Another week in Korea

Caribbean Bay

Today, I went to the biggest water park in the world: Everland Caribbean Bay. There I experienced firsthand what recreation in Asia can be like.

First we had to travel for about 3 hours (due to our own bad planning) in the subway and a very crowded bus. Then we arrived in the park, where we paid the discounted fee of 18000 KRW (about 12,25 euro) instead of the normal 50000 KRW (about 34 euro) since it is Chuseok (mid-autumn festival) and we are foreigners (we even had to bring passports to prove this). Once in, it turned out to be quite crowded, which is something you can expect for anything here. This would normally not be a problem, but for some reason about 80% of the slides were closed. Therefore, the very few slides which were open had humongous lines in front of them. We decided to wait in line for one, called the Aqualoop; a slide where you first drop 18 meters and then go into a closed looping. It takes about 5 seconds in total, we waited for one hour and fifteen minutes (also due to the fact that two of the four slides from this particular one were closed). We also were not able to go into the wave pool, since you had to buy a life vest for 6000 KRW to be allowed to go in, something I as a greedy Dutch guy was not willing to do. Furthermore, this pool was also filled to the brim with people, so it was not possible to swim; only to float. I filled the rest of the day by eating a burger, floating in a different pool and sitting in the hot tub. I lost track of the rest of the group and travelled home by myself, this time taking one hour and a half. Overall, the experience was a bit disappointing, especially since they advertised the pool as though it was in its normal situation. I can’t imagine paying 50000 KRW for this, and then having to pay more for things such as the wave pool and beds.

Last Saturday I also went to one of the biggest music stores in the world! While it was different than what I expected (I expected one big store, while it was more of a collection of small ones), it was still very impressive to see two floors full of instruments. I also bought a relatively cheap guitar, for 85000 KRW.

Academics

Now let’s talk academics; I have managed to find my third course! The professors for all three courses I have right now (Game Theory, Environment and Resource Economics, and Investments) are very understandable in English and are very good teachers (one is even the head of the economics department!). The teaching style for my courses is quite different compared to the Netherlands: here we have two lectures which are exactly the same (so no division in plenary and smaller group lectures), none of the courses have an online component and none of the teachers use any powerpoint slides. This means that I have to study for the most part from my lecture notes (something I never actually made back home) and the books. This is very different from the way I studied at home, I skipped most lectures (I know, not good…) and just studied the slides which were put online. The groups are also quite small here, for two courses we have 25 students and for the last one we have about 70. For the smaller groups I am also one of the two-three exchange students in the room, and also one of the very few boys (I estimate about 75% is female). So far I haven’t really had any homework, but I assume this will start from this week on. My schedule is okay; on Monday I have class from 13:30 – 14:45, on Tuesday I have class from 10:30 – 11:45 and then a long break and then class from 16:30 – 17:45, on Wednesday I have class from 16:30 – 17:45 and my schedule on Thursday is the same as on Tuesday. I have Fridays off.

HI-Day Tour

We also went on a day trip with all of the exchange students and our Korean buddies (basically student mentors) on the third of September. We went to the Blue House (where the president resides), Kyeongbokgung Palace, the National Folk Museum, the War Memorial Museum and Itaewon (a big shopping district). Unfortunately they planned the whole day from 9:30 until 15:30, which resulted in a constant time pressure because we also had to travel to each destination. This meant that we hardly were able to go into the War Museum, I think I was in there for about fifteen minutes. Overall the day was very nice, though, and we saw some very impressive Korean architecture and nature. For pictures, I suggest you look me up on Facebook, where I uploaded all the pictures I have made so far.