[Personal]
No rant today. Wuu!
My week started out pretty ..hard.
On Monday we took turns talking to our teacher about how to present the articles we had chosen. Like I wrote in my last post, I'd chosen to talk about the ongoing Burning Sun scandal. Our teacher had asked us to think about WHY we'd chosen the article we were going to present and also the focal point.
Turns out that I'd misunderstood what she asked about. She didn't want to know why I chose it (personal interest) but the reason why it was a relevant topic to talk about. So I ended up looking really stupid in front of her and somehow lost my words, only making everything worse. It's not like the words from this article are everyday-life words..
Since it's such a complicated case, she wanted me to give a lot of background info before presenting the actual article and it just felt so overwhelming.
She asked me to present like this:
1. Reason for choosing this article/topic
2. Introduction of the Burning Sun case from the beginning until now
3. Presentation of the article
4. Burning Sun case problems: drugs, hidden cameras, rape/sexual assault, corruption.
[She also wanted me to look into the hidden camera problem in South Korea]
And then to ask two questions which I was also supposed to try to answer before discussing it with my classmates:
- How can we solve the hidden camera problem?
- Why do the newspapers and broadcasting companies keep talking about the Burning Sun case?
Defeated, I took the train home and had a I'm-having-a-hard-time-beer. I'm afraid my Korean friends' behavior is starting to rub off on me.
Translation: When you are having a hard day = beer and games
Wednesday was the International Workers' Day so we were offered an online class since my uni wasn't allowed to teach that day. But who has time for online classes with a Korean presentation right around the corner? Not this girl :)))))
Thursday was the day of Korean class. It actually started out well. While sitting in the train on my way to school, I was chatting with my "gaming" friends.
It's just one of the generic war games for your phone (the name is Lords Mobile for the curious) that I've been playing for a little more than a year now. I won't claim it's that entertaining but since I'm in a Korean guild and have been since I started, it's a great way to practice my Korean and I've learned a lot from it!
Anyways, the theme of teamkilling came up and, for fun, I threw some shade at our teammates, who challenge others. This developed into poking fun at me and, in the end, using my funny drawing as the background of our chatroom. They said they're also going to use it as our table sign when we hold our meet-up once I arrive in Korea ㅋㅋㅋ
You can see some snippets from our conversation below. The black text is a translation of our messages.
We joked around like this for a while and I was feeling super proud for being able to do all this in Korea. I'm getting the hang of joking in Korean! Joking is sometimes very culture-bound and you can easily make not-so-great mistakes, especially between Westerners and Asians.
This was definitely a feat!
Anyways, I got to school (late, because my train was 1 hour late) and am told that our teacher has just talked about our upcoming final.
She said that we'd be given 3-4 pages of UNKNOWN Korean text and then have 30 minutes to prepare a presentation before taking the oral exam.
WHAT??
When I talking to my teacher last May about returning to Korean Studies, she told me that it'd be KNOWN text. I was also PRETTY sure that my friends/classmates, who took this final last year, took their exam with known text. Maybe it doesn't sound like a big difference for people, who don't study a language like this, but it's a huge difference for us, especially with the kind of vocabulary we're working with.
Suddenly this exam seemed a LOT harder and everyone felt kind of defeated. Our teacher sensed the (눈치) mood and told us she'd double check but we were still quite worried.
She also told us that the presentation on Monday would have to be 15-20 minutes of presentation (like originally told) PLUS 10 minutes of question answering and discussion. Aaaaand it would also be a good idea to include a video or a powerpoint.
We thought this presentation was going to be like the previous two we did during the semester but the requirements for this one had suddenly been raised by quite a lot and, on top of the news about our final, everything was super overwhelming once again.
That day when I got home from school, I didn't drink a I'm-having-a-hard-time-beer but an actual gravøl while talking to Jasmin and feeling bad for ourselves.
Translation: Another hard day. Save me
『 Gravøl: The direct English translation would be "grave beer," and is an old old old tradition where people drink beer after the passing of a person. Today it is also used when you want to pick yourself up after receiving bad news or similar situations. My brother and his friends drank gravøl after my brother's last final because he didn't think it went too well. 』
During class on Friday, we were given the exam dates for our first exam!
I only have two finals this semester, a written one in Scientific Theory (Videnskabsteori for Danish people) and the oral one in Korean.
Normally we're given 7 days to write this written one but because one of the 7 days falls on a holiday, we were given an extra day. Wuuh!
I'll be writing my finals paper from May 29th to June 4th and have already made plans to camp at my grandparents' house during that period so I will be as undisturbed as possible.
My siblings' birthday is on May 30th and we have a konfirmation to attend on June 1st so I really hope I can be productive with this paper and get it over as fast (and well) as possible.
We're entering a very busy period with a lot of celebrations and what not. I hope I'll be able to keep up with everything.
It's pretty obvious that now is not the time to be social since finals are coming up. So if you want to hang out with your friends, you better do it quick.
In one of the exact moments I was thinking about this, Emilie suggested coming over on Saturday and having a Sims day, so we did. complete with chips, chocolate, soda, and playing sims all day long in our lazy clothes.
Speaking of this upcoming busy period, the first celebration was actually this weekend! On Sunday we attended the konfirmation of my dad's cousin's daughter, Sofie.
Konfirmation is a celebration held for 13-14 year-olds here in Scandinavia where we celebrate them and welcome them into the "life of adulthood."
I didn't have anything to wear for the occasion so my sister let me borrow one of her new dresses. I never wear red because I don't think it fits my skintone so I felt super self-conscious.
My make-up also turned out differently from what I'd planned but I thought it looked alright so I wanted to snap a picture. I couldn't shake the discomfort from wearing red so instead of a "pretty" face, I opted for a strange face, much to the entertainment of my friends.
We left in the afternoon so I had time to go home and finish my presentation. It was mostly just the powerpoint but it ended up taking a while because I wanted everything to be perfect. I even held a trial-presentation (in Korean) for my mom and her boyfriend so I'd feel less nervous on Monday.
↑Snippets from my dramatic powerpoint↓
Monday came and... I'm so happy to say that everything went fine. I'd actually written out everything I was going to say because I get so nervous during presentations and I feared that my teacher wouldn't like this. But Maria, the girl presenting before me, read aloud parts of her presentation as well so I didn't end up looking bad in comparison. The discussion afterwards went fine as well and I'm just so happy now that it's done. We were 4 people presenting Monday and by the end of class, our teacher said that we'd all done well.
That was seriously a huge weight being lifted off my shoulders.
Because I've been feeling such pressure this week, I've made a spotify playlist where I add songs to boost my mood. The first two songs are from this list and Chronosaurus is just a song I've really gotten into these days and just Stray Kids in general. The 4th song (the one with the cow on the cover) is also on my list now. It was randomly suggested to me and I felt so happy and nostalgic when I realized that this was one of the songs we were singing along to when we attended 연고전 while living in Korea.
The last song was featured in a timeline video about the Burning Sun case and although I now associate it with a bunch of dramatic happenings, I really like the sound of it.
•°☆~〜Music of the day〜~☆°•
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