College Life in Seoul: Week 6

Another update of Week 6 in Korea so far! 🙂 Once again as a prewarning, such posts are more for me to remember my daily adventures in Korea, and aren’t particularly interesting so feel free to skip!!

The week kicked off with us going to the cat cafe! I asked Zenn if she wanted to meet for lunch or smth and in the end we met up in the late afternoon and she brought us to this study cafe cum cat cafe place called Table A. It was really sweet and cosy!

The concept was kind of like one cat per table so we got this cute kitty here.

I love Korea cafes because of how conceptual they are! And the cafes almost always make it kind of a study space with power plugs and wifi, they never chase you out. I couldn’t say the same about Singapore cafes though. This particular cafe just happens to double as a cat cafe as well ❤

We sat there and swooned over the kitty for a while. It was really adorable, clambering all over us and our stuff, couldn’t stop playing with my camera lens and kept putting one paw over it like ‘it’s mine bish’ and fell asleep on top of Zenn’s bag and coat, rendering her rather useless as she can’t take out anything to study LOL. Unfortunately i had to go for Korean lessons so I left not long after 😦 It was nice though!

Table A Address: 서울특별시 마포구 창전동 6번지 그레이스빌딩 1층  

Oh oh and that was also the first time i saw trees in full bloom!

On Tuesday, I went to do my own self studying at Coffee Bean outside Gonzaga Hall! I really like that it’s so conveniently located outside our dormitory!!! i just have to walk across the clearing to reach it haha, i’m going to find Singapore so inconvenient after this. It’s ironic how it feels like Korea is so much more convenient and I’ve grown to hate 20-min train journeys in Korea, when in Singapore i had to travel an hour everyday. Haha. I guess we all adapt, for better or for worse.

Coffee Bean inside Sogang was a really nice place to study. Gets a little noisy nearing lunch time with professors and students sitting for meeting, but in the morning it’s nice. 🙂 I studied for a little while before heading over to Myeongdong to meet Liz and Karin!! We walked around a little bit, shopped a bit and ate some 32cm ice cream hahaha although mine fell over 😦

On Wednesday it was again cafe hopping time! We went to a very small home cafe near Edae called Gioia Cafe (pretty sure i spelled this wrong), serving good cheap coffee. Nothing much interesting happened this day HAHAHA sorry the laughter wasn’t really funny orz

Thursday again it was a cafe visit, to Coffee Bean again this time where me and Amber practiced our Korean and chatted about life. Haha. Love this girl man. We got distracted a lot and ended up just gossiping, partly in Korean LOL. After that she said she’ll bring me out to dinner and treated me to food <33333 sweet unnir she is.

We went to our korean classes and did some grocery shopping afterwards to get ready for the field trip!! Read about the field trip post here.

Post is mostly bout cafes so i’m classifying it under cafe hopping~~

College Life in Korea: Week 5

This week felt a bit of a blur to me tbh. I’m gonna do my best to recall what happened based on my expense sheet haha!

So anyways~ on Tuesday I went to meet Adeline and Kelly for the last time before they fly back! We wandered around Hongdae trying to find Air Cafe but failed badly so we just walked into a random cafe and found a really nice cosy spot! It’s called Are Cafe which literally means ‘the cafe downstairs’ hahaha. It was at a basement~

It was really cosy and they had shelves of books, and little corners for one person to study complete with power plugs and table lamps. ❤ I think it’s a study cafe. We sat down and gossiped as we usually do, and i pulled out a korean book ‘Love Smart’ and started reading lines to Adeline who insta videoed it haha. Practicing my Korean yes!!

Details for this cafe here~

we went to eat chicken + beer with Shery’ls boyfriend! Haha i didn’t think i would eat chicken + beer so much but it happened LOL. I invited Amber along since it was after our kimchi making class (which was quite fail actually) and during the whole night we were just teaching her Singlish and bad words LOL. So everytime Sheryl’s boyfriend swore Frederick would translate that literally and it sounded so crude. We also played plenty of Korean games introduced by Monica!! It was my first time playing so many games, in Singapore it’s either the usual 5-10 hand game thingy or just drinking lol. It was a hell lot of fun and Sheryl’s boyfriend and Amber kept losing so the two of them drank the bulk of it.

Luckily Amber had so much fun and she continued to tell me how much fun she had for the next few days, and she said she really loved us Singaporeans ❤ I was so happy and kinda proud of that LOL. It’s just like on my ask.fm account there was suddenly an outburst of anons asking me about Singapore and praising Singaporeans, and asking for some Singlish lessons, idek why out of the blue, but still makes me proud. More Singaporean than Indonesian clearly. Haha.

On Friday it was chicken + beer again haha. This time Zenn joined us! We went to walk around Edae to shop first because Karin and I agreed to find caps to buy! We found a shop selling pretty cheap caps for $10-ish but for some reason those caps looked realllly fake i mean i know they are all fake but that one had bad stitching and really poor looking fonts. So we left without getting anything ): I ended up getting just one pair of flats that i bargained from 28K to 15K HAHA. Just by hesitating a lot.

Then we all headed to find the rest and hereby begun our second round of chicken + beer that week!

This week was a little slow for me at least, didn’t do much in the weekends haha. Because of the chicken+beer session i didn’t wake up on time for Suwon that i initially wanted to go with Jasmine and her friends. So i skipped it and decided to head down to Inkigayo with Goh Hong since it was SNSD’s last stage for Mr. Mr. :’) it was a beautiful album and im proud to have been able to see the first and last music show in this short promotion period.

While waiting to be let in GH and I went to this Cafe Citta and the uncle was so nice!!! asked me where we are from and stuff, i took the opportunity to speak a little Korean, all basic stuff as usual, haha. It feels a little more natural now, like i can think in Korean, but i’ll still need to constantly practice! Forgot to take photo of the place thou it was nice and cosy ^^ I’ve run out of adjectives to describe cafes LOL they’re either cosy nice or pretty sigh

Oh oh on that note, let me post this cafe that we went to the day before called Roti Mom, it’s definitely not a local Korean brand HAHAHA but it was pretty! I won’t make a separate post on this as it’s far from Seoul and not really a common area, but yes it was nice!

I love the space!! There are also books available but they were in Korean. Sigh i swear korean cafes are like the love of my life

^^

After Inki on Sunday I headed back to dorm to rest and just slack the day away lulz.

phew finally done with the day-to-day updates .__. sorry for these posts i needa remind myself what i did thus the mundane details.

and btw wow there are 4 cafes in this one post hahhaa i consider that quite an accomplishment.

College Life in Seoul: Week 4

I was considering how i want to update and record the miscellanious things I’ve been up to in Sogang, because they’re not really anything out of ordinary yet they are still memories I want to record and remember in the future.

So I guess I will be having these “College Life in Seoul” themed posts, probably mostly labelled by weeks, to cover the more ordinary things we do in school, rather than things like traveling. For example, this post is gonna talk about how I did my hair at Edae, the noraebang we went to and the Sogang magic show, among all things. Non touristy stuff, more of an exchange student kind of stuff. I’ll try to highlight the things that happen, or otherwise I’d just list in order of days~ these posts are meant for my personal record and it’s pretty much a post you can overlook unless you’re super in love with me and want to know the littlest details, that’s possible too 그럴수도있지뭐 ㅋ

This week was a bit of a crazy week for me. First of all of course, i made the random decision to dye my hair, post here. I wrote a review for Juno Hair because i was so pleased with everyhing!

And the day after that, we had a crazy Noraebang session! It’s really cheap here, I paid only about $5 for 2 hours of Noraebang~ One of the perks of Seoul that Singapore doesn’t have!

Friday is unofficially our bonding day because we all have the same last class that day and so automatically gather together. We again visited the Intl Cafe that day and played pictionary!

Hangout area for us! Coffee + Bagel cost only 2200 won, which is about $3!! 😀 And it’s a normal bagel size with awesome cream cheese heh. When the cafe closed we moved to this nice quiet lounge area that was actually reserved for MBA students but well who’s checking right.

We got lured into attending a magic show hosted by the magic club in Sogang with free food, but there wasn’t really free food HAHA. Regardless it was kinda entertaining i guess although i kinda fell asleep halfway i’m sorry but i did think they were great at the magic tricks!!

So we headed out to eat ourselves and treat ourselves to patbingsoo!!

Introducing one of my favorite yet most unhealthy meals in Korea. Budae Jjigae. It’s tricky because some restaurants use proper chilli powder and spices for the soup, but many other restaurants use ramen seasoning. I’ve learned that it’s usually the price that makes it obvious, one that costs 5000won or below is most likely ramen seasoning. Those with proper seasonings are 6000won and above. The difference is so small so it’s still tough differentiating T_T

Anyway this Budae Jjigae was ramen seasoning which made it so super tasty but so sinful. Budae Jjigae is a typical spicy army stew kind of soup, with SPAM, sausage, rice cakes (a korean classic), kimchi and ramen, topped with sinful melted cheese. Served with steaming hot rice. One of my favorite meals but I try to avoid it especially those that are served with ramen seasoning T___T I’m hungry just talking about this.

Then we treated ourselves to Patbingsoo!! Classic Korean favorite in summer. I’ve used the word classic too many times in this post. This shop was a nice cosy shop that was packed with customers even on a wintry night. I really loved the mango one!! The other one is green tea shaed ice with red bean toppings. The owner was really nice, pulling chairs from everywhere to give us space to seat!! 🙂

I also conversed for the first time in Korean with someone else on that day. This sounds weird because i have been speaking Korean here, but i don’t recall really talking in Korean to another Sogang schoolmate since i’ve been here for some reason…. well anyways, had a nice chat with her and she’s actually of native Japanese origin but has been living in Korea for a long time and is now studying Korean as a degree. Cool stuff. And also Sogang kids always seem to think business is a hard major to take, each time i say business they will exclaim saying “Isn’t business hard?” well i take it as a compliment i guess, perhaps Sogang business school is prestigious?

Saturday was very lazy because we were supposed to attend Lineatte’s buddy’s friend’s event that day so we planned just for the afternoon. We ate at the same tofu place that i’ve went 2 times before with Zenn & Yonsei kids and with Vanessa and her mom. Well it is a nice tofu place with free rice and tasty seaweed and eggs, only for $8. The Sogang kids seem to love that place too~ Then we nua’ed around and finally decided to go to the War Memorial since it’s a lazy day after all! I will write a separate post on it ^^

The second time we were lured into attending an event with free food that week. This time it’s a swing dance performance haha i admit i was expecting some sort of theatre or bar but it turned out to be a dance studio ._. regardless, the old school style was awesome! We also did receive the free food this time, chicken and beer! Classic korean favorite.

Sunday was Seoul Land, a small theme park in Seoul!! Again, a separate post will be done for that one ^^ I’m keeping my travel journals separate from this kind of weekly posts so that I can do a proper review of my experience ^^ Granted, the war memorial and Seoul Land that we visited on Week 4 weekends weren’t extraordinary, i might combine them into one post.

Till next time~~

Korean Language Learning Progress (1st Record)

Dramatic title but basically it’s just an update, partly to myself as well as to readers (if any), about my progress. I’m taking this pretty seriously and i know it takes a lot more commitment and effort than it seems. It always seems easy if you like what you’re doing, to do well in it, but it really isn’t the case. I love and enjoy learning Korean but I get frustrated or bored or tired too, and sometimes i want to stop, so yes it’s taking dedication. But also, just because it gets tiring or discouraging means that I don’t love it anymore. It’s a love hate relationship really.

So anyway, the 1st record of my learning progress in Korea! So far, I’ve been frustrated more than proud LOL. When Koreans, especially the older ones, talk to me I have a problem understanding and even more problems when speaking. It frustrates me that they have to slow down and find easier words to use and I would feel so useless and unaccomplished. Okay this post is going a bit negative, time to steer away~~

Listening & Speaking. After about a week, I kind of adjusted to the Korean way of speaking and have picked up certain terms, especially those used in shops. I’ve learned things i could never learn from the textbook, i’ve learned slangs, and i’ve become faster in listening and registering words. Earlier i was always lost when they spoke but it became much better and I could eavesdrop much better now HAHAHA. Speaking is still really a problem because when confronted with a Korean I’m usually afraid to step out of my comfort zone and I end up speaking English especially when they can speak English too. Mainly because it takes way too long for me to formulate sentences in korean. it baffles me too because in text I do pretty okay. I can text in Korean comfortably and I can think in Korean when I do so, but for some reason when I speak I blank out and it’s like I forgot all grammar and vocab and maybe my voice at the same time too. U G H. Which brings me to my next point.

Sogang Korean Classes. It’s getting easier to catch what our teacher is saying, but still of course tough speaking to the rest. I’m slowly easing into it though, nowadays trying to chat with the rest in Korean. Our teacher is really nice, she finds out what we want and what we don’t. She took out the tests because we didn’t want them and most of our class were working people in industries like education (professors in Sogang themselves), trade, media, consumer goods… and we even found out recently one of my classmates is a director in a company. Which company we don’t know haha I’d rather not know in case i get intimidate the next time he’s my conversation partner. So she understands and she removes things that she knows will be time consuming. Also after finding out we want speaking practice the most she stopped giving writing exercises and told us to practice writing on our own. So the class is moving towards speaking much more, and I like and need that. So far Sogang is living up to its name for being the best university for Korean lessons in speaking. The rest of the unis focus more on reading writing and listening.

Language Exchange Buddies. I’ve recently prowled through the net to find language exchange buddies willing to help me, and I’d help in return with their English. I stated that i prefer face to face conversations or phone calls, because if we’re gonna be texting i can do that pretty okay already. My problem is still really just talking, being able to think faster and respond faster, to be as fast and as good in speaking as I am in texting. I don’t even know why it is such a problem, since i can text okay. I think it’s a mental block so i want to try to conquer it somehow.

One person responded to me today directly via Kakao. She’s called Youngmi and she isn’t much older, but just started work this year. So far no talk of meeting or whatever cuz it seems like she’s really busy, but it’s a start! She’s already corrected me a few times and i’ve picked up new phrases already! I think this would really help! Consider doing the same if you’re learning a new language~ if you’re shy to talk or meet up i think texting is also an efficient way to learn! I cant tell if this exchange with her would keep up because we may not be compatible but well it’s always worth a try ^^

Drama and variety shows transcriptions. I’ve also decided to take dramas and shows to the next level, by paying extra attention to what they’re saying and writing down certain words and phrases. Granted, I take away maybe just 20 phrases and words each episode but it’s still progress. I try to take down more phrases because these will help later on when I revise and work to become more natural in speaking and forming sentences. I googled drama scripts earlier and saw that there were some korean drama scripts available online for download which is what i’ll do!

Flipcards. Haha what’s language learning without good old flipcards. I downloaded this nifty app called Study Blue to help me. This is mainly training and drilling me to remember vocab. Yes i know, not the most efficient way to learn, but it’s still necessary alongside all the other things I’m doing.

Future goals for my Korean language learning:

• Writing a Korean blog
• Finishing a Korean comic
• Finishing a Korean novel
• Reading Korean news sites
• Understanding Korean radio
• Speaking fluently and naturally with a native Korean (discussing things beyond basic introductory topics)
• Translating a show or book
• Going further into technical terms e.g. politics, historical, law

That’s going to take a few years but well, i don’t want this journey to end either 😀 Although I’ve been saying i want to take a new language after Korean… LOL. I want to be really good at Korean first before moving on to conquer basic levels of many other languages. I also want to brush up and become good at Bahasa and Chinese, since i’m already at a basic spoken lvel of those languages. All these are going to take forever but that’s good then that means i have lifelong goals already ^^

That’s all for the first record! I’ll have strength and persevere on to conquer them languages!