Greetings!

Hello, everyone.
First, I would like to thank Dima and all the staff of the BBC learning English for giving me the fantastic opportunity to write a blog. I will do my best to make my blog enjoyable.
I am Jiae from South Korea. It is actually sad that I have to say South and North Korea separately. North Korean blood runs in me as my grandmother is from there. She had to move out from North Korea when there was the Korean Civil war in 1950. Obviously, it is a sad story to talk about, so let’s move on to introducing myself.
I am a student of 23 year-old studying biological science at SungKyunKwan University in Korea. I am interested in medicine and public health. One of my dreams is working for WHO(World Health Organization). It really fascinates me to learn about living organisms, how the lives are organized and how they are worked. It’s quite difficult to study, but once you make sense of it, it’s amazing to know how complicated and precise everything is working in your body and other organisms. I love studying biology.
Maybe I should mention about my family as well. There are five of us. My dad, my mum, my brother, my sister and me. My dad and mum run for a company producing healthy food made with Ginseng. My brother is a professional football player in Korea I hope he is going to be so famous like Pack Ji Sung. Finally, my sister is a high school student working so hard for an entry exam to a university. We haven’t lived together since I was 15. I always wish we could stay together at least for a year in our lovely house. Let me show you some pictures of my hometown and my home.

It’s a quiet and peaceful village. I grew up here. I had spent most of the time in my life in this small village before I moved out to go to university in Suwon which is near Seoul. I always miss being in my hometown, enjoying the beautiful scenery, and playing with my friends. All of them are just like dreams when I think of them. I’m about to feel homesick. So, let’s focus on my present life.
From the 29th of June, the day before yesterday, I started International Summer School at my university. It is a great opportunity to meet lots of people from different countries and to build up new friendship, globally. I’m still so excited about taking the course. As this course goes by, I will have more things to talk about. Please look forward to it.
I love plyaing the piano. Even though I am not very good at it, when I get stressed out or things are not going to what I want, I always want to play music and get my head rested.
I also love travelling. I have been to some Europrean countries and Japan out of my country. You know what? I got away to Pusan last week with my friends. Pusan is the second biggest city in Korea, and is located in the seaside. I realised that there are lots of different sides you can see in one city. I should describe this city as a package of beauty , old, and modern. The beautiful seaside and mountains, the old markets, and the mordern shopping arcades, other attractions for tourists. I really enjoyed staying there for a couple of days.
I think every country has their own characteristics and they should be appreciated itself. I travelled aroud so few countries considering there are over 200 countries out there. I will not be able to get to know about all the countries in the world, but our high technology is helping us to fulfill our interests. So, by using the internet and this blog, I am pleased to give you the opporunity to know about Korea. I also would love to hear from all of you and share our interests.
Next time, I will wirte aoubt my trip to Pusan. My story will be countinued.
Nice to meet you all out there.

Jiae

Unexpected, unplanned trip to Pusan

Thanks for all your welcoming and being interested in my blog. It seemed as if I started my blog with a bang. I will try to respond your comments as much as I can at the end of the entry.

Hello Jim. Thanks for welcoming! Wow! you have been to Korea? I hope you had a good time. I really don’t know where you took the photo. I guess it might be in Kyeng-ju. I visited Kyeng-ju, which is a cultural city, and I remember I saw a huge buddha statue somewhere. Hope I’m right.

The following is about my trip to Pusan. I didn’t really take pictures of the landscapes while I took many pictures of my friends and me, so I am sorry I can’t show you everything about Pusan. However, whenever I take pictures, I realize that our eyes cannot be compared to the world best camera. If you have a chance of coming to Korea, this is one of the must-see cities, so, visit here and make pictures with your eyes.

It was a last minute decision to go to Pusan. I finished my final exam the last Sunday. I was sick and tired of being at the collage residence after having done all the work for the semester. So did my friends. So, we just decided to get away from Seoul and go to somewhere far away from the familiar city. The place we decided on was Pusan, where my friends had never been before and I just had visited once. As you might expect, we really didn’t know what we would find out, but the idea of going to “never been city” thrilled us to bits.

We caught the train at 10:30 at night. It was a night train. I never expected I would see so many people the small hours on the train. It took us 6hours to get to Pusan. In fact, you can catch a fast train and it takes only about 2 or 3hours. The long journey was fun, though. We did long lists of chatting and catching up with each other.

At last, we arrived in the Pusan Station at 4.30 in the morning. I really wanted to see sun rising from the beach. If it hadn’t been for the clouds, it would have been a fantastic start for the trip. Sadly, it was quite cloudy, come to think of it, the sun seemed to be already in the sky somewhere.

After having light breakfast, we headed to Taejongdae. I will show you some pictures of it. It’s a wonderful place to take a walk. Actually, I saw quite a lot of people walking up. From a distance it looks like a small mountain, but it is a cliff.

After this place, I went to some other famous places such as the place where the international film festival took place, the huge fish market, and the beach with the Gwang-An Bridge which has pretty lights at night. We started the day at 4.30 and the day was really long, and it was very hot, temperature was about 30 degrees. So, next day, we decided to have fun on the beach.

Haeundae is one of the famous beaches in Korea, and you cannot imagine how many people actually come here for holidays. When it’s the season for sea-bathing or sun-bathing, whatever, you would say that there are half people and half water in the sea. I wouldn’t really like being there with too many people. Fortunately, I think we were there at the right time. We really didn’t go into the water as the water was quite cold, then we walked along the beach with bare feet and played with the sands just like children. Near the beach there is an island called Dongbeksum, where you can also take a walk through with feeling a nice sea breeze and it’s leading to Nurimaru APEC House.

Busy Life

I sometimes think how busy I am. Is there a need to be so busy and push yourself into hard work? I should admit Korean people like to be busy, be fast and effective. I think this characteristics have up and downs. When I travlled around some European countries, I felt so relaxed and felt like I was living in the time-free world. That is an unforgettable experiednce. It was surprising to see that I wasn't in a hurry at all, and enjoyed the time I had as I had always felt chased by something in Korea.

I was lookig for some pictures and I found those below. they were taken in Sunbichon which is a kind of traditional village. I just wanted to show you some traditional Korean houses.

I was really busy on the weekend. I went to my home and came back to Seoul on Sunday, then I had a class on monday. I'm still a bit tired. The weather in Korea is quite hot and wet these days, which makes me a bit down from time to time. Anyway, I was pleased to read all your comments. The following is some answers for you.

Mauricio- I’m glad you enjoyed the pictures I had posted. I am excited about the course I’m taking at the moment, but it needs quite an effort to follow the class.

Rabail- Yes, it is certainly enjoyable to go away with friends, but I remember when I was young, my parents took me to many places as well. I also enjoyed being with my family, too.

Alessonadro – What a curious guy you are! I think it is quite difficult to learn the languages originated from Latin for Koreans. It is totally different writing system from Korean. However, when we are at school, we learn English, which is compulsory, and especially at high school, we have to learn as least one other language apart from English. So, you could choose Germany, Spanish, France, Chinese, Japanese, or any other languages, but it’s totally up to you.

Bïa – I learned English at school, and also last year when I was in England, I had the opportunity to use it in everyday life. I certainly enjoy learning English, which I think is the most important part to improve your English. I use many materials. For example, I listen to English news, read the newspaper and novels, and try to use it by writing letters, e-mails to friends. Well, my hobbies are not very special. I like sports activity, too. Unfortunately, I haven’t got enough time to do it. I can play tennis and ski. Hopefully, I can go skiing this winter.

James- Well, I’m afraid I can’t answer that precisely, I really don’t know how those kind of things work in Korea as I am Korean, I don’t need to use them. However, I think you should be careful when you see “Free of charge” and something like this.

Benka – Why don’t you get a camera? I’m sure there must be wonderful places where you can take pictures. I liked taking pictures, especially, landscapes. Thanks for your compliment. I feel kind of flattered. Haha!!

Cris – There are lots of good foods in Korea. I think famous ones are Kimchi, Bulgogi, Bibimbab, Gimbab, and so on. We have three meals everyday, and we eat rice, soup, and some side dishes together by using a spoon and chopsticks. You can make different kinds of rice and soup. Mind you, if I had to prepare a Korean style meal to treat someone, it would be a daunting task for me.

Demin – I’m sure there are tons of places to visit in China as China is such a big country. One day, I will be there being astonished by the beautiful nature in China.

Andrew – I have been to Brighton. The beach is quite different from beaches in Korea, isn’t it?
The pebble beach is quite impressive, and there is one more thing you can’t see in Korea, which is a pier. I think it is nice to have such a thing as I feel like walking far above the sea, and sometimes people go fishing there. I remember the seagulls in Brighton as I also felt a bit scared of them. In Pusan, I didn’t see many seagulls, actually, I saw more pigeons than seagulls.

Henrique – Nice to meet you, too. I can imagine what the weather is like in Brazil. One time, one of my friends showed me a picture of Brazil. I thought It’s stunningly beautiful, though I don’t’ remember exactly where it was. I would like to visit there one day.


Jim In fact, I have been to Seoraksan National park. I know it’s beautiful. In Korea, there are lots of mountains all over the place and my hometown is also surrounded by mountains which is also one of the National parks. When I was walking up Seorak mountain, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of rocks and the sound of streams. Jeju Island, which I also have been to, is a wonderful place to visit. There used to be the Jeju dialect. I don’t think many people in Jeju use it these days because the development of media such as television, radio, and the internet have allowed the people in Jeju to communicate with the people in land. So, they are not isolated anymore. If they still used the dialect, I would never be able to understand them.


I made some corrections about the sentences you picked up as much as I can. Please tell me the answers. I always get confused about using articles. So, can I ask one more question? When you write the name of mountain, do you use “the” like the Soback mountain? Or just can I write “I climb up Soback mountain” ?

I will try to respond your comments
- I will try to respond to your comments
Thanks for welcoming!
- Thanks for welcome!
the world best camera
- The best world camera
If you have a chance of coming to Korea…
- If you have any chance of coming to Korea, - I think it sounds more natural.
I finished my final exam the last Sunday.
- I finished my final exam last Sunday. – I am not sure of this.
I was sick and tired of being at the collage residence after having done all the work for the semester. So did my friends.
- I was sick and tired of being at the collage residence after having done all the work for the semester. So were my friends.
we really didn’t know what we would find out
- I don’t know what’s wrong with this sentence, but I wasn’t sure if “find out” is appropriate in the context.
We did long lists of chatting
- we had long lists of chat – would it be right?
At last, we arrived in the Pusan Station at 4.30 in the morning.
- At last, we arrive at the Pusan Station at 4.30 in the morning.
Near the beach there is an island called Dongbeksum, where you can also take a walk through with feeling a nice sea breeze and it’s leading to Nurimaru APEC House.
-I don’t think I need “through”, here, and it leads to the Nurimaru APCE House.


Jiae

A heavy rainy day

I thought you might wonder about the jars in one of the pictures I put in the last entry.
There can be various things inside the jars such as Kimchi, and kinds of sauces, and I remember seeing my mum keep salt in there. People in cities wouldn’t use them these days, but we still have them outside my home, and we keep things.


It is raining heavily all over the place in Korea at the moment. There are floods reported. I think it’s going to last for days. When I was young, my hometown was almost flooded, and I went to some bridge with my dad and neighbors to see if it would really happen. I was very scared of losing my home. Water was nearly below the bridge. If it had rained more heavily, I would never see the village as what it looks like now. Every summer I am always sorry for the people who lose their houses, properties, and farm produce. It seems as if you never be able to stop the floods when it rains heavily during monsoon. It happens every year.


This week, I am too busy to focus on my blog. I am sorry that I haven’t put all my effort on it.

Talking about my summer semester, it has been fun, and I still have got a week left.
Last week, we had a famous Korean food festival. I wasn’t’ able to take nice pictures as there are quite a lot of reporters taking pictures, they weren’t moving and staying in good positions. Anyway, we had fun. There were Kimbab, Korean style pen cake, Deok-bok-i, and some other food. Those are not considered as a main meal. The interesting thing about this festival was that you had to make them to eat.

That was short entry for today.
See you next entry

Jiae

Multiethnic society

I think Korea is also quite famous for homogenous society along with Japan. I hardly saw foreigners wherever they were from until a few years ago. However, I can feel that Korea has become multi-ethnic society. I learned this from the class I’m taking at present. In fact, I see more foreigners and more tourists in cities than before. There must be many factors of that. I think the most interesting factor is international marriage. Intermarriage has become quite common in the countryside in Korea. These days in Korea, men in the countryside are having a trouble finding women to get married to, which make the men find women in other countries. Isn’t it interesting? Many Korean women don’t want to stay in the countryside helping their husband for farming or fishing and they want to get their own job in cities. Another reason for the lack of women can be the result of son preference. What about your countries?

My story – childhood

Jim, yes, I know very well about the weather in the UK. It really didn’t bother me. In fact, I’d like to be in England when it’s summer rather than in Korea. It’s incredibly hot here after the monsoon.
I’m okay with constant raining or sudden weather change, but the one thing that makes me want to go back to Korea was the very early sunset in winter, which really depressed me.

Well, I think I have got a story to tell from my childhood. When it happened, it wasn’t funny at all. Actually, I was quite severely injured by this accident that I’m going to tell you. It was quite dramatic, though, from the point of a 7 year-old little girl. I was playing with my brother in my dad’s office when I was seven and my brother was five. We were running around the office, making noises and there was nobody in there except us. Suddenly, my brother found a water spray bottle. (I don’t know what to call this in English. It is used when you iron some clothes. You spray some water first, then iron the clothes.) Then, he started to spray water to me, so I ran away from him and to get out of the office, I pushed the door, the part of which is made with glass. I still don’t know how fast I was and how strong I pushed that door. Unbelievably, the small girl broke the glass and flew through the door. Everything happened so fast. The splinter of the glass scratched just below my right arm pit. I was bleeding. My brother didn’t know what to do. Fortunately, a neighbor found me and called my mum and she took me to the hospital, and I had to have the cut stitched. The scar still remains. Even though what happened to me was serious, whenever I tell this story, it’s quite funny. How come I could fly through the door like a superman?
I still don’t know the answer.


I'm going to make some comments about your comments the next entry. By the way, Hyoshil, I like the expression " running around like a headless chicken. I think I learned it from the flatmates. When you really think about it, it's a kind of cruel to say, though, isn't it?

JIae

A little about Ginseng

I can imagine that all the nations are much closer than before thanks to the development of technologies and cheaper and faster transportations. Why not the world being one big country, and speaking one language and respecting all different aspects of life style? It sounds so ideal. Well, I think through world history you can see human beings have curiosity and natural desire to want to know about being unknown to them. I do. That’s why I love travelling. I was pleased to read all your opinions about multiethnic society and it was good to know what I didn’t know about other countries. As I’m studying biology, I understand how complicated everything is organized and is worked in humans, then when it comes to society consisting of human beings, I think it’s even more complex. Well. It’s fascinating to live in the earth and to get to know a lot of variety in the world. Having thought of that, life time is too short.

Comments for you
Ramilton
I would like to show you some more pictures of Korean food, but I couldn’t take pictures in the festival. So, I’ll put other pictures of Korean food which I like on the blog.
There you go.

What I just introduced are not really traditional Korean food, actully those are the food I like.

Naheed
Well, I’m not very affected by this rainy season at the moment, but it’s getting heavier this evening. Hopefully, I’ll stop soon. The foods are so nice. You should try some one day.

Hyoshil
Well, as you live in the UK, I came to think of if you are able to make Kimchi there., or do you buy it? The food made by them was edible. In fact, quite a lot of students were good at it. It was fun to make and then have them.

Henrique
One of my friends live in Angola, and he had worked in Rio, Brazil for some years. He said to me that he had some Korean food there, and that it was very nice. You might be able to try some one day.

Ana Paula
Thanks for your concern. Yeah, I know it is winter in the southern hemisphere now. Is it freezing or snowing? I remember seeing Brazilians feeling so cold in England last winter. When I was there, it was quite unusual to see snowing quite a lot and I didn’t get why schools were closed, and airplanes were stopped taking off. If it had happened to snow like that in Korea, everything would have functioned normally. I guess people found it difficult to deal with as that much snow never really fell before.

Toni
That’s right. Heavy rain always comes along with strong winds. It’s called typhoon. Sometimes it can do serious damage, and it can just pass very quietly. The interesting thing is that we name kinds of typhoons with words originated from Asian languages.

Vladimir
What a coincidence, I’ve never expected to meet someone who had the same experience with me.


I found a picture of Ginseng and I remebered some of you guys were curious about it.

I think they are 6 year-old ginseng. My mum made the jinseng drink. You don't really drink it. It's a kind of decoration. As far as I know, you have to grow ginseng at least 4years, and then you can harvest them to produce red-ginseng tea, drinks, honey and kinds of snacks, that sort of thing. Red ginseng is called Hongsam in Korean and this is especially known for healty food. It takes 4hours to make Hongsam from raw white ginseng. It used to take a lot more than 4hours because you did stew raw ginseng and then dry them 9times each. These days the process can be shortened by using machines. Actually, I have Hongsam drinks in the morning. Even though it's quite bitter, I can feel it makes me healthier than before.

Jiae

A spooky day

When I was little, I was really scared being alone at home when it was very dark, and raining very heavily with a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder.

Today is the day. It’s about 9 o’clock the moment I’m starting to write another entry. Now, I’m here at the college residence seeing constant bright lightning and hearing a deafening crash of thunder. I have never seen this kind terrible weather before.

Well, this time of a year, horror films are always popular. I never really enjoy them, though. Whenever I see them, I can hardly open my eyes and I often have to block my ears so that I cannot hear frightening sounds of the film. I don’t really remember all kinds of horrific stories I have heard or seen in my life. Maybe, when you are young, you take the stories very seriously and think about them constantly, but as time goes by and when you’re a grown up, you don’t really believe ghost stories and forget about them.

This weather reminds me of so much spooky stuff I’ve talked with my friends at high school. I went to a kind of boarding school, which is not exactly the same as in England. I remember quite a few days of staying up late and we frightened each other with a scary story. It was fun but we were also nervous because we had to be very quiet and lights had to be off, otherwise, we would be caught by the teacher in the residence, and we would get punished.

Looking back on, there were so many things I enjoyed. I’m having a high school friend reunion on the weekend. There are eight of us. We lived together, and studied together at high school for three years. I’m really looking forward to seeing my friends and catching up. It should be more fun because we are going away! I guess it might be another spooky day tomorrow. According to the weather forecast another heavy rain will be coming. Well, never mind, we’ll be fine.


I have read all your comments. As I’m so excited about going away tomorrow, I’m not able to write you back about the comments you guys made at the moment. That was such a making-up excuse. I’m sorry. Actually, I need to go to bed early for tomorrow.

Have a wonderful weekend all of you!

Jiae

Comments for you

Finally my summer school finished last week, and I got pass, so I'm really happy about that. I found it hard to follow the class mainly because of the lack of English vocabulary about the subject and different approaches of studying from biology. It was challenging, but I got through with it. Now, I'm really free from everything. it's time to enjoy my summer holidays.

It's been raining for days, and finally it's sunny today. this picture looks quite surreal, doesn't it?

Jim, I made corrections of the mistakes but these are quite tricky for me. Anyway, I did my best.

Making corrections

I think Korea is also quite famous for homogenous society along with Japan. I hardly saw foreigners wherever they were from until a few years ago. However, I can feel that Korea has become multi-ethnic society. I learned this from the class I’m taking at present. In fact, I see more foreigners and more tourists in cities than before. There must be many factors of that. I think the most interesting factor is international marriage. Intermarriage has become quite common in the countryside in Korea. These days in Korea, men in the countryside are having a trouble finding women to get married to, which make the men find women in other countries. Isn’t it interesting? Many Korean women don’t want to stay in the countryside helping their husband for farming or fishing and they want to get their own job in cities. Another reason for the lack of women can be the result of son preference. What about your countries?


1. Known as homogenous society
2. Been becoming multi-ethnic society
3. Many reasons for that
4. Have trouble
5. Making – actually I don’t know what’s wrong with “which make”
6. I haven’t a clue about the last mistake.

Jim, well, it was fun but it wasn’t really time for reliving my school days. We actually chatted about the present life rather than the life back in the days. You know, boyfriends things, prospects of getting a job after college graduation, difficulties in studying, financial problems, that sort of thing. It was two years since the last time we had high school reunion and I felt we have changed so much for 2 years. I’d say we have been realistic than ever before and all the dreams we were chasing seem to be a wishful thinking. However, that doesn’t mean we are giving up our dreams. I think we are all on the right track to be a kind of person who we want to be, but now we can see the real life and have to face some difficulties as an adult, which we didn’t have to worry about at high school. What I’ve just said sounds as if the time with my old friends had been so gloomy. In fact, we had a good time. We had great dinner with nice Korean beef grilled outside the pension. Drinking beers and talking about some hilarious stories, we were having fits of giggles. Maybe this was the last time I laughed until my stomach hurt.


Here we are for comments
I will respond to your comments you’ve made until now. I finally got round to answering you. Sorry for being late.

Alessandro
I hope the answer is not too late for you. Well, I don’t think I want to travel around just because of the small size of the country. There are so many places I’ve never been in Korea, and I’d love to visit those places as much as I want to travel abroad. Let me guess. You might think that you don’t even know about your country very well because it’s huge, so you don’t see why you should fly to other countries and travel? Well, if you would like to know other cultures and go on a trip for it, don’t hesitate, and go ahead. It’s really different to see another culture inside the country. About the relationship between North and South Korea, it’s hard to say. You might know about the political problems which I think seem to make it difficult for us to unify. When there is something happening like launching missiles or possessing a nuclear weapon, military conflict near the borders, we “civilians” become interested in what’s going to happen, but in everyday life, we don’t seem to worry about being separated. It’s been almost 60years since the Korean War, and I don’t think my generation has much interest in unification or North Korea itself, maybe because we cannot have much information on North Korea because it’s a closed society. People like me don’t know what’s really going on over there. One thing for sure, I would love to go to some places in North Korea. I heard from my grandmother that the mountains are beautiful there.

Valeria
You are a biologist. I admire researchers, especially who are studying biology. Last term I took the class “macromolecule structure biology” when I learned about the DNA, RNA studies which have been performed in S.Korea. I think quite a few of articles about this field were written in here. I’m proud of them. Well, I’m interested in public health care and predictive medicine. I think public healthcare system in Korea is organized quite well. It’s not free, but we don’t have to pay much money to see a doctor. There is the national medical insurance system. I have not much knowledge of that. Just simply explaining, you pay insurance fees every month, and when you see a doctor or when you have to get a treatment in hospital and buy medicines, NHIC(National Health Insurance Corporation)pays up to 80%. It’s like raising money for everyone’s healthcare in Korea. The money you pay is dependent on how much money you earn.

Alex
Congratulations for being a father. Well, I have never really thought about when I get married and have a child. Now, I’m just focusing on what kind of job I’m going to get, thinking about how successful I’ll be in the future. Well, in Korea these days, young people tend to marry quite late, and birth rate is also really low. I think because we want to have our own life rather than to raise a child and also young couples are busy at their work and tend to delay having a baby.

Taru
I haven’t really heard about “Arctic Ginseng” before. Does it look the same as Korean ginseng? I’m studying general biology so I have actually learned so many different things such as plant taxonomy (I hated it, but I could get knowledge of the wild plants in Korea.), Animal Physiology, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Cell biology, Genetics and so on. Well, studying biology just interests me, and also I think R & D (Research and Development) in this field are fundamental for the improvement of medicine, helping to find new source of energy so called biofuel, development of agriculture.

Fuligao
Korean Ginseng is expensive here too. I think because you have to make so much effort to grow them. It takes at least 4years to grow enough to sell. Well, to be honest, I don’t think I know China very well. I know quite a lot of Koreans also live in China, and actually, here in Korea there are many students from china, too. Whenever I talk to them I find that we have something in common about culture. We learn the history about Korean and China and china has affected Korea culture and politics since the establishment of the first nation in Korean peninsula, there are so many mythological stories too. Well, it’s obvious we are very close.

Atsumi
No, you cannot grow Ginseng in water. The liquid is actually alcohol. My mum just made arrangements and put it in the jar with the alcohol. So, It’s kind of decoration. Ginseng that you see is roots, so it is always hidden under the ground and you have to dig it out and normally you do every 4 to 6years after you plant the seeds. Well, you can buy raw ginseng, or red ginseng and make drinks at home, but you need a machine to do that. There is one at my home, and I know some people also make the drinks at home, too. I guess it costs less.

Benka
It sounds so familiar to me that the villages can be more multiethnic society. Well, I guess that’s not really true in Korea yet. I would like to see the pictures you have taken, and the orchards pregnant with fresh fruits sounds beautiful and peaceful.

Vladimir
I hate fast food, meaning here junk food, but I think especially children and some young people like to have this kind of food as they think it’s delicious and fast. Well, I remember reading articles about children obesity which is caused by bad eating habits. So, yes, I guess this kind of food affects our public health along with smoking. The comment about invisible surface of the glass was funny, yeah, we need to be really careful.

Leila
Keeping away from the internet is a good thing to do. Well, I don’t think Korean people can live without the internet. I think people feel like being isolated in a deserted island even though they are still in a crowed city. Have a fantastic holiday, Leila.

Hyoshil
I have heard of New Malden, but I’ve never been there. I guess it is strange to see so many Korean restaurants and supermarkets in England. I stayed in Cambridge, and there was one Korean restaurant and one Korean supermarket as far as I know. You’re right. It’s daylight robbery. It’s quite a harsh word to use. Anyway, it was too expensive for me. About running around like a headless chicken, it actually makes sense because I know the story about it. I also like to learn many phrases in English. I sometimes find similar meanings in Korean, and sometimes I never understand. I think by learning idioms and phrases you can understand their culture better.

Toni
You know? I’ve been to Sansebastian(I’m not sure this is the right spelling.) anyway, the food was so great. I loved it so much. Actually, I also have got two Spanish friends. I love Spanish life style and friendly and warm heart of you guys. I miss being in Spain even though it was just a few days. Unfortunately I haven’t been to Barcelona which was a mistake.

Ramilton
Giving citizenship to all the people living in Brazil sounds great but unrealistic. Is there any limit for the foreigners to have citizenship? I hardly knew about Brazilian culture and people. From your comments I’ve learned quite a lot. Thank you. I know you guys dance very well. I was really surprised to see the movement of the feet when Brazilian dance. I saw that when I was in England. About the writer you mentioned. I didn’t know him, so I searched for information about him. I think I will like the stories he wrote. I’ll try to read them one day.

Lucy
Hi, Lucy. Three years seem very long to keep writing letters. You might know about Korea better me. I have got two Chinese friends who I met in England. They are younger than me and started to study at university in England. Well, wherever I go, I always see Chinese people, and for me it’s quite difficult to tell the difference between Chinese and Korean. How about you? I heard going to university in China is also really difficult and needs hard-working. Actually when I heard it from my friend, it sounds awful to me. I admit Korean students also live a really stressful life. I guess people have different opinions. So, what do you think?

Rabail
I guess there are similarities in food among three countries, but also slightly different. I don’t’ know if you can find an answer for the nice skin from the food we eat. One thing I can tell you is that we eat quite a lot of different vegetables. They are not only cultivated but also wild. In Korea there are many mountains so wild flowers and plants are over the place. People used to collect them and make it food for side-dishes. These days, of course not all the people go to mountains and dig them out, instead we buy them in the market. I think we eat healthy food.


Jiae

Ups and Downs in everything

The other day I was listening to Discovery. By the way, I have received podcast for discovery, Global News from the BBC. For 3weeks in June, they talked about stem cell research and the current situation and development of them. As I’m studying biology, the subject drew my attention. As you might know, stem cell research has been very controversial ethically, but it’s also been tantalizing. Well, I don’t want to talk about it in detail. As far as I know, the discovery of the presence of stem cell in human body was after the dropping atomic bombs in Japan. As the radiation from the atomic bomb killed people, but some parts of the body resisted to the radiation, especially, in blood system, scientists started to find out what regenerated these tissues after having been damaged. That was the stem cell. Since then, Stem cell research has been widely performed while ethical issues have also been posed especially about embryonic stem cell research. Stem cell research is considered as important and is believed to make breakthrough in the treatment of genetic diseases, incurable diseases, and spinal injuries. It must be a daunting challenge to carry out the research and find out real treatments for these diseases and it will take long time but if we made it, the way of treating the patients would be greatly changed.

I think that we live in a convenient, productive, fast changing at the same time risky world than ever before thanks to the development in many parts of the science, but it also produces lots of social, ethical problems. Well, when it comes to stem cell therapy, when the treatment using stem cell is reachable to us, and customized I think there might be no incurable disease. It sounds great, doesn’t it? But I’m sure there will be problems. What do you think? What ups and downs will be there? I’m dying to know what you think about this matter.



By the way, do you remeber I love playing the piano, but I am staying in the college residence so I don't have my piano with me, and cannot play. The other day, just came to think that why not buy a digital piano, which is much smaller and a lot lighter. I'm going to buy one!!!!!!!!!!!! and I'lll be able to play any music here. I'm too delighted to say this.


my 16 year-old piano

JIae

English vs. 5000 other languages

Jim, it’s been just a week since the summer school, but it seems so long ago. I’m back to my normal life and I am very relaxed as I’m doing nothing special, and staying at the residence. While I was taking the course I had to take the tube for about an hour to go to the class. You might not understand why I had to travel by tube. Here’s the reason. My university has two campuses. One is natural sciences campus which is in Suwon where I’m staying and the other one is humanities and social sciences campus which is in Seoul where the summer courses took place so I had to go there every morning. It was really tiring to travel every morning when so many people commuted. I don’t know much about London and how busy and crowed it can be. Here in Seoul, or suburb areas when it’s rush-hour, it’s incredibly busy, sometimes the tubes are fully packed with people, and you cannot move. I hate it. Sometimes it goes the same for buses. They would be quite reliable unless there was bumper-to-bumper traffic.

As I lived in the countryside, I wasn’t used to this kind of busy city life, you know, where I lived, people knew each other, and there was kind and friendly environment like say hello to each other in the morning when I went to school. We didn’t even lock the door except when we were going away or at night. Before I started to live at residence, I had lived with my grandmother in Seoul and had to travel almost 2hours at most. Every morning I took the tube and saw so many people surrounding me, and just thinking we don’t know one another, just we are someone who go somewhere, we don’t say hello, and surely we never see each other again. It’s highly unlikely that I bump into someone I know in this kind of city. I started to feel so lonely about living in the city. Do you know what I mean? Since moving out from my hometown, I’ve become indifferent to many things which I used to care about and I think sometimes I’m being selfish. I know that there are so many advantages about living in cities, too. I love going out here, but also you lose something valuable at the same time. .

By the way, yes I took the photo of the beach in Pusan. How could you be taken while you were jumping? As soon as I saw your picture, I remembered the picture of me jumping, so. I’m putting it on. Here is the Cotswold. On the way to Bath, I stopped by here and took a walk.

I wondered how many languages are in the world, so I googled it and no one knows exactly, and there is an estimate sayiing between 3000 to 8000 languages exist. these days, so many people are learning enlgish as a second language and it's considered as important to speak English.

Taking about my English skills, I’m better at writing than at speaking. The reasons are simple. I like writing more than speaking even in Korean. Well, I’m not a shy person, but I tend to listen to people rather than say whatever I want to say first. It’s quite relative, though, I mean if a person I talk to is very shy or not talkative, I’m being chatty. Also, I didn’t have enough opportunity to speak English in the class because studying English was just for exams, so I read a lot, and studied vocabulary and grammar and practiced listening a lot. As almost Korean students have done, or will do, or are doing English exams to enter a university or get a job or study abroad, English is just as important as Korean. I mean speaking Korean well in public or writing essays in Korean and taking Korean exams are also very hard. To make things worse I’ve also had to learn so many Chinese originated words and Chinese characters which help you to get a better understanding of what you read in Korean. I can say that I know English grammar more than Korean one, which is so complicated, and has so many exceptions.

Well, I can’t only blame the education system, here. English is so different from Korean, there’s nothing common between two languages. We can also learn Japanese at school, and I think it’s the same education system but, we learn Japanese much faster, and speak it quite well. One more thing is that even though you become good at speaking English because you have lived abroad, when you get back here, it’s difficult to keep up as no one speaks english in everyday life here. So, it’s been an unsolved problem to learn English in a desirable way here in Korea. However, things have been changing, when I was at high school, we started to have a class with a native English speaker as a teacher, and I would say that many English learners and teachers have recognized that speaking English is more important than any other, so education system has changed. So, I think the younger they are, the better education they get and the better they speak English. Hopefully, things are looking up.


Actually, I have seen this video clip before, and I was surprised to see the Chinese students screaming English. Well, I guess the world makes people become English mania. I agree that we need a common language to communicate, and English has already played a role as a common language, so, we need to learn it as long as you want to study or work abroad.



JIae

Looking back on the life in England

Hi, guys! Quiz time!
Where do you think you can find roads without cars, forests without trees, and houses without people?
Can you guess the answer?
I just remembered this quiz. When I was having a welcome party in the international summer school, we had a quiz time. This was one of the questions, and also that was the only question I got right.

Hi, Jim I haven’t heard of the Eden project, and it sounds interesting. I know that England is really green, not only the countryside but the cities as well, there are many parks and so many people go on a picnic when the weather is fine. And it’s good to see that people go for a stroll there, children play with their friends, people just sit on the grass reading a book and chatting. I mean that’s something I can’t see in Korea very often. Basically, there are not as many parks here as in England.

I lived in Cambridge, and I had a bike, fortunately, my Chinese friend gave it away to me. Every weekend I went to the city centre, sometimes I went to the big parks and cycled along the Cam River. It normally took about 30minutes to go to the city centre from where I lived by bike. Where I lived is called Girton, which is a small village, and there were two farms just 10 minutes’ walk away, I loved going to the farm as well, there was a baby horse, I guess “she” was really cute, seeing horse so close up was intimidating at first, I think because I hadn’t really seen horses in my life.

Your pictures just reminded me of the time I had in England. I kind of miss it.
So, I’m putting on some pictures. Can anyone who has been to Cambridge recognize these places?

I enjoyed every minute in Cambridge. I wasn't a one-week tourist there. While I lived there, I could get to know so many things about the culture and the different ways of life. Also, I learned what it's like being alone and independent.

By the way, I hadn't met any famous person in my life, but when I was in England, Well, I should say I saw two of them rather than met them. One is the Queen ElizabethⅡin Buckingham Palace and the other is Stephen Hawking in Cambridge. He was with two nurses passing the street where I was.


It was nice to look back on. Time flies like a bullet.
Well, See you guys, and It's sad to say that the next blog will be the last.

Have a good day all of you.

Jiae

Time to say good bye

Hi, everyone. It's been a month since I started to write my blog. I vividly remember that when Dima contacted me, I was too delighted to say that I was able to write a blog in July.
I want to thank all of you for supproting me, reading it and making comments, and being interested in my blog.
I also want to thank jim for helping me to write enjoyable blog, and to make corrections about my mistakes. That helped me a lot.
I had a really good time to write my story, and get to know other's thougths.

I'm going home next week and staying there for a couple of days. My brother's coming, too. I really miss him. So, I'm looking forward to it.
I hope you guys all have a wonderful weekend, and hope to see you all the next blogger's.


All the best

JIae



P.s the answer of the quiz on Thursday is a map.

From BBC Learning English

Thank you Jiae, we all enjoyed your blog and hope you too have enjoyed being a blogger.
And now, an announcement for you Jiae and for all other readers: please don't forget to visit this page tomorrow to say welcome to our next student blogger, Asha from India. Enjoy blogging Asha!