2011 Yonsei International Summer School (YISS)

Camera guy loved following me and my friends around so I see myself quite a lot in this video actually. LOL Lots of good memories <3

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This is exactly how ramen gets made at my host family’s house. Exact same stove, exact same pot. 

(Source: aegyobitch, via unicornofthesea)

View of Seoul from Namsan Tower (N Seoul Tower). Breathtaking isn’t it? I love this city so much. <3 

쌈지길 Ssamjigil is a small market in 인사동 Insadong known for having many cute shops and handmade crafts. It is also distinguished for being organized like a spiral, you have to walk around the first floor to get to the second and to the third and so on.  There is also a sticker picture store where you can take sticker pictures in traditional Korean clothing! I really think it is a must for a trip to Korea. :)

A street in Bukchon, a neighborhood of Hanok houses (traditional Korean houses) in Seoul which you can get to by subway on Line 3 at Anguk Station. 

Me in front of the part of Yonsei University that was used to film the Korean drama IRIS! 

So nothing much happened the last day except shopping. I went to Myeongdong twice to buy masks for my mom and then went to Edeh (I think this romanization looks so weird but I guess Idae looks even weirder) to shop around and bought a shirt and then went back to Myeongdong and got a purse for my mom. I was pretty tired by the time I got home so I made dinner and packed some more and just skyped my mom before I slept. 

Monday morning I got up and packed and skyped my parents again since my dad just got back from China. I went to Apgujeong to eat some Ox Tail Soup for my last meal in Korea and bought a card for my host family. I tried to leave earlier but it ended up not happening because… well, it’s me. But since I planned to leave earlier than I was suppose to, I wasn’t late at all. I had to walk to the bus stop with my luggage in the rain though, since I didn’t have any open hands to hold my umbrella with. Sat at the bus stop for a while and stood up every time I saw an airport bus (LOL I felt like an idiot but I was really nervous about missing the bus) until finally mine came. Loaded my luggage onto the bus and slept most of the way to the airport after the scenery got kind of bland. 

The plane ride was not that bad actually. I sat next to a senior from U of H who had been studying abroad in Beijing for the summer. He was pretty nice but I slept through most of the flight and only woke up for the meals and towards the end when it was like 1pm in LA so I decided I shouldn’t sleep anymore. 

Coming back to LA this time wasn’t as bad as last time. Last time was harder for certain reasons but also I think because it was right after senior year, I still wanted to spend more time abroad. But this time after a whole year away, I just really wanted to go home already. Sure, I’ll miss Korea and everything but I’m sure I’ll be back again in the next few years, even if it’s only for a week or two. 

So this concludes my experience abroad. Thank you to everyone who has followed me through my journey! I hope that my blog has perhaps motivated you to study abroad yourself. It truly is an extremely life changing and rewarding experience. I might continue to post some pictures if I want to share them, but this concludes most of what this blog was for. If you would like, you can follow me at my personal blog: abovethecloudss.

(Source: lovequotesrus)

So the last few days of the program. School ended on Thursday, we took our finals, and everyone began leaving. This is the part I hate, the goodbyes. I am too sentimental for this. My host family left today for Thailand, I’m not really sure what they are doing there because it doesn’t sound like simple vacation. Whatever, even though they are ditching me and making me go to the airport by myself and not really spending any time with me after all my studying is over, I still sort of teared up when they left. 

And today some of my friends left, in the next few hours more are leaving. I don’t feel super super close to anyone, not as close as I feel to people back home but I have made some really good friends here. Unlike my friends back home, I might not see some of these people ever again. Because we’re not so close as to go out of our way to see each other again. It’s these friendships that I find to be pitiful. If I lived on campus, perhaps I would have formed stronger bonds with some of these people but there are only one or two people that I really identify with.

Anyway, moving on from that mushy stuff. I am sleeping over tonight in my friend’s room as I did last night. Last night I had a farewell dinner with my CIEE group. I left earlier, right after dinner, so that I could come back and hang out with people that were leaving. We had bbq buffet and unlimited wine and beer. Apparently, Sean got really drunk at the dinner and was just once again, one hot mess. Not even a hot mess, just one huge mess. Somehow I feel embarrassed for him. He called me when I was out with my friends, claiming that he was bored and yelling at me for not hanging out with him as much as we had talked about. I couldn’t really tell he was drunk until I said that he should have called me first and that whenever I asked him to hangout he said that he had to study, this was when he started cussing and I immediately knew that he was drunk. This morning I had lunch with some of the CIEE kids but Sean was MIA so the other kids were telling me about how drunk Sean was (apparently when he called me, he wasn’t as drunk as he ended up being). He really wanted to go clubbing (and had told me that he was going with some “Rice friends”—which apparently is a group that I do not belong to— but David told me this morning that he ended up going by himself. -__- I just don’t know what to say about Sean anymore. We weren’t super close, I didn’t know that much about him outside of fellowship, but I think this summer has made us even more distant than before.

Whatever. Then I went home before my host family left for Thailand so I could say goodbye. After taking a shower and cooking dinner, I met up with my friends since more people were leaving tonight/tmr. We sent Anthony off at 4:46am and by then I could barely stay awake. It is now almost 7am and I am freezing, I think I am getting sick.

So day 44 was a while ago, Sunday to be exact, and also when I went to Inkigayo. Again. A very very important day. 

Basically, we got to the SBS station about 11am but we could only see a crap load of middle school girls lining the streets, which we later discovered were all Teen Top fan girls. I didn’t really think they were that popular but it was a humongous line of fangirls that stretched across the intersection. Anyway, plan was to queue with the T-ara fanclub since my friend Rita and Ali got in with them last week to Music Core. So we ran around for a while trying to find the fanclub and finally we find someone and ask and they tell us that T-ara isn’t prerecording so the fanclub will probably get there around 1. We get food because we are all starving and then Ali runs around with me in the rain trying to find a place to buy a T-ara album (you need one to get in with the fanclub) because I didn’t have one. That was unsuccessful but we ended up getting in anyway. There were 6 of us and the rest of them had CDs and because we were foreigners, they didn’t check up very carefully and made up 1st priority fans. :) 

So we got our tickets and basically saw EVERYONE. Remember how I said that when I went last week, Gikwang wasn’t there? But THIS WEEK HE WAS! I lost my voice from screaming at him but he waved at me so it was all very veryyy worth it. <3 

A lot of the groups that pre-recorded last week (and thus, we didn’t get to see) did live this week. So I got to see um… MBLAQ, 2NE1, miss A, T-ara (obviously), After School Red and Blue, Infinite, Boyfriend, Hyunah, Teen Top, and a bunch of other people that I can’t remember right now. We sat with the T-ara fanclub in our own area and because we were higher up, we could see behind the backdrops, so when the idols got off stage and walked to the backstage door (which was on our side), I’d wave to them and if they saw they would wave back! ^^ So much fun!! 

A very memorable day indeed. I love Korea so much~

It was a bad idea to leave one of them in the fridge. It’s not that I really care that they drank my coffee, it’s more that there is no other coffee in the house and I kind of need it to study efficiently… -sigh- Maybe I’ll just sleep earlier and wake up earlier and go out and get some coffee. Yes, that sounds like a good plan. 

Edit: Screw it. I can stay awake right? I’m like almost fricking nocturnal anyway.

I hate doing film notes. They are the worst things ever. I am falling asleep on this cafe’s couch right now. 

I had my listening and writing final for Korean today, and I’d kind of like to say that I beasted it. I didn’t really study that much since I was doing film notes last night. I only really copied down the grammar and tried to cram them into my head on the subway. Didn’t go over any vocab but somehow I made it through the test without being stumped on anything, not that that means I didn’t get anything wrong. But I don’t even want to think about it since we get our test results in two days anyway. 

I have reading and speaking tomorrow. Speaking is an interview and there is really no way to prepare for it. I’m not very good at speaking; when I get nervous, random grammar just comes out of my mouth and sometimes it doesn’t make any sense at all. So I am just going to bank on the fact that I ace my listening, writing, and reading and hopefully, overall it averages out to be an A. 

Cinema professor told us today that the test was going to be 50 MC questions. Doesn’t sound too hard, so I’ll just go over my readings and film notes after Korean final part 2 tomorrow. Hopefully, I can get an A in that class despite my horrible participation and my inactivity on our wiki. I don’t really think that many people have been posting on the wiki like she wanted so hopefully she doesn’t fail us all in that area. 

Because I like my new shirt and you can see part of my classroom. :) 

This summer has been a lot more work than I expected but I think it has been a very good and necessary experience. I think for once, I feel like a normal college student. Taking notes in class, going to lectures, doing my homework, studying with friends, hanging out on the weekends. There is no architecture or studio to worry about. Something I’m not going to experience again after this summer probably.