Goodbye Andy!

Remember little Andy from Poly School? You know, the super-genius kid that stole my heart? Well, he had his last day at Poly School a week and a half ago, so Mark and I went back to Poly to say goodbye to him. He was doing his little blinky eye thing trying not to cry... and according to some of the teachers the whole class had a cry at lunch about his leaving.

Bye Mr. Andy Bernard, I'm sure you'll do great things and it was so much fun knowing you!

Sogang KLEC Semester 1 Recap

Hard to believe the first semester of Korean classes is over. It's been a great 3 months and I've seen huge improvements in my Korean. (Basically went from being able to say hello and thank you to forming coherent-ish sentences.) I've said it before, but I'm really glad we chose to take this little life detour.

Here's the building we studied in... Arrupe Hall. We were on the 8th floor. Next semester we'll be in another building.

We started every day with an hour of writing. Here is our writing teacher. She was incredibly patient and never seemed to mind when she had to correct the same mistakes over and over in my book.

And this was our main teacher, who we had for 2 hours every day for speaking class. She is so spunky and has a great sense of humor. If she wasn't our teacher, I'd have totally tried to be friends with her. Our classmate is having a party for the class and the teachers tomorrow night... maybe there's still time to make this friendship happen. :)

Oh and do you see all the cards on the board? That's an example of the little conversations that she would put up that we would then practice with our classmates.

Last is our listening and reading teacher. She was really good at explaining difficult things to us in Korean. For example, one of the new vocabulary words was an importing/exporting business. I'm not sure how she did it, but she managed to make us understand that while explaining entirely in Korean.

I like in this picture that there's the lightbulb above my head and "참!" which is what Koreans say when they realize/remember something. :)

Anyway, what a great first semester. Looking forward to what lies ahead, but am incredibly grateful to these awesome teachers for getting us to the point we are now.

Finito!

It's official. We've both passed level 1 and will be moving onto level 2 in two weeks.

::huge sigh of relief::

Boiling

Every now and then Mark and I run across things that seem kind of crazy, but we try to brush things off as cultural differences.

But today's incident was by far the most insane we've experienced yet.

Mark joined this crappy little gym by our apartment in an effort to save some cash. Normally gyms in Seoul cost about $75-100 per month, but this one was $30/month. So I'm sure you can guess the condition of this place...

Anyway, the other MAJOR downside to this gym is that there is no A/C. Right now Seoul's temps are in the 80s and super-humid - actually I have no idea how Mark can stand it.

Today, as Mark was running on the treadmill and (understandably) sweating profusely, the owner came over and yelled at him for sweating. I'm not talking a short warning, it was a long lecture yelled at him in Korean. While everyone in the gym stopped and stared. And he proceeded to point to sweat on the ground and to tried to wipe it up.

Mark ended up feeling so awkward about the whole thing that he quit his workout early and just came home. Totally one of those times that I can't learn Korean fast enough. I was so fired up, I just wanted to go straight to that "gym" and explain the concept of a working out to this idiot. You own a GYM, buddy. You should expect some sweat along the way. Grrr...

Guess he was wanting Mark to work out Korean style, which is basically lift one weight, take a 10 minute rest on the machinery (reading the paper at this point is optional), switch to another machine and lift something once, rest, and then walk on a treadmill more slowly than a normal person would walk down the street. Oh and if you're feeling exceptionally ambitious there's the vibrating machine that basically just shakes your body to "loosen the fat." I'm not kidding. This is probably the most popular machine at the gym.

So if you ever go to a Korean gym, now you know the proper way to work out. Oh, and make sure to keep your sweating to a minimum, lest you get scolded by an ajosshi.

This is why I love Korea

Mark sent one of his students a picture of the two of us and she said to him, "Wow you're really tall. And your wife is tall, too." Only in Korea would I be considered tall... I've been waiting my whole life to hear that. I don't think I'll ever leave. :)

Old and New

On the way to the dual citizenship seminar, Mark and I saw this.

Not sure what it was all about, but love the mix of ancient warriors in a modern setting.

Dual Citizenship Details

Yesterday, Mark and I attended a GOA'L seminar to learn more about the possibility of me getting a dual citizenship.

We learned that this is the first program by any country that will allow adoptees to reclaim their citizenship in their birth country. It's a great first step in recognizing adoptees as citizens of the country, even though they were sent abroad many years ago.

There are both advantages and disadvantages to getting the dual citizenship. A few of the major advantages (at least from my perspective) were:

• being recognized by Korea as an equal citizen
• ability to vote in elections -- which would, of course, be contingent upon my Korean getting much, much better
• any children Mark and I had would be allowed to be dual citizens as well (though for males, they WOULD be required to serve in the military... so we probably wouldn't go that route)
• Mark would qualify for the F2 visa, rather than the E2 visa -- so should we ever come back to Korea, high-paying jobs would be abundant for him. Seriously, all the good jobs around here seem to be for F2 visa holders.
• And as a Korea citizenship, adopting from Korea would probably be easier (and hopefully cheaper). Actually -- Mark read that this is the first year that domestic adoptions in Korea outpaced international adoptions. That is mainly because the Korean government is really tightening up on international adoptions. They actually want to completely eliminate international adoptions by 2012. Who knows if that'll actually happen, but my being a citizenship would open a LOT more doors in that area.

The main disadvantages I saw were:

• Since this is such a new program, there are still a lot of open ends and unanswered questions about some of the particulars.
• I will have to sign a pledge to only use my Korean citizenship within Korea. So, services from the U.S. consulate and embassy would be unavailable to me when I am in Korea. That point was of concern to me, but having an American husband would allow me access to these services should I ever need them. (And I haven't yet.)
• Oh and along with only using my Korean citizenship... once I became a dual citizen, the casinos will be closed to me. It's odd -- there are a couple casinos here, but they're for foreigners only and Korean citizens are not allowed to go. I told Mark before I start this process, I want to go check it out. Or it'll be something I'll always be curious about, just because I can't go. :)
• My Korean passport will show my Korean name and my American passport will show my English name. They have said there could be some issues with airline tickets and general confusion with paperwork initially.
• And this is a small factor -- but the general headache of all the paperwork, etc. that will go with changing this. Government agencies in Korea are so confusing to me.

A couple additional points I learned, were:

• To apply for dual citizenship, you need to do it from within Korea. The whole process should supposedly take 5-6 months. But there were unanswered questions about whether it's necessary to stay in Korea for the entire process.
• We can actually fill out an application now! I guess the magical January 1, 2011 date signifies when they will begin declaring people dual citizens.

Wow, so much information. If this process applies to you, I wouldn't rely on this. This is what I heard and what mattered the most to me. There's a really good link on GOA'L's website here that you can check out for more information.