Blogs from Seoul, South Korea, Asia - page 4

HELLO EVERYONE!!!! Wow, It has been way too long. Basically the reason that I didn't update my blog for a couple of weeks was because of midterm week. Here at Sogang University, there's a whole week dedicated to midterms (just like finals week in the States). So for a whole week the campus was basically on lockdown and everyone had midterms during the same 5 days. As you can imagine, no one really went out the weekend before exams because everyone on campus was studying. And the library was packed - There was literally a ticket line for some of the study rooms. Moral of the story: I didn't really do too much 2 weeks ago. Anywho - I did do a couple of cool things during the past few weeks after midterms, so let me ... read more

Day 44 (Sat 20thOct) I got up early to be made breakfast by one of the girls from last night’s sit on the floor and drink occasion. Toast with jam on and a fried egg on top, was a little apprehensive but gave it a go and surprisingly it works. Ate up and fetched my bag to head off to Andong intercity bus terminal. Got my ticket and got on the bus when it arrived. Think it took around 3 and a half hours to get to Suwon but it was a limousine bus so wasn’t uncomfortable in the slightest. On arrival in Suwon I followed the directions google had my hostel at. Bad decision as this had me roaming around for the best part of 2 hours in the wrong part of town. I gave ... read more

Day 1: Arriving at Seoul Station at lunchtime, I thought we had avoided the peak hour crowds. No, there were thousands of people in the metro. It was raining so I guess everybody was trying to avoid getting wet. It didn't take too long to find our way to the correct station, but we couldn't locate the hotel. Finally, we walked into another hotel and asked directions. They were great; a guy practically took us to the hotel. Our room is quirky but has everything you need, including breakfast (hopefully not rice porridge). We immediately went out for lunch and, once again, we managed to consume enough food to feed a North Korean village. Dean still hasn't eaten crickets yet, so he hasn't completed his culinary tour of Korea. Eleanor bought her second umbrella of the ... read more

This past week Korea celebrated the public holiday of Chuseok, a Harvest Festival, so we were given Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off of work. Deciding to take advantage of the long, long weekend some friends and I decided to take a train over to Seoul and spend a few days exploring the city. After a couple long, exhausting weeks of teaching I was thrilled to be sitting on a train, gliding through the Korean countryside with not a worry in my mind for school on Monday, or even Tuesday...or even Wednesday!! I arrived in Seoul at 8:45am having taking the fast KTX from Ulsan at 6:22 Saturday morning. I took a taxi to the hotel where I was meeting friends and settled in for our day of touristy activities. First, we walked over to the Gyeongbokgung ... read more

This post is late in coming—my life’s been busy, and I’m in the middle of busy-ness, but I’m trying to stay semi-caught-up with these, so here we go. My last semester has been going alright—mid-terms are already in 2 weeks. Although time’s been going quickly, in the middle of some classes where students won’t shut up, time goes all too slowly. It’s the natural course that as the year goes on and the young students grow up a bit, they tend to become less interested and more unresponsive. I’ve been busy rewriting all the students’ English newspaper articles. Also, last week I graded third grade speaking tests. I don’t know what it is with this semester—even though most of my lessons just need to be tweaked from last year, I feel like I have way less ... read more