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I have been going to High School in South Korea for little over a month now, I have been truly enjoying myself here and usually can't wait to go back to school once I leave in the afternoon.
So now that I have pretty much completely settled into Korean life, my blog will be less important stuff and more just kind of whats going on in my life or if anyone has any questions I could answer those.
So school is great like I said above, it only sometimes gets lonely as my closest friends at school aren't in my class, but I am becoming more and more friendly with everyone especially the guys in my class, idk why but I have much more trouble talking to the guys then the girls in my class :<. But it is getting better and better as my Korean improves and so does their English as we talk to each other. Last week I got a new desk partner, and she is very nice and we talk a lot together in Korean and English. She also helps me with my Korean Language Academy homework, like looks it over and corrects which is really cool of her. Otherwise class is still the same I sleep maybe 2 out of 7 classes and otherwise I sometimes either listen to teacher, read a book or study Korean. And then during lunch I meet a group of friends around 8 people and we eat lunch together. Most don't really speak English or are extremely limited but one of my friends wants to be a translator(I think) and he has pretty much perfect English and his pronunciation is amazing.
I talked about this in a post I made in my last blog but for the past couple of days and a few more days there has been a cameraman from SBS who has been following around the Finnish exchange student who lives in my area and that I go to school with, so he has been filming me a little bit but I don't know if I will be in the final production as im pretty sure it is only 1 episode of some show. I will probably link it in another blog entry once it is aired on TV. But I really hate filming so much I probably looks so retarded in a bunch of the shots but whatever, I am happy I wasn't the one chosen to be followed around for 10 days.
Coming up next week I have a class trip to some cheese factory or something?? I actually have no idea where we are going all I know it is 2 days and 1 night and apparently it is fun so whatever I am excited. I think this will be really cool as I will see my classmates out of school and how they act differently. And then the week after that I am going on a trip to jeju island with I think around 15 other exchange students who came to Korea with the same organization so that should be pretty awesome, I will take a bunch of pics of both trips and upload some pics finally for everyone who reads my blog.
So that is pretty much anything remotely major that has happened to me. Just a few more things I would like to add.
I am intimidated as hell by Korean fashion, I considered myself to dress half decently back in Canada, but here people who don't even give a single fuck about clothing easily out do me. Is kind of annoying so I need to go shopping with my Korean friends. Also another thing is that the food at the caf at my school is pretty awful compared to other koreans meals I have had and everyone at school complains about it pretty often and always want me to agree with them. That is another thing my classmates are always wanting me to agree with everything they say and sometimes it gets kind of annoying. Also another thing that is kind of awkward is that I am always asked who is the prettiest and the ugliest when like many people are listening and they really pressure me to answer. It just isn't rude to state the more obvious facts with Koreans like people say " oh her head way too big" or "he has very ugly nose". At first it was really weird but I guess I am getting used to it. And now I appreciated compliments from Koreans even more cause maybe they are actually speaking the truth not like the fakeness of westerners. Also I still sometimes am amazed at how often and how much makeup basically all the girls in my class wear. Usually at any given moment there are at least 2 or 3 girls either fixing makeup or hair during a lesson. Pretty amazing.
Thats pretty much it if anyone has any question or wants me to talk about anything else tell me or if you want me to try something specific or and suggestions really. Lol
Anyway thanks for reading!!! 
 
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Are you there on exchange? Or for good?
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how are school projects in korean high school? do you get to do papers and present them to class?
I have korean cousins that are in school, so i'd like to know.
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I am here as an exchange student, I stay till January 2013. If you want more info read my past entries.
And there are no school projects in high school. Just everyone studying and then so far in one month there has been 1 day of exams. I think exam day was around 8 hours.
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Have you noticed any cliques or rampant bullying yet in Korean High School? I've heard some pretty crazy stories from Korean friends how Hyeong-dongsaeng relationships can get really abusive in high school.
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On April 03 2012 20:01 TheKwas wrote:
Have you noticed any cliques or rampant bullying yet in Korean High School? I've heard some pretty crazy stories from Korean friends how Hyeong-dongsaeng relationships can get really abusive in high school.
I see bullying basically everyday many times a day. There is one guy in my class who is always called some Korean insult or something and rarely ever his real name. But otherwise I would say it is less cliquey then my school back in Canada. All there is here is just the smokers and everyone else then the real big nerds. Like my friends at school definitely aren't the most popular people in school but they seemed to be on really close terms with like all what you could call the pretty girls and such. Overall, I would say less cliquey but definitely more bullying then in my Canadian school.
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Thanks for the blog, I hope you keep it up as I find this quite interesting.
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Keep up the blogging, im loving it
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Interesting read,cool blog too.
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do you ever get picked on for being a foreigner/other reasons?
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Good interesting read. With all these Korean culture blogs popping up it's nice to see something that someone is experiencing firsthand on a current basis.
I mean after reading that the girls would fix their make-up in between lessons makes the whole fashion shenanigans over there even more outrageous to us westerners.
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Oh wow you actually like high school in Korea?
My friends hated it.. like hatttedddd it lol. Smart or not.
But I believe you on the fashion thing. It's quite like France isn't it lol. Where the younger generation; even without trying dress quite mm.. fashionably.
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Sorry it took me so long to respond, I was really busy today.
I am 17 years old, so 19 in korea
No, i am pretty much exempt from all of the bullying. It is annoying though when someone I am talking to gets picked on and there is pretty much nothing I can do.
And yes, I love school here. Mainly because I dont have to worry about the exams and studying 24/7 i can just focus on making friends and such.
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On April 04 2012 04:16 jjun212 wrote:
Oh wow you actually like high school in Korea?
My friends hated it.. like hatttedddd it lol. Smart or not.
Not really surprising he enjoys it. I only went to middle school in korea and its fun if you don't have to worry about grades and studying that much.
edit. lol a bit too late
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This is a really interesting blog Kik. Sounds like so much fun! I always wished to be an exchange student.
Kinda wanna ask a couple of questions...
What grade are you in?
How did you get into this Program?
What made you want to ddo it?
Im really glad you're enjoying yourself, btw. I want to move to Canada in the future :D
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United States210 Posts
Nice blog Loki
You're going to appear on SBS!? :D Dude you should tell us the name so we can gif that :>>>>
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Haha we will stalk every KBS show and FIND YOU! :D
About the "who looks good, who do you like etc. thing". My Korean friend does that a lotttt. He always says like do I look good? who do you like now? she's pretty right? then a girl friend goes like oh he looks good right? oh no he's too short. etc etc. the list goes on haha. People care A LOT about their appearances in Korea. You should see rotinegg's blog he wrote about Korean fashion although it's the extreme
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On April 03 2012 19:38 LlOoKkIi wrote:Also another thing that is kind of awkward is that I am always asked who is the prettiest and the ugliest when like many people are listening and they really pressure me to answer. It just isn't rude to state the more obvious facts with Koreans like people say " oh her head way too big" or "he has very ugly nose". At first it was really weird but I guess I am getting used to it. And now I appreciated compliments from Koreans even more cause maybe they are actually speaking the truth not like the fakeness of westerners.
i've always read about stuff like this about korean culture. it's a little disconcerting to me. does anyone know how it became socially acceptable in korea to do this?
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On April 05 2012 01:25 WisMatiK wrote:
This is a really interesting blog Kik. Sounds like so much fun! I always wished to be an exchange student.
Kinda wanna ask a couple of questions...
What grade are you in?
How did you get into this Program?
What made you want to ddo it?
Im really glad you're enjoying yourself, btw. I want to move to Canada in the future :D
I am grade 12 in Canada, I will finish my final semester when I get back then hopefully go to Uni. But in Korea I am in grade 2 of Highschool which is like junior year in US or grade 11.
I applied for the program basically half a year before I left on exchange. Then they interview you and look at your application. I actually didn't get into my firsts choice which was Switzerland so then I had to settle upon Korea.
I said in my first blog post I think on why I wanted to go. And now that I think about it more it was pretty much that I really wanted to challenge myself. As I have lived a pretty sheltered life back in Canada.
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EPT
