If Gold Grew On Trees

Fall season is here in South Korea. As you enter the main gate of Yonsei University, a cascade of Gynko trees align the main rode. As it is fall, its leaves turned bright yellow and in a distance, the leaves shine brightly in the partly-sunny sky as if gold grew on them. I think to myself...hmmm...if only gold grew on trees, maybe there wouldn't be so much suffering in the world, but then...corrupted people will probably hoard the trees and the world will remain the same. Ah well, so much for dreaming.

It's two months and 15 days...8 more days and then it will be officially three months. It's unbelievable that there's only five more weeks left here. I feel very sad yet am excited to go home as well. I miss family and friends so much. I've made plenty of friends here, but it's not the same I guess.

(picture above: Yonsei University- Gynko tree by student center)

The world seems so small being here. Apparently, all the Hmong girls (8 including myself) that came with CIEE all know each other one way or another. It's crazy the how the world works...how fate works. I know all the people in CIEE by name now 8 ). Although many of us don't hang out- there's a mutual companionship among us. A group of us went to B Boys (break dance boys) last friday. It was super awesome....I admit, it was the guys that really made it special. They had really really nice bodies...as in, they were really fit. This performance only made me more appreciated of the many talents that Asians have, and break dancing is definately one of them. The performance is called "Ballet girl falls in love with B-boy" (something like that). The jest of it is that ballet girl falls in love with a B-boy...romance, disputes between the two sides, and than B-boy fiends himself with a muscular disorder disease, breaks off with ballet girl because of this, but they both get back together again at the end. The funny thing about this was that the whole story didn't make sense at all. There was a very wierd scence where they did an enactment of Dracula...hmmm...I'm still trying to understand the point of it. Korean perforfamances are very interesting...in a nice way. I really liked it though. I think it showed Asian talent all the way! Go Asian power : ).

School is school. I would say my most interesting classes are Korean Language and Victorian Literature and Culture. The professors make it fun and part of it is that it is interactive. I'm getting use to having Korean taught to me in Korean language. At first I had a horrible time with it, but I'm starting to see the reasoning behind it. I still don't understand half of the things I do in the class, but it got me use to hearing Korean...considering CIEE is so isolated from campus.

I met an interesting Korean this week. It was so random. I was sitting in Korean Language class about 1 hour early (as usuall), and this Korean boy came in. He was very shy, but he asked me to be his friend...hehehe...it was very sweet and interesting in a way. But the unique part of it was that in exchange for being his friend...he'll help me with my Korean. I was a little disturbed by this because he made the friendship seemed like a conditional thing...but he was so shy that I agreed to it. I told him I'll help him with English too...to make it more of a fair exchange. Hmmm....It's a little hard to communicate with him, but I think this is the challenge...we are getting by and he's helping me with pronuncing my vocabulary words. It's cool : p.

My roomies and I are planning to go to Busan next weekend. No school on friday because it's a an entrance exam day. We'll leave on thursday and come back sunday. We have no plans as of yet...but we know we want to at yummy seafood!....