing. Since I wore long pants I got fish water up my legs but i survived. After that, we went to Konkuk university station for lunch, and had 보쌈 -- really good pork and rice for 2 people (21,000won). The we went to a coffee shop and ordered an exotic coffee and a hot choco and talked. Okay, it's an underestimate to say we talked, because we had a 6 hour conversation - 3:30-9:30pm. The coffee shop atmosphere was too good, the owner might have said. We discussed everything from how it felt to ask our parents for money, prostitution, church volunteering, and prejudices people hold about their neighboring countries, to what is considered "good" food in different countries, dating customs, and foreign language accent differences.
I could really impress you if I said that this whole conversation was in Korean, but Yulim's English was pretty good. She wanted me to meet her favorite cousin because he was home from the US, so we waited for his teaching job to finish. We met him and his three friends, all of whom were Koreans that went to college together in Pennsylvania. I believe a few of them were in Korea because they had to do their military service (In Korea, every man is required to serve in the army for two years.) We had dinner with them and spoke in lots of Konglish (a mess of Korean and English). Her cousin and friends didn't have accents, or rather had American accents, and spoke quickly so Yulim got shy about her English. Although it was hard to believe because we had just finished speaking together in English for six hours. No one could believe that we met on the Internet and this was the first time we've met in person, everyone thought we were best friends. At the coffee shop there were papers we could write our hopes and holiday wishes on to hang for Christmas decoration, and Yulim wrote "I want Alisha to come to Korea Again." Such a sweet friend. I love making connections with people.

Yulim was the third pen pal I've met in person, one in Pusan that took me to one of the best meals I've had, and the other is Kwangsoo. Kwangsoo is now affectionately called a "best friend." We chat about everything and he helps me find things around Seoul...hopefully he'll come visit the US so I can be as kind. We went to Gyeongbokgung Palace the last time we met.





Besides Penpals I've met some great people just randomly. One day Pauline and I met KiTae, a 27 year old student at Seoul National University, that invited us to tour his school. Seoul National is the largest, and best (sorry to say that Ewha, just repeating the general consensus) university in Korea, so it was worth seeing. He brought two friends to meet us, one of which could speak great English, and they showed us the campus. It was getting dark but we saw a good bit of things including the library and a few places couples go to hide out, haha. You can say it was an insider's view. KiTae treated us to dinner in one of the dining rooms. This particular dining room was mostly used by professors for meetings, because all of the meals were about $35 and there was even wine on the menu. After a great Korean dinner, we went to a coffee shop before heading home to celebrate a friends' birthday.

Other activities I've done with people I've met off-campus have included going to Lotte World amusement park, lots of dinners and coffee shop visits, batting cages, trips to the movie theater, and even one ridiculous random trip to a street-side fortune teller.

OH also recently I went to the DMZ, the border of North and South Korea. I could talk about the tour with the USO, how odd it felt traveling with 40 Americans, the feeling of being in a war zone and how much I learned, but I don't think I can do it justice in this setting. Here's a photo from Panmujeom, the UN building used for negotiations, that straddles the boarder...yes I crossed into North Korea for a few minutes ^^.

“I want nobody nobody but you…” Pop Culture

Since my last post I've been staying around Seoul and keeping up with the normal random activities. The only complaint I have is that my camera has been going crazy on me by not working half of the time, so my tourist look isn't quite complete. One day I went to the 63Building to see the sunset over the city, and thankfully got some great photos.

^^63 Building



^^Snapshot of the Subway when you get on at the wrong time...chaos.

(^^ Random Band, 제8극장, that played covers of Elvis and other random bands.)

One thing that is evident here is the impact of commercialism and pop culture, and I surprisingly have grown to love it. Even while taking a walk to the subway station from the main gate of Ewha you’ll be bombarded with sales pitches and catchy tunes. Well this is a popular women's university, so of course the shopping outside the main gate is called “Fashion Street” in all of the tour guide books. It is truly a street shopping paradise, or at least a convenient place to buy a new pair of shoes to celebrate the end of midterms. But it’s the same everywhere here, sales people with microphones trying to get people to come into their stores, people trying to pass out advertisements, and at every street cart selling accessories you’ll see pictures of your favorite celebrities wearing scarves. Earlier in the semester the picture of Paris Hilton and her purse-sized puppy inspired quite a few purchases. My first week here I felt like I had to get a pair of high heals and a fashionable boyfriend on my arm. However, I like that everyone usually dresses professionally, a change from the typical sweat shirts and t-shirts wardrobe of most American university campuses.
Korean popular (K-pop, rock, traditional) music also has its interesting place. There are some great bands, and some crazy fans here. Like I said, I went to a concert last week, luckily a free benefit concert with about 15 bands. I haven’t seen one band that doesn’t have a dance routine to every one of their hit songs. And since being a fan is not taken lightly, most people learn the dances. One band, The Wonder Girls, is probably one of the most popular now, their current hit being “Nobody.” Look it up on YouTube if you’re interested, it’s all in Korean except the addictive chorus. Speaking of which, why did I start writing this? It’s replaying in my head again. Ahhh. One night I was sitting with some friends and the song came on in the restaurant. Looking around I spotted a few grown men saying how they loved Wonder Girls and one mimicking the dance moves under the table. People are hilarious. Before I came to Korea, I memorized one Korean song, so I could impress my friends in Karaoke, but I regret not learning a dance as well. Well sad to say the Wonder Girls weren’t that great in concert, and they only sang “Nobody”, but I still like their music. There’s no way I could escape it anyway.
(^Random band at the concert)
Speaking of commercialism, some genius invented a wonderful unofficial holiday for a pretty sweet candy: Pepero Day. Pepero (빼빼로) is like Japan’s Pocky, a long cookie covered in chocolate. On November 11th, you may be honoring Veterans Day, but thanks to the Lotte candy company we’ll be trading Pepero with friends, teachers and anyone we may “like” here in Korea. It’s on November 11th because 4 Pepero looks like 11/11. Every convenience store I’ve passed today going to and from church (I travel an hour away from campus, that’s a lot of convenience stores) had Pepero in the windows of all sizes and flavors. I've met people that told me they're giving some to their boyfriend/girlfriend, then a few that say definitely not, it's not romantic, or they went to a men's high school so they had no experience to help me out...poor guys. I think it’s more for couples once you get out of high school, a Valentine’s or Sweetest day kind of thing, but I still hope I get some Pepero!
This weekend was the Peace Buddy party for international students, with a costume theme and Mr. Ewha contest. Colin definitely represented here, putting on a great talent performance, unfortunately, yet entertainingly enough, someone in cross dress, dancing to “Nobody” won the title.
I was fortunate to make a friend outside campus that invited me to a birthday party, so I went after the I-Party. The typical birthday (well this one at least) turns out to be hanging out at a restaurant with friends. This one was particularly interesting because I was the only foreigner, and only girl ( also known as: “홍일점”). Everyone was really cool, tried to speak in English a little, and asked me questions about home and such. It was a blast, it kind of reminded me of hanging out with friends back home, and even though I didn’t expect to be the only girl, it was definitely an experience I’m happy I was able to have. Now I’m excited for my birthday next month! The rest of the weekend was pretty relaxing: movies, window shopping, girl talk…just ended my Sunday with a load of laundry and a game of Uno with some girls. I'm really comfortable here, but I'm still doing new things, so I'm really sad there's only a month left.