Sunday 22 November 2009
Living in dorms of university in Korea was pretty weird, first of all because they had separate male and female floors.And you could never enter the opposite sex floor, because you would be expelled (yeah right).
Living in dorms in Korea has pros and cons. I guess the first disadvantage that U notice is a HUGE amount of rules... But what could be more fun than not following them and having an argument with our beloved "sonsaengnim"? :D Well there were notices and rules everywhere: to be quiet, not to do this and that, there were the rules even for watching TV, using fridge and toilet :D And if U did not follow the rules there was a long list of penalties.
Some samples of notices ( just a few, there were much more of them):
And our beloved one - list of penalties:
And those who lived in the dorm of Ajou in the spring of 2009 know the story of the following notice :D.
Well I tried to integrate into a society so I posted one notice of my own on the door of our room
(unfortunately someone was not so happy about it, so after a while it was gone and I was so upset about it, I loved that poster so much).
Anyways I had the other one posted soon
In our case we had a 4 shared room. There were two girls from China and us, two lithuanians. The condition of a room was ok, not too fancy, but good enough to live :)
This is how our room looked like at the beggining of the semester, later on it got much more a bit messy ^^.
And that's how my food looked like during the first month:
Not a very healthy way of living :D
Overall I enjoyed living in dorms and pissing coordinator off even if sometimes I felt like I was in prison ^^ The good thing about our dorm was that we were able to come back there whenever we wanted. I heard that in some dorms they do not let you in if U come back later than midnight. Then U just have to spend all night partying or sitting in front of a dorm and waiting or the time they will let U in :D
Damn it - that's why I love Korea :D A lot of things were different from everything I used to know.
One of the first things U wanna try when U come to other culture is traditional alcohol. In Korea it's soju (소주). Well it has 20% and tastes like vodka mixed with water :D
And what is most important it's cheap! 1 bottle of soju is usually cheaper than one beer (~2000W, if I remember correctly). The first time I tried it, I didn't like the taste much, so after that we started mixing it with juice and named it "sojuice" :D.Then we were able to drink alcohol inside dorms without being noticed. Well Koreans have a lot of ways of drinking soju, one of the most popular cocktail (if U can call it a cocktail) is soju mixed with beer - somaek (soju+maekju(beer)). Here is one of the ways to mix it :)
The main reason why Koreans drink a lot is because they are making friends while drinking and getting to know each other better. They play a lot of drinking games - it's just a part of their culture :) Besides there are some rules of drinking and I found a video which explains it all ^^
Well I guess that's all for now. It's difficult to explain all about their drinking culture and the way they party, U just have to go there and see it with your own eyes (it's better to see once than 100 times to hear) ;) And here is just one fun Korean soju commercial, which shows a lot of truth about Korean lifestyle :D (and damn that song is catchy) :D
Wednesday 18 November 2009
Well I guess the first thing that comes up to your mind when you order Korean food is - omfg %#*$!!!!!!!! can someone give me a glass of water???!!!!! (gladly water comes for free in every restaurant and is served before you order the food). Most of the food is veeeeeeery spicy. Well for me it was not a problem, because I like that kind of the food. But it was fun looking at others trying hard not to cry or not to choke and drinking plenty of water :) Or even more fun, looking at exchange students trying to master eating food with chopsticks :)
Well at the beggining I had a few problems eating with chopsticks as well, because they are a bit different from those that I knew, but in general I didn't have much problems with the food - I loved it, especially
Kimbap
(something similar to sushi - products rolled in rice and seaweed and it was extremely cheap - 1000W ~ 2lt so I ate it a lot ^^)
Bulgogi
(marinated beef, usually comes like soup - though the view might not be so pleasing at first, the taste is amazing) and
Korean BBQ
Kimchi
Funny thing happened when I was going back to Lithuania. I was sitting next to one Korean man. Kimchi was served during the flight and guy saw that I didn't touch even a piece of kimchi, so he asked me if he can take it :D I gave it with pleasure :D
Well Koreans have some unusual dishes, like dog - gaegogi (개고기) - (yup they do eat dogs, but not the ones that are running on the street ^^, they have special breeds raised for food) or live octopus- sannakji (산낙지) - but I haven't tried any of those... Well I think my stomach is too weak for that kind of experiments (well actually - no, I was just afraid to taste it, I admit it...).
And now some personal experience ordering food ^^
We were in Korea just for two days (as I remember), so me and my roomate (Monika) decided that we need to taste some Korean food. So we just went to some random restaurant which was the most attractive to us. The first problem that we faced was reading... We couldn't understand anything (I knew how to read hangeul not to understand it), so gladly there were some pictures and we pointed at the first one. Well U can see in the pictures what kind of food we ordered then ^^ . I couldn't say that it was tasty as hell, but it was as hell expensive - we paid 40.000 One more thing - THANK U (whoever u r) for the idea of blogs and for the people that fill them. I got all crucial information I needed before going to Korea ^^. Without that I wouldn't even knew that in most restaurants you don't need to leave any tips :)
P.s. Later we found some restaurant with Lithuanian flag ^^
we were guessing if they could have some traditional lithuanian food :p~~~ unfortunately :D anyways we went there several times, because they had bulgogi (which I loved soooooo much!).
Well I think that's all for now :)
Bye (damn it, suddenly I started feeling hungry O.o)
P.p.s. I do not own first, third and fourth photos I stole borrowed them from internet... Hope nobody is gonna be mad because of that. All of us are friendly, aren't we? ^^
Monday 2 November 2009
Korėjiečių raštas, priešingai nei mano nemaža dalis nesusidūrusių su šia kalba, nėra sunkus. Hangeul sudaro 24 simboliai iš kurių 14 priebalsių ir 10 balsių.
Simboliai yra rūšiuojami į kvadratėlius ir skaitomi iš kairės į dešinę ir į apačią.
Pvz.: 한글 būtų skaitomas:
1 garsas - h,
2asis -a,
3asis - n,
4asis - g,
5asis - eu,
6asis - l.
Taigi gauname H+a+n+g+eu+l = Hangeul.Elementaru!
Žinoma yra niuansų apie kuriuos dabar nekalbėsiu (tarimas ir pan.) - neketinu kalbos mokyti ar pan, tiesiog noriu supažindinti su pagrindiniais jos elementais ir struktūra :) Jei kas yra užsidegęs mokytis ir nori daugiau informacijos, galit kreiptis į mane, pabandysiu padėti ir pasidalinsiu resursais, kuriuos turiu :) Tik deja tiems, kurie nemoka ir nesupranta anglų kalbos, vargiai ar galėsiu padėti, kadangi visa informacija kurią turiu (knygos, audio įrašai) - anglų kalba. Taigi dar vienas svarbus šios kalbos ir apskritai Korėjiečių kultūros bruožas - pagarba ir mandagumas. Taigi kreipdamiesi ir šnekėdami su vyresniu ar aukštesnį soc. statusą turinčiu žmogumi, naudotume skirtingą oficialumą nei kalbėdami su geru draugu. Elementariausias pavyzdys pasisveikinimas (labas):
안녕 - anyeong - neformalus, naudojamas tarp draugų
안녕하세요 - anyeonghasaeyo - formalesnis/neutralus variantas
안녕하십니까 - anyeonghashimnika - formalus variantas
Taigi, kaip galėjote pastebėti, keičiama žodžio galūnė, priklausomai nuo norimo pavartoti oficialumo.
Na, o pabaigai (dėl įdomumo) keli "mirtinai" reikalingi žodžiai/frazės, kurie gali praversti viešint Korėjoje ^^ :
사랑해요 - saranghaeyo - aš tave myliu (neutrali forma),
소주 한병 주세요 - soju han pyong jusaeyo - vieną soju (Kor. alk. gėrimas) butelį prašau (jei norite alaus vietoj žodžio soju vartokite maekju) ^^
감사합니다 - kamsahamnida - ačiū - (neutrali forma)
Iš tiesų apie šią kalbą būtų galima prirašyti daug daugiau, tačiau nesijaučiu pakankamai kompetentinga tą daryti. Be to kartais kai "įsivažiuoju" nebegaliu sustot. Štai kodėl, nekenčiu rašyt... Jau kai pagaunu pagreitį, stabdžiai sunkiai suveikia:)
P.s. Kaip jau minėjau prieš tai, jei yra kokių klausimų - klauskit, jei norit informacijos, pamokų ir t.t. - rašykit, pasidalinsiu. Pati prisimenu kiek vargau kol suradau tai, ko man reikėjo :) Na tai tiek šiam kartui :)
;;
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