We’ve already established I’m a lazy writer, but now, my friends, you also have to learn that in addition to that, I’m also a very slow writer. Chuseok update comes only now, after the holiday has been over for about 4 days.

 Chuseok is the biggest holiday in Korea and therefore a number of things happened:

a) I didn’t have to go to school, which sucked (refer to c).

b) Super Junior, Lee Hyori, DBSK and a number of other Korean as well as foreign bands gave a free concert, the Asia Song Festival, at the World Cup Stadium and

c) I was bored out of my mind because all Koreans were off spending Chuseok with their families and/or left Seoul to go back to their hometowns. I managed to snatch my boyfriend away from his family several times to spend time with him, but overall it was a very boring experience. I have officially decided that, despite having no objective reason for it, I severely dislike Chuseok. Thankfully, it’s not for another year now. Yippah-deedle-doo!

Going back to b, the Asia Song Festival. The concert itself was decent for something that’s completely free, but if I had had to pay for it, I would likely have been rather pissed. The stage was very small, much too small for everyone in the stadium to get a good look and what was even worse, the TV monitors around the stage were tiny, too! It was hard to make out who was on stage due to this (thankfully, you could tell by the audience ). Due to the stage being so small, it felt a lot like just watching those people on TV, so I can’t say it was a very overwhelming experience to watch Super Junior, DBSK etc. live. At least the sound was decent and everyone got a full dose of sugary sweet and generic Asian pop!

It was marketed as an Asian music festival and for this reason, performers from China, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia all came there to celebrate… Asian unity (how they are one Asia) and bringing world peace and some of that other stuff the moderators would keep yapping on about. It resulted in very little other than what they said going in one ear and straight out of the other.

What destroyed that littled illusion of Asian unity rather hilariously was the fact that nobody sans a couple of handfuls of people gave a damn about any of the non-Korean performers. Personally, I enjoyed some of the non-Korean performancers, especially F4 from Taiwan and Kuraki Mai from Japan, but the vast majority of Koreans just whipped out their cell phones and yawned quite openly, waiting for the “foreigner” to finally disappear. The scene was quite different, however, when Korean performers graced the stage.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many crazy fangirls in one place as at that concert! I’m seriously surprised I didn’t get deaf from the rows upon rows upon rows (seriously, about 3 quarters of the whole audience) of screaming fangirls chanting “DONG BANG SHIN KI!!! DONG BANG SHIN KI!!!” (a boyband’s name) while popping up on down on their seats and flapping their arms like excited ducks. It was… quite a sight. I wouldn’t have been overly surprised if the whole stadium had just collapsed underneath the weight of orgasming fangirls. It did have one advantage, though: we didn’t hear the boybands singing due to them. Yay!

 The rest of Chuseok passed quietly and last Thursday, school started up again. We’re slowly starting to get into somewhat new territory which, while I do theoretically know, I haven’t thoroughly studied before, so I expect my boredom to get reduced the following week of language instruction. It still frustrates me on occasion that while I can have a conversation in Korean, I still don’t understand so much of what people are saying. However, for now, not understanding is still motivating rather than frustrating for me, so it’s all good I suppose.

Well, it’s been forever since I last updated, and it wasn’t even that I was particularily busy! I was just plain too lazy to update. I’ve never been good at keeping a diary… anyway, here’s the long-awaited update. And looky-looky! At least I uploaded some new photos.

 http://www.neavanille.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=7

 Photos of my classmates, my teachers and my classroom. Enjoy.

My 3 weeks at Sogang have ended, the first 2 weekends have come and gone and I’ve now completed my first 14 days of Korean language study and the first 56 hours of Korean language instruction I’ve ever had. Those 14 days have given me a much deeper understanding of what studying at Sogang University entails, has given me a clearer view of what I want to do those next 1.5 to 2 years and has given me the chance to make friends with most of my classmates. I always got to know all 3 teachers better, and can say I like them all (and guess what! The male teacher is apparently not gay like we had all assumed from the first few lessons!!) and I think they are all good teachers. Which brings me to…

 1) The Language Classes

The classes have improved dramatically in difficulty since the first day and I was very pleased to learn several words I hadn’t known before, including “cross”, “sponge” and “gymnasium.” Most of the vocabulary learned was things commonly found in most homes (everything from book and pencil to hair brush and soap) as well as drinks and places (swimming pool, hospital, book store, zoo etc. etc. etc… I knew all of those already).

Grammar-wise, we didn’t learn much. Basically, we learned how to introduce ourselves (name, job, likes, dislikes), how to order something at a restaurant, how to ask what and where something is and how to say how many things there are (counting). We also learned how to say what time it was, what day of the year it was, how to ask for someone’s phone number, how to ask for the price of something etc. etc. I know a lot of grammar already, so at the speed we’re going with grammar, it will be a while until I learn any I don’t already know. However, even though I already know everything, I feel like my time in level 1 is not wasted. It’s strenghtening my foundations and since I have a lot of time here, reviewing the basics now to be better able to soak up later levels is  worth it.

The teaching style consists of the teacher explaining the target grammatical pattern and us students spending the rest of the lesson practicing it with help of the target vocabulary. Often, we will do so in groups of 2, 3 or 4, but sometimes we’ll be asked to stand up and mingle in the classroom. This can get very boring very fast – when you already know the target grammar and are not completely unintelligent, you will have mastered the sentences by the 5th time you utter them, and the rest just becomes boring drawl. Everybody else in my class has studied Korean before as well, so I feel the boredom is rather universal.

Still, I have to admit that while it is boring, it has given me a lot of confidence in speaking Korean. Last Saturday, I went to an international pub called Hana, where I met a lot of Koreans whom I socialized with in Korean. It went rather well. Though it was at a very basic level, I could communicate and have a good time. I was a lot more insecure about speaking Korean before I started the Sogang program, so I can say the fact that I could communicate with ease is probably largely due to them, so they have succeeded in teaching me something despite so far failing at teaching me anything new.

 2) My Classmates

Despite the fact that I am the youngest in the class, the other students treat me as an equal and are generally very kind. We have good classroom dynamics and often have lunch together after class. All of us have already studied Korean (as I found out, most of them have studied Korean for at least one year! O_O Wow! The fact that a lot of these Asian students have been studying Korean for a year, yet their skills are on par with mine gives me a confidence boost..) so we can communicate easily with each other despite coming from different parts of the world. None of the Japanese and Chinese students speak English, so we are ‘forced’ to use Korean.

Our class is in fact so advanced that two of the Westerners we started the term out with were transfered to slower classes! A guy named Jonathan and (sadly, sadly) Tara are thus no longer studying with us. I guess that if you don’t know any Korean at all and have never studied it before, the speed at which our class is going can be rather overwhelming.

I’ve developed an especially close bond with Ryuichi (the anime-hair guy ). Maybe it’s because we’re both so young that we like to tease each other so much, but in any case, I’m probably having the most carefree fun with him, followed by Tara. But as I said, everybody in my class is very nice and I’m frequently trying to socialize with all of them.

2 weeks into the lessons, 2 new students joined us – Jibin (American, half-Korean) and Ran, a Chinese girl. They don’t really ‘belong’ yet, meaning that in the first 2 weeks, our class had already been formed, so by the time they arrived, they were the newcomers to an already established group. Everybody is very nice to them, so I think it won’t be long until it feels like they’ve always been here.

 3)What else have I been doing?

Nothing special, really. I went with my boyfriend to the zoo 2 weeks ago, and they just had the cutest dolphin show you’ll ever see! I also learned a lot of words there, like elephant (koggiri) or tiger (horangi).

My friend Soyoon whom I went clubbing with 3 weeks ago has since left to study in England for a year. I’m very sad about that, but thankfully it isn’t hard in Korea to find friends because due ot having grown up in such an isolated country, a lot of people are very interested in being friends with foreigners. Tonight I’m going back to Hana International Cafe & Pub, where I’ll hopefully meet up with some of the people I met last Saturday.

In other news, it’s typhoon season in Korea right now, and it’s raining, raining, raining…. I forgot to bring my umbrella to school once because it didn’t rain in the morning and I can safely say that I got the most thorough shower outside of a bathroom of my life that afternoon.

My hair is a big hit with Korean girls… today, as I was waiting for my meal at McDonald’s (yeah, I know, I’m in Korea, why am I eating at McDonald’s? Well, even though the Korean food here is great, I like the quick fix McDonald’s offers, so I find myself getting American fast food about once every 2 weeks) , 3 Korean high schools students started talking about me in Korean (“ooohhh, her hair is so pretty!” basically). I turned around and said thanks in Korean, and they made these cute big eyes and exclaimed, “wow, you can speak Korean!” upon which they commenced to actually touch my hair while making “ohh” and “ahhh” sounds. It was cute.

Tomorrow, I’m going to the Asian music festival with my classmates! SG Wannabe, Super Junior  (Korean bands, in case you don’t know) will be there, and what’s best about the whole deal is that the concert will be completely FREE!

Well, I have to get ready to go out now. I’m glad I finally updated and I hope so are you.

Today, I had my very fist day of class, and that after I spent all of last night clubbing with Soyoon (a friend of mine) in Kangnam (the rich part of town, in case you didn’t know – the Beverly Hills of Seoul) and when I came home at 7 AM (had to wait until the subway was running again to make it home), my hair and clothes were reeking of smoke. A quick shower later I was on my way to class, feeling all excited and like I wanted to accomplish great things that day.

Once I arrived at my university, I was initially dismayed to find out that my class seemed to consist of mostly Westerners. Don’t misunderstand me,  I have nothing against them, but they do tend to learn slower than Asians and seeing as how I am a very advanced level 1 student, I was afraid they’d bog down the class and make it unbearably draggy. Once in my classroom, I met some of my classmates for the 9AM writing class. I sat down opposite a Western guy who I later found out was an English teacher named Charles who’d been in Korea for 4 years and whose Korean was similarly good as mine was. A Western girl, Tara joined us. I was surprised to find out she was half-Korean – she looks all white to me, personally. Rounding out our table (at Sogang, you sit together around tables with your classmates instead of in a circle around the teacher like I think they do at Yonsei), a 29-year old Singaporean woman joined us. Class could begin!

My teacher for the first period is named Kim Ji Eun, and she looks a lot like the actress Jeon Ji Hyun – though, of course, she is slightly less prettier and older than her, but the resemblance is definitely quite striking. I immediately liked this teacher – what I liked slightly less, however, was the content of the first class.

The horror, the horror! Basic hangeul classes! We spent about 20 minutes reading and pronouncing ah, eo, oh, uh, eu and i! How very annoying – what was even worse was the fact that eveyone in the class clearly already could read and understand some basic Korean! I was pleased with the fact that my classmate do appear to be on a similar level as me, but as a result all of us and not just me were severly bored the first period.

Second period started and the other students who aren’t taking the extra writing class from 9-9:50 arrived, completing my class. All in all, in my class there are:

- 4 Japanese students (2 older (to me, older is everything above 25 ) females, 1 young female, 1 young male)

- 2 Singaporean women, one 29, one in her 30s

- a pretty and young Vietnamese girl

- an American woman, Tara (22)

- A Canadian guy, Charles (30)

- two young white guys, one from England, the other from I don’t know where

Too many white people for my taste. But I do know that beyond level 1 there are barely any white people left so this might be a level 1 thing for now.

Anyways, the teacher for our second period entered – and I don’t mean to be sexist, but I was slightly surprised that the teacher was a man. I consider a language teacher to be a highly feminine job, so I’m pretty sure there are very few male Korean language teachers at these institutes, yet I had the pleasure to be assigned one. He taught us reading for another hour (more hangeul – how mind-numbingly boring!) and the class was over soon. Next, our main teacher, our conversation teacher who has us for 2 hours a day, entered the classroom.

Like all my teachers, I also had a good impression of her. Her name is Seo Yoo Kyung and she seems like a good and competent teacher with a nice sense of humor. However, we did not do any talking at all in our so-called conversation class and instead finished up learning hangeul, actually managing to cover the whole alphabet in one day. I’m glad that that’s over with, freeing us up for other areas, and I do have to admit that though it was very boring for all of us, if any of us hadn’t been able to read Korean already, it would have been very fast-paced and probably difficult to keep up with, so I think I’ll forgive them for boring us with hangeul classes. But just for this first day.

Now about the teaching methods themselves: I’m not sure how I feel about them, yet. Basically, the teaching style at Sogang is like this: the teacher explains a concept (in this case, hangeul) and the students do tasks to re-inforce what they just learned in groups of 3 or 4 (in our case, ordering, reading and quizzing each other on word cards with hangeul on them). That’s how it was done, over and over again. While I do appreciate the practice time, I do have to say that speaking Korean with other foreigners and practicing it with them is a rather useless skill – they don’t have proper pronunciation (although mine isn’t perfect, either, I can hear and it does bother me to listen to badly accented Korean) and you run the risk of imitating their accent (something I tend to do – I used to speak English with a Brazilian friend, and would sport a Portuguese accent myself when talking to her!). The games were also rather monotonoues, but that’s more the schedule’s fault rather than the teaching system’s – there’s just a very limited number of variations of how you can practice reading with your classmates, and reading was all we did today. One other thing I’m not too happy about is the age of my classmates – except for 22-year-old Tara and a Japanese man who I think is in his early 20’s as well (and has an anime hairstyle like I’ve never seen before! I’m so going to post pictures of him!), all the other student are quite a lot older than me. I was warned that the average age of students was higher at Sogang than it is at Yonsei and that seems to be true.

Oh, and a drama references for my readers from Korean drama boards: when we learned the Korean word for coffee, I spontaneously blurted out, “Coffee Prince!” (the name of a popular Korean drama) which made all the Japanese students laugh. Heh.

Anyway, class was not too bad and I have to say that, overall, despite being dead-tired from clubbing all night, I was probably the most active and motivated student (go me!) and right now I feel an immense desire to go study Korean! I think when I finish this entry, I’m going to study ahead.

Overall, a very interesting day! I’ll report more on Sogang tomorrow.

I finally came around to uploading some photos, 30 all in all.

 Check them out here: http://www.neavanille.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=6 The photos include me and my boyfriend in hanboks (traditional Korean dress), Insadong, Seoul by night, the photos from the beach trip I promised an eternity ago and a few general pictures of my room. Yay!

 Story behind some of the photos: yesterday, I went to Insadong, which is seen as the cultural center of Seoul. It’s basically one long street cramped with shops selling souvenirs, art galleries, traditional restaurants etc. It wasn’t really that impressive but it did make for a nice date. Still, for tourists, Seoul is kind of bleh – Japan, Thailand or China have a lot more to offer for the avid picture-taker and traditional culture lover.

What follows is rather personal ramblings, so I’m not sure who’s going to be interested in it, but I’ll write about it anyway. My boyfriend (who is under the unfortunate delusion he’s good at games, when he really isn’t) bought an online adapter for our Playstation 2 so we can play Winning Eleven online. This game seems to be very popular in Korea – it’s a Japanese soccer game and everybody and their grandma seems to be playing it. I’m not very good at it yet, but a lot of it seems to be based on luck rather than skill anyway. I spent a lot of days this August staying indoors and playing Playstation because it was just too damn hot to set one foot outside of the door.

Um, can’t really think of more to ramble on about. XD

Tomorrow is my first day of class. I CAN’T WAIT. XD As much as I love vacationing, I’m starting to get bored – I need a sense of purpose, some ‘work’ at the moment, so I’m really really looking forward to starting at Sogang University tomorrow morning.