Goodbye, level 2!

I can't believe it's been over a month since my last post. Oops. :) I've been pretty busy, I guess...


My one roommate's doodle of us ("Anne, Yoonji, Bre"), drawn during a late-night
convenience store noodle run, posted on the wall of said store.

My one roommate's birthday is only a few days before mine, so we had a joint party on April 27. We went to a nice Italian restaurant in Gangnam called Vapiano's. Then we went to a bowling alley. I don't actually know of many in the city, so I guess it makes sense it's a little expensive. It was only ~$5 per game to bowl, but you were required to order a drink, and the cheapest was $9, making it $14+ per person per game. Ouch. :( After that, we caught a taxi to Octagon, a popular Gangnam club. Up until this point, I'd only been to a few in Hongdae. Gangnam clubs are an entirely different beast, it seems. Hongdae clubs are filled with mainly college kids. The average age at the Gangnam club was at least 5 years older, possibly due to the more expensive cover. Before 11, it's only $10. 11pm-12am it's $20. After that, it's $30. And the cheapest drink is $10. So we got wristbands before 11, then went to a cheaper Japanese place down the road to drink, and came back and danced. Ah, to be a poor student again, ha. But really, it was more fun to sit around a table talking and sipping our sake than chugging an expensive watered-down drink near the bar (no drinks on the dance floor) and screaming or not talking at all. Anyway, Korean celebrities frequent most of the Gangnam clubs, and I actually saw a couple. Now I just have to go back with Hera, who can use her aegyo (hard to define, but basically, acting cute to get your way) to get us into the VIP section. :)


The Smashing Bowl lanes and a special event at Octagon.

In class, we had a small party with blueberry yogurt cake for myself and a classmate whose birthday is a few days after mine.


Eating cake with chopsticks... :)

I also went to a shabu-shabu restaurant with my roomies and another friend on my birthday. I loooove 고구마 ("go-gu-ma," sweet potatoes), so they bought me a sweet potato cake!


Shabu-shabu and birthday cake!

SNU apparently has a good performing arts program. The opera students give a free opera performance a few times a year. The spring semester's performance was Don Giovanni. The students sang in Italian, but they had Korean subtitles off to the side. Thankfully, reading is one of my better skills, and I knew the story, so I understood pretty well. Still, it was a little strange to hear a foreign language that wasn't Korean, heh.


Free Don Giovanni performance.

Our final exams were May 7 (Speaking) and 8 (Writing, Reading, Listening). After our final final, a few of us went to the Banpo Bridge light show. Unfortunately, different websites gave different times for the final weekday show, and we showed up at about 9:10pm, thinking there was one at 9:20. It turns out it (probably) started at 9, because it's supposed to last 15 minutes, and we only saw maybe 5 minutes. :( Still, it was very pretty. Though, it would've been a lot nicer if the lights hadn't been set to My Heart Will Go On.....^^




My camera's shaky, but you get the idea...

May 9 we had a class field trip to 청계천 ("Cheong-gye-cheon", Cheonggyecheon), a stream in Jongno, north of the river. We split off into groups of 3 and had to take pictures with various people (a woman wearing sunglasses, etc), and at various points along the stream. It was fun, but very tiring. It started raining just before we reached our destination (bridge #14 of 23), but at that point, the refreshing rain was more welcome than the heat, heh.



A waterfall at the start of the stream, me in front of some Chinese displays,
a picture of a poem I had to memorize back in the US. (I still remember it.)

We didn't receive our grades on a slip of paper this time, but they were posted online pretty quickly.



I earned the same three certificates as level 1.


Certificate of: completion, perfect attendance (100% attendance), excellence (>90% grade).

This semester, however, I earned another award as well.


Scholar(ship) certificate.

It says (roughly): The above person, while completing the Korean course, with a sincere/honest attitude and by earning an excellent grade, served as an example for others. Whereupon, this scholarship certificate (worth the sum of 300,000 won [~$270]) is presented.

Apparently, I got the highest grade in all of level 2 (maybe 70 students total?), but the program's website says you must also be recommended by your teachers. If so, that's a bigger achievement, I think. (Having someone recommend me, rather than just earning the highest grade.) Unfortunately, the scholarship is just a tuition voucher, and I didn't receive it until after I'd paid for levels 3 and 4, so I guess I'll be using it on level 5. :) (And, if you receive perfect attendance or honors certificates for the first 5 levels, supposedly the 6th level is free.)

School break is currently almost halfway over. Last week, I went to Tokyo with a college friend. Though I posted a few pictures to Facebook every day, I'll also be writing a blog post here shortly. :)