welcome to the jinju chicken party

this is my korean family! from left to right, 한국아빠, 상욱, 창욱, and 한국엄마. 아빠 is a computer science professor at the Jinju National University and 엄마 is a dietitian at a middle(?) school. 상욱 is a high school 3rd year who literally studies all the days of his life. in this last week i've spent a total of less than an hour with him. his typical day has him leaving the house at 8am and coming home after 11pm (around 11 if he's lucky, up until 2am if not). he's studying until 2am regardless of where he's at. he's got this huge test in Nov that will essentially determine which university he will get into in the spring, so he's gotta work his ass off right now. a couple days ago he took a practice test that went form 8:30am until 5pm. how ridiculous is that? our longest test was probalby the SAT and that's like, what, 4-4.5 hours? 창욱 is a middle school 2nd year. he also has a pretty intense schedule that has him going to after school classes and academies every day as well. although he's usually done by 10pm. his sweet 16 is on this sunday. all of them are super friendly.

this is an identical apartment complex across the way from ours

my room

the kitchen

huge tv! though i've only been able to find one english channel thus far..

the apartment complex's playground
(i have yet to go test it out but i'll give it a go soon enough i'm sure)

this is the main form of entertainment. every day, at least one person from the family will be playing some game on this. thus far i've learned 2 games that you can play on this, though i'm sure there are many more.

back home in LA, whenever i was unable to understand what my korean friends were saying i used to attribute that to the "language barrier." unfortunately i did not leave that barrier behind. the barrier has only intensified since coming to the korean motherland.

yesterday afternoon, 한국아빠 comes to me and says, "tonight, chicken patty, we eat." i'm like, "oh chicken patties? i like chicken patties. good." i was thinking we'd be eating those breaded globs of goodness. again, i should have known better. it turns out, he was trying to say, "chicken party." we were going to a chicken party.

here's me and susan (she came to visit yesterday. i bet you didn't think we'd be going to a chicken party when you decided to come to jinju did you?) with a bunch of koreans. so apparently this party was held for me. all these people were curious about me and wanted to meet me.

the good news, though, is that they confuse each other as well! the brother was asking the father where something was, and the father answers, "in the school area." only it sounds more like "school alia." to which, the brother responds, "what?! school alien?!" haha! that killed me for like 10 minutes...