Morning everyone! 9:30AM in Seoul, and I am up since 7:30: the dready combination of excessive light going through the very thin curtain and the waking-up time of my hard-working Korean flatmate, who had to go to his University lab for 3 or 4 hours in the morning were too much for my light sleep. Hopefully tonight I'll be so dead tired that I'll be able to die in bed after dining with Mr. Flatmate.
Well, I just had a nice if original breakfast cooked by Ms Park -- yes, that's Daniel's mother: she's here helping out with the moving of stuff and, as a responsible Korean housewife, she insisted on preparing my breakfast --, whose main ingredients were scrambled egg and apple. They really love apples in Korea! I did not expect that: I knew tangerines were ubiquitous in the region, but it looks like Korea is a very decent apple producer... anyway, that's good news for me and my diet!
Before that, I had my usual morning shower. I am sure you wonder why I am telling you that. Well, it's just because it made me think of chaebol, the big family-run Korean industrial conglomerates. I am sure you know some of them: Hyunday, Samsung, LG... Sure you know them for electronic devices, cars and other technologically advanced products. However, that's not all they make: I guess it's impossible to realize how big a Korean chaebol is unless you live in Korea and take a shower using LG shampoo. Yes, no H&S for me here: my flatmate accompanied me to buy anti-dandruff shampoo, and we ended up with this! You really got the sense that those big companies encompass so many aspects of your daily life...
Anyway, going back to my experience here, yesterday was a very busy day. I also had the chance to experience the only downturn of not living in the campus residence: going back home late at night. It's not dangerous, not annoying... just inconvenient. Subways run until 1AM (ironically enough, just until midnight on weekends) and taxis are everywhere, and quite cheap (basic run: KRW2400, about EUR1.5), but it's just the feeling that you have to "hit the road" while your pals stay in the area.
In any case, I think everything goes quite smoothly. Yesterday I had the chance to meet a Korean girl, a good friend of the one who is now studying at the Autonoma, in Barcelona: she showed me around the small Hankuk University campus and then we had a wonderful dumpling soup meal at a small and cheap restaurant nearby. Later in the afternoon, we had the orientation meeting for foreign students: at first, I had the impression it was more like disorienting me, as it was mostly focused on undergrads, which make the most part of exchange students at my university.
However, they ended up giving us some very valuable information, such as whom to talk to for medical insurance (I shall go there on Monday), opening a bank account (I am not sure I really need one, but I will ask if it's worth the fuss for only 6 months), getting an additional scholarship based on your records (I will apply for that... we'll see if I get the extra EUR700 they award)... and registering for lots of activities they organise for foreign students. That should be a great way of knowing people and becoming involved with student life: I don't know if I will have the time to do it properly, but I might try.
I also had the chance to meet a Catalan guy from the UAB who's with the intl' student association and who's been in Seoul for 1.5 years now. He's slowly finishing his journalism degree while learning quite a lot of Korean: yes, if you want to focus on Korean language, Hankuk University might be a very good place to be an exchange student. They offer extremely intensive 10-week Korean language courses, running Mon-Fri, 9AM-1PM. Stressful, specially if you try to combine it with your regular courses... and it might even be incompatible with the schedules you might have in your course.
I am not sure I'll be able to take such and intensive Korean crash course, in fact. My main goal is finishing my MA strongly, with good grades and learning as much as possible. Now I have the daunting task of choosing which subjects are the most interesting ones, combining schedules, making sure my professors at the UAB are happy with my choices, talking to local professors for acceptance in their lectures and, of course, making sure I have Friday and/or Monday off for longer weekends and, therefore, longer trips around the country.
I have also been told that May 5 and May 10 are national holidays: I will surely take this opportunity to travel either to Japan or to Vietnam. Flight prices are already high, but having some extra days to spend there might do the trick for me. I am willing to pay a few extra euro to enjoy a longer stay there. Now let's see if I can find someone else to come with me: if not, that should be fine, I will surely find people in Japanese hostels!
I could keep on writing for one more hour -- for instance, talking about how I ended up being invited to dinner by one American professor at my university, together with Antoine, the guy from Bordeaux who's also in the same EU exchange program --, but I think that's enough for now. I will meet Antoine, another French exchange student at Sogang and Silvia, my colleague who'll also study at Sogang at 1, but before that I'd like to visit the Seoul City Hall area and maybe also see a bit of Namsan park.
So... let's move it! I'll keep you posted!
Anyway
No comments:
Post a Comment