Horse race

Our Korean friends took us to the horse race the other day. We drove to the Seoul Grand Park, south from the Hangan. It wasn't geografically that far, but it took so long to get there! Believe me, sometimes subway is the best option!

I had never been to a horse race before. Even though I don't really have a thing on gambling, it was interesting to experience the race. And bet on few horses also ;)

In front of the place.

Checking and comparing the odds. Many people seemed very absorbed into the comparison of the horses, monitoring the odds and gambling. I got a feeling that they weren't doing it just for fun like us. I bet most of the people go there regularly and have the whole betting on horses as their lifestyle.

Picking our lucky horses. Yes, this situation is all genuine, aren't we this brainy all the time?

It was such an experience to be in front of the audience during the race. In the beginning of the race everyone was watching it quite calmly. Then, little by little when the horses came closer to the finish line, you could hear the noise from the audience getting louder and louder. And just before the horses hit the finish line you could hear hundreds of Korean men screaming and shouting from everywhere behind you!

I bet like 1 000 won per horse (that is approximately 60 euro cents) and one of my bets got me 1 900! I'm such a gambler!

Studying

As I figured at some point of the semester the balance between studying and free time activities changes and the focus moves towards studying. It is not a bad thing, after all we're exchange students. I just hope it's not gonna be all-studying-no-fun for the rest of the time. Well... I shouldn't worry. We are exchange students after all ;)

The most difficult thing when it comes to school for me right now is to get a picture about how much work the professors expect from us. The courses aren't difficult themselves, it's just that I don't know how much time to spend on the studies and assignments.

Some Korean students tend to live at the library. When you try to find a desk there you see that many desks are already "taken"; there are books and stuff on the tables waiting for the student to return. I wouldn't be surprised to see a houseplant on some desk there! You also see people sleeping with their head on their books. Of course they need a nap if they stay there all day...

One difference between Koreans westerners is the effectivesess. I wouldn't want to say that Koreans aren't effective, the infrastructure and constructions in Seoul are a proof of that. (Nothing in Finland would happen as fast as it happenes here.) The point is just that we westerners want to spend as little time on doing things as possible. If there is a decision to make in a group, we discuss it and make the decision and people compromise. If we have to do a group work, we make it as good as reasonably possible and hand it in. It doesn't have to be perfect in every aspect. I guess Koreans want to do things more carefully.

None of the styles is better than the other. The difference is how we measure time spent on the work. We westerners want to start working, do the job and get out. That is effective for us. Koreans in the other hand do a lot of other stuff like discussing alongside. So the time spent on doing the actual actions might be the same, just the style is different.

This text is really rough. I separate 'westerners' and 'Koreans' pretty arbitrarily and my arguments are subjective. It shouldn't say "westerners and Koreans" but rather "me and my impression".

Last week we represented and advertised our home university HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences to potential exchange students with Ville.

Big BDay of Raita, Stéphanie and Vaclav

Last friday we held a big birthday party for three exchange students. At first it was supposed to be only Raita's party, but eventually it turned out that all together three people had their birthdays around the same weekend. So we celebrated them all :)

We wanted to do a surprise party, but it was difficult to organize it so that all three would be surprised and not feel suspicious about us. But it worked :) It was really fun to organize it and make up fake excuses for people and create diversion for the birthday heroes!

First we went to Namdaemun market to buy some party stuff. Crowns and tiaras for the bday heroes, party poppers, balloons...

Namdaemun market is one of the places to see in Seoul. They sell like everything in these small alleys.






We found a party store and did our shopping.



Later in the evening it was party time! Yay, it was so child-like with all the balloons, the surprise and everything, but it was fun :)

Waiting for the bday heroes to arrive and open the door...

Birthday girls.

Birthday boy.

And birthday "cards" :)


This pic makes me smile everytime I see it ^^





We went clubbing after the houseparty. On the way we grabbed some mantu (dumplings).

On the subway everyone was very musical. Among other songs Swedish pop hits were covered. Vill ha dig!

And so were Swedish drinking songs. Jon singing Bremmemböle-something har ett glatt humör!


Also other instruments were introduced to entertain the fellow subway-users. Vaclav played a set of very varying songs with his flute.

And the bithday hero was happy!


We went to Hongdae, which is the bar/club area in Seoul. There is the Hongik University where all the "artistic" and out going people study.

We went to a rock-club called Funky Funky. It was a special night because it was Saint Patrick's Day. There were live bands playing, green decorations and free green beer.



There were some crazy scary pictures on the walls...


The best band was a Korean U2 cover band. The atmosphere was bumpin the roof when they played Sunday Bloody Sunday!

I saw one girl doing crowd surfing there and I was like: I've always wanted to do that! Damn, it's no good just to think about it, so i did it too! I climbed up to the stage, it was so great, and then fell forward. The crowd surfing was pretty short but it was just so fun to do the whole thing!

Suwon

Last week we made a daytrip to Seoul's neighbour city Suwon. There are over 1 million people living in Suwon which makes it quite a large city. Anyhow at least Seoulers consider Suwon just a suburb of Seoul where "nothing ever happens". And the suburb thing has some truth in it. When travelling there you don't get the feeling of going to another city. The tall buildings and houses continue all the way there. But I guess it's the same in all the metropolitan areas. Even Helsinki has fused with those kinds of "suburban cities"; Espoo and Vantaa.

Seoul metropolitan area is the second largest in the whole world with 20 million people. It's interesting that almost half of the people in South Korea live in the Seoul metropolitan area.

Although no one seemed to consider Suwon an interesting place to visit we wanted to check it out. Our destination was a UNESCO world heritage site Hwaseong Fortress.

Transferring to the right subway. Outside the city center the subways go on the ground which is nice cause you can see the surroundings then.


Suwon station. It was also a mall for expensive brands. If you're a westerner you can walk into really expensive stores and the staff doesn't look weirdly at you.



From a local tourist info center we got these pieces of paper to show the taxi driver. The taxies here are so cheap compared to Finland... well in Finland they're just ridiculously expensive. The starting price here is 1 €. oO

Before sightseeing we needed to refuel ourselves. The café-culture here is huge. On every corner you can find cafés, bakeries and pastery shops.

Mmmm...


On the ground in front of the Hwaesong Haenggung there was I guess a story about some war or something.

A popular TV show is filmed in the castle and we got to pose with the characters.

This pic turned out to be naughtier than it was suppoused to be...




Kimchii! (Korean version of "cheese" when taking a picture)


Photo art again.

The frotress was on a hill behind the castle but we didn't find a proper path there. So we ended up walking up a very steep slope...

...but got to our destination.





View to the city.

There were some hideous clusters of buildings around.


A local ninja doing her excercises.


We walked along the wall that surrounded the castle.







You see signs with swastika pretty often when you walk around. We westerners immediately think of Nazis, but actually it is commonly used in buddhist churches.




Tryin to be tall...


Our university's second campus is in Suwon and we of course also wanted to see it too. The campus looked like a pretty traditional university campus but the main attraction was the brand new Samsung library. (Samsung sponsores our university and builds fancy buildings on our campuses :P )

Near the gate to SKKU.


The library.



Inside the library. There were all kinds of media facilities: computers, music and movie centres and so on... The only thing we didn't come across with was books :)

It was kinda late when we started to head back home. The subway took 1 and a half hour and for the first time here I felt a little homesick. But interestingly not for my real home in Finland. I felt homesick for my room in my dorm.

I guess because I don't have a possibility to just go back home, my mind doesn't even bother me with feelings of yearning there. But that night I felt homesick because we were away from our "haven" here in Korea.

Tired travellers returning home.