I am trying to remember what has happened in the last 12 days. I fixed my camera, so soon there will be pictures.
I am currently in Niigata, Japan, the place where I completed my junior of high school, and I am having a great time meeting up with old friends and host families. It is currently a Thanksgiving-esque holiday in Korea, and I will be back in school come October 1st.
Life has been good. I am continuing to learn Korean, and I have made quite a few Korean friends with whom I can practice my newly acquired language skills. As for truly interesting happenings, there was one thing in the past 12 days. I got cast in a documentary that will appear on Korean television. I went to an international party a couple of weeks ago, and there was a documentary director in the midst of it. The reason that she was there was that she was looking for a truly happy foreigner that was living in Korea. I told her a little bit about myself, and she apparently got a happy vibe from me, because she decided to make me the focus of her documentary. It will be a documentary that will be aire by KBS, Korea's major broadcasting company. Shooting is likely to start as soon as I get back from Japan, and I am quite excited. It has always been a dream of mine to be on TV, especially in Asia. Later on in life, I would actually really like to live in Japan, or maybe even South Korea, and make a living off of appearing on variety shows; this may be my start, or kikkake, as they would say in Japanese, don't know what it is in Korean yet though.....haha.
Besides that everything has been going quite well. I am developing a good routine that allows me to complete all my Korean studying and also experience everything around, maybe routine isn't the best word to describe since it is actually a pretty spontaneous approach.
I watched a total of 25 films at the film festival and met a bunch of up and coming Korean directors. It would be great to volunteer some time later on once my Korean gets better to get some experience towards my film-making career, especially since, on the international level, Korea, along with Iran, is one of the countries currently making the most intriguing films.
My class dynamic at school is great. I take Korean with quite the assortment of interestin people; there is the Israeli ambassasdor to Korea's wife, who is a very nice lady, and Japanese, Mongolian, Chinese and Indonesian people who range from early twenties to the middle age. As usual, I am the baby, at 19, which I turned on the 20th of this month. Every thinks I am at least 26 when they meet me. I even got 34 once, not sure if that's good or bad, haha.
I really like my teachers; during the 4 hours of daily Korean, I have 3 different teachers. In the morning from 9 to 10 am, we do writing, and then after a short break, from around 10 to 11 we have listening, and then the rest of the day until 1 is speaking. It is a super interactive approach, so I love it, and it is also super reminiscent of Yale's own Angela Lee-Smith's teaching style, who once also taught at Sogang for some time .
Well, I will be here in Japan for another week or so, so I will write again when I return to Korea. Mata Ne.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
First Week
Unfortunately, my camera ceased to function right before arriving in Seoul, therefore I have been unable to snap any pictures thus far. However, hopefully, I'll either get it fixed or get a new one. In the meantime, I'll with do my best with prose.
I arrived in Seoul a little over a week ago. I have found a place to live, a "living-tel", a boarding house type place with a small room with a television and refridgerator and, thank goodness, air-conditioning. However, I was told that I arrived right as the weather begins to make its transition to autumn; it has stil been pretty hot though. The "living-tel" has a bathroom for each floor. The fourth floor, where I reside, is an exclusively male floor, and the landlord is pretty strict about enforcing these rules. There is also a communal kitchen which provides us on this floor with unlimited rice and kimchi, a definite plus. My room is quite small, however very cozy.
School is a blast. I am learning a lot, four hours worth a day, and it literally zips by, and my Korean has improved immensely already, so I am quite excited to see where I am at come June.
This past week, and until this coming Sunday, I have religiously attended Seoul's very own International Film Festival; it has been cinematic bliss. The timing of my arrival in Seoul couldn't have been any better. I have seen films from all over the world and have also had the chance to meet with Korean national directors and award winning directors from France and Spain, not to mention one of the forme editors for Cashiers du Cinema. It has been quite the trip. Come October, Korea's most important festival will be coming up in the Southern city of Busan, and I will be there, at least for a weekend.
At the end of this month we have a holiday called Chuseok. I am not entirely sure what it commemorates, but I will make sure to post it as soon as I know. I will be going to Tokyo with a fellow Yalie that week to rendezvous with my former Japanese host family to spend a not so lonely birthday in my times of world travel.
I'll end this post with some peculiar things I have noticed since my arrival. First off, couples here often match, as in they are wearing that exact same outfit, and the couples here, as for the whole overall culture regarding human interaction out in the open are surprisingly warm, especially compared to my experience in Japan. Maybe it is the spicy food, probably no though. Interesting fact though, it seems to be that the reason Korean food is as spicy as it is is due to trade that they did with Mexico back in the day. I feel quite at home, not completely missing mi madre's cooking.
Next on the pecularity list is that maps here show Korea as just that, one united Korea, no 38th parallel or DMZ demarcated on their maps here. Cities and everything, although not very many, are marked just as relevantly as those in South Korea, and don't try to tell any South Korean Kim Jong-Il is a bad guy because they will not take it kindly; he is just another Korean, one of them with some serious, quite serious if you ask me, issues.
Lastly, a little trivial, but I still think it's hilarious, at the movie theatre, where I have been for near thirty hours in the past week, whenever you are going to give your ticket to the person who guards the gates to the theatres they do this little dance. That also reminds me, I was walking around my boarding house the other day, and randomly this music started blasting and what looked like people dressed in shampoo bottles, to me at least, with big asian animation-style eyes started dancing hip-hop. I later discovered they were soju, the Korean sake if you will, ah the far East, or at least Japan and South Korea's, sensibility for cuteness. Until next week.
I arrived in Seoul a little over a week ago. I have found a place to live, a "living-tel", a boarding house type place with a small room with a television and refridgerator and, thank goodness, air-conditioning. However, I was told that I arrived right as the weather begins to make its transition to autumn; it has stil been pretty hot though. The "living-tel" has a bathroom for each floor. The fourth floor, where I reside, is an exclusively male floor, and the landlord is pretty strict about enforcing these rules. There is also a communal kitchen which provides us on this floor with unlimited rice and kimchi, a definite plus. My room is quite small, however very cozy.
School is a blast. I am learning a lot, four hours worth a day, and it literally zips by, and my Korean has improved immensely already, so I am quite excited to see where I am at come June.
This past week, and until this coming Sunday, I have religiously attended Seoul's very own International Film Festival; it has been cinematic bliss. The timing of my arrival in Seoul couldn't have been any better. I have seen films from all over the world and have also had the chance to meet with Korean national directors and award winning directors from France and Spain, not to mention one of the forme editors for Cashiers du Cinema. It has been quite the trip. Come October, Korea's most important festival will be coming up in the Southern city of Busan, and I will be there, at least for a weekend.
At the end of this month we have a holiday called Chuseok. I am not entirely sure what it commemorates, but I will make sure to post it as soon as I know. I will be going to Tokyo with a fellow Yalie that week to rendezvous with my former Japanese host family to spend a not so lonely birthday in my times of world travel.
I'll end this post with some peculiar things I have noticed since my arrival. First off, couples here often match, as in they are wearing that exact same outfit, and the couples here, as for the whole overall culture regarding human interaction out in the open are surprisingly warm, especially compared to my experience in Japan. Maybe it is the spicy food, probably no though. Interesting fact though, it seems to be that the reason Korean food is as spicy as it is is due to trade that they did with Mexico back in the day. I feel quite at home, not completely missing mi madre's cooking.
Next on the pecularity list is that maps here show Korea as just that, one united Korea, no 38th parallel or DMZ demarcated on their maps here. Cities and everything, although not very many, are marked just as relevantly as those in South Korea, and don't try to tell any South Korean Kim Jong-Il is a bad guy because they will not take it kindly; he is just another Korean, one of them with some serious, quite serious if you ask me, issues.
Lastly, a little trivial, but I still think it's hilarious, at the movie theatre, where I have been for near thirty hours in the past week, whenever you are going to give your ticket to the person who guards the gates to the theatres they do this little dance. That also reminds me, I was walking around my boarding house the other day, and randomly this music started blasting and what looked like people dressed in shampoo bottles, to me at least, with big asian animation-style eyes started dancing hip-hop. I later discovered they were soju, the Korean sake if you will, ah the far East, or at least Japan and South Korea's, sensibility for cuteness. Until next week.
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