The First Day of Class!

Tuesday finally came! My first day of real actual Korean class! I was up early yet again due to excitement. Breakfast a little after 8, and a walk across campus does a body good. They told us to meet in the Korean teachers lounge at 9, so of course I'm there half an hour early trying to figure out what to do with my time. 8:45 rolls around and guess who shows up? That's right, Nathan, the American guy from yesterday trying to drop his class. Turns out me showing up helped garner enough interest to starting a new section of the beginning class and he was able to benefit as well.

So we walk into the teachers lounge together and the main teacher from yesterday takes us to a small room next door and sits us down. After a few minutes another Asian guy joins us. Turns out he is from Vietnam. I still haven't quite figured out how to say his name, but I believe it is Heuwia. Our teacher comes in and starts to talk to us in Korean. Most of her speech is to herself, and she translates what is important for us to know into English. Just after class starts another Asian girl comes rushing in out of breath and apologizes for being late. This girl is Chinese and her name is Ting Ting. Yes, Ting Ting.

So our teacher asks us questions to get an idea of how long we have been in Korea, and how much of the language we know. I told her that I had been exposed to the language for about a year, however I basically just knew the alphabet. She laughed at that and was a bit surprised, but hey who isn't with a 6'6 viking giant in Korea?

We get started right away on the alphabet sounds, and basically breeze through everything since most of us were already familiar with it. In fact Nathan seemed to be struggling the most even though he had already taken 2 weeks of this Korean course. Then again, with only one day spent on the alphabet, it would be easy to not have enough exposure to have it come to your head quickly.

I want to do a Korean word/phrase of the day. We didn't really learn any in our first class, but I figure it's a good time to start anyway since the pace is incredibly fast and the difficulty will increase rapidly of what I would be able to help beginners with on this blog anyway.

After class I messaged the other RA's on Kakao and asked if what their plans were for lunch. They were all up for something so Mr. An and I hopped in Heavy G's car and picked up my roommate Yoon Joo Sik for some noms. I had to get the Tangsu JJajang Bap again of course. Afterwards I asked YJS if he wanted some company in the library. He was totally down to study and chill, but I realized I had left my books in our room so I had Heavy G drop me off at the dorm. I sat down to my computer to watch a bit of my buddy's Twitch Stream (Shout out to mah boi Alex Keeler TheEndBoss). when YJS was all "brah u comin to the libary?". Well you can't just leave a man hangin like that so I packed up my books and walked out the dorm.

I have a general idea where the library is, so I message YJS to come out front to meet me when I get there. I wait outside for a few minutes and he pops out. We go upstairs to the 5th floor which is apparently quiet time. There's only 3 of us among a bunch of tables and shelves of books so I get down to work practicing my Korean alphabet. Since I know it pretty well by now I was focusing mostly on the pen strokes. There is a very specific way of writing the Korean alphabet. I find that it's actually pretty intuitive, except for a few things that writing English for 25+ years has trained me to do. I took a break and checked out the view from way up high and snapped a photo for you all.

The view from on high. 5th Floor Daegu University Library.

After about an hour and a half of scribbling away, YJS decided he needed to get back. I needed to go to the book store first though. Why? You guessed it, who needs cash in this society? NOT THIS GUY. At least not yet lol. They gave us books in class and told us we would have to pay the next day. Well I don't have cash so I decided my best course of action would be to go to the book store and buy replacement books. Good thing I did, it cost 20,000 won less than they wanted in class! My books literally cost $32, it would likely be 10 times that in the U.S. I'm good with that.

After the book store we walked back to the dorm to get the K-PACE students ready for dinner, and headed over ourselves. Bulgogi Bibimbap hasn't let me down yet so why stop now?! Me and YJS crushed it together and headed back to the dorm to get ready for fitness center time!

We took the K-PACE guys over to the rec center for an hour of good hard workout. This was my chance to check out the rec center for myself. I'm planning on joining, mainly because it's the only place on campus with decent free weights. One flat bench, one squat rack...whatever it works. The cool stuff is that they have a driving range in the basement with about 300 yards of room. (Very rare to have that much space in Korea).

We walk around to keep an eye on the students while they're working out, and of course keeping the other eye on any babes that might be around. After about an hour we walk back to the dorm and it's getting dark so my sleepy genes take over. I head to bed at about 10pm and its knock out time.

Korean Word of the Day: 안녕하세요 (An nyeong ha se yo) We will keep it super simple today. This means hello. You can cut off the ha se yo part in casual settings if you want for more of a "hi" feel.

TL:DR I'm in Korea.