School is winding down.....

Everyone is counting down the days until the school is over...... I think we all feel bittersweet about it. We're sad that it's ending so soon. We made a lot of good friends and as a class, we've become pretty close. But at the same time, we're getting tired of studying Korean so intensely..... and that kind of tiredness is showing in our lack of enthusiasm to study as hard as before :( I'm falling a bit behind in memorizing vocab and etc...... oiy.

So yeah, only 5 days left...... wow. It's hard to think that I was counting down the days until I could come to Korea, and now I'm counting down the days until I would leave Korea. I think I'll definitely be sad when I leave. I think from time to time, my classmates and I would talk about whether we would want to come back to this program again, or how soon we think we'd even come back to Korea. Just thinking about it..... so sad :( I really enjoyed this program, but I don't think I'll do it again, mostly because I've done it already and it's quite costly. A lot of people in the program saved a lot of money over a year just to come to this program (I mean, they're students after all). But yeah, wow..... when will I ever get a chance to go to a place to study for 5 weeks?! And live there and all that?! Then again, I don't think there is another place I would rather study and live for that long except Korea. I will definitely miss here :( And when will I come back again? I really don't know..... seeing how rare I come to Asia (the last time I was in Asia was 5 years ago...), I may not even be back for a long time.... sigh. I'm getting pretty sad now :(

Alright, quick recap of what happened today. Our teacher promised us that she'd bring a cake to celebrate the July birthdays (because it was her birthday too) and she did bring one today!

It was Jamie and her birthday that we're celebrating. Mmm.... cake.

She put three candles on the cake, and then she bent the candles so they'd fit. And we were all shocked and said..... "can you do that?!"

And then one student said, "this is Korea, even the candles are more advanced." Haha... and the teacher said we're stereotyping!

After our morning language class, we went to Seoul Ro for culture class. Seoul Ro is a new construction that just opened in April, where they built a large overpass over Seoul station and neighboring roads for pedestrians to walk on.

This is the old Seoul train station. Really nice looking right?

This is the look from Seoul Ro... it's really nice on top!

There are over 400 types of plants planted on top of Seoul Ro. It's quite nice just to stroll around on there.

And then we walked over to Namdaemun since it's just right next to it. So they have this map thing where if you collect the four stamps from each door (north, south, east, west), then you can trade it in for a gift at Dongdaemun.

I didn't even know this exists! I'm definitely gonna try to get it done before I leave!! This is a little mailbox containing the map and stamping mechanism.

Namdaemun from very far away because it's not open on Mondays.... :(

This is the Seoul Station that I've heard so much of from my online language class (they always want me to make sentence on how to get to Seoul Station and etc.... but I've never seen it until today!). It is a big hub for trains to airports and other major cities in South Korea. 

Last picture, dinner. Dinner was full of variety!

The next few days will be filled with lots of studying and buying more things before I leave. And don't forget... I still need to do some stuff I haven't done yet... like going to Noraebang and maybe Jinjabang (if I can fit that in). And shopping for a lot of clothes..... and bags. We got an oral final on Thursday (eek!) and presentation due Wednesday which I'm almost done. Eek....... got a lot more to do before the term is over! Then back to my reality in LA.....