Conor Meagher Fan Club

After two weeks at University, I’d say I’m pretty confortable with my school situation. All my teachers and classmates are great. It’s everything I could of asked for. But there’s something that was different when I came back to Korea and it was something I had to take care of. After 377 days with one of the greatest girls I’ve ever met, I decided to part ways with her. The hardest thing was that she did nothing wrong, but it was something I needed to do for myself. I could spend all going into to the details, but it’s just something I’ll leave alone. It’s been over a week now and the fact that it’s rained everyday since then has not helped. It’s because of Typhoon Nari hit the south part of Korea last weekend. Now there’s another one on the cost of China, Typhoon Genesis, headed for the north coast of Korea. You can check it’s path here:
http://web.kma.go.kr/eng/wis/typ_01.jsp

The first day of my graduate school career is in the books. Let me give a little summary on how the day went. It all started abruptly when an unexpected visitor came to my apartment door looking for the previous tenant’s ADSL modem. We could find the modem, but for some reason it didn’t have it’s power cord. Even after telling the man it’s not here in Korean, who was probably the tenant’s father, he continued to look. Finally, he gave up and went on his way. This was annoying, but I still had plenty of time until class. I wanted to be prepared, so I left 30 minutes early and went to the campus supplies shop to get some materials. You got to get new pens and pencils for a new semester. Unfortunately, I lose them after the first week, but I’m a graduate student now, so hopefully I will lose them after 2 weeks. Soon after, I grab a bite to eat while walking. My first class is not in my major, but just a Korean language course that I wanted to take for my own personal reasons and also that it is free. This an undergraduate elementary class and I probably should be in the graduate intermediate class, but there’s a couple logistical problems preventing me from doing that. So I just hope to try to get the most out of it and use it as my own catalysis when studying on my own free time. The class is a very interesting group of students. This was the first time I have ever seen any of the undergrad international students. Most of them where from other countries like France, England, The Netherlands, China, Japan, Austria, but some were from the States. I would say all of them are 7 years younger than me though. Except one student, Sasha, who is from the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State. She has been my CSU buddy since last week. She also has the next class with me, Quantitative Analysis 1. Before going to this class, Sasha and I had tons of time to kill because on the first day most classes don’t teach anything. Well, all my classes are once a week for 3 hours. So we had more than an hour and a half to kill. During that time I did find a place that sells bubble tea, so it wasn’t that bad. If I could just find durian bubble tea, then I would be in heaven. So after a sitting outside for awhile, we decide to go to class “early”. Well, all the extra time we had was all wasted when we couldn’t find the classroom it was in. We were only saved by a student who knew what room we were talking about. We basically couldn’t find it because of a mistranslation to English. After arriving late, I could easily tell that it was going to be an interesting class. The class was a prerequisite and required for graduation for most post graduate degrees. But what made it the most unique, was that it is taught only in English. So Sasha and I are the only ones with a good understanding of the English language in the class and to go along with it, the class is taught by the head of the Public Administration Department. The makeup of the class is almost all Korean students, but the range of ages is quite big. From an undergrad senior taking a graduate class to a 50s something CEO are the end points of the spectrum. Actually, there are 3 old guys in the class and it’s really strange to see a Korean professor, who is at least 20 years younger, speak down to them in “only” English. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in Korea too long, but if you’re a 50 year old male CEO in Korea, then you have a lot ass-kissing around you. One other thing I forgot to mention was that during my Korean class, I got a text saying that all my major classes were cancel for this week, which are all the classes I have left this week. Instead, all the URP students are attending a special guest lecture on new development in Los Angeles and how it affects K-Town.

Sweet.