Last Day at KLC + 2PM Concert

I’ve finished my 4-week internship at the Korea Leadership Center! I’m sad to leave my new 친구들 and 선배님들 (friends and seniors) at the company but I’m also excited to start the second leg of my motherland adventures. I’m writing this post from Daegu because I didn’t have wifi until tonight. HyunJi, BK’s sister, and I were having trouble figuring out the wifi situation here (how many Korean women does it take to turn on the wifi, amirite) but I eventually remembered that I have this nifty little wifi-hotspot egg thing that JeungHo oppa gave me so I’m finally putting it to use

On Thursday night we had a surprise going away dinner! All of our roommates/friends/people who weren’t busy/people who wanted free food came and ate with us and shared sentimental things. It was really nice. We had really good food (ddeokbokki, pizza, chicken, etc) and they all signed letters for us. So precious.

Goodbye dinner!

My lovely goodbye letter

I also took a nice group photo with my WebPlan friends. I really enjoyed working with them and I’m really glad I was put in Webplan instead of the promotional team as originally planned! We also took some random pictures with Hector’s roommate Ee-Shin (이신)

Webplan! 화이팅!

이신 선배님!

I spent all Friday afternoon packing all of my crap into my suitcases. This might have been the biggest struggle of my life until that moment. I didn’t realize I had bought so much stuff and I didn’t really have anywhere to put it…. Plus I had to pack separate bags for Daegu so I was kind of limited for space. I eventually crammed everything into my suitcase except for my shampoo and conditioner, which I gifted to my roommate. After I finished packing, I had to lug all my crap to the information center, which was all the way down the hill from my house. I had though packing my suitcase was difficult, but bringing my suitcase down the staircase from my house to the street and then dragging the bag from the top to the bottom of the hill was about 1098354781 times harder . The struggle was so real.

We left KLC at around 6PM. Without traffic, it takes about an hour and a half to get to Seoul. The concert I went to started at 8PM and I was really worried I would make it on time. Luckily, though, we made it into the city at around 7:30 and I met with BK at 7:40 to give him my stuff and then took the subway to the concert venue. I got to the stadium at almost exactly 8PM and I though I’d be late and they wouldn’t let me in (I form really irrational thoughts when I’m stressed out or tired). They did in fact let me in though and I got to my seat 5 seconds before the show started.

2PM is one of my favorite kpop groups, so please pardon my bout of fan-girling. But ASL;DFJA;SKDFA;LDKFJ THEY WERE SO GOOD. I still miss being at that concert and it’s been a full 24 hours. I could live the rest of my life happily sitting in section 35 row 12 seat 5 in Jamsil Olympic Stadium as long as 2PM were perpetually performing. OMG. I still can’t even believe I saw them. I almost didn’t go because I thought I wouldn’t make it on time and I thought going by myself would be unbearably awkward but I went anyways and I’m so glad I did. The fact that I was on a solo date was only awkward for about 3 seconds but then 2PM started their show and I quickly forgot about it. The audience consisted of 10,000 screaming Korean girls. The only guys I saw there were most likely dragged along by their crazed girlfriends. Anywho, 2PM is known for having great live performances and they didn’t disappoint. I took a few (hundred) pictures, which I’m almost certain was illegal, but basically I’m a ninja and sniped all of these pictures without security noticing. Unless they did notice and are patiently waiting to strike……….Either way I’m safe right now and that’s all the matters right?

2PM WHAT TIME IS IT GRAND FINALE IN SEOUL OMG <33333

The fine men of 2PM

gah dying

The stadium. My seat was less than ideal but I’m pretty sure I got the last legally-sold ticket so it was all good.

Ahhhh posting those pictures brought on a fresh wave of nostalgia from Friday night (it’s Saturday night now). I’ll remember this concert forever. Well, I’ll remember it for at least the next 2 years because I bought a 2 year 2PM calendar outside of the concert venue after it ended. Don’t judge.

Me with my nice and useful new calendar heheheheheheheheheheheheheheh

The concert ended at 11:00PM and then I took the subway 2 more stops to meet up with BK and HyunJi to go to their apartment. The plan was to leave for Daegu early the next morning so I spent the night at their place. We got to their apartment at around midnight and I didn’t sleep until maybe 2. Overall I was so happy I decided to buy the ticket and go by myself. OMG. Greatest concert of my life. If you’re an avid fan like myself and would like to have a more in-depth discussion about the show, feel free to facebook message me or something. I wrote down the whole setlist and some notes. Heh.

Anywho, I’ll post shortly about my trip to Daegu thus far. I’ve met many of my dad’s cousins and their children and their children’s children all in 1 day.

안녕!

Scary Movie + Weekend Plans + KPop Stuff

Now that we’ve run out of work to do, we (the 5 Penn interns) are looking for ways to pass time. Last night, we decided to watch a scary movie. As I am in fact a baby and not actually a functional adult person as I appear to be, I’m terrified of scary movies. We picked The Shrine, a Canadian horror film about 3 Americans (a journalist, her boyfriend, and the journalists’s intern) who hear about a bunch of people being killed in a certain village in Poland. So, logically, they travel to the village and see what’s going on for themselves and chaos ensues. It was all demon-y and supernatural and stuff like that. [Spoiler alert] Honestly, I think it was kind of a political statement; American people belligerently invaded this village and its quaint every day life and were turned into demons because of their nosiness. The people of the fictitious village then have to go out of their way to kill these people to contain the demons and save the rest of the world from their evil. So basically the stupid Americans are the bad guys and everything would have been totally fine if they hadn’t shown up to meddle in the Polish people’s business.

If you’re interested, here’s the trailer (although I don’t particularly recommend it):

The acting was really really really really really bad and the plot was only okay but I was still pretty scared. In general I can’t watch scary movies because I tend to internalize my fear and then when I’m alone, say, in my kitchen at home getting a glass of water in the middle of the night, all the pent up fear from watching these movies surfaces and then I have to either run upstairs or turn on all the lights in the house. I’m not sure how normal or not normal this is but it’s a thing and I’ve accepted it. I just try to avoid scary movies now because if you avoid all your problems then you’ll lead a happy life. Life advice from Jennifer Kang.

Also on a more general note, monsoon season has officially started in Korea! Woooo…..? It rained like crazy yesterday (Tuesday June 18) but today it’s sunny and warm. I have yet to get an umbrella or raincoat or any other form of rain gear so hopefully I can get my hands on some soon. Or maybe I’ll just walk around in the rain. People were able to survive for a while without raincoats or  modern umbrellas, so maybe I’ll be okay. Knowing my luck though I’d probably get pneumonia and have to go home. So I’ll probably just spend a few dollars on an umbrella and call it a day.

Me without an umbrella #MonsoonSeason2013

Anyways, this weekend is the transition between our internship and taking classes at Seoul National University. I was supposed to go to Daegu on Friday night but I have a farewell party thing at work so it would have been too late/inconvenient for ByungKwan and HyunJi to pick me up, so we decided to leave Saturday morning. With this new change in schedule, I can now go to the 2PM concert in Seoul that I really wanted to go to! I had given up hope of going because a) the tickets sold out in like 4 seconds a month ago and b) I was supposed to be in Daegu visiting family and Kang ancestral graves and stuff. However, after endless scouring online today, I found a ticket on InterPark (it’s kind of like TicketMaster), and I’m pretty sure it was the last ticket available for either days of the concert. I feel bad because I was going to go with my friend Sally if we could get 2 tickets……but I’m a bad person and I’m selfish so I bought the ticket and, unless another one goes on sale in the next few days, I’ll be going alone. We’re still looking for tickets in case people are selling 2 seats together though. Sally: 화이팅!!!! I’ve never gone to a concert alone and I don’t know Korean so I most likely won’t be able to understand what they’re saying. The beautiful thing about kpop concerts is that I won’t be the only crazed Asian girl fan. Literally all 10,000 people in attendance will be just like me. Maybe I can bond with the people sitting around me over our mutual love for these Korean idols.

2PM *drool*

*dying*

In the world of Korean music, they are known for their masculinity rather than their feminity/pretty looks.If you think they look girly, you can’t even imagine what some of the other idols look like…. Some of them look like they could be girls. And pretty girls at that. For example, this is another group that I really like, SHINee (pronounced “shiny”). They dressed up as girls for a show they were on and I actually thought a few of them were actually female

SHINee dressed as women (the one with the red headband isn’t in SHINee though. I think he’s a comedian). They’re all male. Heh.

Anyways, pardon my kpop ranting. I just really like them and I don’t get to talk about it too much but this is my blog so I’ll write about what I feel like. Plus literally nothing exciting has happened here over the last few days so I figured I’d write about something.

I’ll post again later when there’s more to write about!

안녕!

Temple Visit + Family Fun Time Part 2 + New Hairdo

안녕하세요! I just got back from another weekend in Seoul (it occurs to me that I haven’t spent a weekend here in Anseong… maybe that’s when all the fun happens. but probably not). I spent time with my lovely Aunt Yomee (my mom’s cousin) and her parents, 이모할모니 and 이모부할아버지 (great aunt and great uncle, respectively). They have an awesome apartment in Seoul and I hung out with them Saturday morning through Sunday evening.

On Friday, before I left for Seoul, us 5 Penn interns visited a local Buddhist temple. We have to write a 10 page report about globalization in Korea and we had to visit a place with historical or cultural value to include in our report. We chose the temple because it’s relatively close and we didn’t have to pay to go (except for taxi fees) and we had a good idea of how we’d incorporate it into our paper. So we ventured to the Chiljangsa temple (칠장사 신전) for the afternoon to look at cool Buddhist things.

Temple fun

Casual selfie with Mawunyo with a photobomb by Bruce Lee (Vincent) #PennInChiljangsa

Water that you can supposedly drink (it was a lot clearer than it looks here). I was the only one who drank it, though… so if you hear that I’ve contracted a mysterious disease, this is probably why.

There were a few signs scattered around in front of various buildings with Korean and English descriptions, which were helpful. I think they also offered tours of the grounds. Part of our trip was to see if the temple has been affected by globalization, so I think that they offered information in English shows an attempt to reach out to a more global/foreign audience. South Korea has been one of the fastest growing economies/countries in the world in the past 50 years, so globalization/ modernization has happened very rapidly throughout the country.

I left for Seoul on Saturday morning and met with Aunt Yomee at the bus terminal. Her parents have a beautiful apartment in Seoul and, for the second time in 4 weeks, I got to sleep on a bed. It’s pretty strange that the prospect of sleeping on a bed and not the floor has become such a special occasion for me. Living in Korea is definitely different. I really like it though and I already wish I were staying longer, even though I still have 5 more weeks.

After I got to their apartment, 이모할모니 made me 떡국 (rice cake soup [pronounced ddeok-gook], which is probably my favorite Korean food) and other good Korean stuff. I haven’t had a home-cooked Korean meal in a really long time so it felt like I was home. After lunch we hung out for a little and then Aunt Yomee took me shopping…heh. So much shopping.

We went to Lotte World, which is different from anywhere I’ve ever seen or experience in my whole life. I didn’t get any pictures, but here’s a sample from Google images:

The inside of Lotte World. It’s like Disney World threw up inside the Mall of America from eating too much at the food court. Photo from: http://yokorea.com/files/coupons/images/yokorea-coupon-lotteworld-ticket-002.jpg

It was super bright and colorful and I felt like I was in a cartoon. Of course, my eyes are entirely too small for an Asian cartoon, so I knew it was real life. There’s tons of stores and restaurants and activities for people of all ages. Most of the stores were independent brands, but quite a few were Lotte brand. Like there was Lotteria (it’s sort of like McDonalds) and the Lotte Department Store and the Lotte Duty Free Shop and the Lotte Indoor Amusement Park and the Lotte Cultural Museum and so many more Lotte related places. It was a little overwhelming, and it added to the feelings that Lotte World wasn’t actually a real place.

We walked around the whole mall and stopped by a few stores. I bought some really cute stuff that you can probably only get in Korea (i.e. a squirrel rice scooper; the part that scoops the rice is the tail and the handle is the body and it has arms and legs so it can stand. It’s basically the cutest thing I’ve ever purchased and I’ve decided that it will be the official rice scooper of the Du-Hu-Kang-Pi apartment next year. Christine, Jenny, and Elise: I’m sorry this wasn’t a democratic decision). Aunt Yomee and I also had time to catch up, as I haven’t seen her in a while. She visited us all the time growing up so we’re pretty close. It was nice talking to someone that has a firm command of the English language (besides the Penn interns). I feel like my English-speaking abilities have deteriorated from trying to speak to some of the people here, and if my grasp of English disappears then I’ll be in trouble since I speak no other languages.

After shopping we met up with Aunt Yomee’s dad to go to dinner. We went to this pretty fancy place, and Aunt Yomee’s dad knows the owner so the overall experience was really nice.

A veritable feast of appetizers. There’s 3 types of salad (one with grape dressing, one with duck, and one with a type of gelatin), some sort of seasoned root, pancake, kimchi, and noodles. yum yum yum yum.

Another veritable feast of main courses. There’s dried fish, more salad, a different type of kimchi, soup, various vegetable side dishes, and rice. Soooooo good.

We went back to the apartment after dinner, where Aunt Yomee’s mom showed me the following picture:

Kang family + my mom’s parents back in the day. Bobby, my grandpa, and my dad look exactly the same as they do now, Thomas was super chub, and my mom and I have the same haircut. I also looked really stupid. Good times.

On Sunday, I woke up at around 10:30 and lazed about until lunchtime. One of the great (and potentially dangerous) things about Korea is that basically every restaurant delivers food to your house. So we ordered jajangmyun (noodles with black bean sauce) and tangsooyook (fried chicken with sweet/sour sauce) for lunch. It was around 7,000 won ($7) and you don’t have to tip the delivery guy. It’s quite convenient and reeeeaaaaaalllllllllly good. The delivery guy also comes back to pick up the bowl when you’re done.

Tasty lunch

(Thomas: they also have this with jampong instead of tangsooyook. I think it’s called jajampong. You need to come to Korea asap)

On Saturday night, I made an impulse decision to get my hair done while I’m here. It’s hard to find a hair dresser in Pittsburgh who understands Asian hair, so I was excited to get a legit hair cut/perm. I’ve become this much closer to becoming an actual Korean girl by perming my hair. Aunt Yomee got her hair done too, so we went to the hair place together. Our appointment was Sunday at 12:30 and we finished at around 4:15. The whole process was really intense; first they cut my hair, then they put this really strong smelling solution in my hair, then they washed that out and put my hair in this crazy heated curler contraption, then they straightened the top half of my hair, then they readjusted the curlers, then they took them out and dried my hair. (that was an atrocious run on sentence and for that I apologize).

Super intricate hair curling machine

The end result!

I’m quite happy with how it turned out and I’m glad I decided to do it! c:

Sorry this post was pretty long…I couldn’t think of a good/not-awkward place to divide the content. Anywho, this is the last full week at KLC for our internship! Time really does fly. I’m heading to Daegu this weekend to visit some Kang relatives (I think I’m meeting the “head of the Kang family” so that should be interesting) with ByungKwan and HyunJi. I hear that Daegu is the hottest place in Korea (not socially but climatically) and monsoon season is supposed to start this week, so…..yeah this weekend should be nice and damp. After Daegu I’m moving into my dorm at Seoul National University for 5 weeks of classes. My internship in Anseong/KLC was really fun and I really like the people I work with, but I’m pretty excited to not have to take a 90 minute bus ride to get into Seoul.

Thanks for reading! I’ll be sure to write again when more things happen.

안녕!

p.s. Father’s Day shout out to Big Jim. You’re my favorite Dad in the whole world. Sorry for always making you mad by spending all your money. heh. You da best.

Daily Life + Korean Things

My blog has 552 hits! Waaaah! (I think it’s because my mom shared it on Facebook but still it’s exciting!) Thanks for reading c:

people actually read my blog! 😮

Nothing too exciting has happened in the past few days… Today we had a symposium/workshop on green sustainable development called “Awaken the Dreamer, Changing the Dream.” Basically we learned about the current state of various environmental crises, spiritual fulfillment amongst the different peoples of the world (i.e. indigenous/3rd world vs 1st world), social justice, and unexamined assumptions (i.e. human supremacy, or that material wealth necessarily equates happiness). Some of the things we talked about were actually really interesting. It showed a lot of super-brainwashing environmental videos that my mom would eat up. It was actually pretty influential though so now I might actually use those weird reusable bags that my mom loves when I go shopping.

I occasionally see my WebPlan 친구s (friends, pronounced “chin-goo”) around the KLC campus and they awkwardly say hi or other random things to me. A few days ago, I was putting away my dishes after dinner and one of my WebPlan colleagues JiMuk (지묵) came up to me and we had the following conversation:

JM: Jenny! Hi!

Me: Hi!

JM: You no work anymore

Me: Yeah, I finished all my WebPlan work, so I don’t come in anymore…

JM: I shock! Shock! See? Shock! *points to his moustache*

Me: ……what?

JM: Shock! See? *points to his moustache again*

Me: ……what?

JM: *laughs* Okay, bye! *leaves*

This was a few days ago and I’m still as confused as I was right after it happened. I think it has something to do with some Korean saying that facial hair is indicative of shock… but I’m not entirely sure. If anyone has any insight to offer as to why shock would make him grow a moustache, please tell me.

Jimuk is super cool and really funny and he’s probably the WebPlan worker who I’m closest with. He makes the most effort to talk to me even though his English isn’t that good. He’s not embarrassed though and I really appreciate his efforts to befriend me. When I got bored during my last few days of WebPlan work, I would sit with him and he’d show me pictures of his wife and his dog and funny videos of the other KLC people doing funny things (i.e. playing Jenga or riding unicycles or putting a chip at the end of a chain of dominos and seeing if they could catch it in their mouth after all the dominos fell). Good times, good times.

Also, on a slightly different note, the WebPlan workforce mostly consists of guys, and Korean people are really concerned about appearance. One day, we were all in the car driving back to the office from lunch, and John said that one of my other coworkers Kim Baek Song was really handsome, especially for a guy from a “country town” like Anseong. He said he was “Mr. Anseong”, and sometimes when I can’t remember his name, I refer to him as such…Which is really weird now that I think about it. They all started talking about how good-looking he is and then they told me to rank all of them in terms of handsomeness. I saw this coming as soon as they started talking about how handsome Baek Song is, and in case you’re weirded out by this, this happens all the time in Korea… Well actually I’m not sure about it if actually happens in real life but it happens all the time in the Korean talk show/game shows I watch so I wasn’t too surprised or weirded out. I was a little uncomfortable though and I didn’t want to make any awkward situations among my coworkers so I said I couldn’t rank them. They kept badgering me about it but I kept saying no, so they told me to either write it down and give them the list before I leave or to tell my supervisor Annie when they’re not around. I haven’t done either of those things, though… It felt like I was sexually harassing them or something. I do have an idea of how I would rank them, but still… I didn’t want things to be awkward. It was a few weeks ago and I think they’ve forgotten about it, so it’s all good.

Anywho, right now we’re sitting in the conference room writing reports about the Awaken the Dreamer symposium. They gave us a lot of time (5 hours) to write a 2 page report, so I finished it in like 30 minutes and now have 4.5 hours of free time. We had someone drive us to the supermarket and we bought a plethora of Korean snacks:

About half of the snacks we bought… we consumed the other half. heh.

There’s a lot of Choco-pie and other tasty Korean snacks. I bought a few triangular kimbab (김밥, pronounced ghim-bahp). “Kim” means seaweed and “bab” means rice, which, as the name suggests,  is rice wrapped with dried seaweed and filled with various things like spinach or egg or ham. It’s essentially a California roll but, like, better. The one I bought had kimchi (spicy cabbage.. i think) and ham. Because the seaweed tends to get soggy very quickly, they manufacturers have developed this game-changing wrapping system that keeps the seaweed dry:

Unopened triangular kimbab. The plastic wrap is on the outside and also between the seaweed and rice to keep the seaweed dry.

Step 1: Remove the strip to divide the wrapper in half

Step 2: Remove the right half of the wrapper to expose half of the kimbab.

Step 3: Remove the left side of the wrapper to expose the whole kimbab.

Step 4: Eat the kimbab ^_^ #superasian

They sell these in basically every store across the country, and each one c0sts around 800 won (around 80 cents). I really wish these were a thing in the States.

Someone also bought a can of Pepsi, which are, in general, much more fun here:

Hell yeah it is #pepsitime #funtime

I also just found this video called “S*** Korean Girls Say” that perfectly encapsulates the extent of my Korean speaking abilities. Basically I sound exactly like this wigged white man:

My personal favorites are “왜?!?!” (pronounced “wae”, which means “why” or “what”) and “어떻게?” (oh-toh-kae? which means like “what should I do”).

I think this is essentially how native Korean people see me….a white person poorly disguised as an Asian. I think it’s because that’s essentially how I actually am. Having grown up in the super white suburb of Mt Lebanon Pennsylvania, I am basically the definition of what one would call a “twinkie” or “banana”: yellow (Asian) on the outside but white on the inside. I think it’s like super obvious here too so that’s why everyone automatically converses with me in English.

That’s about all I have to say today. I’ll post again when something interesting happens!

안넝!

Work Life + Glitter

The work support portion of our internship ends in a few days, so there’s not much work for us to do anymore. After work support ends, we have to write a bunch of reports and then visit a historically or culturally important site in Korea and write a report on that. I finished all my internship tasks on Friday morning so my supervisor told me that I don’t have to go to WebPlan anymore. Last Wednesday we went out to lunch. We had makguksu (막국수), which is a cold noodle dish with spicy pepper paste and dried seaweed and other things. It’s really good to eat in the summer.  John decided to draw me again during our lunch excursion (for old times’ sake I guess)

Me holding a bowl of makguksu

Because I had no more WebPlan work, Mawunyo, Bryan, and I had to do “warehouse” work on Monday.

Basically I was fulfilling my social/cultural/ethnic niche of being an Asian child laborer.

… Except that I’m a legal adult so I guess it’s too late to be a child laborer. Dang.

Anywho, I didn’t have to go to work in the morning and warehouse work started at 1PM so I had a nice morning of lazing around on my bed mat doing nothing (which is how I spend the majority of my time at home). At 1PM we left for the warehouse, and when we got there, there were rows and rows of boxes filled with Franklin Planners and related Franklin Planner products.

so many boxes though #FranklinPlannersfordays

Our job at the warehouse was to pack Franklin Planners into their respective boxes for clients. Each box was about the size of a dictionary. We had to unfold the box, put a binder, the planner pages, and a refill pack into each box, and then close the lid to each box and stack them on a platform. We had to stuff 50 boxes for each type of Franklin Planner, so we ended up packing around 250 boxes. There was something really soothing about doing such a menial, mindless task. As I said in my last post, I feel like factory/warehouse work suits me well. Maybe I should drop out of school and move to Anseong and work at this warehouse for the rest of my life. I could live at the KLC dorm and work at WebPlan in the mornings and the warehouse in the afternoons. I think I could adapt to the wake up/eat breakfast/work/eat lunch/work/eat dinner/go to sleep routine they’ve got going on here. This will be my new official plan C if my current plans A and B don’t work out (plan B is to learn to become a nail technician and be one of the rare and surprising English-speaking Asian manicurists).

After finishing filling the boxes, we were given order forms with lists of products that clients wanted. We had to find each product based on their serial number and location (i.e. B-01-01, section B, 1st row, 1st column) and put them in a box. It was basically a glorified scavenger hunt…except it wasn’t  really that glorified. So it was just a normal scavenger hunt.

After we finished our scavenger hunt, we packed more boxes for a few hours. After we finished packing a set of 50 boxes, we learned that someone gave us the wrong planner pages so we had to take them all our and put in the new ones… It would have been frustrating had it been non-menial work but I just put in my earphones and listened to music while unpacking and repacking the boxes. The more I did this the more I thought that I should choose a career that requires minimal thinking. It was quite easy.

After we got back from the warehouse, we ate dinner (following the typical KLC routine of course) and went back to our respective houses. I was a little bored though and decided to paint my nails. I don’t have any of my fancy nail polish things here so I couldn’t do anything really detailed. I got a free nail-polish set when buying makeup stuff though so I just used that. It came with these little pots of glitter so I thought I’d use that. I went to the conference room to do my nails since I didn’t want my roommate to think I was trying to kill her with nail polish fumes. Anyway I went to the conference room and sat at the table to do my nails. I forgot that glitter is super messy though so there was glitter all over the table and the floor and the chair I was sitting on… I tried to clean it up to the best of my abilities but glitter is just one of those things that goes away when it wants to go away, so I eventually gave up and left. There was still a considerable amount on the chair and on the table. Normally, people don’t really use the conference room though so I wasn’t that worried.

The next morning, though, I saw people having a meeting in the conference room. Some guy wearing a nice suit was sitting in the seat I was using to paint my nails……..so I think there was glitter all over the butt of his pants. heh. My bad. Hopefully he didn’t get that much on his pants…or he didn’t notice. Or nobody told him.

Anyway my nails are pretty and I’m sure he’s fine so it’s all good

pretty nails yay

The glitter keeps coming off though so I leave a sparkly trail behind me now…. It could be worse though.

This is basically what happens to my nail polish whenever i move my hands

Anywho, that’s all for now. After today we have to start other work, so if anything interesting happens then I’ll post about it.

안녕!

 

p.s. if anyone wants any Korean makeup/hair products/skin care products, hit me up. It’s pretty cheap here and I’m basically a frequent shopper at these stores now so just let me know.

p.p.s. shout out to Chloe Park. Thanks for your 13 snapchats in the middle of the night Korea time… u rock gurl. so I put you in my blog as requested.

Gangnam (Style) Adventures

안녕, friends! This post is kind of long and for that I apologize. It’s mostly pictures though I promise.

Also on a side note, if you read my KLC Party Time + Day Off post, my coworkers (Song Baek Kim and Jung Bok Tae, 2  guys (around 30 years old) who work in WebPlan with me) told my boss while I was standing there on Friday that I drank 2 bottles of soju by myself on Wednesday night…..This may or may not be true, but it was spread out over like 8 hours. They of course failed to mention that. Another guy who wasn’t there on Wednesday was really surprised and said that he can only drink one bottle. I’m not sure if that’s more embarrassing for me or for him, though. I have confirmed that they all like embarrassing me. They said they think it’s funny……..not cool guyz.

After a tiring weekend in Gangnam and a tiring day  at work, I am sitting down on my bed mat using one of the approximately 6,000 free sample face masks that I got while shopping for cosmetics. I really hope my roommate doesn’t come back from the shower for at least 20 more minutes (how long I have to wear this mask) because I’m fairly certain that I look like a ghost. Or a monster. But at least I’ll look like a ghost/monster with nice skin! ㅋㅋㅋ

We (Vincent, Bryan, and I [Mawunyo wasn’t feeling well so she stayed in Anseong]) left for Seoul at around 7:40 AM on Saturday. I’m usually not about that life (i.e. waking up before 9….okay, 10….okay, noon… on weekends [don’t judge me]) but we figured it would be best to spend as much time as possible in Gangnam. Plus someone was going to Seoul for a workshop at 7:40 and that was the only time we could snag a ride to the bus station. It takes about an hour and 10 minutes to get into the city from Anseong, so we all got a nice early morning nap while commuting to Gangnam Express Bus Terminal.

Hello Gangnam (강남)

Gangnam iz pretty k00l u gaiz

Hooray for modern cities

We arrived in Gangnam at around 9:30AM and went to Shinsegae, a really fancy department store right next to the bus terminal. The bottom floor of Shinsegae is a giant food court, except it’s not bad mall food like at other malls. A bunch of people make all this really good food and sell it fresh for dirt cheap prices. I bought a giant dumpling (왕만두 wahng-mahn-du) for less than 1,000won (it was around 80 cents I think). I watched the lady steam it and she handed it to me right out of the wooden steamer contraption. It was probably the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten in my 19 years. That sounds lame because 19 years isn’t even that long but still it was really good.

After eating a quick breakfast/brunch, we went upstairs to look through the rest of the department store. I was told that if I wanted to buy super fancy cosmetics, this was the place to go. The only stuff I saw there though was like Chanel, Shiseido, Clinique, and other stuff that I could easily find at the Macy’s in the mall that’s 10 minutes from my house… Plus I think it’s more expensive here. We looked through the rest of the mall but most of the stores there were stores I could go to in the States (i.e. Burberry, Tiffany&Co, etc) so I didn’t buy anything there. After that we went to Garosugil, a famous street in Gangnam with a lot of trendy/expensive shops and restaurants. We got off the subway about 2 blocks from the street and we somehow managed to get lost trying to find it… Turns out we went in the completely wrong direction after leaving the subway. Plus Google Maps doesn’t really work on my phone here and I’m the only one of the Penn interns who has a phone so we kind of just wandered around asking random store cashiers if they knew how to get to Garosugil. We eventually found it and strolled down the street window-shopping.

After we finished walking down Garosugil, we took a cab to Coex Mall, which is a really huge underground mall/aquarium/movie theater/casino (at least I think it was underground….all the fun stuff was on the B-floor and the floors that were above-ground were all like convention center rooms and other uninteresting non-shopping things). We didn’t stay there that long… I wanted to go the aquarium because they filmed an episode of Running Man (a really funny Korean variety show) there. If you’ve never heard of Running Man, the main host of the show is Yoo Jae Suk (the yellow-suit guy from PSY’s Gangnam Style music video) and there’s 6 other permanent members and they’re all super funny and the show is just great. Google it for a more specific/useful description. Anyway, I think I’m the only one of the Penn KLC interns who watches Running Man so I didn’t think the others would want to pay money for me to fan-girl over standing where Yoo Jae Suk, Lee Kwang Soo, Song Ji Hyo, Gary, Kim Jong Kook, Ha-Ha, and Ji Suk Jin (the people on the show) had all been. Maybe I’ll go by myself (or with people who would equally appreciate the significance of going) later.

Entrance to da mall

After Coex Mall we went to Gangnam station to eat dinner and just to walk around and stuff. It was around 9 after we ate…The original plan was to go clubbing but we were all tired so we went to find a bar instead. We ended up at some random bar in Gangnam. Since it was pretty early we were pretty much the only people there. The bartenders were super excited to see us (I think it’s because as a group we’re very obviously not native Koreans). We stayed for about an hour and took the subway back to our housing.

Casual selfie cuz ya know why not

We were thinking about maybe going out again in HongDae (a super trendy area in Seoul near our housing where a lot of young people hang out) after dropping some stuff off at the Co-Op but the nice soft bed in my room immediately annihilated my plans of leaving, since I’ve been sleeping on a mat on the floor for the past few weeks.

[Side note: I’m sitting in the dark in my room typing this while my roommate is trying to sleep and she told me I look like a Korean ghost/the girl from the Ring because of the light from my computer screen and my long hair……thanks gurl. At least I’m not wearing the face mask anymore. I feel like she would have tried to exorcise me if I were still wearing it]

On Sunday we went to this super fancy restaurant on the 59th floor of the 63 Building (named so because there are 63 floors). It’s the building with the most stories in Korea (although it’s not the tallest for some reason…I still haven’t gotten a good explanation as to why that is). It was really fancy and delicious and the view was incredible.

Super tall 63 Building

View from the 59th floor

View of the restaurant…my camera didn’t do it justice 😐

After brunch we went to Dongdaemun (동대문), a really popular shopping district in Seoul. To get good deals at these shops, you really have to know how to bargain…which I have no idea how to do, so I probably got ripped off. I didn’t buy that much though so my being ripped-off was pretty minimal (I hope). I generally prefer stores with set prices because I’m not good at judging the monetary value of things… I should probably learn how to do that soon because it seems like a pretty important life skill. Also it’s apparently really easy for Koreans to discern that I speak virtually no Korean just by looking at me. Some of the more aggressive salespeople would approach me saying “Hi, look at our handbag, yes?” and stuff like that. Like I didn’t even say anything to them and they didn’t hear me speaking English. And if I tried to ask something in Korean they would just reply in really bad English. I think I need to try to blend in more. Or learn more Korean. Either way, something needs to change.

We sort of just walked around and ate street food snacks and shopped. It was pretty casual/chill. We left for Anseong at around 7PM and arrived back at the dorm at 8:30.

Ddeokbokki (spicy rice cakes) on a stick. Purchased for about 1 dollar. mmmm

Casual selfie with Vincent (aka Bruce Lee) and Bryan

Enjoying street food

It was a really fun and action packed trip and my feet still hurt from all the walking. I’m pretty sure the walk from the car to my house (quite literally an uphill battle) was the hardest physical effort I’ve had to make in my whole life. I honestly thought I wouldn’t make it and thought about sleeping outside on the grass [not really though that would be sad and I’d wake up with approximately 238749 mosquito bites]. I eventually made it to my trusty bed mat and slept like a log.

That’s all I have to say about the weekend. I’ll post again tomorrow night because today at work I had to do some physical/sweatshop labor at the KLC Franklin Planner warehouse. There’s something very soothing/calming about doing mindless and repetitive labor. Maybe I’ll ditch my goal of going to medical school and just work in the warehouse here opening and stuffing boxes with Franklin Planners. But that’s what I did all day today and is probably what I’ll do all day tomorrow too so I’ll post more about it later.

안녕!

KLC Party Time + Day Off

It’s been a while since I last posted! Hello, friends/family/friends of my mom! 오랜만이야! (It’s been a while!)

Thursday was Korean Memorial Day, so we didn’t have to work. So, naturally, on Wednesday night, some of the KLC workers decided to partay.

And by partay I mean have Korean BBQ and soju/beer.

Party time at KLC

It was really fun though because after they drank a little the workers were more willing to try to talk to us in English… plus I wasn’t quite as embarrassed to speak my horrible Korean so we all had some nice bonding time. After we finished our meal, we went to a Korean karaoke room, which are in general a million times more fun than American karaoke. They’re called noh-rae bahng (노래방) which means song room. Basically you reserve a small room for your group with semi-soundproof walls and you sing your heart out while eating a bunch of food and drinking lots of beer/water. Us 5 Penn interns went with 5 of the KLC workers, all of whom were around 30 years old. Personally, I am mortally embarrassed by singing and I generally don’t enjoy it, and even my slightly tipsy state didn’t help me overcome my self-consciousness, so I didn’t partake much….. I know, I know, I’m really lame. I’m over it.

The KLC guys we went with though… man oh man. They were all about the karaoke. Their singing abilities ranged from not so great to actually legit, but they all sang like they were professional ballad singers/rappers/performers. It was awesome. Apparently the CEO of KLC is pretty strict about partying so this kind of thing rarely happens here. You could tell that they were super enthused about having a chance to go out and have fun. I was starting to get the feeling that all everyone did here was wake up, eat breakfast, work, eat lunch, work more, eat dinner, and sleep (which is more or less what my roommate does on a daily basis). It was nice seeing people having fun and not just working and sleeping.

We finished karaoke around 1AM and decided to go to a supermarket to buy more drinks & snacks. Supermarkets here typically have an outdoor bench area where you can hang out all day/night. So we sat around for about another hour and a half eating snacks and drinking various beverages. It was really fun and I’m glad we got to do it; otherwise, I would have thought that everyone here lived boring and monotonous (I don’t think that’s the right word but whatever) lives.

On our day off, us 5 Penn interns went into downtown Anseong for a few hours to eat lunch and go shopping. We decided “as a group” to go to McDonalds for lunch….. In general, I don’t ever go to McDonalds, so I was a little bummed, but I think the other interns are a little tired of Korean food, so I didn’t complain about it. I had a bulgogi burger (bulgogi is Korean grilled meat); it was soooooo good. I think that was the first McDonalds burger I’ve had in a really really really long time. They had other things like Shanghai spicy chicken sandwich and other Asian versions of McDonalds sandwiches.

Typical Americans finding the McDonalds in Anseong….it was pretty tasty though. #livingstereotypes

After lunch, we went shopping. I haven’t had a chance to spend any money yet, so I was really looking forward to using my spending money. hehehe.

We went to this cosmetics store called Etude House. I’ve been anticipating buying Korean cosmetic products because they’re really high quality and aren’t outrageously expensive. I went a little crazy at Etude House…. I think I spent around 80,000 won (1,120 won = 1 dollar). After we left Etude House we went to a different cosmetics store called Skin Food…and I bought more stuff there. I think I have a money-spending problem (which my dad will heartily agree with).

The results of my splurging. All the stuff to the right of my phone was free. #shopping4ever

We also went to Paris Baguette, a chain cafe that sells various types of bread/pastries as well as coffee, tea, and patbingsu (shaved ice with lots of random stuff on it). I ordered fruit-bing-su (과일빙수); it had shaved ice, mango, pineapple, blueberries, granola, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Mmmmm. so good.

After that we sort of just walked around looking for places to go. We went to another cafe to sit down and hang out for a bit (it was unbelievably hot outside) and drank bubble tea. We kind of just bummed around there for a while trying to make plans for this weekend (we’re going to Seoul!).

Bubble tea hangouts

Penn in Seoul KLC interns. From left to right: Bryan, Vincent, Hector, Mawunyo, and myself.

we’re so cute amirite #anseonglife

We went to get dinner to take back to the dorms. The other interns wanted burgers again but I wasn’t really feeling it so I went to a Korean restaurant and got soon-du-bu (spicy tofu soup) with kimbap (it’s kind of like a Korean California roll but so much better) to go. We went back to KLC at around 7PM and ate and just hung around the campus for a few hours.

All in all it was a very satisfying day off. I’m glad I finally got to hang out with coworkers and go shopping and stuff. It has certainly added some variety  my internship in Anseong.

I’m currently sitting at my desk at work doing nothing. I finished my day’s work already so now I’m just download Korean rap and taking Sporcle quizzes. I’ve finished filming all those instructional videos so now I don’t think there’s much work for me to do. I already edited all their English manuals twice and updated their English website.

That’s all for now! I’ll post again after the weekend!

안녕!

More Acting + Dinner with the Boss [Edited]

I have befriended the president of WebPlan. He’s basically my 베프 (pronounced beh-puh, which is the shortened Korean word for best friend: beh-suh-tuh puh-ren-duh 베스트 프렌드). His name is Ahn Joon-Young but he asked me to give him an English name. I have given him the name John, which is probably the top 1 most bland name of all time. I considered more outlandish/weird name options like Dexter or Winston or Tyrone but I didn’t think he was ready for those kinds of names. Also, if he meets another American/English-speaking person, I didn’t want him to have to say “My name is Dexter/Winston/Tyrone” (pronounced “ma-ee neh-eem ee-suh Deck-suh-toh [or ween-suh-tuhn or ta-ee-rohn”) because that’s sort of embarrassing…. So I thought John was easy enough. I’m so considerate.

Today at work I did literally nothing in the morning because WebPlan had meetings from 8-12 and nobody speaks English so I just sat at my little table on taking Sporcle quizzes for a few hours. After lunch, though, I learned that I had to make another video. I’m not sure why they’re doing this to me; maybe they like seeing me mortally embarrassed. But this time was a little less awkward because I didn’t do an introduction so my face isn’t actually in the video. John asked if I wanted to film a greeting for the video and I said no very fervently in Korean so I think he understood that I don’t like acting. He tried to get me to do it and he kept saying “you borned to do this” but I really didn’t want to so he said okay. heh.

I also learned that he likes to draw … I think he majored in media design or something like that because he’s really good at drawing cartoons. Here is today’s portrait:

Me pulling a rope

He uploaded it to Facebook and tagged me in the picture and in the post… He gave it a caption of “Jenny Kang  !!!!” so I’m still not sure what he meant by it. He drew another picture after this one; it was supposed to be a continuation of the one of me. He drew himself wrapped in the rope I’m holding and with a quote bubble that said “Save our app!”, as if to suggest that I had either captured him or was in the process of letting him go… Either way he never explained why he drew it. He drew it out of the blue too so I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean. He’s a really good artist though. He drew this on his phone with a little stylus pen in like 1 minute. 2legit2quit

After filming the instructional video we went out to dinner; it was me, John, my supervisor (her English name is Annie), and YeonWoo, the only other girl who works at WebPlan. We went to a Korean BBQ place and we ate samgyupsal and naengmyun and it was really really tasty. Samgyupsal is pork belly and it’s basically thick bacon. Naengmyun is a type of noodle in cold broth with pickled radish, sliced Asian pear, cucumbers, and a hard boiled egg on top. It’s really good to eat in the summer. But we ate that and drank some Korean 술 (i’ll let you figure out what that is…..ㅋㅋ). I think it was cheong-ju (청주) but I don’t really remember. It was really sweet and not that strong.

[Note: “ㅋ” is the Korean character that makes the “k” sound, and writing “ㅋㅋㅋ” is kind of like writing lol because some Koreans laugh like “k-k-k-k” (not kay-kay-kay-kay but like “ck-ck-ck-ck”…… it’s hard to type out phonetically)]

While we were eating, Annie and YeonWoo asked me how old I thought John was. This is always an awkward question unless the person asking is a very young child… I could tell he was either in his late 30s or early 40s but I didn’t know if he would be offended if I could guess so easily so I pretended like I didn’t know. Then I remembered that my dad would make me say that he looks 25 even though he’s 50 or so, so when he asked again I said “25?” Boy oh boy did he get a kick out of that. After I said I thought he was 25 he was really smile-y. I think he really likes being told he looks young (as most people do). He revealed his true age after clearing up with me that he was not in fact 25. My prediction turned out to be true.

[After that he asked how old I thought my supervisor Annie was. Guessing a woman’s age is always really uncomfortable, so I just didn’t answer. I kept saying I don’t know or I can’t tell. Eventually he told me her real age. I won’t disclose it here, but she is older than John.

Everyone seemed into the age-guessing game so I had to guess YeonWoo’s age too. I honestly thought she was maybe 23, 24. She said she was 31. I was legitimately shocked. I told her I thought she was maybe 24 but since I already said the thing about John being 25 I don’t think she believed me. Actually though she looks super young. People in general here look a lot younger than they are (especially women).

After we finished eating, we drove back to our housing. John drove and, like most Korean men, he is a reckless and borderline dangerous driver. He made my dad’s driving seem tame. Nobody else seemed to be phased by his driving though so I didn’t say anything and held onto the grabby thing on the ceiling of the car (is there a word for that?) for dear life.

Now I’m back in my room on the computer doing nothing (which is how I spend approximately 97% of my evenings during the week). My roommate (one of the employees at the Korean Leadership Center, the company I’m interning at) went out to get hamburgers with her friend (also an employee)…which she seems to do a lot. She said hamburgers are the perfect food. She invited me too but it was right after I got back from dinner and the thought of consuming more food almost made me ill.

That’s all I have to say for now… I think we (the 5 Penn interns) are going into Seoul this weekend for some fun adventure time (I’m excited about this as I have yet to truly fulfill the title of this blog).

안녕!

Weekend in Seoul + Korean Food

I have finally escaped Anseong and have found the glory that is Seoul, South Korea. The fact that I’m back in Anseong is a little depressing but now I know that the second part of Penn-in-Seoul (taking classes at Seoul National University, which is basically the Harvard of Korea) will be really fun.

Just based on my wanderings I have found that Seoul is a really cool city with lots of innovative things (i.e. foods). For example, the Koreans have re-invented the French fry (I didn’t try it so I can’t say how good or bad it is but it looks interesting):

The “tornado potato” sold on the streets of Seoul.

They also sold these crazy looking ice cream cones but I didn’t take a picture. I found this picture online:

Those crazy Koreans, turning ice cream cones into spirals.

Basically you just grab a “cone” and then take it to the cashier and she fills the whole thing with ice cream and then you break pieces off. It’s like a long, thin, curly burrito…if the burrito shell were an ice cream cone….and the burrito filling were ice cream. That was a really weak analogy but I can’t think of anything else. I’m not making it sound cool or interesting but it was super crazy and I don’t know how anyone thought of it. So creative.

I also ate a lot of traditional Korean food with BK and HyunJi. Here’s some of the food we ate:

A traditional Korean meal. Lots of side dishes (mostly pickled/fermented vegetables) with soup.

Traditional Korean alcohol. All of these jars have some sort of flavoring and then they pour a ton of alcohol in it and let it sit for a while.

Coffee patbingsu, a traditional Korean dessert. It’s shaved ice with like candied almonds, chocolate frosted flakes, sweet red bean, and coffee ice cream. So good.

After wandering around Seoul, we waited until nighttime to go to Namsan Tower. Basically it’s a huge tourist attraction in Seoul known for the beautiful view of the city. There’s also this thing that couples do up there where they take locks (like a locker lock you would use at the gym) and write their names and a short message it on it and then attach it to the fence lining the area. I feel like it was super cute for the first couple to ever do that but now it’s super cluttered and there’s probably thousands of locks and it’s probably not as special now. But it looks cool. Some pictures:

Namsan Tower

 

Tower

Lockets

A locket-covered tree. This is probably really bad for the tree but whatever.

Seoul night view. So pretty.

More nighttime view. My camera isn’t very good at taking low-light images 😐

 

The next day we were supposed to go to Gangnam to go shopping but I accidentally set my alarm for 8:30 PM instead of AM so I overslept and we didn’t have time to go….. Classic Jenny. So instead we went to this really old fashioned farm-type place where they make different kinds of food paste/sauce (hot pepper paste [고추장], soy bean paste [된장], and soy sauce [간장]). Basically there are rows of large vats of different ingredients that sit under the sun for literally years. I think BK said the good ones ferment for 5+ years before they’re ready for consumption.

Jars of fermented paste/sauce.

This wasn’t as exciting as spending time in Gangnam would have been (although I’m not sure since I’ve never been to Gangnam but I think there’s a reason why there’s a super popular song about Gangnam and not one about paste farms…). We ate lunch there and had some of the food made from these toddler-aged pastes/sauces. It was really tasty. Sadly I have no pictures of that but all the food was organic (and really expensive… :/)

All in all Seoul was really fun and I’m super thankful that BK and HyunJi unni let me sleep in their apartment and took the time to show me around the city. I can tell that they’re really worried about me enjoying my time in the motherland and it’s really nice having someone look out for me here.

That’s all for now. I’ll post again soon!

안녕!

My Acting Debut

I have finished my first week of work! On Friday I didn’t really do much in the morning (just some more English editing stuff) but then in the afternoon a lot of stuff happened… I still don’t think I’ve gotten over it.

They made me “star” in their English instructional video. I almost died from the awkwardness.

I am in no way an actress nor do I ever aspire to be anything similar to an actress or someone who appears on camera in any way. I’m not sure if the situation itself was inherently awkward or if I’m just an awkward person (it’s definitely the latter, I don’t even know why I even considered the former long enough to type it) but the whole thing was just weird.

The President of WebPlan (the division of this company where I’m working) speaks very little English and I think he was afraid to talk to me at first. As time progressed he started to feel more comfortable so he started speaking to me in his very very broken English. Actually he mostly spoke to me in Korean and when it was evident that I couldn’t understand him, he would say one word in English and laugh really loud. Like the other day I think we were talking about computers and he said something I couldn’t understand in Korean and then he said “TYPE!” and started laughing like a maniac. Whatever, though. He’s really funny and enthused to be alive.

Anywho, he came and sat with me at my desk and said I would be in the English video. He didn’t actually say those exact words to me… He pointed at me and then drew this picture:

My boss’s drawing of me starring in their instructional video.

Apparently that’s what I look like.

The director of the internship program told me that my face didn’t have to be in the video, so I asked if I could just do the second of the two depicted frames… He laughed and said no. So we went to one of the more scenic places in the company compound and started filming.

Now the President’s English is really bad and supervisor’s English is okay but she’s certainly not fluent. I kept making mistakes when filming but they didn’t really notice. After making a mistake I would expect them to be like “okay do that again” but they would just say “WUUOOHH YOU-UH SOH GUHT!” (you’re so good in a Korean accent) and keep going. I didn’t really have the heart to tell them that I messed up so I kind of just went with it…….. I think I need to have another lesson in assertiveness. My passive nature has proved to be quite burdensome.

After filming I kept laughing and saying “aaaah I’m so embarrassed” in Korean (to be precise: “aigoo nahn noh-mu-chang-pee-ya” or 아이고오~ 난 너무 창피야) but the President would just laugh and say it’s okay… So this instructional video is probably the worst instructional video of all time. Sorry man.

I would post the video here but I haven’t seen it yet and quite frankly I don’t want to see it. Like, ever. And you will never find it either because I will never tell anyone what it’s called.

After we finished filming my boss wanted to take pictures with his “American friend” (mi-gook chin-goo 미국 친구) and then he posted them on Facebook:

you can almost taste the awkward.

I also went into Seoul this weekend (I finally escaped Anseong!) to hang out with ByungKwan and HyunJi. I’ll make a separate post about that trip though because I’m realizing that my posts are super long.

Also, I have around 260 views! Woo! I was really worried that I would be the only one reading my blog (since I read it over once or twice after publishing to make sure there aren’t any grammatical errors or that I don’t just sound stupid or weird in general). thanx u gaiz

♪┏(・o･)┛♪┗ ( ･o･) ┓♪┏ ( ･o･) ┛♪┗ (･o･ ) ┓♪┏(･o･)┛♪

That string of emoticons is super weird now that I look at it…. i almost deleted it but decided not to last minute

i’m probably going to regret not deleting it

whatever

안녕!