Stuck in dorm

Complains.

Yea, the reason why I haven't been blogging, is because everyday is pretty much the same here. Ever since school started my days have been pretty much mundane, as I always go back to my dorm after lessons.

I didn't really want to type reflective posts here as I believe only close friends of mine would be interested to read. This blog here was created to help students who want to come study here in Korea (more for summer or exchange), and to share my experiences. Reflective posts? Nah...

But let me just do a comparison between my summer and exchange (so far) experience then.
As you might have known, I did a summer programme with Korea University, and now I'm an exchange student in Yonsei University.

Korea University is located at Anam, while Yonsei is located at Sinchon.

To be honest, I loved Anam more that I like Sinchon. I like the serenity and calmness of Anam, the quaint little shops, and how most of what we need can be found around the area, with minimal walking. The streets of Anam have Paris Baguette, Daiso, Baskin Robbins, Yoogane, Ms. & Mr. Potato, Mr. Pizza, Etude House, Tony Moly, Innisfree, and lots more.

While Sinchon has all these too, they are spread out, way spread out, apart from each other.

Convenience-wise, Korea wins without saying. While it takes less than 10 minutes to get from the dormitories to Anam station for KU... Yonsei's dorms are located about 25 minutes away from the station. Come on, please tell me how anyone would be motivated to go out when you have to walk 25 minutes just to get to the station?!

Plus, Sinchon is too crowded. Too many people.

So yeah, I haven't been going out much. Since the weather is cold I did drop by Ewha to pick up some long sleeved tops, but other than that, not much. The amount of money I spend is also scary sometimes as I have long since stopped tracking my expenses. My parents came and after that the system doesn't work anymore, haha~

Oh wells.

Before I go off, I want to thank all who have been reading my blog so far and even though I don't blog regularly now, I still keep you in my heart <3

Feel free to drop me an email!

연고전! Yon-Ko Games~

It's finally here, the clash of the Titans, the sports games between two rivalry schools in Korea - Yonsei University and Korea University.

Being a student from both sides, currently in Yonsei, it was a really confusing moment. Honestly speaking. Yonsei calls it Yon-Ko games, and KU called is Ko-yon games. But according to JoonYoung my Yonsei buddy, he tells me that every year the official name changes, alternating between the two... And this year it's Yon-ko Games!

So yes, the games started yesterday, Friday. The only free day I have for the week where I could sleep in, I found myself waking up earlier than usual to get to the Yonko Games at Jamsil Sports Complex. The place is amazing!

They had a pretty cool opening ceremony and they had the flag team on the field doing a cheer too!

The first game to be played was baseball, and I was pretty excited about it because there is never a chance for baseball in Singapore. I actually pretty like the gameplay too (:

We went there and we were given some freebies, a cap, a bottle of coffee, two breads, and later in the day we even had lunch. Well anyway it was a mess when we got there! ):
We went with the mentors club and apparently we have seats reserved for us, but once we entered the stadium we were just left standing there along the aisles! Some students were ushered into the seats but I think they realized there weren't enough seats. So what did they do? Leave us there.

We stood there with no seats, couldn't find the Mentors Club flag, didn't know who were the buddies, and basically walked around trying to find empty seats because people kept reserving empty seats. In the end, Ian and I just found some other exchange students and sat with them at a row nobody sat in. Fortunately, MinJae (Rekha's buddy whom I know too) walked around and found me with Ian and the rest. He immediately went to find where the group is and managed to get seats with the rest of the mentors club people for us. Thank goodness for MinJae, seriously.

So after that we stood there and cheered our hearts out. Kudos to the cheerleading team because they were amazing, they kept our energy at a perpetual high and didn't know tiredness. They just kept going on, cheering their hearts out for our players.

Well, umm... KU played splendidly, while Yonsei was... not very spectacular. Sorry, have to be honest here. Even though Ian and I were trying o figure our baseball rules and scoring while watching, we could still see the difference in play, and Yonsei's turn to score always lasted a short time. ):

So at the end..

KU won with 3, and Yonsei only managed to get 1. The way they played, you can still see that KU performed much better.

I was kind of sad that Yonsei lost, being a Yonsei student now... But since I am just an exchange student, and I've received lots from KU before during summer...
No matter what the outcome, I would still have enjoyed myself and be happy for whichever school that won!

I didn't go for the basketball match after the baseball games because I didn't have tickets for that. Tara went, and told me that we lost the basketball match as well..

And later in the evening, we were informed that Yonsei won ice hockey!!!
W00ts!! I always though KU's ice hockey would be better since they had their own ice rink and could probably manage more practices and whatnot, but nevertheless, good job Team Yonsei~!!

AKARAKA~!!
사랑한다 연세~ 내 가슴속에 영원히 남을 사랑이어라~!

So yeah, it was a really good and touching experience (:

How I really wished my home school had such school spirit, talking about school spirit and not faculty spirit only... I don't think Singapore schools ever fostered such a thing though, and that's really sad.

I'm gonna have those cheer songs stuck in my head for a long time to come...

연대 화이팅!
고대 화이팅!

Smile!

Laughter is my best friend :D

Today was a rather eventful day~

Social psychology as usual, we learnt about emotions and facial expressions.
Interesting fact was that there were non-verbal accents on everybody! People of different countries learn to express emotions is very subtle different ways... So for example, when a Japanese is smiling, you can actually tell if the person is a Japanese born-and-raised-in-Japan, or say... Japanese who grew up in the States.
So in that aspect, we have accents in our facial expressions very much like verbal accents that vary between countries!

He also made people from different countries go up to the board to draw smiley faces~

Ok, I guess y'all can't see.. But at least, you get to see what my class looks like! XD

We didn't go for developmental psychology class today, and went to have Mr. Pizza with Shireen today. Mr. Pizza is endorsed by 2PM! We had a combo set, and chose a shrimp premium pizza!

Yummy goodness. Shireen and I love shrimp~ The side of the crust had a 고구마 (sweet potato) filling, and had a layer of cheese! And below the shrimps was a mixture of corn, cheese, and a whole bunch of other ingredients. Delicious!

Shireen hates corn and sweet potato so she went to great lengths to remove them from the pizza. It was super amusing when she split the crust just to scrape the sweet potato filling off, before consuming the outer cheese layer >.<

We then went back for our Period 4 lesson. Media was pretty funny today. The front part, Prof was talking about pansori, minyo, and chapka. Basically, traditional Korean music. He also went through music in the 70s and 80s. And I was thinking, if we were watching such music videos with the amount of concentration we had, in Singapore... People would seriously laugh at us for doing so.
O_O

And after that, we went to the KU main gate to take photos! The weather, was too hot! >.<
I stood there and perspired like mad. And the worst part was that there were no people to help us take photos! So we had to wait for sometime before we could get a nice group photo...

Hard-earned group photo... A group of young Korean girls helped us with it, and then they requested to take a photo with us! Cool! <3
We also managed to take other shots, of which Victoria's jumpshot skills were so awesome that she helped us take this...

Shireen was wearing a dress so she didn't want to jump properly. On the other hand, Yi Fong and I accomplished awesome poses. (: Nice, right?

Last photo before I melted in the sun. It's really nice! Though Shireen looks kinda scary here...

We wanted to grab food around KU station, but there wasn't anything interesting. We ended up having to walk back all the way to Anam streets. And it was super hot, so we had bingsu instead, at Anouk Cafe!

맛있겠죠? We ordered a bingsu for 3, plus another one because the cafe made us do so. There was dark chocolate ice cream, green tea ice cream, and red berry ice cream! Yummy! Twice as awesome eating it in the hot weather.

Well anyway, joke time!

Shireen and Victoria were arguing about red beans, because Victoria loves red beans, but Shireen doesn't. But Victoria scooped red beans from the big bingsu, into the bowl of the small bingsu... So they bickered a little...

At this moment, I took a piece of cornflake, put it on the tray between them and said...
'Hmm... seems like there's some cornflake (conflict) between you and Victoria...'
XD

And after some laughter, Shireen pressed on the cornflake, broke it, and said, 'There, conflict resolved!'

To which I gave a shocked expression and exclaimed,
'Ohmigawd! CEREAL (Serial) KILLER!!!!!'
XD

And we had even more laughter~ :D

Ahhahaha, I am so good at this! If you need something to laugh about when you're down, feel free to come look for me ^_^

But I mean, if you can't appreciate a good joke, then you'll probably find it a pain to be around me.... ):
Loosen up a little~ Just laugh!

Ahhhh wells, kinda late!
A smile for you before I leave~

Early morning smile! :)

Have a great day and thanks for reading!

KU Ice Rink and 막걸리(Makgeolli)

Since temple stay got cancelled today, Shireen, Victoria, Yi Fong, Elizabeth, Wanlin, and I met up for our own activities. And since it's a weekend, they decided to go ice skating at KU's very own ice rink!

Yes, you heard me right! Korea University has their own ice rink!!!

It's my first time ice skating! >.< At first was a little apprehensive if I should go or not, but everybody has their first times for everything, right...? So I just went ahead with the company of my friends ^^

Yay! So excited! O_O

And a photo of the team that went ice skating today! We reached at about 1pm, but they weren't open yet like they were supposed to be! In the end, it only opened at about 2pm, and we bought our tickets...
Since we are Korea University Students, our entrance ticket only costed 3,000 won, and skate rental was 2,000 won!

Omg, Singaporeans, you jealous now? :D JCube doesn't treat you that well isn't it?!
And get this, our entrance ticket lets us play the whole day at the rink, until it closes at 6pm.
(But we didn't stay that long, haha!)

All geared up and ready to go! Next photo is courtesy of Shireen~

First ice skating experience, 시작!

I really love cold sports, for the simple fact that they don't make me sweaty and sticky. (Sorry, I'm a polar bear. I can take heat doesn't mean I love it...)

I love skiing too, so it's definitely something I'm looking forward to during my exchange!

And after today, ice skating has become my new love. Being able to do it all year round, ignoring the price of it, is super awesome!

Thanks to the 'sports gene' in me, I picked it up really quickly and learnt to skate within the first half and hour. I'm so so so proud of myself. I had roller blading experience before so maybe that helped? I'm not sure, but anyways, I enjoyed myself today.

On the ice rink! Yea, that helmet made my head hurt again T.T I don't know why I have to have a head with corners. (If you've felt my head you know what I mean...) Helmets ALWAYS make my head hurt after wearing. ):

Oh yeah, I only fell down twice, and it's not coz I didn't know how to skate... Embarrassingly, I fell once while standing stationary at the side of the rink because the skates slid. And the second time coz it was slippery and I didn't control my CG well. Well, I think I've done pretty well for a beginner, don't you think? (:

*Gimme a pat on the back!*

Oooh, green nails!

Well, it doesn't come without consequences... I wore short socks to skate. And that was the hugest mistake today. >.< Both my feet had blisters! One of them broke near the beginning of the skating session so it was pretty painful. Thank you Shireen for the plasters! And another one formed above it. The one on my other foot hasn't broken yet, thank goodness.

It hurt like a hell lot when I stepped into the shower. Seriously. *Gimme a hug!*

I'm gonna wear long socks to skate next time. 절대!

We finished up around 5pm, because Elizabeth and Wanlin had to go off, and I had to go off too for dinner with Seung-ik and friends.

Met them at about 6pm. 승익 오빠 and I were on time. (Caili says never let the senior wait, but 어머, he was there early... 미안해... ):) Then waited awhile more for the rest.

Realized that they were friends staying on the same level as me at Frontier House! I've actually seen them quite a few times already!

We then went to a 막걸리집 (Makgeolli House) around the streets of Anam. We had Makgeolli and Jeon. I drank it really, really slowly because I didn't want my face to turn red like it does whenever I drink alcoholic stuff. And well done to me, today was alright!

The 막걸리 was pretty delicious too! (:

Nice atmosphere, right? 

My bowl of 막걸리! Deborah, jealous?

Anyway, 막걸리 now always reminds me of Martin, and the times we had during Korean lesson. Especially the time Martin translated 목걸이(necklace) into Makgeolli. We had a great laugh over that! XD Actually, I think he's just the scapegoat... He handed in his paper early, while the rest were still thinking about their answers... And then when 선생님 announced his mistake, could see almost everyone changing their answers (including me)! HAHA MARTIN!!!

Made a few new friends, and had really interesting conversations with them during the gathering! ^^

Well anyway, we chatted for awhile and then some of them had to go off already, so we called it a day... I walked around a little bit more while rest went back to Frontier...

And I saw Ms. & Mr. Potato! Reminded me.. That night I told Caili, I will come to try their fries, coz they look really delicious. And I decided, tonight's the night.
I got myself a Special Cheese Potato (Yep, that's what they call french fries.)...

It was super delicious, totally worth my 4,000 won. Fries with cheese sprinkled on them, dipped in cheese. Cheese fries can't get any better than that. But come to think of it, the western stall at Science Faculty back home sells for $2 for a box with generous cheese....

But hehe, this one is more delicious! :P

Hmm, so overall I thought today was really eventful. Smiled a lot today coz it was such a fascinating day! First time skating, and having makgeolli party, making new friends, eating delicious fries... Haha... Awesome day, really.
(Next time if anybody wants to go ice skating, please call me along!)

It doesn't matter that temple stay got cancelled and there wasn't any typhoon eventually!

As I like to put it: 开心就好！

And a smile for you! (: Thanks for reading!

Korea University!

Today I bade a temporary farewell to my buddies Jacqueline and Kangwei as I moved out of Chocolate Tree and into Korea University's Frontier House. Hope they are doing well now (: Past few days have been fun and all but I think they'd appreciate the privacy without me.

Anyway I took a cab from Chocolate Tree (Sinchon) to Korea University (Anam). It was a pretty long trip due to heavy traffic conditions, which was a result of the rain and the weekend. The taxi driver uncle seemed friendly but a bit too much for my comfort. He kept trying to talk to me when I didn't want to talk to him because my Korean still sucks, and he didn't speak or understand much English. 

He appeared nice until we reached our destination. You see, he couldn't find where Frontier House is. So we had a hard time. In the end, we got picked up by Mr. Jang at the main gate so he could send me into Frontier House.

The taxi uncle charged me an extra 2,000won! >:(

I didn't know why, but gave him the 20,000 won in the end la. Argue also no use. At least saved me the trouble of traveling using the public transport. Mr. Jang told me that he charged me extra because he had to wait. Seriously, WHY??

It isn't exactly my fault that he couldn't find the place! I even called KU Hotline to guide him there. What a scam.

Well anyways check-in was really quick and I got settled down well. Went out with Caili to get our necessities. I bought about 40,000 won of stuff for my personal usage. Damn I'm spending so much.

We went to Seoul Station's Lotte Mart. Before that we had lunch. Caili had Seafood Fried Rice and I had Tuna Kimbap. It was cool because the provided soup and pickled radish along with the Kimbap. Had a fun time learning the norms of a Korean food court.

Really love Kimbap to the max. It's so easy to eat, and it is packed full of delicious ingredients!

Norms of a Korean Foodcourt (or at least the one I went to)

1. You order your food at the counter at the entrance. There should be a menu there.

2. You pay for your food and are issued a receipt.

3. Find a seat and wait for your number (printed along with receipt) to be displayed on the screens.

4. Go to the stall dispensing your food and give the staff your receipt stub.

5. Enjoy your food!

6. Water is usually provided free of charge. 

7. You have to return your tray to the respective return points (usually near the stall) after you finish your food.

After that we headed to Lotte Mart and bought lots of stuff. Caili and I initially wanted to buy bedsheets, because she didn't have any, and the bedsheets I brought couldn't fit onto the mattress in the dorms. However, we realized that Koreans have a different system of lining their beds.

They have a fitted comforter/quilt layer. This is different from Singapore's as we usually have this layer elastic banded onto the top of the naked mattress. This layer in Korea is fitted on like a bedsheet. Then they have another layer placed on top. I think they call it a bedspread, and this layer is movable. And then they have the blanket.

In the end we got so confused that we just ditched the bedsheets and decided to use the weird piece of cloth issued to us as bedsheet and just live with it. Frontier house provided pillow, bedsheet and blanket! The room also has air conditioning. There's even a bathroom inside the room! The desk is spacious and organization-friendly. 

A brief view of my room, super obvious which side of the room mine is... The only problem is that my tabletop LAN port isn't working! I had to use my own LAN wire to connect to the wall port directly before getting any internet access.

So anyways we bought a lot of stuff from Lotte Mart and had to carry them back without the use of plastic bags. Caili brought two huge recyclable bags and we had to squeeze everything in... Until we saw a boxing counter. We put most of our things into two boxes and carried them back to our room. Fortunately it wasn't all that heavy.

Oh, another thing that made us sad was that there was no refrigerator anywhere! This means that we can't buy milk to drink because it'll spoil. ): Both Caili and I are people who like to drink milk. But unfortunately that won't happen. We can only buy in small cartons to drink.

Anyway that concludes our day for today. We missed the dinner period in campus so we had to eat the cup noodles we bought earlier. Hope tomorrow we get to eat normal food /=

Until then, see ya and thanks for reading! (: