This is going to be short and quick I have tests coming up and assignments due. Alright here is a quick recap of my last two weeks. Last week our whole class had dinner with both our KLI teachers, and half of my group of friends went to COEX mall. A mall that has gifts and a lot of things from the SM entertainment. SM entertainment is a music entertainment business that has idol groups that I have started to listen too. The dinner with the teachers was awkward at first, but we got comfortable after a while of making questions and trying to speak with our broken Korean. This week is dead week. Next week are finals! Not going to lie Korean is kicking my butt. I am trying so hard to get a passing grade, learning a language is hard and when it is intensive the class goes fast. It is also hard to ask questions when your professor only speaks Korean. However, I will not give up! I am going to study my butt off and practice my Korean as much as I can. I am pretty sure I am missing some things that have happened, but time is going by so fast and I am trying to keep up with the time and school. Wish me luck guys!

P.S I forgot to add I went to jjimjilbang… sorry

Alright so starting off the subway system is super difficult, and unfortunately for my friend who invited us to stay at her house, we can’t help her with figuring out the transportation. Although she does live there, she even gets lost ㅋㅋㅋㅋ, We left Korea on Thursday afternoon and arrived around 10 o’clock to her house. A two hour flight with a 4 hour bus ride to her hometown, to another subway ride, and then finally a taxi. Yeah, a long ride and many transfers, but it is worth it. Yuogang, my friend who invited us over, has been showing us around and been going sightseeing it is beautiful. Let me just tell you being a tourist is hard. A lot of walking and not a lot of resting. When we arrived it was sleep and get ready for the next day. So yesterday we went to Osaka and went hiking to see monkeys on a mountain. They roam free and we can go into this shed type area and feed the monkeys. After that we went to the bamboo forest and Chabeli and Annie decided to ride the carriages pulled by tourist guides (mainly men). We raced the guy who was pulling Chabeli and Annie around. The guy had told Yuogang that we weren’t going to beat them, but Kellie, Yuogang, and I are pretty competitive. So we proved the guy half way wrong. He met up with us half-way through the forest and when he saw us he said we walk fast. We took some pictures and the guy offered to take pictures for us. Which we took advantage of and since Yuogang can speak Japanese she asked other people that day to take pictures of us. We ended the night with going to go eat shabu shabu at Yuogang’s favorite restaurant. The food was great and it was pretty fancy looking too. Her mom, treated us to the dinner and we are so thankful for the delicious food. When we went back to Yuogang’s house, Chabeli mentioned how she wanted to dress up in the kimonos. As a collective decision we all said yes and today that is what we did. Before that though, we want to a palace and went on another hike to get there. The palace was beautiful and the view of the city was gorgeous too. We were late to the appointment of the kimonos, but we had a great time walking around in our kimonos and taking pictures in random allies and taking 셀가’s (selfies). I am so tired but tomorrow we go to universal studios! I am so excited but so tired at the same time. This trip is a nice break from school, but I have a feeling this break is going to catch up to me. Well got to go, we are going to get ice cream at the convenience store. It has become a tradition in our group to get ice cream at night.

대박!!!! AKARAKA was amazing!!!! So much energy, great company, and we ended the night with eating meat at our spot! I didn’t mention this last week but one of my friends, Annie, has a hurt ankle and needs help going up and down the hills at our campus. This also includes the stairs she had to take when getting to the stadium. First off the this whole week there were many events leading up to AKARAKA, festivals, and parades, as well as events to have get togethers’ with your friends. A lot of those events included alcohol and games. About yesterday or today I should say, so many artists went. I didn’t know half of them but the other half I had heard songs from or known about through tv shows I got into while I was here. I wish I could post all the videos I took while I was there. It was an amazing event, but when it was over my group of friends and I realized we hadn’t eaten all day. So what do we do when we are super hungry? We go to our spot! It’s a Korean BBQ restaurant in which we have become friends with the lady who works there. She sometimes gives us 서비스 which is service (free food). It is not always free food but sometimes she forgets a cider for us and makes that up by giving us 순두부 찌개 sundubu jjigae. Which is tofu soup with veggies and sometimes meat. It is really good with rice! Before we got to the restaurant we had to walk all the way to sinchon and as I mentioned my friend is hurt. We convinced her to go with us and it did take 30 to 40 minutes to get there, but it was worth it. We contemplated going to somewhere closer because of Annie, but she said since we were already half way there might as well go all the way. At one point we had to make a circle around her so we people would be more aware about our friend. Interesting discovery, not many Koreans here care if you are hurt or not they will still shove and push to get through. The video about AKARAKA should be on youtube if you want to see what I am talking about. Also on the day of AKARAKA it was teacher appreciation day. On this day many students give their teachers a carnation and chocolates. I don’t really know the meaning of the carnation, but it is very common. Anyways I have to work on my Korean and my homework from psychology. Talk to you guys next week 안녕!

P.S. I forgot to mention, but my friends and I are going to Japan next week!!!! The next post will be from Japan! On a side note sorry the video is side ways I don’t know how to fix it.

So this week we went to the beach. It has been super hot and we thought we deserved a break. So we came to the beach. A long 4-hour bus ride but they wait was worth it. We went to the fish market and got bought fried food from a lady who totally convinced us to buy her’s instead of the ladies next to her. We wanted crab but the was expensive, we are students and how the lady said we probably wouldn’t of been able to afford it. We could of but we didn’t want to spend 50,000 won on a king crab. The girls wanted to go in because of a celebrity child that had eaten there. Not going to lie I wanted to go in too, but our pockets said otherwise. So what are we going to have for dinner? I don’t know we are going to have to order in and ask for help probably. Our Korean is not that good yet. By the way next week is AKARAKA! I am so excited I can’t wait to see what artists will go to our school this year. Speculations are that PSY is going to be there. Well time to relax after a lot of exploring.

P.S it is cold, it feels like the coast in Oregon, the water is cold and I didn’t bring warmer clothes thinking it was going to be hot ㅠㅠㅠㅠ

Last week we had our midterms, and that let me tell you. I don’t think I have ever studied so much for a midterm. I want to say that my KLI midterm may have been the hardest one. I studied for that midterm about one and a half weeks. My mind was so focused on how well I had to do on all these midterms that I didn’t really think about anything else. I want to say that I didn’t even leave the dorm for a week, because all I was doing was studying. Now that I don’t have a job, I find it easier to find time to study, and meet up with friends. Midterms in any school is a pain, but having a midterm in speaking is even more painful. Especially when you don’t know the language that well. I was scared I would walk in and not know a single thing the professor was talking about. Thankfully I managed to understand everything, but my responses weren’t well thought out. I need to work on making complete sentences.

On to a better weekend! As a way to reward myself for surviving midterms I went to two concerts last week. I also had to educate myself on who they were. I had heard about these groups before, but I never really listened to them as much. Thanks to my friends though, I ended up liking these groups, and I think I will listen to them often. The groups are Epik High and Big Bang. The Epik High concert was a rap beat show, so it wasn’t only Epik High but also other rappers. Granted I did not know all the songs, but I still had so much fun and the people I went with also had a great time. I was close enough that I got some pretty good videos, my pictures weren’t so good so I had to get rid of them. This concert happened Friday night and the Big bang concert was on Sunday. For the Big Bang I was also prepared enough to know more than half of the songs they played. Leading to me fangirling a lot. The only bad thing was that, it was super hot. Summer is coming in early I believe and the weather has been hot and humid lately. Something an Oregonian like myself is not use to. Anyways these concerts were the first concerts I had ever been to, and I still can’t get over the music and the atmosphere. I find myself humming their music and just remembering that day with the people I went with. Here are three of the people I went with to the Big Bang concert. Yuogang was sitting in subway. All in all last week was the most dreadful,as well as the most memorable week of my life. Thanks ladies for an amazing weekend!

I apologize for not keeping you guys updated on what is going on these past few weeks. So here is a quick run down; classes have already started I am already in my fourth week now, I have gone to a noreabang (karaoke), picked up my ARC on my own, have had 6 quizzes already, went bungee jumping and spent the night at the place where I went bungee jumping. I have done other things as well but so far that is what I can remember. Bungee jumping happened on Saturday, and let me tell you that it was amazing. I went with a group of girls I have gotten close to since I have been here. So close that I even call one of them my daughter XD. What surprised me that most was how cheap bungee jumping was, I thought it was going to be around 70,000 won but it wasn’t even close to that. I did two things that day, I bungee jumped, and did this swing bungee thing that only costed me 45,000 won. Super cheap I think for doing two things. Although taking into account other expenses, it ended up being 100,000 won for the whole day. Anyways, it was amazing what was even cooler and not in our plans was that we are going to show up in the news. Since we were Americans he wanted to interview us and talk to him about why we went and what we were feeling before the jump. You know just the normal interview questions. After the bungee jump we had to wait an hour to get back to the city we were at, and also find a place to go eat. The restaurant we went to was delicious and the lady serving us was amazed at how well we ate. She said we were basically natives! It made me feel super happy, I don’t know why but it did. About the ARC, it was just a proud moment for me because I went all by myself to go pick it up and I didn’t get lost using the subway system. I mean there are only so many ways the subway can go before I realize I am on the wrong one. Noreabang is super fun if you go with people who aren’t shy and are willing to sing. I want once before with some people from my KLI class and then again with almost half of my KLI class because it was my friends birthday. On my friends birthday we spent 3 hours singing and people wanted to keep singing. I was so tired and my I throat hurt. Although only two people have the mic, if you know that song everyone sings with them. Some people even danced while singing. It was just something that I had never done before and I was so happy that I went with people that were willing to sing and dance and just be goofy.

Now, time to get real, classes. Wow, I know I am definitely learning from every single class. More from my KLI class but KLI is everyday for two hours and then almost an hour of studying every night what I learned that day. Speaking of which I have a vocab quiz tomorrow on 102 words. So today is a definite study night. The format for classes here is different, it is like one day it is two hours of that one class and then another day of only one hour. I think it is like a block period or something like that. I think I have a weekly quiz for one of my classes and then then another weekly quiz for the other class. KLI is more of speaking Korean and learning the spelling as well as how to address certain people that are older than you; using honorifics for that individual. KLI is becoming a little bit easier, I can understand more for when my professor is asking us a question or when she is only asking me. I am super nervous for our midterm. It is one day of reading, one day of writing, and one day for speaking. We get graded separately for each one. I have a hard time speaking and using the right terms for what I am talking about, so I know my speaking test is going to kill me. Anyways, things have been great classes are getting harder, but it is not like I don’t know that feeling. Life is good right now, and I have to study right now so until next time! 안녕!!!

At the palace in the Seoul Tour! (That is just a small part of the palace)

I think I am still in the honeymoon phase of my study abroad trip. I LOVE IT!!! Everything is great, my roommate is awesome, my friends are totally my style of friends, the food is great and cheap, the people are nice and understanding of my lack of communication skills, and classes start tomorrow. I am a little nervous, but also excited, because I have been out of school for almost two months or more, so I miss it. Orientation was amazing and mentors club was fun. Mentors club is a club I got invited to before I arrived in Korea. It consisted of having a current student from Yonsei be a mentor for a whole group of international students. I think there were about 25 students in my cell and my mentor. Let me just say, I am so excited to go to a sport event here at Yonsei. The school has a cheer team, that is amazing! The whole student body is involved with the cheering. There were about maybe ten or more dances we did that involved cheering. It made me think that we weren’t as cheery as they are over here. The cheering is called AKARAKA, it is huge and amazing and I will post a link on the bottom so you can see what I am talking about. I also want to point out that although I don’t know enough Korean maintain a conversation with someone, yesterday I was able to get medicine, get myself from one place to another, and also buy a computer. It felt like a great accomplishment and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the help of my friend. We both made a great accomplishment yesterday with our minor knowledge of the Korean language. Please feel free to ask questions if you guys have any and talk to you guys next week!!!

Hello my name is Daisy Romero I am in Korea right now and the time is 2:39 on a Sunday. I was so caught up on getting all stuff together as well as hanging out with friends in family before I left, that I completely spaced about the blog. However, I do have a journal that I write in so I can tell you exactly what I was feeling before I left to Korea. Here it goes.
It is Wednesday, a day before I leave. I am still in like lala land, I feel like nothing is really going on. I just feel like I am on a mini vacation from work and tomorrow I have to go back. Yesenia (my friend since middle school) keeps telling me, “It’s like we are in High school again. Hanging out with no worries about work and just doing what we want.” I was like this is going to end soon and I am going to be on my way to Korea, but for some reason I don’t feel any different. There is no anxiety attacks, or worries right now. Maybe once I get there I will feel the culture shock and all that, but right now I am just like “meh”. Last week I was worrying about my departure, what am I going to do with no work?, what about the language barrier? will my roommate like me? what if I don’t like her? this is going to be hard. However, as the days went by my worries went away. Daisy you are going to be fine, you will make friends to help you with the language barrier, you can turn on that customer service (i work retail so I can be really customer friendly when it is needed) when you meet your roommate, and you will go into clubs for that extra time you have on your hands or exercise. Let’s do this Daisy! you have been waiting three months for this you are ready.
Yes, even in writing I talk myself, just for motivational purposes. So that was what I was feeling before I left I will post something new on Thursday my time to let you guys know about my experiences this week. Until then Annyong!