New Friends

So, for the many who have been asking, classes start for me tomorrow. Expect full details sometime next week.

Other than that, I've been spending my days waiting for it to happen. I went this morning to apply for alien registration. You will see my card once it arrives. The Immigration Office was even further away than my school, so that was pretty miserable. I met several people at the welcome parties last week, but only two acquaintances gave me contact numbers.

One was the buddy that Yonsei assigned my. Her name is SunHee, lives over on my side of town, and she's and 18 year old freshman. I don't want to be skeptical, but how is a freshman supposed to help me find my way around the school and campus? If I remember correctly, all freshmen are clueless. We'll see how this works out. SunHee and I met at the department store on Tuesday for lunch. That place was pretty interesting, and deserves a post all to itself. SunHee is majoring in both education and English. She hopes to teach middle or high school. I think she wants to teach English, but now that I think about it, she maybe just wanted to know English really well. Like most people here, she's interested in going to the U.S. Her English is pretty decent, but it's that textbook English that's so common in this region: big vocabulary, very little physical practice with fluent speakers. This means that she understands me if I steer clear of slang, but that her accent is really thick. SunHee likes Korean pop music, so that's a dead end. I don't see this becoming a rich and meaningful friendship, but I've been surprised before.

The other person whom I've met outside of welcome parties is Jae. Jae is another person participating in the buddy program, but I'm not his buddy. Jae and I met when we were all playing games at after dinner, and then we met on Wednesday for lunch at the tofu house (everything on the menu was made of or contained tofu. Actually there was a surprising amount of variety and flavor.) Jae is my age and lives on my side of town as well. He had a much more brimming personality. He was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan while his father was studying at University of Michigan. They left when he was seven, and he promptly forgot all the English he ever knew. He's since then gotten his English back to near fluency. His buddies are a Korean American and a Finnish dude, and we're all planning on a group dinner one day soon. Jae is interested in breaking out of the terrible music scene that is Korea, so we found lot's to talk about in that department. We'll be seeing much more of Jae.

Lastly, HyeJeong (my friend in the States who found this host family for me) has a friend here in Korea whom I'll meet on Saturday. YoungBin is exactly what I need. He speaks about as much Korean as I do English, so the two of us will be forced to struggle and learn! YongHee speaks far too much, so as a rule we speak English and then struggle in Korean if he doesn't have the word, but YoungBin and I should learn a great deal from each other. HyeJeong and YoungBin himself have boasted about this kid's knowledge of Seoul, so I expect to see some new places in this city.