First things first - China

Niedawno wrocilam z Chin. Kolejna po Tajlandii podroz pelna przygod. 3 dni spedzilam z dziewczynami w Pekinie, kolejne 4 sama (sic!) w Szanghaju! Szczerze nie umiem powiedziec ktore miejsce bardziej mi sie podobalo. Trzeba zaczac od tego, ze Chiny generalnie raczej nie zdobyly mojej sympatii. Chiny jak dla mnie to taka troche wieksza Tajlandia czasami. W Pekinie bylo spoko, ale chyba dlatego ze mielismy za przewodnika Sun. Z nia i dziewczynami czulam sie bezpiecznie. Zakazane Miasto i Mur Chinski robia wrazenie!

Za to w Szanghaju...porazka. Hotel z grzybem na scianie ;/ jak chcialam zmienic na inny to oczywiscie nie bylo zadnych wolnych, moglam jeszcze mieszkac z 7 innymi osobami (tzw mix-dormitory) ale jak zobaczylam 30-letnich Wlochow i Hiszpanow latajacych w recznikach po korytarzu... podziekowalam. Na domiar zlego prze caly czas padalo ;/ ale musze przyznac ze Expo zajebiste, serio robi wrazenie! W szczegolnosci polski i koreanski pawiolon :) Za dwa lata Expo w Korei! Jade KONIECZNIE!!!!!

Generalnie nie wiem co ludzi pociaga w Chinach! To nie sa tylko ladne swiatynie, jak dla mnie. Ale z drugiej strony mysle ze moze zle miejsca na zwiedzanie wybralam. Taka prawde ze bylam tylko w dwoch metropoliach. Moze inne mialabym odczucia gdybym wybrala sie z dziewczynami do tych malych, spokojnych miejscowosci jak Xi'an.

Jedno wiem - do Chin predko nie wroce. Jeszcze tylko do Hong Kongu bym pojechala!

peace out

Dawno oczekiwany update (?)

Wiem, ze dawno nic nie pisalam (tak od maja chyba). Tyle sie dzialo, wielu rzeczy juz nie pamietam ale postaram sie niedlugo opisac wszystko to co pamietam z tego dosc dlugiego okresu.

Kazdy kto mnie zna wie ze nie jestem systematyczna. Mysle ze poczatkowo opisywalam wszystko co wydawalo mi sie ciekawe, inne, smieszne...jednak jak emocje opadly najwidoczniej cieszylam sie zyciem w Korei, juz bez potrzeby dzielenia sie kazdym szczegolem Teraz zaluje :) ale czasu cofnac sie nie da :)

Update wkrotce.

Pozdro ^^

New passion

I've developed a new hobby - it's korean drums, or if you prefere - Samul nori!

This is my second favourite thing after Japanese language. Since 日本語 nothing ever gave me so much satisfaction - when it comes to hobbies. Exciting feeling.

So basically there are two types of drums - the round one called buk and hourglass-shaped callled janggu. Because playing janggu is difficult (you have to use both hands) I prefer buk for now (one hand is enough) :)

Besides people are super nice. Amazing thing is that even though they hardly speak English we still meet twice a week and play together. Every time before and after the meeting we eat street food together. Also at the end we sometimes do an evaluation part during which the speak Korean, we - Polish! I forgot to add that there are 4 of us - Me~, Ewa~, Mary~ and Alexy~.

One night we went to a bar with them - last meeting before mid-term. Funny things were happening. They look really excited about white people being with them, but the truth is they like Alex the most (or just his hair - I'm not sure) ;P

Anyway I'm having a great time with them.

Just watch them play :)

I enjoy it here!

Food update

Answering request to post more photos. Here are some pics from Korean restaurants slash bars.


Green tea latte - don't try it...ever.





-

Don't know exactly what I'm eating but hey at least it's not moving, oh whoa whoa ok maybe it's moving a little but hey at least it's not singing =)

Bon appetit!

In the middle of nowhere

I will post it later. Sorry - tired.

The best teacher (?)

Today I will tell you a story about the best teacher ever. The one that brings alcohol to the classes, the one that takes us to the cinema after admitting that she doesn't have a boyfriend, the one that can directly ask you "are you stupid", the one that is attracted to European guys and doesn't try to hide it, the one that ask you whether you like deep kisses or not. It's a story about my Korean language teacher... well that's pretty much it. :)

Our 선생님 (sonsenim=teacher) is a 32-year-old Korean woman. She hardy speaks English but she is kinda nice - that is what we've all been thinking.
I wonder if you can find her on the photos?

She took us on Sunday the cinema. It's a shame she just took us not treated us. Whaaaat? I just heared that the oldest person always pays. But actually it was our initiative so....
The point is that she always seems so nice towards the guys, doesn't much care about the girls. She already has got her favourites (but it's hush hush).

But I have to admitt that a trip to cinema was fun. I even managed to watch "Alice in wonderland" - with Korean subtitles. I love Tim Burton's movies.

You definitely should check it out.

Plastic food revolution

Another trip to downtown, this time with Ewa, Mary and Alex.
But today we splitted because some of us wanted to see what plethora of exciting places Daegu has in offer and some of us just wanted to go shopping.

So after leaving girls me and Alex went to Daegu's herbal medicine market. It was ofc too late to see the whole thing happening. But we managed to chatch a glimpse of the remainings of the market. People there were selling a variety of herbs, dried fishes, spieces etc. We even had an opportunity to try a dried mussel. Well...it tasted like a dried mussel, really nothing special about it. Btw that day we also tried a Shrimpburger, takoyaki (octopus balls) and I saw a place where they sell Japanese crepes (I have been obsessed about them since I saw that one movie on YouTube). I should definately try them one day.



But the thing I liked the most was plastic food on restaurant's display. I heard about it before (Japanese obsession thing), but I have never seen it. Ingenious but kinda strange, isn't it?


And at the end of the day we've found a cosy looking local place. We've ordered shabu shabu (しゃぶしゃぶ), which is kind of Japanese hot pot. I have never try a hot pot befor and I eager to eat it very much. The idea of this dish is very simple - you get sliced meat or seafood and vegetables, noodles and dipping sauces. The dish is prepared by adding meat and vegetables into pot of boiling broth. Once everything has been eaten you put rice with egg to a hot pot and mix them together - it's eaten last.
It was a pleasant culmination of the shop struggle we've gone through.



Enjoy your non-plastic food.

Korean "beauty"

Every day in my room there is a beauty salon.
So here is the story, I live with a Chinese girl - Christina. She is a great girl, she always wants to help me. She is also really careful about her appearance e.g. every single day she soaks her feet in a hot water twice and puts masks on her face and does other beauty stuff. This is all because she wants to be a perfect woman and wife I guess.
She also got a medicine for everything, she knows what kind of herb is good for health. Sometimes she even sacrifice herself in the name of beauty! Like yesterday she drunk a chinese jujube brew which she didn't quite like.
But I have to tell you something - I can learn a lot about looking good from this girl. It's not like many people here already appreciate my appearance, however...

We also wanted to feel like Koreans beauties.

Korean pop

Everybody here is obsessed with this particular song. It's really catchy. I'm singing ot all the time, I can't get rid of it!!!

"Nobody" - Wonder Girls

Enjoy :)

Stay tuned.

Mammia mia. I'm in Korea!

So this weekend it was the MT time. MT stands for "Meeting Trip". The main purpose of this trip is... drinking. I'm not gonna lie to you. And because I don't consider events like this as fun I really didn't wanna go. I didn't go to drunken trip at my home university why should I go now?

But I went ofc.

We were devided into teams, our team name was "Red Hot Chilli Kimchi" - I still think it's brilliant! I'm not gonna describe in detailes what happened - you can easily guess! I will just put the summary.

Summary:
-1 good spaghetti eaten
-around 7 hours wasted listening to Korean dance leader - sheer torture!
-1 good performance made (to Mamma mia song)
-1 whisky won
-1 whisky disappeared
-2 teeth broken
-3 hours spent on sleeping
-lots of people met
-147 pictures taken

About the place - Gyeongju known as the museum without walls (yeah maybe), it holds more tombs, temples, rock carvings, pagodas, Buddhist statuary etc. than any other place in South Korea. Well what I know is that now it definately holds more soju and beer bottles also :)

Avoid korean MT's :)

Food review

Mostly it sucks!
EOT.

Karaoke mood

It was Ewa's birthday so the whole international community went to karaoke place. It was great. Even I after a while found myself singing Avril's "Girlfriend". And now.... I'm speechless because of two reasons. First - cause I can't express how much fun I had and second - I strained my voice last night :) Karaoke rules! I wish we had clubs like that in Poland.

Unfortunately battery in my camera was low so I couldn't take many photos. But as soon as I will get some pictures from other people I'll post them.

Status for today: Karaoke mood.

Stay tuned.

Simon says...

Yeah... actually I have no idea what he says because he speaks Korean (시몬 가라사대). But I doesn't matter cause I can still attend the mass. Simon is the Christian priest I've met yesterday. Polish society went to the korean church! It was an interesting and unique experience. Can any of you boast about it? Yeah, and I can.

But it's not about it. I truly enjoyed the mess. And after it they treated us to a cinammon tea. Everybody was so nice - I'm getting use to it :P

Stay tuned!

Trip to downtown

Today me and Ewa did some sightseeing. We finally went do see Yeungnam University campus. The campus is indeed huge. We probably saw only about 1% of it, but I have to say it's impressive. Campus' highest building is library (5th photo) - the story behind it is that (I think) a president (or sb) graduated from this university but nobody knew where it exactly was so he instruct to build this library so that it reign over the city. But I probably mixed it up so it doesn't have to be true. There is also another funny story about my photo with a bush, but I'll tell it next time.

A few pictures posted below.

We also went to Daegu downtown. To get there we needed to take a bus and a subway. One ticket costed 1100 KRW (about 2,75 PLN). Daegu's subway is very modern so it was a pleasure to travel by it. And like always there was a small surprise :) While traveling by subway an old Korean woman sat next to me. And to my surprise she started speaking English! Amazing was the fact that she did it without any hesitation! And believe me it's a country where lots of young people don't speak or is affraid of speaking English more like it. She told me that she had attented an internet course. It took her 6 years to learn English. She also traveled to Europe - according to what she said she had been to Poland and Switzerland and her son-in-law is American so this summer she is going to visit USA :)) I don't know if all of it was true, maybe she just wanted to be nice. But nonetheless it was unforgettable experience.
Downtown itself is really... "eccentric" is the only word that came to my mind. It's also pretty bustling. You can spot it in the photos.

Peace out.