Midterm Day

So as today started I was a bit perturbed. Our teachers told us more than once to be in classroom 1110 at 8:15am to check in for our midterm, and I have a picture to prove it. That's no problem in and of itself, however none of the cafeterias on campus open until 8am. That means I wouldn't have time for breakfast before going to class. Not eating before an intense midterm is not my idea of great preparation, but I don't know protocol around here so I better make sure I'm on time.

PROOF WE WERE SUPPOSED TO MEET AT 8:15 FOR THE MIDTERM!

I get to the classroom and no one is there. Ok, I must be late and they moved everyone or something. Nope! Nowhere to be found. Maybe they're somewhere I don't know, hopefully they check the classroom for me then. I'll just chill in 1110 and wait. Turns out no one got there until 8:45. Like what is this? I know about Korean time, but that's just ridiculous. I am definitely not myself when I don't eat, and I didn't have a snickers to fix it either :(.

Anyways, it won't be that bad right? Just 3 hours of testing on an empty stomach. Then I get to go eat. The vocab/grammar/reading portion was a bit tough. It seemed like they introduced new vocab during the test. I don't know what Jedi mind games those are, but hey, whatever they wanna do. Then the teacher announced during our break that we will be forgoing the speaking portion of the test until next week. Score! I get out an hour earlier to go grab my food! (My mind was one track by now.) Nope, not to be. After our second hour of testing it was time to have 2 more hours of class! Definitely not how they do it in America.

For those of you super eager to find out, yes we did introduce a new conjugation today! Yay! This one was a doozy too. This particular conjugation is used for polite speech with someone you know. For instance a grandmother or grandfather, but not to use while addressing a group of people you don't know such as a speech in front of business associates or on a news broadcast. The better part is that it's conjugated exactly like adding "please" from before! Sweet right? That makes logical sense, you'd be asking a person respectfully to please do something. Nope. Totally different. Just the SAME. EXACT. SPELLING.

I get it, you listen to the context of the sentence to figure out what the person is actually saying, but I wanna know who decided this was a good idea. I mean I know the great King Sejong invented the language, but I doubt he was chillin in his throne room saying "this one will get em, we'll make everything sound alike but mean totally different things!" Or maybe he was, who knows. Regardless I have massive amounts of studying to do.

After class I went to lunch with Monkmandakh the Mongolian Monster. He was apparently a professional DOTA player for awhile which is really cool. I really enjoy watching pro gaming so this intrigues me. He told me during class today that he had won a few regional championships and had played some sponsored teams that smashed his team. Good times.

After lunch I invited him back to the dorm for some Alex and chill. He showed me a few of the DOTA events that he had participated in, and after an hour or so he had to go to play basketball. I took a quick nap then headed to the gym before dinner. Otherwise I've just been chilling in my room watching twitch and looking over Korean.

I got a bit of a relaxing day because my entire floor is empty! The students that didn't go on the senior trip to America went to what is called MT until Friday night. MT is Membership Training as I mentioned and I don't know what that is. All I know is that now I realize how boring and empty my life would be without these students and other RA's. As much as I love it here I can't imagine coming here alone to study. Now I realize things would be different if I lived in the international dorms. I certainly would have more American friends, and probably friends from all nationalities that could speak any kind of English, but it wouldn't be the same.

I am so thankful to God for my position here. I have been afforded the chance to really be in the heart of Korean culture and I have been inserted in a place where I am immediately accepted and helped. Glory be to God, and thanks to Dr. Carol Burns and Dr. Kunyong Rhee as well as all the other people involved for making this happen. Tomorrow marks my being here for 1 month officially! Time really flew, I can't imagine what will be happening at the end of next month let alone 11 months from now, but I'm really excited to find out.

Korean Word/Phrase of the Day: 여헹 (Yeo Haeng) This means "travel". This was also one of the things that was introduced to us on the test. It was also an essay question. So I had to make up a bunch of stuff about how awesome "여헹" was without knowing what I was talking about. I'm sure it was mentioned before the test, but it certainly wasn't talked about extensively enough to make a dent in anyone's mind. Love the mind games, you win this round Korea! *Shakes fist vehemently*

TL:DR I'm in Korea.