Tag: London

Posted in Personal, TOPIK, Uncategorized

This and that

Posted on by 카밀라

Hi guys!!
Gosh, it sure has been a while. The last few months has been so hectic and I don’t even know where to begin updating from.

As you guys know I was studying diligently for my TOPIK exam and I flew to London on November 16th as planned, with my Korean friend, ready to tackle whatever came my way. And thank god for that because I woke up with a sore throat which then quickly evolved into a full on cold.
I was determined to do well on my exam anyway, so the next morning I stopped by a pharmacy to buy a nasal spray and some kleenex, and then I headed straight to the test location. Everything was going according to plan until I talked to the supervisors to get my papers checked, and she asked me if I was sick – Even though I very obviously was. So, apparently they don’t really want sick people taking the test because it easily disturbs the rest of the test takers – which is totally fair, I just didn’t think about it.
So there I was, trying to explain that I didn’t cough at all and that I had brought nasal spray and kleenex so I wouldn’t be sniffing either. I thought that would work, but that just brought up another problem. During the test, we’re not allowed to have anything on our table except the papers, our pen and something to drink. So then I had to unwrap all of my tissues and lay them on my table to show that I had no secret notes and what not, as well as to avoid being noisy while unwrapping them during the test.
What. A. Mess. Anyhow, in the end, they let me in and I was, in fact, the quietest in the room lol.
As for the actual test, we started with the listening test which went okay, I think. We then moved on to the writing test which is my weakest point so I figured that it would be perfect to “get it over with” and then I could finish strong with the reading test which is my strongest point. Or so I thought haha! Instead, the writing test turned out the be easier that imagined (though I still didn’t manage to finish the final essay before the time ran out) and halfway through the reading test I had a few questions where I felt completely lost. And then I made the mistake that I ALWAYS TELL MYSELF NOT TO MAKE! I kept re-reading the questions – which by the way didn’t help at all – and that obviously meant that I ran out of time and had to speed read through the last 5 questions and just guess the answers.
Honestly, I’m still a bit frustrated with myself for falling in that newbie trap, but what can you do? Just have to keep going.
So all in all, things went okay, but not at all like expected so I literally have no idea what my results will be. I’m not super confident that I’ll pass level 4 as wished, but if that’s the case, I’ll simply take it again in the spring.
It was also a really great experience! As most of you guys know, I had some intense anxiety issues when I took the exam the first time a few years ago, but I didn’t have any problems this time. Also, a lot of the other test takers said that they found it really difficult to stay focused around halfway through each test, but I didn’t feel that at all. I’m so used to using Korean for hours and hours at a time so I just felt super relaxed and basically just in my right element.
The results will be out on Thursday so I’m impatiently waiting, haha!

I had some fun days in London with my friend, and a few days after I got home I started a new internship, which slowly sucked the life out of me. Okay okay, I’m being dramatic. It was really rough though. I didn’t have a lot of time to myself and when I finally did have some time, I didn’t have the energy to do anything at all. The work I was doing just wasn’t a good match for me but I learned a lot and when I finished the internship last Friday, I got a lot of praise from my boss and coworkers, and they even gave me a present. It was rough but I’m grateful for the experience.

I’m now officially on my Christmas break and I’m looking forward to just relaxing and having a great time with my boyfriend.
I have a lot of things that I want to get done, but I want to make sure that I actually get some proper rest.

I hope you all are having a great holiday time with your loved ones!

Posted in Selfstudy, TOPIK, Uncategorized

Study Log: July

Posted on by 카밀라

JULY STUDY LOG

Goals for July:
– Have a daily study average on 3 hours.
– Work on my vocabulary.
– Practice reading aloud!
– Work on Taekwondo specific vocabulary!
– Study with TOPIK tests.
– Work on writing.

Results:

A Tracker:
75 Hours, which gives me a daily average of: 2,4 Hours.
So I definitely did not reach my goal this months. A lot of family stuff came up and I had to prioritize my time. I guess this just happens sometimes, but I’m still a bit bummed out. Oh well, it’s a new month now so let’s see what happens!

TOPIK:
My TOPIK practice results for July were:
듣기: 32/50 correct answers.
This is the same score as last month so I guess there isn’t really that much to talk about here, haha.

읽기: 33/50 correct answers.
This is 1 more than last month, however it’s not a new record so it doesn’t really say much.

Other results: 
Okay, so I completely failed 4 of my 6 goals. Not the best stats, haha!
I didn’t reach my study goal for time (though hours spent doesn’t equal things learned, so I’m not too worried about that) and I didn’t look into Taekwondo related vocabulary AT ALL. I also didn’t practice my writing (I don’t even think I wrote in my diary) nor did I work through my previous TOPIK tests. These 4 points will be moved to my August goals, as they are things that I really do need to work on.

I have been practicing reading aloud quite a lot, and I’m finding it really helpful for a lot of things. I do it during all italki sessions as well as when I’m studying on my own.
I have also been working on my general vocabulary. I’m making an effort to actually use the words I come across every day, and to write them down and say them out loud to myself.

To work on in August:
– Have a daily study average on 3 hours. Hopefully I’ll make it happen this month, haha!
– Work on my vocabulary. I’m not making any changes to this goal as it really seems to be helping me. I keep having those moments where you learn something new and then suddenly hear and read it everywhere. God I missed having those moments!
– Work on Taekwondo specific vocabulary! I really need to do this, and I have already found myself a few resources. This is not a goal for my general language skills, but its really important for me personally.
– Study with TOPIK tests. This is my biggest and most important goal for August. I took all the practice tests in my books and the ones online as well, so I ordered a new book in order to continue my monthly testing. Until then I’ll be working through the results from the old ones. I need to analyze my answers and the reasons why I got them wrong.
– Work on writing. Writing is my weakest skills (unless it’s everyday chatting), so I really have to focus on this. There’s a few 쓰기 examples that I want to analyze properly and I want to start working with one of my writing books again. I’m not sure I be able to do it this month though, as I want to finish at least one of the books that I’m currently working with.
I’m working through YTN 뉴스로 배우는 시사 한국어, and I’m finding it really helpful. I think it’ll help with writing too.

I have exactly 100 days left for my exam. I already signed up, I’m buying the flight tickets soon, and I’m really looking forward to it. Those of you who have been around for a while knows that I had my first really bad anxiety attack, when I took the exam 2 years ago, so I was really worried about doing it again. But so far I feel nothing but pure excitement!

Posted in korea, Personal, taekwondo, TOPIK, Uncategorized

Overwhelmed but happy

Posted on by 카밀라

Yesterday a kind follower sent me a message and asked me how I’m doing lately. It made me realize that I have been MIA for quite a while compared to normally and it also got me thinking about all the loose threads I currently have here. During the last month or so, so many things have happened and I’m not even really sure where to begin explaining but I’ll give it a try.
This post will probably be messy, long, study related and pretty personal. You have been warned.

Let’s start with my drivers license. I took my final drivers license test about a month ago and I passed despite driving in a small snowstorm for the first time and nearly peeing my pants from pure fear. The days up to the test day was an absolute nightmare. My anxiety was completely out of control and I couldn’t sleep or eat properly, which just makes the anxiety worse the following day.
I was so relieved that it was finally over but a few days later when I had to drive my boyfriends car for the first time, the panic started all over. Oh no, there’s no signs on the car letting other people know that I’m inexperienced – shit what if I make a mistake? – there’s no driving instructor to save me if I mess up – what’s that sound? – is it me or does the gear stick feels weird? – Did they let my pass by mistake?
I was starting to think that this part of my anxiety would never go away. My boyfriend however felt like the problem was easy to fix and a week  later he bought me a brand new car on my birthday. He figured that I would be way more relaxed in a new car since it’s safer and has more in common with the car I drove in during my driving classes. He was right. It took away more than half of my anxiety and that is how I ended up with my little red Suzuki.
I have now been driving more or less every day and while it is mostly just the short trip from home to work, I have actually been on a longer trip completely out of my comfort zone too. I am going to keep pushing myself and practice. Interchanges still freak my out like crazy. It scares the soul out of me. I guess it’s because I have to trust all the other cars in my lane, even more than I trust myself, and that’s just terrifying!
I would love to be able to drive to my hometown in may, and visit my family. I guess you could say that it’s my goal. But that’s like 220 kilometers and about a million interchanges away, so we’ll see. Ugh, scary!

Having my drivers license and a car means that I can finally start Taekwondo classes! I’m so excited about this even though I have no idea what to expect. I’m currently just waiting for new teams to start up so that I wont be the only person who knows just about nothing. I hope this will be a good way to get my body moving and tire it out a bit so I can control my anxiety a bit better. Or at least give me an opportunity to meet new people, show off my Korean skills and get out some of my work related frustrations! I’m hoping for a beginner class to start in April, and if not then I’ll probably just join the current class even though I’ll feel like an idiot. I worry that I’ll chicken out if I wait for too long.
Actually, I’ll write them a mail as soon as I finish this post and find out! I promise!

As for my anxiety in general. I have been in a really bad period since January and I have been struggling a lot with my anxiety. I believe it started due to this whole drivers license process. Since I passed the written exam in the middle of January I constantly had driving related activities and working full time at the same time probably didn’t make it better. It made me worry a lot about my Korea trip. You see, whenever I have a bad (like good ones exist) anxiety attack I promise myself that I will never ever again do something to make myself feel that scared again, and since I already know that flying will set off every bit of anxiety in my body, I have actually told myself to cancel the trip at least 20 times. But I wont.
Also, my boyfriend and I decided to tell his parents about my anxiety after keeping it a secret for ages. I guess I just wasn’t ready for the questions and the pity until now.
It turned out to be quite the emotional evening, but I’m happy that we did it. Now I don’t have to make up stupid excuses for being overly tired and quiet at times.
This reminds me of another new thing in my life. I started hypnosis therapy. Hypnosis is.. Odd? I’m not even sure what to say about it. In the beginning I really disliked the thought of hypnosis and the feelings it gave me, but I seem to be finding more and more comfort in that feeling now, and I think it might actually be helping me. I’ve been feeling better for the last 10 days or so. It’s still odd though. During my last session I clearly felt my body fall asleep while my mind stayed completely awake for several minutes. I heard myself snore slightly while listening carefully to my therapists words. If that’s not weird then I don’t know what is. Anyway, I’m starting to feel optimistic for the first time in a while! I’ll be bringing hypnosis audio files with me on the flights. Everything will be okay, and I will go to Korea no matter what.

As for the Korea trip, time is really starting to fly now! A little over 3 months to go! Phew.
My sister and I are finally starting to make more specific plans for our time in Korea as well as prepare some of the more practical things like the schedule for our departure day, looking into money exchange and what not. We are both incredibly excited at this point! It feels so unreal that we are actually going on the trip we have been planning for years. A few things have changed though. I will not be taking TOPIK 2 like planned in Korea. Basically it turned out to be a bit more complicated than it was in London so I just decided to postpone it and take it in London again next year. I don’t want more stress than necessary. I want TOPIK to stay like a good memory in my heart, so I’ll just wait a little longer.

As for studying, I have been doing a decent amount of studying however I honestly haven’t gotten much out of it. My studying have been insanely disorganized and random because I simply haven’t been able to focus on the same topic for a very long time. But I don’t really mind. I somehow enjoyed my random studies.
Oh yeah, I also forgot about the Italki language challenge!
My goal was to complete the 12 hour goal and I did! I got a diploma and everything. I still have my italki lessons twice a week and I seem to be gaining confidence in my speaking skills these days. That’s a pretty great feeling!
I have been reading a lot lately. It makes me feel really happy. I have been reading a few webtoons and some ebooks too. I have also been reading a ton of different blogs these days. I’m also still in the process of reading 빨강머리앤. I’ll be finishing it soon and I have truly fallen in love with this book.
I feel a pretty big urge to buy books lately. Study books as well as story books. I’m trying really hard not to though, since I know that I will be saving a ton of money if I can just wait a little longer. God give me strength!

Okay, now I’m just pointlessly ranting. I’m not sure if I have more relevant things to add. But then again, I guess none of this was really relevant unless you were wondering where I was.
Basically the last month or so have been sort of hell but I’m starting to feel better and happier.

I just want to leave this beautiful voice here for you guys to enjoy.

Posted in books, Kpop, Personal, Selfstudy, TOPIK, Uncategorized

My London Trip

Posted on by 카밀라

Now that I’m back from London, I believe it’s time for me to share the highlights of my trip! We (my sister and I) left for London on Thursday and it was the first time flying for both of us. The trip was chaotic from the very beginning as one of the trains I had to take, got cancelled last minute. Luckily there was another train leaving shortly after that I could take and in the end I made it to the airport in time. After getting on the plane, things got really chaotic! It turns out that I get airsick (I haven’t had trouble with any types of motion sickness in almost 10 years, so none of us had seen it coming) and vomiting is actually one of my biggest fears. I’m not sure why but I have always felt this way and I would do pretty much anything to avoid vomiting. In the end I made it through both of my flights without vomiting but the trip and the fear alone was enough to trigger my anxiety attacks. I have only suffered from anxiety a few times before so this was yet another surprise to me. I ended up having 4 attacks on the trip which was super exhausting and I ended up only taking TOPIK 1 as a result.
Even though my trip had quite a few bad surprises, I actually had a really good time and I would gladly do it over again! I had so much fun with my sister and I got to practice a lot of Korean!

On Friday we took the long trip out to New Malden. New Malden has a big Korean community and the streets are filled with Korean restaurants, convenience stores, Korean hair dressers, bigger Korean markets etc. My sister and I went there to shop and eat dinner but in the end we got there pretty early and decided to go shopping and then eat lunch instead. It felt so strange and exciting for me to walk along the streets and be able to listen to small pieces of Korean conversations while reading Korean signs and looking at Korean products everywhere! It is probably the closest I’ll get to Korea, until next year! I ended up buying a ton of snacks, some beauty products, a kpop cd, and a ton of other things. We then chose a random restaurant where we sat down to enjoy a big meal and plan the next day’s activities. We ended up in a restaurant called 징기스칸 and we had a great time there! The restaurant had a great 분위기 and the food was delicious. We were the only non-Koreans there but we could easily chat with the staff and they even cheered on my sister when she was struggling with her chopsticks! It was really just a great experience and I would definitely go there again if I could!

genkis
CREDITS TO ORIGINAL OWNER http://shinhan.eduhouse.net/community/community_tongsin_view.asp?curr_menu=community&curr_loca=community_tongsin_view&search_field=&search_word=&VLI_page=1&report_article_code=39286&list_type=&view_type=&user_seq=645396&rnum=84&sel_nation=2&sel_course=

On Saturday we headed towards London Centrum and I took TOPIK 1. It was a great experience despite of my anxiety, but I will have a separate post on my TOPIK experience soon, so I won’t really talk about it now. After getting lost a few times in the giant crowd of people, we finally found our way to Foyles. My sister and I both love books and I actually just wanted buy a new crime novel to read later, but we obviously had to stop by the language area – How could we not? Much to my surprise, they actually had quite a few books in Korean (mostly famous books translated to Korean) and there was no way I could leave without bringing one of them home with me! I read a few lines on the back of each book and ended up with two finalists. I couldn’t choose so I closed my eyes and let my sister switch them around a few times. I ended up choosing the one in her right hand but because my sister is simply that awesome, she actually bought the other one for me! 고마워 언니~

DSC_0059

We spent some more time in that area but decided that we actually had liked New Malden more, and therefore we went back to our little Korean playground. We finished up our shopping and then ate dinner at a restaurant called 소라. This place was even better than 징기스칸 and we really enjoyed the food and small talk! I wished I had a better camera at that point as my phone camera truly sucks, but nevertheless, we had the times of our lives! Sister time and Korean food – does it get much better?

My trip back home where a lot easier to handle. I got some motion sickness tablets so I only had to worry about the anxiety itself and I’m usually pretty good at dealing with it when it happens.

I have definitely learned a lot about myself on this trip, and now I know what to expect and how to handle it, when we go to Korea next year! Despite a few uncomfortable moments I would do it all over again, anytime!

Here’s some of the random things I brought back home with me!

 

Posted in books, Personal, Selfstudy, TOPIK, Uncategorized

It’s Official

Posted on by 카밀라

Ok guys! You all know about my TOPIK plans and guess what? It’s finally official! 아싸!
However, it most certainly wasn’t easy, haha! I had a lot of problems when signing up for the exams, and I have been patiently waiting for 2 weeks, to get a reply from the Korean Embassy. Phew! It’s been super nerve wracking!
Anyway, basically what happened was that I got the dates mixed up and therefore I was suddenly left with only 4 days to fill out all the papers and send them of to London. If you send a high priority letter to London, it still takes 3 days to get there, which means that if the letter had the slightest delay on its way, then I would pretty much be doomed. As you can imagine I was suddenly in a hurry!
Sadly, after this stressful discovery it all just started to go wrong. First of I had a ton of problems when trying to download the application form and once I finally got all that technical stuff figured out, I had no idea how to actually fill out the form. At that time I was already freaking out, and I was starting to think that I would never make it in time. When you download the application form, you also get a guide on how to fill it out, but the things is that the guide is in Korean and when I started translating it, I still didn’t understand what to do with some of the fields. In the end I got help from my awesome italki teacher (HI RACHEL!) and was able to fill out most of the form. I wrote an email to the embassy in London with my remaining questions and luckily they were able to answer my mail on the same day.

Just as everything was back on track, I suddenly couldn’t transfer the exam fee. It turns out that I was missing some of the needed information about the bank I was transferring to, and it was too late to contact the Embassy again. Sigh. Luckily my google skills were able to save me this time, haha!
In the end I was able to fill out the form and send it off to London, but as I mentioned above, I still had to wait and see if I made it in time. I have been checking my email and mailbox several times a day, and yesterday my conformation finally came!

Ah.. I would never have imagined that it would cause me this much stress, but now that things are finally set in stone, I definitely feel that it was worth it! I had many sleepless nights (starts singing 잠은 안오고 배는 고프고) but I have no regrets!
I now have everything prepared. TOPIK, new passport, flight tickets, a booked guestroom, money, days of from my internship and so on. It’s all ready!
LET THE COUNTDOWN BEGIN! – No seriously, I added a countdown Widget to the blog.

Now I just need to focus on studying which will be easy with all my new books and magazines! More on those later!