Since this morning we have been talking about about food in class, since we finished the chapter titled: ‘Food’ today. As soon as we got our long midday break (our 20 min break) the entire class rushed down to the shop in the building to buy some food. I bought one of their kimbap’s, even though it isn’t as good, and a bit more expensive, than the ones I usually get, I was simply too hungry not to eat.
When class was over Unnie and me headed out to buy some tofu for our noodles, we have been craving tofu with our noodles for so long (three days), so it felt very satisfying to finally buy it.
On our way back to our room I stopped by the bookstore at ECC and purchased the next set of school books that I plan on bringing back to England to study from.
The green ones are for level 2 and the blue ones are for level 3, level 4-6 don’t have any books, I reckon that they read prose books, newspapers and such, at those levels, but I actually have no idea, I just know that they are supposed to be able to discuss politics at level 5.
I flipped through the books to see what they contained and got a bit of a shock when I discovered that only the vocabulary had english translations in the level 2 books. In our level 1 books the questions and topics at the top of the page are also translated, but not in the level 2 books. In level 3 everything is in Korean and there is no translations whatsoever, even for the vocabulary we are expected to be able to figure out the meaning from the context, or by looking it up ourselves. At first when I saw this I felt slightly scared and wondered if I would be ok studying these books on my own in England, but then I calmed down and tried to read parts of them, and actually understood what it said, that totally boosted my confidence. I reckon that I just got a bit scared as I still read quite slowly, a lot like an elementary school kid.
The second thing that I noticed was that the characters that follow us in the book were different. The funny part about this is that they are the same in level 2, the names and their occupations are the same, they just look differently. On the third level however we will have to say goodbye to some our good friends including, but not limited to, Natasha (나타샤) the Russian housewife, Wangkai (왕카이) the Chinese student, Michael (마이클) the American office worker and Yoko (요코) the japanese student. I’m quite heartbroken at the thought of parting with 왕카이 씨 (Wangkai shi, shi is a honorific form used to address someone in Korean). His name was really the best, it took me so long to learn how to spell it correctly, but his name is just very funny to say. Don’t worry Wangkai my friend, I’ll remember you until the end.
Bonus:
Today I finally went somewhere close by that I had wanted to go for a while.
Today me and Unnie also made plans for the next two weekends, so now my next three weekends are all booked. I don’t have classes this Friday as well, Unnie does (but I don’t), so I have to find something to do that day as well, as I don’t feel like staying at home. I reckon that I might go to a Korean style sauna but I am bit worried about going alone so I might ask someone to go with me, or might head out somewhere else, I’ll have to see when the time comes.
As we were planning our next three weekends I suddenly realised that our final exam is in five weeks, when Unnie expressed her worry about having enough time to study for it. I reckon that my last couple of weeks will fly away, because I have no idea where the last month went.
Comments