糟糕

I had hoped that having left China, I would no longer have the occasion to say "糟糕" (zao1gao1), which means something to the effect of "disaster" or “terrible." But my experience coming home tonight was pretty much the very definition of 糟糕. Here's what happened: after meeting up with Tyler and Andy (two Light Fellows studying at Sogang--more on that later), I decided I should head home since it was getting pretty late, and the subway would be closing. I was at Sinchon, and my destination, Euljiro-4-ga, was perhaps seven stops away with about fifteen minutes left. I though I'd make it, so I took said subway; it turns out, a 1:00 am closing time actually means all the trains stop taking passengers at 12:55 am. Consequently, the rest of the passengers and I had to get off at Euljiro Ipgu (three stops away) and go upstairs to call a cab. I was there for about half an hour before I realized that the taxi drivers only slowed down if there was a girl in the vicinity, and even then, they only picked up the prettiest girls.

Left with no other choices, I ended up walking all the way to my hotel--probably a twenty minute walk normally, but thirty minutes for me because I was tired, sleepy, and couldn't figure out if I was supposed to turn at an intersection or keeping walking straight. I arrived at the hotel sweaty, disoriented, and with a grudge against Seoul taxi drivers. On the bright side (if this story can be said to have a bright side), I did get to see the parts of the city that I usually miss during my commute because I'm underground. I'm not really sure it was worth it. Oh well.

In other news, my first few days in Korea have been relatively eventful. On Tuesday, my first full day here, I checked out COEX and unsuccessfully shopped around for some fobby clothes. For dinner, I met up with three other Korean Yalies living in Seoul, ate some heavenly pho and gelato, and watched a movie (눈눈이이). Yesterday, after hanging out in Apgujeong for a while, I met up with three prefrosh, ate sushi, took sticker pictures (oh the horror), and watched another movie (X-Files--I didn't even know this existed). Today, I went to Sinchon to meet with Tyler and eat dinner, which ended up being amazing sundubu. Afterwards, we met with several upperclassmen, though besides Andy, they ended up going to different places. Tyler, Andy, a Japanese lady in their year at Sogang, and I went to a noraebang (karaoke room just sounds silly) and sang our hearts out, then went over to a bar to chat. After that, as you know... 糟糕.

I never realized how much studying Chinese would help me with Korean until yesterday, when I was speaking with my uncle and he started dropping words like 전세계 (全世界, whole world), 모정 (母情, motherly sentiment), and 일반 (一般, common). It's actually more likely a sign that my Korean is just very bad, but nevertheless, I'm glad my Chinese is actually useful for something still. Another interesting phenomenon that I never noticed before was the abundance of Chinese characters in everyday Korean life; from the subway to billboard advertisements, Chinese characters are everywhere--albeit in traditional. The practicality of this practice is obvious: because Korean is nontonal, many Chinese words become perfect homophones in the Korean language, and the characters become necessary for easy differentiation. I've heard that many people support the completely abolishment of Chinese characters from the Korean lexicon. I wonder how that would work out.

I know I promised photos in the last post, but I'm way too tired to be bothered with resizing and uploading right now. My next post will have photos for sure, plus a commentary/critique on the superficiality of Korean people. Good night.