A day in Gangnam

Oh I had such a good day in Gangnam yesterday. Me, Erik, his roommate David and also our new friend Eunjee or as we also call her - Rachel. Eunjee is from South Korea and lives in the U.S. She will be staying in Korea for one year and originally she is from Gangnam. Me and Erik got to know her at the Welcoming Party (I will write a post about the party when I get some pictures) and she really wanted to show us around the area. The boys and I met up at Hoegi station and the trip to Gangnam took us 30 minutes, since we had to change subway three times. When we arrived in Gangnam we were all so amazed. Since South Korea is so famous for this song you all know Gangnam Style, we had to visit the area. All four of us were hungry so all agreed to go for what else than a korean barbecue.

Ah, how delicious can food be? This is the perfect way to spend a saturday evening. Eunjee was teaching us some phrases in korean and I got to order some more meat in korean of course. Unfortunately, I have no clue how to say it anymore since I didn´t write it down anywhere. 

After dinner we ended up doing something that is typical in Korea, and also in Japan. We went to a shop where there was a lot of photo booths where you could take photos with your friends and print them out as stickers. Eunjee and Erik are ready to jump inside the booth to take some pictures!

Oh we had a loads of fun doing this. After taken 8 photos we had to pick only 4 of them. On the outside we were able to add some super cute stuff to the photos before printing them.

There they are, happy with the photos and I will also share the photos with you guys!

    

                    

I think these photos are amazing. We had so much fun doing this!

A week ago I saw a Cat café and from a exchange student I heard that there is a café for dogs aswell. Caffé Paws is a cafe where all dog owners come for coffee and their dogs can run free. It felt like a kindergarden for dogs and I think that this is an cool business idea. 

Immediately when we entered all the dogs came running. When I sat down this white cute dog sat on my lap until we decided to leave. I really enjoyed being there and to experience this. A lot of people has been telling me how they eat dogs in Korea, but apparently there is a lot of dog owners in Seoul. 

After the visit to the Cafe, we took a taxi back and walked around in the area. And see what we ran into, the Gangnam Style statue. All three of us were walking with our mouths open, so amazed and happy to be in Gangnam. Even though it was beautiful, I expected a little bit more from the area since I have heard a lot about it. It was also quite expensive compared to the other areas I have visited so far. 

When we came to that point when all of us were thinking "What should we do next?" we came up with the idea of trying all kind of crazy stuff that came in our way. We tried a lot of different games but unfortunately we didn´t win anything. We met a tiger mascot that was giving free hugs to all girls and as a price you got 1000 krw. So I decided to give him a hug and lucky me, I got 1000 krw! After all our adventures and a lot of walking we were all tired and decided to head back to our dorms. We wished Eunjee a goodnight and hopefully she will show us around Gangnam and Seoul another day!

Sewha Hall Dormitory

Now, I will show you around in my dorm, with pictures of course. Since I got all my clothes unpacked and this place looks like a home, I thought that it would be nice for you all to see how I live at the moment.

The name of the dorm is Sewha Hall Dormitory. On the picture you will see the main entrance. A place where some students like to hang out. In the dormitory there is a lot of rules, but honestly, they have not bothered me at all. The stupidest rule is probably that the dormitory is closed from 12pm-05am. If someone for some reason would like to go partying, that is possible. The only thing you need to do is to let the house office know, that you won´t be home before 12pm. There is separated floors for women and men and it is strictly forbidden to visit the floors of a different sex. Oh, I could go on all day to tell you all the rules, but I have been really happy with the dormitory so far. 

Just a few days ago I recognized that my name came up on the door. So nice!

Welcome to my side of the dorm. There is my bed, desk and a lot of space for storage.

Here is the "bathroom". When you step inside the dorm there is a sink and next to it more storage space. On the right side you will see the tiny toilet/shower. 

The lobby area. In the lobby you are able to read magazines, socialize, study, use the microwave and watch TV.

In the basement there is a little store where you can buy some snacks, food and drinks. There is also a laundry room that you can use free of charge. One for the girls, and one room separated for the boys. In the basement you can also play pingpong and even workout in the gym. All these facilities are included in the rent which is really good! (Except for the stuff you buy from the shop though!) 

Sewha Hall offers study rooms, free use of their computers and a lot of nice neighbors! I highly recommend Sewha Hall for you who want to focus on your studies, meet nice people and live close to the Campus. 

Alien Registration etc.

   

Good morning. Wake up time was at 5am. A few exchange students met up close to the Hoegi station to visit the Seoul Clobal Centre Immigration Office to finally do the Alien registration. We were waiting outside for about 2 hours so we would be the first persons in line. My ticket number was 08 and finally it was my turn. Now my Visa is Multiple, which means that I can travel out of the country as much as I like to! When I left the Immigration Office there was over 350 students after me. I mean just look at the picture above, that amount of people in the same tiny room. They will be there waiting the whole day!

After the long wait we were all starving, so we decided to go to the closest bakery. Oh lord, I was having the most delicious breakfast in a long time and fresh pressed orange juice, oh mama!

Walking back to the campus, I had to visit the Clobal Atm again and of course it still didn´t work. How in the world am I supposed to get some money now? While trying to figure that out I decided to go and buy a few books that I need for my courses. I managed to only find one book that I need for our Marketing Communications for a Tourism Destination course, seriously? After that, I felt like just go home to my dorm and cry and sleep the whole day, but no. I visited another Global Atm instead without result. Argh, I stepped inside the HanaBank office and decided to open an Korean bank account. What a relief that the guy behind the disk were speaking english and helped me to get the account. The only thing I need to do now is to transfer money from my old account to the new one. When I came back to the dormitory I actually met a girl that had one of the books I needed, Consumer Behavior, so I bought it from her! Could not been happier, now there is only one more book that I need to buy.

Now, I can start being a good student! I will have a lot of good times with my two new friends!

"Ooops! I´m so fat"

Something interesting that I haven´t realized until now. Since I am having lectures with a lot of girls and boys from Korea, they are completely different to us students from Europe. In Europe we participate in the lectures, we ask questions, communicate with the teacher and so on. On the other hand koreans are very passive. They listen, take notes and leaves class - quiet. All professors I will have these two semesters are originally from USA, Australia or the UK. They want us students to talk in class and ask questions. Even though the professors asks a student from korea a question, they will have a hard time to answer it even though they know the answer.

When I walk home from school everyday (not through campus) I always come across this painting. "Ooops! I´m so fat" 31kg. Really? This is a something that I think is very sad, that women in Korea are stressing so much about how they look. They are under pressure to look beautiful, be skinny, nose jobs, operation of the eyelids, being tall and so on. As I have heard and I don´t like to use this word, but the "fat" women are always at home and won´t show themselves in public. Personally I think that korean girls have the most beautiful hearts. Korean girls might not be considered as the beautifulest girls on this planet, but they have an inside that makes them the most beautiful persons in the world!

Cold noodles

Thursday and only one lecture today. I met a few students from Finland and we decided to have lunch together at the schools cafeteria. There is a lot of different options to choose from and it´s very cheap. I paid 1,30€ for the school lunch. Cheaper than eating out at least!

I found out that next to my dormitory there is another cafeteria so I can go there for a cheap lunch or even dinner since it´s open until 7pm. 

Waiting for my food. Interesting to see what there will be on my plate. 

Of course, I knew that it would be noodles. Take a good look at the noodles.. Seriously, ice? If this is the way they do it South Korea, I guess there is nothing else to do than deal with the fact that it is summer now and the noodle soups are cold. Quite funny! The sad part is that the fruits here are expensive, or maybe I have just not found the right place to buy the fruits from. When I saw the cans with pineapple in the cafeteria, I had to buy one!

After the cold noodles I decided to go and buy a few books. I changed my mind before I even got inside. The line went around the whole shop and could not manage to find more than one of the books that I needed so I simply gave up. Tomorrow morning a lot of exchange students will be heading to the Immigration Office to do the Alien Registration. Maybe after that I could try my luck and visit the bookshop again. Now I´m off to bed, I got to wake up at 05am so goodnight y´all!

Korean Karaoke Night

Oh such a long day again! First lecture started today at 10:30am and the last one finished at 16:15pm. I managed to sign up as an contact student in one of our courses. I have no idea what I will be doing, but since the professor asked and I immediately knew that no one would sign up for this, I decided to do it. And of course, the contact student will also get a better grade!
After all the lectures today we went to the Olleh phone shop to get all exchange students a korean phone number. Now I can finally use the internet as much as I want to, make phone calls and send text messages!
After a few hours at Olleh, we went for a nice dinner!

Korean dinner with the buddy students and exchange students! I think we all look super cute when we are trying to imitate the korean girls and how they pose in pictures! 

 

After our dinner we decided to try the Korean Karaoke! Ah I have been waiting for this moment. We had so much fun singing all kinds of popular songs but also korean pop songs like Gangnamstyle and 2NE1 - I AM THE BEST.

Chocolate Music Zone. We had a whole room for ourselves and we had such a good time! 

Korean Pancake

I have heard about it a thousands of times but never tasted it the famous korean pancake. The restaurant we decided to have dinner at was quite small, so we had to sit on the floor which I don´t mind doing. I think it´s a fun way to enjoy dinner and it´s one of the things I love about the asian culture. First they brought us some Rice wine to the table. A "white" wine made of rice. The smell reminded me of beer and the taste was.. interesting. At the table there is a buddy student, Sol and a lot of exchange students. All of us enjoyed the pancakes. There was one pancake with seafood and the other one with seafood and kimchi. I wouldn´t consider this as a dinner, more as a snack maybe, but it was very delicious! What I also enjoy when we go out for dinner, is that when we hand out the chopsticks and spoon, there is a certain order. The oldest person gets the chopsticks first and the youngest last. This is a way to show respect to the older generation or to those who are older than yourself.

The Rice wine.

The whole team!

Seafood pancake. Delicious!

College of Tourism

So wow.. Where should I even start? Monday, first day at school, and oh lord how messy can it be? You apply for a course, that says Leadership, and you will be writing cv:s and doing interviews and presentations? How stupid is that? When you try to ask for help, no one speaks english and they just tell you in a polite way: "To be honest with you, I don´t know if there is anything I can do to help you.." Well if they can´t help me solve the problem, who can? Everything is written in korean, no one speaks english and no one is able to help. Sorry, I am not going to complain but my day didn't start that well.
Let´s write something positive instead. Our professors are really funny actually. They tell jokes and make the lecture more interesting and funny. I really look forward to start the classes, though, I am a bit nervous since I got four lectures on Monday and Wednesday and only one lecture on Tuesday and Thursday. All exams on the same day, how awesome is that?

So now, my FINAL course list looks like this: 

Consumer Behavior Research Mon, Wed 10:30-11:45

Quality Management Mon, Wed 12:00-13:15

Understanding of International Manners and Cultures Mon, Wed 13:30-14:45

Tourism Case Study Mon, Wed15:00-16:15

Marketing Communication for Tourism Destination Tue, Thu 10:30-11:45

I really hope that next semesters course registration won´t be as complicated as this was.

After class I walked home to my dorm so angry. I decided to call up a few friends for dinner. Since I have been eating too much korean beef lately, I really wanted to have some chicken instead. We went to a Chinese restaurant and the chicken... I have never in my life tasted something that has been so spicy. My lips were burning and I was sweating. After a lot of laughs and after learning a bunch of new korean words, we did some shopping before we said goodnight. 

Day number one at school!

The day has come. I will be heading back to school again after a long summer break. This time I will be studying here in South Korea as you probably know already. Tomorrow I got my first class, Consumer Behavior Research at the College of Business 10:30am. Before that, I have to add and change a few courses tomorrow when the Course registration part two starts at 09:30am. I don´t even know but I am feeling so nervous about this. Everything will be okay, that´s for sure. 

Look at this amazing picture we took on Friday on the orientation-day. In the picture you see all the new exchange students from all around the world. This picture will be something that I will save forever! There is no words for this one, just look at it and enjoy.

Sunday Shopping

Today I went to Myeongdong to spend my sunday with Ludo and Trisha. I used the subway today for the first time and oh lord, the lines .. Just look at the picture above, there is like one billion of them! Anyways, we had some good laughs in the subway on our way there and when we came up from the subway I was amazed. There is no words for the feeling that I got when I saw all the buildings, malls and the amount of people. I have never seen a city as crowded as Seoul. 

Trisha and me having a laugh!

           

We had a fun dinner at restaurant unknown. No idea of the name. I ordered some fried rice with vegetables and beef. The lady sitting beside us thought that the way I was eating my dish was so funny.  In the best way she could, she showed me that I am supposed to eat the rice with my spoon and use the chopsticks for the beef. I bet that I made her day! After lunch we did some shopping and we found the most beautiful heels to Trisha. She was hugging them the rest of the day and they were only 10,000won (So that would be about 6,50€). I found a nice pair of shoes myself, a skirt and shorts. Oh, the shorts. They were selling those in the middle of the street and they were looking perfect. The only problem, where should I try these on? Since there were no fitting room, I had to be a stupid tourist and pull them on in the middle of the street! So now I bet that the whole Seoul have seen my butt! Just kidding, since I had a dress on it was easy to try them on. I feel sorry for Ludo and Trisha, they always have to deal with me and my embarrassing things that I do.

(Remember, If you wanna have a better look at the pictures just click on one and there will be a slideshow!!)

The koreans are totally in love with everything that is cute or sweet. The cat on the left side picture is promoting a cafeteria where there is cats all over the place. How cool is that? And no, they won´t serve you a cat for dinner, they are actually having them as pets in a nice and cosy café. On the other picture you see the most famous man in korea - PSY! You will see him on all commercials all around the country.

And finally I managed to find a place where I can exchange money. And of course when I found one place, there was all of sudden 10 different places where I could have exchanged some money. So typical! In korea, even students are millionaires. Wouldn´t you feel awesome if you would have many hundred thousands won in your pocket?

Some pictures from Friday

Here is a few photos from Friday that I got from Trisha! Trisha herself, Ludo and me!

Typical pose we do here in Korea as you probably have noticed already!

Jihye and Gyumi our buddies, me and Benjamin enjoying our dinner.

Party people! Ludo looking fierce as always!

Party people!