So, I'm sure you've been wondering and thinking to yourself "Sure, he's in Korea. But why? Is he just wandering the city and drinking and just going on fun field trips?" To which I would reply, "Not quite, but those are fun things as well."
Today was the first day of classes and I wasn't sure what exactly to expect. I have taken three years of college classes in the US, so I'm not exactly a stranger to the concept. What I didn't know was how class in Korea would be.
I'm currently taking two courses: Korean Culture and History and Korean Language. Both classes are on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday with History from 9 to 12 noon and the language from 1 to 4pm. This being said, it's going to be hard for me to talk to people from the US online as those time frames but hopefully I can catch you guys in my evening or something.
So, my day began at about 6 or so in the morning. I don't set an alarm- I'm woken up by the light from outside and good to go. I didn't sleep amazingly well, but I feel alright. I've become more accustomed to going without sleep as my "training" at US college has taught me. So, I ate a bit of breakfast with some people from my home college and took off to my first class: History.
The class room looked very similar to any US college lecture hall. Rows of desks that seat about 6 or so people. And in the class all of us white people sat in the front. Together.
The course itself will cover basically from ye olde Neolithic period (read: hunters and gatherers) to roughly present day Korea. The time of material is basically split with half of the time spent on ye olde Neolithic to Chosun dynasty (started around 1390 and lasted to 1890) and the other half on Chosun dynasty to present.
The teacher was a short Korean lady and seemed really nice and happy that there was such diversity in the class (yes, 5 token white kids out of a class of about 28, though to be fair a few people were from Japan and a one from Thailand). She spoke pretty darn good English and made the point that A) she expects everyone to participate and B) do so in English. She seemed to say that she didn't want anyone to be shy and hide in the rows of people.
The coolest part of that class is that 20% (yes, TWENTY) of our total grade is showing up to class and 15%(yes, FIFTEEN) is participating. So, I automatically have 35% in the class doing just what I normally would. When I read the sylabus and saw that, I felt like I had been wrapped in a warm snuggly blanket. Ah, the good old days...which is not to say that I'll be slacking off. No, not at all. Just...it's nice.
The impression that I got from the class is that any Korean person taking it seemed to be taking it for general education credit or something similar. The course seemed to be a prerequisite for studying abroad which they all seemed to be planning on doing (we all had to stand up and give a little spiel).
The strange thing was that on the class roster, only our first names were listed. This created some confusion with a few Korean Americans as they go by their American name rather than their Korean, even though on the roster they were listed by their Korean. For example, Bryan (mentioned earlier during the Korea Game night) has the Korean name Yong, but only has used it as a middle name. So, when the teacher was calling out for "Yong" he didn't think to say "Hey, that's me" until it hit him.
The one quirk about the History teacher I noticed was that she really has no tolerance for other people talking when she's talking. She flipped out on some Korean students for doing so whene another student was introducing himself. It was impressive on many accounts. I daresay the same mistake will not happen again. A few of the Korean American students basically chuckled about it afterwards and said the teacher reminded them of their mother in that short instance.
Now, for books...about that. Korean copyright law is rather...lax, for lack of a better term. Especially when it comes to textbooks. So, for the history class, instead of straight up buying the book, the teacher had us all walk to a copying center where we dropped off the textbook and could stop by a few hours later and purchase copied pages of the book for about W3,600 ($3.60). Now, anyone who has bought a college textbook in the US is probably foaming at the mouth reading this (and especially your humble narrator, who purchased *pages* not a book but *pages* of a zoology book that was only needed for one quarter class and couldn't be resold back to the bookstoree because it was only *pages* and cost roughly $120). I was awestruck. So cheap. So nice. I like.
So, after that a group of us headed to lunch: Miranda, Bryan, Jay(Korean American who can speak the language well), Jim and Campbell (another student from my college, an engineer). We decided on Popeye's Chicken. I've never had Popeye's chicken, have scarely seen restaurants but have seen commercials out the wazoo. So, I bought a chicken sandwitch, drink and biscuit combo for W3,900 ($3.90) and it satisified. Then, seeing as I was a bit lower on won than I thought necessary, I decided to find the bank to exchange the US that I brought over for Korean won. Bryan declared that he had nothing better to do so he followed me while Miranda, Jay, Jim and Campbell took off for other places.
Along the way, we noticed various things about the pedestrians which we had discussed before amongst ourselves. We noticed some interesting trends. First off, men and women both were normally dressed nice, usually for a date or better. Men usually wore collared shirts while women wear blouses or nice dresses. T-shirts? Not so much here. Also, men almost always wear long pants while women usually wear shorts or a skirt/dress or capris. The eyewear was interesting as well...seemed like both genders seemed to prefer European styles to US. Most everyone I've come across just on the street is dressed rather fashionable, whether in class, on the street or at E-Mart(let's compare this to the questionable characters that one could find at the local Wal-Mart, shall we?).
But at the bank, I noticed that it was very quiet and orderly. I was given a number (1030) upon entering and gestured to sit down at a given spot by the doorman- no words, just body language. When my number flashed on a monitor above a teller, I walked up.
It appears that money talks in all parts of the world. I showed her US dollars and she instantly understood my purpose there. The rate was pretty good (or so I was told by a few people not working in the bank): $100 US dollars for W118,588. Now the one thing I didn't know, but was sure glad my laziness suceeded was that I needed my passport for the transaction. I was carrying my backpack for classes and had the passport inside from after my voyage over. I conciously knew I was carrying it but didn't know it was needed for the transaction. Luckly, I had it so it was all good.
Korean Won in hand, Bryan and I headed over to our next class: Korean Language. Miranda also was in the class as was Phil and Benji, both of which are Korean Americans who go to Ithica University in New York and I had run into a few times over the last few days. Also in our class was Carolyn (remember her from World Cup night?) who I mentioned that I was glad that she looked better, to which she shook her head and said she wanted to forget that night happened.
So, first order of business in the class was the placement test. To which the response from us American born students was "Aha. Haha. Hah. Ha...wait, what?" There was a verbal component and a written component much to the dismay of most of the people in the class. See, unbenownst to our instructors, most of us did not speak Korean more than a few phrases. My extent includes being able to read most Korean and speak about 12 or so phrases. That's it. Benji and Bryan, being both Korean American, knew more phrases than me but hadn't seen the langauge in print very often. Others such as June (a guy) and Phil knew the language decently so they were not that concerned. So...yeah.
The teachers (one for the upper level and one for the lower) passed out the written part and then took two of us intimindated students out of the room for the verbal. I had to laugh- I was the first one to be called for the verbal. I was led out of the room and to the next class room over. The conversation went like this:
Instructor: Annyeong haseyo (don't know the spelling) (English: Hello)
Me: Annyeong haseyo (bows head)
Instructor: (starts speaking in Korean)
Me: Uh...I'm sorry.
Instructor: Eh?
Me: I kinda basically said most of what I know.
Instructor: Oh?
Me: Yeah, I know (I said the words here for:) Yes, No, thank you, I am an American, etc. But that's it.
Instructor: Oh...
So then she asked what I was looking for in the course. I said I wanted to learn Korean that was useful in everyday usage. She nodded and sent me back to the first room.
I sat down the the written test and laughed. I was totally screwed. I couldn't read anything. I could pronounce the words on the page but I couldn't interpret for anything. Thankfully I wasn't alone. Bryan and I were joking that we should answer the multiple choice segment randomly but decided against it as (if by some stroke of horrible luck) each answer was correct and we were bumped up to the intermediate section. So...my test remained blank save for my name. And it remained that way until I turned it in. Total ego crush. But I wasn't alone.
So, then the instructors split us up according to the verbal (seeing as most of the written tests were blank like mine) and the intermediate instructor took six people out, including Phil and June. This left Miranda, Carolyn, Bryan, Benji, myself and Nadia in the room.
Now, Nadia is from the Netherlands and prides herself on her ability to speak Korean. She took her being selected for the beginner class as affront, though the teacher tried to tell her she could be moved up in time. She(Nadia) seemed very full of herself and annoyed me as soon as she opened her mouth and whined that shee would've been better if she had known (we had a month's advance noticee) in advance about the test. I felt bad for our teacher. Some people can't take being put in their place...which was the case when we started going over vowels and after pronouncing 8 or so basic vowels as a class and later the individual rounds- Nadia was the only one who tripped up. Boy did she look silly.
No matter- I'll be doing plenty of tripping in that class, but man, my prework with the vowels before coming over to Korea really helped out. So, now I'm relaxing in my dorm, ready for the evening and waterpark visit tomorrow. Should be very interesting. Will write more later.
-Reven
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