a bunch of us in the dorms decided to take it easy last night, our last night of vacation, and rent a movie. we ended up renting this korean psychological thriller, 'old boy.' it was such a f-ed up movie. completely disturbing. basically, the premise of 'old boy' is a man getting kidnapped and locked up in a room for 15 years. then, he's suddenly released and spends the rest of the movie searching for why he was locked up in the first place and seeking vengeance on the people who had him prisoner. i think everyone's general reaction was, "OH MY GOD! EWWWW!" good stuff.

we also watched this japanese horror flick, 'ju-on.' very possibly one of the lamest horror films i've seen in a while. i mean, i freaked out a little while watching it, but i had no idea what was going on until it ended and we had all discussed it for about 30 minutes... and we still don't understand the time sequencing. and now i hear there's also a ju-on 2 and a ju-on 3, which i'm going to have to watch... you know, just to see what else happens...

it's so good to be back in seoul. i think i'm really beginning to think of it as my home away from home. i spent monday and tuesday in jeonju with my uncles, aunts, cousins, and their children and i already began to miss the crowds and the sounds of traffic.

i was so grateful to spend cheosuk with my family though. we woke up reeeally early on tuesday morning and drove to gongju, where the majority of my dad's ancestors are buried. each burial site we visited was located on a different mountain, so that led to a lot of hiking up steep slopes with food and gardening tools and a whole lot of bowing (we're talking on hands and knees here). i think, all in all, we visited my great grandfathers site, his brothers, his cousins, my grandfathers and grandmothers burial sites. each time, we would lay out an offering in front of the burial mound, say a few words, and bow twice. then, we'd do some light gardening around each area, which wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been about 85 degrees out and humid.

in the afternoon, we drove around and my uncle showed me the house where my dad grew up in and where he went to primary school and highschool. his house was so tiny and cute. it was an old school traditionally built korean house on little stilts, and it only had 3 rooms. it was in pretty bad shape, but i'm sure it was adorable back in the day.

we spent the rest of monday and tuesday hanging out at my uncles apartment. all of my relatives love to do this thing where they corner me and badger me about why i don't have a boyfriend. every single time they see me, it becomes the hot conversational topic. i really don't know why they always act surprised when i tell them i'm single, especially since we go through the same thing a couple of times every week. then, they all start listing off all the single boys they know who they shuold set me up with, and anytime i try to tell them not to worry about, they get angry. i guess they assume that if i'm not dating anyone at this point in my life, i'll never get married. they always get this really relieved look on their faces when they ask about jason, and i tell them that he's already taken. if he was single, all their focus would have been shifted onto him and they most likely would call him up and attempt to set him up with people they knowin america.

but other than that, i had a great cheosuk. i ate more food than i normally do in a week and got to spend some quality time with my cousin's babies. now, i just have to set my mind into getting some homework done before classes begin again tomorrow. which, again, wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't an oven in my room right now.

bc of cheosuk, the thanksgiving/harvest holiday, yesterday marked the beginning of the mass exodus out of seoul into other parts of south korea. i went to seoul station (the train station, kind of like penn) to get a train ticket from my cousins who were leaving for their parents home in gongju. the subway there was insanely crowded with people and their suitcases. it made me really happy that i wasn't going to be leaving until monday afternoon. i guess traffic on the roads is usually deadlocked for hours, and a 4 hour trip can easily become a 10 hour one. so, i was very lucky that my cousins happened to have an extra ticket they could spare me.

starting tomorrow though, seoul will bascially shut down. all the stores close, except for maybe the 7-ll and a few other places, so people who are staying in the dorms seem to be stocking up on food, cigarettes, and other essentials.

and now i have to go into sinchon and do some very last minute shopping for gifts for my uncles family. cheosuk gifts are usually things like fruit or honey and are ridiculously priced for the holidays. like, a box of asian pears might cost about $60US during this time. so now i'm not even sure what to buy. it has to be somethign that i'll be able to easily carry onto the subway and train. and even though i'd be more than willing to buy them a box of fruit, it would be such a huge pain in the ass to carry all that way. i really need to buy them something nice though since it was my uncle who bought me such a sweet cellphone... but seriously, who pays $60 for a few pears?!

i just had orientation this afternoon and it was the most pointless hour i've had since i've been in seoul. they basically stuck us in a stuffy, hot auditorium with over 100 other students (some of whom were NOT wearing any sort of deoderant).

i found out the results for my placement test. i placed into level 1, which is the beginning level, and section 4, which means i know a little more than the complete beginners.

classes begin tomorrow morning, but then starting on friday is choosuk, the korean thanksgiving. that means that there'll be no classes, and everything in the city will close down for 4 or 5 days. usually, you go to your families home and celebrate by eating some duk (korea rice cakes) and then going to the gravesites of your relatives and paying them homage by offering up foods and bowing before their grave.

most of the korean american students here have family in korea and will be leaving for those days to go spend time with them. my uncle wants me to come to his home, which is great, but he lives pretty far away and i would have to take a train. and i heard that it's a little late for me to buy a train ticket at this point, seeing that people plan for this weeks in advance. taking a bus is out of the question since the traffic on the roads will be ridiculous. so, at this point, i don't even know what i'll be doing. there'll defiantely still be people here in the dorms, but what the hell? there won't be places for us to eat or go to for the entire holiday. i'm suddenly feeling the need to stock up on some ramen, just in case i end up staying in the dorms.

yesterday it rained cold cold rain all day long. in the morning, all of the korean language institute (kli) kids went to take the placement exam. so far, in the dorms, i've only met 2 other people who are in the program... everyone else has already been here for over a month taking normal classes through the university.

anyway, we all got to the auditorium where the test was supposed to take place, and it was packed with people. where the hell did they all come from? they can't be living in the dorms, as the dorms are pretty small and everyone pretty much knows everyone else, at least by appearance. there were at least 100 people there waiting to take the test... koreans, chinese, japanese and a few europeans.

i was pretty much ready to kill on the test, thinking that they would be testing us on some vocabulary terms, months, days of the week, how to tell time, etc. the actual test turned out to be six pages long and completely on grammer. a handful of people just signed their names on the top and turned the tests in without even trying. i at least read through the questions and attempted to answer some of the questions (ex: fill in the missing particle in all the sentences... i don't know what a particle is in english, let alone in korean).

in the end, i ended up filling in some of the first two pages and then left the rest of it blank. i felt like an idiot, but they told us not to guess if we didn't know the answer, so i didn't.

then we had to go through an oral test, which was really just an interview with one of the professors. my interviewer thought it was pretty odd that i could understand her questions, but only answer them in english. she laughed a lot. is that a bad sign?

all in all, the whole thing only took about 1.5 hours and then we had the rest of the day to do nothing. so, we decided walk around sinchon in the pouring rain, which turned out to be no fun.

it's really difficult to spend any amount of time in the dorms, even when it's monsooning outside. all of the dorms in korea have these incredibly archaic rules where the boys aren't alllowed in the girl's wing and girls aren't allowed in the boys wing (if anyone is found in the opposite sexes wing, it will lead to immediate expulsion). plus, we're not allowed to have visitors spend the night. they have to leave before midnight. and we always have to sign out if we'll be spending the night somewhere else... as in writing down where we're going, who we'll be with, when and what time we'll be back. the only place people can hang out together is in the lounge, which gets really crowded, or outside, underneath a little tent that's usually filled with smokers... which is where i've been spending a lot of my time.

at the rate i'm going, i'm going to have lung cancer by the time i return to the states.

this weekend was the big yon-ko festival in seoul. it's an old tradition that dates back to when my dad was a kid here in korea. it's actually just a series of four sports events between yonsei university and korea university that take place in the olympic stadium. the rivalry between the two school is really old, but it seems to be really friendly.

basketball and baseball took place on friday and soccer and rugby were on saturday. no one goes to actually watch the games. they go to cheer.

the entire week before yon-ko, each of the universities holds cheering practice in their own little stadiums. in these practices, the majority of students go and learn each of the cheers. these aren't cheers like ones in the us. they're basically dance rountines that you learn, some of them being pretty elaborate. i didn't realize this and decided not to attend practice, thinking that i'd just catch on once i was at the festival.

at the olympic stadium, all the yonsei students were dressed in blue and all the korea uni kids were dressed in red (it kind of reminded me of a badger game, but not really). there were two huge stages erected on the track in front of the field where each school's cheerleaders danced around and directed the crowd. these were not normal cheerleaders. they were dressed in incredibly flamboyant satin outfits in bright colors like magenta and kelly green... if you've ever seen the tv show 'the iron chef,' think about the chairman and what he normally wears, only the cheerleaders had a lot more ruffles. so, the crowd danced and chanted along nonstop for the duration of the rugby and soccer matches that i attended, which was a good 5 or so hours. it was ridiculous. there were about 10 different cheers, and i think i finally caught on to about 3 of them by the time it was over.

by the time sunday rolled around, i was so tired i couldn't really feel the lower half of my body.

and, even though this is completely off topic, i finally got a cell phone, so hit me up with an email if you want the number and feel like spending a ton of money to call me.

seriously.

i still can't get ym internet to work, so i'm once again in the computer lab... only this time it's nice and quiet in here... today marked the beginning of the korea university vs. seoul university games. it's a huge event here and goes on throughout the weekend. everyone on campus (and i'm talking about 90% here) is wearing blue shirts to represent yonsei. and since asians "all look the same" anyway, it's extra difficult to tell us all apart.

we decided not to attend the games today and run around sinchon instead. it's a little wierd because the campus is so dead, but it's also kind of nice to be in such a calm atmosphere for once. tomorrow, we'll be going to the korea vs yonsei soccer game, so hopefully i'll be able to take some interesting pictures.

i met my roommate yesterday when i moved into the dorms. she's also 22, which is nice. from what i understand, she grew up in korea, and then went to college for a couple of years in florida, and now decided to come back for a semester to take some classes. i think i can safetly say that we're going to get along much better than my rooommate from freshman year at madison... she was kind of an odd duck.

everyone in the international dorms seems to be at least 22 or older... some of the residents look like they're close to hitting 30, but maybe i still have on the jet-lag goggles.

the other day my cousins took me down by the han river. i think the plan was to rent some bikes and take a little trip around some of the paths, but before we could even begin, it began to rain. i thought it was actually pretty pleasant, as it was only a light sprinkle, but my cousins had these horrified looks on their faces and scattered to take cover under a bridge tunnel. i didn't really understand what the big deal was until they started yelling, "ACID RAIN! ACID RAIN!" at me. that freaked me out. i don't know what the deal is with acid rain... is it really that bad for you? there were some old guys fishing down by the river and they didn't seem to care, but my cousins seemed genuinely concerned. plus, they told me that they won't be seen in public with me if i wear my rain slicker (!!!). i guess only wierdos wear rain coats in korea, which is a little disappointing since i love my little rain coat so much.

today i officially moved into the yonsei dorms... and i can't get my damn computer to work so i have to use one in the lab. wtf? this sucks.

nobody in korea smokes cigarettes. since i've arrived here, i've noticed maybe a handful of people smoking outside, and they're all businessmen, and i can see the shame burning in their eyes for indulging in such a dirty dirty habit. seroiusly. i've heard that smoking is very much frowned upon in korea (and every other country in the world), and that seoul is actually known in south korea for being chocked full of nicotine addicts. so, my question is, where are all these smokers? where are they?

and to be a female and a smoker is just unheard of. you are disgrace in the eyes of the elders, you become a social pariah, and your family is shamed into seclusion. so, when i bought my first pack of dunhill lights yesterday, the cigarette vendor gave me such a sad look... like i was committing social suicide... okay, he actually looked pretty damn happy that i was even purchasing something from his newstand.

i did feel like a circus freak when i smoked though due to all the very bad looks i recieved from anyone over the age of 40. so, from now on, i've promsied myself that i'll only smoke when i'm completely alone, which will probably be never, which means i'm once again "in the process of quitting."

it might not be so hard this time since dunhill lites taste like poo.

so this whole posting everyday thing is turning out to be really easy, seeing that no matter what i do, i always wake up at around this time (it's about 2am here) and have absoultely nothing to do. i'm really starting to wonder if i'll ever be able to get more than 3 hours of sleep a day here... and i'm wondering how wmany more days i can go on like this without completely crashing. this lack of sleep situtation is almost reminiscent of finals week, onyl without the all the stress of studying and the burning desire to throw myslef in front of a bus. i figure it'll take about a week or so for me to just pass out.

i finally saw yonsei univesity today. it was so much bigger than i had expected and there were thousands of students roaming all over campus. i'm used to there being a lull in students outside during class hours, but i guess classes begin and end at random times here, so the campus is a zoo all day and all night.

the campus itself is beautiful. there are lots of tree-lined streets and wooded areas. the older buildings are made of grey stones and i love how they're completely covered with that really leafy ivy. my cousin's son, young ju (all my counsin's children are in their early to late 20's, by the way), gave me a walking tour of the campus and the area of the city right outside of it (sinchon).

the amount of people wandedring around sinchon was crazy. the sidewalks were packed with people standing shoulder to shoulder and the cars and buses were insane. apparently, no one follows any traffic laws around here when it comes to driving. there are lines painted on the road indicating separate lanes, but i'm starting to wonder if i'm the only person who sees them. plus, there are virtually no stop signs anywhere in the city, including all over campus. you just kind of go at your own will, and if you happen to be walking, then you better hope to God that the drivers won't flatten you into roadkill.

anyway, right now i'm staying at young ju and his sister, ryung's, apartment near yonsei. i'll be allowed to move into the dorms on thursday and i start classes on sept. 23. i'm thrilled that i have the opportunity to just spend a few more days wandering around the city and learning the subway system. let's hope i don't' get completely lost tomorrow...

i made promises to my cousin and her husband all day long that i wouldn't take a nap during the day... and then i took a 4 hour 'power' nap in the late afternoon and completely screwed up any chance of adjusting to the time difference again. OH WELL.

it's close to 4am here and i'm wiiiide awake, so it's time for an update.

i spent most of yesterday wandering around seoul with haejung. her husband and two children (seeri, who's a judge and seewon, who's a 20 yr old college student {seeri's a girl, seewon's a boy... dont' act like you knew}) all left early in the morning and were gone all day, which was fine. i had felt a little overwhelmed the night before (it's possible that that was due to the self medication on the plane) when i arrived at the airport and about 8 cousins were there to greet me.

the main goal and highlight of the day was to buy me a cell phone. apparently, you're nobody in korea if you don't own a cell phone. men sleep with their cell phones clenched to their fists; babies are given cell phones as soon as they utter their first words; mothers would gladly give up their first born son before their cell phones. haejung told me that we'd be taking the subway to a store that was 'kind of like walmart.' and it was! if walmart was a sprawling 13 floor super mall, then this place was walmart to a T.

each level specialized in one item. one floor was dedicated to cameras, another to mp3 players, and so on. the cell phone floor was amazing. i had never in my life seen so many cell phones in one room. each company had a counter set up and each counter had about 50 or so phones. as you walked by each of the counters (and there were lots of them) the sales people would beg you to come over and buy something from them. it was kind of alarming. i wanted to go to the camera floor and maybe pick myself up a digital camera to post some pictures, but i decided that i can't until i learn enough korean to haggle the price down as far as possible.

anyway, i left 'walmart' phoneless bc of something to do with not having a bank account set up in korea. but i guess my uncle knows someone who knows someone and they're going to hook me up. sweet.

we made various other stops during the day at little shops on the street, which brought back memories of the tiny shop my aunt and uncle used to own in pusan, korea. the last time we were there was when i was very young. it was located under their apartment and i remember jason and i used to run downstairs and poke around because we knew, eventually, someone would give us candy.

tomorrow, i plan on dropping by yonsei university (where i'll eventually be settling) to check out the campus and the area around it. one of my cousin's children, younghee, gets done with classes early, so i'll have a personal tour guide, which is always nice.

i feel as though i should make an attempt to sleep for a few hours so i won't be comatose tomorrow afternoon.

(for whatever reason, i've decided to stop using my livejournal account and from now on, i'll just be posting on this site. this is mostly bc i've been having a bit of trouble loading my lj page and whatnot.)

i landed in seoul at around 4:35pm yesterday (sept 12) at incheon airport. my whole plan was to take a sleeping pill in the beginning of the trip in hopes that i would be out cold for the entire flight. i ended up sleeping maybe 40 minutes. so i watched some boring geoffry rush movie about swimming and spaced out for a majority of the time. with about 4 hours until we landed, i decided to try the whole sleeping pill thing again. it totally worked, i was basically dead to everything around me, and my lovely seatmate had to rouse me when we landed. i really don't remember a whole lot about wheat happened next. i assume i went through customs alright and found my baggage and i snapped out of it a little when i met up with my cousins outside.

i finalyl settled down in my counsin, hae-jung's, apartment in seoul and immediately fell asleep... for about 3 hours. i spent a lot of last night lying in bed, fully awake, reading a little, and trying to relearn a few korean phrases.

my apololgies if some of this isn't very coherent. i'm doing everything in my power not to fall asleep right now, seeing as it's about 4pm over here. i still have my watch set on wisco time and i can defiantely tell that i SHOULD be sleeping right now. i was planning on writing a little more, but i think i need a nap, so maybe later. jet lag's a bitch.