Chapter 14: 끝까지 달려라 (Run Until the Very End)
Aaaaaand….it’s June!
That’s crazy
Much like the title, I’m kind of just trying to make it to the end in one piece. That might make it sound worse than it actually is, but y’all, I am just very burned out at this point that even the most trivial of tasks requires way too much energy for my liking. Luckily, my classes are kind of unofficially over. At least, my Korean language class is basically over. We did our last weekly presentations last week (about the rising interest rates!) and now just have one final presentation to do. I’ve written my 25-page essay for my Korean education class and just have one more essay to write for my history class (which is going to be turned in in English because honestly I can’t find it within me to care anymore).
I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re almost there.
Up until now, I’m quite proud of myself for making myself go outside and do things despite the never-ending stress, so here’s another chapter to let you all know what’s been going on. There’s only about three or so weeks left until I return to the US. Oh god, writing that down just made it very real. I need to get my butt in gear and start sorting stuff out for my return. Stress.
Anyways.
I left off on our graduation trip to Jeju, and quite a lot has happened since then.
As soon as we got back, we had one of our official speaking tests to take and then we had a video project presentation that we had to do. Basically, the people in DC want to see how fluent we all are in the language and make us create a presentation to submit via video format for them to see. To be honest, this assignment is honestly kind of pointless in my opinion, since they’re not even evaluating our language skills, but rather our presentation skills using the language. I mean, we had to make subtitles as well so that they could actually understand what we were saying. And yes, presenting is a very important skill for any type of work, but it’s not what we’ve been focussing on at all this year. We’ve more so been concentrating on just basic fluency and the structure in which we present our opinions and arguments. There were no presentation classes. But I digress.
So all seven of us had to pick a topic of interest and give a 10–13 minutes presentation on it, leaving room at the end for Q&A as well. My topic was about English’s use as a universal language and the pros and cons of such use. I think I did fine? I don’t know. My final presentation this week is just the exact same thing with some adjustments made, so that’s nice.
And there I am. They borrowed an entire lecture room for us to give this presentation in, so that was downright terrifying.
And on that day, karma decided to really mess with me and make my life just about a thousand times harder for the three minutes leading up to when I had to get up there to present. Honestly, the more I tell this story, the funnier it gets, but you should know that I was actually on the brink of having a full-blown meltdown at the time.
What happened??
Well, the week before this presentation, I went for a walk around campus to clear my head and get some air after being locked in my room all day doing prep. Nothing wrong or unusual with that. But apparently campus grounds are a hot spot for people to come and preach their religion to you and try and convince you to come with them to church. For the record, yes, I do believe that people are obviously free to their own beliefs and don’t judge them for whatever they may choose to put their faith in, but I do have a problem with people coming up to me and trying to convert me or whatever to their cause. Like, I just wanted to take a walk? Leave me alone? Might be the anti-social side of me coming out, but seriously, leave me alone.
So anyways, that’s basically what happened to me. Some girl came up to me and started off with a friendly greeting blah blah blah and eventually got into the topic of religion. And I really tried to avoid this, but not well enough. My first strategy (yes, this has happened to me that often that I am building up strategies) is to just speak in English and pray that they don’t want to continue if it’s not in Korean. That didn’t work. She spoke English pretty much just fine.
Shoot.
So after that I basically just lied and said I was leaving on a trip for the weekend within the next 10 minutes and that I had to be at the train station in two minutes. Well, that didn’t work so well either, because she walked with me to the subway stop and then asked for my Kakao ID so she could message me. And for some reason, I couldn’t lie and say I didn’t have one because who doesn’t have Kakao in Korea? I figured I’d just block her and I’d never see her again. So that’s exactly what I did.
But I was very wrong in my assumption.
I should add that, for the sake of adding a sort of “professionalism” to this video project, our teachers invited our Korean tutors and language partners to come and watch and make it look like we had an audience. I’m sure you can guess where this is going.
On the day of my presentation, this girl came up to me and was like “Oh! It’s you!” Took me a minute to recognize her, but when I did, oh. god.
Mind you, I told that girl that I didn’t speak a word of Korean and now I was about to get up on stage and deliver a 10-minute presentation in semi-fluent Korean while she watched.
The universe truly just wanted to mess with me that day, I swear.
But anyways, after having a breakdown for about three minutes, I got up there and gave my presentation. It was fine, and like I said, I honestly just laugh (and cringe) now whenever I think of this story. This was the epitome of the phrase “What are the odds?”
But traumatizing presentations aside, there’s been more fun things I’ve been able to do. The weather here is getting hotter and hotter, and honestly? I kind of hate it lol. No matter how cold winter may get, I will always prefer being cold over being hot, and the summers here get hot and humid. But that won’t stop me from enjoying this last month, so here’s what’s happened.
Once again per my teacher’s recommendation (I make her give me travel recommendations when I’m stressed haha), I took a trip towards the outskirts of Seoul all the way to Paldeong station (팔덩역) which was right next to the most aesthetic walking path along the Han River. You can rent bikes here or you can just walk. I oped for walking, because honestly riding a bike here is too much pressure. I just want to enjoy the scenery, but there are plenty more people who are out for the exercise, and I don’t want them to crash into me. So I just stuck to the walking path and took my time. I think I was out there for about four hours? It was a good time. Very healing.
Another funny story, but I originally planned to go on a Saturday. I had everything packed and ready to go and went to the subway station where I had to transfer onto this special line to get to Paldeong. But I was not aware of the fact that, literally, once a day, this train called the ITX comes to the same station as the subway line I needed. Long story short, I got on the train by accident, freaked out when I realized that was most definitely not where I was supposed to be, and disembarked immediately. After that, I was honestly just too overwhelmed to even try and find the right subway, so I just went home. But the next day everything worked out, so it’s fine! Again, live and learn, I guess.
The weekend after that, I had some free time on my hands after completing my assignments, so I took a trip to one of the more local parks by the Han River and just took the day to myself to sit by the river and read and go for a walk. I was there until the sun went down, ate some good food, saw some cool performances, and just generally had a very nice time. Oh yeah, I also saw this huge fire that apparently happened at a local high school? They put it out really fast and no one got hurt, but it was very shocking to suddenly see this huge black plume of smoke in the sky. Refer to the pictures below.
The day after, I took a trip to my friend’s hometown that’s just a little ways outside of Seoul, but still completely accessible by subway. While it was still the city, it definitely had a different atmosphere, something much more relaxed and peaceful that you kind of just have to experience to know what I mean. For lunch, we went and got some pork cutlet, but a type that you actually grill yourself. A very fun experience. We also ordered some omarice, or fried rice that is topped with a rather thin and runny omelette. Absolutely delicious.
I also got to meet her dog, Jamong (Grapefruit in English haha), who was the most adorable collie I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. I miss having pets around ㅠㅠ
The week following that was the week of Korea University’s spring festival, something that hadn’t been able to be hosted for the last two years because of COVID. This is an entire week filled with music performances and other activities for students, ending with a huge concert on Friday called Ipsilenti (입시렌티). The school actually managed to book lots of famous artists to come, with performances happening in the one of the campus squares every night from Monday to Thursday. This space was also filled with food trucks selling all types of delicacies and games that students could play.
I feel like that week was quite busy for me for some reason, so I didn’t really go and participate in the festivities literally until Thursday, but even just the one day was plenty of fun. My Korean conversation partner and I bought lots of food (the lines were quite long but worth the wait) and just walked around to see what was going on, and I went back that night to listen to the music performances. I say “listen” because I could not even get near the stage, there were so many people. That night, a rather popular girl group was performing, and I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that there were people lining up at 10 AM in order to get a close spot when the performance finally started at 8 PM. A sight to see. Unfortunately, I did not have that type of motivation, so I just parked myself on the sidelines somewhere and listened along.
But Friday, the day of Ipsilenti, was the real event. The event went from maybe 1 PM to 10 PM and was held at the school’s outdoor soccer field. I had class until 2 that day, so my friend and I got into the stadium around 4, luckily just as the big performances were starting. Let me just tell you, the line to get into the stadium probably stretched up to a mile long. As we were waiting in line, we passed lots of people selling water and other street foods, just adding to that festival atmosphere.
There were a lot of artists who performed at the concert, including Jay Park, PH1, Sikso, Heize, and Red Velvet (if you know who any of these artists are, bonus points to you!). But the singer I was most excited to see was Psy. If you read Chapter 12 and listened to the song that I included at the end, you’ll know who Psy is, but he’s basically a legend amongst Korean artists, and I’ve heard that his concerts are absolutely insane and exhausting just because people are so hyped by his performances. I definitely got a taste of that at Ipsilenti, and after hearing his songs performed live, I can’t help but kind of want to go experience one of his concerts for myself.
Since I can’t upload my own videos on here (which is weird and slightly annoying but oh well, what’re ya gonna do?), I will attach the official video that Psy’s company shot. The way everyone was singing together and going absolutely insane was so fun to see. Also, I actually knew all the lyrics to this song, so I was also having a blast.
The week after that, our internship took us out for a field trip of sorts, letting us pick where we wanted to go so that we could have a day of fun instead of being in the office doing internship work. We ended up choosing Deoksugung Palace and Changdeokgung Palace as our destinations, wanting to experience more of Korean history and also go to some of the most popular tourist destinations.
At Deoksugung Palace, our coworkers had some connections that allowed us to get an inside tour of this very western style building that was built right before the the Japanese occupation that began in 1910. The king at the time had the building, Seokjojeon (석조전), built in the hopes of accelerating modernization in Korea, however these efforts would sadly be wasted as the Japanese took over until 1945. It was definitely interesting to see this western-style building next to the traditional hanok-style architecture, the two standing in direct opposition to each other. Honestly, Seokjojeon is kind of just like any other building you’d see in Washington D.C., and our tour guide made the interesting point that people from the West usually aren’t so much as interested in the architecture and decor as they are in the history. I definitely related with that, and it was just kind of funny to see that something so novel in Korea kind of just resembled what my house in Schaumburg looks like (albeit a lot fancier).
After that we had a delicious meal of traditional Korean food (한정식). Unfortunately, I became very sleepy after eating so much and we still had one palace to go!
At Changdeokgung Palace, rather than focussing on the history, we more so just went to appreciate the aesthetics, taking the opportunity to rent hanbok, or traditional Korean clothes, and take lots of pictures! It wasn’t too hot that day, and the pictures turned out well.
One funny story: I guess there was a group of middle-schoolers out for a field trip at the palace, and they had also decided to rent hanbok (admission is free if you come in wearing the hanbok haha). According to my coworker, a trend nowadays is for the boys to wear the girls’ hanbok and vice versa, a fact which I kind of just laughed at but didn’t really expect to see. But lo and behold, then came this group of middle-school boys wearing literally every genre of hanbok, including the outfits of the upper-class men, the king, and peasants, and yes, even the women. They graciously let us take a picture with them, and I can’t help but laugh every time I see this picture.
Speaking of my internship, I might as well put all the articles I’ve written here. I don’t really remember what my last update on my work was, so I’ll just post the ones I think I didn’t upload. If any look interesting, please feel free to read when you have the time!
We also did an interview about an event we participated in that focussed on spreading awareness of Korea’s cultural heritages. But I guess there’s no English subtitles…? If you’re curious anyways, feel free to watch!
And…that’s everything up until now!
I have made some travel plans and now I really don’t have much to do between now and my final evaluations, so I plan to use my time wisely and go and see a few more places.
I’ll leave you once again with some food pictures 😋
I’ll probably be back for one or two more updates, and then this journey will sadly be over :( But until then, I’ll be out having as much fun as I can!
Until next time~
Song recommendation!
BTS just released new music, you know I will not be shutting up for the foreseeable future.
