More dorm/Cherry blossom photos

view from my balcony

looking left from the balcony- view of Int'l house dorm

 These top photos I took when I first arrived here. That's why the trees are all bare and stuff. I took all these with Kelly's super special Canon Camera, so they should be better quality :P The memory card was mostly full already of stuff from home, so I filled it up really quick. Luckily I have like 3 more mem cards here so I'll make sure to go out and do some more photoshoots soon :) I hope you like these photos! They're all from around my dorms and the last few are at Hakkwan, where my Korean Classes are.

From a second floor balcony

Keepin' on

Feeling lots better :) I think sleeping and lots of fluids and just re-adjusting to the chilly weather is the cure. And warm food. yeahhh... lots of warm food yummm....
Anywayyy...I'm in the midst of my second week of classes. Techincally tomorrow (Thursday) is the start of my weekend, since I only have Korean Class, and nothin' else the rest of the time :)
Speaking of classes, this is my official schedule:

Monday: 8-10:45 am Korean Class
              2-3:15 pm Understanding Korean Cultural History

Tuesday: 8-10:45 am Korean
            
Wednesday: 8-10:45 am Korean
                   12:30-1:45 pm Understanding Korean Cultural History

Thursday: 8-10:45 am Korean

And 2 Online classes:
Diversity in Language and Culture
Therapeutic Use of Music on Human Behavior

The online classes involve watching a lecture, doing various readings/listenings/exercises/responding in the forums/etc, within the school week (Monday-Sunday). So, I usually do some work for them on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and finish up whatever else I need to do for them over the weekend. They're not throw-away classes either, the Lang/Culture class seems to be building up on the readings, and the Music class requires response exercises to the music we listen to for each assignment. Very cool and fun :)
I'm also really enjoying my Korean classes, despite their unholy early hour. We're moving along at a good pace, even if we're still pretty much reviewing stuff I already know. It's still great practice and I'm already noticing improvements. I'm really determined to get better at Korean this semester. I'm taking advantage of all the opportunities to get better, like signing up for Korean Language partner who will be helping us advance quicker, and I'm thinking about taking an intensive class on grammar or writing that they're offering. It helps that our professors speak only in Korean during the class. And I bet Noraebang trips help too ;) and all the kpop that I continue to listen to with devotion :D :P
OH and some friends and I signed up to volunteer at the children's center next to our dorms, where they're looking for english speakers to talk to the kids! They're so adorable! ...and throw tantrums in the mornings sometimes >_< Ya wake up and hear "엄마!! 엄마!" (Rom: Omma! Ommma!! Eng: MOOOM! MAA!")
But it'll be fun :)

Uhh....yeah! I can't think of much else to say for today.
Love You ALL!
사랑해!

First trip to Hongdae

For me and my friends, our class schedules worked out so we don't have classes on Friday, so for our first weekend adventure, we decided to have street food for lunch, go to the Raintree Cafe near Ewha after, and then have dinner and fun in Hongdae.

Kimbap, Cheese Tonkatsu, and Ddeokbokki

Flower wall at Ewha Gate

A random protest at Ewha. So many people!

 They have drinks from various places around the world, and specialize in pancakes. Among us, we ordered a green tea smoothie, an americano, a cappuccino, and a Real Hot Chocolate (for me)... The coffee was cheap and good, and the hot chocolate was literally melted chocolate with steamed milk that you add in to make it milky and good to drink. It was probably the best hot chocolate I've had in my life.

Hot Chocolate with added milk and foam

 It was such a cozy cafe, with only a few tables, some near the ground with cushions to sit on, and these lovely curtains making a nice relaxing beautiful environment. They also had photo albums around from all the trips the owners had gone on, so you could look through them if you wanted to. I just wanted to chill and take a nap here once I was full of hot cocoa and pancake ^_^

Decorative tree with lights near the cafe's free computer, guest starring my friends

 By the way...I need to make a visit to Caribou Coffee one of these days...

How is there a Caribou Coffee in Korea but not in Homewood?!

 We went to an Italian restaurant for dinner in Hongdae...

Gorgonzola Pizza, and two pastas

 Uh...I also noticed that the waiter was attending to the table with the rest of our group, and I couldn't resist taking this stealthy photo of his bum :P

Scandalous!

We liked the creamy pasta the best

 I liked the Gorgonzola Pizza the best. It was really thin, but apparently that's so you can roll it up and dip it.

apparently you roll the pizza up and dip it in the maple syrup. IT WAS DELICIOUS

Delicious Sweet Wine

Street performers in Hongdae

I found Minho!

And the rest of SHINee!!

I really want to visit this Hookah bar...I took a picture cos we couldn't go that night

Then we went to a Noraebang! It was so cool! We almost wanted to drink a little beforehand so we weren't so shy to sing...but we decided not to, and we had a lot of fun anyways!  It was only afterwards that we realized that the rooms really aren't soundproof at all, so anyone outside our room, including the cashier, could hear all of our horrible singing, as well as the perhaps embarrassing (but FUN) tunes we sang to...

And...here's some short videos of the karaoke :P hopefully its too dark to see anyone, but this is just to give you a taste of the kinds of songs we sang. We sang both Kpop and American pop. It was so much fun! Almost lost my voice even! As soon as we tried singing our favorite Kpop songs though...I quickly realized I didn't know them as well as I thought! I really need to go and memorize them now :P

We also found the Hello Kitty Cafe!

So much pink! >_<

 OH we also spent too too much of our time wandering around trying desperately to find the Eat Your Kimchi studio! We didn't find it that night, but once we got back a friend looked it up and if we'd only made a different turn we would have found it! DRAT! Ha, good thing we're gonna go back and try to meet Simon and Martina! YEAHHHH!
Mkay, I'm about to go make another post with all the funny engrish and stuff we found as well...

Tired...

maaannnn....waking up for 8am korean class was a struggle, lemme tell ya. And to top things off..i'll have to do the same thing tomorrow. In fact, we have 8am-10:45am Korean classes every week, monday through thursday.
I don't really mind though, if it means I'm learning and improving my Korean :) I just really like learning languages I guess.
OH but story time. So, I"m realizing that while Seoul is amazing and great and interesting and damn cool, Ewha university....is a bit overrated. The make this big deal about how great the school is, and I'm sure it is great...if you're Korean, maybe.
The administration and school system seems really inflexible and unaccommodating for exchange students. I've heard stories already of people not being able to take classes they NEED for their major because the professor let Ewha students sign up first. They're also really slow and inefficient at organizing things and running things efficiently. Like, they ALWAYS take days to reply to emails, and sometimes don't reply at all. They're also scarily late at putting up important things like CLASS SCHEDULES and info for HOUSING?! Like...why?! grrrr.....
Another example....I went to my Korean class this morning, and it soon became apparent that something wasn't right. The classes are supposed to have maybe 10-15 people, and soon about 30 people were trying to fit into the classroom, and standing at the back. The teacher was really nervous and did a pretty good job of handling it, but she called the office to get someone to figure out what the scheduling conflict had been, and they never sent anyone. We wasted like an hour filling time with introductions, and then learning the alphabet (which half of us already knew) until she decided to look online at everyone's level, and confirmed who was supposed to be in that beginning class. Then the rest of us finally went to the hallway and met another teacher and walked to a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BUILDING and finally started our actual class, appropriate to our level. Ha, great job Ewha....great job at organizing your students...
Ah well, it was all good, I like our class, and the most difficult thing I've got to do so far is memorize vocab I don't already know.
Another good thing was that I talked to my parents, checked my email correspondence with Beloit, and then talked to the Global Affairs Office and it looks like my tuition is being sorted out *phew!*
Still a bit of a stressor, but I'm pretty sure Ewha and Beloit will figure out how to get their money sorted out...

Ah, another bit of sad news...Me and some friends were trying to get tickets to GD's One Of A Kind concert here, which went on sale today and tomorrow, but since the concert tour is sponsored by Gmarket, we couldn't buy tickets without an account--and when we tried to make an account, it needed our Alien Registration number, which we won't be getting for another few weeks! :( 
We were Heartbroken

But I figure 1. we might be able to try again tomorrow...2. There will be other concerts during the time we're here that we'll hopefully be able to go to 3. As my friends pointed out, its sponsored by Gmarket, and an 8 and up concert sooo...it has to be family-friendly which sadly means probably no cussing in That XX and No GD taking off his shirt ;__;

Heheh in all seriousness though, it's a bit sad, but we're having a great time anyway :) and we'll find fun stuff to do and maybe run into our favorite celebrities at any time...It IS Seoul after all ^_^

Love you all!

Grrr

I went to the Shinhan bank at Ewha today to try to figure out how I'm supposed to pay them the tuition...They're not flexible or accommodating at all. For one thing, they only want to have the tuition paid in cash or through a personal transfer, which isn't gonna happen unless I can get Beloit to wire me the money... Also for a school with a pretty big international student population, there were no good english speakers there. They had to put me on a phone with a teller at another branch who spoke better english. I can understand that not everyone is gonna know english here, but for a bank branch INSIDE a campus with hundreds of english speakers coming in each semester? It's just annoying.... :/
So I had to email Beloit, and now I'm waitingggggg for a reply... I hate the time difference at times like these.

I guess in more positive news, I somehow successfully was able to scan and upload a form using a computer that was only in korean... That was quite a puzzle :P

And I attended my first class today: Understanding Korean Cultural Diversity

It seems like it'll be fun and interesting. My next class is tomorrow morning: Korean language. Still waiting for update as to where the class will actually be held. This whole week is registration week so everything's a bit sketchy and nerve-wracking...
My other class is an online course, and I still need to figure out exactly how that's gonna work, but I'll snoop around and see what info I can find.

... i'm just really tired and have no energy left and i think i might just chill for the rest of the night if i can...
Love youse!

jjimdak and ramen

Hey y'all, not much to say about today, just more food pictures :P First up we have Jjimdalk, which was made of vermicelli noodles, chicken, potatoes, dumplings and sweet potatoes. REALLY YUMS! Even though the restaurant at first seemed a little sketch cos we had to go down these really narrow steps..but it was all good from there!

pre-cooked

So...beautiful...

 Then OH YEAH crap then yeah me and Jo--- had to meet up with our PEACE buddies and some other exchange students so we could go get phones that would use korean sim cards, so we could text and stuff in-country. It was the first time (for me) using the subway here! Not too bad, apparently there's a nice subway map app, and also a handy card you use to get on the subway and refill with money whenever, and transfers are free. And luckily it wasn't too crowded today, so not too much sardine-packing... :P
Finally got to the mall area and went up too many escalators to get to this huuuge floor just filled with phone shops. We were at the used phone shop for hours, it kinda sucked. I was sad cos I can't use a korean sim card in my iphone, so I had to buy a cheapy flip phone to use in korea. Sadly it had to be extra cheapy cos I forgot to bring extra money, sooo the only phone I could afford was a little 20,000 won ($20) flip phone. But I don't really care cos all i'll use it for anyway is texting people I meet here. (Unless I end up paying slightly less for no-contract wifi? I need to look into this...It might be worth it, but might not...I still wouldn't be able to text people here unless they had KakaoTalk... very frustrating, trying to figure all this out)
Sooo yeah, finally got outta there and headed back to Ewha.
Then it was getting close to dinner time, so had to check facebook to make dinner plans and we all met up, with couple new people too (^_^) and went to look for somewhere cheap and warm to eat. We kinda wanted ramen, but the So-oh ramen shop that was recommended was teensy tiny, so we ate at a rice ball shop instead! Holy spitballs, it was good. Most of us got a ramen set, where you get a bowl of ramen and a $2 riceball comes with it. I got a regular mild ramen and a tuna-kimchi rice ball...

 Even though it was "mild" ramen, all of us had runny noses and burning lips while we ate this >_< Someday...someday I'll get used to the spiciness!

Holy kimchi this riceball was good. I'm def going back

So yeah! That was my day, and tomorrow will be another adventure! We're gonna try to eat at the cafeteria tomorrow, cos its cheaper and still lots of food, but we gotta figure out how to use it first! Now I'm really tired and I just wanna lay down and digest...

 

 

P.S. apparently you can buy Korean-Boys here...? (yay!)

Orientation Day

 Hey Lovely People! So yesterday was Orientation day, so we had to spend like 4 hours in an auditorium being welcomed to campus and told how to register for classes and stuff. The best part was free buffet lunch, I'll admit ^_^ Kimbap and fruit and japchae and potato/seafood salad and some mini eggroll things and some barbequed meat on a stick! YUM!
Then we went on campus tours and geez we only were introduced to like 5 buildings and this campus is huge but honestly I'm not too worried about finding my way around, the maps are really helpful and I'm gonna find my classes before they officially start up so I make SURE I don't get lost!
So that all wrapped up around 4:30, maybe, so then a couple girls and I decided to go walk around and find this convenience store called Daiso, because I needed to get a bowl and other eating stuff.
There was lots of adorable stuff there, and I almost bought a cup with some cute Engrish on it, something like "Hope you have a happy Tiger", but instead I bought a more adorable cup with baby animals and some Japanese on it :)
BRB I want some Banana Milk...







Yummmm...
Anyway! Afterwards we went and got dinner at a place called Mr. Pizza. The pizzas in Korea are a bit different from those in America, and hopefully I'll try them all someday, but this time we decided to try Bulgogi Pizza!

 Bulgogi, or Korean BBQ, is beef marinated in this really really good sort of sweet marinade. It also came with a little cup of butter and sweet pickles, and I can only assume we were supposed to eat those with the pizza, cos I definitely dipped my pizza in them. It was pretty good :) It was also good luck that we'd decided to eat at Mr. Pizza, because at the table next to us were all the Ewha PEACE Buddies. The Peace Buddies are Ewha students who are here to help us adjust to life here and also organize activities for us to do, such as the Welcoming Party at the Barfly club that was going to happen later that night.....But more about that later! We ended up asking the Peace Buddies where we should go with the check, and that's how we learned to take the check up to the counter where we'd come in.

There was this cute little comic book about how Mr. Pizza was created :)

napkin holder at Pizza place...Why does it say "love for women"?? We still don't know

Bought this cute ice cream at Orange Mart. It's vanilla strawberry on top and apple ice on the bottom!

Went back to campus and went our separate ways until we'd meet up again at 6:15 to go to the International Education Building, where everyone was going to gather and go together down to the BarFly for the party.

All dressed up?

So we were this huuuuge group of exchange students migrating through the streets of Seoul to this club, and we all honestly just felt too tired to party, but we were gonna try anyway! Especially cos they gave us all coupons for 3 free drinks ;) Hollaaaa! Here's some pics of the walk over...

Sexy Beer Man

The BarFly

You can also sort of see the little store next to the club...where this old lady came out and yelled at us for being a nuisance and stopping people from coming to her store...>_< So they club people talked to her and then made us move the line around to the other side so we weren't in front of her anymore...

Why is the club "Occult III" themed??

So it was really super loud inside, like not as loud as clubs and parties usually are...And why would they make it so loud if this is supposed to be a place for us to mingle and get to know each other? Whatever, it was still fun :)

My friend put her Minnie Bow on me...

New Friends! (yay, I'm making friends! *hyperventilating*)

After our free drinks ran out, we bought more. This is my Pink Panda :)

Store outside the club. "Something Women Want" WHY DO THESE RESTAURANTS WANT TO PLEASE WOMEN SO MUCH? is it just cause they're near a women's university??

Another thing, even though this is a Woman's University, there is actually quite a lot of guys here too. Sure, they're in the minority, but there's definitely quite a few male exchange students. Cool, huh?
So we left around 9:30, I think? We were all super tired and didn't want to stay until 11, when the party would end. We left and luckily one of the girls in our group is from here, so she called her gran and got some directions back, because we weren't quite sure if we knew the way back, especially since we were all slightly tipsy... :P Turns out the club is actually really easy to get to from Ewha, and we know how to get back if we ever want to go party there again.
Once again all the street food smelled heavenly on the walk back, and I saw a few cute shops that I want to go back and visit...
While we were walking and chatting, one of the girls suddenly stopped and said "G-Dragon alert!!" so I had to stop and take this pic... I love that man :P

GD for Saem

Aaaand then we got back and chillled in the lounge, got each other's contact info, and chatted about random stuff like Kdramas, BB cream, North Korea, and the possibility of a sandstorm today... if it is a sandstorm, I can't tell, all I know is it's really windy and colder than it was earlier. I do need to buy a mask though, for times when smog is bad or if an actually bad sandstorm does come in.... I'll make sure and buy a really cute mask tho ;)
Sooo yeah! Then I got to sleep in and then I just went out and got lunch and now I'm here updating my blog! Maybe I should go buy detergent, I think my roomie and I are gonna do laundry tomorrow...
More to come! Love you all! Please comment if you can, I love hearing from you guys!