McDonalds

"Kimche opseyo" means "no Kimchi" As I mentioned before, every korean meal comes with Kimchi. It is one of the staple foods here. Anyways.... when you have been in korea for a while and have eating nothing but korean food you really do feel a huge sense of happiness when you come across a McDonalds or Burger King or any other western restaurant

Lost in Translation

"Annyeong Haseo" means Hello. This happens to me all the time! Hahahah... so funny. SO many times people start talking to me in korean like I undestand everything and so I just say "nay nay " meaning "yes, yes" and hope that they are not asking something to which the answer is not "yes". Somtimes i can grasp part of the meaning of what they are saying but there are SO many times when I have not the slightest idea of what they are saying and so I just keep saying yes.

Kinda when we moved to the US and I did not understand kids at school. I mean... i these american kids speaking to me in english super quickly and I did not understand what they were saying. Eventually, I felt really bad that every 2 second I had to say "what did you say? im sorry? can you repeat?" and so I opted for a much better option which was to use one of the following phrases when in doubt:
oh really?
aha.
no way?
yeah?
oh wow!
cool.
yup, these couple phrases helped me keep my sanity for at least the first couple months in the US. Then as time went by, little and little I started to pick up a bit more of what people were saying to me.

Laundry

Yes, in Korea there are no drying machines, so you gotta do it the old fashion way and hang up your clothes so they can dry. And if it is not warm outside, it sometimes takes 1-2-3 days for the clothes to dry (especially in winter). But now that the weather is a little bit warmer usually for me, it only takes one day for my clothes to completely dry. But then I gotta actually iron them. Back home, I could just take them out of the dryer while they were still nice and warm, shake them out and hang them, and so there was no need to iron. But here... cant do that.

Frustration

Just got finished with my first class of the day and so frustrated! it just frustrates me how immature korean girls and boys are.... mostly girls though. I mean... they are just so shy and have absolutely no personality. Like .. come on, i ask you a question and all you can do is keep your head down, shrug your shoulders and slightly laugh without looking at me???!?!??! are you kidding me??? like wtf! I mean, if you compare 13 year olds in the US and in korea, two totally different worlds. Yes, the kids in the US might not be as studious, might be a bit more disrespectuful and rebellious, but at least they have personality. Ahhhh!!! sometimes these kids just drive me crazy//. And whats worse... there is nothing i can do about it. I mean, they are shy and thats that. It's not like I can change them. Sorry, just needed to get my frustration out, so im doing it on my blog. hihihi.... already feel a bit better. This is why i am learning to love blogging, because I can just vent, talk, share my thoughts, etc etc etc....

well, my second class is about to start in like one minute so I have to go. But I will try to write some more later. I know I havent written in over a week and have just posted some comics. Promise I will write a bit more... its just, not really much interesting has been going on lately. Pretty much just school and lots of work.

bell just rang. BYE

The typical korean student

The typical korean student usually has all kinds of academies, extra classes, etc after school. Education is the priority number one here and parents make sure that their kids use every single second of the day to learn something and so of course they have no playtime. It is not uncommon for you to see a bus leaving 10 year old kids at their homes at like 11pm. Their idea is the more education, the more schoolings, the more homworks, the more studying the better. I think this is kinda sad because I feel that the kids here forget to be kids and just focus and stuyding the whole time and dont really have too much fun and see more school as a task than as an opportunity to willingly learn and expand their knowledge. Learning should be a pleasurable experience and not torture!

Iteawon

This is the foreigners district where all the foreigners go hang out and where you might be able to find things from back home that you usually cannot find in other parts of korea

Staring right at you

As a foreigner you experience this every day when walking around, when on the bus and subways, when going shopping etc. Yes, people stare and they know that you know that they are staring and they do not care. I dont think they think staring is rude. In the US, people would not stare or they would do it discretely, but here they dont even try to hide the fact that they are staring right at you. I must say, the first month or so it kinda bothered me, but then you get over it. And well, if you live somewhere like Seoul you get a lot less staring, as people are much more used to foreigners, but the smaller the city the more staring you get. Also, of course, you get lots of stares at bath houses as a foreigners body is different from the typical korean body. SO of course people are curious. For me.... it was really weird the first couple times i went to the pool at to the bathouses because I am a lot heavier than the typical korean woman by about 15 kilograms and have big boobs and a big butt. So people stared A LOT . But now i just ignore it and do my thing.