Someone Skips Leg Day...

Hello all! I am terrible at blogging. I did a lot of stuff this last week and am now settling in at my orientation, so I have a little time to recap.

First of all, toilets. I am still not used to the differences here. I'm positive that this is TMI, but it's actually a legitimate and huge part of my experience. I only had to use a squat toilet at Tina's school and have not encountered another one (thankfully) yet. I'm sure they're lurking though. Other than that, in most of the bathrooms here you throw the toilet paper into a bin next to the toilet instead of flushing it since Seoul's plumbing system is so old and can't handle the volume. You try using a bathroom differently after 20 years and see how much you adjust.

Anyway, since there were a lot of great things about this week, I'll list off some highs:

1. My Love from Another Star: Tina and I visited the set of an awesome and wildly popular Kdrama, "My Love from Another Star." It was so much fun! We got to go into the sets and take pictures and such. It was much smaller than I imagined, so I guess the actors are not as tall as I thought. It was great to see the set though. Some pics:

Me with my main man Do Min Joon, and Cheon Song Yi is also there...

An excellent drama about an alien who has been on earth for 400 years 

Can't go back to your planet if I've got you...

Do Min Joon's secret hidden library

Do Min Joon had South Pacific in his room!

We come in Peace

Tina with the stars

So that was really fun!

On Tuesday we went to see How to Train Your Dragon 2, which was also excellent! I also sat in on Tina's Korean class, which was helpful to see but not helpful since my Korean is still very basic and I didn't know what was going on. Mostly I just wrote out the alphabet a million times.

2. Cat Cafe. Following our endeavor to see CATS (which I have a strong desire to see again, as I always do when seeing musicals), we decided that a week away from real cats was too long. On Wednesday, I was reunited with feline friends. I miss my cats from home, but damn these cats were a good substitute. We stayed for like 2 hours just chillin with the cats. Most Koreans can't have cats in their apartments so they come to places like this (there are dog cafes too), but they are also much more timid around animals than Americans are (which might explain why I was the only one actively chasing cats for attention). Anywho, here are some awesome animals:

Squishy

Sir Derpyface in all his glory

KITTEN

Kitten hogged treats

CATS CATS CATS

I've waited my entire life for this moment

Kitten loved Sarah's skirt

After Cat Cafe we went to the other Korean language exchange thingy that Tina goes to, which was also fun!

3. Food. Now that I can functionally use chopsticks (kinda sorta), I like eating again! I tried some new stuff:

My first street food experience!

 To be honest, the rice cakes in spicy red sauce (pictured above) were not my favorite. It was the first thing I had eaten that did not immediately sit well. I'll have to give it another go.

Chicken and veggies in a sauce (we only got a little of the spicy sauce) and after they make rice and it is incredible.

Dutch Coffee Bingsu, but we did not pour the coffee over it at my request

A hot dog covered in fries, aka the greatest creation in history

So the food situation is pretty great. We also went shopping. That situation is also great.

4. SMTown Concert. On Friday Tina, Sarah (Tina's old roommate from Ithaca, for those who still don't know her) and I went to SMTown's World Tour concert (World tour here means Korea, China, and Japan...) to see all of the major SM groups. SM is one of the major music companies here. They represent such groups as Super Junior, SHINee, EXO, Red Velvet, Girls' Generation, f(x), TVXQ, and many others.  At first these names meant nothing to me, but I really enjoyed the concert... For about 5 hours. It was from 5PM til 11PM and all three of us could barely hold it together for 5 hours. It was 6 ours straight. No actual breaks between groups. Still, it was a really great way to get inundated into the Kpop world.

In case you want to watch some of the videos for these groups:

Super Junior (my current fave thanks to my companions): Swing

Super Junior: Sorry Sorry

Super Junior: Mr. Simple

EXO: Overdose

EXO: Wolf

SHINee: Sherlock

Anyway, it was awesome. Except nothing is awesome when you don't expect it to last 6 hours and it does.

ALSO SOME OF THESE BOYS CLEARLY NEED TO STOP SKIPPING LEG DAY. I FEAR FOR THEIR TOOTHPICK LEGS AS THEY DANCE.

The ones who do not skip leg days are fiiiiiiiiiiine. I can feel my legs getting stronger from walking around Seoul!

Kyuhyun (and all the members of Super Junior...) does not skip leg day

5. Having dinner with Tina's co-teachers. We went for Korean BBQ and had some Soju. They were very excited that Tina was staying and that I was here. They kept saying that Tina's Korean is really cute since she is quite expressive. Also, Korean tends to be one-note when they speak, and English is not, which makes for an interesting change over. So Tina still has English intonation on Korean words, which is apparently adorable. 

Anyway, it made me really excited to get my own school and start having my own experience. I'm currently at orientation, so it will be great to finally get into the swing of things.

I had some lows this week too (in case everyone thought it was all hot dog sticks and shoe shopping).

1. The Korean Language. It's really hard to learn. I'm just getting into the alphabet and words. I know some words, but it's just not going as well as I want it to be.

2. Related, but I feel like I lost my independence. I was at the height of self-sufficiency when I lived alone in Olean. I was doing my own schoolwork, I had a job that I loved at the Iroquois Group, I was teaching and working on a thesis, and I lived alone. Now I can't even read basic words and I was almost totally dependent on Tina during the time I stayed. My residual anxieties from grad school (read: I'm not good enough, I should be doing better, I should be doing more) are amplified here, where I feel like I'm failing by not being better at Korean and living here. I know it's mostly just me, since I've been here for like 10 days and no one expects me to be an expert, but still. I knew it would be hard and I know it will get better.

3. I'm sweaty all the time still. Everyone tells me it isn't too bad this year as far as the heat goes, but try telling that to my face.

4. Toilets.

In conclusion, Korea is awesome despite some minor setbacks. See ya after orientation!