Blogs from Seoul, South Korea, Asia - page 9

I officially finished my first week of work! So many things happened that I will only write down the most memorable ones. On monday, Mark and I were picked up at the ICYE office by a relatively young man (I don't know if he's 25 or 35, to be honest...) and he took us to the Gangnam YMCA. His English was pretty good, but it seemed like he was feeling very self-concious about it. He seemed to be a little nervous, but in likeable way. As we walked up the hill, he walked very slow, and his breathig was a little heavy, so I was wondering if he was not used to walking? But then as we entered the YMCA and got into the elevator, he said in his (rather cute) Korean accent: "Ah, sorry, sorry. ... read more

Blog round number two has arrived! Since the last blog post we’ve started at the Sungkyunkwan University and settled down in this crazy city. To save you guys lots of reading we decided to upload a little less text and a lot more photos this time. We were overwhelmed by all the positive messages we received from you all, so thank you so much for that! For two weeks now we have been going to classes at the university, which mainly consisted of introduction classes and talking about the subjects to be discussed this semester. We will be taking the following six courses for 16 weeks in total: Economics in Global Environment, Management Information Process, Understanding Asian Culture, Financial Markets in Korea, Marketing Management and Organizational Theory. Most professors are from Korean origin, but have studied ... read more

We had to go to the immigration office today to get an alien ID card thingy and we had to wait about two hours until it was our turn... Naturally, in a room where everyone was irritated and stressed, we started joking around. Maybe I should explain. So we learned the Korean word for blood today, which is 피(pronounced "pee"). Well... I saw this guy at the immigration office who had a large bandaid on his arm, and without thinking I said "Look! He 피'd! He's wearing a bandage!" and then I must've had this look of horror on my face as I realized what that sounded like, because Pablo (this is USA girl's official nickname... I'll get into that later) burst out laughing. In the end I cried tears of laughter, it was so funny, ... read more

I came out of Suyu Station on line four at exit three. I headed to the bus stops in the middle of the road and caught bus number 120 to Ui-dong. It took about 20 minutes to reach the end of the line, which is where I needed to get off. I like it when the stop I need is the last one, as it means I don't have to pay too much attention. Luckily, the bus terminates in the depot. From there it was a bit of a walk through the village to reach the entrance of the park. It was a lovely sunny day, there were lots of Taegukgis flying. I walked for about 10 minutes, then there was a signpost, which showed the way through a nice forest walk to reach the start ... read more

I was too tired to write anything last night, but basically I met one of the girls I'll be living with and together we went to Sinchon and looked around a bit... We almost didn't make it home because we forgot which bus we had to take and we were too shy to ask for directions haha but we made it! The apartment is very cute, and there's still lots of stuff from the previous volunteers all over the place (shampoos, danish flags, snacks etc.) which is kind of fun. I don't know when the others are going to arrive, so for now it's just the two of us here. We have the day off today because the camp officially starts tomorrow, so we're going to explore Seoul soon!... read more