The end

I've been putting this off for way too long, because this will mark the definite and final end of my exchange period.

I wanted to talk about how I felt after leaving South-Korea, and how I feel about the country after a while of adjusting to the life back in the Netherlands.

My friends left the dormitory and the country a day before I left, which is exactly one month ago. We had a goodbye party the evening before, which was very emotional. All the girls cried when we had to part and the entire evening was a little awkward with a 'last-time' atmosphere.
It certainly hasn't gotten much easier for me to get back into the rhythm at home. I purchased a smart phone with the sole purpose of keeping in contact with everyone there. I even made a facebook, a social network which I used to resent, but it is not the same.

I know I'm sounding really melancholic and I can imagine many people will feel as if I am over-reacting, but I can say I made some friends there who I will never forget.

What still freaks me out

I know it has been really long since I last wrote a blog, and I think it is about time for a new one.

We have been asked (already some time ago, but I am still going to write about it) to write about how we feel about our host country now. There were 4 phases an exchange student was said to go through: the honeymoon phase; the negotiation phase; the adjustment phase; the mastery phase.

Sinchon

This blog will be a little different.
I here present you a video for you to enjoy, about the area 'Sinchon' which is the area that is mostly visited by students from our university, Yonsei. All of the bigger universities have these designated "area's" which are usually named after the uni it belongs to. For example, Ehwa, the womens university close to us, has "Ehdae". Hongshik, another university close to us, has "Hongdae".
Hope you guys like it!

연고전 2011

Hello everyone!

This weekend, or rather this Friday and Saturday, one of the major events our university participates in took place. Its called 연고전, or Yongojeon, (though Korea university calls the event: 고연전, Koyonjeon.) which basically is a two day event where two rival universities (Yonsei and Korea University) compete in five sports; baseball, basketball, ice-hockey, rugby and soccer. The games take place at the giant Olympic stadions, where the students all cheer for their team. The whole day. The dancing and screaming is no joke, especially when you're in the sun.


The exchange students had a cheering orientation at the beginning of the semester, and I have to say that it was easier to cheer when you knew the songs beforehand. The songs are completely in Korean though, so singing along took some practice, but I think I managed.

Seoul at its best

Hello everyone,

Time for my second blog, and I have been thinking about what to write here for a long time because I have done and seen so much in the past few days here that it's way too much to write down.

So let me start by saying that I have been having the best time ever. The dorm where I am currently staying is an international dorm, and I have made many friends. I have met loads of people, ate the best foods, seen beautiful places and all in such as short time.

어서오세요! (welcome!)

Hello everyone, I hope that in this blog I can show you some things I have been doing and will be doing the coming semester which I will be spending at Yonsei university in Seoul, the capital of South Korea.

At the moment it is midnight in Seoul, and I am in the university dorm. I arrived in Seoul the 23rd of August. We were picked up by members from one of the many global student clubs, which had organised transportation for us from the Incheon international airport to the Yonsei university campus.

When we arrived at the dorm, we were all placed randomly, in shared rooms. Who would be my room-mate was going to be a surprise. After finding the correct room, I was happy to see that I had been placed in a room with a Korean girl, Yegi.

Having already met the other student from Tilburg university who also attends Yonsei, Vera, at the airport, we decided to have dinner together.
That was a mistake.

Neither of us speak Korean, I can read the alphabet, but have little to no knowledge about the Korean food. I knew that many dishes here are very spicy, but we were starving, and we needed to eat something. So the first restaurant we could spot that had a giant menu outside with pictures of the food (easy, so you can just point) we went in. My Korean friends had often told me to eat bibimbap, because it was a traditional Korean dish, and according to them, very delicious. So we ordered two servings.
Bibimbab (비빔밥) literally translates into 'mixed rice'. It is served in a big stone bowl, with several types of vegetables, egg and hot pepper paste on top of a layer of rice. Meat can be added as well, however, ours didn't have any. You are supposed to mix all of it together using your chopsticks before you eat it, so we did.
We didn't really get to the eating part though, since the dish was, as we could've expected, very very spicy. I had to put my chopsticks down after three bites, since I couldn't take any more.
We exchanged looks, quickly paid the owner of the place, and left.

By now I have found that you should be very careful with what you order here. Just to be safe, I'm going to stick with Korean people for the first couple of days, so I can find out which dishes are safe for us foreigners to eat. I want to try everything eventually, but I need time to get used to the different spices used in the food.


The weather here at the moment is very humid and hot. During the day it reaches up to 32 degrees Celcius. Travelling across campus is therefore a really hard job. Aside from it being amazingly large, it's also very hilly. Every building has air-conditioning here, making it a lot more comfortable inside than outside at the moment.


The first few days here have been packed with introduction activities which were meant to help us adapt to the Korean way of life in an easy way, as well as giving us the proper information for the academic part of our exchange. The day had academic information sessions, which were alternated with games, a taekwondo (태권도) performance and meeting the student clubs which would help the international students.

In the evening, we met our mentor group, or 'cell' which is a group led by a few Korean 'mentors' who will do their best to show their cell the best of Korea, to take them to restaurants, show them around Seoul, and of course to answer general questions.

There is so much left to say about these first few days I have experienced here, but I will save those things for another blog.

Thank you for reading!