Lord Almighty, why must there be such an evil like tests to exist? Now, outside the walls of Yale, I felt a little more free from the standard liberal arts curriculum by delving into language learning and self-teaching. But, lo and behold, one can never truly escape the death grip of testing. So I tried to study on Sunday for the first time for my imminent midterm. How imminent? My midterm split into two parts with the first being on Monday and the second on Tuesday.

I expect you think I have thus been a bad boy for not properly keeping up with my studies and to have procrastinated to this point. But, in my defense, don’t we all do the same for that first test? Regardless, I felt that immediate post-exam guilt but I soon got over it knowing that I would be immediately starting the second half of level 2 and fussing over my predictable incompetence served no purpose. To my surprise, I survived above the passing mark: a solid first victory. Fear not, potential Yale advisor/Light Fellowship office member/close friend that wonders when I will learn, my Korean is honestly improving, my test-taking skills however remain crappy.

Good news? Let’s get to it!

That intimidating figure standing next to me happens to be a pop-and-lock icon and a member of both the Electric Boogaloos and Rock Steady Crew. I can explain how cool it was to meet him after R16, an international b-boy tournament in South Korea, and after he taught an awesome class at Studio BWB, or I can just let you watch this. Yeah, that probably was good enough for you. AHEM, that’s not all. Shortly thereafter, I met Poppin’ J, one of the founders of the Blue Whale Brothers and Studio BWB. If you kept up with this blog, you may have remembered me linking a video of him and Crazy Kyo winning Korea’s Got Talent. Well, here’s a reminder of his talents.

Now, if I could just absorb their talents…

Friday afternoon, I attended a part of the Ewha-Yale Conference on Korean Literature, Art, and Film 1910-1945, a series of panels lead by Ewha’s Institute for the Humanties and Yale’s Council on East Asian Studies. Specifically, I took part in the panel discussing cinema, images, and art. In summary: the first lecture discussed the life and impact of Korea’s first female artist 나혜석 (Na Hyeseok) on both her contemporaries and feminist art; the second overviewed the escape of elitist art education by the outflux of young Korean artists shifting to Teikoku Art School (modern day Musashino Art University 武蔵野美術大学); the third discussed mass-produced images during the pre-WWII Joseon era, and the last overviewed the internalization present in Joseon Korean Cinema. As a student, I found the material intriguing, and as a non-expert, I found the material required an extant of basic knowledge of the subject matter to gain more from the lectures.

Well, my hip hop class and I have grown pretty close and our instructor Double D decide we should go out for an outing together and just spend some down time where we weren’t unbelievably sweaty from overworking our bodies to do ridiculous movements. So we all met up over at 건대 (Konkuk University) in the East side of Downtown Seoul. As I always say, you can’t beat 치맥 and damn, it was sure good.

But if you thought a few rounds of fried chicken, shrimp, and dduk were going to fill our stomachs, you’d be surprised to know that we needed to get 3 large servings of 빙수 to quell the desires of stomachs. All of this culinary desire was accompanied with learning about each other outside the whole dance context and surprise*notreally*surprise, we ended getting into a discussion over Korean and American social norms. What else do you expect from a couple of twenty-somethings? Nonetheless, it was fun to poke fun at each other’s lives and get to know a bit more about each other.

As promised, I continued my excursions with another wonderful hike with CIK (Climbing In Korea). Saturday, we embarked to the outskirts of SNU’s campus to take on 관악산 (Gwanaksan Mountain). In comparison to Buramsan, Gwanaksan involved fewer ropes since we didn’t have to scale too many slippery, steep smooth rock faces; rather, we faced many more steeping trails, climbing walls, and narrowing ridges. Luckily, I had gloves ready for this one expecting the need to grab onto a lot of hand holes to get through.

Damn, that was a smart move. Although not as superficially daunting, the hike this time around was considerably more taxing considering it was in the midst of my Ramadan fasting and more physically exhausting. As an added bonus, it was the first time using my new boots so they needed a lot of breaking in. Boy, did I make a good first effort.

Gwanaksan was not only a higher ascent than Buramsan, we had to go through more peaks to get to the apex of the range. Honestly, it made the hike feel more like a thrill ride since the ascent was very regularly transformed into a descent and back again. There even was a helipad next to what-I-presumed-to-be-a-broadcast station. (In defense of my assumption, it was an ominous, multi-storied building with a satellite; rational judgement, right?)

When we finally got to the 정상, we goofed off a bit for some group photos. The mood immediately shifted when we visited a nearby mountain temple. Even though I understood the attractive aspects of viewing the place, I couldn’t help but feel that we were intruding. People very clearly prayed in front of us but we all quietly shuffled by to the edges of the temple to view the depths of the valleys that lay all around us.

Granted, the scene refreshed my person, I still felt wrong to intrude without having been properly accustomed to the appropriate prayer I could have offered. It will be a moment I will reflect on more deeply as I transition into actually visiting and observing temples during the academic year.

All I can say, the final descent down in new shoes was not the most pleasant. So we decided to cool down at the base with some stretches and yoga. Soon, the stretching evolved into a myriad of different poses and cool party tricks.