To Sejong and the Macabees: April 2011

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Grad School Admission = Costco Celebration

Hello again,

I found out yesterday that I got into my first choice graduate school, Gallaudet University, with a 50% tuition scholarship!!!! yay!!!

I've been waiting weeks for a reply, so I was super happy and honestly, relieved to know the outcome. The scholarship came as quite a nice surprise.

I couldn't really celebrate though, because I had my midterm interview the next day (today).

So, I had my interview with my classmate Chika. It went alright; our dialogues were supposed to last 3-5 minutes each. But, we finished our three dialogues in just under 6 minutes... So, our teacher had us talk about our upcoming weekend. hehe.

Afterwards, Chika and I went out for a nice lunch to celebrate being done/me celebrating my getting into graduate school. The weather was absolutely perfect!!! The cherry blossom trees are starting to bloom, but aren't quite in full swing yet... In any case, after our exam, we walked around Sogang campus and took a few pictures. And then we headed to Jenny's Cafe in Hongdae.

After some wander (or a lot of wandering) we found it, and had a nice Italian lunch with a glass of wine.

It was funny because of our dialogues that we had written was about Chika drinking a glass of wine before giving a presentation for our class. We actually kind of got the idea of drinking wine after our exam from our dialogue... lol!

I really like Hongdae~ Honestly, I've not spent much time there. Lots of foreigners like to go clubbing there, but I've mostly spent time in Sinchon (where Yonsei University is) and Edae (where Ewah University is). Hongdae also has a university, Hongik University. Anyhow, there are some really great cafes and restaurants there. It's also known for being the "artsy" area~ Saw some cool graffiti and other such things. While we were searching for our restaurant, I saw at least three models posing in various areas - hongdae is very hip/quaint.

~love~

makoli bottles~

I found a Chevy bike!!!!

I went to my volunteering at the deaf school and taught my students. They seemed to really have picked up on spelling swear words in English. Honestly, my initial response thought was wow, I'm impressed that they know how to spell those words, second though: hilarious!!!!!, third though: hm.. and inappropriate.... Anyhow, today they wanted to learn how to sign KILL and KILLER. Oh middle school boys...

This evening, Nik and I made an epic trip to Costco. We had planned to go to the Seoul Women's International Film Festival and see a movie as well, but we seriously ran out of time... So it goes.
Costco was loads of fun anyhow.

Nik and I were pretty hungry, so we decided to eat dinner first. Oh, yes. Costco dinner. Nik, being a boy, order us a lot of food. Two slices of pizza, a bulgogi bake, and a smoothie. The place was packed, and the only chairs we could find were sandwiched between two couples... We literally had to climb over them to get in. They were not pleased. And, our speaking English probably did not help... haha!
I think we completely embraced the "loud, annoying American" stereotype tonight.

dinner

that my friends is a "bulgogi bake"

We used our hand sanitizer and ate. To put it nicely, Koreans are a lot less lax about washing hands... My Japanese classmates once commented on how American's are always washing there hands or using hand sanitizer. Well, germs are scary!!! haha.

Here are Nik's steps on how to eat like an American at a Korean Costco:

apply hand sanitizer

lather

cut

stab with fork

eat

Nik is having a dinner party next weekend for his Spanish students, so we went in search of needed items. Of course, we got really side tracked... I had come in search of one thing: jelly beans (for my students). I came out with a huge tube of Jelly Bellys and a carton of yogurt. Man, those jelly beans are EXPENSIVE!!!! I was in this huge quandry, but they were the only jelly beans available, and I really really wanted to give my students jelly beans for an Easter treat. So I sucked it up and spent, can you guess??? Roughly $23... Ouch. yeah, holy crap. that's how much I love my students...

그때 가격 너무 비싸서 고민이였다.

I had to do some serious thinking before purchasing these jelly beans...

Anyhow, Nik and I are not the most efficient people... But, we got most of the stuff and then some.
Here are some bizzar/creepy things we found at Costco:

flaxseed powder just for you mom!!!

and canned beans, just for you dad!!!

gross huge octopus!!! yum yum... it was almost $30!!!

creepy sideways fish...

soon to end up on someone's dinner table, or breakfast table for that matter

huge tins of gojujang, red pepper paste, the staple of Korean food

huge bottles of wine?...

our cart

Thus ends our epic Costco adventure.

*We have no shame. Nik asked a worker to take our picture, but she wouldn't. So, we set it on a self time, leaned my camera on a railing and took it that way.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Spring has Sprung and Happy Birthday Pop!!!

Hello!

First off, happy (belated) 95th birthday to my grandpa Pop, my most dedicated and avid reader!!!!!!!

Also, hats off to my Bubby for working really hard at therapy and getting better every day!!!!! ^^

So, it's already 11:30 pm... So I probably can't write much, but I've been meaning to write an update.

I feel like I'm always in the middle of tests! And here I am, yet again, studying and getting ready for my midterm interview exam on this wednesday. I took our two written exams last week on Monday and Tuesday. I got back my writing and reading tests; my scores were fine. Pretty on par with what I thought they'd be. I'll get my speaking scores back on Wednesday, after my interview.

It's called an interview, but really, its memorizing dialogues... My partner and I had to write 10 dialogues and now I'm trying to memorize them. When we take our test, there will be 10 cards, and we will draw 5 of them. From those 5 we pick 3, and do the dialogues that correspond with the grammar points.

My interview partner, Chika is from Japan, and is an AMAZING cook!!!! We met on Saturday to practice and she made the most amazing lunch (and she thought it wasn't very good!!). What?! It was awesome.

salad and bosam (thick bacon aka pork belly)

(I don't know the name, but the white stuff is made from potatoes)

PASTA!!!

me and Chika

After studying, I met up with Nik and we went to the Vagina Monologues (click on the link for a description of what the Vagina Monologues is all about). I've been meaning to see this show for quite some time, and was pretty impressed with the production.

According the the Vday website:

V-Day is a global activist movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM) and sex slavery. [...]

In 2010, over 5,400 V-Day benefit events took place produced by volunteer activists in the U.S. and around the world, educating millions of people about the reality of violence against women and girls.

So, there are Vagina Monologue productions held all over the world and I think 100% of the proceeds are supposed to go to help an organization/beneficiary. The beneficiary of our show was KUMFA, Korean Unwed Mothers & Families Association.

We saw a bilingual production, so some of the monologues were in Korean with English subtitles behind, some were in English with Korean subtitles on the screen behind, and a few were done by two actors in both English and Korean.

To put it simply, there was definitely a Korean twist to the show, which I both appreciated and found very intriguing.

Some of the pieces were very moving, especially the one about Haiti and the one about the comfort women, and some were just hilarious. They chose a good mix of monologues.

There were a number of Fulbright people who went as well. Afterwards, we headed to Hongdae for chicken and beer.

Nik and Sung

Anyhow, last week, I went to Nik's house and made parmesan chicken. Honestly, I was kind of impressed it turned out, considering I winged it and made the whole thing up. Not too hard though, if you think about it. Bread the chicken. Saute it. I also made baked broccoli! I was so happy to be able to cook!!! There is a serious lack of ovens in this country.

note the MN map!!!

We definitely watched "Big Bird Goes To Japan" on youtube (6 parts!) because we are awesome. My question is, why is there no Big Bird Goes to Korea!?

See how changoos (the drum) can be used in so many ways if one is resourceful!

Also, last week I met up with Steve Wunrow, Bill Drucker and Mary Lee Vance, (all associated with Korean Quarterly) who all came to Korea.

Nik and I went to PAN, Kim Duk Soo's samulnori show with them and then out to lunch in Insadong.

The show was pretty awesome!!! We ate at this weird vegetarian/vegan restaurant. There was definitely a HUGE portrait of the Supreme Master watching us eat the entire time. haha!

I also met up with Steve and Bill one more time to go to this North Korean fashion show, My Fashionshow, put on by Dirk Fleischmann, a German fashion designer. It was... interesting?.. He was showcasing clothes made in Kaesong, North Korea.

It started out with a magician. I haven't seen a magic show in forever, so that was pretty fun! The lead into the "fashion show" was the magician pulling a North Korean made shirt out of his hat.

magician, complete with purple hair

the shirt that was pulled out of the hat

model

Perhaps I missed the main point of the show... That could very well be. But my take on it, was this guy went to N. Korea, toured the factories. Got a bunch of black and white cotton shirts. Sewed his label inside them and is now selling them at astronomical prices... I feel like I must have missed something because that doesn't seem right...