[Personal]
Since I've had such a busy weekend (which I'm also about to blog about), this post about my last two weeks of the semester is going to be pretty short'ish.
Now that the finals are coming up, I'm glad I was able to spend time with some friends and family before cutting the world off in favor of studying.
My friend Jake, my old friend whom I hung out with while living in Korea, and I had a video call the other day after not having talked for a while because we've both been busy. He'd moved to Sweden with his girlfriend but have just returned to Korea and will be there when I go back to study as well. It's always nice to talk to him and I'm excited to see him again.
That Wednesday was the big scary "round of layoffs" for our university after some politicians decided that the quality of our education must keep developing while they, at the same time, decided to cut 2% of our funding by firing professors and closing down areas of studies. Who ever thought that that was a good idea, really??
Anyways, class was supposed to start later that day because all teachers had to be in front of their computer in the morning to check whether they'd been fired or not. Thus class was shortened and, considering my travel time, I was considering whether it would be worth showing up. But I hadn't had the best night before that so Jasmin, invited me to sleep over at her place.
That day our professor from Korean Studies, Barbara, had been invited as a guest speaker and, instead of the usual boring lectures about philosophy, she had us rewrite the tale of the original The Little Mermaid to fit into our own "cultures" - as an exercise in translation and communication.
Our group came up with a story about a the founder of the clothing brand Fila (the prince), the Sharkman (the little mermaid), and Supreme Sauron (the seawitch) and it was the most ridiculous story ever. Our friend Billie and their classmate were in charge of writing the story while Jasmin and I were made to do character design.
When we came home, Jasmin and I had a fat day. Jasmin put peanut butter and nutella on tortilla pancakes and, like she'd told me, it tasted just like crepes but had a more solid feel. We also shared a cup of Ben & Jerry's with peanut butter cups.
I left the next day after class. It was my grandmother's birthday so my siblings and I, my sister's boyfriend, my cousins and my cousin's newborn son, my dad, his wife, and her two daughters and their boyfriends all went to my grandparents home for dinner. There's kind of a tradition of doing manual labor (carpentry, VVS, mechanics etc.) on my dad's side of the family and two of the boyfriends brought to the party are in that field as well. Within that field is also a crude, but funny kind of humor that we joked around with. I was happy to hear that my dad still prank his coworkers like that.
Here's my cousin and grandpa oogling over the baby. I'll never not appreciate the look in my family members' eyes when they see him.
May 11ᵗʰ was the day of my mom's bachelorette party that my sister and I had planned with some help from our cousins, Pernille and Cathrine.
It was a good day spent with great company and I have many good stories but I'll save all those for another post.
Suddenly last week rolled around and I had my last classes of the semester.
Monday morning, someone suddenly poked my shoulder while I was waiting for the subway. It was 류 선생님, my Korean teacher! Somehow meeting her casually like this and making small talk was a lot easier than sitting in class (maybe because small-talk is actually within my vocabulary contrary to the current issues in Korean society that we are discussing in class).
She asked me if I was okay and whether I'd made sure to eat well when I was in Korea since I was so skinny. It was super motherly of her although she shouldn't be more than maybe 5-7 years older. When I explained that I'm just one of those people who don't easily gain weight, she shared stories about how one of her Hungarian friends is the same but even has trouble finding fitting jeans.
If only all people commenting on skinny peoples' weight could be as understanding as her.
For our last 3 classes, we reviewed the topics we'd talked about in Korean class, the words we should make sure to learn before the final, and how best to prepare.
At last we learned how to write a Korean CV because our teacher thought we "looked too happy" and wanted us to stress more about the future. She also stressed that my classmate Anna and I take the TOPIK (Korean language test) when we go back to Korea.
I'm scared and excited for the future but I know that our teachers have done their best to prepare for what's next.
Now all that's left are the two finals and then I'm off to Korea!
"기억해 줘 This life
이 축제의 시작 순간
아름답게 태워 Fireworks
새로운 시작에 어두운 무대 위의 조명이 되려고"
•°☆~〜Music of the day〜~☆°•
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