still alive!

I had no internet for like two weeks.. actually I didn't have Internet for like 4-6 months, but until two weeks again I could just log into an unprotected WIFI so I didn't care..
Then the exam came so I didn't care and finally today I called my landlord and explained my problem. She sent a technician and it was fixed after two hours. Should've called her earlier but I was always afraid I wouldn't understand her answers.. Which in fact happened of course! But this time I was clever enough to talk most of the time and not let her talk too much, so it was much better!
The exam showed pretty much the same results, so I'll have BBB for speaking, speaking and reading and C for listening. That's really ok.
Today I went to a Jjimjilbang with my two Japanese classmates. It was such a good relaxation, I'm really happy. I'll miss them for sure, they'll both leave Korea even before me :(

20071208-TraditionalMusic

What else? I went to a traditional music concert on Saturday. When I told this to my language partner, she said "oh it's so boring"... When I told this to my teacher she said "oh, Korean people usually think it's boring".. So actually I'm a little bit like wondering if that's why they make foreign people watch it? Anyway, for most of the music they were right.. (which is due to my music taste however) but there's one Korean traditional music called Pansori, which I really really like. Praktically it's just a special way of singing (telling a story) accompagnied by a drum. Sound's boring but due to the special singing style it's pretty cool. Especially you're in the audience and are very close it's very nice.

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Ah.. and my friend Alex and his friend Sebi came to visit me for a weekend.. the first day we did the traditional sightseeing and the next day we went hiking and to the Jjimjimbang.. (obviously I like those placed just way to much).

Pictures

Exam preparation in the library and in the classroom (my classmates making themselves mad just before the roleplay exam! I thought it was a better idea to take pictures)

20071030_ExamPreparation

Sightseeing at Jongmyo Shrine and Changgyeong Palace.. the color of the trees is just amazing!

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On the way back we tried to take a bus (if you can take a bus in Seoul it pretty much means you're really getting accustomed to the life here, cause it's much more difficult than the subway) and just found a right one very quickly. Tried to ask the driver if he was going our direction which he was so we got in. But then he tried to ask us something else which we couldn't understand, so the whole bus was listening to his questions which we didn't understand. Somewhat embarrassing. Well.. the next busstop he threw everyone out cause there was a huge demonstration and he couldn't go his route. First we thought about taking a subway but then we decided to take a look at the demonstation where we shot some more pictures. There was a lot of well equipped riot police so I wanted to get away quite quickly (definitely don't wanna be in the middle of a fight if some stupid protesters start one) but Lera was just too curious and shot a lot of photos which the police didn't seem to like too much. Anyway, I HAD to take some, too. Besides gathering stones at various places, some protesters uttered their "love" for the police by trying to decorate the police bus by adding some Korean. However maybe they should have chosen some nicer words than those :D

20071111_Demonstration

Photos

Today I was at a K-League soccer match Seoul vs Busan with a lot of exchange students from Seoul National University. Seoul won 4:0 which was very nice. Think I never saw that many goals in a stadium before. And there was some fireworks right after every goal. I want that job! Watching soccer games, pressing a button on a goal and getting paid for it. Sounds nice :-) There's more pictures linked on the pic above.

And I also uploaded some pictures of my last sightseeing trip ...

Tomorrow my Korean class will start. Really wondering what it'll be like, hope I can fit in well :) Should go to bed now in order not to fall asleep in the classroom maybe :-)