It's been a pretty hectic last few days. But in a good way. Whereas in the summer, "busy" meant "grading papers", these days I have really small classes, which means a lot of time to do other things.
Last Saturday morning I took the GRE General Test. A few weeks previous, I had taken the GRE AWA (the essays), and now it was time for the math and verbal. I knew the math would be easy; in fact, it's even easier than the SAT math because all high school kids take math but not all college students. So if I get any math questions wrong, I'd be pretty disappointed.
I knew the verbal would be a bit more of a challenge. On practice tests I was still getting about the same score I did on the SAT in high school, which wasn't too surprising but I wanted about 60 points higher. I knew the only way to improve my score was to study vocabulary, so I found all the lists I could and tried to study those words. I probably learned about 250-300 new words. Fortunately, some of the words I had studied appeared on the test, and I probably would have gotten those wrong if I hadn't studied the words. So I left the test feeling pretty confident in my results. I will get the scores sometime in the next month or so, but I'm pretty sure I got the score I was hoping for.
Sunday I went hiking at Bukhansan (the mountain in north Seoul) with the folks from The Princeton Review. In the past two months or so, I've been trying to get to know more people from work, or at least be socially polite to them. Usually I just smile and look away whenever I see someone who I think doesn't speak English, but I figure that everyone knows "hi" and "bye" so I guess that's a good place to start. "But, Chris," you say, "didn't you study Korean?" Yeah, yeah, but I'm WAY too embarassed to try to speak to anyone in Korean.
Anyway, I decided to go on the trip not only for the social aspect but also because I wanted to get out of the city. It was shaping up to be a beautiful day and I was really excited at the prospect of some peace and quiet and fresh air.
As we were driving up to the mountain, we passed a bus stop where people wearing hiking gear were lined up around the corner. And then I remembered that *everyone* goes hiking on Sundays, and that I've seen pictures of "hiker traffic jams" on Bukhansan before. When we got to the parking lot, there were tons of people and I started to think that I'd probably have been better off just staying at home in my nice quiet apartment.
About 20 people from work were there, though my friend Sean was the only other foreigner. I guess we hiked for about five hours or so, and I think that the pictures don't quite capture how beautiful the scenery was. Despite the crowds (which lived up to expectation), I had a really great time. I actually talked to some people in Korean (which surprised most of them) and it was a great bonding experience.
Of course, my whole body was stiff and sore the next day, and I didn't dress warmly enough so I've been fighting off a cold all week, but I really did have a good time!
Wednesday night, Vivi and I went to see Linkin Park. Of all the rock bands currently putting out new music, they are definitely my favorite. I think Vivi and I both realized that we both like them a long time ago, and when we found out they were coming to Seoul, we decided that it was definitely worth going. Tickets were really expensive (about $70 EACH) but I dare say it was worth it.
The DJ in the band is Korean, and so that's one of the reasons they're really popular here. Plus, well, Korean music sucks so if you're a 16 year old kid with pent up rage, then the never-ending flow of boy bands and girl bands isn't cutting it. So these kids really need to rock out. Plus, not a lot of bands come to Korea. Usually they just hit Japan, but these days because of SARS, bands aren't touring Asia at all. So this was a real surprise.
Linkin Park put on a great show but the crowd was REALLY into it and I think that the band was a bit surprised at the energy the crowd was showing. Even Vivi was head banging. She had never been to a rock concert before and now I think she's addicted. Limp Bizkit is coming in December and even though I think they're musically inferior, we'll probably go to that.
One last story. Recently I have been helping a student named Ellie work on her applications for colleges. She is trying to transfer and needs help with her essays. She's probably 18 or so, very cute, very sweet. Unfortunately, she has the typical Korean girl bad luck. For some reason, it seems that every Korean girl I know (Vivi included) always has these tragic things happen.
The deadline for Ellie's essays is this Saturday (Nov 1) and on Wednesday afternoon, she dropped her laptop and it broke! It contained the only copy of all of her essays! Fortunately, the people at the service center were able to rescue the hard disk and recover her essays. So she stayed up all night Wednesday working on them, and then met me on Thursday with a floppy disk containing all her work. But when we tried to read the floppy disk, it was corrupted. We tried a few different computers and I tried all of the MS-DOS tricks I could think of, but no luck. The files were gone, and those were the only copies.
She handled it surprisingly well, and to make her feel better I told her a story of my own misery. I told her that when I was in high school, I had a really important paper to write. It was due Monday morning, and Sunday I spent the whole day working on it. Then when I went to print it... there was no ink in the printer! There was a terrible snowstorm outside and, against better judgment, I got in my car and drove to the mall to try to buy a printer cartridge. The roads were really icy and when I was getting off the highway, I spun out and did a 360 right on Route 1. Thank God there were no other cars on the road or else it would have been a disaster.
At which point Ellie jumped in and said (God bless her), "Why didn't you just email it to your teacher?"
It made me feel really old to have to explain to her that this was 1990 and there WAS no email. =) I assume this will not be the last time in my life that I have to tell someone that I was in high school before the Internet was invented.
Anyway, tonight is Halloween, which is not at all celebrated in Korea. I think some of the hotels are having parties, and if we go to the foreigner neighborhood I'm sure that we'll find people in costumes, but I don't think we'll do anything special.