Today I had my first day of classes. My Korean language class does not start until the beginning of April because it is an intensive course so it will meet for I think two or three hours every day. So right now I just have half a load of courses, which is two additional classes.
My first class is Korean Unification Policies. We have about 40 or so students in the class, as of right now I am the only white person. However many of the people in the class could be international students. The class sounds pretty interesting. We will analyze other unification policies that have taken place such as in Germany. We watched an insane video on a performance put on by North Korea at a celebration of Kim Il-Sung’s birthday (Kim Jung-Il’s father). It is incredible. At the same time you can’t help but imagine what these people go through for this, especially the kids that do acrobatics that I don’t think they should be able to do.
The second class is History of Korea-US Relations. There is only 8 people in the class, not only am I the only white person in this class, but I also know that I am the only American. The professor went over the course and I know it will be quite interesting because at times there can be strong emotions of contempt for American policies, and part of the course covers anti-Americanism.
Today I also got my cell phone, finally! Now my roommate and other international students in the house we’ve befriended can finally be connected! It’s been such a huge pain not being able to get a hold of anyone unless you see them face to face. I am also able to now call my friend that I met who’s a local and has been helping me buy a few things. The other day she helped me go buy a hair blow dryer, a hand mirror and some flip flops. The city is so crowded its hard to find places that sell stuff like mirrors and hair blow dryers.
My cell phone seems pretty cool. It doesn’t have T9 on it, which is strange. Maybe Korean’s don’t use T9, I don’t know. Its a Korean phone but it can be changed to English text, however there’s still some Korean in parts of the menu system.
My Korean cell number is 010.8050.0390
March 7th, 2009 at 2:33 am
I thought you were going to get one of those fancy ones that turns into a robot or a toilet or something like that.
Hope you are studying hard. (HA!)