Follow my exchange year!

Chungang university, South-Korea, 15/16

[yenneykorea]

It’s spring! And I’m alive!

Seems like I did a new record on not updating anything here yet again. Not too proud of that. Anyways, since the school started I have been busier and have been doing and experiencing a lot of new things. And for your luck, there are pictures of most of the events in my friend's camera!  The problem is that even though I saved the pictures to my computer something seemed to go wrong and I’ll need to download them again, so, that’ll take some more time BUT I promise to post more often this month! Quite a scary promise to make knowing how often I usually post...

The reason why I’m actually posting again is my and my friend Alex's small day tour at Hyehwa and Sungkyukwan University campus (tho the pictures are from the campus only). I had never actually heard of the school but supposedly it’s the 4th best school in Korea right after SKY universities. Also, it’s a freaking old school, the internet is telling me it was first found in 1398. Not sure when the actual campus was built but there was actually that kind of traditional buildings in the campus area. As you can see bellow, the trees there were also huge, so, I’m assuming the campus and the old buildings at least have been there for some hundred years.

I think I’ll keep this post mostly as an overall update post although I’ll be posting about most of the things I have done here later on. Nevertheless, life here has been great lately, the spring has arrived and it’s already so green, which I love. The temperature is staying definitely over 15C during the daytime and gets as high as up to 25C. What is more, I just had my midterms almost two weeks ago, so I feel extremely free and stress-free again, though I know I shouldn't rely on that feeling because I actually do still have papers and group projects and what not to do before the finals. But still, I’m having this feeling that this next month and a half are my play time when I can and should explore and experience as much as I can. It’s pretty easy now too since there are so many festivals coming up and just hanging out outdoors is a great choice as well. I feel like Korea is almost waking up as it gets closer and closer to summer.

That brings me to the fact that as the summer approaches so does the end of the exchange year. Although I still have a decent number of days left here, 51 to be exact, I can’t help but feel like I’m running out of time. And what I have talked to my friends here I’m surely not the only one who feels this way. 

I have read tens and tens of exchange student blogs and I always read how people talked about leaving the country, going back home, and feeling like everything was just a dream. And I can imagine it already, so clearly. I can imagine myself being back in Finland thinking, that yea, I was indeed in Korea for a year. And that makes me unbelievably sad and baffled at the same time. But, let’s leave the goodbyes and overly sentimental posts to the summer when I’ll be actually leaving. And I will not be going straight to home anyways as many you probably know because I’ll be making a small trip to the USA first to visit my boyfriend. So, that's quite exciting considering the fact that we last saw almost 9 months ago.

I think those would be the most important updates and feelings for now. So, stay tuned, I’ll be posting about our culture exchange and school organized events later on so... yeah... bye?

[yenneykorea]

B+ for being busy for once

February 5th

Iiris came to Seoul to spend her Lunar new year holidays! And since I have been quite bored most of the time I’m extremely glad she came here. Anyways, on the day she arrived we went to this International “party” she had found about online. Should not have gone tho, it was very lame. The first time we went to see the pub it was held at, there was literally no people and we decided to just spent some time walking around the area. And when we later went there it was still very lame, we were tabled with two Koreans and one of them was juts boring and weird, he kept on talking about politics and such, not particularly my fav topic to discuss about. The party included entrance tickets to a club but since it was rather late we ended the night there and just headed home.

February 6th

Some previous time when Iiris was here she wanted to go see this area in Dongdaemun selling pet animals, and since we didn’t have time last time, we did that on Saturday. 

We had really bad luck and we started to walk the wrong part of the long street that was full of... everything basically. The street remind me of a craft and hardware store and there were tens if not hundreds of small shops that sold basically one item per store. Eventually we gave up on trying to find the pet area and returned to our starting point and took some pics. Thankfully we did decide to try one more time and walked the other half of the street and we did actually find the area selling pets!

It was my first time seeing something like that. There were maybe 4 stores almost next to each other selling various kinds of pets and equipment. And as you can see from the pictures most of the animals were outside in cages stacked over each others. I’m sure that kind of pet stores would never get permission to operate in Finland tho. The cages were packed with animals, the cages were quite dirty and sometimes didn’t have solid floor but just the cage floor that can’t be good for the feet, not to mention the temperature was lingering around 0 °C so the animals were all packed next to each others to stay warm.

I was surprised they sold so many different kind of animals tho. There were some squirrels I have never seen being sold in Finland. They also sold chickens and roosters, kind of weird. In the picture above you can also see they are selling some kind of small lobster looking things, I wonder what they are, like, are they actually kept as a pets or is it just d.y.i lobster meal?

The pets were ridiculously cheap tho, I think bunnies were sold at 10,000 wons which is about 8 euros. I don’t know how much pets cots in Finland but that seemed a bit cheap and I’m just worried that that encourages people here to buy pets on a whim without actually knowing how to take care of them properly. I mean, the pet culture here is quite new thing anyways...

I think later that day we went to Insadong, where Iiris was staying for the trip. If you don’t know yet, Insadong is the traditional/one of the tourist areas of Seoul. I’m so gonna buy all kind of crap from there to send home later on. I mean they have pretty legit, beautiful looking things there, even though some of the stuff reminds me more of Gran Canarias tourist shops than traditional Korea. There is also this kind if, apparently famous, shopping mall(?) with full of all kind of small cute shops.

I think this map shop was adorable and I really would love to have some cute world/Korea map at home some day...

February 7th

On Sunday a miracle happened! I woke up before 8am! Not just for fun tho, but because we had reserved buss tickets to take us to the Nami island. We started our ride around 9:30am and rode the buss for about 1,5h and arrived to Nami island. In the picture bellow it might seem there were a lot of people but actually it was rather quiet there since there’s a lot of room and since it’s definitely not the season to visit the island. Or well, I don’t actually know, just my guess.

Nami island is kind of known for these pathways surrounded with trees. They were pretty tho, can’t deny that. I think it would be gorgeous in the summer evening when they (probably) lit up the lights. Unfortunately or luckily we left before it got dark and cold. It was cold during the day too, not to confuse. Thankfully there were bonfires here and there where we could warm up and make sure to soak our jackets thoroughly in the smoke. I swear, my jacket still smells like the smoke....

In the Island there’s not toooo much to do during the winter, there were these ostriches we spent good time to stare at as well as some kind of tour train to take around the island, which we didn’t ride.

That picture below makes it seem it was such a winter wonderland, doesn’t it? Well, it wasn’t but for some reason there were some spots with snow and ice to play with. I guess would be impressive for tourists coming from warmer countries but as a Finn I wasn’t too excited about it.

At some point there was a traditional music performance and I have seen those before too but omg there was this small boy performing with the rest of the crew. I’m sure that the boy didn’t add anything else but cuteness to the show but it was just so adorable how he tried to do everything as the others did. I was glad to notice there were some other younger performers in the group too because I think it’s so important they keep traditions like this alive. And like, even though the traditional music isn’t that much of a joy for the ear it’s amazing how much detail and skill they put into playing, dancing and performing.

February 8th

From traditional dance we can smoothly change topic to our visit to Gyeongbokgung palace. Since it was the main(?) day of Lunar new year and the enterance was free there were quite many people, which didn’t bother that much tho because it’s surprisingly large area.

We managed to arrive basically when the royal guard change show was going on. It was cool....Well more cool fact is that that’s actually someones job. I wonder how they end up there.

Since it was the new year there were quite some people dressed up in hanboks. These particular ones were supper pretty in my opinion. Anyways, we walked around the area, went to the museum there and the left to Hongdae since we were supposed to meet some other Finns for dinner later on. It was fun as always to meet other Finnish people and I feel its always so easy to click since there are not that many of us in Korea after all.

On Tuesday there’s nothing to show or to tell about so I’ll end up here. All in all it was super fun to have Iiris here again and to actually do things and see new places. But yea, thanks for reading:-)

[yenneykorea]

Pros, cons and “what the heck”s of living in Korea

Wow, hasn’t it been quite some time I updated anything here. Actually almost 2 months...oops. I have extremely good reasons tho: 1. I haven’t done much to write about and 2. when I have had something to write about, my computer has been disagreeing, I mean, I most definitely don’t the patience to open files billion times just to see programs freeze and crash.

To put some color to this post, I inserted two songs I like and have been listening a lot for the past couple months a lot. Also, both of em’ have English captions so you don’t need to try to guess what they sing about.

To write at least something here I figured out, that since I have been in Korea already half a year I would make an update on what kind of feelings I have about Korea and my life here. So here, without too long explanations, here are the things I love, hate and can’t really understand about Korea.

I absolutely love...

...that it’s so cheap here! I especially appreciate clothes, eating out and taxi being super cheap compared to Finland.

...how a lot of places are late really late. Shopping at 10pm? No problem. Watching movie at 1am? Why not. Quite some contrast to Finland where stores close at 6pm sometimes.

...THE FOOOOD! Some foods are just incredibly good and I’m gonna probably fall into depression in Finland for not being able to eat them anymore.

...that people here are so polite and nice most of the time. If ask help, usually people try to help even if they wouldn’t know too well either. 

...how fashionable Korean people overall are. They really put a lot effort to look good and keep up with the trends. For me, it seems like normal Korean people adsorb the new trends faster than rest of the world.

...mountains. That’s not something I love horribly much but it’s quite cool that Korea is full of mountains, something we don’t have to the same extent in Finland.

...that the winter here is just a piece of cake after living in Finland all my life.

...random street performances at Hongdae.

...the night life of Korea. Waaaaaaay better than in Kuopio atleast.

...my friends here. It’s so obvious I almost forgot to mention that. I’m not particularly social person so I don’t have tons of friends, but those who I consider my friends are really important to me. Also, it’s awesome to know that even after I go back home I have friends over the world. 

...traveling club and people I have got to know through it! I have mentioned our traveling club before too but joining the club is seriously one of the best decisions I have made in Korea.

...how things are usually really cute in Korea. But not overly sweet as in Japan, more like toned down, adorable way cute.

And in contrary, I hate...

...that although things are open very late, the subway stops at 1am. You can always take a taxi, but even the 10e annoys when I know that with subway I could have probably traveled with 1e or 2e.

...when the salesperson at store is just too eager. And that’s often. Seriously, they follow and stare at you, maybe even push some products or clothes to you. Pretty funny tho, one time I just walked a circle and changed direction randomly in the store while waiting for my friend and the seller still kept on following me for good minute or two. Ridiculous.

...when our dorm cafeteria has nothing good to eat. 

...when our dorms convenient stores have nothing good to buy.

...that our dorm is on top of a hill. 

...when people walk really slow in front of me. Could happen anywhere but Seoul is full of people so it happens more than often. Specially when I’m in a hurry.

...that the worst summer heats are pure hell after living in Finland all my life.

...that at most places you are not allowed to try on most of the clothes. It’s pure game of luck weather the clothes look good on you or not. 

And for last, let’s have random things that confuse me in a way or other or I find strange.

-You are supposed to peel grapes. Well, I don’t peel but Korean people do. 

-At most places, you are not supposed to throw toilet paper to toilet but put into a trash can. Slightly eww....

-Squat toilets. Omg how shocked I was for the first time when I realized there was no traditional toilet in that specific restaurant.

-When someone on the campus says hi to me and I say hi back, but have no idea who they are or where I know them from. Very awkward but can’t be avoided.

-Same thing with my phone. I’m not particularly good remembering Korean names in one go, so I literally have no idea who half of my contacts are.

-People overall staring at me. At first I found it a bit intimidating and also wondered if there was something wrong with my clothes or make up. Nowadays I don’t really care and notice people staring that much and I can actually understand Koreans... I do take a second look as well if I see an obvious foreigner lol.

I’m sure I forgot something that I wanted to mention but I think that’s mostly it... So but yeah... that’s it... thanks for reading!

[yenneykorea]

Korean folk village

Wow, I‘m very impressed on myself for once actually writing blog right after something happens and not almost a month later (which seems to be my normal way). Maybe maybe because I’m supposed to study right now...  Anyways, yesterday I visited Korean folk village which was about 1h from our school. The trip was organized by the schools international office and was completely free, even the foods and various snacks we got. 

The village is composed of real houses from the Joseon dynasty that were relocated to this village. In my opinion it’s really fascinating that these are the same houses people actually used hundreds of years ago. Also, I really love Korean old architecture and actually I feel like ending fall made the scenery even more beautiful in it’s own way. 

Here’s a kind of useless picture of pots. If you don’t happen to know these kinds of pots are usually used to store foods, for example bean paste, chili pepper paste and  different kind of kimchis. I’m not sure what these were used tho, maybe just a decoration.

What was great about the village was that everyone working there wore clothes appropriate to the time period. As a small cute detail they had a beggar couple there who had a basket where people actually gave stuff to. I suppose they get to keep at least the foods they receive. unfortunately I had nothing else to give but some spare coins.

Actually recently in Korea it has become rather chilly. The temperature lingers barely above zero degrees and that day was no expectation. I don’t know why but it feels even colder here in Korea. I guess I got used to the warmer temperature during the summer and this sudden drop is just... horrendous. Actually, before the lunch I was seriously about to die because my toes were freezing. Finnish people reading this know for sure the feeling when you wear too light shoes during the cold season and your toes go just numb. I guess I should go buy a bit better shoes for winter...

In the village they had different kind of performances probably every hour or so. This is from the drum thing, I don’t know for sure what the name was but they played the drums and danced and so on. Just as a side note, I really like how colorful all the traditional costumes in Korea are.

Doesn’t relate the picture but we had opportunity do decide weather we want to join activity where they make a paper doll or do some pottery. I chose the later one but don’t unfortunately have any pictures from there. It was pretty fun tho, maybe I could consider that as hobby in the future. Also, I think we are gonna get back the pottery we made after it dries/is burnt, so that’s cool

I think I can straight up say that the most impressive performance they have in the village is the horse acrobatics. To be honest, I didn’t catch good pictures from all the things they did but they did so many things: archery, knives, throwing spares (and missing the target lol), and all kind of acrobatics. And everything was done riding a horse. They even add a spark of humor to the show which was really refreshing.

I mean come on, just look at this... So talented.  I wonder how many accident they have gotten during practices tho.

Next thing we attended was this show of traditional Korean wedding. And gosh, just look at the bride, shes so beautiful. As I said I just love how colorful all the costumes are. I don’t know whats the thing with the two ladies holding the bride tho.

The ceremony consisted of a lot of bowing and the content wasn’t too impressive because it was mostly an old guy speaking and the tempo of the whole thing was rather slow.

In the end the groom and bride left the scene groom riding a horse and the bride being carried in a small box thing (you know what I mean right?). 

All in all the trip was pretty nice, even though it was horribly cold. I especially liked the performances and our pottery making activity and I wish it would have been warmer so that I could have enjoyed the experience more.

Anyways, that’s it for today folks, see you next time.

[yenneykorea]

Ever so great Everland

Last month my friend IIris came for a weekend visit to Seoul. On the first day we visited Kimchi museum on Insadong. Yes, Korea is so proud of their famous side dish that there is a whole museum for it. The visit costed 5,000wons which is a bit salty price considering the museum wasn’t actually that big (Yes, I’m that cheap I think 4e is expensive). What I liked tho was that it was made pretty interactive and I actually happened to even learn that kimchi contains lactic acid bacteria (maitohappobakteereja), who would have known. Also, in the museum they offered kimchi making lessons (we didn’t participate but some day I will for sure) and opportunity try two different types of kimchi. The entrance fee did include one drink from the cafe but for my bad luck they only had coffee which is definitely not my favorite drink.

During that weekend we also went to MOTI club that had recently opened and had Jay Park performing. Our logic was flawless, clubbing and performance in one go what could be better? Well, not so surprisingly the place was packed with people who were waiting for the performance so people didn’t even really dance while waiting, just mostly standing still (I didn’t mind tho lol) and it actually took veeeery long time to Jay Park even appear. And when he did, oh maan the amount of pushing... All in all, seeing Jay Park wasn’t really worth it for me.

The main thing of the weekend was us going to Everland on Sunday. Everland is actually the largest theme park in South-Korea and it includes zoo as well as a water park called Caribbean Bay, that is not directly attached right into the amusement park but is somewhere close it I think. Anyways, we woke up super early (at least for me since I normally wake up around 11 lol) and headed to Gangnam where we hopped into a buss that basically took us to the theme park area.

Since we visited Everland in November the theme park was decorated with Halloween theme, which I think was really nice. I feel like it brings something new to the park every time, even if you would visit it more than once and I’m looking forward seeing how it will look in the spring time.

Spooky, especially the one with heart eyes lol.

As mentioned above, the theme park contains a zoo and there's option to attend a safari ride, that we went to.

Although it might look nice in the pictures and that I was pretty excited about it at first, the safari was slight disappointment. It was basically animals laying in the same spots all day while cars passed by constantly. Made me really sad and I think the animals would actually have better life in traditional zoo instead the safari where there were cars passing by all the time.

I think the saddest part were the bears though. As you can see bellow, the bears were taught to perform tricks such as waving, walking on two legs, even to shot the hoop like in basketball game. It was really sad to see how the bears just did the tricks manually when the next car started to approach. Of course the bears got treat from doing it but... to me they seemed nothing else but circus animals. Maybe I should stop visiting zoos because they always seem to make me just sad.

There was also small bird house. And well, there was a petting zoo (means farm animals plus rabbits and guinea pigs) and possibly some other animals too somewhere, not sure tho.

I didn’t explain yet but the whole park was separated into different themes. This one is from the Europe part which to me looks only like... Switzerland or German. But well, I guess the area is European in a way, at least more European looking than the regular streets of Seoul.

Europe is apparently full of fountains as you can see. (Well... It kinda is though)

It seems that the whole Europe part of the park was just to take pretty pictures, which is understandable considering Korean girls and couples (or well, girl of the couple) are so enthusiastic to take pictures. Random story but once when I went to hang out along the Han river there were girls having a picnic and sipping beer, nothing odd about that, but through out around 1 hour that we were there, they kept on taking pictures. They even had a tripod and camera with a selfie screen (obviously). I don’t know how the picture taking culture keeps surprising me time after times even if I basically see it all the time.

Ah, so romantic... or maybe a bit too cheesy and cringe worthy.

About the rides of the park. Aside from the classic merry-go-round we rode viking boat and some other basic rides you can find even in amusement parks back in Finland. But one ride that made a huge impression on me was the T-Express, wooden rollercoaster that you can see in the picture bellow. It was the most intense rollercoaster I have ever ride even though it didn’t go upside down or anything. Here’s a video of the ride so that you can also go see how stiff the first drop is. Anyways, I will definitely visit the park again in the spring time just to get ride that rode again!

The above picture is from the America part of the park, and as it seems that Europe is German, America is stuck in the 50′s. By the way, most of the rides were actually around this area.

All in all I liked Everland. Without T-Express I would like a lot less though. The lines that day weren’t crazy other than right in the morning when we went to line up to T-Express and waited for 1,5h... it was cold and unpleasant, I can say that for sure. Other things to mention were that there were tons of tourist crap shops and you were actually forced to go through them for example after riding that thing you can see in the picture above (I forgot the name both in Finnish and English, pls help me). Also, the people supervising the rides were kind of annoying because they were trained to talk all the time. It’s their job, I get it, but it was a bit odd. 

Okay that’s it again, all comment and questions are welcome, both here or on my fb. See you next time!

[yenneykorea]

A long long long time ago...

(I’m sorry, this is so long time ago I can’t remember too well so, sorry for the not so good explanations)

Last time I updated about my school mostly so let’s focus this time on how rest of my life so far has been here in Seoul!

Firstly, to be completely honest, life here has already became rather ordinary for the most parts. But I’m not by no means saying that life here would be boring, it’s just everything starts to slowly become more and more normal. Maybe that’s why it’s so damn difficult for me to take pictures because, I mean, it’s not something horribly special for me to go hang out in Hongdae with my friends, not to mention hanging out in the Heukseok area. (For those who don’t know area names so well, Heukseok is the area my school is located in)

Anyways, believe or not I actually do have some pictures to show. First I’m going to show pictures I took at the Sky Park (하늘공원), near Seoul Stadium, where I went with this Korean girl I met in a Finnish people meeting in Seoul.

The Sky park, as the name hints a bit already, is located on top of a hill. Here are the stairs, wow, so cool.

The view from the top was pretty nice. 

While we were walking towards the actual park, since it doesn’t start right away when you get up, I noticed that in almost every single tree there was a thick spider web and HORRIBLY many spiders as showm bellow...

And my reaction was something like...

Because seriously what the fuck?!?! There are not supposed to be that many spiders, that’s freaking horrifying, that’s like...Harry Potter’s spider forest but in real life. And in addition they were HUUUGE, may not look in a pic but never have I seen spider that big in Finland, and I truly wish not to see in the future either.

Anyways, we reached the actual park, it’s mostly just field of grass, which is actually pretty, no complains, and obviously way prettier in real life. Oh, and at one point there were those random houses...for birds???

In the park there was a sunflower field which was so pretty! I haven’t actually seen thaaat many sunflowers in Finland and definitely not a field like this so it was truly an amazing view for me.

In the park there was this bowl kind of thing where you could take pictures, pretty nice idea.

Okay, I’ll just stop even trying to say anything about these pictures... Just enjoy.

Ah, can any picture be any more tourist like than this?

Anyways, let’s continue to more meaningful thing, our schools traveling club, Youth Hostel, that I joined with couple of my friends. That was seriously the best decision I have done so far because I have gotten some really good friends from it and I always enjoy hanging out with the club members.

Anyways, in September (yes, I’m writing about stuff that happened two months ago) we went to a MT with the club members. The notice to leave to this trip came pretty late so not too many people were able to join but I still had a blast with those who came there. For those who are not aware, MT stands for membership training, which basically means just a trip where you try to get familiar with the people. Our MT was held in a pension along a riverside outside of Seoul. We wen’t there by subway and on the way stopped in a market to buy food. As you can see from the pic above our meal consisted mostly on meat. (Sorry mom, I know you requested me not to post food pictures)

Here is our MT group.

After eating we went inside, sat in a circle, ate snacks and played drinking games, which to be honest, is still one of my favorite memories from the time I have attended this school. I learned many fun games I had never heard before and I can’t wait to play them with my friends back in Finland! Anyways, we kept going till pretty late night until we decided to call a day and made our very luxurious beds (basically couple blankets as a mattress) and went to sleep. 

I promise to update a bit more often from now on, I already have couple events to write about so... until next time, bye!

[yenneykorea]

Chungang university and school life in Korea

Let me start this by saying that I know it has been very long since I last updated and I have no other excuses than that I’m lazy. I will try to update more often in the future. Let’s move on.

I have had around one month of school so far and I think it would be good time to show you around my campus, dorm and tell overall how school here is.

First of all let me show you around the campus. 

This is the main view right when you get to the campus area. I don’t actually really know what this building is or if it has some historical value. It looks pretty impressive tho.

Next thing I want to show is this dragon pond. And the reason is that to be honest there's not too much to show on the campus area. Near this are stairs where students often met to chill and drink in the evening but actually I haven’t personally done that so far.

Here’s another pic of the pond of the heck of it.

This is a view I see everyday going up and down the hill. (I don’t know if I mentioned yet but my dorm is all the way up to the hill). The building you see on the background is the library where I personally haven’t visited too many times.

Again just a view I have going up the hill.

The dorm is called Blue Mir Hall and it has two parts, old and new. Old is mixed with local and international students and the new seems to be only local students. These two parts are also divided, to girls and guys sides.

For now I could talk a bit about the dorm life and rules. Because we sure do have them. The biggest thing is that you are not allowed to come to the dorm between 1am-5am. And let me tell you, this rule sucks! It basically forces the students to decide weather come home “early” or painfully late/early and basically sleep the next day. I understand that this is to make sure students get enough sleep but this rule applies even during weekends (tho sometimes you can get in without guards being there).

Another thing are the room inspections once a month, when you need to be in your room during certain hours. And I just can’t understand why? Why does everyone need to be in their rooms for many hours just for that one moment when they check your rooms cleanliness quickly.

Other than that it’s pretty okay. No kitchen tho, own nor shared, so that limits your diet really bad. We do have a shared fridge, water purifier and microwave tho.

Anyways, let’s continue. Here’s the actual dorm building, the old one in the front and new part in the back.

And here’s the view from inside in the main lobby. As you can see there’s a cafe (where I have never been) and you kind of can see behind it there’s a convenient store (where I have been very often). For real convenient store’s are my savior here because if cafeteria is not open you need to walk all the way down the campus to have real food and well, sometimes you just don’t feel like doing so.

Talking about cafeteria, here’s what it looks like. In this particular cafeteria there’s Korean, international and premium meals to pick from. Premium meal is a bit pricier than the other two so I usually don’t have it.

There are various other cafeteria around the campus but unfortunately I have only eaten in this one and the one that's in the new part of the dorm.

Here’s some of the meals I have eaten in the dorm cafeteria. Most of em are Korean meals which I actually like often. I really like the combination of soup and rice with side dishes. You can also see pork cutlet that’s from the other cafeteria and the noodle dish that was actually probably the worst meal I have had in the cafeteria although it looks pretty nice.

I don’t have pictures of the other parts of the dorm, sorry. But one thing I want to tell you and what I think is sooo cool is that when we go into our dorms we need to put our pin-code and after that scan our blood vessels. How cool and futuristic is that! And I have no idea how can the machine recognize people by blood vessels. 

This is the window in the very end of the hallway of tenth floor where my room is located.

And here’s my dorm room. I share my room with a girl from USA and honestly I got really lucky with my roommate because she’s really nice and I feel like we instantly became friends.

As you probably might guess I’m only showing the shared/my side of the room for her privacy. From the picture above you can see our small hallway that has bathroom on the left and closets on the right side.

We have one closet for shoes, mine are in the lower part and her on top. 

And here’s my part of the closet. As you can see, most of the psace is taken my huge luggage, box of winter clothes and laundry basket. Below that there are three drawers.

And here’s our bathroom (and me in the mirror). What is shocking about it is that it doesn’t have a real, lockable door. It’s just class doors to separate the toilet and the shower from the sink area. First I was pretty shocked about that because I was thinking that glass wall like that wouldn’t be enough but it’s fine in the end. Of course I would prefer a real door but, oh well.

And here’s a delusive view of my desk and bed. Delusive because, come on, whose room looks like that ever? It’s all a setup to make it seem like I would be actually a tidy person. Anyways, no complains about the bed, or well we did need to buy our own pillow and blanket as well as the sheets....

And the desk, again ridiculously clean. There are two more rows of shelf's above the one you see and the desk has drawers as well so I’m definitely not having lack of storage. Also, those two pink baskets were the best purchase ever because I can just throw all the makeup in them and keep the table at least tolerable clean. 

And more storage. I actually keep most of my clothes in these drawers. I have so little clothes, I should go buy more ㅠㅠ.

And here are the views I see from the window.

They didn’t lie tho, there is a view to Han river lol.

In conclusion, I think living in a dorm is pretty good! It’s relatively cheap and you don’t need to worry about water or internet bills, nor about paying rent monthly because the payment is done at once. However, if you are used to living on your own, don’t want to be restricted and are staying in Korea (or anywhere else where there’s a dorm system) for a year I would seriously consider living on your own. It can be slightly more expensive and complicated but... If you value those things more than money I guess it would be worth it.

About the school and studying itself now. I’m taking five courses this semester which equals to 15 credit’s here. The courses I’m taking this semester are: 

Marketing research: nothing special to say about this course, it seems really good and not too difficult, teacher speaks perfect English and so on...

Business communications: again a course that I have no complains about. Actually this is probably one of the courses that will benefit me the most in the future because it focuses on more practical skills you need when you apply to a company and actually work in one.

Corporate finance: this on.... this one is the trouble maker. Way too difficult for me, I’m already, after two lessons, completely lost and behind... the teachers English is also a bit difficult to understand. (Actually I’m probably going to drop this)

Korean and global business: seems fun, relaxed, more of a overall knowledge type of course rather than studying some theories from a book.

Intermediate Korean: I have mixed feelings about this one, so far it has been quite easy especially the grammar, but then again I know I lack a lot in vocabulary section and that the advanced one would be too difficult for me. So i’ll just need to stick to this and immerse as much new things as I can.

Most of the courses have midterms, final exams as well as group project. We don’t really get homework on any other classes than Korean + pre-reading materials on some courses. The teaching seems to be good quality and as I said, other than the corporate finance teacher, everyone speaks good and clear English.

This is it for now. Please ask if you have any questions or are curious about anything related to the campus life or studying in Korea overall. 

[yenneykorea]

Good bye Busan, hello Seoul!

Finally I have time to write! Couple past few weeks have been quite hectic, not saying I wouldn’t have had any time to write, not at all, I probably could have posted way earlier, but when you have the free time it easily goes into skyping or just surfing the internet. But now, I’ll force myself to finish this today so that you can know a bit what I have been doing. So let’s start from when I was still in Yangsan.

On Tuesday, over two weeks ago..... We went to Busan to

1. Jin to get his school books printed 

2. fix my luggage bag. 

While we were waiting both of those to be done we decided to go for a walk to a park nearby.

So cute yes I know...

To be honest I have to let the pictures mostly tell what happened because unfortunately I can’t remember too detailed anymore since it was so long time ago. But pretty flowers, yay.

Actually in the center of the park and on top of the hill there was some tower but we didn’t visit it because it costed. It’s the best to be cheap and avoid all the places that cost.

I think it was still around the Korean independence day time so a lot of places had Korean flags.

As we were walking around the park we found a escalator that took to Nampho, the shopping street that I had visited earlier with Iiris, so we went there to explore and have some bubble tea.

Caaaaat 

On Wednesday we went hiking to a mountain right next to Jins home. That was something I actually really wanted to try. Anyways, we went to the mountain and followed the signs to the way up. But it was tough, seriously tough, the hill was occasinoly really steep and had even ropes to hold on. We did in the end find our way to the very top. We enjoyed our the view on top for a moment and started to find another way down, since as I said our first route was rather steep, and we did find another way that wasn’t really much better in the end, many times I was afraid I was going to fall. Anyways, as we got home we found out that the way we took was actually one of the most difficult ones

On Friday we visited the big aquarium near Heundae beach. It was really cool, it has been quite some time that I have visited an aquarium. I was especially impressed by the big aquariums as the one above. Also, there were some part’s were you could actually walk above the aquarium and that was so so so scary for me. I almost could not make it.

Sorry, most of my pictures are about medusas because they don’t move too much so the pictures come out okay-ish. The photographing environment was pretty bad as you can imagine since it was dark and there's glass between the fishes and you (obviously). These particular medusas live upside down by the way, that’s so silly looking though.

Since we enjoyed creatures of sea in aquarium what would be better way to continue the theme than to go eat seafood? It was good otherwise but there was some odd fish that was chewy and....that’s not my favorite type of fish.

And yeah, finally the day of Jin going back to USA arrived. It was sad, not denying that and I did cry quite some bit, but I feel like it was much easier than previous time, when I had stayed up almost all night and was crazy tired. Also maybe because we have been separated for more than we have been together it’s kind of easy to get back to the routine of texting and skyping. Anyways, all in all I can say that the time I spent together with Jin has been one of the best times I have had, not only because I spent it with him but because I got to experience so many new and fun things.

Breakfast at Orange guesthouse, I totally recommend it to anyone who’s looking for cheap place to stay in during stay in Seoul.

I don’t have many pictures from the week I stayed in guest house in Hongdae area but what I did basically was meeting some friends, eating food and window shopping as well as visiting IKEA with another finn, Lotta.

With one of the friends I visited dog cafe and for once I actually had camera with me. So enjoy some pics of....dogs.

This one looks so done with everything.

The dogs in the cafe weren’t super friendly nor scared or angry, they just didn’t really care about the people too much. When you first go in you get snacks and that’’s basically all the dog’s cared about. 

Some of the dog’s did went to people lap’s to sleep and to be petted, but in my case I had to really struggle to get any of the dog’s to approach me but I succeeded in the end!

Week ago I also finally could move into my dorm! I need to take pictures later on of my room and the campus are and talk about the dorm & school life here a bit more specifically. But for now let’s just see what I have been doing.

First thing is eat. Often grilled meat, samkyeopsal. It’s just really good food to eat when going out with friends and not even really expensive either. For those who don’t know the concept of Korean BBQ, you grill the meat in the center of the table, often there is pipe to suck the smoke away but you might still end up smelling like BBQ after eating, but I mean who wouldn’t like to smell like delicious food?

The area below is Hongdae, it’s a place where a lot of young people often meet and i don’t wonder why at all, it’s full of affordable clothes, restaurants and pub's as well as night clubs. The area is full of life from, not from the very morning actually, but mid day to early hour’s of the morning.

While we were walking we run across the Hello Kitty cafe, we did go see the area but did not order anything. It’s a fun concept tho.

Hongdae is known as an artsy area in Seoul and I could definitely see it when we happened to walk to this art market.

The place has also a lot of graffitis. Also notice the homeless guy under the slide lol. Good choice of home.

There were also some artists that did real time portraits for about 10e. I really want to get one done before going back home because those guys are seriously talented.

While we were walking around we some guy taking pictures of these stairs so we decided to take pictures there as well and asked the guy to take the picture for us. While we were doing so we found out that the guy actually used to go the same school as we now and he even had the same major as the other two girls. What an rare coincidence.

Here are the few pictures of my school I have taken. This is the building that you can see first when arriving to the campus area.

Here’s a view when climbing up to our dorm, which happens to be on the very top of the hill. Oh well, at least I will get some exercise...

That’s not everything that has happened here but most of the time I haven’t really taken pictures so I’m not going to explain too carefully what I have done. As a summary I can say that I have been eating out a lot and spending time with my new friends, overall just having great time!

I’ll try to carry camera around more in the future and maybe tell more detiled about some certain topics, but as for now, thank you for reading and have a good day!

(comments and questions are always welcome) 

[yenneykorea]

Haeundae beach and other random updates

Let’s start with the random updates, which I don’t have too much pictures off. Because the truth is that in the end most of the days I do nothing too special and pictures, if I happen to even take ‘em, are mostly from the phone. Anyhow, to recover from the weekend trip we stayed almost all weekdays home. We did go for a walk one day and saw the biggest spider ever! (Maybe it doesn’t look like so in the pic but seriously it was)

If you get bitten by spider that big I can assure you will turn into spider-man.

Other day we went for a ride bike, but to spice things up a bit we chose…double bike? I don’t know what its called for real but you probably know what I mean. It was something I have wanted to try forever and I finally did. At first it was little scary and I felt like we would fall at any moment, but as we got the drill of it it was really nice.

On Saturday we finally headed to the famous beach of Busan, Haeundae. As you can see from the pictures bellow, it was so so crowded! Not just one spot but the whole beach area was just packed with people.

It’s a shame that the place is so crowded because it’s kind of lame to go swim when there are tens of people right next to you. The water was nice temperature tho, nice and refreshing when you first go in but pretty warm after you get used to it. But damn it, as a Finn surrounded by lakes mostly, it was kinda nasty how salty the water was and also it stings nicely when it get’s into the eye (all credit for Jin letting me experience that).

That’s us, tho notice the lady in the corner. Why is she wearing a jacket and long pants to beach??? What makes it even better was that she was occasionally laying on her back as if she was trying to tan. What???

I think asides from the amount of the people there is one huge downside to this beach: there are no proper places to change and wash. Yes, there was a public shower/changing room but it costed, don’t know how much tho, and what is more it had huge line. So I ended up changing in a tiny WC stool that smelled absolutely horrible. But I guess that’s what you get in huge popular beaches like that.

The beach is right next to a city and for that reason people dress kind of whatever so it was really odd to see often very conservatively dressed Korean girls walking around wearing even only bikinis in a city setting like that. ( Not in the picture tho and well, there weren’t too many but still...odd)

For dinner we had meat soup with rice which is a actually one of the dishes Busan is known for. Nothing too fancy flavors, just meat soup with fresh taste of green onion but that actually fits my taste very well.

Nice sunset, ay?

When we went out again for a walk we noticed there was performance going on a stage on the beach so we stopped to see it for a moment. If anyone is interested the group is called LABOUM and personally I do like their debut song, you can watch it on the video bellow.

Our destination for the walk was the Dongbaek Island that is right on the right side of the beach. I don’t really understand why is it island tho, at least where we walked it was firmly attached to the other parts of the beach, but who knows.

My trustful source of information, Wikipedia, tells that the Island is a popular fishing area. I doubt you would get fish that close to noisy beach but maybe the fishers know better than me.

Our walking didn’t continue for too long tho, because it would have been really long trip and Jin was carrying heavy backpack so we gave up and returned back to the area with the huge screens.

The main event for that day was finals of the computer game called Blades&Souls, I believe. Many of you probably know this already but gaming is a big deal here and the tournaments are big events.

As you can see, the budget was not small, having huge screens, famous performers and a gorgeous firework show.

Also, the winner of the tournament won 30,000,000 wons which equals to over 20 000 euros. What is more, the top three finalists are sent to the world championship and I would not be surprised if these guys won it as well since the game is Korean and Korean usually do well even world wide.

As a congratulation performance they had invited 4Minute which is very popular group in Korea for those who are not familiar. Again, if you are interested, you can see below the most recent music video from the group.

The next day we actually headed to Busan again, this time to meet fellow Finn, Iiris (Finns can check out her blog here) who we had met for lunch previously during the week as well. Also, Iiris was actually the one who introduced me to the meat soup and rice dish, so thanks for that! (it’s a good dish, okay)

Again, what else could we do when meeting someone than eat? We had some spicy-ish chicken sauce thing as you can see, where later on added rice so it was fried rise in the end, I suppose. That’s actually quite common here, you have some sauce dish, you eat most of it but leave some and after that you get rice or noodles to mix in. (I’m not sure how it works tho,like is it part of the set or do you buy it separately)

Later we ditched Jin to PC room and went to some shopping to Nampho. The main street that you can see above is mostly brand clothes and more expensive things but when you go deeper to the small streets you can find really cheap places to shop, I found a basic white t-shirt for a bit over 2 euros, not bad at all.

We separated with Iiris and joined Jin again to meet his friend couple for dinner. Nothing too special to mention about it except the food. Nothing special about the meat, it was delicious, but the noodle looking stuff underneath. It’s not noodles, it’s jellyfish. Shredded jellyfish in wasabi flavored sauce. The texture was really odd, can’t really even describe it. And the wasabi tho, the spiciness hits so hard that I felt like nail was put through my nose and stuck on the top of my head. Not pleasant.

That’s for now, there has been some delay with this which I apologize. I still have over week worth of things to write about so keep tuned for that!

[yenneykorea]

The georgous Geoje island

Last weekend we did trip with Jin to possibly one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. The trip started by us leaving to Daegu where my bf friend, who we traveled with, lives at. Small fact about Daegu, it’s apparently the hottest city in Korea and I sure did feel it. Being outside literally feels like being in a sauna! And that is why our choice of meal was again cold noodles. I really love this dish, it’s so refreshing and just perfectly fits my taste.

After the meal we went for stroll around the campus area (because we stayed in the friends apartment, that was on the campus area, while he was at school) and visited arcade and PC room. I have also wanted to try strawberry bingsu so we headed to Seolbing to have it but they didn’t have it on the menu anymore and that was the case in every other place but Baskin Robins (shop taht sells ice cream), but well, having Baskin Robins bingsu was definitely a mistake because the ice was so poor quality, there was barely strawberries and juts strawberry ice cream. Those who haven’t tried bingsu should know that the quality of the shaved ice is so important, in Baskin Robins it was actually just shaved ice, with rather big clumps, when better places have, I believe, frozen milk that is shaved and it’s really like eating powder snow. Anyways, I have now find out that strawberry season is now off, so no strawberry bingsu for me.

After the friend got off the school we went to pub nearby and had some food and drinks and I can say for sure that peach soju is my favorite! Well, I actually just like anything peach flavored but aaanyways… The next day we woke up painfully early and headed to Geoje that is an island in the south part of Korea and where the friends girlfriend lives at. On the way we stopped on a rest stop for guys to have some breakfast and after that went out to see the view and just wow…

I don’t know if I have ever been on a rest stop with this beautiful view. It was way more beautiful in real life because you could see the sea shore, that was unfortunately not easy to capture with camera, so no picture of it. But let’s move on. We arrived to the Geoje island, picked up the girlfriend and headed to our first destination.

We picked really good time to visit the place from that point of view that there were not THAAT many people yet. Because when we were going to leave the place there was a ridiculously long line and I have no idea how all those people could have fitted there at all because the parking area was very limited.

The place we visited was called windy hills and it was so gorgeous. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t seen sea too many times in my life but I was so mesmerized by the clear, bright blue colored water.

As the place was called windy hills they obviously got to have windmill too!

Here’s us all. Also, from the hair you can notice that as the name says, it was windy, which was not bad thing at all though, because not surprisingly it was boiling hot that day as well. I actually got my first sunburns in Korea that day for not applying sunscreen on the neck. Well done me!

The pictures don’t really make justice how great the place actually was but I mean look at that…

The pictures above are from the shore/beach area that you could go if you stepped out from the main trail. Even though it looks really pretty, it was full of bugs. Like seriously a lot. Mostly just the one species that lived on the rocks though. It was quite funny when you moved there and you could see huge flock of the bugs just escaping all directions to find safe spot.

After spending enough time on the windy hills we headed to have some food. It wasn’t spaghetti, although it really looks like it on the picture but it was actually bean sprouts and some really odd fish in spicy sauce. It was good, but maybe slightly too spicy to have as main course and the fish…It really was odd. The texture wasn’t soft and easily crumbling like most fish but kind of chewy. 

After the meal we headed to movie theater see Mission impossible. It wasn’t maybe the best decision to see a movie when you are exhausted from waking up really early and then spending the day in extreme heat, because right after first 30mins I started to doze off. Oh well, at least I know how the movie starts and ends.

Nothing too much to tell about the rest of the night, but I got to mention this meal. Because that innocent looking meat on the right, it was the spiciest thing I have had on the whole time in Korea. But the most evil thing was that it also tasted really good. So what I did was eat the spicy mean, suffer in pain while gulping down cold water (I know water doesn’t really help tho), eating some other foods, then thinking “Oh, the spiciness wasn’t that bad after all and it was quite tasty too. Let me have just a bit more..” and the same starts from the beginning.

Also, I would like to mention that we spent a night in a public sauna, jjimjilbang. How jjimjilbang works is that you first go to the bathing section (ofc women and men have their own ones) that has locker room to store your stuff and a bathroom with water pools of different temperatures as well as sauna I believe. After cleaning yourself up you go up to the common area wearing the clothes jjimjilbang gives to you. There you can visit rooms of different temperatures, use massaging chair or buy food and drinks. You can also sleep there which was the reason for us to go there. It was pretty uncomfortable tho, because you get only thin mattress and rock hard pillow to sleep with, I wouldn’t call it pillow at all though, just a block of some not-so-soft material. To add to all that it was freaking warm. Well luckily or not luckily, I can’t decide, I didn’t need to suffer for too long because again we left out really early.

The first destination of the day was mireuk mountain. We went up by cable car, which actually is the longest one in Korea. It was kiiiinda cool, but having a slight fear of heights, I couldn’t stop thinking what if it would drop or something as catastrophic would happen. 

As you might guess, we made it up without dying, and from there we started the climbing. It had been made “easy” by having stairs to climb on, but due the heat it was far from easy. It could have been fine if there had been shadow but as you might believe, there are not too many trees on top of a mountain to give you shade.

The place itself was beautiful though. It was so green and the view was breath taking. 

Unfortunately, it was pretty foggy (because of heat? or clouds?) so taking pictures was quite difficult. 

There were also quite some butterflies and dragonflies. Luckily, Jin managed to capture couple focused pictures because most of what I took looked more like this:

God damn it camera, could you focus on what I want to capture at least once in a while???

This is a great start of my butterfly whisperer career though! As you can see, I didn’t choose butterfly life, the butterflies chose me. 

Anyways, not too much to tell about the trip more than that we went up to the very top, enjoyed the view, melted in the heat and got back down. From there we moved to buy some honey bread, that is the specialty food of the area, and let me tell you, seeing a water dispenser and fan (in the store) have never before brought me such joy as it did after climbing the mountain.

The next place we visited was a hotel area where we rented two bikes and while Jins friend and his gf rode the bikes first, we went to the beach nearby and sat in the shadow of the trees. And I again I can’t stress how the camera can’t capture the beauty because it was so gorgeous. Also, it’s awesome to be outside when you have shadow and access to cold water.

The bugs in Korea tho! They are huuuge. I mean can you see that bug? It’s not like I zoomed in crazy much and that it’s actually tiny little insect but it was seriously the size of a thumb. Also, bees or hornets, whatever they are, look way bigger as well and as a person who is afraid of yellow and black colored bugs, I’m not too happy about that fact. 

When our friends returned it was our turn to ride the bike on the road going along the seaside. 

We passed an area of pensions and maan I would love to stay there. 

We enjoyed our bike ride and the view, got eventually back. We originally had planned to visit an art village after that, but I was so exhausted due the heat that we skipped that, which I appreciate very much, I mean I even fell asleep on the car, and went straight to eating. I was still way too much out of this world when we started to eat so unfortunately no picture of our food. It was good though, we had squid and bean sprouts in spicy sauce and rice, some odd pizza that had basically no other topping than cheese and some spice, meat dumplings and cold acorn jelly soup (which was so so so good).

But yeah, that’s about it. I had great time and wish to visit the are again someday. From Sunday until today, Wednesday we have been just lazing around at home so nothing too much to write about that. So, I’ll update you about my life again next week! 

[yenneykorea]

De är mörk och kalt här i Finland. Njuta som du kan där... p.s. kattencafé oj så häftiggg <3

oj jaa.......jag would svara på svenska but jag forgot already alla im sorry:/

[yenneykorea]

Hahahha i love it when you tell something like "we went to the booth (SURPRICE MATAFAKA)" XD keep that writing style gurl

Ay-yo thanks!

[yenneykorea]

Ai alienin rekisteröintikortti

Kyllä, kaikki ulkomaalaiset Koreassa ovat alieneita!👽

[yenneykorea]

Finally, Busan!

Last week we headed to Busan with my boyfriend and her sister. The main reason for this trip was to leave the Alien registration card application form to the Immigration office. It didn’t go that smoothly in the end, maybe because of lack of research. The main problem was that I study in Seoul but I wanted to leave my application to Busan office although it’s advised to leave the application to closest office which definitely is not Busan for someone who is going to study in Seoul. Why could I not then just wait and leave the application to Seoul office when I get there? The problem is that you can’t get telephone subscription or internet without the card (this is how I have understood) and since I’m going to be alone without Jin for a week before school starts, I would rather have access to internet wherever I go than just rely on the random free WiFi you could possibly find. Anyways, in the end it all turned out rather well and I was able to leave the application, it just has different address on the register than what my schools address is so I will need to change it later on when I get to Seoul.

I didn’t really take that many pictures during the trip since it was mostly about the application. The above one is from the Busan train station. You can see those kind of fountains(?) and kid’s playing in them quite a lot in Korea.

For dinner we had big’s feet and some soup. It was good and kind of got a Finnish taste when you dipped it to a sauce with mustard tasting wasabi(?) in it.

Looks good right? Below all that meat was the bone parts and the skin(?) that has kinda nasty texture because of the gelatin. It’s like, fat texture maybe, that kind of kinda soft and slimy. But it was good with the sauce actually.

I have no idea what day this was, but we went a nice small restaurant to eat some 물회 (mulhwe) that translates into water raw fish, I guess, I don’t know why though because the dish was vegetables, greens and raw fish in spicy sauce. It was good otherwise but the fish had some bone pieces in it so the texture was a bit...interesting to say. Can’t leave out that we had some boiled octopus for appetizer and although it’s one of the most exotic looking foods I have had it was actually good and I would definitely eat it again!

After the meal we drive some good hour and got to this area that had some historically meaningful buildings, I’m not sure weather they were the original, restored ones or rebuilds but they sure were beautiful. Only downside was that the whole place was packed with people. You can’t see that in the pictures because I’m a professional photographer (just kidding) but so many people taking pictures and selfies, again it wasn’t even any special day and so many people. I just can’t really get used to that.

On Sunday we decided to see Yangsan a bit more so we got to E-mart, bought some snacks and headed to the water park area of Yangsan. Just to make clear, it’s a normal park where there’s a small lake that has some water fountains in it that I unfortunately didn’t caught on camera. 

We also bought this kind of potato screwer that’s a whole potato (in one piece!) fried around the stick. It was good but that’s because it had some powdered, rather sweet, spice mix on it.

As a Finn it’s really odd how fast it get’s dark even during summer time. As many probably know, in Finland the sun is up almost all night during the summertime (I don’t know is it still so). Anyways, there’s probably 30mins difference between this pic and the previous pics above.

In the park area there were two huge swimming pools for kids to play in. I think that’s really awesome since the weather is really hot and aside from the valley there are not many places for kids to play in water. Just a random note but it seems Koreans use the public spaces way more than in Finland at least. Maybe it’s just that there are many people overall but for example this park, I didn’t expect it to be that full.

Our next stop was the Yangsan tower that Jin hadn’t actually visited before either. The view was obviously great, especially since it was a night and you could see all the lights. Again, what I said about public places being used more applies to the tower as well. There were surprisingly many people there, specially in the cafe that was a floor below.

The viewing floor and cafe had tons of books, so we got some overpriced ice tea and had a short study date. The book choices might not seem that impressive but at least I understood most of what was said in them.

The next day we headed to Busan again because I wanted to visit a cat cafe, so that was our main destination. And let me tell you guys, it was awesome! For entrance fee you needed to buy a drink from the menu and they were quite pricey but that's understandable since it didn’t have any other fee. The man working there also gave us a package of chicken to give to the cat’s

As I expressed earlier I think cat cafes are such a cute and fun concept for a cafe. Some people could wonder how ethical is it to have many cat’s in one area with so many people coming and going everyday, but at least in this cafe all the cat’s seemed to be in good condition, they weren’t afraid of people, long haired cat’s had no tangles and the they could all hide away from peoples reach if they wished to do so.

Only downside I could find was that some cat’s peed on the furniture and occasionally the cat’s had some clashes put oh well, I don’t think that’s avoidable that with so many cat’s. Also, below you can see this cat with no fur and oh maan, she sure had some temper. I had couple cat’s around me that I fed the chicken to but this guy on my lap decided that everything was for her and she just crapped my hand with her paw and pushed the chicken to her mouth. You can even see in the picture how her paw is guiding the food to the right direction.

After the cat cafe we visited some game arcade and then went to a multi room. Since many of you probably don’t know the concept of multi room yet let me lighten up you a bit. In multi room you pay either for entrance or for time (depends on the company) and you get your own room with different things to do in. Well, actually I don’t have any other experience than this one so I don’t know what other multi rooms offer, but this one at least had a Wii with large variety of games and you could also have some board games from the reception area. In this case the fee was similar to the cat cafe, you buy something from the menu. When we were leaving Jin also let me know that there was a free snack bar, but that didn’t really benefit anyone anymore at that point. All and all, I like that concept a lot as well, you can go with your friend and you can have great time without actually needing to purchase all those games.

If anyone is interested, we had berry yogurt bingsu.

The day doesn’t end yet though, oh nope. We also found a photo booth area and went take some pictures. Again, freaking fun and not really expensive, you get set of (tiny) pictures to share with someone for 5-6e. So the way these booths work is that you go into a booth (surprise) that has green background and professionally good lighting and then you choose background from the screen and then you just pose. But let me warn you, the time goes fast so I next time I will be smarter and pre-think what I want to do in the booth. Again, doesn’t stop here but you actually then get out and move to the decoration station where you have tons of stamps and stickers and pens and so on to edit you picture. After that the machine prints it out for you, actually you could get them to phone as well through Bluetooth but we somehow failed it so no pictures to phone for us.

Gotta mention that the machine makes your eyes look so dolly which for guys might not be that most desired look, I mean look at Jin, what a flower boy.

 Okay, again time to end the story time, I have nothing else interesting to tell for now. Aaaand remember, all comments and questions are very welcome!

[yenneykorea]

Escaping the heat in Yangsan

Again almost a week has passed. I actually don’t know weather the time passes quickly or slowly. It feels like I have been here for such a long but then again it’s crazy that I have already spent two precious weeks out of the five I will be spending with my boyfriend in total. Anyhow, on Saturday we visited the Chinatown nearby again and I managed to take camera with me this time.

When you arrive to the Chinatown area from the apartment we stayed in you could see this kind of area with...Chinese yard? garden? I don’t actually know what it was, seemed like just a place where you could take pictures with Chinese vibe background (and that’s what I did as you can see bellow). 

Talking about taking pictures, especially selfies, Koreans have no shame! For real, anywhere you go, especially if it’s some pretty or famous area, you see people taking pictures of each others or themselves. For me, I still feel really awkward doing that (as you can see from the pictures), although I really like the fact that it’s not looked oddly upon. I don’t know if people in other countries are as shameless but I feel like at least in Finland you can’t really see thaaat many people with arms stretched out to take a selfies or even carrying a light tripod around for that purpose.

The area was actually rather packed that day since it was a weekend. When we visited the Chinatown for the first time it was almost empty. Anyways, the main purpose of our trip was to eat (obviously) so let’s dig into that.

Dumblings

Jjamppong

White jjajangmyon

What we had were some big ass dumblings, jjamppong which is spicy seafood noodles and white jjajangmyeon which is...white black bean noodle dish. Don’t ask me for more detailed explanation, I don’t actually know that well how black bean noodles can be white. Anyways, my favorite out of those three were the dumplings hands down. They were not the best dumplings I have had so far though, just as a side note.

View of Yangsan

The next day we finally packed our stuff and traveled to Yangsan, where my boyfriends family lives at. I was very nervous about the whole “staying with boyfriends family” thing because of the Korean culture. The whole concept of dating is a bit different in Korea, it’s not odd to parent’s meet the significant other of their child for the first time when they are already seriously thinking about getting married. And that’s defiantly not the case with us yet, to clear things out. 

Another view of Yangsan

Luckily so far everything has been fine. The family is super nice and they don’t seem to mind me staying over. Obviously, I can’t know what they really are thinking though, I mean, Asian cultures are known for the aspect of hiding negative feelings after all, so even if they would hate me I doubt they would say it right on to my face anyways. Well, maybe no one would do that regarding from the culture, but you get my point. 

Love locks on the bridge in Yangsan

We also have quite some language barrier despite the fact that I know some Korean. That’s really a shame because I would love to join the conversations more but since I’m not confident with my speaking skills yet and need to focus a lot to even keep up what people are talking, I mostly stay quiet. 

All in all, it’s really great to see what normal family life in Korea is like. One thing I can say for sure though, the food is great! I haven’t had one bad home cooked meal so far and I really hope that the school cafeteria food can keep up the quality later but...we’ll see.

While I have been here I have mostly lived just a normal everyday life. We have seen a bit of the Yangsan, eaten great food, went for a late evening walks, watch TV shows and played Go Stop, which is the game you can see in the picture above. Talking about Go Stop, it’s kinda complicated with all the rules and most about luck in my opinion, but it’s really fun, especially when you play with money. Not with our own tho (not gambling), all the money goes back into the coin pouch afterwards, although that's what the game seems to be for since many of the rules relate to the multipliers of the money you get if you win the game. Anyhow, I will definitely buy one to bring back home to play with friends.

On Wednesday we escaped the heat by going to a valley. The valley had a temple way up in the end of the road and going there wasn't definitely the heat escaping part of the trip. I might look happy and all in the picture, but let me tell you: It’s all fake. It was freaking hot! Like everyday here. And when you walk hill up, nope, not pleasant at all. 

I don’t know why but I really liked these dragon turtle statues on the way.

I was surprised to hear that the temple was still in use and there were monks actually living there. They sure have a nice car at least. 

Anyways, the main reason for the visit was the stream running down the valley. I had never experienced anything like that before, there were families, couples and friend groups resting and playing in the water all the way up until where the zone where you couldn’t go swim anymore started.

Mostly the water was rather shallow, which is good for kids play in. Mostly the people visiting seemed to actually be families and the whole place reminded me of those beaches along the lake where many families spend the hot summer days in Finland. 

One point we stopped at had actually really deep water due to the waterfall. It might not look like it but you couldn’t even touch the bottom time to time. Also, the picture doesn’t make justice for the place because it was so beautiful. The water was crystal clear and actually quite cool. You could swim there easily but after spending some time in at least I got really cold.

As you can see, it was really green and foresty, if that's even a word, and I was really impressed by the mountains surrounding us. Since there was water running downwards the stream all the time I couldn’t help but wonder where does the endless water come from and apparently it’s stored to the roots of the trees or something similar. I guess it then leaks to the ground and gets filtered through the ground because since was so so clear and clean. Here’s your geography(?) lesson of the day, your welcome.

That’s all for now again. I have already visited some couple more cool places but more about them the next time! Remember that all comments and questions are very welcome! 

[yenneykorea]

First week in Korea!

Well, not a full week but the first five days. So far my days have been mostly packed, full days staring from 10am and ending at midnight. But I like it here, no doubt. It’s slightly different from what I thought tho. A bit more old looking and dirtier. My idea is mostly from blogs and videos that show probably just the more fancy side of Korea so rather understandable. Also, something that I was really curious about was what does Korea smells like. (I can’t be the only one who wonders what different countries smell like, right?) I was surprised to notice it occasionally smells bad here. Like dog food. Not all the time tho, not at all, but sometimes you get those kind of clouds of dog food smell. Also, depends a lot on the area you are at, the cleaner and newer the place the better it smells of course. 

But let’s move on from that very interesting topic for now. My trip to Korea went rather well, only trouble I faced was that our car didn’t start when we were about to leave (which caused so so much stress tho) but luckily I made it in time to the train station by taxi. When I arrived to Korea I had my boyfriend Jin waiting for me there (surprise surprise for those who didn’t yet know about us) and we took a subway to the place we are staying in, which is in Incehon. 

This is the view you can see from the street we were staying in. 

Actually, the apartment is close to china town (defiantly should have taken pics there to show you guys, maybe I’ll take later) and that’s where we went to eat after leaving the luggage. Kinda ironical to eat Chinese food right after arriving to Korea, but oh well, it’s Korean Chinese. After that we took a subway to Bupyeong station which is a place where you can transfer the subway so there is also underground shopping area. And it was huge, for real it’s not just couple shops, it’s tons of different shops in an area that’s like an labyrinth (again, defiantly should show it to you). Those kind of subway station shopping areas are apparently the cheapest places to shop at, I think most clothes are between 10,000-20,000w which is about 8,5-17e. Not that expensive ay? I haven’t yet bought any clothes so I don’t know how well I could fit them since clothes in Asia are known for being overall smaller than western clothes. Also, the shops don’t have fitting rooms so… it’s a game of luck weather the clothes look good on you or not.

From the subway station we went up to the streets to find something to eat which in this case was ttokbokki and kimbap. No pictures of that, I was too hungry to care about having something to post later (yes I’m such a good blogger). Anyhow, it was good. For those who don’t know ttokbokki is rice cake in spicy sauce, I was surprised that it was sweeter than I though it to be. I mean, I have seen many Korean foods on TV before so I have my own idea what the foods could taste like and it’s very interesting to finally try them.

Mango bingsu

After meal you obviously need dessert, so we headed to Seolbing cafe to eat mango cheesecake bingsu which was so good. For real believe me, probably one of the best things I have eaten so far. Bingsu is basically shaved ice, which you can’t see in the picture tho, since it’s under all the toppings. 

The next day we hopped on the subway and headed to Seoul. As a first destination we visited Heukseok where my school is located as well. Actually the school area is really big, I only saw just one small part of it.

View of the street on Heukseok

Since it was hot and humid day, like every day here so far, we had naengmyeon which is noodles in an icey cold broth, as you can see from the picture above. Again, really good. I don’t remember anymore the specific taste but the noodles were chewy, which I like, and the broth is really refreshing on a warm day. Also, it’s supper cheap, only slightly over 4e ,and the serving is huge.

In the evening we met a friend of Jin at a restaurant and had some samgyeopsal which is grilled meat and side dishes, as you can see from the picture. I feel like my blog will be really boring to read because I have nothing else to say about the food expect that it was good but... it was good as well. Specially the side dishes and sauces (which you can always get more if you ask) were so good complimentary for the meat. Also, what is interesting is that when you go to the restaurant they give you a big plastic bag to put your stuff into so that they won’t get the smell of smoke. How smart!

On Wednesday evening we visited Karosugil which is some kind of fashion area. Well actually you could notice it since the place was full of well dressed people, fancy cafes and expensive looking shops. There we ate some kimchi stew, which was actually my first time tasting kimchi. It’s kind of a big deal because kimchi is one of the most popular side dishes in Korea and that’s the food most Koreans tend to miss when being abroad. I didn’t like it horribly much tho at the time, especially when it was in the for of both stew and as a side dish it was a bit too much.

On Thursday we were invited to the house of another friend of Jin so that’s where we headed that day, but before going there we obviously had to have some food. The restaurant of our choice was located in this kind of indoor market where there were restaurants and ladies selling all kind of food ingredients and clothes. The restaurant is quite popular apparently since we planned to have it on a go today as a dinner again but there was a huge line so it would have taken tens of minutes to get the food so we just took something else.

As you might believe the smell wasn’t the most charming.

What we ate was this fried chicken with spicy sweet sauce. The sauce was like caramel to be honest, maybe a bit too sweet for me. But well, at least you don’t need dessert after that kind of meal. Also, as a side note Koreans tend to really like the sweet flavor, if you go to snack section most of the chips are sweet as well.

From there we took a taxi to the area, man-maid island Seongdo, where the friend lives at. Again, can’t help but be surprised how cheap it is here, taking taxi would have been at least twice or even more expensive in Finland. 

I had great time with Jins friends, we ate and talked, well I just tried to understand since the conversation was held mostly in Korean, and later on we went for a walk to area nearby. For those who know the triplets of The return of the superman, it’s was the area they live in, at least it looked the same. The area was really nice tho, new and clean and it had an area with traditional looking houses that had a cafe or restaurant in it.  

Overall I had really good time with those friends, although couldn’t have too much conversation because of the language barrier. But oh man, they were so kind-hearted, we just out of nowhere decided to stay over there and they provided all things needed for us and fed us so much food. Of course they know my boyfriend so that’s understandable but they never met me before but were still so friendly!

On Friday we had just a really lazy resting day: we ate some dumblings and kimbap on a way home and bought some instant noodles, fruits, snacks, soju and makgeolli and had them for dinner later.

These kind of flavored sojus have recently (well, not that recently anymore) become really big deal and you can find few different flavors from the stores. I have had only one glass of normal soju but I can already say that the flavored ones are way more tastier. I think the taste is almost like really strong sider but less sweet, does that make any sense? We also bought some berry flavored makgeolli buuuut that wasn't for me. Somehow a bit odd taste, could be because of the berry flavor, so I guess I’ll try the regular one later too and after that give my final conduct on makgeolli.

The cup noodle I had was fried thing(?) flavored and it had those kind of fish cake(?) lumps pretending to be fried food. Anyways, while I was eating I was really surprised to notice that I actually wished I had kimchi to eat with it even though I didn’t really like it on the first try. I guess I know the charm of kimchi now.

Buuut, let’s end it here for now. This is rambling from almost a week long period of time so I apologize for such a long post. I just simply didn’t have any time, computer nor proper internet earlier. Also what I’m gonna do next is to leave to Busan to my boyfriends home and probably going to mostly stay there until schools start, so expect some stories from the southern part of South-Korea!

[yenneykorea]

Almost ready to set and go

It’s finally happening! I’m leaving to Korea tomorrow and that’s pretty awesome I would say.

First of all for those who don’t know I’m going to be an exchange student for two semesters in Chung-ang university, Seoul, South-Korea. I’m going to study business as I study International Business in Finland and I’m going to live on the on campus dorm. Not sure if that’s a mistake tho, because of all the rules, I mean come on, do university students really need homecoming times?

A bit about the application process for those who would be interested about that. It went all rather well although I was extremely stressed during it. My family and friends have probably heard hundreds of times me saying “Oh, but what if I wouldn’t get accepted”, “What if I sent that paper too late”, “Oh, but everything must be going alright….right? RIIIGGHT?” and so on. Anyways, the whole process started during winter when I sent the application to become an exchange student and got accepted. After that I think I just filled some information documents, planned the year from the academic point of view and send application to Chung-ang. Then after school ended I got the official decision that I would be accepted to Chung-ang as well and from there I sent the Visa application and did course registration. Also, if I would need to tell two things that I have learned from this process and how I would advice future exchange students, they are:

1. Gather and send all the papers as soon as you can. Don’t just think you can get the papers couple days before sending them like I did. There was so much stress when I couldn’t get the papers as soon as I thought.

2.Everything costs. A lot. Specially if you go to Asia. New passport, flights, vaccinations, sending mail (surprisingly expensive especially if it’s express mail), Visa, things you need during the year, possibly souvenirs if you know people there beforehand. Luckily I live home so as the famous Swedish proverb says: “Pappa betalar”.

Anyways, back to that I’m leaving tomorrow. It’s certainly and odd feeling: I know I won’t be coming home for a long time and I feel partly really sad about it but to be honest, at the same time I just can’t wait to leave. Everyday during past week has been me just trying to think something to do to make the time fly faster. And now that’s it’s almost here…I don’t know, it’s just odd. (Wow, my describing skills are on fire)

About this blog now, I’m actually quite nervous about this. I know it’s mostly only the people I know who are going to read this but I don’t actually know if it makes it any better. I’m somewhat scared of voicing my thoughts this publicly. And to add the fact that English is not my native language and I don’t feel fully confident with my ability to write interesting content…yeah, this is a bit scary for me.

From that we can smoothly change to the next topic, which is that I should do scary things. Seriously. I feel like I have lived most of my life tugged deep into my comfort zone. I have lived most of my life in the same city, most of my friends have been with me since elementary school, I rarely post anything on social mediums because I’m afraid of people judging me. And I truly want to change that. This is not the first time I think like that but this time I want to succeed, at least to some extent. And I feel like I’m starting well with writing this blog…well, actually the bigger challenge is to share it with the people I know but I’m going to do that too. For sure.

To end this, I know this is not probably the most interesting post there is but I think it’s good idea to share my feelings and thoughts before I will go to Korea and will be too overpowered with everything new and exciting. So, expect more interesting stories, pictures and videos in the future!

Also, feel free to leave a comments and follow me here on tumblr (or blogspot if you can find me there). (Also for people on tumblr: I think there’s that notification thing (human icon?) on tumblr now so press that as well so that my posts won’t drown on your feed!)