Well, while I was outside today, it started raining, so I had to walk home without an umbrella, getting all wet. However, it didn’t take long for a handsome Korean guy to approach me and give me his umbrella. Korean guys for the win. ^^

In other news, I spent 2 days of last week not in Seoul, but at Hajodae Beach, which is a little beach in an even tinier village set on the East Coast of Korea, bordering on the Sea of Japan…or East Sea, as it is also known in Korea. Well, regardless of what you wish to call the sea, this is where I went last week with my boyfriend, with the kind financial support of my boyfriend’s father (you know how there are so many girls online who complain their Korean boyfriend’s parents hate them and try to break them up? Well, I guess I can consider myself lucky then, because the parents of my kimchi lover not only do not mind us being together, but actually support our relationship).

 Hajodae Beach turned out to be very nice and the place we stayed at was a comfortable, though completely overpriced “Contel” (mixed condo and motel.. I had never heard of contels before, personally). However, what was decidedly less nice was the weather – it rained throughout our entire stay there, which resulted in us spending quite more time than I had imagined we would watching TV. Watching the weather report revealed that all parts of Korea were sunny those days – except, of course, for the province we were in, which was stuck underneath heavy clouds and prevented me from seeing the sun even once while I was there. It was quite frustrating, but we managed to make the best of it – instead of being depressed over the fact that my dream of resting on the beach all day while getting a charming tan had been pretty much ruined, we thought of other ways to entertain ourselves. Twice we went swimming when nobody else on the entire beach was and fully-clothed at that. It was fun, despite being somewhat of an unconventional holiday.

 On the second day of our stay there, we made a trip to Yangyang, the closest city – however, being used to Seoul, it wasn’t much of a city at all. I really missed Seoul while I was there. Despite the fact that I appreciated the change and being able to spend a lot of time with my boyfriend was fantastic, I ended up missing Seoul by the end of the first day. Have I become a true Seoulite already…? All in all, an enjoyable trip that not even terrible weather could ruin completely.

 The few pictures we took will be uploaded later.

Originally , I wanted to upload this post last Monday. Then, when I couldn’t on Monday, I promised I would on Tuesday – well, that didn’t work out either, and we’re looking at Friday night now. All because I’ve been so tremendously busy and preoccupied this week. Plus the fact that uploading the pictures and commenting them all took literally hours – and I’m still not finished uploading all. A good number of them, however, can now be found here: http://neavanille.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=4

 As I mentioned a few times before, I attended Bible Camp at Omega Presbyterian Church last Saturday and Sunday… despite not being religious. But, my boyfriend is, and he is volunteering at the church as a teacher for a group of children aged 4-12 , whom I had the pleasure to meet last Sunday and, as it often is with children, their charm immediately won me over. Though I am not Christian, and never will be, the atmosphere I had encountered at the church the Sunday before had impressed me deeply (I would never have thought I would feel so accepted and so part of a community. They say that as a foreigner, you will never truly be accepted by Koreans, much less Koreans you’ve just met. Well, despite all that, feeling totally accepted was exactly what I did). Though I might have attended church for less than noble reasons (basically, to make my boyfriend’s parents like me more), I did find plenty of reasons why that Sunday was not a wasted one. Even though I initially felt very dismayed at having been talked into attending… Bible Camp, I ended up not regretting it and coming home with a positive feeling and a happier outlook on life. I must say, though, that as an Austrian, “Bible Camp” is a very weird concept, as it doesn’t really exist there – at least not to my (honestly, quite religiously-challenged) knowledge. My mother even sent me a worried e-mail “child, what is this Bible Camp? You’re not hanging out with some sort of religious cult groups, are you????” Yupp, that was my first reaction as well.

 However, Bible Camp turned out to be very fun. On the first day, I was assigned the ‘job’ to take pictures and ’sell’ food during breaks (the children paid with stickers). I liked nearly all of the children very much, and while they had certain reservations about me the first time we’d met what with me being a foreigner (most children their age have probably never talked to a foreigner before in their lives) the second time we met, on Bible Camp Day 1, they were considerably more open to me, some even hugged me. The girls called me ‘unni’ (big sister), which I think kind of pissed of my boyfriend because they call HIM ‘ajeossi’ (uncle).

 The day started with Bible work-shops taught by Sung Ryong and the pastor’s wife (it keeps occuring to me that calling her just the pastor’s wife is kind of sexist (but I can’t call her anything else because that’s what everyone calls her and I don’t know her real name), because she is reduced to being associated with her husband, stripping her of her stand-alone individuality. But I think this is just how it’s done in Korea – people are very often addressed by their family connections, women more than men, although it happens to men as well. I believe Sung Ryong’s parents call each other “Sung Ryong’s mother/father”. In Korea, individuality doesn’t seem to be a very popular thought). After that, there was mass for the children with songs sung by Sung Ryong and a few sermons by the…. uh, pastor’s wife. The children went out to play some outdoors games following mass and all in all, the day was full of much more games and play than any ‘real’ Christian propaganda and in fact boring stuff was kept at a minimum for the children – which I think is reasonable given the attention span of children, and handled MUCH BETTER in Korea than in Austria, where the majority of churches are Catholic and the majority of church services are as dry as a nun’s gusset where you’re expected to shut up and wait until the ordeal is over. Compared to that, church in Korea is muh more enjoyable, especially the service for the children. Though it might all be a Protestant vs. Catholic thing, and Catholic churches in Korea might be not one bit better. Who knows.

 Anyways, on the second day, I was asked to help prepare ddeokbokgi (spicy rice cakes) for the kids and though I happily obliged, I was not so happy anymore after discovering that my t-shirt had ended up pretty red shortly after I was done. Still, I enjoyed to see the children take to MY spicy rice cakes with childish enthusiasm. On the second day, the children’s day was interrupted by the adult service at around 11 PM. Adult service is decidedly more boring than the one for children, but it’s quite bearable with all the songs we sing. Plus, it helps that I don’t understand a word of what the pastor is yapping on about – while in Austria, I kept thinking, “who are they trying to fool with this bullshit? Sinning? Man in the Sky?” here I am just blissfully unaware of everything said. ^^

The day ended with games when the children came back and after they had left for good, I was taken out by Sung Ryong’s parents for dinner and had two delicious servings of BBQed beef. In case you didn’t know, Korean BBQ is just out of this world, so if you haven’t tried it, DO IT NOW!

Check out the pictures for a lot more comments about the weekend and photos of all of the children. All in all I have to say that Bible Camp might be my most unusual experience in Korea to date – but it’s definitely something that, against all odds,  I quite enjoyed experiencing.

Well, I got admitted into University and am set to start my Korean language education with dedication (doesn’t that rhyme nicely?) on September 3rd. However, it is not Seoul National University that accepted me.

I was puzzled to find out that SNU had rejected me for unknown reasons since I had previously believed that these University language programs accepted everyone since they had nothing to lose (they’re not giving me any degree) and could earn a lot of money, but apparently I was mistaken. They cold-heartedly rejected my application without even bothering to contact me on time, despite the fact that the lady at the admissions office had told me I’d get an e-mail no matter what the answer was. Well, that was kind of… unprofessional.

So, all kinds of broken, I set out today determined to get another University to accept me, and ended up going to Sogang first because their session starts a month before Yonsei does, and I have very little patience left. Sogang is a relatively small, rather unknown Uni (though, considering it was founded only 47 years ago, it has so far managed to earn itself a pretty good reputation) but they are very famous for their Korean language program which is supposed to me more ‘Western’ and more communicative than the grammar-oriented programs at other Universities and considering that this is how I learned English and I figure it doesn’t matter much where you are studying as long as you put in extra effort, speak Korean outside of the classroom and read regularly. I went there at around 9 AM this morning (the University is around 30 minutes away on foot) and the man at the admissions desk immediately gave me the first scare – “what, you only have a tourist visa?” Dread started to work its way up my spine as he dialled the Immigration Office’s number to inquire whether I could change my tourist visa to a student visa later on, and I almost panicked when he mentioned the Korean word for Japan, figuring he was asking if I had to do a visa run to Japan mid-way through class. In the end, though, he hung up and told me it was all right and that I just needed to walk to the Immigration Office with the required documents and I’d be issued my student visa on time. Whew!

Next problem around the corner. When it came to paying my tuition fees and I tried the Global ATM in the basement floor, it kept giving me the message “amount exceeds approval limit”. Fuck, and all this while Korean Universities, despite living in perhaps the most high-tech country in the world STILL don’t accept credit card payments. The staff at the bank spoke no English at all and I was already considering to call my bank back in Austria to tell them to raise my limit when I remembered my MasterCard. Fortunately, this one didn’t have a limit and I was able to withdraw the 1,470,000 won tuition fees. I returned to the admissions office, paid it and immediately got admitted.

I am set to take my placement interview August 21st at 2:20 PM. I won’t be late!

It’s 10:26 PM here in Korea and the e-mail that SNU had promised they’d send me today…. didn’t come. Well, that was kind of anticlimatic. I’m going to call them tomorrow and see, but so far I’m terribly disappointed with the lack of organization at Korea’s so-called elite University if they can’t even keep the deadline they have written black on white on their website. Well, I’m going to see about this – if they don’t accept me, there are plenty of other Universities who will, but I’m disappointed nonetheless. I was counting on enrolling there, actually.

In other news, last Sunday I did something so extraordinary that I barely dare mention it here, something so rare you’ll be asking yourself if maybe somebody hacked myself or forced me to speak vile aspersions on the internet. But no, I swear it’s true – last Sunday, I did something I haven’t done in 2 years and haven’t done voluntarily since the dawn of time. I went…. to church. Church where I was immediately coaxed into attending regularly and even – hold your breath now – attempt BIBLE CAMP next weekend! I must have truly gone mad. Bibi bubu lala lulu, the insane person goes.

I haven’t updated in a while, mostly due to the fact that nothing especially exciting has happened since I’ve moved into my room and in fact, I’ve already settled into what could be described as a routine over here. I get up at whenever I like, usually in the afternoon, go out to meet a friend and spend the evening with them or have dinner by myself at the hasukjip (the hasukjip food, though it isn’t delicious by any means, is definitely eatable) and then spend the night with my lovely, lovely laptop and watch Korean TV dramas on it. When I’m not doing any of these things, I might be out by myself exploring a part of the city I didn’t get to see last summer, but all in all I’m not doing earthshatteringly interesting things these days anymore.

Except for maybe today. Today was one of the first days that I left the city of Seoul and ventured out into the suburbs, where I was scheduled to pick up Sung Ryong from his army service (that didn’t quite work out, as dumb me got lost on the way and I had to call him, demanding, “Save me!!! I’m lost!”. Yupp. I’m not that good at finding the way). The city was called Kimpo and in this city, for the very first time, I really noticed I was a foreigner. Foreigner means waegukin in Korean, which literally means “outside person” as far as I’m informed, and oh dear, I really did feel like an alien. People stared at me wherever I went and indeed I felt like an exotic animal in a zoo. It was a rather new experience to me – though people in Seoul do stare occasionally as well, I’ve never been subject to nearly as much attention before in my short life. It was an… interesting experience, to say the least.

About money… I am considerably spending more than I should, but I figure it is quite normal to spend more money in the first few weeks than in the ones following, so I’m not too worried. I had to buy a lot of things to settle into my life here, so my bill for this month should be quite scary. From now on, I’ll try to eat at my hasukjip as often as I can, leaving only public transportation and my cell phone bill left as causes of a financial state of emergency (I don’t think my cell phone bill will be that high – I rarely do phone calls and sending SMS is only 30 won per message). I believe I will be able to budget well and shop within my abilities in the coming months.

Korean school still hasn’t started and truthfully, I am getting quite anxious to finally hit the books and get down to studying. Though I know I deserve a bit of laziness after all the stress of the last school year (right, mom?), I actually truly want to take Korean classes and am looking forward to my regular classes a lot. On Monday , I find out if Seoul National accepts me or not. If they don’t, I’m going to cry.

It’s now been a few days since I moved into my own little room and I am as happy with it as I was in the beginning. It is great to finally live by myself and to be able to schedule my activities to my liking. I even love doing all my groceries shopping – I love Korea because you can buy any food you like at any time of the day, and in fact there are several 24/7 shops right outside of my room, which means I could theoretically buy chocolate bars or orange juice or whatever else I desire at 3 or 4 AM. I love it – it’s exactly the kind of thing I missed back home. This kind of urban freedom and how boundless it is, how, compared to a small village in Austria, you can do, see or have anything at any time of the night or day without having to drive a car. Everything is reachable on foot, subway or bus here in Seoul and the city has quite possibly the best public transportation system of the world.

The day before yesterday, I went to Yongsan Electronic Market with a friend (a couple of huge buildings and open-air shops that sell everything electronic your heart may desire, from computers and accessories for it over movies to cell phones) and bought a used laptop for 550,000 won. That may seem like a lot considering my tight budget here in Seoul (okay, it is a lot), but I don’t regret having bought it – I am going to be a college student for a few years now and sooner or later, I will need a laptop, so I might as well buy one now. Plus, Korea is definitely a better place to buy electronic equipment in than Austria is – not only are the prices cheaper here, but the quality tends to be very good, as well. I got a pretty nice, quality model for my money (I might post a picture some time) and plan on using it extensively. Thankfully, as I think I mentioned in a previous post, my hasukjip offers free internet access, which basically means I am now set up with a computer much like I was at home, with all the privacy your own room gives you and an internet cafe fails to provide. I have been ecstatically happy with my laptop these past few days and have been especially delighted with its fast internet speed, incomparable to the slow connection I’ve had to endure in Austria.

Korea is very hot and humid these days, and it is only scheduled to get even hotter in August. Asian humidity, for me as a European, is very hard to bear, but I will do my best to get used to it. Thankfully, air-conditioning in Korea is top-notch, as is the rest of the country’s technology. Korean people on the whole have a very strong affinity for electronical equipment.

There’s one thing that I haven’t talked about yet on this blog, despite the fact that it was the very thing I came here for in the first place: the Korean language. I have to say that, all things considered, I have made quite a bit of progress within the last few days, despite not having had the chance to take formal classes yet. I am good at chatting and sending cell phone text messages in Korean already and I am able to hold simple conversations. My Korean friends like to compare my language skills and my accent with that of a Korean child of 5 or 6 years of age. It’s doubtless, though, that I still have a long way to go until I reach the kind of proficiency I am striving for. Korean is a hard language, though getting to a conversational level is probably easier in it than it is in Japanese and Chinese – the real difficulty in Korean is the grammar and the sheer endless array of suffixes and politeness levels. It makes Korean a very, very complex, yet undeniably very intriguing language. Since the person I spend most of my time with speaks excellent English, I am currently not speaking as much Korean as I probably should, so I should make an effort to befriend a few people with very poor to non-existant English skills. Given that in Korea, like 80% of people don’t speak English very well at all, this shouldn’t pose to be much of a challenge.

I hope that all my friends and family back in Austria are not too worried about me – don’t worry, I am very fine and very happy here. Life in Korea is good.

I know you’ve all been waiting for this – I finally got around to uploading a few photos I’ve taken since arriving here. Admittedly, I am somewhat lazy with taking pics, so the staggering number my picture-taking has amounted to accumulates to nothing more than… 14. Yeah, but 14 is still better than nothing, so take your time to browse the following:

http://www.neavanille.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=2 Photos with comments! =)

It’s now been a day since I moved into my new room and it feels very good! Today, the old man even moved a fridge into my room – this is great as I can now save even more money by storing larger amounts of drinks in my fridge. The room has turned out to be a great deal and I’ll be eternally thankful for Sung Ryong for digging t up. Though, I still have a large amount of work ahead of me – I still need to unpack all my clothes, put all of them into my…. ‘closet’ and need to think of suitable places to store my books, DVDs, shoes etc. It will be so exciting to manage my own room and be fully responsible for everything about it.

I want to buy a PC I can use from inside my room and will probably set out to buy one tomorrow morning. Tonight I am meeting a female friend named Soyoon – she seems to be very nice and I hope we will have a lot of fun hanging out together.

I ended up not moving into the hasukjip my American friend had proposed – instead I let Sung Ryong find me another one, located farther away from the center of the region and therefore a lot cheaper. I already moved in today and I feel very happy having my own room. ^^ The new room costs as much as the one I had considered before, 350,000 won, but this room includes 2 meals a day! That should cut down dramatically on my monthly expenses. The room also offers free internet and TV connections and is being managed by an elderly couple who seem to be very nice and accommodating poeople. I do feel at home in my room and already went out to buy a few supplies for it, because I got it pretty much bare – I bought a blanket, pillow and, most importantly, a fan. With this heat and humidity in Seoul, it is nearly impossible to sleep without a fan or air conditioning, especially not for somehow like me who hails from a comparatively cool country. Now all that’s left for me to buy is a computer to make good use of the free internet and I’m all set!

Extra note for the concerned mother/Extra fuer die besorgte Mama: das neue Zimmer ist hinter 2 verschlossenen Tueren, da klaut sicher keiner was.

I haven’t had the time – and, to be honest, the motivation – to write lately, but seeing as how I’ve gathered so many experiences these last few days which I wouldn’t want to ever forget, I will do my best to remember as many noteworthy details as possible.

The day before yesterday, I managed to attain a phone with the help of a very good Korean friend of mine, Sung Ryong. It cost 30,000, but the design was bordering on ancient and to make things worse, the colour of said phone was a very boring, non-descriptive fridge-white. Still, I was happy to finally be able to contact people, so I bought it regardless of its mediocre looks, deciding right then and there that I would paint it pink with glittery pink nail polish! I did and photographed it too, so I will share my beautiful new phone with you soon.

Yesterday was probably the craziest day so far. Unlike the other days, I had no date in the evening, so I mostly hung out with the other guys from the youth hostel (I had to share my dorm room with 4 guys. Don’t worry, mom, I wasn’t hurt ). In the evening, one of my roommates, Steve, got a stalker in the form of a pink-wearing Korean guy who seemed to have drunken about a hundred bottles too many and seemed to be missing about a million times as many brain cells. The guy met Steve at the Family Mart, then followed him and simply walked into the hostel, where he started speaking in Korean. But in such a way that even the Koreans staying at the hostel didn’t understand what he meant and merely called him “the crazy guy.” Later that night, when I was at the computer, one of the guys in my room came out and told me that said crazy guy was standing in front of the window looking into the room, and just when I had walked into the room to see for myself, he actually walked through the front door into the hostel again! It was very scary, but thankfully then some of the other guests managed to chase him away and finally locked the door. (*Mama, mach dir keine Sorgen, ich lebe noch! *)

But good things also happened, or at least things who could potentially turn into something good. I went with an American friend who had been in Korea for over a year and spoke Korean extremely well to Shinchon, where I was shown a hasukjip (a kind of one-room apartment many college students (have to) choose as their choice of habitat) for 350,000 won a month (note to my family and friends at home: this is about 276.974 euros). I agreed to move into it today, but I might change the room after one month if a better opportunity presents itself as the room could definitely be cheaper. Still, I’m not complaining. As much as I like the guest house in Hyewha and as nice the people there are (the owner, Mijung, a 40-year-old lady who doesn’t act like an old lady at all, some of the Korean guys who work there, the other guests…), I do value my privacy and I generally dislike sharing my room with other people. Thus, even though the offer could’ve been better, I am glad to be able to move into it today.

Tonight I am scheduled to move into the room and meet Sung Ryong again, who I hope will help me with my phone again as a sudden problem has arisen. So all in all, I’m doing fine.

I arrived in Korea yesterday at approximately 8 PM after all three of my flights had been late (and they say Qatar Airways is 5 stars..). It feels great to be back! Since having spent all of summer 2006 in Korea (a few photos of which I have uploaded in my gallery), I have been craving to return all year long. Now that I’ve finally made it back, apart from the unbearable heat, I am happy with just about everything.

Today I went to drop off my application at Seoul National University. I was told I’d get the result of my screening on the 23rd. Let’s see how that goes – in case they reject me, I will apply to Yonsei, which might turn out being better for me anyway as it would be way closer to my room.

Today I still want to go a) cell phone hunting and b) room hunting. Both of these things are essentials and I’d prefer to have them done sooner rather than later. All of this while I hope that nobody will steal my bag full of clothes as I left that in my 6-bed dorm room this morning due to a lack of lockers big enough to store it in. In case someone does steal my bag, I’d be pretty, well, uh, fucked.

I’m already spending more money than I should. Today, on my way back from Seoul National University, I stumbled upon a little shop selling pretty, delicate high-heels for 10,000 won a pair, which is way cheaper than I’ve ever seen pretty high-heels priced at back in Austria . It’s hard being a woman sometimes.