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 took the time and liberty to compile a list of my good as well as my bad impressions about this country. Keep in mind that these are all my personal impressions and opinions. I am very curious myself how much my impressions will change troughout the course of my stay here.

Good things about Korea

- Korea is very safe. You don’t have to worry very much about things getting stolen here. People are mostly honest here.

- Korea is extremely convenient, the most convenient country I’ve ever been to. Want to watch a movie? Want to eat live octopus? Maybe you want to go to a bar and meet people? Wherever you are, all of these things are only a short walk away, and for those midnight cravings, you can rest assured that a 24h convenient store is pretty much guaranteed to be right in front of your door.

- Korean people are very good-looking and walking through the streets is very pleasing to the eye.

- Korean restaurants and food culture is great – even in case you are not so fond of the spiciness of Korean cuisine, the cheap prices of food in Korea will sway you. You can have a decent meal at a restaurant in Korea for as little as $3, and included in that price is as much free water as you can drink.

- Even though Korea is a hardcore capitalist country, people give you freebies surprisingly often. When I bought a laptop, I got speakers and a mouse as free ’service’ and many public buildings offer free water (hot and cold). When ordering food, speaking a little bit of Korean very often results in you getting free extras with your meal.

- People here are generally curious about foreigners. Though there is substantial racism here (as mentioned in the negative things list), most Koreans are paradoxically also absolutely intrigued with foreigners. It’s not hard to meet people interested in talking to you, especially college-age people. People are also often very nice to you – I’ve gotten free rides on motorcycles for having a pleasant chat on the subway etc.

- Subway. Right. Korea has quite possibly the best public transport system in the world. The subway is absolutely fantastic and so is the bus system.

- Shopping can be done cheaply and in typical Asian fashion in Korea.

- Koreans are absolutely technophile! I list this as a good thing since I expect that most people reading an internet message board will be, as well, at least to some degree. You can use a computer practically everywhere and on the subway, you will see plenty of Koreans watching movies on their cell phones.

- Koreans are perhaps the most ambitious and hard-working people I ever knew.

- Korean nightlife is great.

Now, on to…

Bad Things About Korea

- Korea is sexist. Very sexist. But it doesn’t just hurt the women. There is huge pressure on the women to be feminine and equally as much pressure on the men to be masculine and of course, the compulsory military service for males doesn’t really help matters. There are countless social problems caused by this strict separation of the sexes.

- Korea is too hot and humid in summer and too cold in winter.

- Korea is an extremely superficial country. In Korea, being ugly is the equivalent to being shunned all your life and young people can spend hours discussing only a love interest’s beauty. Being ugly in Korea is tough, for both sexes, but moreso for women and this explains why in Korea there are so many ads for diet programs, why there is so much plastic surgery and why many surveys have shown that Korean women are the ones to be most concerned with their looks out of all women in the world. Korean people are so obsessed with other people’s beauty that in most cases, conversation just isn’t going to happen if they find a prospective conversation partner to be physically unattractive. Which leads me to…

- Korean people don’t make good boyfriends or girlfriends on average, unless you are completely obsessed with them like me. Not only will their family make it difficult and will you have a tough time overcoming the language barrier, but the superficial culture they grew up in has caused most of them to be quite dull and uninteresting. They are a lot of fun to be around with, and they certainly are pretty/handsome, but dating them takes a lot of work and dedication.

- Korean people have this national disease of illusions of grandeur. They tend to not want to realize that, overall, the rest of the world, except for a few dedicated individuals, doesn’t really care about their country, might not even know where it is located and, worse still, might initially compare Korea’s economic power and standards of health to that of.. say, Cambodia. Koreans like to believe they are great people (maybe the greatest of all) and thus have a hard time coming to terms with the reality of their global insignificance. The Korean nationalism stems from a complex mix of feelings of superiority and inferiority compared to other nations.

- Koreans are rather xenophobic, especially if you are Chinese, Western Asian, South Eastern Asian or of African descent. A little bit less so if you are Japanese (though it largely depends on the people you meet, but in general, Koreans respect the Japanese more because of their power and wealth) or white (because Koreans equate whiteness with America, and America with money. And Koreans like money). There are plenty of Koreans who are not racist, though, and in everyday life, you will very rarely be the victim of outright racism directed at you, especially if you are a woman as most negativity is directed at male foreigners.

- Koreans are obsessed with money.

Overall, though, I love living here. What I love most is the lifestyle I am having here and despite the numerous problems of Korea, this lifestyle is enough to make me feel (mostly) happy with my life here.

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.