Immigration Office + Mentor Meeting

This morning (way too early) me, Stephanie, Elena and one mentor went to the Immigration Office. Going to the Immigration Office is one of the most important things if you are a foreigner staying in Korea and not a tourist. You have to go to the Immigration Office, fill out a form (don't forget a passport photograph) and (that's the thing that feels weird) leave your passport there for about two weeks. So right now, I don't really have any ID to prove who I am (except my German ID card, which is not really valid here). After around two weeks you get your passport back and receive an alien registration card. The alien registration card is like one of the most important things to have here. You need it for making a bank account, getting a mobile phone (don't ask me how I got mine without alien registration card ;) and you don't need to (theoretically) carry your passport around all the time.
My previous experiences with the Immigration Office were really bad but this time everything went very smoothly. It took us some time to get there though (around 1 hour) but we didn't have to wait too long there (the last times I went to the Immigration Office in Suwon I always had to wait for 3-4 hours). I will even get my Alien Registration Card faster than the others because my name is still in the system ;))
When we came back to Wangsimni we were all feeling hungry and because we were very thankful to the mentor who came with us we invited him for lunch. We went to a Japanese place and had Terriyaki.

Pork Terriyaki

It was really good but sometimes it was a little bit too sweet for me.
Afterwards I went to the dorm and finally registered my student ID card!!!!!! Now I can enter the dorm by myself!!! Yeah!!! And they can track how often and at what times I opened the door!! (and if I'm late for curfew I think I might get minus points...but I already know a trick how to open the door without my card and if everything fails I have to call my roommate and ask her to open the door from the inside for me, you don't need a card for that fortunately ;))
Btw, I haven't yet found any fire exits yet...there is a "descending life line" in the hallway in a box...which is basically a rope so you can climb out of the window when there is a fire...I know, very reassuring ;)
Because registering my card was a full success I tackled the problem how to print stuff but failed completely! I will try again tomorrow though, wish me good luck! (Using the washing machine here was also some kind of Russian roulette...)
In the evening I met my mentor so we could check whether my class registration was successful....of course it was not!! So far I'm not registered for one class yet! we couldn't find out why but when I returned to the dorm I received an email saying that they could not register any graduate students for their classes...that sucks! I just want to be done with registration and go to my classes like everybody else! I also have to try to do that again tomorrow...Many people are very unhappy with class registration here because it isn't working out at all and now many classes are already full and the remaining classes are all in Korean ;) There isn't too much choice to begin with and because of the problems with registering, all the Koreans could register before the exchange students...well, let's hope that by tomorrow evening I'll be happily registered for all of my classes!
This was frustrating, but afterwards my evening was really great! Me and Minji, my mentor, went to have dinner together. She even managed to introduce a Korean food to me which I haven't had before: 제육볶음 (je-yuk-ppo-kkeum). It is pork, cabbage and carrots in a very very spicy sauce (again I faced the pain!!). We also ordered my favorite soup, Doenjangjigae, and, of course, rice. 

제육볶음 (it's as spicy as it looks like!)

My favorite soup

And you can't imagine how happy I am about what we did after dinner! We searched a gym for me and I will register there tomorrow and then I can have my first workout!! woooohooooooooooo :) It's a little bit more expensive than I expected but at this stage: I don't care!
We decided to have one coffee after this success and stayed at the coffee place for a couple of hours actually, just talking! I'm very happy to have such a nice and friendly mentor and that we get along that well! :)