AiriZel: Thoughts

Well today is the morning after the first night at the homestay. Man, not what I expected. From what I undestood, the homestay program was supposed to put us with a traditional korean nuclear family. That is to say a mother, father, and kids. Instead I and Nicolas Pang (a very bright kid from Hawaii) ended up with a god-fearing grandmother, similar in style to that you would see in a western movie in regards to an old grandmother figure.

So what does that mean? It means near unlimited freedoms equivalent to what I have not only in the home, but also what I’ll have when I’m in college. Simply put, the grandmother of this small apartment lives by herself. If you put it into the perspective of a grandmother living alone, the apartment is not that bad at all. I could definitely live in something like this by myself (which brings me to the funny point that I may not have a suite room year 1 at Yale. But rather a very big room. I don’t know how that’s going to go). That said, for the three of us, it’s a bit smaller than anticipated (but not overtly uncomfortable by any means).

In addition, the son, IE the hypothetical father figure of this house seems to work all the time, living away from this apartment. In addition, the grandmother is a god-fearing woman who attends church everyday until 6PM. So what does that afford Nick nad myself? Well we get keys to this apartment and the freedom to come and go as we please whenever. That’s a lot more freedom than I thought I’d have, but also we lose out on the immersion into Korean families. I feel worse for Nicholas than I do for my own situation, having grown up in in fact a Korean nuclear family, knowing that my father sits at the head of the table, knowing that the respect I show to my parents is infinite. Nick will never have that experience at this rate.

That all said, the family is still very supportive as if we were college students. The grandmother graciously took us to the nearby YMCA equivalent so that we could spend 31000 won to open membership. I’ll probably be heading there every morning from 6-6:30 or around that time (with the exception of maybe wednesdays when the program takes us away). She also took us into town, which is about 1 km away I think from this apartment complex, where we bought bread, power adapters (since the prongs on american adapters differ), and ice cream. Lots of ice cream.

So moving on to talking about last night. Man I could not sleep well. I costantly felt like I was waking up, and my back couldn’t seem to realign itself with the bed. Meh, hopefully tonight will be better. Also, my eyes seem to be failing me lately. I don’t know if it’s becuase I’m tired, but I can’t seem to focus my eyes on people. Words and letters no problem. People… they seem to be blurry at a not that far distance. I’m thinking it’s just a lingering effect of my jetlag, but if it continues when I return to the States, I’ll get a contact in my right eye or something.

Back to the living of Korean life!
-Sebastian

It’s currently 5:45AM on July 8th, a wednesday in Seoul.

So time to share a story of what happened yesterday. Well, first and foremost is that South Korea is still pretty amazing. But I felt culture shock yesterday. There were two occasions which caused me to raise an eye. One was a man clearly ripping me off. Now, the sad part is that he was rpping my friend’s money off, but as the person who was dealing with the guy, I definitely felt very responsibile for the lost money. Basically we purchased a case for a phone, but the guy, instead of charging the normal 4000 won, decided to ask for 15000 won, which is a lot more money. I felt extremely bad that I forgot to haggle and was very much reminded that my Korean has a strong american accent, which causes people with less good intention to go after people like that.

Secondly, a guy was very rude and told us essentially to f*** off when we inquired about a shoe. Sort of weird, sort of a different culture, definitely boiled my blood a bit.

After having slept on it, I realize now this is why I want to better master the language. That way I can be as coherent as my father, who would never have had anything like this happen to him. It was a good learning lesson for all (especially me) and I plan on keeping myself from getting ripped from now on.

On, I also got a cellphone (a slider-phone. Samsung of course),  150,000won (for use for food), and 126,000 won (for use for transportation).  Good stuff.

-Sebastian (12 hours after it happened, still somewhat annoyed that he was fooled)

It’s currently 8:30 PM EDT or rather since I’m somewhere over Russia on my way to Incheon, I’d say it’s about 9:30AM at the start of this post. Delta’s moving flight map says that’s about 4 hours and 15 minutes off landing.

so basically, I’ve been sleeping, eating, listening to music, watching movies, and talking to Alan (more on him in a bit) for the past 10 hours.

So what is this part 1? Well, this series of posts will probably take the remaining duration of my summer. I’ll be studying Korean throughout the summer and enjoying my time in my parent’s home country.

So I suppose I should start with some preliminary goals. I REALLY want to be able to fluently read and write Korean (both on the keyboard and by hand). My current level of Korean is very deceptive as while I’m able to understand the majority of Korean I encounter, I lack the distinctive knowledge of being able to read anything with a good amount of speed. Or write anything error-free.

On top of that I want to eliminate the majority of the American acent in my Korean. Sure, it’ll always remain (similar to how my english will probably have a unique flare to it as my accent different syllables), I want to take advantage of the total immersion experience I’ll be experiencing.

Oh, and of course like any adventure, I’m going to have fun! And probably study hard. It’s so strange, I never realized how driven I am to learn and do well in things until very recently. I mean, in the back of my head I had thought it might have been in search of the grade I want, but it isn’t. I just really want to do well in anything I do!

Now for my experience so far. I had a terrible flight from Salt Lake City to Washington DC. I don’t know why, but my head was hurting a great deal at the end of it. It was all fine when I got off though. I joked with a tourist in the area for the 4th of July that I had showed up 5 1/2 months late and was sad that I missed Obama’s inauguration. That said, I only got to see the Congress building and the Washington Memorial from a distance (as the opportunity to visit the sites was cut short on the virtue of the flight in which I’m typing up this blog post).

The first two days were a lot of fun as it presented a non-korea environment to meet with the summer, fall, and year students studying in Korea as well. Man these guys are bright (and by guys, I really mean like 75% girls and 25% guys as that’s the composition of the people in the exchange). First of all… THEY ALL KNOW JAPANESE >> What the heck! I want to learn japanese T_T. I’ve been running by my rudimentary japanese by them and they’ve helped with a few things. Really cool guys. Take Alan (since I said I’ll get to him at the top of the post). He’s headed to Harvard next year and on top of that, he has this extremely diligent vibe about him that is compounded by his knowledge of other exchanges which is really cool).

So beyond the sleeping and meeting of people, the first two days were a preparation and getting to know people before boarding this 14 hour flight. The unknowns coming up? I have NO idea what level korean I should/will be placed in. It’s becoming clear that I’ve blessed to have had a background in Korean, but at the same time I also suffer from the bad life-long habits that new speakers are not plagued with. It’ll all be very interesting.

I’d go into details, but I have two months to talk about the people. Points of interest include Dina and her husband who have been absolutely amazing ^^. Also include in that mix Ed who is a Korean History scholar.

So far on this plane trip, I’ve realized that there is no wifi (sad), unlimited movies (WIN!), and a J-pop station (complete with BoA, Sasuke, GreeeeN, Utada Hikaru and others. I’ve watched Watchmen and Push so far. With now 3 hours and 45 minutes left,

Props: Dina, iEarn, the US Gov’t, Delta Airlines
Flops: Sorry, but a bright green T-shirt wasn’t my idea of something I’d wear on an airplane to South Korea ~_~

-Sebastian (watching a comedy next!)