Chapter 12: 5월이라니…(It’s already May…)
Well, here we are…
It did not occur to me how long I’ve been putting off writing on here until I was talking with my family over video call and they were like “Yeah, you should probably update that.” Always keeping me in check, which I appreciate 👍🏼
These past three months have been surprisingly insanely busy. Lots of the same assignments and work to be doing for class as well as the new added pressure of end-of-program assessments.
(I’ll have you know, I’m officially “Advanced High” in speaking now, so yay for that. Just gotta pull it together for this last month and run the final stretch and maybe we can get Superior. Who knows.)
I also fell into a two-week slump of sorts, which honestly just felt like a mix of burnout and senioritis. In other words, I didn’t have much motivation to do much, including updating this blog.
But now I’m back and after looking through my photos, I realize that a lot has actually happened. Maybe it hasn’t been as exciting a time as it could be (What can I say? My idea of relaxing is laying in bed and watching YouTube), but amongst the business of class and other things, I’d say it’s been a pretty good three months.
So, last time I left off, our winter intensive period was just ending and spring semester classes were just beginning…
First, if I may rant just for a second; I made the very very very stupid mistake of taking a Korean history class of all things for my major class. And not just a general 101 history class, but a class about times of war and peace in Korea, focussing mostly on ancient Korean kingdoms. If I’m being completely honest, I do not ever pay attention in this class. It’s online and there’s no group projects or participation points, so the professor just straight up lectures for 75 minutes every Tuesday and Thursday. I’ve logged into the session, turned off my camera and microphone, and then slept through at least 60% of the classes, and the other 40% has been spent on my phone looking at various social medias. I know. I’m a model student. But hey, if I have no idea what he’s saying anyways (both in terms of the language and just the general content) then what’s the point in me straining my brain?
But for one of my assignments I had to analyze one of the battles that occurred in the kingdom of Goryeo back in the year 600-and-something using Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and let me just tell you, I was having a crisis for the entire week it took me to write that (insert profanity) paper. I sat at a cafe for 4 hours just trying to learn the content in English first then hopped over to another cafe for another 3 hours to work on it in Korean. Traumatizing. Truly. But did I learn my lesson? No, because I fell asleep during this week’s classes as well lol.
Just needed to get that out there.
Anyways.
Where do I even start?
The first big thing that I remember doing was going to 관악산 (Gwanaksan Mountain), which is one of the taller mountains in Seoul. It’s located by Seoul National University (aka in the middle of basically nowhere) and is about 630m tall. I thought it was only about 300m, so imagine my shock when the stairs going up just. Didn’t. End. I also went alone, which probably wasn’t the smartest idea, but I still did it and felt very accomplished afterwards (성취감을 느꼈다 — I need to review my Korean haha bear with me). After crossing over the peak, I ended up in 과천, which is technically outside of Seoul? Ever since mid-March, we’ve received permission to be able to go outside Seoul whenever we want (I’m planning my travels as we speak), but when I went to Gwanaksan we were still technically supposed to be staying in Seoul, so I felt quite rebellious stepping foot outside.
The next “eventful” thing to happen after that was that I went to go watch a BTS concert being live-streamed at the movie theater. I failed miserably at getting tickets to the actual concert, so this was the next best thing. It was a very different but fun experience, and even though I went alone it was actually quite enjoyable and really fun to just vibe with the other people who had come to watch.
And that was the last fun thing I did before it happened.
Yep, I got Covid. Probably the Omicron variant. I don’t know.
I went to bed one Thursday night and my throat was kind of hurting, but I wasn’t sure if it was Covid, a cold, or just me having burned my throat on the soup I ate that night. Nevertheless, I got up at like 6AM the next day to get one of the home testing kits, which ended up coming out negative. I still decided to stay home from class though, and eventually was told to go to one of the health centers near by to get a more accurate test.
First of all, that test fricken hurt. It wasn’t a PCR test, but similar? Slightly less accurate? Unimportant. But the nurse administering it I’m pretty sure poked my brain with how deeply she shoved the q-tip, and my only hope is that no one around me gets Covid because I swear to god if I have to go through that again, I will die.
But yeah, so that test obviously came out positive, because I’m pretty sure I just did the home test wrong. So as soon as that happened, the nurse reported it to the city’s health center and I was sent home to start my 7-day quarantine.
That day was full of so many phone calls. Way more than I signed up for. Calling all of my teachers to tell them what happened. Calling my boarding house manager and figuring out how we’re going to do this whole quarantine thing while living in communal living (Spoiler: it worked out. Pretty sure no one got sick after me. I’m amazing.). And then getting a call from the health center to verify some information. Not exactly what you want to be doing when your symptoms are starting to ramp up, but whatever.
So after that it was just seven days of not-great. From what I’ve heard, everyone’s symptoms seem to be different, but I was actually dying for the first five-ish days. Made my friend buy me lots of Tylenol and cough drops and Sprite to help with the sore throat. Then I ordered 24 1-liter bottles of water because the water filter was outside of my room (I ordered way too much and just finished the last bottle last week lol), two huge bags of cereal, crackers, chips, and cans of tuna. It was like my room became its own little bomb shelter. It would’ve been funny in any other circumstance.
Also, my souvenir from this time is the screenshot I have of the daily number of positive cases in the capital area that included me! This was when the Omicron wave was hitting Korea, so it’s not like I was the only person who was getting sick! It was me and 80,000 other people, so at least I don’t feel that guilty. The cases are now back down to about 6,000 a day, if that’s any indication for how bad it was…
But don’t worry. I’m all fine now. No after effects either, so I’m now just riding the high of my six months of antibody-fueled immunity.
Oh yes, luckily before I went into quarantine, I finally plucked up the courage to drag my butt to a salon and get my hair cut. Pretty sure I got at least six or so inches cut off, and I even looked up how to ask for layers. Very proud adulting moment for Ali, that was.
After that, I kind of started a new hobby: taking pictures of flowers. Seoul and probably all of Korea (I haven’t seen all of Korea, so I don’t know) have so many flowers in the spring??? Seriously, I was not expecting there to just be flowering trees and bushes wherever I walked. Like, there are just cherry blossom trees on the road to school, something that you can literally only see in Washington D.C. in the US! Crazy. Absolutely crazy. So here is a dump of all the flowers I’ve seen, but not even, because there are just so many everywhere, even now, that I couldn’t possibly take pictures of them all.
And I think I need to dedicate an entire section just to the cherry blossoms. Even for Koreans, going to see the cherry blossoms in bloom every spring is a kind of monumental thing. There are whole festivals and other events centered just around the cherry blossoms (and some of them even reopened this year after not having been able to be hosted for so long because of Covid). There are famous spots for taking pictures, including 석촌호수 (Seokchon Lake), the Han River, and 양재천 (Yangjae…Creek? I have no idea how to translate that haha). But even besides that, there were cherry blossom trees even on my campus and by the small river I usually go for a walk by. It was just really pretty to see and it made it feel like spring truly had come. Of course, cherry blossoms are usually only fully bloomed for about a week, so we had to go go go when it was time and see as much as we could.
Going with that theme, here is also my collection of various 🍃nature🍃 pictures. I really do appreciate going for walks (and the occasional run) especially now that it’s finally warm but not too hot. If summer never came I’d be happy, but alas.
Small happiness: I love how green everything is now. I did not realize how, uh, sad everything looked during the winter. But now everything is in bloom and the trees are all lush and green and it’s just very nice to see when going outside. 10 out of 10.
Next, here is a collection of the cats I have seen since February. Yes, this got its own album. So. Many. Cats.
At the beginning of April, all of us had to take the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK), which is basically the international standard for evaluating someone’s Korean skills in reading, writing, and listening, and is the score foreigners use when applying for college or graduate school in Korea and probably when applying for jobs as well. That day I was honestly so out of it. I can’t even tell you how well or how poorly I think I did, but the climax of that entire day was when I messed up filling the bubbles on my answer sheet at question 40 out of 50, and had to start back from the beginning with about 20 minutes left. That was a rough day.
But! After that was all over, some of us went to the Han River for a picnic to rant about the test and just relax after, so that was very fun. It was just as crowded as ever, but I really enjoyed the festival-like atmosphere. The 20-minute line to get into the convenience store was a bit of a disappointment, but other than that!
And last week during one of the off days I had (provided so that I could study for my midterm, but let’s be honest, no studying was done) I met up with a friend and we went to 일산호수공원 (Ilsan Lake Park) to go to this flower festival that was taking place. I think it was like, a convention of sorts for businesses to promote their products. There was a indoor portion where the businesses had set up booths and then an outside portion where there were little gardens that regular people had planted as like a hobby of sorts as well as other booths that were selling various products. It was a very hot day, and there were a surprising number of people there given that it was a Tuesday afternoon. But everything was pretty, and I finally got to go back to the park that I first went to in 2019.
And the final installment of this chapter is, of course, the food~
The highlight of this would have to be the olive oil ice cream that my friend made me try. It was…not great, to be completely honest. But apparently it’s trendy, not only here but in the US too? I don’t keep up with trends, so how would I know?
And~I think that’s about everything I’ve done up until now. I actually already have the next chapter planned, so I can promise that I won’t leave on another 3 month hiatus.
I’ve also officially bought my ticket to go back home and will be back on the 30th of June. Which, now that I think about it, isn’t that far away. Sad. But also not. I have mixed feelings.
Anyways, thanks again for reading and remaining patient with me for all this time! Here’s to finishing off this year strong!
Bye~
(And here’s a song for you to listen to because, well, it’s my blog and I kind of just have the freedom to add whatever. Enjoy!)
