first post from korea

finally, i have some time to post smthg here. just finished my classes for the day. it's 3.31pm here at seoul, it's an hour ahead of s'pore time.

well, today's friday, and it's the 3rd day of school. we have classes on mon, tues, thurs and fri, because wed's reserved for city tours. my classes are from 9 to 3 everyday, with 20 mins in bet each lesson, but the time's too short for proper meals so we can only buy bread from this really nice bakery at the next nearest building before rushing back for class.

anyway,we have 4 city tours in all, had to pay US$80 for them and this fee's compulsory, so we might as well go for all the tours. went for the first one two days back in which we toured 2 palaces and had lunch at Insa-Dong. By the way, lunch's not provided. anyway, the other city tours we'll have include going to this pottery place at the outskirt of seoul i think where we'll get a chance to make our own creation. Then there'll be this Nanta performance that we will be watching. I think they're showing it now back in S'pore for the Arts Fest. Anyone heard of Cookin'? it's the same performance that we'll watching. I'm really looking forward to that, cos it's pretty expensive in S'pore, and i get to watch it in its home country!! there's another trip where we'll be going to this theme park place called "Everland". apparently, if you watch korean shows, there are quite a few drama serials shot there, particularly the one called "hong dou nu zhi lian" by Zhang Nala and Kim Chay Weon. it was shown on channel u some time back i think. actually, i'm not terribly interested in this theme park thing cos i dun like to take those kind of rides, so i might consider skipping that if i need to study or something.

anyway, quite a few things have happened here so far. some are not so pleasant but most are pretty good. On our first nite here, we spent the nite at this guesthouse in Incheon, which was just 3 minutes away from the airport if we go by car. the guesthouse's really clean and it looked more like a condo than a guesthouse. it's well equipped, there was even cable tv! cos of the cable tv, we even got to watch Friends, Survivor and CNN news in English! Anyway, there was even a small kitchen looking place hidden in a cabinet, but we didn't get to use it of course. oh, and we had beds and blankets and all, it wasn't the korean mattress thing. (i know this sounds sua gu, but my friend and i really worried abt getting real beds you know) And we paid 45000 won for the night only,; it's abt30 plus sing dollar for each one of us only.

the next mornin, this korean guy whom my friend knew over the university's forum came to pick us up. It was really kind of him, because he had to drive or more than an hour from seoul to incheon (incheon's a big island i think, while seoul's on the mainland), just to pick us up, then he treated us for lunch (korean japanese food!), then drove us to the uni, helped us settle our problems with the office (in korean lang), before driving us to the dormitory. we're feel so bad for imposing on him u know. thankfully, my friend bought ba kwa for him from singapore.

there were some hiccups for me cos the office didn't assign me a buddy. you see, there's this buddy program in which the uni's office pair up int'l students with local korean students so they can help us out and bring us around. so i signed up for the program durin my application, but somehow, nobody got back to me on that. so it was really worrying for me. when we went to the office, the person told me there wasn't enof local students in this summer program, so i was the unlucky one who got left out. well, if that isn't upsetting enof, they didn't even bother to inform me abt it! so they took down my name and promised to find me a buddy asap and they'll inform me again. up til now, i have no news. sigh. i noe i haf to be understanding, maybe they're really busy cos this is the first time they're doing such a big int'l program with 400 students, so they may be as lost as i am. sigh. anyway, i'm jus leeching on my friend's buddies, jus following them whereever i go and feeling so bad abt it. thankfully, i met this local student whose buddy din turn up for this program, so now she's my fake buddy. haha.

anyway, after we went to the office, we had to check in to our dorm. the security guard uncle couldn't speak english and we couldn't speak korean. so he looked at the list, checked my name and gave me this key. i went into the room, dumped my stuff and left cos we had to go for orientation. when we got back in the evening, the uncle gave me the key to another room. remember that we dun spak the same language, so it was frustrating to communicate. after some painful minutes, we managed to get this korean american girl who translated everythin for us. then we all realised that he gave me the wrong key the first tiem round. so he escorted my friend and i to collect my stuff from the wrong room before moving to the correct one. and he kept insisting that i was holding on to another set of the keys for the wrong room when he was holding on to my set of keys!! (every person gets a set of key with a different ending number for the same room number) and old korean uncles aren't very very polite you know (i think it's their culture), so it was a really bad experience.

anyway, when i got to my correct room, my roommate hasn't arrived yet, so i thought she would be arriving the next morning or smthg. she never came. so i' staying alone for now. sigh. it's a terribly bad thing la, but it gets too quiet in the room sometimes. anyway, after a few days, the program administration finally realized these pple weren't coming, nd there are abt 7 of us without roommates, so they said they'll shift us ard by this weekend. and it's not good news cos i have already emptied everythinfrom my luggage and unpacked everything into the cupboard and drawers. so it'll be really messy nd difficult if i need to move. sigh.

everything's jus very messy here. there wasn't internet access initially until some korean americans noticed this thing on the notice board saying that we need to configure our IP addresses accordingly. and the whole thign was written in KOREAN. it was so silly. this is supposed to be an int'l program and we're supposed to be staying in int'l dorm. so they should have thought of writing it in ENGLISH. anyway, we managed to configure the stuff and finally have internet access. but the IP address's accordng to your room, so if i have to move, i got to do everythin again. sigh.

then we received this email from the admin pple telling us tat they haven't received our nproof of enrollment and transcripts form our home university, and my friend and i totally freaked out. we called back to s'pore and scared our own admin person, and wasted money on that call. finally, the office pple said, "oh, that was just a mass mail, since you're exchange students, everything's fine". ...............

well, some pple were complaining that this dorm's old and the telephones in the rooms can only receive calls but can't call out, and a whole load of other things. well, i do admit the dorms' not as pretty aas i expected, and it's really old, but i've never stayed in a dorm before so i had no basis for comparison. but it does disturbs me that my aircon's really cold and that we're not authorized to change the temp settings, and there's no proper garbage thingy, and some of the cupboards and drawers can't be locked, there's no kitchen, and the instructions to the washing machines and dryers are in once again, KOREAN. but otherwise, things aren't too bad. haha. at least there's aircon you know. the resident assistant told us that for ten years, they have never renovated this place, and just for this summer program, they added air con to the whole building. so i guess we got to be thankful la. anyway, this dorm's right on top a hill, while the building that we have lessons in are all the way at the bottom. it takes 10 minutes to walk down for lessons, but more than twice the time to come back cos it's such a steep hill to climb u know. guess i'll come back with really strong legs. haha.

anyway, we also had some difficulties confirming our dorm mailing address as well as our room phone numbers cos different websites told us different things. so there was quite some confusion there. oh, but there's hot water for bathing and all 24/7. so i'm really happy abt that. jus turn the tap and there's hot water! hee.

some of you might be surprised to know i've handwashed my clothes! haha. cos i dunno how to operate the washing machine and dryer, and i only have 2 setas of clean clothes left, so i decided that the fastest way would be for me to handwash them. did that last nite. but i'll prob learn to use the machines over the weekend, will grab some of the korean americans to help.

oh, i feel like i'm studyin in a US college you know. cos more than half the students are Korean Americans and the university's buildings dun look anything korean or asian. it's so so so pretty, will put up the picture soon. and my prefessors are all non-koreans, and they're actually from US universities like UCLA, Utah, Rutgers etc. So wherever we go in class, or in dorm, it's always american accents that we hear. feels so US.

anyway, i've got to stop here for the day. gotta go meet my friends for dinner at the bottom of the hill. will continue updating next time. =)