A Walk to School

Becky is always excited when I post something on our blog even though it usually ends up being long winded and dry. I thought I would surprise her this morning and write about my journey to school. So many things happened in the short... or rather long 30 minute walk to school today. I convinced two people I spoke Korean, I had a delicious breakfast, and I saved a soccer ball.

I left the apartment at the same time as my next door neighbor who I have not yet had the chance to meet. I greeted him in Korean and he responded. Then he continued, I don't know what he said but since he gestured toward my apartment I said, "Nei." I figured he must be asking if I lived there. Nei, nay, nea, however you want to Romanize it pretty much means yes depending on the situation. I like to think of it as a wild card because it can mean just about whatever you want it to. If somebody's talking to you, say nei and they will know you are listening, you can respond to a greeting with nei, or you can use it to speak to a horse as it turns out all horses even those in America use it! So, with my deep understanding of this word, not to be confused with the word of the knights who say nee, helped me to convince the first person I saw today that I could in fact speak and understand Korean. That is until he spoke again and I had to confess I didn't know what he was saying. Our conversation quickly changed to English at that point.

I then started my walk along the busy narrow roads leading to school. I didn't have a chance to eat at home so when I could smell the sweet smells of Paris Baguette I took a short detour. The cinnamon rolls were fresh out of the oven and with the chill factor outside I really didn't have a choice in that matter. As I ate and continued my walk I kept sniffling my nose which has been runny lately. My frosting touched my nose and stuck in between my nostrils as I continued to sniffle. My tongue is long enough to lick it right up, so what is a guy to do? Anyways I'll just let you guess if I ended up with a sweet and salty surprise or not.

I continued past some people loading up a truck with household goods covering the sidewalk. As I squeezed through the furniture a man unknowingly stepped into my path. I politely said excuse me in Korean and he turned and said, "Chue song hamnida" which means I'm sorry.

I reached into my vast Korean vocabulary and responded, "Nei". I love wildcard words. That was number two on the list of people who actually thought I could speak Korean in the first thirty minutes of my day.

As I continued I saw a soccer ball at the bottom of the hill on the way up to the school. There is a field on top of the hill where many students spend their nights playing soccer. They must have not been able to find the ball after it rolled to the bottom of the hill in the dark so I dribbled it up the hill for them. I put it at the top of the hill for easy finding, but far enough away from the field that someone else who wonders onto the soccer field won't take it as an opportunity to get ball free of charge. I'm not completely altruistic in helping them though. It gives me a strange pleasure to think that some time today the group of friends who lost their ball will all end up giving the guy a hard time who swore up and down that he saw the ball roll down the hill and made them spend half the night looking for it.

Law School Admission Test Day

The LSAT is probably the most important part of admission into law school. I often thought about how many hours and literally years I spent working on my GPA to motivate myself to devote a lot of time to study and prepare. The LSAT consists of 6 timed sections of 35 minutes each. The order is random other than the last section, which is a written essay that isn't a factor in the score. The other sections are a logic games or analytical reasoning section, two logical reasoning sections, a reading comprehension section, and one experimental section which isn't included in the score. You don't know which is the experimental section so you have to do your best on all of them and hope the one you did the worst on is the experimental section. This is getting boring so I'll move on.

Korea's only place for taking the LSAT is in Seoul at Yonsei University. Yonsei is about 3 hours away from us. I needed to be there by 8:30 in the morning. Luckily the Oldroids, a nice family in the English Branch live within walking distance of Yonsei and let us stay at their house the night before the test. We are very grateful for their help. They fed us dinner that night, breakfast in the morning, gave me some fruit to take with to the test, lunch after and some cookies in a bag as we went home!

I was ready with the name of the building and had made sure to memorize the phrase "Where is..." to make sure I found it on time. I had also brought a little snack and some cough drops so if anyone was coughing I could share. Becky was nice enough to walk me to the test. Although we had been to the university before we came in the other side of campus than before. We were walking fast and I kept asking people where the building was for my test. I think I was asking them more to feel good that I could speak in Korean than to get help finding the building. I did end up having a nice man sweeping the road point me in the right direction. It was in a large building with several floors of classrooms all dedicated to the LSAT. We went up to my assigned classroom and waited in line. I did a set of logic game questions that I have successfully done before to help build my confidence and so my first questions would be stress free. Out of the 7 questions or so that I breezed through with ease I only got 4 correct. I was kind of shaken so I quickly checked to see what I did wrong. Shocked at my results I laughed, albeit a little nervously and determined not to be so stupid on the real test. I said my goodbyes to Becky and she took the cellphone and papers I had, they are very strict about what can be brought in the test room.

As I waited for the test to begin I tried to be positive and think of how well prepared and ready I was. My mind wandered and I noticed that many of the test takers had Korean passports. I started thinking how much of an advantage I would have against those in the room since I was probably one of a few taking the test in my native language. I started to notice many of the Koreans had U.S. passports and I thought, "Oh no their Asian American, they're all going to ace it!" The air was a little tense and so I tried to lighten it up a little and jokingly told the student behind me that whatever he does he should just make sure not to throw up on me, he laughed and we wished each other good luck. Students continued to file in and many of the desks were a little wobbly so staff and test takers alike were picking up desks and exchanging them with unused desks and others were folding up paper to stick under the shortest legs in an effort to stabilize their desks. I looked at my desks legs and realized that they were designed to get longer or shorter by spinning the bottom of the legs. I explained it to the guy next to me who was trying to get a staff to get paper for folding up under his desk. After spinning it the wrong way I showed him how to spin it the correct way and his desk was just fine. I tried to get the attention of the staff to show them how easy it was to fix rather than playing musical desks and their paper folding games, but I don't think they spoke English. The students obviously are trying to go to law school not engineering grad school.

The test was administered by a guy over an intercom. I was really happy to be taking the LSAT in Asia because testing is one of the things they do best, the staff didn't talk or disrupt us at all during the test and the timing was all perfect. As the test started I felt pretty good about all but one section. After we had our halfway break I ended up doing an extra section that was the same type as the one I did bad on so I am hoping that it was the experimental section. After the test was over the kid behind me said, "Sorry, I hope I wasn't coughing too much." I told him I didn't even hear him once. I must have been really focused. He was surprised, "I thought that's why you told me not to throw up on you." I felt so bad and apologized, I could've given him cough drops had I noticed. I hope he didn't spend too much test time worrying about what I had said as he tried to muffle his coughing. Oops, at least it was all over.

What is this, BYU?!!

I remember when my cousin Mike came to visit me at Utah State University he expressed how it seemed weird that my neighbors whose door was less than 5 feet from ours were girls! I laughed and had some of the same feelings when I visited him and found that the entire apartment complex he lived in was all boys. I thought it was great to have female neighbors and I think it made them feel comfortable to know there were 6 very strong men(I'm just trying to be honest about my physical stature here)next door.

One of my favorite pastimes during these experiences was to make BYU jokes, I mean they make it so easy. It got to the point that all we had to say to make fun of a situation or roomate was, "Guys what is this... BYU?" it was a sure way to get a laugh. My favorite BYU joke besides the rameumpton at the business building one explains how BYU students try to copy the True Aggie tradition. I don't mean the time they stole our colors, but how they meet up at the Y at 10:00 at night to shake hands. This makes them True Cougars. While explaining this to some friends once my cousin Christopher quickly added, "And the trick is gettting back home before curfew."


We now find ourselves in an odd predicament. Becky and I have been temporarily seperated into two different dorm rooms while they prepare an apartment for us. They are so strict they won't let married people visit each others rooms, not even to stand in an open doorway!
The whole 5th floor, where we are staying is dedicated to English teachers. You would think that since no one on our floor are students they would be lenient about their policy right? Then again American culture would also lead us to expect no curfew or such strict control of the college students either.




Our first night we were so tired that although we didn't like that we wouldn't be together we went to sleep without fighting it. We just kissed eachother good night in front of the elevator then talked on the phone for a few seconds before konking out. At lunch the next day the American teacher in charge of our program mentioned that after 1:00 am the gaurd was off duty or went to sleep so we should be fine to sneak into eachothers rooms. After talking to the Korean lady in charge of us, her advice was to think of it as a vacation from eachother. We like to vacation with, not from eachother. During our seperate afternoon naps two people opened Becky's locked door without knocking! One was the gaurd(he's a guy, not the one in the picture). After another kiss goodnight before our 11:00 curfew and a phone call to check in last night I felt even less comfortable having Becky all alone so when I woke up at 4:00 a.m. I decided to sneak on over to her room and stay there the rest of the night, turns out I have quite the rebelious streak. I snuck down all flights of stairs(there are cameras in the elevators) and I opened the door to the first floor where I could then head up the stairs to the fifth floor on the girls side of the building, and find my secret lover (nevermind that we've been married for two years). As I opened the door the gaurd was standing in the lobby, he turned around and while pointing up yelled, "Hoahdo ahoeco seo ameni alieoh aoobeseo dajlvdo" whatever that means. I was caught so I quickly grabbed a drink of water so he wouldn't know what I was up to. Argh, the one to two week wait better not be two weeks! I mean what is this... BYU?