Intro to Korean Symbols with F-U-N

Today was supposed to be a boring, easy, get-a-lot-done kind of day. We had a "meeting" at 3 p.m. with the grad students to figure out the rest of the program in Korea, except the main professor in charge of it (who looked younger than 25) proclaimed "well, do you undergrad have any questions, comments, concerns? No? Okay, I think it is better to have our meeting with just graduate students and Dr. Yun." So we kind of got kicked out of our own meeting haha.


During lunch Tiara got invited to the "KAIST International House" for a pizza dinner. Since we had already decided to stay in KAIST for the day Annika, Tiara, and I ventured out as the sun set to find the 2nd floor of the N5 building. It wasn't long until our shoes were added to the collection outside a class room and were welcomed by the same Korean lady that invited us. She took role on the countries in the room --Malaysia, India, USA, Mongolia, Korea, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, etc. ...yes, a very diverse group. Boxes of small pizzas were brought, with 2L(?) coke bottles, watermelon and mixed fruits, and some Korean snacks were in the middle tables for us to eat. It's the first time I've eaten pizza with chop sticks. Then, another Korean man took out his guitar and instructed all of us to go outside for a dance. So, Annika, Tiara, and I found ourselves holding hands, all in a big human circle singing in Korean except we didn't know what we were saying. For me it went like "ha-ang chil-dren chil-dren.. ??? mmm mmm mmm chil-dren chil-dren ..." Then he started calling out " 2! groups of 2!" and we ran to find a group. The music started again, and the number 2 became 3, and then 4, eventually 8, sometime later 20.. and somewhere in between those numbers I found myself kneeling on the ground with my hands up because I didn't have a group and that was my punishment for not making friends. Then we all became two big snake lines who were supposed to kill the other snake by 'fighting.' This game didn't turn out very well since our 'heads' almost strangled each other until the guy came and said "no! no! no! like dis.. [rock paper scissor game].. yay! You Win! (to us)" and we all went along and shouted "YAY!"


After all of the fun games we came back and got divided into groups. My group consisted of me and another American (Sarah), except the teacher and I kicked her out. Then we added another person-- the other girl's friend-- but we also kicked her out because she could read "uyu" (milk: 우유). So, it became a one-on-one lesson. In an hour I learned the Korean alphabet and I can almost decipher most Korean words. Annika and Tiara regretted that I learned so much because I kept trying to read everything in Korean on the way back.


Not only was the Korean class helpful but we also began to recognize the other girls in our dorm. Not long after we got back to our rooms we introduced ourselves to one of them and we got invited to sing Karaoke. Oh, the night was young. On the side of KAIST there is an International Zone with many bars, restaurants, and luckily a Karaoke basement. Tiara and I sung the only English songs we knew "Take on Me" by A-ha, I sung "La Bamba" to contribute some Spanish, other girls in our room took over and started singing Japanese, Korean, and one English song-- "We Will Rock You." The only song I knew in Korean was from GIRLS GENERATION. Then Sarah came in and started dancing to... KPop? The Japanese girls loved her! Very interesting dance too.

Well, I have the song "Sweet Caroline" stuck in my head now.. but great times.


So, Kasun (the Sri Lankan in our group), Sarah, Annika, Tiara and two other people wanted to go to a bar close by. We went and we witnessed an American bar, downstairs of a building with a dentist sign on the door (if I correctly remember).




That's it.

-Allie R.