Classes Begin + Fish Market

Classes have officially begun at SNU! I’m enrolled in East Asia: Past & Present and US & Asia. I’m thinking about majoring in biochemistry (if not some other science-y field) so I’ve never taken a class that’s anything like either of the two I’m taking now. I’m glad I picked these ones though. I feel like I’m expanding my mind and the content is actually really interesting.

East Asia is taught by Professor Eugene Park, a Korean professor from Penn who’s actually the director of the Penn-in-Seoul program, so we get Penn credit for taking his class. S0mething Professor Park talked about that seemed really interesting was  defining “Asia” and how most people only think of East Asia (i.e. China, Japan, and Korea) when discussing Asia. Asia is not only East Asia, though, and we really should include Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand), Inner Asia (Mongolia, Manchuria, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and other Turkic-language-speaking countries), and South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh), and Southwest Asia (Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia). Of course, when a guy says “I’m Asian”, I think almost no one would picture Borat, amirite? The concept of Asia as a whole is pretty interesting and is something I’d never thought about before. He also discussed  other things about Ancient China, Korea, and Japan (i.e. economies, religions, social structure, etc.) We covered a lot of material in 2 lectures, so this summer will definitely be packed with condensed East Asian history. It seems more exciting to learn about this stuff since it’s about my “ancestors” and such; learning about all those white guys in US history and European history wasn’t quite as interesting for me. Prof Park also talked about tracing back mutations in DNA to see migration patterns of humans around thousands of years ago, which I thought was cool. Professor Park has the M122 marker, which is apparently very common in Asian men, so the common ancestor he shares with, say, a Spanish man with the M343 marker, existed around 40,000 years ago (see image below; you can find the common ancestor by finding the diverging point of 2 arrows and checking what color the point is with the legend). Apparently men can get their genes tested by ordering a kit from National Geographic and sending in a sample of cells from the inside of your cheek. Pretty cool stuff.

Tracking DNA mutations on the Y-chromosome and the migration patterns of these mutations. Biology is super cool omg
From: http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/2008-07/evolution_5.jpg

The other class I’m in – US & Asia – is a class about foreign policy between the US and Asia. I know next to nothing about foreign policy except that it’s policy regarding foreign countries (I’m really smart, I know). There are 16 students and one professor in the class; the only Caucasian person is the professor. Literally everyone else is Korean or Korean American (I think one kid might be half white half asian but I’m not 100% certain). Since some of the students aren’t from the US and understanding US foreign policy-making requires some background knowledge of the American government, we spent the first lecture reading the Constitution and Bill of Rights and very briefly discussing some American History. I wish I had paid more attention in Thad Merriman’s US History class in 11th grade, because my knowledge of this stuff is a bit shaky. The professor would ask the American students (maybe 50% of the class) questions about very general American history (i.e. when did the American revolution start adn end) and I felt like those were questions I should be able to answer but couldn’t remember. I haven’t formally learned about the American Revolution since 8th or 9th grade (if I’m remembering correctly) and it never really stuck in my brain. I felt ashamed as an American citizen but also none of the other American students knew or said the answer so I felt a little comforted in my ignorance. I can’t even blame it on my Korean heritage for this because I’ve never been to Korea before now and know even less about Korean government than I do about US government. So basically I’m just another ignorant American teenager. Heh. I think the class will get more interesting once we start talking about foreign policy of Asian countries and how international relations affects foreign policy making in both the US and in various Asian countries.

I haven’t been doing much these past few days because I’ve been trying to adjust to school life and such. Like last night I read 4 articles about East Asia, watched a Korean tv show, and went to sleep (at midnight! so early). Today (Thursday), my US & Asia class was cancelled because the professor went to Jeju Island for some big conference because the president of South Korea, Park Geun Hye (fun fact: she is the first female president of South Korea), is going to China, so he has to cover that for his actual job. Accordingly, Alice, Tiffany, Nicolette, and I decided to take advantage of our free afternoon. We went shopping at the Express Bus Terminal near Gangnam, which is this huuuuuge shopping center in the bus terminal. Everything is super cheap and you can bargain for most things so it’s an awesome place to check out if you’re lookin to save some money. I generally don’t buy clothes here because most Korean girls are approximately the size of a grasshopper, so I bought accessories and cosmetics/skincare stuff. I think I’ve bought like 8 jars of hair wax for my brothers/various other male relatives. We shopped for a few hours and then took the subway to the NoRyangJin (노량진) fish market!

The fish market was incredible. Oh my goodness. It was enormous and there were probably over 100 different vendors (mostly older women and men) selling fish, clams, shrimp, lobster, crabs, scallops, etc. We bought some fresh salmon, some sort of fish with clear meat (i think it was 과어 but I don’t really remember), giant scallops, and tiny live octopi. I ate something alive today. Omg. It was really really delicious and so fresh. We bought all of this for around $35 dollars for 4 people. Mmmmmmm.

The fish market! This was only one of about 6 or 7 rows in the whole market.

The biggest crustacean I’ve ever seen in my life. They were literally monsters.

For context (monster crabs are in the top left tank). There wer also freakishly huge lobsters right below the crabs.

Some of the octopi before we consumed 5 of them. You were delicious, octopus friends.

A veritable feast. Salmon, octopus, and fresh scallop sashimi. MMMMMM.

The octopus was really good. I thought I would be more freaked out by eating something that was still alive and squirming, but I got over it pretty quickly. The suckers got stuck to everything, but, luckily, not the inside of my mouth or throat. I think if that had happened, I would have been traumatized and less willing to eat it. We dipped it in this sauce that comprised of sesame oil, salt, and sesame seeds. Oh so good. If you ever come to Seoul, I highly recommend you visit this fish market. It really helps if you have someone who speaks and understands Korean fluently (Alice saved our butts because she knows Korean and could talk to the merchants), but it’s definitely possible to visit if you or your friends don’t know Korean; you might be ripped off if you’re a foreigner but it’s still really delicious and relatively cheap so it’d be like paying for this stuff in the States. Maybe. I’ve never bought seafood in the States so I don’t really know.

Live octopus. They were still moving even though they were cut up! 😮

I got back from dinner a few hours ago and am just hanging out in my room. Some of the girls in the program decided to go out but I’m really tired and we have to leave at 7:10 tomorrow morning to catch the bus to GyeongJu for our program field trip, so I decided to stay in. I’ve heard that GyeongJu is amazing, so I’m really excited to go!

That’s it for now! I’ll post again after my field trip this weekend!

안녕!