Well the day started off great due to my first class being canceled meaning that I did not have to be anywhere until 1:20 pm. I was almost late to the class waiting on the elevators in SK Global House. I now now that I have need to expect to leave 40 minutes before my class because it will take sometimes 10-15 minutes for an elevator. I was very lucky today because I did not get heavy rain while I was outside, but after my last class it started pouring as soon as I made it inside. HA, so in Korean Culture and the Cultural Wave we watched a movie called Shiri (쉬리) and it was very good. We actually didn’t watch the whole thing, but rather three different sections of the movie. The movie was so good that when she asked us about I tried to speak and ended up almost crying. Wow, I am super emotional at times and you could even hear awing in my classroom because I said I couldn’t speak anymore.
I believe that I told you that I had started my Teaching Certification.Well after doing some calculations I realized that I need to do about 8 1/2 units worth of learning per week to finish it within one month. I don’t want to still be working on my certification when I should be studying for finals so I will definitely do my best to put as much time into it as possible.
As many of you already know today is the 4th of July here. Just in case you didn’t know or remember I even put it in the title for you! This morning on Facebook one of my best friends dads asked me if I knew what the 4th of July stood for and why we celebrate it. He said that many of his nieces say it’s just a day to shoot fireworks and have no real meaning of the day. I found that very saddening, but I thought about it and realized that a lot of Americans probably don’t know what it means. You learn in school about the wars and the Declaration of Independence, but when I think about it I can’t really remember talking about the 4th of July in a manner that didn’t make me want to sleep. Interestingly enough I remembered what the 4th of July is and replied, “It’s to celebrate the Declaration of Independence being adopted by Continental Congress. It marked the beginning of our own country in that it declared us separate from the Kingdom of Great Britain who had been ruling over us.” Not sure where all that information came from, but yeah, I was pretty darn proud of myself and it made me happy that I took all those history classes that I couldn’t stand. So what did you do to celebrate today? Celebrate? I did absolutely nothing! I knew that I needed to focus on my teaching units and I wanted to do some Korean lessons as well so I decided to celebrate tomorrow since I’m going bowling with friends.
Tips:
Don’t be over American. Ren I don’t even know what that means. Oh that’s good then, hopefully it means that you are not being over American. When I say this I mean that you should don’t bring any flag t-shirts, a flag, patriotic purse, or anything that just screams “Hey I’m an American.” People will know that you are different if you don’t know Korean and even if you do know they will most likely ask you where you are from and what you are doing in S. Korea. I’m not telling you to hide your American pride, but I’m saying to keep it on the inside.
Cough medicine! A lot of people have been getting mini colds from the air conditioners. I absolutely love Korean air conditioners (they call it air con) because they cool a room so much faster than the American ones.That also seems to be an issue since many of my friends have come down with some cough and had to keep their air conditioners off. I believe my throat got messed up from having too much air on me and now that I have my own room that allows me to completely control the temperature my throat is almost back to normal.
Tomorrow is my K-pop singing class….can’t wait to tell you about it!
MusicalSeoul 