Orientation day

Yesterday there was an orientation day for exchange students in SKKU. It was the first time I saw all the other exchange students. It's funny that there are so many Finns here. I guess there are like 10 exchange students from Finland, maybe eight from France and also many from China. Other nationalities are i.a. Dutch, German, Swedish, Russian, Japanese, Taiwanese and even Kazakhstan. All together there are about 50 exchange students here.

Hosts.

Hanging around at the break.

Yay, here we all are :)

At the orientation day they served us Korean food for lunch. We had the most popular Korean dish, kimchi and bibimbap.


Bibimbap = mixed rice. It's always served beautifully set but you just mix the whole thing and eat it with a spoon.

In the afternoon we had a tour around the campus. Back at home my university is just a building. So compared to that this campus is huge.

Our tour guide Marek.

In the library. What is this, a cyber cafe?

There is also a baseball field.

In the central library building I found an interesting thing.

What do you see in this picture? A piece of paper, right. And behind that is a water purifier.

But the piece of paper is actually a pocket. It's a water cup! Wow!

Anyway, about the orientation day. On our campus tour we also got to see Sungkyunkwan University's old campus. SKKU is the oldest university in Korea and the old campus is over 600 years old.

In the largest area on the map is actually a shrine for the confucianists and buildings to support the celebrations held there. In the smaller area on the up-right are the actual classrooms and dorms.

Here you can see the new campus buildings behind the old campus.

Walking up to the shrine. In order to honour the ancestors you can't just run up the stairs. You have to take a step, have your both feet on the same step, pause for a second and then take an other one.







On the 1000 won bill there is a picture of the old campus. The picture is a little blurry so you can't really see it but it's there. :P

Us in front of the Central library.

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In the evening all the exchange students went out together.

We walked through the campus and it looked really nice in the night.

On the street we saw like the most random thing: Marimekko curtains in a street restaurant!

We went to a norebang = karaoke room. It was fun :)
In Finland we also have karaoke bars, but there it's more like performing because you sing in front of everyone in the bar. Here there are small rooms that you rent for your group. You don't really perform to the group, people sing along and shake tambourines. There's actually a lot more going on in the room than just singing.




Norebang!

Wow...

Hi guys :)
thanks for reading my blog!
I don't know, I just wanted to let you know that I have so much to tell you... But right now I don't have enough time to write everything here. There's so much going on right now. I guess I'll have time when the semester starts and everyone's just studying...
But anyway... I'll post some new stuff always when I have time!

P.S. Tonight (we have a curfew from 12.30 am to 5 am) me and Ville tried to find a way to get into the dorm during the curfew but ended up making a neighbours angry dog just more mad... Not so good...

Day 2: Itaewon and Dongdaemun

I didn't know what Koreans have for breakfast, so I went to Dunkin Donats. Shame on me!

This was my first breakfast here: some greasy egg, cheese and bacon thingie and this raspberry filled bun. Not the healthiest choice but oh so good...

Later that day I got to know a bunch of other exchange students and we went to the foreign part of Seoul, Itaewon. It's a place where you can find foreign markets, mosques, ethnic restaurants from all over the world, and of course foreign people. At night it's not the best part of town and I hear that most Seoulers rarely even go there.


Walking down the street in Itaewon.

In front of a mosque.

We went to a foreign market and saw these exotic products: Lipton Yellow Label tea, yams and pasta sauces!

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After our visit to Itaewon I went to walk around Dongdaemun. There are I'm not sure how many shopping malls alltogether FILLED with fashion. Clothes, shoes and bags floor after floor after floor, building after building... And they are totally different from the clothing stores we have in Finland or other western countries. In Finland in a shopping mall you find separate stores for separate brands. There might be an H&M or Nike store that sells everything: clothes, shoes, accessories, some sports gear. But here in the non-western shopping centers you have one product in one area. Really.

These pics are from the women's fashion area. As I said, there aren't really separate stores, just small sections aside the corridors.


What's hot here: girly grandma's clothes. Stockings, heels, knee-long dresses with small floral pattern, small leather jackets, long knits, all in earthly colors.





I learned about this one place one product thing when I was wandering in a giant shopping complex looking for a towel. I didn't bring a towel with me when I came here, I thought I'll just buy one from here. The huge shopping complex was filled with pillows, blankets and curtains. I didn't yet realize that there actually wouldn't be any towels to be found. After walking a mile in the narrow corridors I tried asking about towels from the sellers. The whole thing was really painful because of the language barrier.

Me: Do you have towels? (drawing a big square in the air with my hands)
Seller: Towel? Towel? (scratching his head)
Me: After you take a shower...
Seller: Shower!
Me: yes, after that you need to dry yourself with a towel. (demonstrating drying myself)
Seller: Ahh, towel!
Finally...

But even if the seller knew what I was looking for, he couldn't give me directions such as "go straight that way and turn left from the stairs". He could just point his finger. I guess I asked from three sellers with the same result. Luckily at one point this woman I asked the same thing led me to the towel shop. No, the towels weren't in the shopping complex for pillows, blankets and curtains. On the street there was a district for towels. What!??

A towel shop in the towel shop street.

Other districts I've come across are jewellery, pharmacy, souvenirs, electronics, food and even devices for physically challenged people. This means that you have a street or an area selling things in just one product group. In other words you need to know where you can find what you're looking for ;)

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In the evening I met up with Finnish guys and we had octopus for dinner. They brought red-hot coals to the middle of our table and we fried the octopus there ourselves.

Yum!

Finally pictures!

Here are pictures from my first moments in Korea. You can click them and they get bigger :P



When I arrived at Incheon International Airport it was wonderful to see the sun shining :) In Finland during the winter it's always cloudy and gray. You can't hardly ever see the sun shining bright.



A guy from our university's "HI-club" (the HI stands for help and information) came to pick me up from the airport. We took a bus to Seoul. I was so excited for the new environment so I even took a picture of the TV on the bus. >__<
After dropping my stuff at the dorm we went to grab lunch on this street close to my university. It's really lively with lots of young people and restaurants and other amusements.



This was my first meal in Korea :P It wasn't traditional Korean, more like Asia-fusion.



We also went to see my new university. This is the I guess main building that was built for the university's 600th anniversary. The Sungkyunkwan University was founded in 1398 and is the oldest university in Korea. Alltogether there are like 20 buildings on the campus.



Here is the view from the hill my university is on. If you zoom to the horizon you see that it's not land there, they're high rise buildings. I felt like a real small town girl because it was the first time I saw that kind of view in real life!

I took pictures around the neighborhood where my dorm is. It's a bit older part of the city but I love it! It's so different from Finland. In Finland everything very regulated: parking, open hours of stores, noise you can make on the street... I don't know how it is with the permissions here, but this.. you just couldn't have in Finland! Right now I'm high on this whole cultural difference thing. Everything is so new, fantastic and exotic. Well, I'll just enjoy the feeling :)


Wires, wires, wires... I think they're lovely in their own disorderly way! (This would never be in Finland...)



On the street to my dorm.



Just outside of the gate to my university.



Want a quick snack? Crave for something hot and spicy? Wanna get it cheap? Try this or some other of the countless food booths in Seoul!

I'm in Seoul!

Phew... I'm now yet lagged... But happy! I'm finally here!

I've got a long day behind me. I guess it already started yesterday. I started the packing process day before my departure which was definitely too late. I didn't have trouble choosing what to take but what to leave. I had to make real sacrifices to get my suitcase weigh 20 kg. Luckily I could take also 8 kg to the plane. Plus I wore many clothes on top of each other ;)

Finnair seems to put a lot of effort to it's new Asia routes. There was all kind of Korean specialties such as bibimbap for dinner. It also included kimchi, red pepper paste and sesame oil in their little jars. Since last time I flew on Finnair I ate a half chilly half lukewarm "omlet" that tasted hideous, I was kinda pleased with the food now.

The only downside about the flight was that I couldn't get any sleep! Whyyy? (I'm soo tired right now but I'm trying to get myself into this time zone.) After the flight I felt kinda horrible. Physically of course. My mind was happy. I'm so tired...

But! I'm really enthusiastic about this neighborhood where my dorm is! My "buddy" (from my university's HI-club) took me to my dorm from the airport. I will post the pics later, when the internet at the dorm starts working. That brings me to another thing. Since the internet doesn't work at the dorm, I went out looking for an internet cafe. I asked directions from several workers at stores and cafes and seriously, they all spoke really poor English. I'm so glad that I learned some phrases and words and stuff in Korean. And of course it's possible to understand each other by using hand gestures. Well, I kept walking and finally saw a sign: PC bang! It's a place where Korean kids and adults play videogames and apparently also eat. And smoke. So here I am! Next to a child who's playing some bright colored videogame with happy music on the background.

Next I might take the subway to this big sightseeing/shopping place. Or walk around and take more pictures. It's spring here :)

Annyong!

Hi everyone!
This is my first post and I'm not quite sure what I should write. I just spent hours surfing in other people's blogs and creating this one. I haven't yet found my "thing" in blogging or writing overall, but I guess it will work itself out.

I'm leaving for Seoul in 3 days and right now I got my hands full with "packing". I haven't gotten to the actual packing part yet as in putting things into my suitcase, because I have millions of little things to do before like washing my clothes, sending e-mails, trying to sort out my courses for the spring...

In these last days I'm planning to have Finnish food that I can't have in Korea. Lot's of rye bread, curd with blueberries, cider, salmon (that I might get there too), sour cream, Finnish chocolate... I think I'm gonna have to bring a Fazerin Sininen chocolate bar with me ;)

It's funny (and a little bit concerning) that most of the time I feel completely normal like I wouldn't realize the fact that I'm leaving my whole life here in just a few days. Like I've had a lobotomy or I'd be emotionally retarded. I could just say that "Yeah, in 3 days I'm leaving everything I know behind and going to a far out country I've never been to before. Alone." and feel nothing special about it.

But then there are moments when it really strikes me and I get these feelings of anxiety and fright. I'm going to a far out country alone! Please don't make me, I don't wanna! What scares me the most is that it is so far and so different from everything I know.

I guess it's too big for me to be dealing with so my brain has chosen denial :P

P.S. Seoul-e means "to Seoul".