The Conversation Buddy Series

Nicole! :)

Nicole and I were talking over lunch about their class schedule in Korea. She said that their classes start around nine in the morning and end at four in the afternoon, with several break times in between – a schedule which is far from what I had until this semester. Usually for the past 3 years, I’ve always had classes that start at 7am and last up to 6pm. We hardly have any break time between classes with only an hour to spend for lunch. Sometimes the professor would talk us into having a working break. Discussion over lunch.

Unbelievably for this semester, we’re only having 17 units divided among 3 subjects plus the “Intensive Nursing Practicum”. While the sound if it seems intimidating enough, it’s just like the other duty shifts that we had except there will be days that we will be having our night duties from 8pm up to 6am the following day. I am quite hyped up for this since we’d be working in shifts similar to a professional nurse. 

And in a few months time, we’ll be graduating. This reminds me reserve a slot for my graduation pictorial. Anyway, the delay would be fine since I’ve promised myself not to upload my pictures until my graduation day. Isn’t it too assuming if I already use my graduation pics as my display images in Facebook?  Di pa naman ako gumagraduate.

 

Barkada ng buddy ko

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Things I learned/observed from my Korean Buddy:

1. They can’t pronounce the letters R and Z. They call me Laymond and they call the restaurant where we ate Kajam when it’s really Kazam.
2. We went to Tagaytay weeks ago, and I’ve observed that they’re not really fond of buying souvenirs. They’re more of the shopping in malls type of people.
3. Most of Korea’s supply of pineapples and mangoes come from the Philippines. And according to them, the pineapples that we bought from Tagaytay were sweeter compared to those in their country.
4. We brought some of them to a Filipino restaurant near Magallanes Square. They liked Bulalo, Crispy Pata, Kare-Kare and Leche Flan although generally, they find Filipino food either too salty or too sweet for their taste. There is a logical explanation to this as mentioned by a Korean professor in UST. He said that since the Philippines has a very humid climate, the high sodium content in Filipino food helps the body to retain water and prevent dehydration. On a medical point of view, this explanation is quite reasonable.
5. “Kaja!” Means lets go!
6. They love singing. In fact, the K-Pop stars you see on TV undergo formal training before they can be given big breaks. 
7. Some Koreans know understand/speak Nihonggo since some words share the same meaning for both languages.
8. “Bento” means something like a lunchbox. Now I know what bento meals mean in Tokyo Tokyo!haha
9. Only South Koreans are allowed to travel outside their country.
10. Koreans actually know how to differentiate Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, etc from each other. They told me that the shape of the face and the teeth structure are giveaways. But for me, they’re all singkit.
11. They can pull off any type of fashion. I saw one wearing something like a pajama and another one wearing a Bohol souvenir t-shirt and it actually looked good on them. Bakit pag Pilipino nagsusuot nun mukang jejemon lang?
12. Matibay sila sa inuman. Seriously.

 Isn't she the cutest? :))

Meet my Korean Buddy

Nicole

If you had read in my previous blog post, I was selected to be one of the buddies of the Korean exchange students from Gyeongju University. They will be staying here in the Philippines up to the first week of December to attend English courses.This will already be their second week of stay in the country but I just met my buddy today since I was pretty preoccupied with our thesis defense. My buddy's English name is Nicole.

I met her again after her class and had dinner together with her other Korean friends. One thing I've noticed among them is that they are a conversational bunch of people, they just don't leave people out. I mean, as much as possible, they talk and include you in their conversations. They told me how they liked the chicken in Mang Inasal and how they liked pancit. They also asked me about the taste of balut which was quite funny on my part since I had hesitance on how I would actually describe the taste. They also asked about the different places in the Philippines such as Palawan, Boracay, Cebu, and Bohol but I wasn't really that confident answering since I've never been in those places. Nakakahiya naman di ko alam mga lugar sa sariling bansa ko.

Anyway, here's what I learned from them today:

1. Noona - a term of respect to the older sister. This is equivalent to our "Ate".

Since the Korean students were older than me, most of them aged 20-21, I would call them "noona". In my case, I could address my buddy as Nicole Noona. (not noona Nicole)

2. There is such a thing called as "Korean Age". My buddy is 20 years old in Philippine age but is already 22 in Korean age. This is because they believe that as a child is born, he is already a year old after staying inside the womb of the mother. Then one day after the birth date, this will be considered as another year. So that explains the additional two years. The age would then progress normally every year during their birthday.

3. Their English names are either chosen by them either because it's the one closest to their original names or because they just fancy the name, period. Isn't that cool?