Finally, an update!

So I realize it's been well over a month since I last updated this. I suppose that was due both to being busy with midterms and not having much exciting to write about as a result.

Anyways, all is well in Korea, except that it seems as though Spring will never really come. We have had a few strings of nice days, but they are always punctuated by unreasonably cold and rainy ones.

In a couple weeks or so I am apparently going to a concert called 'Dream Concert.' I say 'apparently' because I have not talked to anyone about it since we bought tickets online together at an internet cafe a few weeks ago. At any rate, the tickets were dirt cheap, about $4.50 each, since the entire concert is a fundraiser. The line-up of performers seems pretty impressive, though. Essentially every famous girl-, boy-band and solo artist in Korea will be there. I found a list of who is actually performing here: http://www.allkpop.com/2010/04/dream-concert-2010-performing-artist-line-up-finalized.

This weekend was pretty amusing. I went to HongDae (홍대) for the first time. It's another district of Seoul on the same subway line that I live on. I think I must be the last exchange student here to have visited Hongdae. It's one of the more popular regions for foreigners to go out to bars, clubs, etc. After that, in the morning, I went with some people from the SNU buddy group to go bungee jumping! I had never done it before, so it was pretty exciting. Now that I have, I definitely want to do it again sometime. I'm also much more tempted to go skydiving now :). Here's a video of my jump:

Anyways, just a quick update for now! Hopefully my next update will be a lot sooner~

-Curtis

Korean Class = Hard

I have to do two presentations today. One is for Human Computer Interface class, one is for Korean class. The Human Computer Interface is a powerpoint and I finished it hours ago, and i'm presenting it in English, so it should be fine. The Korean class presentation, however... Well, I have to do that one in Korean and I have not yet written a single word. I have around 9 hours left until I have to present it. The news articles that the topic was taken from are ridiculously hard to understand. I have to look up roughly 60% of the words in a dictionary. It's a very slow process... At any rate, I have to present on the following question:

무상 급식을 반대하는 쪽에서는 그것에 쓰일 세금을 모아 고등학교 학비 지원을 하는 것이 우선이라는 주장을 합니다. 무상 급식을 찬성하는 쪽에서는 고등학교 학비 지원과 초등학교 급식비 지원은 별개의 문제라고 주장합니다. 여러분이 만일 정치가라면 어떤 입장을 취하고 어떤 근거를 제시하겠습니까? 발표해 봅시다.

In essence, should the Korean government implement a new tax to subsidize free cafeteria lunches for elementary, middle and high school students in Korea. This would be difficult enough for me to present about in English...

Anyways, apart from being busy, Korea is still excellent ^^.

-Curtis

My Apartment

I remember someone (I think Tom?) asking me to post some pictures of my apartment, which I realize now that I haven't done yet. So, as per the ancient request, here are some pictures of my apartment from a couple weeks ago before I moved in. I'm sure it's considerably messier now... :S

There is also a desk with some overhead shelves and a small closet which I forgot to take a picture of. In the meantime I have somewhat unpacked and at least furnished my apartment with useful things like a floormat for the bathroom, some bowls, spoons, chopsticks and food for the cupboard, some sponges, laundry detergent, etc. Also, when I first moved in, things were ridiculously dusty and there were still some dirty dustpans and such lying around which I've cleaned up in the meantime. A couple more photos of the not-so-exciting view from outside my apartment. You need to climb quite a hill to get up here...

As a side note, that is quite the mess of wires...

~Curtis

Scenic Shots from the Engineering Buildings

I took a few pictures of the engineering buildings when it snowed last week. It looks rather nice in the snow :). The engineering buildings also keep their snow for a lot longer as they are much higher up. These were all taken from behind the 301 building (301동).

재미있게 보세요~

Curtis

Gyeongju

It's now Friday here in Korea, and it seems that much time has passed since my last post again... I'm really bad at updating this regularly >_<. At any rate, this past weekend I went to Gyeongju (경주) with about 40 other exchange students and a couple Korean students as well. Gyeongju is in the south near Busan (부산) I believe, and it is famous for its history and magnificient temples. I hear it used to also be the capital city of one of the old Korean dynasties (don't ask me which one). We took a tour bus (all 45~ of us or so) which departed from the Seoul National University main gate at 7:00am. Here is a photo of the ones of us who got there a little too early...

Every person in this picture is either French or German. Can you tell who is French and who is German? I'll give you a hint, only two of them are German.

The trip to Gyeongju took a good 5 hours or so, and after a quick lunch with a million side dishes, we started sightseeing. This is one of the oldest astronomy towers in Korea. How it was more useful standing in this thing than just on plain ground I am not too sure. Apparently it has some sort of intricate design from which one can tell months of the lunar calendar or something, though. In the foreground of the picture are 3 Koreans and one guy from Finland. The guy on the right did a lot of the organizing and managing of everyone throughout the day. His name is Park Nam-Gi (박남기), but I prefer to call him Chairman Nam Gi-Nam (남기남 회장님) because that name is from a movie called Mokpo Gangster. The Chairman title just suits his organizing everyone during the trip :).

For the rest of the day we explored other relics of ancient times in Korea, most of which were not particularly extravagant looking, as the Japanese and Mongolians seem to have made sure that anything extravagant was destroyed :). Here is a photo of a tomb of sorts (I believe it's Queen Seon-Deok's):

After a lot of exhausting sightseeing, we went to dinner together which was unbelievably better than lunch. We had some sort of beef and seaweed hotpot thing which was quite delicious. After a couple bottles of Soju at the restaurant, we quickly went and checked into the hotel before resuming drinking. After getting settled in our rooms, about 30 of us went to a Hof together (similar to a pub) and shared a good 40 liters of beer or so and some Soju together. After that, back to the hotel to continue having some fun before bed. My room happened to be the biggest one (8 of us were sleeping there), so about 10-15 of us went to play some games there. Here is a pic of us sitting on the floor of our traditional Korean-style hotel room.

After that, we managed to get a good 3-5 hours of sleep before waking up bright and early for our 9am departure to continue our sightseeing. We first went to a beach where we saw an ocean tomb of some King as well as a large group of Koreans having a Buddhist ceremony. From there we went to Bulguksa (불국사), a giant temple which I actually visited once before with Tom and Chungkyu (이충규) two years ago. Here is a nice shot from a balcony on the temple.

After Bulguksa we had a short lunch and prepared for the long 5-hour drive back to Seoul. I slept for a decent chunk of the way and we made a roadstop somewhere along the highway where I had some delicious Hoddeok (호떡), a kind of warm pastry with honey inside. All in all it was a pretty nice trip, but I was glad to get some sleep when we finally got back to Seoul...

Until next time,

Curtis

First week of classes, Everland and Snow!

The first week of classes is now over and we are decently into the second week. I like my courses quite a bit so far. After a bit of revision, I am now taking Human Computer Interface, Artificial Intelligence, Data Structures, Logic Design and Advanced Korean for Foreigners.

I had the Korean class for the first time today and it was much harder than I anticipated! I originally tried to register for the intermediate level one but it conflicted with my time table. In this class, the professor speaks only in Korean, which is alright because she speaks very clearly and is quite understandable, but the writings we have to read are very difficult for me. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time pouring over the dictionary tonight when I got home...

Apart from that course, all of the others are taught in English, with the exception of a '15-minute summarization' in Korean at the end of each Human Computer Interface class. The Korean professors all seem extremely competent and their English is much better than I expected. The semester looks like it will be quite enjoyable :).

About a week ago or so (maybe a little more), I went exploring around Seoul with 윤경. Here is a picture from that day with a statue of King Sejong!

This weekend I went to Everland with some of the people from the SNU Buddy program. Everland is a big amusement park in Korea. We rode a decent chunk of the rides (I think so, at least). Most of them were pretty fun, but the cold weather made it less enjoyable than it could have been. I forgot my camera, so all I managed to get was this picture of the park map that I took a few minutes ago:

Today we had a strange bit of weather... I was kind of surprised, and displeased. It has been snowing for the past few hours now, and I went out to get some food with a friend from Australia and ended up taking a few pictures along the way. Here is the result of tonight's bit of snow (It was totally dry yesterday...).

It looks pretty and all, but i'm used to our lovely tempid weather in Victoria, and this is a little extreme for mid-March... It's -3 degrees at the moment.

As well, I also got a cell phone and made a bank account today. I couldn't make them up until this point because I didn't have my Alien Registration card yet (외국인 등록증). My phone isn't amazing, but it definitely seems to be better than the one I had in Canada! It was 80,000원 (about $75 CAD), and it comes with a few games, cable TV (just one channel, SBS), a couple radio news stations and the normal texting/calling, etc. It's a contract phone, but instead of a plan with a certain number of minutes/texts included, I just have the default 12,000원 per month plan with nothing included, and every text message costs 20원 and every 10 seconds of calling costs 18원 (incoming calls are free).

All in all, i'm pretty settled now and have most things that I need. All I need to do now is finish preparing my student card. This Thursday night or Friday I will hopefully get a chance to go meet Kurt Lee (이충규) in Cheonan (천안), as he has a few days of vacation from his military service.

Sorry for the lack of updates lately! I'm not used to this blogging business yet :P.

A la prochaine,
감사합니다

-Curtis

Departure and Arrival

I left Victoria yesterday morning bright and early. It was raining, so I guess I left right at the end of our streak of good weather :). I got a few last pictures with Monica in the car and in the airport, here they are.

We said a sad good-bye at the airport. I'll miss you until you come visit in the summer, Monica :). My family was there too and we all exchanged good-byes.

From that point on, security was a breeze. Got to Vancouver, waited around for a bit, then boarded the dreaded half-day flight to Seoul. It wasn't too dreadful though. The food was alright, people next to me didn't say a word, but I couldn't get much sleep anyways.

Upon arriving in Seoul I quickly cleared customs and got my luggage, then met my old Korean tutor and friend from Victoria, 윤경 (Yoonkyeong), and her sister 윤모 (Yoonmo). We took a quick picture before taking the 6003 bus to SNU.

After arriving at the SNU main gate, we hailed a taxi and went hunting for my apartment building. Without 윤경 and 윤모 I think I would have had a near impossible time finding the apartment alone with the taxi driver. We took a very strange route to get there which consisted of going down all these ridiculously narrow side streets that the GPS told us to take. I guess we took the 'shortest' route... Anyways, when we were almost at the apartment, we were suddenly blocked by parked cars and couldn't go any further, so we paid the taxi driver, helped him back out, then walked the rest of the way.

The dormitory tutor, Sean Shin, met us on the first floor of my apartment. He showed us to my room and gave me a key. The room is not bad. It's very small, and could have been cleaner, but after I clean it up a bit and get settled it should be quite nice.

From there, 윤경, 윤모 and I went to a barbeque restaurant called 서래. Here are some pictures of us at dinner.

After that they showed me the way back to my apartment then went home. I would post some pictures of the apartment but it's rather nondescript. Perhaps another time. Today i'm off to try and get my 외국인 등록증 (Alien Registration Card). Hopefully all goes well and then i'll be able to make a bank account and get a cell phone soon.

To Monica: I miss you tons, can't wait to see you :)

-Curtis

Introduction

Well, I've decided that I should have a blog to document my studies and experiences in Korea, both for myself and to show others back home what i'm up to. I'll try to update this at least once a week during my trip, and at least a few times before I leave. As well, to anyone who may be following this whom I do not know personally, allow me to give a brief introduction.

My name is Curtis Muller, and until recently I have been a Software Engineering student at the University of Victoria. I recently finished the first semester of my second year, and am now taking the remainder of the year off to study as a visiting student at Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. I will be taking similar courses there in addition to some Korean language courses.

I have a wonderful girlfriend, Monica, whom I will miss terribly while I am gone. I will be eagerly awaiting her visit during summer vacation :).

I have studied Korean since October 2008, upon returning from a brief 3-week trip to Korea with two friends from high school the summer after graduation. I am currently studying from the 3rd level book in the Seoul National University Language Education series. The books can be purchased at www.hanbooks.com.

Current status:
Have a plane ticket leaving Victoria airport at 9:00am, February 24th, arriving in Korea on the afternoon of the 25th.
Need to sort out transfer credits with UVic.
Need to pay my housing fee soon.

More to come, hope you follow along!

~Curtis Muller