Future

So, i have officially read 230 pages of Suzanne Collins Hunger Games in French...without a dictionary. I must say, I am very proud of myself. I remember when I started it, it took me 30 minutes to read one page because I was so lost in the vocab and the grammar. I came to the conclusion that it's better to read and only look up the words that seem important, otherwise I'll be finished with the book in 10 years. It helps that I've read it in English, so if I get lost in the grammar, all I have to do is get the gist of the sentence and figure out what's going on.

Moving on...

I am all out of money. I spent all the money I saved up over the summer on my ticket to Korea, so now I'm completely penniless. Luckily, I bought my tickets for February break in November before going to Korea. But, after going to Germany this break, I'm pretty much stuck in Rennes for the next 3 months. We have one break in April and my friend and I want to travel around France because we bought these youth cards for the train that gets us a discount on tickets. However, it's still expensive, I don't know if I'll be able to pull it off. We are just going to have to find REALLY cheap hostels.

I just finished the SAT. 4 and a half hours of my life... I either really failed it, or kinda did. I guess I'll find out when the scores get here... I hate how this one test basically determines my future.

Speaking of futures, I'm so lost at the moment. The year is almost over, and I'm not ready to go back to the States. I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do, and I have aucune idée.... I never realised how scary real life can be, and I'm not even starting it yet. It's like I'm standing on the border between my world and the real world. What I mean is, look at me, I'm a 17 year old girl living in France and I've got the whole world at my disposal. I don't want to restrict myself to following everyone thinks I should be doing. What if I'm not ready to start college? What if I'm not done seeing the world? Sure, there are study abroad programs in college, but they don't normally start until sophomore year. What if I want to do something next year? I feel as though my whole existence revolves around seeing the world. I want to experience the full of it, while I'm young. I want the world to throw me into some sort of amazing adventure.
We are reading Dubliners by James Joyce in English and all of the stories that he has written are basically about dreamers only dreaming. Or seemingly adventurous people being trapped by society. I don't want to be stuck in Dublin forever. I don't want to live vicariously through other people like Little Chandler in Joyce's A Little Cloud. Good story by the way, you should read it!

Not a very cheery blog post, but it's been a stressful month. I'm happy break is coming!

xx

The Moment

Whenever you hear or read something that talks about learning a different language, it always says something about how one day they woke up and just realised they understood. I've always said that I can understand, but not without concentration. Well, I've had the moment.

My friend Akhir and I were at this amazing restaurant called Vino et Gusto. When we sat at the table the waitress came and heard us speaking English, she asked in French where we come from. We answered America, and she asked the simple question that always gets me excited "Vous comprenez le français?" Yes, yes I do. After we said yes, she jumped into a story about how her and her daughter created this restaurant and everything is homemade, we can have one plate from the buffet and one desert for just 9,90E. She said it all in French. And it didn't even sound strange or foreign to me. It was just natural.

Everywhere I go, I hear conversations and words and just understand them as if I've never had any difficulties. I can go up to someone with ease and ask them something without being scared of not understanding the response. I'll be honest, I've still got a loooooonnnggg way to go to fluency, but I'm making progress. The only thing holding me back now is English.

I need to stop speaking English.

It needs to leave my brain.

I'm trying very hard to speak just French, but it's so hard when everyone at my school is speaking English all the time. Some of the people are sadly not as dedicated to learning French as the others. I just need to refuse speaking English for the rest of the year. I can understand everything with ease, it's just the speaking that's killing me now. I can get my ideas across and make sense, it's just not perfect.

I went to the Air France travel agency today to talk about cheap tickets to Italy for April break. I spoke in French, the agent didn't even try to speak English, I guess he just knew that although my French isn't amazing, it's still understandable.

Galettes. Bigger than crepes, not as sweet an made with different flour. The first time I had a galette, I was at a small restaurant. I didn't really like it too much because it was too buttery and fatting for me. However! My host family made galettes last night.... they used the original recipe that the people of Bretagne used in the 17th century. An it doesn't have any butter and it's made with water instead of milk and (if the family was rich) one egg. Because way back when Bretagne was the poorest department in France, however these days it's one of the richest because of agriculture.

I have a lot of homework that needs to be done, I'll post again ASAP.

xx

Korea!

Yummm, I sat on the floor when I ate this, I felt cool!

Bonnie and I at the palace!
These are the weird rice cake things at the cute cafe
The note that I wrote at the super cute cafe!
Keith's red scarf!
This is the tree in the really cute restaurant we went too.
Keith and I went to a Buddhist palace.
This is a different cafe, were my favourite kdrama (Korean TV show) was filmed.
The architecture in Korea is so cool!
First delivery in Korea!

Sorry! I haven't been posting a lot lately. I'll try to get better. But I went to KOREAAAA over Christmas break. It was the most amazing break ever.

Korea is very formal. Bowing to your elders is crucial and being polite and discreet is necessary. When I arrived, the first thing I saw was my boyfriend, Keith, waiting for me outside of customs. He lead me to his father, I was very nervous about meeting Keith's parents so I'd been practicing the phrase that Keith gave to say to his parents for weeks, which was basically a simple sentence thanking them for letting me stay with them.
경영오빠 집에머물게 해주 셔서감사합니다.
After bowing and thanking his dad, we got in the car and drove an hour or so to Keith's apartment, the drive was amazing. My dad once asked on a family vacation in Cambridge how could one tell that we were in a different country because everything was in English, I looked around and said the pound sign for the money... well not only is there the won sign in Korea, but it's very obvious as well because everything is in Korean and there are little Asian style buildings everywhere. it was amazing, I kept telling Keith in the car: "Keith! I'm in Korea! I've never before been to Asia!! I'm in Korea!!"

When we got to his apartment, Keith's dad had to leave for work, because it was only 8 in the morning. So, Keith and I got my bags out of the trunk and said goodbye to his dad and walked to his apartment. His mom was downstairs waiting for us. I bowed again and said hello, she came up and hugged me. We got on the elevator and went to the 14th floor. All the apartments in Korea have, other than a keyhole, and keypad.. the code is the key. Of course, once we entered there is a designated area for taking off your shoes. Keith's puppy Somang (meaning hope) was excitedly waiting.

She.is.so.cute.

Keith and I decided that it was best not to venture that day because we were both very jet-lagged, so we stayed in with his mom and watched movies and ate delicious food. Keith made me ramyun, which was magical. For dinner we ordered some bulgoggi and kimbab and some kind of omelet thing that had rice in it... it was all superb.

The next day we started a little late, I slept too much. So, Keith took me to the mall near his apartment. It's called the Coex mall. It's huge. I bought some ridiculously cute pens.

After that, the days went by way too fast. My best friend Bonnie came, and I went t stay with her, but she had classes everyday (because Koreans study ALL the time), so Keith would hang out with me during the day and Bonnie and I would chill together at night. But I did everything:

--I went to N-Seoul Tower for Christmas with Keith, because Christmas isn't really that big a deal in Korea. While we were there, Keith bought us a little magnetic box to write on and put on the wall at the tower, and it'll stay there for the next year! Then Keith can go get it, so we can keep it forever.

--Keith and I went to the movies, and let me tell you, the movie theatre in Korea is enormous and the coolest thing I have ever seen. They have caramel covered popcorn for crying out loud!!!! And the seats are HUGE and red and comfyyyy. Plus, when you buy you're tickets you get to choose where you sit, so you know for sure that there will be enough spots for you and you're friends!

Speaking of choosing where you sit... Seoul, is the most organised city I have ever been to. Not only do you reserve seats for the movies, but the metro is so organised!! Let me tell you... So when you are waiting to get on the metro you wait in line, not because you have to, but because it was mutually agreed to wait in line. There are two lines, one on either side of the door and then there is an empty space between the two lines, for the people that are getting off the train. And then when you're on the train there are three seats that NO ONE ever sits in, because it's for the elderly people, I went to go sit in one because I was tired. But Keith practically ripped my arm off to keep me away. It's reserved only for elders.

Which leads me to my next point. Korea is very formal and polite. There is a specific way to speak to people who are older than you. And in Korea they have specific names for example, Keith is older than me, so I call him 오빠 (obba, which means brother) but only younger girls call older boys obba. Take Bonnie for example, since she is younger than Keith whenever she talks to him she has to call him obba and speak to him formally.
언니 (ani)- youner girls to older girls
누나 (noona)-younger boys to older girls
형(hyung)- younger boys to older guys

--One day, Keith was being very secretive about where we were going. We were at the mall and I was getting very curious... I had told him earlier that I wanted to do everything Korean, big mistake. Guess where he took me? Karaoke.... it was so embarrassing, I don't even want to blog about it. I'm holding a grudge against him for the rest of eternity.

--When you go to downtown Seoul there aren't any tourist shops, but that doesn't mean that Seoul doesn't have tourist shops. Seoul basically has roads dedicated to just tourist shops, I went to a couple a streets like this with Bonnie, my best friend, and there were hundreds of stores selling traditional Korean merchandise, the cheap and the good. There were stores selling the tourist-y stuff, like tee-shirts and socks (Korea has THE CUTEST socks ever!), and other gift-y things.

--At one of the tourist streets Keith and I found this really cute restaurant called Misslee Cafe. And I'm not kidding when I say this restaurant was adorable. It's a really quint restaurant on the second floor of a small building, and when you walk into the door, the first thing you see is a tree absolutely covered in rectangular strips of paper. The walls were covered by these papers too. Basically, one can write whatever they want on these papers and hang them where ever they please. I looked at a few, some people would write long stories, others would draw pictures or wishes. It was a really cool idea.
While I was there Keith and I ordered, in his terms, "very Korean food". First, we ate these foamy, puffy, rice cake things covered in sesame seeds (no idea what it's called), then the waiter brought us a thin box with a lid, Keith picked it up and shook it like there was no tomorrow and then opened it. Inside, there was a mixture of ham, rice, kimchi and egg. It was really good, I'm not a HUGE fan of kimchi, but I can eat it. After eating what I like to call the "Lunch Box", Keith ordered sherbet, which I thought was pretty normal...
this. thing. was. massive. It was pretty much a small cauldron of green sherbert with the craziest stuff mixed in. It had nuts, kiwi, peaches, tomatoes, red beans, bananas, chocolate covered rice chex (yum!), mochi and a whole ton of other things. I'm proud to say that Keith and I polished that cauldron off without any problem.

--Keith took also took me iceskating, indoors of course because it's colder than cold in Korea. But we pretty much got kicked out because we weren't wearing gloves, and it's a rule that you have to wear gloves. Silly, but true. I was surprised by how well Keith could iceskate. It was very amusing to watch.
Also in the same building as the iceskating rink there is an indoor amusement park could LotteWorld, or something. It's huge! And all the rides are so cute and fun. Keith and I went on the Crzy Loop, which is just a circle that you spin around on... funniest thing ever. Keith hates going upside down, the words that came out of his mouth on that ride... hilarious. It wasn't even that scary (no offense, Keith). However, he got his revenge by taking me to the haunted house... not funny at all.

-- So, in Asia there are these photo booths that the teenagers go to. But it's not like any photo booth I've ever seen. After choosing backgrounds for your pictures and taking them, you go into another booth and decorate each photo with cute stickers or words. Afterwards you choose a layout for printing based on how many people there are and then it prints teeny little pictures!! It's so cute!!!! I did this three or four times with Bonnie and Keith.

-- Cat Cafe. I really don't need to say anything else. It was, by far, the mostest amazingest bestest perfectest place ever. There were CATS. CATS IN THE CAFE! ...speechless. My heart exploded with fuzziness.

-- Bonnie and I went to the palace Gyeongbokgung which is thousands of years old. It was amazingly beautiful. But it was also very cold, so we didn't stay long. But the palace was built in 1394....which is exaclty 6,000 years before I was born.... yeah, I feel pretty insignificant being only 17 and all. Bonnie and I took a lot of silly pictures with the actors being traditional guards. It was fun.

Speaking of cold, the hottest it got in Korea the entire 2 weeks I was there was 4 degrees Celsius, which is 38 Fahrenheit. It was ridiculous. I did not pack for the cold, and while Keith and I were at the tourist street, I was freezing to death. So, I stole Keith's scarf, which helped tremendously. However, Keith became cold, he literally made me run to the nearest store that sold scarves so he could buy a new one. The store was pretty close, so out of breath we entered and grabbed the first scarf we could find. It was a big, thick, red scarf for 30,00₩ ($30). Keith didn't hesitate because it was below 0degrees. The funny thing is 2 minutes after we bought this expensive scarf, we came across other stores that were selling scarves for only 5,000₩ ($5)... Keith regrets nothing, the red one is a nice scarf and we both were warm. Morale of the story: if you plan on going to Korea during the winter season, pack very warmly and bring enough scarves for the family.

Here are some of my favourite Kpop (Korean pop) songs:
Clazzi's This Is How We Feel
Super Junior's Mr. Simple
2NE1's I Am the Best
10cm 죽겠네 (basically anything by 10cm is amazing)
Big Bang's Love Song
CNBlue's Love Girl and Love
There are a million more... if you want some more, just ask! I know plenty.

and if you want to watch a cute show, Flower Boy Ramyun Shop is amazing.

That was the longest blog post I have ever written, I've been working on this for the past 3 days. I'm sorry that I have been so lazy about blogging. I'm going to start a weekly posting binge starting now. Chaque vendredi il y aura un nouveau blog. Promise!!