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Chuseok and Classes

As I am having a lazy evening right now, I thought I would update my blog today.
So... Chuseok was fun! I felt it was basically how Canadians (well at least my family) celebrate Thanksgiving. Except Chuseok or Korean Thanksgiving's level of importance is way higher then a Canadian Thanksgiving. It's almost like Christmas. Everywhere you go in Seoul it would be filled with families gathering together. My home stay family is a Christian family so they celebrate it differently. Like any other family, they would prepare the food the day before and on Chuseok, everyone gathers and eats together. My home stay family, gathered from morning to night. We ate food in the morning, talked, talked, talked, (I didn't understand 90% of it), eat some more, talk, talk, decide to get in the car, go to Haneul Park which basically looks over all of Seoul. Really cool park and then talk some more before going to a different place to eat some more and then all the young ones went to Karaoke before calling it the night. It was a really hard and long day for me because not only was I trying to find conversation topics to talk about but I also was trying to talk to my homestay's relatives. There were 3 other people around my age but basically older then me and their english abilities is waaaay better then my korean ability and we could sort of talk. However, I felt sorry that they were having a hard time as well. Motivation to UP my Korean language studying.
The day after, my homestay and I went hiking. There were A LOT of people there. People from ALL ages. From parents bringing their babies on their back or their 2-year old toddler to the elderly. There were even some middle age women there with their heels on! I was very surprised but it was very much an experience. We didn't hike all the way to the top because my home stay had to meet their friends and I realized how much I need to get in shape to keep up with my homestay. (sooo embarassing.) I definitely want to go hiking again! It seems like my homestay goes hiking every Saturday! I'm soo amazed.
Anyways, classes are really long and dreary. I have classes that are fully in English and classes that are fully in Korean. The one fully in Korean is my Korean language class. We have 2 teachers for Korean language class. One who is in charge of grammar and the other who is in charge of oral. We have it every day from 4 - 6 and for me, sometimes, it's really hard to go to class at that time because somedays I don't even have morning classes. My classes so far are going... I mean, the professors definitely are intelligent and well educated people, however, at times, it is hard to understand what is going on in class. I have one class that is structured in a way I am not particularly used to and am slightly uncomfortable with it. Students are put into groups and assigned a topic. Each topic is assigned a presentation date and so basically students learn from other students about the certain topic. The professor is there to confirm the information. First presentations is this Friday and I'm not sure a lot of students will show up this Friday which will make up for an interesting class for sure.
This Friday and Saturday is what they call the Yonko Games or if you are from Korea university they call the Koyon Games. What is it? 5 different sport matches between Yonsei University and Korea University. The two universities have a huge rivalry going on, so it's going to be super fun. Because the first day of Yonko games is on Friday, a lot of students will be skipping to go there. I want to go but that one class I was talking about, is all about attendance. I'll go to the Saturday one.
I've been too busy with Korean classes that I haven't really explored much of Seoul yet. However I would like to go to Namsan Tower, Everland, Lotte World and other places. However, I need the time. Right now I don't have it yet. :'(
Well I really should be going back to doing my homework.
Signing out~

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