Stormy Day

It's Sunday, which is church day, but first.... you know what's coming. The breakfast picture! I think the food is starting to repeat, so I'll probably post less of the breakfast pictures unless it gets interesting again :p

So today I decided to go to the largest church in the world, Yoido Full Gospel Church in Yeoido. It's really only 15 minutes away by bus from our school, just right across the Han River. My classmate wanted to come with me today because she feels like it's a sightseeing opportunity, so we left around 10:15am to walk to the bus stop and got there around 10:45am. 

The church is really large.... like a musical theater, and it was really full.

The service was in Korean, but they are super structured that a foreigner usher came to welcome us and took us to the foreigner area where they give us earphones for listen to live translation of the entire service.

I was listening to the English translation at first, but decided to listen to the Chinese version next to see if there is any difference. I think it's just really hard to listen to a translated service, even though it's in real time... because the translator often doesn't have the same "passion" as the preacher, so too many things are lost in translation. Anyways.

Their service reminded me a bit of a mix between Catholic church and charismatic church. There is a lot of routine service things that they do.... like they sing a few worship songs in the beginning, which I tried to follow along as much as possible in Korean since it's basically like us singing arirang yesterday (haha). They sing a lot more hymns than contemporary songs. The worship songs were more in contemporary style where they used piano and drums, but they switched to full orchestra and choir afterwards.

After singing the worship songs, they go into a time of prayer where everyone prays out loud. Then they have a few scripture reading, declaration of Apostle's Creed, choir sings one song, presider leads another song, and then finally preaching. The sermon was really short.... I'd say maybe 30 minutes? Today was communion service so they had a lot of people passing out the bread and wine. And yes, they used wine. The bread was like a Korean tteok. I didn't take a picture because I felt weird to keep taking pictures during service with people looking at me like I'm too disrespectful :( But they eat the bread and wine right when you receive it..... The wine tasted like the one I had when I went to the Christmas Eve service in Westminster Abbey in London a few years ago. Just weak wine, but I was just surprised that it's actually alcohol.

After the communion, they collected offerings, we sang a few more songs, closed with Doxology, and we all exited the church. When we went down the stairs to exit the church, there are these women in hanbok all lined up and said something like "hallelujah, 안녕하세요!" while bowing. They did that for 5-7 minutes continuously. There were a few men who also lined up to say things to us. 

My thoughts? I don't know..... I don't like super mega churches that just run routines. Maybe I'm just not used to the Korean traditions, but I feel like some things are a bit cultish? It just seemed a bit weird to me to have people keep repeating the same thing over and over to me....... and all the men wearing the side banner seemed like they're running for office or something (you know how it looks like when they run for positions in Taiwan). I feel like they have more routine than actual in depth sermon.... the sermon seemed really peripheral, just of a general surrender to God because He loves you. The routine made the service REALLY long, which took about 80 minutes or so..... just seemed really long. 

I went to their bookstore afterwards, which was a bit more organized than the Sinchon Christian Store, but the prices are about the same, so I decided to just wait until I come back to Sinchon to buy stuff.

And then I realized that the church is right across from the National Assembly, which I'm guessing is their congress!

Alright, so after church, I decided to find the Talk to me in Korean book from Kyobo Bookstore in Hapjeong station to see if it's worth buying. The bookstore is REALLY nice, but I didn't feel that the book was gonna help me too much in progressing in Korean, so I decided not to buy it.

By this time, it was 2pm, and I was quite hungry...... so I got some spicy pork over rice at this place called Robot.

Pretty good food..... but let me tell you, everything in Korea is 2x spicier than things in U.S. I think U.S. really waters down the spiciness for the Americans that can't take the heat. I had to drink more water when I eat the kimchee and anything spicy here...... oiy. It was quite spicy.

Oh and just one thing that you'll notice in all Korean restaurants. They usually have a cabinet (if the restaurant isn't super fancy) that sterilizes cups, and you're supposed to get the cups yourself and pour water for yourself.

That's just how they do it here in more "do it yourself" restaurants.

During lunch, my classmates texted me to see where I was and if I wanted to study with them at Coex library in Gangnam. Since I have nothing to do anyways, I told them that we'd meet at Hapjeong station together and go over there. Dude, I didn't know Gangnam was SOOO far from Sinchon! It was 45 minutes by subway ride... which cost me 2,000 won -_-. My goodness.....

The Coex library is in SM Town, and I realized.... it's not really a library -_-. Yes, it's a library where you can sit down and read books, but it's more like a tourist location inside a mall..... and YOU CAN'T STUDY THERE. It's so loud. But very pretty.

Yeah, there is no way you can study there at all. People were just taking pictures everywhere.....

My Singaporean classmates said they wanted to visit this place because their teacher said that this is a really big library. But after they came, they were quite disappointed..... because Singapore's national library is 5 stories tall, and this is nothing compared to it. Hahaha. 

We looked for some children's books because you know, that's the only thing we can read. So we each picked a book and tried reading it. I was reading it on the children's books stack and realized that the kids around me would probably think I'm a crazy auntie who is reading SUPER SLOW, TO HERSELF, and pronouncing words incorrectly........ so I took the book really close to myself in order not to sound crazy.

Anyways, I successfully finished reading this book after 15 minutes! Woohoo! I think I understood the gist of the story, although I can probably only understand 70% of the words and grammar.

Nevertheless, I feel accomplished *strong beefy arm*

Anyways, we gave up trying to study in this library and just walked around the mall a bit. The mall is very American, with tons of americanized stores...... But there was a Kakao Friends store and they had this toiletry bag on sale (!) for 10,000 won, so I bought it!

I've been looking for this kind of toiletry bag in Korea for the last few weeks, but just couldn't find a decent one anywhere. This one is cute and on sale (original price was like 25,000 won), so yes, score!

Next up, SM Town. If you don't know what SM Town is, it is a place FULL OF SM Kpop singer "stuffs". I really don't know any SM artists, and even if I know the names of the Kpop groups, I don't know the members that well to really care for them. Like I know who Super Junior, EXO, Red Velvet, and Girls Generation are, but I don't know any of the members' names matched with faces to really care. BUT! There were tons of girls there who really really care.

They had this place with a few life size posters of artists. The only one that I knew and liked was Siwon, so I took a picture with him.

They had a ton of stuff with the Kpop groups' names on them. Seriously, there was like EXO chips, EXO popcorn, etc. Even perfumes that says "selected by Sehun (I think I just made up a name), in hopes that fans will buy it because their idol picked it. 

And they played Super Junior's "Sorry Sorry" while we were there. Very nostalgic. If you don't know what this song is, here's a video to familiarize yourself with it.

For a long time, I thought they were saying "soy soy soy soy"... like they were gonna say "soy sauce", until I realized the name of the song was "Sorry Sorry" -_-

Anyways. We went back to Sinchon and it was POURING. OMG. We had to take shelter in Coffee Beans and scratched the idea of eating dinner on street vendor shops. Bleh.

And we just studied Korean there for a while.... and we started our long trek back to the dorms. My goodness.... it was probably a good 20 minutes walk in pouring rain. It was really really bad. Storm Watch 2017! Thank God I had my unused poncho from yesterday and armed with my umbrella. I was pretty much indestructible, apart from my soaking slippers, which was already a lost cause.

Back at the entrance to the dorms, they have this bagging system for your wet umbrella which I thought was ingenious. You just put your wet umbrella into the bag, and pull out from the front, and you'll have a bagged umbrella.

Smart stuff. 

Some last thoughts for the day: I've already noticed this a while ago, which I may have already blogged (can't remember...), but that Koreans don't say "excuse me" at all if they need to get past you. I don't really know why they don't develop a phrase for it. I mean, there's a phrase in English, Japanese, and Chinese, but Koreans don't say anything. They just walk past you really quickly. I guess it's a bit strange to me that they would always walk really quickly past you, or they would seem to come towards for an impending head-on collision, only to swerve around last second. All the while saying nothing. I don't really know why they don't just create a phrase like "excuse me" to notify people that they're coming and need you to move out of the way. Everyone is ALWAYS in each other's way..... and I guess to me, it's hard to get used to.

I asked my Korean student what she'd say if she needs to get around, she said you don't say anything, you just go. She also said, if you really want to say something, sometimes she says "작아만요", which I guess in a way means, "a little bit". I try saying that and 죄송예요 when I accidentally bump into people.... sigh, I guess I just think it's more polite, even though most of them don't have any response when I do that.

One last thought. I am a bit self-conscious being in this program because I'm so much older than they are. I think I always try to act a bit younger, or try to avoid people asking me about my age, because I'm afraid they'd be super surprised at how old I am. I would say the average age in this program is about 23 years old. Most of them are still in college, although some of them are just older college students (like 25 years old), but there are also kids who JUST graduated from high school here. And although I try to mingle in, I think they kind of in a way look up to me because I'm so old and is already a high school math teacher. Bleh. I think I need to get over this stigma of this age issue in order to enjoy the rest of my time here.