Settling In

So I was going to do a day by day recap of what I've been up to but I got too far behind and my journal is too detailed so I'm just going to do a general update.

For the first week we went to language class in Seoul from 10am-2pm every day and we learned a lot! We were doing one chapter of the Sogang textbooks a day. Also, I'm placed in DiMitri's level and he's amazing. I skipped from doing Sogang 1A last year to 2B this year. I learned a lot of the inbetween stuff on my own but I definitely still have some catching up to do, and the first 2 days I felt especially overwhelmed but then I settled in. The first week I hung out with my older sister Hye-Ri a lot, it's really nice that she's in college so she has more time for me. But we've both been really busy this week so I haven't seen her as much. Over the weekend we visited Daebu-do, my host mother's hometown, which is an island off the coast of Incheon. It was beautiful and we met a bunch of family who we'll be seeing again at Chuseok at the end of this month. I was also able to hang out with Ye-ji, my younger sister and some of her friends on the weekend. It was kind of weird how quickly I settled in, it was like I picked up where I left off last summer and had never left.

Then this last Monday, we started high school! I'm going to an all girl's school with my fellow NSLIan Andi. We're both in different classes since we were placed in our host sisters' classes. The first day was pretty crazy overwhelming...everyone was yelling when we walked around and pretty much anything I said elicited screams from my class. People would run in from other classes and say "Hi, you're pretty" and then run away. But by the second or third day though everyone in my class had calmed down a bit. Now they're still curious about me and about American stuff and people still come to talk to me a lot but they're not going crazy and I feel like they're taking care of me. I still get a lot of people waving and saying hi in the hallway but that doesn't bother me, it makes me happy! My school decided to switch me out of a few classes with my homeroom like science, history, and math and put me into fun classes that my schedule doesn't allow me to take (I leave after 3rd class on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to go to language class in Seoul) like music, art, and Korean traditional dance PE. I really like one of the classes I'm taking a few classes with, but the other class I'm taking PE with I'm not so crazy about...kind of a weird dynamic...but I only have one class with them a week so it's ok. I love my class, I'm so happy with them! I'm kind of sad that I only get to eat lunch at school twice a week because the students don't have very much time to hang out outside of school so lunch is a good time to get to know them. Lunch at my school is 80 minutes and breaks between classes are 10 minutes and you don't have to go anywhere during them, so there's a pretty good amount of relaxing time despite how hard Koreans study. I can't understand any of history or math and I can only understand a tiny bit of science and Korean with help from my sister's electronic dictionary, but there are some classes I can understand pretty well. I really like music class because we get to sing and the teacher's really nice. I think we definitely have it easier than NSLI-Y students from previous years since we only go to less than a half day of school 3 days a week whereas previous years had to go all day, every day. It's nice being able to go to Seoul so often (and the class is at the YES office in Hongdae so there's lots to do in the area) but my commute runs up to 2 hours at rush hour and it can be exhausting. I've never felt so tired in my life as I have these last 2 weeks...not only am I doing so much but I'm trying to speak, think, and read in another language. It's finally the weekend and I am going to sleep so long tonight, I'm quite excited! Until next time~