자장면 Dinner

My roommate's boyfriend found someone who ordered 자장면 (Jajangmyeon) delivery for us for dinner (somehow the guys are a lot better connected with each other than the girls). Jajangmyeon is a Korean dish which is originally from China (if you really want to know more look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jajangmyeon). It is a noodle dish with a black soybean sauce and vegetables and meat. The vegetables and meat are very hard to see though because the sauce is really thick and dark.

Jajangmyeon with side dishes

It doesn't look very appetizing but tastes quite good. It is not spicy at all, so it's very popular with foreigners who don't like spicy food.

Stirring doesn't make it look any better ;)

Delivery in Korea is super-cheap and usually really fast. We paid only 13.000 krw for three people (~ 8,30 €).

For desert I had a 초코파이 (Choco Pie). Some people call it a cookie but I'd rather say it's a small cake with marshmallow filling coated in chocolate. Choco Pies are really a Korean thing and when Koreans do their army service they eat a lot of them :)
   

   

Orientation Day

Today was Orientation Day...It was very cumbersome to get up in the morning. I'm not very good at getting up early, especially after a bad night of sleep (how are you supposed to sleep when your body thinks it's 4 in the afternoon?).
We were picked up at the dormitory by another exchange student who had been here for some time. Good thing, because there's no way I could have found my way to the central library myself. At around 9:30 am the Orientation started. Honestly, it was so tiring! Presentation after presentation after presentation...some stuff was quite interesting but most of the time I was fighting to not fall asleep or run out of the room screaming!
Maybe around 12ish we finally met our mentors. Mentors are Korean students who help the exchange students with all the questions you have and are your "first" Korean friend at the university. Every mentor has only one mentee. It's a really nice thing because they really try to help you with all your questions and go to the immigration office or any other administrative office with you. They also help you to register for your classes, which apparently is really important here. My mentor is a really nice and friendly Korean girl, her major is English language and literature but we will not have any classs together because she is attending undergraduate classes (she's quite young) and I will be going to graduate school. We had a pizza lunch together and walked around the university campus in small groups. I think I can now find by myself:

• the central library
• the faculty of humanities building
• the Korean language institute
• Campus plaza (with shops and restaurants)
• and the subway station.

Which is all I need to be able to find for now :) The faculty of humanities building is at the highest point of the campus (it's really really mountaneous!!)...yeah :) so I'll get plenty of walking every day...I'll take some pictures of the campus soon and post them here :)
After the campus tour we were supposed to register for our classes...for this you need your student ID card...which weren't ready yet for graduate students so I will have to wait until Wednesday. This part of the orientation was a little bit unorganized because many undergraduate students didn't receive their student ID cards as well (without any reason). Still everyone had to wait in a stuffy computer lab for a really long time which was quite boring...and I wanted to have my student ID today as well!
So I still don't know which classes I will be taking for my major (English linguistics). But I know that I will take the Intensive Korean Language Class (if everything works out, it's all a little bit complicated here), which is every day (except weekends) for 4 hours. In Korea "intensive" means very very intensive! So I'm very curious how I will cope. The Korean intensive language class is called intensive because besides the 4 hours of class which you have to attend (compulsory attendance), you are supposed to spend 2-3 hours on homework and memorizing vocabulary every day! Korean teachers expect you to be very committed to the class! Let's see how it works out for me (I've taken two intensive Korean language classes before and it was ok, it was at a different university though)! On March 16th I have to take a placement test and I want to fresh up my Korean until then a little bit, so wish me good luck :)

Rainy Second Day

Me and my roommate didn't really sleep well last night...no particular reason, so we got up really late and went to the cafeteria for breakfast/lunch. Cafeteria food doesn't look very appetizing but tastes ok and is really cheap (~1,30 € per meal).

My cafeteria meal today

There is only one meal option in the cafeteria which is closest to my dormitory. Today it was rice (of course) with curry, accompanied by spicy rice cakes and kimchi (spicy Chinese cabagge) and some kind of soup.

It was really rainy today, very windy and cold, very unlike yesterday. So me and my roommate met up with her boyfriend and their Korean buddy and we went to a really big department store just for electronical stuff in Yongsan, because my roommate wanted to buy a netbook. After walking around for maybe 1 hour and looking at dozens of laptops and netbooks we finally found a nice one (I don't think it was a lot cheaper than in Germany, but it looks nice :). I saw many nice Macbooks but they are still too expensive for me...maybe one day...*dream*
We took the subway back to Wangsimni station (one station before Hanyang) and went to a nice Korean restaurant to eat my favorite food: samgjopsal :) It's meat which you grill on your own table on hot coals. You get a lot of side dishes with it and we also ordered rice and donjangjigae, my favorite Korean soup. And of course we also had some Korean alcohol: soju.

Samgjopsal and side dishes

 It was so delicious and now after a good meal and some nice schnaps I feel very tired. Tomorrow morning we have to get up early for the orientation and I will now have one more look at my class schedule.

Fantastic First Day

After sleeping for a really long time, I checked my emails and saw that a very good Korean friend of mine wanted to meet for lunch at 신촌(Sinchon) station (don't mix it up with 신천 - Sincheon station which is even on the same subway line, I can't perceive the difference in pronunciation). Great idea, but first difficulties were arising: finding the Hanyang subway station. Looking at the map I decided that I didn't feel like getting lost today and just walked completely around the university campus. Worked perfect, after walking for 20 minutes in perfect sunny weather I arrived at the station. From there it took around 20 more minutes to Sinchon station where I met Sun-ah, one of my best friends here in Korea, which I still know from my last visit around two years ago. Since it was nearly two years ago that she brought me to the airport on my departure day, we were really happy to see each other again :)
We went to a Korean restaurant to have my first "real" Korean meal in two years (my own crudely home-cooked meals don't count ;) and it was ohhhh soooooooooo delicious...and ohhhh sooooooooooo spicy :)

Bulgogi (the spicy kind) with vegetables

Sun-ah tried the Bulgogi first and stated that she was scared that it might be too spicy for me. And it really was spicy! But I was brave and announced that it is perfectly fine for me :) In fact, it was right at the treshold of pain...be proud of me! Will get used to it again hopefully!

Me and Sun-ah :)

While we were eating her husband arrived (she had married while I was in Germany) and after introductions we went to KrispyKreme. Oh I love Krispy Kreme! I don't want to live in a country without Krispy Kreme anymore! They have the best doughnuts in the world! Just look at them:

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts

Eating doughnuts and drinking coffee the afternoon passed quite quickly and Sun-ah and her husband brought me back to Sinchon subway station before taking a bus to their home. I went to Kangnam, where there are all kinds of shops because I wanted to visit the Kyobo bookstore, allegedly the biggest bookstore in South Korea. They also have a good selection of English books and books for foreign learners of Korean. Just take exit nr. 6 at Kangnam station and walk straight for around 10 minutes. The bookstore is adequately located in Kyobo-Tower. I discovered a lot of books I wanted to have and finally decided on the following four:

• Korean Grammar for International Learners from Yonsei University Press (sells on the internet for around 26 € I got it for 14.000 krw, ~ 9 €)
• Complete Guide to the TOPIK -  intermediate (TOPIK is the Test of Proficiency in Korean, similar to TOEFL for English; my goal is to take the TOPIK...and pass it...before I leave. And I thought it might be a good preparation for the placement test which I have to take for my Korean language class)
• Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (I know, wrong country, but I always wanted to read it)
• An Appointment with my Brother by Yi Mun-Yol (This book belongs to a series called "The Portable Library of Korean Literature". All books of the series are short fiction so they are very small, the one I bought has only around 100 pages. They are very cheap though, maybe around 3 € and my plan is to read all 15 of them before I leave :)

All in all I paid around 30 € for all four books, which I think is a good deal. Especially language learning books are a lot more expensive in Germany.
On the way back to the subway station I passed an Artbox (selling stationery and other knickknack) and I couldn't resist going in. Everything they have is incredibly cute and I want to buy all of it! Unfortunately I can't so I just got a couple of small things...even the free bags are cute:

Now I have a notebook with ears:

Oh my cutey notebook

I arrived back at the dorm quite late (shops in Korea are opened well into the night) and made a plan to go stationery and book-shopping (there seem to be some nice bookstores with used English books) with my roommate on Tuesday :)
All in all: a fantastic first day in Korea!

My Room at the Dormitory

After landing in Seoul, me and two other guys which were on the same flight met our pick-up service, a taxi driver sent to the airport by the university. I can only recommend taking the pick-up service even though you have to pay for it because after the long flight you will be really exhausted and tired, so it's not worth the trouble to find your own way to Hanyang University (which is of course possible). That's why I opted for the pick-up service as well, even though I'm familiar with public transportation in Seoul. And actually, Hanyang University is sooo huge, that finding your way to the main gates does not mean that you found the dormitory. I haven't even dared to walk across the campus yet because I'm scared I will get lost. I will wait for the campus tour on Monday, but I already know that I will have problems orientating in this maze of streets and buildings.


Arriving at the dormitory (adequately called International House) was very surprising for me: compared to my last dormitory room at Ajou university my room is huge! And we even have our own small bathroom with a (!!) shower (last time a whole floor had to share two big bathrooms). It's a Korean style shower, but nevermind. Korean showers are not separated from the rest of the bathroom by a separate basin, which means that the whole bathroom IS the shower. So, after a shower the room is completely wet...and also the fresh clothes you wanted to put on afterwards ;) it's really hard to find a spot which stays dry.

My Room

The left side is mine, the right side belongs a very nice girl from Switzerland, so I'll have someone to talk to in German from time to time. Outside our window is a small balcony...unfortunately there is no door so you have to climb through the window to get there. I'm sure it's a balcony though. It's very dirty but we'll clean it and I think it will be a very nice place in summer. Now we use it as a fridge...couldn't find a kitchen in this building yet.
My dormitory is only for women and there is a guard sitting at the entrance who looks at you and if you are female and he knows you he pushes a button to let you in, otherwise, bad luck ;) ...once you have a student ID card you can open it with that I think. There is a sign which says that between 3-5am you cannot enter the dorm... well, I guess if you stay out until 3am you can also stay out 2 hours longer and come back after that ;)

First thing you have to do when arriving: go out and buy a blanket, pillow and bedsheets. I was so tired but still managed to go to the next E-Mart (15 minutes by bus) and buy some stuff for the bed. The mattress is quite hard and the stuff for the bed I bought feels funny (a little bit like plastic?). But nevertheless, first night was good :)

Departure

Leaving Germany wasn't that difficult, so here just a short post about my departure and flight from Frankfurt to Seoul.

Happy Traveler

As usual I was at the airport way too early but since my sister and father accompanied me, it wasn't too boring (thanks again). Sitting in the lounge and watching too many flights get cancelled (fortunately only the short distance ones) or delayed (those which weren't cancelled) because of the bad weather conditions made me a little bit nervous though. I'm not scared of flying per se...I just had a very bad experience on an Emirates flight once (which involved people screaming and, even worse, starting to pray), and ever since I really hate turbulences. In the end, my flight took off one hour late, which isn't too bad and despite fog and heavy rain, everything went smoothly.

LH712 - From Frankfurt to Seoul

All in all the flight took about 10:30 hours and I arrived in Korea at around 2 pm Korean time (the time difference is 8 hours). I thought flying overnight would be a smart idea, but it turned out to be quite bad, considering I was only able to get around 2 hours of bad airplane sleep and couldn't go to bed again before midnight, which basically means I skipped sleeping once.
Well, enough about my flight, next time up: arrival at my dormitory and my first "real" day in Seoul (which, to already spoil it, was fantastic!).