Calligraphy Day

Breakfast has been awesome everyday. I LOVE the soup!! I look forward to it everyday, as long as it's not miso based.

Aw man, it's soooooo good! I really wanna tell the 이모 that it's so good..... but I'm afraid that they'd think I'm super weird. Anyways.

Today's quite a short day because there was rain in the forecast so I didn't really want to go anywhere after class in case I get caught in the rain like I did last night.

Today's language class was quite intense. The teacher passed back our quizzes and she was kind enough to give us partial credit on many things.... but she took points off for spelling. I'm horrible at spelling... mostly because I haven't practiced writing until this month. I can't quite sound out the word and spell it correctly..... AND! My particles are all over the place. It's really embarrassing. I think she was a bit frustrated and told us that we need to go home and review all that stuff and make sure we know it by the next quiz. Oh man.........

Oh yeah, there is something frustrates me a lot in class. There is this one student in class who moved up to our class because she really wants to be here, but I feel that her level is so much lower that she doesn't understand most of what the teachers are saying and she can't read most of the articles correctly. Basically, her level is not there. I'm ok with that if she wants to study. However, the teachers had already told us very strictly at the beginning of the program that you cannot be late to class, no cell phones in class, no eating or drinking, and you must review the night before class. She breaks all the rules. She is constantly on her phone in class even though no one else is doing it. She doesn't participate in the group unless the teacher is close by because she doesn't know how to read the sentences. She is always eating and drinking something in class. And she is often either late or absent. And sometimes she'd ask us what the teacher said or what the article is talking about.... and she'd continue to read the words or sentences wrong (or have very incorrect grammar).

I think the most frustrating thing is that the teachers don't say anything. I mean, she is blatantly just using her phone in class not for checking up words, but for chatting or reading something else. And she doesn't say the words correctly and all that. I don't know why the teachers don't do anything about it! It just gets on my nerves so much! It makes me feel like the rules mean nothing and that we're following rules, but those who break it don't get any consequences. Why make it so strict in the beginning of the program if you're not going to enforce it? I don't know.... I'm not going to overstep my boundary and tell the teacher what to do, but I hope I don't ever avoid confrontations like that when I teach my class because it's super frustrating for the good students who try to do everything that he/she is told. Urgh. Really gets on my nerves because she's often in my group and is just like dead weight, while my classmates and I spend hours looking ahead in the next chapter so we can be super prepared for the next day. I suppose it's just for my own good at the end of the day.... but it would be better if it were more fair. Darn the teachers who are afraid of open confrontation!

We went to this place for lunch, which was super cheap, and the food was on an acceptable level... but hey, it's cheap.

My classmate got 냉면 (cold noodles):

And then the other three of us shared 짬뽕, 짜장면, and 당수 meat (I really don't remember the word).

So the afternoon is a culture class where we learned calligraphy. Not exactly traditional calligraphy though. We all had to take calligraphy when we were in school in Taiwan, so I learned how to do it a long time ago.... but the teacher was going for a more "freestyle" calligraphy that is more modern. She's really really good!

Yes, she wrote that! That's her name!

She did a lot of calligraphy for brand names, soju brands, slogans, movie titles, etc. Basically her writing is so good that people ask her to write professionally. She is very much an artist.... she hopped out (literally) to introduce herself because she said that your personality will be shown in your writing, so your current mood makes a lot of difference. And yes, she did the ENTIRE thing in Korean.... it was quite intimidating to try to follow her instructions with 100% attention, while be super alert in answering her questions.

Anyways, she asked us to give us like 8 random words at the beginning and she wrote them on the canvas on the floor (yes, she is REALLY an artist. Very free-spirited).

I'm not even sure if you can figure out what she wrote.... there is like 사과 (apple), 아기 (child), 영화 (movie), 여행 (travel), 남자 (man),... yes, our Korean levels are quite low, so these are the only words we can think of -_-.

Then she let us practice writing with our brushes and ink. I haven't smelled ink for A LONG TIME. Ah, nostalgia.

We practice a lot of different strokes.... and she told us to write our names in Korean.

The final product is that she wants us to make a fan by pasting teared color paper on it and then writing a Korean phrase.

I'm not really creative..... so I just wrote the phrase that the teacher suggested. Haha. It means to be happy.

And then I took a picture with the teacher! She's super talented!

And she wrote my name on a card. Super freestyle, but so much style!

Whoa..... super professional! Just to show you one work she did (because I can't remember the other ones)... here is one!

Super talented. 

After class, my Singaporean classmate and I went to a nearby cafe and did our homework as well as studied for the next day. She had the idea of trying to speak Korean as much as we can to each other, so we did that starting yesterday. It helped a lot! I pick up words a lot more because of it and we created more sentences than we normally would on our own. I think it really helped boost my Korean confidence as well as improving on my communication skills (like being able to have faster reflexes). 좋아해요!

The cafe we stayed at was SUPER CHILL. It was quite small and there wasn't a lot of people in there.... it was also decorated simply, but tastefully. They played jazz songs by Acoustic Cafe and it was awesome!

Here is the song if you wanted to listen to it. So nice! The song I was listening to (Waltz for Debby) starts at 31:33.

The coffee wasn't cheap though. It was 5,500 won for a cup of latte. I probably need to stop going to cafe so often or else I might be broke much earlier than I anticipate.

Classmate got a piece of brownie. Not bad. They even heated it up a bit.

Nevertheless, the cafe was super super nice.

Last thought for the day: I can't spell Korean for the life of me! So the calligraphy teacher today wanted us to go around the room to say one thing we don't like. You know, it's quite hard to first think on the fly, then also know the Korean word for it. Seriously. All I can think of is "pickled radish" at that time, which I don't like eating because it's so sour and crunchy..... I like kimchee a lot more than it. The word is "ggakduki", and for the life of me, I can't spell it! So I ended up writing 까둒이or something like that, and she's like...... um.... I don't think it's right. And she's like.... eh..... I don't remember either! So we both tried searching on the internet -_-. It ended up being 깍두기. OIY!!

I had the conversation with my Singaporean friend and she says she has the same issue with words she doesn't know. The problem with Korean words is that there are a lot of "silent" characters inside the word sometimes, or sometimes it's connected to the next word, so if you don't really know how it's spelled, you really can spell it wrong.

For example, we were at taekwondo that other day and the teacher said to write "shifu" in Korean, which he said 사범님 (if you break up each word by itself, it's sa-beom-nim). Well, I heard "sa-bo-nim", so I was about to write that, then something behind me said "it's sa-bom-nim" (at least that's what I thought I heard), so I wrote that...... and it ends up being "eo" not "o". My Singaporean friend said she did the exact same thing.

It's like this other word....... "an-ne". Oh my goodness. So it could be 아내 (wife), 안에 (inside), or 안내(I haven't figured out what this means yet). They all sound the same if you say it quickly enough. So my friend and I said that we'll probably just have to write a daily journal entry in Korean each day to practice our grammar structure and spelling so we can get better at it. Alright, time to sleep!