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Published: August 27th 2015
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FROM AMSTERDAM TO SEOUL
After months of preparation it finally has begun!
Tuesday the 25th of August 2015 was circled with a big red marker in our agenda's. This was the day that, after saying goodbye for now to friends and family for weeks already, we were leaving The Netherlands behind for the long-awaited Korean adventure in Seoul. The plan is that the both of us will be studying at Sungkyunkwan University from next week onwards till the end of December, in order to collect enough studypoints for our International Business Management study at the University of Applied Science Inholland Haarlem.
For those who have never heard about Sungkyunkwan University, a small overview follows: Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) is established in 1398 and is the oldest university in Asia. It is ranked among the top private universities in Korea. It is located in the heart of central Seoul and in recent years it has been rising in the university rankings, consistently placing in the top five nationally.
So, last week on the 25th of August from Schiphol Airport we first had to fly to Helsinki, Finland. From Helsinki we flew nine
hours straight to Incheon Airport, South Korea. Of course the flight was filled with crying babies, people who had to walk up and down the aisle continuously and ‘delicious’ airplane food. Luckily, the entertainment set was entertaining enough to keep us busy and awake for the whole flight. We left The Netherlands at 11:55 local time on the 25th and we arrived in Incheon at 09:00 local time on the 26th. It is seven hours later in Korea compared to The Netherlands. Goodbye sleep, hello jetlag!
A taxi driver arranged by SKKU picked us up and drove us from the airport in Incheon to the campus in Seoul where we would stay in the dormitory. Surprisingly, after an hour the taxi driver stopped in the middle of a busy neighbourhood and said that we reached the final destination. So no campus life for us, but the full Seoul experience surrounded with locals. The dormitory building we are staying is called the C-House, consists of 36 rooms for in total 72 foreign students and is seven levels high. We are on the third floor in room 305. Here in Korea they are very strict with mixed gender
groups, so this is a male only flat. There is a guard/supervisor present between 05:00 and 01:00. And what about the time in between? Well, as they are quite strict here we are not allowed to enter the building between 01:00 and 05:00. This means if you are out for a drink, you have to watch the time very carefully...
Two Korean students from SKKU welcomed us and helped to fill in some documents. Something went wrong with the money we sent to the university, so we were told to go to a local bank and transfer an additional amount. Furthermore, because of the deadly MERS breakout a couple of months ago in Korea the government isn’t taking any risks. They told us to immediately go to a local medical center and get official proof of your medical conditions. Not even being in Seoul for two hours and we already had some interesting challenges ahead of us.
First, we decided to the bank to make sure the payment was fully completed. With a map and some instructions from the Korean students we headed out for the bank. We entered this huge building,
which was completely build out of marble from the inside and luckily stumbled upon an employee who spoke English very well and could help us perfectly. Within ten minutes both transfers were done and the needed stamps and documents were given. That was easier than expected…
Now, the medical center. This was definitely something else than the easy bank adventure. Again, with the map we easily found the building where it should be. It more looked like a shabby pub entrance with only stairs to go up than a medical center, but we entered the building anyway. Once we reached the first floor we saw a space which looked very much like a private surgery with luxury seats and cosy lightning. Three nurses waited for us behind the reception and once we had handed over the information sheet with all the details on it we discovered that they didn’t spoke a single word of English. You are in a hospital for an x-ray scan and nobody speaks English... great. With the help of Google Translate and lots of hand gestures we filled in the correct(?) information and were taken to the room where the x-ray was.
The first impression of this room was that probably the local butcher kills his animals in the same room as we were about to take the scans in. Creepy stuff. Scans were made and we had to wait in the waiting room for the results. Once these were available we were called in one by one by the doctor. Sitting at the desk of the doctor, who also spoke not a single English word, we looked at our lungs and after a long Korean story by the doctor eventually the two thumbs up and a kind smile confirmed that everything was alright. Lucky us!
By now it was time for breakfast… or lunch… or dinner… depending in which time zone your stomach was. Korean food supposed to be a great experience, so we couldn’t wait to finally eat some. A small restaurant caught our eye and fortunately they had the English translations on the menu! We ordered fried eggs and egg rolls among a local beer. Already after two minutes after ordering a woman came up to us with two huge bowls of soup. Must be on the house or being part of the menu right…?
The soup was delicious, but keeping the fried eggs and egg rolls in mind we didn’t ate too much. After half an hour waiting we asked an employee what was going on. He immediately awkwardly laughed, apologized a thousand times and explained that the translation on the menu was completely wrong. Perfect, we had just ordered soup. To make it up to us we receive free egg rolls from the kind gentleman.
That night we headed downtown to attend a ‘all you can drink’ international student party in a club. We paid 15.000 Korean Won (9 euro’s) and entered the club. The club was quite empty, but the bar was overloaded with people thirsty for their free drinks. It took us 20 minutes to get our drinks, so together with a group of new made friends we decided to go to a local restaurant to drink soju. This drink, soju, is by far the most popular drink in Korea. For one bottle of the size of a beer bottle you pay one euro and it contains between 19%!a(MISSING)nd 45%!a(MISSING)lcohol. Getting drunk has never ever been so cheap… After two hours of heavy drinking, a
bill of six euro’s per person and having eaten sow bugs (sort of cockroach) for a snack we decided not to go back to the apartment before 01:00 and entered a very lovely night. How lovely it was? We can’t recall…, but what we do know is that Koreans can party and that soju is our new favorite drink from this moment onwards!
Today we mostly slept, did groceries and explored the neighbourhood a little bit more. Tomorrow in the afternoon we have our very first school day at SKKU. According to the email we received it is an orientation day, so we finally get our timetables and all the additional info about the upcoming semester. Exciting stuff!
Next week we will do another blog post to tell you how our first week of school was!
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