Sorry for the late post! I got lazy, whoops. Pretend you are reading this on September 2nd!
After being here since last Monday I'm finally all unpacked! And trying to think of ways to put off laundry a little bit longer because I just don't really feel like doing it (story of my life).
Every day since I've arrived in Korea I've consistently woken up between 7-7:30am no matter what. I'm not sure if it's the jet lag or if that's just suddenly become my natural wake up time? It's really nice though! I feel like I am so productive when I start my day early.
I rolled out of bed around that hour last Monday to shower, eat, repack, and say goodbye to all my hostel friends. Some of them woke up just to see me off and that really touched me. :) I hope our paths cross again someday. They were all so kind.
My university (Soonchunhyang/SCH) sent shuttles to the airport that left at 11:30, 1pm, 4pm, and 7pm. I'd planned to be on the first bus but I left for the airport a bit later than scheduled and actually missed that group by only a matter of minutes! Although in my defense I had been told they were leaving at noon. It worked out quite nicely though because the second bus was completely full of Chinese students except for a French girl who has never been to Asia once in her life and knows next to nothing about Korea or Korean culture or really anything Korea-related, so we wound up talking for hours about that kind of thing. She also told me all about life in Europe. I've now decided that I'll live in Korea until I'm fluent, and then I'm moving there.
The bus ride was about two and a half hours, I think. It would have been shorter but we had to go to the other airport in Seoul, Gimpo Airport, to pick up more people there. I don't know how rural the areas we were driving through were, but we never went more than sixty seconds without seeing another house. By American standards that's not terribly rural.
Things were a little crazy when we got there at first because there were a lot of people running around but not very much (aka zero) communication between those who knew what was happening and those who didn't. We stood around for a while until finally some of the students returning from last semester showed up and gave us some directives. We received our bedding which I carried up to my room and promptly left, along with my still-packed bags.
My dorm is really cool. There are four buildings that connect to the main lobby via windowed hallway; the left two buildings are for Chinese and international boys respectively, and the right two are the same but for girls. There are six floors with two suites each, and six rooms and two bathrooms to a suite. Each room houses two people, usually a foreigner and a Korean but in the boys' dorms the ratio is not perfectly 50/50. Not every Korean boy has a foreigner roommate, but they all have foreigner suite mates at least.
The toilet room is literally the most cramped I have ever seen. I can't close the door comfortably, I always have to stand right next to the toilet while I shut it. The rooms are quite small as well but there's a ton of storage space; I have many unused shelves. Unlike my dorm in the States, internet is not provided in every room. I had to buy an Ethernet cord for my laptop. Wifi can only be found in one of the lounges on the first floor.
The poopiest thing, however, is the 12am curfew we have every single night. If you're not back in the dorm by then, you will be locked out until 5am. Sunday through Wednesday nights this is kind of good for me because I have to be up early the next morning for class, but on weekends it really sucks. I have friends in the dorm who are 25 or older and I can't imagine how they must feel, having a curfew at their age. The dorms here in general are actually quite strict--they do room checks every so often and if the Koreans aren't in their respective suites they have to report to the RA at a later time and explain where they were. (They don't care as much about the foreigners though.) There is also a zero-tolerance policy regarding girls being in boys' rooms and vice versa.
I originally wrote a rant in this post about how I disagree with such a system, but it got to be too long so I'll be making a separate post for it.
The first and second days we were here zoomed by because huge groups went out both days to buy stuff needed for the dorm. Things like shower caddies, shampoo and conditioner, shower shoes, hangers, snacks--lots of little things that I kind of take for granted in the States but didn't bring to Korea. We had to travel a few subway stops away because Sinchang ("shin-chahng") is too small to have everything.
Everyone laughed at me when I went with the shopping group again the second day because on the first day I bought so much I couldn't carry it all...but I needed everything I bought! It was a lot of little stuff. I'm supposed to take my own toilet paper into the suite bathroom with me and I bought it in bulk so I would have plenty, but I couldn't carry it with everything else so someone had to hold it for me. Three very nice people did so without my asking. :)
Thursday and Friday were orientation days for all the international students. We spent the morning in an auditorium full of people of sixteen separate nationalities; everything that was said had to be repeated three times in Korean, English, and Chinese. I may or may not have taken a short nap at some point...
We then had a nice walking tour of campus. I hadn't really had a chance to explore yet, so I hadn't realized how big it was. In terms of square footage it still pales in comparison to OSU, but the campus is basically on top of a mountain, so little Ohioan me is going to be scaling a lot more hills and stairs than ever before.
I was walking with my friends and one of them challenged us to a race up the stairs. "How nice," you may be thinking. "To see who can bound up a dozen or so steps."
Wrong.
So, so wrong.
The Korean students call them the "death stairs."
So named because of the 112 steps of death you must endure to ascend the entire flight.
The challenge was not necessarily posed at me because the other friends who were present are all more active and athletic than I am, but naturally I thought it would be hilarious to surprise them and race up the stairs and win before they had a chance to realize what was happening. The joke, however, was entirely on me, because not only are my legs too short to take the steps two at a time, but I only made it halfway up before I actually could not take another step, and I spent the second half wheezing and literally dragging myself the rest of the way while everyone else bounded past me. :(
Lesson learned. The death stairs are no joke.
After lunch we had a second half of orientation that was blessedly only for the international students and only in English. Although I can't say that it was entirely invigorating or useful, there was one bit where the assistant director of the program was describing why they created the Global Village program that caught my attention. He said the international students' reason for being here is to help the Korean students "wake up." They have spent their entire lives focused on school and homework and tests and studying and what they're expected to do; in college they study to become something that sounds prestigious or pays a lot of money. They haven't really had the time or opportunity to explore their dreams and passions; they just wait for someone else to push them in the direction they're supposed to go.
Of course those are very broad statements and aren't necessarily accurate for every person, but I was surprised to hear a Korean saying them. I had previously thought about those things and simply figured it was just a cultural difference, but the truth is that you are a human being no matter where you come from and if you don't have the opportunity to experience unfamiliar environments or be alone or make mistakes or get lost, you'll never find yourself. If you never challenge your boundaries, you'll never get to see what is beyond them.
Already I think I am not the same person I was when I arrived here. It hasn't even been two weeks yet but I feel changed from the girl who left Ohio last month. They're not big changes, but the most important thing to me is that they're changes leading me towards the kind of life I want to lead and the person I want to become.
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