Captain's Log Stardate: -297735.67605276505
Intro
Holy shit it's been a while. I've been in South Korea now since February 22 sooooo I guess that's around 45 days. Oh my god.
So much has happened in this time. I've met so many people and been to so many places and done so many things all while trying to learn Korean, navigate a new country, and do school. I'm very tired.
Dorm Life
I'm very glad I was able to get a single dorm room. I can make messes as I please and when I inevitably crash out I don't have to worry about roommates being around to witness it. I won't lie though, sometimes it's lonely.
I've started doing little things to try to halt the boredom and make my dorm room more homey. I purchased some cotton yarn at Daiso and am crocheting wash cloths that have actually come in handy more times than I can count. I also bought some glow-in-the-dark sticky stars and have put them on the walls of my dorm room. It's very cute at night. Lastly, I started a receipt wall. I had and am still getting receipts for everything I buy and I started taping them to my wall in a kind of wallpaper-esque fashion. It looks like I'm trying to solve a receipt-related cold case. I think it's funny.
Monthly Reviews
I realized I haven't been keeping up with my monthly logs of music I've been listening to and movies and tv shows I've been watching. I think I'll make a separate blog post about that for both February and March. I haven't been watching much movies and tv shows, however, I think because I'm too busy doing other things to sit down and watch something new.
Beginner Struggles
I won't sugar coat it, I was kind of struggling in the beginning. This is the first time I've been away from home this long without being able to see my family and friends. That in conjunction with trying to navigate South Korea and dorm life was very stressful. Luckily I have friends who have helped me out. I still miss home a lot. Don't get me wrong it's been very fun but. I miss American food.
Classes
My classes are interesting. There were only two courses offered in English that would have anything to do with my major and by the time I was able to apply for classes they were both full. I am taking a Korean language class and I like it a lot. At least that class counts as a GE credit at my home university. The other classes I just took because they were in English.
One class is called "American Novel." In this class, we read books in English written from the perspective of different people's experiences as immigrants in the United States. The books and short stories are actually interesting which is nice, and the workload so far is pretty light. The class itself is sort of awkward though. I learned that many Korean students don't like to participate a lot in class, so the teacher will ask a question and there's a very awkward pause where no one wants to answer.
Another class I'm taking is called "Introduction to College Level Writing." This class, I learned, is for Korean students to learn how to write academic level writing in English. I am the only native English speaker in that class. The professor is from New York. I like him a lot actually. He's very energetic and he gets the Korean students to actually participate and it's a very casual classroom vibe which is nice. He advises the students to use ChatGPT to help with their grammar, which I won't lie I don't necessarily agree with as I do not like AI on principle but at this point I don't know how else these students would be able to correct their grammar mistakes in a quick and easy way, short of downloading Grammarly or something. He told me I didn't have to use ChatGPT to correct my grammar, though. The first week of class I wrote a paragraph that he thought was AI and my partner had to vouch for me saying she saw me type it herself. I've had this problem before at Sac State too.
The last class I am taking is a Korean Culture class. I call it "K-pop Class." The first week we learned about the very beginnings of K-pop as we know it today, who the pioneers were and some of the drama and legends involved. This last week, however, we learned more about the conflict with North Korea. Some very heavy topics covered, but it actually made me sort of happy to be an American? We learned about an American-born South Korean who opened a hotel in China close to North Korea, and the CIA approached him and asked him if he would carry out some missions for them. Relaying telephone calls, getting information on certain persons of interest who check in to his hotel, etc. Well he got caught and was taken prisoner in North Korea, and America pulled out the whole nine yards and got him back. In the interview he said something like,"That's when I realized, because I'm an American citizen, I'm safe." That does something to me idk.
Travel!!1!
I've gone to some pretty cool places here. Incheon is a pretty urban city. I think the area where we are close to the college is the more bougie part of Incheon. Lots of luxury cars (I've seen a McLaren more than once) and people dress pretty snazzily. I've heard, though, that there are some parts of Incheon that are kind of ghetto.
Seoul is gigantic and I've been there like four times now and still haven't seen everything. The first time we went to Seoul, I went with the two people I came with from my university, Max (Happy Birthday, king!) and Cade, and two people we met in Incheon. Ignacy from Poland, and David from Quebec. We went to Hongdae because there was an event there put on by the school's official support group for exchange and international students. The event was going to two clubs and drinking and partying. This was the first time I had been to a club on purpose that wasn't also part of a specific concert I was going to. That was actually crazy. The dorm has a curfew of 2am and the subways don't start up again until 5am after they close for the night. So we stayed out until 5am. We were all wiped.
The second time we went to Seoul, we went to Gangnam with the same crew + Simon from Germany. We went to the Hyundai Museum which was so cool and ended up going to a restaurant and getting 삼겹살 where we met an Olympic speed-skater, a Korean guy who graduated from Harvard, and an entertainment manager. No shit. The guy from Harvard actually told us Incheon is like Oakland. We had a little giggle about that.
We've also visited some more historical places. We've been to a few Buddhist temples which are some of the most gorgeous places I've ever been to full stop. We also went to Gyeongbokgung Palace which is also gorgeous and is also gigantic and I would 100% go again and even rent some hanbok to wear and take pics in.
Just recently our friend Hazel (윤지), who was an exchange student at our university last semester and is a student here, took us to her town in 청주시. When we told other Korean friends where we were going for the weekend they all looked at us like we were insane and asked us "Why are you going there?" But it turned out to be the coolest weekend I've had in a while.
When we got there we went to the sickest restaurant on the planet. It was an LP bar, so the DJs were spinning ACTUAL REAL VINYLS AND mixing drinks at the same time. They also had sort of fusion Italian food and we got a Lasagne that tasted exactly like my mother's. You were able to request certain songs off some of the vinyls they had in the bar and they had some good stuff. Like SZA and Biggie Smalls and Earth, Wind, and Fire good. I got a Manhattan and a Jack and Coke and we stayed there until closing. We actually made friends with the staff and it turned out they were having an event at a club in the same restaurant area the next night and they told us to come and they'd hook us up with free drinks. Coolest motherfuckers on the planet.
The next day it was raining pretty heavy and my Uggs might be done for but it was worth it because the park we went to was beautiful. It was right my a river that came from a dam and we walked around there for a while until we took a wrong bus back to Hazel's car and got lost in the city. We ate some 닭갈비 to make up for it before grabbing some taxi's back where we would then go to the Cheongnamdae Presidential Villa (청남대). This was also very pretty and the actual buildings where the presidential families lived were a time capsule to 2003 which was kind of hilarious. After this we headed back to Hazel's neighborhood.
Hazel, Cade, and I, + Brandon, Max's friend who had flown out from America to visit Max for Spring Break and had come with us to Cheongju, had planned a sort of surprise party for Max's birthday. Hazel had ordered a cake with an inside joke on it for him and we were going to surprise him with it at a bar for dinner.
Well in my infinite wisdom I did not understand that this plan was for this night and not the night after. So I kind of fowled up the plan. But Max was surprised anyway. So I guess it worked out.
The bar was a chain bar called Rainbow Beer and we stayed there for a few hours and ate cake and drank beer and soju. At this point, the party we had been invited to by the DJs from the restaurant from the night before had started and we decided to head over there.
This was hands down the coolest club I have ever been too. The DJs had told us this was a "Korean Traditional Club" and I guess that just means old because it was kind of giving Roller King in the most fantastic way possible. It was located in the basement level of another building and it had low ceilings and old school booths surrounding the hardwood dance floor and the ceilings were low and they had a fog machine and a drinks table and the pillars had those fish-eye mirrors on them that looked like tiny old school TVs and a disco ball and the vibe was immaculate.
The DJs were once again spinning REAL VINLYS like respect my man. We got some drinks and started hitting the dance floor and I could tell this was a real cool group of people there were some folks voguing in their own little dance circle and some breakdancing happening. The staff from the restaurant found us and were very happy we came and we were equally happy to be there. Honestly it was a very friendly crowd, not like some of the places I've been too where everyone tries to act cool and is a little shy. We stayed until closing AGAIN and we stumbled to a CU and sat down and ate some ramen and drank some Condition Hangover Remedy which actually works pretty good then we called it a night.
The next day we went to a fortress in the hills in Cheongju and took some pictures and walked along the wall. Then it was time to head back home to Incheon. Great weekend.
Conclusion
I've had a lot of fun in the month and a half I've been here but I've also had times where I'm just as depressed or angry. I have until the 6th of July to be here and in the gran d scheme of things it seems like almost too little time to do all the things I wanted to do + things I find out about while I'm here. For a country that's about 99 times smaller than the US there's a ton of culture and cool stuff that would take someone a long time to experience. I just know that when it comes time to leave I'm going to wish I had more time here, despite the hard ship I experienced in the beginning and no-doubt will experience later with my luck.