와플 파이*

* = waffle pie.  Not a song, but all I can think about right now.  See below.

In lieu of going out to get the cream-filled toasted waffle drizzled with caramel syrup (all for less than $1!) that I would do terrible things to have right now, a blog post.  Less delicious, more nutritious.  Sigh.

So Level 5 progresses, and its honestly not the Amityville-esque horror that I was anticipating.  Really, success in the level comes down to one thing and one thing only, and that is how much you put into it.  If you diligently put at least 2 hours a day towards previewing the next lesson and reviewing today's, class will be so much easier and your teacher won't eat you.  Not that she would anyway, but I'm still kind of terrified of Park Jin Hee Sunsaengnim.  I cannot in any way gauge what she thinks about me or anyone in our class.  She might very well hate all of us, but that's probably not true because she puts "good job" panda bear stamps on our homework, and a truly cold-hearted person probably wouldn't even own a stamp like that anyway.  I have heard that although she's brutal at the onset, she's one of the best teachers at Sogang, which is probably why she's teaching the most difficult level.  I am actually genuinely looking forward to seeing how things unfold here.

In other news, I came across a rather startling realization, or rather, have gradually realized something to be true in the past couple of days.  It's a hard truth to swallow, so I'll just come out and say it: I'm actually getting somewhat competent in Korean.

This is not in any way, shape, or form bragging.  Actually, it's kind of a scary thing to think of, because (and I don't know if this is true for other Fellows/people who have come to live in Korea) I got very used to the "oh, no, there's no way I can do that" attitude, and because I have so many beautifully kind Korean friends, it was only too easy to get them to generously help or outright do things for me.  In other words, my usual reaction if something comes up that I have to deal with is..."JUNG MIN UNNI.  HELP."

I think that that's slowly changing as I watch my friends carry out the interactions that I was too afraid to do and realize that I very well could have done that myself.  Or, in the absence of friends to help (damnit America, stole all my peeps), having to do things myself that originally caused me a serious amount of stress but turned out to be completely no big deal in the end.  Examples include, but are not limited to: (1) ordering takeout from my favorite 죽 restaurant, (2) calling my landlady to fix my cracked shower head (which not only resulted in me getting a new shower head installed for free, but also a plate of watermelon and a bag of chips from my landlady for no apparent reason - I mean, I was the one who accidentally cracked the shower head in the first place, so...yeah, that was surprising), (3) returning defective purchases to stores.  To elaborate on the last one, I purchased a fabulous navy blue fall jacket at my favorite store near Ewha (I've become a regular - seriously, I'm all buddy-buddy with the two girls that work there, who have honestly got their hustle down so well that I can't help but buy something every time I walk in) and didn't notice until I got home and tried it on again that one of the pockets was sewn in backwards.  I couldn't even make this stuff up, could I?  Anyway, since I am a person who pretty much perpetually has her hands stuffed into jacket pockets, but also a person who rarely complains or returns things even in America, this presented a conundrum.  Eventually, I decided that I should go to the store and ask for an exchange (given my relationship with the store, I figured this would be no problem), but my Korean abilities of course stopped me.  I tried to figure out some way around this, and of course my first order of business was to send a ridiculous text message to Unni's internet phone that read, "How do you say, 'the pocket is sewn in backwards' in Korean?"  But by this point, it was already almost 2am in America, Unni was surely asleep, and I feared that if I waited too long to make the exchange, they wouldn't have any other jackets left (it's quite a tiny store).  So I did the only thing I could do: I went myself and bumbled through an explanation of what was wrong with the coat and it was fine.  Of course it was fine.  Granted, my explanation was probably not the most eloquent, but I was understood just fine and one of the workers gladly gave me a new jacket after personally checking to make sure that the pockets on this one weren't defective.  I walked out of the store smiling wider than I probably have all week, and it was only partially due to how much I love this jacket.

I suppose this means an end to all or most of my pathetic insistence of incompetence here.  Probably not totally; I mean, I am in no way claiming that I can do whatever I want with my oh-so-fly Korean skillz, because like it or not, I'm still only "intermediate" by Sogang standards.  But I think I'm okay doing the daily life thing, which at this point, is good enough for me.

Other developments of late:
1) Due to the aforementioned workload, I've been spending ungodly amounts of time in coffee shops, but I've recently discovered that my body is highly, highly sensitive to caffeine.  It took me a while to realize this because I'm not a coffee drinker and spent the better part of the summer drinking smoothies or frapaccino-esque beverages that contain more flavored syrup than anything else, but with the cooler evenings, I've started to drink lattes and espresso.  Consequently, I have become something of an insomniac.  If I have a cup of coffee, even a latte or something that hasn't got more than a shot of the stuff in it, I can't fall asleep until 4-5am at the earliest.  Seriously, one night this week I was up til 6am totally wide-eyed.  It was a disaster.  So now I've got to figure out a way to reconcile the fact that I find it really difficult to concentrate on work in my tiny apartment and can no longer drink caffeinated beverages after 3pm, unless I decide to party all night long.  Looks like a lot of hot cocoa is in my future?
2) Not included in my Light Fellowship budget is money to indulge my intense desire for gym membership, which is actually ridiculously expensive here (~$50 a month is considered cheap. WTF).  While I haven't completely ruled out purchasing a membership, I decided that I should try my hand at exercising the free way, which would be...running.  If you know me well, you'll know that I abhor running above all other forms of exercise, but I am cheap and running is free, so...there you go.  The only price I pay here is a hefty amount of personal strain and embarrassment: the strain from being so inept at running that I'm huffing and puffing after a 12-minute mile, the embarrassment from the fact that NOBODY EXERCISES OUTDOORS in this country.  Originally, I planned to go out to the Han River to run, but since this involves a subway ride longer than 15 minutes, I ditched it in favor of the running tracks available at both Yonsei and Ewha Universities, both within walking distance of my apartment.  The tracks are fine except that both have their...problems, for lack of a better word.  The track at Yonsei, for example, is a legit quarter mile track, but I have yet to see a single female exercising on or near it.  The only people who are even around there are dudes playing on the soccer field the track encircles.  As an American, I obvs draw attention to myself for sticking out, but I stick out doubly as an American female in shorts, a tshirt, and track sneakers.  Now, this could be resolved nicely at Ewha, since it's a woman's university, but the track is pathetically small and unkept because women in Korea don't work out, they just don't eat.  I can never be sure how far I've run because it is definitely not a quarter mile, and my only companions on this track are (no joke) grandma-aged woman who come to exercise there and gossip.  Clearly, it's a huge dilemma, almost as big as the fact that I mother effing hate running to begin with.  The things I'll do to not be a fatass...

Anyway, I realized that I've taken like, a pathetic number of pictures in this country, so I'll make an effort to upload more.  Perhaps I'll start tomorrow; I've been given a complimentary ticket to tomorrow night's Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra concert in Seocho-gu (thank you Jungran Unni ^__^), so if I can smuggle in my camera, maybe I'll be able to post some shots of my beautiful orchestra unnies in action.

Out.