Pools and Parties

On Friday Sungah's friend Sandra came to visit from Germany. She went to Conserve the year after I graduated, so I don't know her too well, but we've been having a lot of fun since she got here. We met up with more of Sungah's friends, usually going to bars or noraebangs. We also went to this all-night shopping mall that opens at 9 PM and closes at 6 AM. The clothes there are pretty cheap, so I bought myself quite a few things (way cheaper than in Boston!)

On Sunday we wanted to go swimming, so Sungah's parents paid for us to get a room at Hotel Shilla (named after the first unified Korean kingdom; I wrote an 11 page report about it for World History 175). The hotel was really nice. Indoor pool, outdoor pool, fitness center, sculpture garden, nature trails, high scale restaurants, etc etc. I was scared to even touch anything. We spent most of the day at the pool tanning. I burnt a little but not too badly. That night we went out to meet Sungah's boyfriend and some of his guy friends at a bar. That's how most of our nights have been, but meeting friends and going out has actually been the most beneficial to my learning, believe it or not. Since they're all having fun and I want to have fun too, I work really hard to keep up with the conversations and understand what's going on. I've noticed that my listening comprehension has greatly increased. I can understand the subject matter of pretty much every conversation, now I just have to work on catching all of the details. Unfortunately I feel like my speaking has stayed about the same, but that's the most difficult part of the language process so I'm sure it will take a lot more time.

Today we are meeting friends again and going out. We seem to meet new people every day. I've already given up trying to remember all of their names, although I did finally make a Korean name (김태히) Taehee Kim. Sungah's friends said that sounded the most similar to my real name. I'll probably still use my English name in Korean class though. It sounds prettier. They pronounce it like tu-ree-shya :-)