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.