Wednesday-Sunday

To be honest I'm not entirely sure what I did Wednesday other than school or work- I might have gone to the cafe close by my house that I've been frequenting lately and gotten some mango juice, which is more of a crushed mango slushie. During work I got to leave the office to buy small prizes for the NSLI-Y "end of the first week" meeting they held on Thursday. I bought an umbrella (because rainy season is so real right now), some socks, and some cute notebooks for the kids to pick from. After work I went to a local takeout place to get curry but when I got home it was so extremely spicy that I couldn't eat all of it and gave the rest to my roommate. Next time I definitely need to ask if the food is spicy or not.
Thursday the kids had the meeting and I was given the choice to go to the meeting or not so I chose to go to an after school activity at Yonsei instead. It was a kpop dance class, and all of us thought it was going to be fun and easy, and while it was fun, it was extremely hard. We learned "Bang Bang Bang" by Big Bang and the teacher was so peppy and made everything look so easy while the rest of us were actually dying behind her. She made us get into three lines of four and then at the end of the class we had to go to the front of the room with the rest of our line and perform the dance in front of everyone. We all did terrible so no one felt too bad about it haha. One of the girls I met in the class had studied abroad in Korea for a year during high school so i asked if she did NSLI-Y and she said no, but that she knew a lot of NSLI-Y people so we talked in class and then coincidentally met again in Sinchon as I was walking home (and ahem shopping a lil bit). While we were talking two of her friends came over and invited her (and me!!) to go to bingsu and they bought it for us which was so super sweet. After bingsu I picked up a sandwich from Paris Baguette and then took my bus home and went to the cafe near my house again for a little work and studying.

On Friday I went to school and then walked to Sinchon with my roommate instead of taking the bus. Together we bought donuts for our roommates because we are the best people ever, and then I got a bagel and frozen hot chocolate for lunch to eat on the subway while going to meet the NSLI-Y kids for one of their culture clubs!

The culture club that I went to Friday was their fan dance and I helped take pictures! It was so cute and it was so interesting to see an actual professional teach fan dance because I've only done it in an informal setting. Coming home I bought six ice creams with all of the change in my backpack, but when I got home it turns out my other roommate had already bought ice cream for everyone already too.
On Saturday I went to the water gun festival in Sinchon again! I went two years ago and it was super fun, and then this time I went with my roommates friends and it was great. We didn't buy water guns thought so we just ran around and had people shoot us. They also had fire trucks and giant fountains that were spraying water into the crowd. It was super cold though so we left and rode the subway home, and then I walked home alone soaking wet which was a little weird but oh well. Before the festival we ordered pizza hut, which was crazy. The pizza came in a three layered box with two of our pizzas on the bottom and then with pasta, french fries, pickles, and other assorted condiments on the top layer. It looked like a giant present and our other roommate thought we had ordered a cake. After the festival I studied and then my roommate and I had the strangest dinner, consisting of a peanut butter sandwich, ramen, leftover donuts, and leftover pizza.

(the last one is just an attractive man promoting for sprite by handing out free soda and looking perfect while everyone else looked like they were drowning)

On Sunday I went to Yongin to meet one of my penpals whom I met last time when I was in Seoul. We went to the Korean Folk Village and getting there I was so afraid i was going to get lost. I rode the subway for 45 minutes to Gangnam and got on an express bus, but I only knew the stop I was supposed to get off at so I stared at the screen that announced the upcoming stops for an hour as we left Seoul and got on the freeway, praying that I was going in the right direction. After over twenty stops, mine came up and it was literally in the middle of nowhere, with only the Korean Folk Village there. Going back home I was a little more relaxed and I slept (maybe too relaxed-- I almost missed my stop and pressed the request stop button at the last possible moment).
The Korean Folk Village is a traditional style village that showcases Korean history and the old way living in the different provinces of Korea. I had no idea that almost all of the provinces had different styles of houses and different methods of doing things, but it makes sense. A lot of the provinces are divided by natural barriers, mostly mountains, so even though Korea is a small country it is really linguistically and culturally diverse. Some of the Korean dialects aren't even mutually intelligible even though South Korea is only about the size of Indiana. My pen pal whom I went with wants to be a Korean teacher when she graduates and she is really involved in traditional culture clubs at her university so she was able to give me some additional information on a lot of the stuff we saw!
It was also about 100 degrees outside today so even though we stayed there for almost five hours, a lot of that time was spent sitting down. We also watched three performances, one was "Thrillingly Steal Watermelon" and if that title is confusing that is how I felt about the entire thing. They were doing a special summer series of activities about watermelon because they had a watermelon field and watermelons are really popular in Korea during the summertime or something like that. I think it was a comedy performance but again, it was just very strange. The next performance we saw was a traditional music performance, and the third one was a horse performance where riders did a bunch of different tricks while riding horses and it was really cool/scary looking. I don't have all of the pictures from that day so I'll just put up the ones I have right now and the rest in my next blog post!

We tied our wishes onto this rock

Traditional Music ft. cool hats

It actually looks like someones home!

The cute sunflowers we made

That night I came back and went guess where- to Paris Baguette and got another sandwich and then like half a baguette that I sat down and ate right there. Coming home I went and bought milk at the supermarket and then when I got home I ended up eating a second dinner of Jokbal (pig feet) with my roommates.
When we took out the trash my roommate all of a sudden left for the supermarket and he came back with 50 INDIVIDUAL ICE CREAMS and even more sweet snacks as if our house doesn't have enough already. This is the same person who bought the water and toothpaste in bulk, of course.
Also here is a picture of the scary bear outside of the building next to ours.

Saturday-Tuesday

And so begins blog posts without pictures. The phone I'm using now  has an okay camera so I might not have Many photos from here on out unless people send them to me, but oh well!
On Saturday I woke up and saw a movie with my friend who I met a few weeks ago. She really likes the K-pop group BigBang as well and this August is their 10th anniversary so a documentary about them came out last week and of course we had to go see it. We both got free posters when we bought tickets and I accidentally expressed a little disappointment when I got one of my least favorite members (I'm a terrible person I'm so biased) so my friend traded with me because she said she has a lot of posters at home. Then I went and started the expedition to get my phone fixed, and found out I had to wait until Monday. That was annoying but then I went to get my hair cut and actually had a lot of fun. The stylists were all horrified when I said I wanted to cut my hair short, and I ended up cutting it to above my shoulders because it was getting really annoying. It feels so cool and comfortable and healthy now and I love it! There was so much hair on the floor it looked like a small animal. After they cut my hair (dry) I got my hair washed and had a head massage type thing, which is the opposite order than they usually do it in the US. The guy who washed my hair told me he studied English by listening to Drake and Lil Wayne (lmao) so I started laughing, naturally, and then in English he said that he "Studies English at the club" which was basically the most ridiculous thing I ever heard so I couldn't keep it together. After my hair got washed I got my hair dried and then we looked at it one more time and she evened it out a little more and cut some pieces to frame my face. I left the salon feeling like a new woman and therefore bought a pizza bagel from Paris Baguette to eat at home.
Coincidentally, that night my roommate and I, along with some people from another sharehouse owned by the same company, went to watch a movie. We saw "Me Before You" and yes I cried. Afterwards we went out for BBQ and then got ice cream. I got honeycomb ice-cream, which was getting popular the last time I was here and is still pretty popular. It is just vanilla soft serve with a honeycomb and honey on top. When we got home we hung out a bit and then my other roommate wanted to order takeout and he said he'd pay so naturally we accepted. He ordered Dalkbal, or chicken feet, and not only does it look scary, it is extremely spicy so I tried to get out of eating. I had some rice and then they forced me to try it but it was too spicy and so with the permission of my roommate I spit it out into a napkin. We also went to the convenience store and bought an extremely unnecessary amount of alcohol and chips that four of us could definitely not eat/drink in one night, but they were in a good mood so they just bought it.
On Sunday I slept in late unintentionally and then met with my language exchange partner. We went out for Italian food and then got gelato (me: nutella and tiramisu, him: rice and earl grey tea) so I was very happy.

Then that night we watched a Japanese horror movie and devoured all of our extra snacks from Saturday. Unfortunately, we couldn't find English subtitles for the movie so it just had Korean subtitles and I had no idea what was going on so it wasn't very scary for me. Also, we took out an extreme amount of garbage that night- it was so bad we had to use a giant cardboard box to hold it all and even then there was things that wouldn't fit.
Monday I went to school (like every day) and then to work, but I got off early so I went to get my phone fixed. I waited for two hours at the phone repair store only to have the news broken to me via google translate-- phones bought in America can't be fixed in Korea. I angrily bought a sandwich on the way home as well as some things I needed from the dollar store- some school supplies and house slippers for me and my roommate because we were tired of our feet getting dirty.
Then today I went to class like normal and then to work, where I prepared the fans for the fan dance culture club for the NSLI-Y students. The fans were brand new and unfortunately un-sanded so I spent like an hour making them smooth enough for the kids to use because we were worried they would cut themselves or get splinters. Before work I went to Dunkin Donuts to get a drink and then after work I got McDonalds for dinner so it was a very American day to make up for me not celebrating July 4th the day before.

THE WEEK THE CHILDREN ARRIVE

Okay so first I'm going to apologize for the extreme lack of pictures in the next few posts. My phone broke on Thursday so I lost some pictures that I had taken and then was unable to take any more over the weekend/up until now (Monday).
But anyways, this past week was extremely exciting and busy- Monday I went to work all day and was busily preparing for the arrival of the children. I did a little bit of translation work (successful only thanks to the Naver Dictionary app on my phone) and then started stuffing the goodie bags for the NSLI-Y children when they arrive. The goodie bags were a Better World tote bag, a Better World water bottle (and I took one of those as well- its glass and mine has a pink cover, its adorable), a fan with some calligraphy/ink painting, handmade soap, a pencil case, and their NSLI-Y T-shirt (which I painstakingly sized- they didn't have t-shirt size on their application so I looked at their height and weight, converted that into kg and cm for the benefit of the rest of the people I work with, looked at the chest and length cm measurements of the Korean t-shirt company we were ordering from, and estimated from there). We tied all of their nametags onto the bag and then put them on each of their beds in the hostel so they were waiting for them when they arrived!
Tuesday I had my placement test at Yonsei and I made the mistake of taking the subway instead of the bus- I ended up walking like two miles and it was super hot and I got super sweaty and gross when I arrived. During the speaking portion of the placement test I asked my interviewer if I could be in the third level and she laughed at me and was like "I love you Tatum, You're so funny" so needless to say I placed into level two. After the placement test I went to the supporter orientation that was being held for the supporters volunteering for the NSLI-Y students. After the orientation I went out to dinner with them and they were super nice and adorable and the NSLI-Y students are going to absolutely love them. They were also horrified when I told them that I spoke mostly in English with my supporter but I'm sure they'll do just fine.
On Wednesday I went to my first day of class (Yay!) and it went pretty well- the grammar we are learning is a mix of stuff I already know and semi-new material so the class itself isn't two hard. The second level is probably the best for me right now since I'm so busy and probably wouldn't be able to handle any more work than I already have. After class I bought my textbooks and then went to work, where I finished stuffing the goodie bags for the NSLI-Y kids and put the inserts of all of the contact information of their fellow NSLI-Y participants in the YES book that they receive upon arrival. I am also listed as an emergency contact so I feel so official. After class I went to Myeongdong to go to a tourist information booth and inquire about some English subway maps for the students to use during the scavenger hunt they do during the orientation to help them learn the subway system. I ended up going to two different information booths and scored 20 subway maps in total so not bad. Myeongdong is super touristy and therefore unbelievably crowded, but it is also famous for it's street food so I got some yakisoba while I was there.

There is also a soft serve ice cream stand that sells foot high ice cream but when I walked by it like three workers started harassing me to buy some so i just walked away and bought a milkshake at a coffee shop instead.
On Thursday I went to class and then got extremely, horribly lost on my way to the youth hostel in Namsan. First, I got off at the wrong station so I ended up walking past three more (closer) stations on my way up the mountain (Unfortunately, Namsan, in the middle of Seoul, is an ACTUAL MOUNTAIN). I ended up walking for like an hour in the humidity and then when I finally sucked it up and got a cab the driver made a U-turn and was like "it's right here...." The hostel entrance is on top of a big hill so I just asked him to drop me off at the top and honestly that $2.50 cab ride was so worth it because I don't know if I would have been able to make it up anyways. Then while my manager and I were putting the goodie bags on the beds of all of the participants my phone completely died so it was a really great day. But actually it was because once the NSLI-Y kids got here they were super nice and excited to meet everyone and practice their Korean. Plus the cafeteria dinner at the hostel was so much better than the year I was there.
On Friday I went to class for two hours and then left early to go back to the hostel for the full day orientation with the NSLI-Y kids. I got off at the right subway station (holla) and then grabbed a sandwich before heading to the hostel. I ended up making it just in time for lunch so I got to eat twice. After lunch the Survival Korea session began, where some alumni and supporters each led a group of five students on a "mission" somewhere in Seoul so the students would learn how to use the subway and reload their subway cards. My group coincidentally got Hongdae so I knew exactly where we were going. Unfortunately, it was raining so hard that we couldn't really look around so I took them to eat patbingsu at Sul bing and we hid in there for about an hour. We took a short walk afterwards because the rain had calmed down and then we just went back to the hostel. I feel bad because it wasn't super fun or interesting due to the weather, but hopefully they thought it was helpful. After Survival Korea we ate dinner at the hostel and then started the Survival Korean session, which I made. Other alums and myself taught them basic Korean phrases and then I sorted each group into a topic and gave them flashcards with which they had to make a skit. I thought they wouldn't be very cooperative since they were all exhausted, but they actually made some super cute, funny skits and I thought it was brave of them to speak Korean in front of a big group like that. After the Survival Korean session we had an Alumni Q&A that I also organized, and then afterwards pizza and chicken was ordered for everyone. All of the staffs and volunteers retreated into the staff room in the hostel and we talked a lot, it was super fun. It was raining but the intern from two years ago and I wanted to go out a little bit so we went to a Korean style bar, but they put us in a booth in a super dark quiet corner so while it was nice to talk, it wasn't super exciting. Afterwards we went to another bar and then I came home and went straight to sleep.