Hello everyone!
It’s been a difficult time for me this past month. The classes I’m taking this semester have brought a lot of sadness to my life, especially last week during midterms. I even wished this April just disappeared from the calendar.
But since May is approaching quickly, I’m kind of asking for things to be slowed down. That’s the thing with time, we wish we can control it. But in reality, the only power we have over it is what we do during the limbo. During our life.
I’ll cut right to the chase, before this post turns into an emotional ramble.
The Studying
This past month has been rough, because my classes are catching up to me. First, Korean level 2 moves very quickly compared to Level 1. I’m definitely learning more and can see my progress when I can understand people speaking more. My biggest weakness right now is speaking, because when I speak Korean to others, they don’t understand me! And that makes me a little disappointed in myself, but I will just have to practice more. Maybe I can practice with a Korean person, or repeat what people say in Korean dramas.
The other classes are difficult too, but not the same as Korean. Learning a different language requires lots of memorizing. However, my other classes require more critical thinking. I’m used to critical thinking, because I write lots of essays as an English major, but that’s all I do. At Middlebury, most of my exams have been essays, but it’s more short answer questions at Ewha. Both require critical thinking, but the former is a long paper on a thesis, while short answers are actual questions.
It’s been 3 years since I’ve done exams like they offer at Ewha. I’m appreciating my liberal arts college more.
What’s left to do is finish the semester strong and study more. I didn’t imagine my schoolwork to be this taxing, but it is. The challenge now is to find a balance between school work and enjoying Seoul before I leave. I always hear that the classes are easier when you study abroad, but that doesn’t apply to Ewha at all. Despite that, I still try to find time to have fun.
The Being Abroad
After finals, I met up with some friends and we went to karaoke (๋ ธ๋๋ฐฉ). That was such a great way to end my finals week. The ๋ ธ๋๋ฐฉ that I go to, the worker always gives us free time, so I think we were there for 4 hours. We ordered Chinese food and fried chicken around 4AM, too. I’m very thankful for the delivery services in Korea. I’m going to definitely miss that when I go back to the U.S.
The day after ๋ ธ๋๋ฐฉ, though, I went to Gwangju! I’ll make a separate blog post about that sometime this week or next, so stay tuned for that. Spoiler: I get lost a lot.