Rabbagello's Blog: womens

It's winter here in Korea! Something I could truly feel when walking out the airplane. The air was ice cold and looking out the window I could still see some snow laying on the ground. The snow probably fell a couple days prior but since it's soo cold there were still some remainings left.

Arriving at the airport at 12:40h and going through customs I had to give my fingerprints and profile picture. I take this is since quite recent because last summer there was no need for this at all. Maybe they changed it since the passing of our Great Leader Kim Jung-il.

After finally getting my luggage and walking through the final door I was really in Korea. I took the metro this time to get to Seoul. It only costs 3,600.- KRW (3.60 USD) instead of the 10,000,- KRW for the shuttle bus. Everywhere people were talking Korean, which is quite interesting for me since in the Netherlands you'll have a hard time finding anyone talking Korean. The trip by metro was quite interesting. Because of the winter they turned of the air co, instead they turned on the heating which is located under the chairs. I hate this!!! It's like the feeling of peeing in your pants! ugh..

Since at the airport you can get to the metro via a underground pass way I could only feel the real cold when I got out at Hongdae station. The sun was actually shining quite bright and the air was clear. Except for the freezing cold the weather was really nice.

Arriving at Pencil Guesthouse they immediately recognised me. =) Too bad I was too tired from the trip so after getting money from the bank and getting myself some ramyun with kimbab I went straight to bed. I slept through dinner and woke up at 21:00h. I met some other guests from the guesthouse and made fun of the kpop music that was airing on the TV. At 0:30h I went back to bed to wake up early so I could attend the test that Sookmyung University prepared for me and my classmates.

In the morning I met up with Nils, a classmate/roommate/friend of mine, to go to Sookmyung University. We took the taxi since Nils had his luggage with him. He was planning on getting into the dorm this day. Getting out of the taxi we immediately were greeted by two girls, our Korean contact person and an intern. They took us to the building where we would have our test and later on would have our classes. The test itself was oke, I got in level 3 (of 7). Most of us are in level 3, Nils and Joyce, another classmate, got into level 4!! =) Congrats to them :)

After the test we went to our dorm. Hmmm what can I say about the dorm... It's dirty!!! Nils and I are in a room on the ground floor. Situated above the entrance of the garage but for as far as I know there haven't been any cars coming in or out of it. The wall and curtains are beige and yellow with burn marks on the floor. The bathroom is also not the most prettiest. The shower head is broken, the water is or too cold or too warm and the cupboard door in the room is not functioning how it should. That's only our room, don't get me started on the kitchen or the washing machines that are straight out of WW2!

The same day we tried to get some stuff for our room. Since the bed was given without sheets or pillow we had to buy that too. We bought allloot of stuff! we bought pans, trashcan, chopsticks, ramyun, spoon, plastic plates, cups, toilet paper, thee, coffee, etc.

The next day I joined Nils at the dorm. With all our stuff finally in the cupboard, bathroom and on our desks it looked more like a real room. The one thing that luckily wasn't broken was the floor heater!! Which is AWESOME!!! If only I had this in my room in NL!!! Since the beige looking 50's dryer wasn't working as I hoped for I actually used the ondol (floor heater) to dry my clothes! This works perfectly fine! :)

Couple days later we bought even more stuff!!. I had to get a Korean phone number and Nils wanted to buy a electronic dictionary. At the end I bought one too!! It was 150,000.- KRW (150.- USD) so le me had to buy this too!. Doing your homework on Google translate is not always the best way to do it. ;) I also bought a razor but the trimmer is shit so it takes an hour to get it the way I want it.

Since I'm in Korea I had to visit the nightlife in Hongdae. You don't simply go to Korea to NOT visit Hongdae,. this my friend is impossible!! This time in Hongdae we went to Mama Gorillaz, which was quite fun. Since it wasn't really the music we hoped for we stayed in the back of the bar/cafe and just watched the scenery. Although I wasn't actually promoting myself or even making myself the center of the club (which I don't really do for as far as I know) it seemed that I got someone's attention! =P Before I knew it I got a business card in my hand with the offer if I would like to do some modeling work for some kinda internet site that sells brand clothes. You can check out the website here http://www.afterd.co.kr/ Normally I don't get these kinda offers and specially not in modeling! =P I mean I don't consider myself ugly but modeling is probably not the first thing people would expect from me.

I nicely thanked the girl for her offer and took the card but even now I haven't really done anything with it, the offer probably already ended. =P Well.. it's always nice to have somebody push your selfconfidence a little bit to the right direction, right?! =) hehe..

The next week we had our first class with our orientation. The professors (all women) are really nice and considered. They only speak Korean to us which is actually quite cool since it seems like I understand more and more everyday. :) The only time they speak English is when we still don't get it after they explain the meaning of a word/sentence in Korean and people start searching it up in their dictionary.

The orientation and the welcoming party were oke. We got free food out of it so no complaints there! =P We also got to meet our Korean buddies. Mine didn't show her face during the party. I only saw her at the end when we were leaving. But! She's really cool though, so that compensates for the not showing up at the party.

We also visited a folk village in the province of Gyeonggi. We actually partied the night before in Itaewon (a place where you normally won't see me since there are allot of foreigners). Our curfew is between 12:00pm and 5:00am so we had to stay up through the night. After getting back at the dorm Nils was actually able to sleep for a couple hours, but me,... I knew that if I would close my eyes even for a slight moment thorny trees with roses would climb up the wall and conceal my existence for the next 100 years. Luckily we arrived in time to take the bus with the other foreign student to the folk village.

At the folk village we received a hot pack. Awesome! but I didn't use it! You have to understand my strategy!.. The next time I see a cute girl that is shivering in the cold winter weather I can be her knight in shining armor by giving her my hot(six)pack!! Hahahahahaaaaa (evil 17,5cm wide laugh XD) Oohw the folk village was cool too. :) We saw some cool drum performances, walked through the old houses and again received a free meal :)

Another thing I did some time ago was going to the Yongsan jjimjjilbang (aka a spa). You have to know that the Korean Jjimjjilbang is different from the western spa's. They bring naked to a whole new level!!!! haha =P Luckily I'm half Dutch so no worries for me! =P The baths were awesome. There were ones with salt water, cold water, warm water, boiling hot water! hehe.. The plan was to stay the night at the jjimjjilbang, something I probably won't do again,... ever!! The sleeping chambers were full so we had to sleep in the main hall where the floor was made out of freaking marble!!!! I don't know about the others but that shit hurts!!!

With the Chinese new year we made a Dutch dish called Hutspot with meatballs (meatball problems!!) We enjoyed it at Nils's friend's place where she also cooked some Korean dishes (with allot of seafood) for us. Since I was still in pain because of the jjimjjilbang I couldn't stay the night so I missed the Korean breakfast she made for us. =( Luckily my good friend Nils brought some back to the dorm for me to enjoy. It was meat and vegatebles made in egg. :)

We also got some semi Korean cooking classes, which was cool since we would get free foooood,. AGAIN!!! =P There was one teacher telling us how to make it but when we finally got to make it ourselves we discovered that they already did the most part for us. Only thing we had to do was putting the meat in the pan and make the bibimbap. It was really good though.

Last week we had to change our dorm since they wanna renovate it (probably because all the Dutch people complained so much!). Our new room is SHIT!! (in a bad way, not that you can see "shit" in a good way.. hehe =P) The room is really big and since it's so big they don't even put in nice single beds but bunks! yes we sleep in bunks in a room that's actually a conference hall! The view is nice, I've to give them that. There's no kitchen and the bathroom is tiny. It's so tiny that we have to put the toilet paper in the cupboard before we shower. To make it even better our electricity failed us since last night so I'm sitting in a coffee shop (not the Dutch one!) now to finish this blog!!

Btw,. going to coffee shops is a daily ritual! A typical day for me would be waking up at 8:15h showering and having a sandwich as breakfast. Class starts at 9:00h and ends at 13:00h, so 4 hours of Korean grammar, listening, reading, writing and talking per day. After class we usually meet up with the Dutch gang to eat lunch at a cheap local restaurant. We eat things like ttugbaegibulgogi (beef soup), kimbab, allot of cheeseramyun, kimchichigae (kimchisoup), omerice (omelet filled with rice) and other relatively cheap food. After luch we usually go to a coffeeshop to study and make our homework with a nice cup of coffee or tea. If you're like me and you don't like cinnamon on your cappuccino you specifically have to ask them to not sprinkle it on top of the milk! Because this my friends is horrible!! Maybe this action is embedded in there muscle memory. =/ After the studying we eat again at a restaurant or sometimes when we need to watch our money or we don't have the energy to walk we just make ramyun at the dorm.