chuseok ilgi: day wan
communication, y'all! despite saying i wanted to write more in toki pona, i guess english is one of my dominant languages. but who knows maybe i'll translate this into toki pona!
in korea, we currently have a 10-day-long holiday, from 10/3 to 10/12. one of the biggest holidays here is 추석 (chuseok) and i wrote about it! technically this isn't about chuseok but the day before it, and it was written today (10/7, one day after chuseok) and idk if i'll write about the actual chuseok day, but i wrote this in my private notes and i just wanted to share this online with some parts being edited so i don't doxx myself.
despite the title being in three languages (ilgi (일기) means diary in korean, wan means one in toki pona), this is (surprisingly) written in (mostly) proper english!
arrival
so we left at bosseyomp, which is lipamanka's english word for 새벽, specifically around 5:15am. and then i sang a lot and annoyed my bro. (i sang the entirety of ryuupekosi) also it was so smooth on the road, like no traffic jams at all. it was so cool and refreshing. sadly i didn't see the sunrise :<
going outside
my big dad (in proper english: uncle) uses the lunar calendar for his birthday (i learned that this chuseok lol) and therefore it's always two days before chuseok. so while my parents existified (really? you expected me to use proper english?) the cake by going to the mall, me, bro, and big dad (yes i will call him big dad for the entirety of the writing) walked around with no destination. after some walking around, we went to the nearest subway station which i assume was called [redacted]. the station next to it is [redacted] (i recall the name very clearly) and the two stations are connected by an underground path that has a bunch of pet-related businesses. actually that's literally what the path is for, it calls itself the largest-scale pet road in korea if i remember correctly. i've been there before, but it was fun anyways cuz i got to walk and i probably daydreamed like a lot. or maybe i was just hyped up idk. also there were cats! mute of them!
we left from [redacted] and headed to the beach (i didn't know the beach was so close to grandma's place) and i saw a japanese restaurant on the way. i'm a huge fan of japanese food so i was like 'man i really want to eat there'. it mainly sold ramen (the japanese kind because duh) and i haven't eaten japanese ramen before, so big dad recommended me a type of ramen he liked (our tastes are pretty similar). i also joked my bro was vegetarian, and big dad was like 'oh no every ramen has meat, so he can't eat here right?'. i told him it was a joke and a way i see my brother, of course he eats meat, he's still 11 after all, but only when my parents force him to, which is every meal. anyways we went to the beach, i stood right next to the water just to feel it lightly when the waves came, it was pretty fun and my feet didn't get wet because i was wearing shoes, until one wave was stronger than i expected and soaked my feet. that was also fun.
and then we went back to the ramen place! it was a bit after 12pm, the optimal time for lunch eating for most people, me included. (random fact: my parents get me lunch around 1pm on weekends) i loved the ramen, it was completely different from the korean kind which is the fast food, while the japanese kind isn't. but i did sense why this diverged into korean ramyeon later on. it kinda tasted like 사리곰탕면, the first ramyeon i've tried in my life. my brother offered me to trade my egg with his meat, and i loved that so we made a deal. afterwards my brother offered me half his noodles for free and i ate all of what my brother gave me. i love trading food. meanwhile big dad was trying to teach us japanese food culture. also he claimed [his city] is better than [our city], and i added on that and self-deprecated my city.
a buncha things that happened next (dog man reference)
we returned and skipped lunch made by grandma because we had ramen already. then we did big dad's birthday party and we had cake. after that i tried to read the language instict but i suddenly felt really sleepy and before i knew it i just fell asleep. if you know me, you know i hate, despise, and strongly dislike (dog man reference, probably) going on a nap, so after i woke up i was furious at myself for sleeping in the afternoon. (apparently some people do that every day and it's called siesta) i desperately wanted to go outside so i can get some fresh air and stop feeling sleepy, so i did! my dad was going out to meet his friend from college, and big dad was after him to tell him the way. i followed, and i met my dad's friend who looked pretty young. it looked like my dad and his friend suddenly morphed into their 20s and they just left. on the way home we met big dad's son. because dad's friend didn't look like he was in his 50s at all, i half-assumed he was also dad's friend who looked like he was in their 20s, but nope he was just what he looked like.
meeting my 재수생 cousin
we went home and the family had a conversation on my cousin's life. i learned that he's taking 수능 this year, he did last year but he wasn't satisfied with the results. he was talking about the top universities in korea which was just really cool. on top of that he was studying by himself with no private tutors/hakwons whatsoever, and he paid all that stuff himself. (probably) i was just so impressed and i was staring at him just to know his amazing secrets. (btw staring is what i naturally do if i want to know someone) after a lot of staring he was like 'ok what do you want why are you staring at me' and i said i wanted to get study advice from him. and he told me that you need a strong desire to study, and a lot of that comes from having a goal you desperately want to achieve. you can't just go 'well idk i guess this will work out in the end' and do nothing, and tbh that was me. he also said that studying for a long time once keeps you focused, so he recommended studying for 3 hours straight over taking a break/switching subjects every hour, and yeah i found out i focus best when i do something for 2~4 hours. i usually take an hour-long break after that for eating, photosynthesizing, writing, conlanging, or whatever my hobbies are. however, he said, it's different for subjects focused on language (like korean or english) in which case you have to expose yourself to them as frequently as possible even if it's a short time. also doing one thing at a time and focusing on that one thing helps a lot, and doing that well is what fuels the fun in studying. imo sometimes people think 'learning is fun' is an inherent trait that's revealed at birth and always fuels people in life, but sometimes it gets stronger or weaker, sometimes even lost completely depending on the circumstances. the next moment was an iconic example of that, my brother asked me for help on a math question and i was like 'YES GET IT RIGHT HERE' and [cousin] commented, 'well if anything's a sign of liking math, that's it'
also i tried solving some of the 수능-level english problems, i got all of them minus one right!
the end
big dad and [cousin] left, our family went to sleep, i suddenly got a stuffy nose and my bro told me to shut up so he could sleep. i was annoyed and asked him if he wanted me to suffocate. luckily i went to sleep despite suffering for hours with a stuffy and loud nose, and nobody died thanks to the threat of prison and our whole future being destroyed if we commited murder because we hated each other.