last two weeks

So, obviously I have been a little lazy writing here, which was most likely due to the unexpected high workload at the Korean course which makes me study in the library quite long every day...

20071013_WarMemorial

The weekend after the Korean writing contest, first I spent an amazing evening in Shillim in the good old Dick Tracy bar, just like in old days. On Saturday, I went to the Korean War Memorial. Unfortunately, we went a little late and realized just two hours certainly wouldn't be enough for a complex of that size. On Sunday I think I just tried to study but like always rather watched movies and played some games until the evening.

Last weekend, I met with Gaeul, a German literature student to practice my Korean and her German. We first went to a cafe and indeed spoke a lot of these two languages, but when we went to a supposedly German-style "Bräuhaus" for some beer (it was indeed not bad, however quite expensive) and to another bar later on, we somehow switched to English for the harder topics.

20071020_Namsan_Tower

On Saturday, I went up Namsan Tower with Martin and Sebastian from my University. So there's more pictures of Seoul from a high perspective now. Later, we met Urte, another German student, for going shopping in Myeongdong. Like always, not too much time, and so we left again after maybe two hours. I met up with my former buddy KD and his friend Seonu for talking and drinking some beer. Later on, I took one of the last subways to Hongdae to meet the other SNU exchange students..
Sunday I wanted to pay my rent. So I wrote a text message to my landlady, and she called me back... Unfortunately I was not able to understand a word, so I called Joseph for help. I was able to pay meeting the landlady by chance on my way out, but still later on met with Joseph to say thanks and to eat some Galbi. Later on, Gaeul joined us and we had some beer in a bar... once we found it, cause the first place we went to required us to order Sidedishes as well. That's actually not really what you need if you just ate a lot, so we left that one again in search for a better place :)


Well well... and then today I felt like taking some pictures on my way to school, so here they are:

20071023_waytoschool

And I'll be back to studying now

Korean Writing Contest

20071008_Korean-writing-day

Yesterday there was a contest at Yonsei University for Foreigners to write an essay or some poetry in Korean. The first prize was a certificate, a medal and about 700$ and there were more than 1000 participants from a lot of universities in Seoul.
The contest took place on Yonsei Campus, in the amphitheater. Even though a little cold, the weather was quite nice, I even got a little sunburned in my face. I had picked to write an essay when applying, which turned out to be the worse choice, as the essay topic was "travel" and I really didn't know anything interesting to write about - whereas the poetry topic was "star", which I came up with some nice ideas. However, my Korean skills wouldn't have been sufficient for winning anyway, so after all it didn't matter. We were given two hours for writing (from 10 to 12am), then everyone could get some milk and some muffins as a lunch snack. While the teachers were reading the texts, there were shows of traditional Korean music and a quiz so a lot of students could win a little something. Then, winners were announced.

After the contest, I went to the main library for studying. Compared to the small libraries in Kaiserslautern, it was quite a change! First, you can only enter with your student ID card which has a bar code on the backside. Then, there's computer terminals where you have to reserve a seat in the study rooms, using your ID again. The ticket you get is valid for four hours and has to be renewed afterwards. If you leave earlier, you are to log out again so the seat will be shown vacant again. That's a nicely organized way for sure. I should shoot some pics of the study room and everything next time I go there, I guess :-)

Sightseeing activities

20071003_German_Connection

So, finally some time to comment on the photos I already uploaded before.
On Wednesday, there was a national holiday, so I had some time to recover from the first two days of the course and meet some friends from old days again. Some pictures - especially of Seoul by night that were shot before the meeting - can be found here.

20071007_Gwanak-Hiking

Today I went hiking in the Gwanak Mountains with Sebastian and Urte, two German exchange students to Seoul National University. We met in Shillim-9-Dong, and had lunch in the place I've always been to after language class two years ago. Then we started walking to the mountains. Actually we didn't really find the one we were looking for and therefore only climbed an intermediate one... which turned out to be completely right later on (just when we were back in Shillim, it started raining). Going all the way up was actually quite exhausting, and I realized I should definitely have been working out more back in Germany. On the way up, we always passed (while going) and were passed by (while resting) a Korean family with two like 13year old girls (forgive me if I'm wrong, I can never guess ages). After walking and actually sometimes also climbing more and more up, we met them again while having a rest at a place with a very nice scenery and a bit of a view over Seoul. They were so nice to offer us some drinks, and so we gave some of our cookies in return, and finally took some pictures together :-)
Then we kept on going up and rested again at another place to drink a bottle of Soju together. Actually I had hope to figure out how to drink in public already but of course we were doing wrong again. We had brought a bottle of Soju and some "glasses" so we could just sit down somewhere to have a drink on the rocks (haha!)... so we thought and did. We also offered some of the Soju to the Koreans sitting next to us and that way we learnt that it's not good to drink only Soju. You should obviously also have some food to accompagny the meal (this is a habit I will never adopt to, I guess: in a lot of bars it's actually mandatory to offer addional food called "anju" when you just wanna drink some beer, as Koreans use to like snacks while drinking - I personally think it's pretty stupid to eat snack with a lot of fat or oil while drinking, but luckily usually there's fruits as well). So we were offered some anju, which we gladly accepted.. or rather me, the other two didn't like the squid parts too much. However, we had some Soju on a mountain, and even together with one of the Koreans :D And we learnt that for the next time we should buy some dried squid or some other Korean style Anju. Not to actually eat it, but to take it out while drinking Soju as some kind of alibi maybe :)
Pictures of our trip can be found here.

Language course

So, there's gonna be two new posts today, at least I hope I'll finish the second one, too. The language course is kinda tough, actually much harder than I had expected. The first lesson was hell, I didn't even understand the text we were reading. So I actually started looking up all the vocabulary which took me about 4 hours (due to crappy internet connection). So next day I could at least understand what we were talking about. Later, it got better however, I could understand the next two texts, the third one even without having prepared.
Some general info about the course: it's divided into four lessons of each 50 minutes. For the first two of them, the break is at the end and then in the beginning, resulting in a 20 minute break in the middle. The first two lessons are with a male teacher, working with the textbook (or, more accurate: with a copy of it as the current version for lvl 2 is not finished yet). Then there's two different female teachers, and I could't really figure out who's turn it is when cause it was different every day until now. What we are supposed to learn with them is reading and speaking/ listening. Actually reading is very good (there's a whole book just with texts to read) and necessary (my reading skills are so terrible!). Listening is sometimes quite bad cause there's still so many words that I can't understand but actually it's getting better and better every day :-)

20071001_Yonsei_University

Ah, and then there's just some pictures of Yonsei Campus to be found here.