Monday 26th August
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| Welcome Presentation |
Welcome Presentation: Int'l Students Briefing (9.30-11.30am)
The presentation was held at 9.30am at the Inchon Memorial Hall.When we went inside we had to line up, sign in, and then walk into the auditorium to find our seats in our respective KUBA groups. My group was group 7 so on the seating plan we were sat at the back seats of the lower floor.
We were handed information packets that contained an Orientation Guide, free KU pen, information sheet for the Seoul City tour as well as application form, an override permission slip, a large folded map of the campus, and a handbook. We were also give a survey sheet that asked us questions like if we were interested in taking part on a language exchange tutoring programme, what places we would like to visit with KUBA, and if we would like a KUBA shirt for 5,000won plus what size.
The presentation didn't really start until 10am, so we killed time by introducing ourselves to each other since we sat in our small KUBA group with our KUBA buddy. This KUBA groups thing may sound very confusing but it goes like this:
- KUBA stands for Korea University Buddy Assistants
- Every exchange student is put into a group of 3 or 4 exchange students assigned to one particular Korean KUBA buddy (small KUBA group)
- Every small KUBA group are part of larger numbered groups (large KUBA group). I believe there are 10 large KUBA groups in total but I've also heard that there's actually 12..?!
- Every large KUBA group has a group leader
- Most events are held within each large KUBA group, but there are times where the groups can mingle
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| This year's KUBA buddies are called KUNE21 (haha!) because it's the 21st set of KUBA buddies at KU. |
There were 2 other exchange students in my small KUBA group, one from China and another from Dominca Republic.
There wasn't anything particularly interesting to hear about during the presentation, well at least, not anything I could remember. But just minutes before one segment B informed us that something funny is about to come up. So I thought it was some welcoming performance, but no. It was this Korean head police officer who stepped up on stage and started reading an info speech about security and safety off an A4 piece of paper in Korean, there was another guy there to translate every line he said. It was quite amusing, but it was hardly funny as my buddy described.
Lunch (11.30am-1pm)
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| Dirt cheap, but tastes gross. |
Like a typical cafeteria, we walked in a line with a tray and utensils along the food area where the food was displayed. Most of them had price tags displayed next to them. The first set of food you see were side dishes and main courses, and then drinks, cheese slices and fruit.
I ended up getting vegetable curry and rice, sausage, brocolli, yakult, and peach flavoured milk. After handing in my coupon I was given a yogurt randomly like everyone else. The curry actually tasted of nothing but spiciness. There was no curry flavour at all, just spice. The brocolli was covered in a red sauce in what I thought was ketchup but it was in fact gochujang (pepper paste)! I dislike this combination. Only the sausage tasted nice, everyone agreed on that. Unfortunately I was too full to finish the artificially flavoursome sausage. The peach milk had an interesting taste. Because it was my first time drinking from one of these containers - we don't have these in England, B had to help show me how to open it haha;; I didn't eat the yogurt either, so I gave it to the staff member in charge of putting away the trays.
IT Session (1-3pm)
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| IT Session |
There wasn't enough computers for everyone so half us had to stand at the sides and wait for their turn.
This IT session was to set up a KUPID account so we could have our own KU email to receive messages from our lecturers, and get access to the EKU Learning space (like UoL's VLE).
By setting up a KUPID account it gives us access to KU's Wifi which required a username and password which was the same as our KUPID account. But right after the session when everyone tried to connect to the Wifi, no one could connect. Turns out the Wifi wasn't working properly and should be working within the next few days (it worked the next day).
Right afterwards we were free to leave. We were supposed to have the mobile phone session right after to get our Korean sim cards and buy phones - I didn't need to do any of these, but the phone session was running overtime so our group couldn't do it that day but the next day instead.
We were supposed to have a campus tour as well but my group leader deemed it to be too hot that day to do one.
Tuesday 27th August
KU ID & Bank Account Registration (9.30-11.30am)
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| KU ID Registration |
For that day we had to bring a passport photo and our passports in order to fill out the necessary forms for our KU ID cards. The KU ID cards can act as a student card, transport card (T-money), and bank card.
The form had around 6 double-sided pages, and everyone most definitely needed to attend this session purely because most of the form was in Korean. We slowly made our way through the form with the help of examples and notes shown on the powerpoint presentation as well as our KUBA buddies - some fields required us to write in Korean. During the latter half of the grueling form we ended up having to sign and print our name in block capitals a lot in these small boxes.
We could choose our PIN numbers for the bank account. And when it came to the passport photo bit it turns out that my standard UK passport sized photo was too big for the box that it should be stuck in. So B had to help trim down my photo (in a very angular manner) till it somewhat fitted - the edges were still over the line, and stuck it on for me.
Mini Campus Tour
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| Whilst touring we stumbled upon a samulnori practice |
The two of them pointed at buildings and told us what departments are in which building, .
Turns out that D is also a media student, and on top of that he is group 7's 'media' guy - the photographer. So he instantly pointed out the media hall building to me when it came in sight since I told him I do media too.
Meanwhile B told us that all of the buildings will have at least 1 coffee shop in it. We also passed a Twosome Place on campus and she told us the coffee there was too expensive and to go to Ediya Coffee instead.
Lunch (1pm-2pm)
After the mini campus tour, we returned to Woodang hall where the rest of our group was and found out we had to wait longer.We waited an extra hour till 1pm.
So, once again we got handed coupons and headed back to the dreadful cafeteria.
Unfortunately there was no sausages, the menu changed. They had samgyetang instead - but I didn't get it.
That day I had purple rice with beans in it, battered fish (tasted like fish fingers), beef nuggets, pineapple, banana, 2 yakults and peach milk again. The purple rice tasted interesting, it had an almost nutty taste to it accompanied with the black beans. The battered fish was basically a huge fish finger covered in this white sauce. Beef nuggests tasted pretty artificial, thank God it came with ketchup dip, NOT gochujang. I went for pineapple slices and banana because I was craving for fruit at that point seeing I spent 2 weeks with little to no fruit in my system!
Drinking Games & Phone Session
Under a sheltered area in people's square, the KUBA buddies taught us drinking games (without alcohol) in preparation for later that night - the chicken and beer event! We done this for an hour to kill time because the mobile phone session was running late.I will talk about Korean drinking games in a future post, but what I can say for now that it is...interesting. There are many games, some easy, some hard that involves numbers and counting, and some that are absolutely hilarious.
When we were informed that we were able to go to the phone session I informed B that I didn't need to attend since I already had a SIM set up for my phone, so she let me go home and told me to meet her later at Anam station exit 2 so she could take me to the chicken and beer event later that day.
Chicken and Beer
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| Do you see that huge beer pitcher in the back?! |
Group 7 went to Samtong Chicken which was all the way down the Anam road. We were seated on tables with cutlery already laid out, and within minutes large pitchers of beer and bottles of soju were placed on the tables. The chicken hadn't even come out yet and everyone was already drinking. The group leader proposed a toast to a successful end to the orientation and made us chant the group cheer which was: "Chil chil chil chil chil chil chiiiiillax!" - hope I got that right haha!
Our group name is called Chillax, on the boards that they use to lead us to places so we don't get lost (like flags) it is spelt as 7(x). 7 in Korean is 'chil' and 'ax' came from (x). I guess this is a play on words in correspondence to Kpop group f(x). The other groups in KUBA done similar things where they made whitty group names out of their group numbers - such as group 4's 'Read Set Go' ('set' means 4).
The chicken was amazing at this place. Perhaps the best chicken I ever had. We were given 3 different platters of chicken during the course of our meal. Spicy chicken, garlic chicken, and crispy chicken. I loved the garlic and spicy ones the best, they were just so juicy and flavoursome.
We had to eat the chicken with 2 forks on a small plate. That's right, 2 forks. Here in Korea when you eat chicken they give you 2 forks, not knife and fork. When only bones are left we could bin them in these tiny bin pots that are placed on every table.
After all the chicken was gone we played drinking games with the beer and soju.
The meal came to 15,000won.
Everyone was then invited to round 2 of drinking at a different place (Dosin?). Here we had a platter of snacks of our choosing per table, as well as unlimited drinks of, you guessed it, soju and beer.
We played drinking games the most at this place, pretty much everyone got drunk by the time the clock struck midnight.
This is where I met most people that have now become good friends of today. I drank a lot with many different people. Eventually I forced myself to leave at 1am with my friends because of the city tour the next day.
I don't recall paying anything for round 2...or maybe I did but I was too bordering drunk to remember.
Wednesday 28th August
The Seoul City Tour was an optional outing for us exchangees since space was limited. Initially I was hesitant to go since I found out that we would be drinking the night before the 9am start, but my KUBA buddies managed to convince me to go. The trip cost 40,000won.Strangely I didn't regret making this choice by the end of the day even though I felt like utter crap. I think it was the NANTA performance that made the day.
Gyeongbokgung Palace
For 9am I had to go down the 'stairs of death' then trek up the long steep hill to Hwajeong Gym where everyone else was waiting. In reality I didn't have to take the stairs, all I had to do was walk down the hill towards GS25 and walk from there, but I had yet to disocever it back then...Here we caught coaches to our first destination: Gyeongbokgung Palace.
Now, when I first got on the coach the sun wasn't so bright, there were clouds covering it so I thought someone up there was going to make it easy for me today since I felt like shit from all the alcohol I had the night before. But oh no. After waking up from the 40 minute coach ride when we arrived - yes I slept because I was that exhausted, the sun was out and blazing. So we spent a good hour or so outside walking around Gyeongbokgung Palace under the blistering Sun. Even the KUBA buddies were dying from it.
I got particularly excited when we walked through the memorial stones area purely because it reminded me of one scenes from Queen Inhyun's man that was filmed there! The scene where Yoo Inna's charater (Choi Heejin) was filming a documentary about the history of the palace and etc. Oh memories...I loved that K-drama!
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| When King Sejong began to form Hangul |
After the Folk Museum we headed outside towards the Blue House. The Korean equivalent to the White House where the Korean president lives. We couldn't get a close look at it, only from a distance at the palace. Behind the guarded gates leading to it was a long road on a slight hill leading up to it. Behind the Blue House was a huge mountain, what a view the president has!
Insadong
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| Traditional Korean meal :"D |
We had kimchi, egg, 'salad' (strips of cabbage, radish, and carrot covered in salad cream), tteokbokki, pickled(?) eggplant, radish kimchi (?), seaweed, salted fish, and spicy pork to share plus a bowl of rice and doenjang jjigae each. I loved the salted fish the most, maybe because I haven't had fish since I got here. I wasn't too fond of the doenjang jjigae that much initially, but it grew on me.
Afterwards we headed off on our separate ways to do a bit of shopping and sightseeing in Insadong. I headed for the skin care stores first. Got handed a basket with a free sample inside as I went into Innisfree, so I had to buy something inside! I know I didn't have to, but when they do that I just feel compelled to and if I don't I would feel guilty... Anyway, it wasn't too bad. I needed to get a nose pack from there anyway to clear my blackheads. Bought the same one that I used back in England: Volcanic Clay Black Head Clay Nose Pack.
Walked on further down the street to find this cute little artists' store that we walked past earlier: Hana Art Gallery. This place basically sold stuff designed, painted, and/or handmade by artists. A small painted canvas was 15,000won. There were 2 floors, the bottom was more dedicated to artist work whilst the top focused more on small brands like Enaki. Here I bought a small planner/scheduler for 6,000won - which I lost a week later TT TT
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| Ssamzie-gil Complex (outside) |
Due to the lack of time I only managed to explore the ground floor. Here I found an Ugly Doll store, unique tea stall, and small boutiques. There was one boutique tucked in the back behind the tea stall/booth that sold handmade women's accessories. Everything had a vintage style to it and were proabably sold at near-Western prices. I came out of that place with a handmade pink bow hair band priced at 3,000won.
I later bumped into H who introduced me to sikhye. Back in England, I had sikhye in can form before, but I didn't like it. But this non-factory produced sikhye actually tasted really nice, so I will give this drink a chance whilst I'm still in Korea - as long as it's homemade.
H then walked with me back down towards the meeting place. Along the way we got into a heated discussion about hair dyes and cosmetics. My 4 colour hair seems to attract a lot of attention to the female Korean KUBA buddies haha! She told me that one particular brand of dye didn't work quite well on her hair and she dyed over it so much that she ruined it. To solve this problem she used Etude House's Silk Scarf Hair Treatment which solved everything, so she highly recommended it. We then talked about my experiences with British costmetic brands and how some products don't seem to fit me so well. So she took me into Aritaum (Korean Superdrugs, more cosmetics based) and introduced me to some products that she used that worked for her. She highly recommended HERA and IOPE, in which the former unfortunately was available in department stores only. Damn.
NANTA
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| The stage. Exciting! |
I was a bit scared that I might have found it boring purely because NANTA is said to be a non-verbal performance, but it turned out to be highly enjoyable.
Without giving any spoilers, NANTA is a non-verbal performance that integrates salmunori with comedy. A few performances are given almost everyday, and there are different teams of actors depending on the day.
Plot: 3 chefs are given the task to cook a Wedding celebration meal in time for 6 o'clock with the 'help' of the manager's nephew.
You see them chop food and cook live with enthusiasm. Food can fly into the audience because it's that extravagant. The cooking itself is not just pure visual performance but audio as well. They create rhythm with every chop, saucepan banging, and table beating, all the while cooking. There is in fact very minimal incorporation of verbal sounds, but most of it is just gibberish and done in a way that can easy convey the message to the audience. Sometimes they even speak a bit of random English words.
This is an interactive performance as well. A few times the performers invite a few audience members onto the stage to join in with specific scenes like taste-testing. There is this one bit where the head chef tells the audience to clap and stomp in time with him.
Before the show even started there was a powerpoint presentation projected on a screen in front of the stage, it gave us information about the performance, told us to practice clapping and cheering, and even welcomed us KU exchange students! Of course the words were projected in Korea, Japanese and English.
Overall I came home thoroughly satisfied with the day out despite the early morning start where I felt like utter crap.
And yes I really do think every foreign student should go see NANTA!
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