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I’m studying at Sookmyung Women’s University this semester, and l love it here.

You may ask how an English-speaking American male is studying at a foreign women’s university. Well, Sookmyung offers nearly a hundred courses taught in English, and men aren’t a total rarity. Courses are available in nearly every major, so you shouldn’t worry about falling behind in your studies at Coe.

Seoul has some great things to do and see, and most of them are easily accessible. So far I’ve hiked three mountains, gone to the Demilitarized Zone, visited a naval base, walked through two palaces, and spent countless hours wandering through the bustling streets. Everywhere in the city is easily reachable in a half hour and generally much less.

How can I get to these places you ask? Well, Seoul has one of the best mass transit systems in the world. The subway uses a touch-pass card as your ticket, which is fully integrated into the bus system and taxi system. You can even use the Weon (Korean currency) you put on your card in convenience stores.

Living and eating in Seoul is delightfully healthy. One has to walk all the time, but you always enjoy it as you take in the cityscape. Once you get somewhere, all you have to do to find somewhere to eat is spin around, stop, and they’ll be a street vendor, a small restaurant, or a Korean BBQ place. Then you could get a fried pancake filled with a brown sugar/cinnamon mixture (Hodok), or a stone bowl that’s cooking your rice, vegetables, and octopus meal (Bibimbap), or sit down with friends to cook marinated beef and pork on a small stove in the middle of your table (Galbi). And how much would it cost? Respectively, ~75 cents, ~$4.50, up to $10 for a very nice dinner.

This last weekend, I went hiking in Bukhansan National Park just north of Seoul with another exchange student from Canada. Seoul is nestled amongst a lot of mountainous terrain, and so getting to a good place to hike is crazy easy. We were hiking for around 5 hours, all over the southern part of the mountain range. The best part of the hike was that we ended up at a 1300+ year-old Buddhist temple, with some amazing statues and artwork. The view from the monastery was to die for, and the whole complex was beautiful. We all meditated in the main room for a few minutes, which is full of gold plated Buddha statues. Then we walked up a 108 step flight of stairs to a Buddha carved out of the mountainside. So far that was my favorite experience in my month and a half of life in Seoul. And I’ve only scratched the surface.

I trust that I’ve left you curious about this fantastic study abroad program. Feel welcome to email me about the Sookmyung exchange if you have any questions, and talk to John Chaimov, coordinator of Coe’s study abroad programs. You can also direct your questions to Ellen Burns and Paden Chang, who have both attended prior Sookmyung terms. Even if you decide the Sookmyung exchange isn’t right for you, I encourage all students to go abroad so that they can experience living and studying in an unfamiliar environment. You should leap at this opportunity to learn things that no classroom can teach.

Pictures

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You Are So Handsome

I have been told this phrase when meeting Korean women in school, by rich Korean guys in a bar, and in the bank. Clearly, I came to a place where they finally appreciate me.

😉

I’m damn good with chopsticks now.

Subways are easy.

Politeness works wonders.

I doubt I’ll ever be able to eat this healthy for such a low price and so conveniently.

Most people are happy to talk to you here.

You don’t need to speak the language to eat. You don’t have to know what it is to enjoy it. I haven’t tried a food here I regretted ordering.

Seoul is amazing.

Write Me!

The only thing I’ve received in the mail in the month I’ve been here was my foreign registration card. I’d like that to change. So, in order to facilitate that, here is my address:

Alex Barbeau #109
International House #1
98-11  Cheongpa-dong 1-ga
Yonsan-gu, Seoul

140-131, Korea

Yongsan

So, wow. I’ve been busy. I’ve: Hiked two mountains, gone to the War Memorial, spent a day as an extra in a Korean-produced movie about WWII, gone around Seoul on the metro multiple times, got my foreign registration card, had even more Korean food, met even more cool people, gotten in the hang of classes, have nearly learnt the Hangul alphabet, visited the DMZ, stood in North Korea for a minute, done some homework, went out clubbing with my roommate, and wrote 10 postcards home. I’ve got 21 people on my list of cards to write, so various people should expect them over the next few weeks. I have no idea how long normal mail takes. Furthermore, postcards are oddly rare in this city. I’ve walked whole streets filled with nothing but car part vendors, but postcards are unheard of.

I have a semi job here on campus speaking to Korean girls in the ‘English Lounge’. All I have to do is talk to them so they can practice their English. Pretty sweet gig. I’m basically an escort. Though lots of the Korean girls seem to get intimidated and giggle themselves out. One girl asked me if I had a girlfriend. I couldn’t tell what her intention with that question was, silly language barrier. ha.

The War Memorial is quite the sight. It’s a very large complex, with a huge outdoor area filled with monuments and dozens upon dozens of tanks, artillery pieces, and warplanes. Then there’s a huge museum which I haven’t checked out yet. Soon though.

For classes, I have Korean for foreigners, Korean Foreign Policy, Applied Probability, and Tae Kwon Do. I initially started with Ceramics and ‘Learning easy French in English’. Turned out that the Ceramics offered is a junior level ceramics course, and as for French, the textbook is in Korean. So I decided against going through the Inception of language learning. The foreign policy class is really interesting as there are many students from China, Japan, and South Korea in there too, in addition to myself and one other American. So the variety of different viewpoints makes for good discussion, when the other students actually talk. The Liberal Arts style of talking about the material in a seminar like fashion isn’t terribly wide-spread in many Asian schools. But the professor is trying to instill that style, which leads to me talking too much if I don’t catch myself. The class has a lot of potential beyond the good place it already is in.

Annyeong Haseyo!

Ugh. Sorry, oh anonymous readers. I haven’t been able to access my blog for the past week. My apologies.

Well, I’ve been up to a lot of things here in Seoul. I love it here. The food is delicious, cheap, and almost always healthy. I’m walking at least a few miles each day, if not much more. My Hangul (Korean) is gradually improving, and I nearly have the alphabet down. I’ve made some good friends so far amongst the other exchange students.

Not being able to post for a while has discombobulated me in terms of recollecting what I’ve done so far… I’ll do my best.

On my second day here, I bought bedding, wandered around the bustling neighborhood around Sookmyung, had dinner with the exchange students, and napped. I started waking up pretty early for me, 8-9ish at the latest here. I’ve woken up as early as 6:30 unprompted by any alarm. And I’ve been falling asleep 11-12 as my body drags me to bed. I’m getting a fair amount of exercise with all the walking I have to do here, which I’m thrilled about. I’ll join the school gym soon. I’ll go with the other exchange men. There are only 5 male fluent english speakers amongst the exchange students, including myself. So we hang out a bunch.

Anyway, over my next few days here I tried a bunch of different food, wandered all over the neighborhood, and got settled in. Sookmyung has a ‘buddy’ program, where-in a Sookmyung student who can speak english/chinese/japanese is partnered with a few international students, and she helps us out with getting acquainted to Seoul and navigating paperwork and dealing with complicated stuff like that. She and I went to Myeong-dong, which is basically the 5th Avenue of Seoul. It’s about 10 blocks of high-end shops, as well as some side alleys with smaller Korean stores. Jam packed with Koreans and tourists as well. I bought some ‘Kings Desert’, which is really finely divided honey wrapped around a nut blend.  There’s a youtube video of the creation of it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCLYieehzGs. The process is just like that, and the script was oddly similar. I had gone to Myeong-dong to buy a messenger bag/briefcase with a strap, whatever was cheaper and still looked good. Nothing really caught my eye without being over ₩100,000, so I decided to keep searching elsewhere. After we took the bus back to Sookmyung, I passed a street vendor with just what I was looking for, for only ₩20000. Obviously it isn’t as nice as a fancier bag, but the construction is sturdy enough for my purposes.

There are around 20+ coffee shops within a short walk of my dorm, around 20+ restaurants, and lord knows how many small street vendors. There isn’t a meal plan at Sookmyung, but most of the places to eat around here are quite cheap. Sookmyung also has a cafeteria,  two nice restaurants, and a coffee shop. They’re all cheap, which is a nice change of pace from Coe and its environs. I can get a pretty tasty and filling plate of Korean for around $2.25 at the most there, and the better places are still around $6 for a solid meal. One nice thing about Seoul is that I can get most any kind of food I want here, though foreign fare is a bit more expensive. I still haven’t seen a Mexican restaurant though, but I’ll track one down. Oddly enough, Baskin Robbins and Dunkin’ Donuts are suuuuuper popular here. It scares me at times because I think I’ve wandered back to where I started walking, but I’m just by another Baskin Robbins. I’ll go eventually, but for now I’m quite happy with the wide variety of Korean foods and treats.

The day before classes started I decided to go on an adventure, as it was also a Korean holiday. So I hopped on the subway (which is amazing, and very convenient) to downtown intending to visit a palace, and ended up seeing two palaces, visiting a small museum, walking a long ways down the Cheonggyecheon Stream, which goes through downtown Seoul. At the first palace I went to, Deoksu-gung, there were lines stretching at least 100 meters from the gate. Once I got closer, I realized that I had been standing in line for the art museum situated inside the palace grounds, and it was the last day for a Picasso exhibition there. So I walked to the right ticket line, paid ₩1000, and wandered around the palace grounds for an hour. At one point the construction cranes in downtown Seoul nicely silhouetted  with some of the roof features on the royal residence, so I tried to take a picture. The light was all off unfortunately. Another day!

After that palace, I wandered north to Gyeonbok-gung palace. The road to the palace also happens to be the main north-south road for Seoul, so the avenue was packed with high end hotels, tourist info stands, and tons of people and cars. There’s a recent statue of King Sojeong, who created the Hangul alphabet and is the bee’s knees of Korean Monarchs. Underneath the statue there’s a small museum dedicated to him and the Hangul alphabet. One of the attendants asked me where I was from, and she seemed quite excited when I said I was from the US. So that felt good. Then I kept going north, and looked through a display of Korean war pictures that was set up outside an open air memorial to the Korean war. Reading about the Korean perspective on the war was illuminating.

After that I made it into Gyeonbok-gung, and much to my surprise I was right on time for a changing of the guard ceremony. For those of you who don’t know, Korea’s last king was deposed by the Japanese in 1910, and the Republic of Korea has been a presidential republic since the Japanese occupation ended. Up till 1988, however, the government was ruled by either political strongmen or a military junta. But for the last 23 years Korea has been a thriving fully democratic society. That painfully brief history lesson’s point is to say that the palaces do not need actual royal guards, and that what I saw was performed by re-enactors. Lots of music, lockstep marching, and tourists being herded out of the way of the performance. Quite cool all told, especially as I had no idea that I had wandered into an infrequent show.

Then I walked around downtown for a while longer. The US embassy is right on the main road, and is a pretty crappy looking building, frankly. One would think that the US might put some money into the building looking different from a suburban office building. After that I walked down Cheonggyecheon, which was a nice respite from the bustle of Seoul. The stream was paved over as Seoul built up, but was recently dug up and made into a scenic walkway. It’s a bit too artificial for my tastes, but standing by any moving water is enough for me after months without being able to canoe. I walked a few kilometers down, till I eventually made it to a line 4 subway station and came back to the International house.

I think this is enough info for now, I’ll write up what classes are like soon.

I’ve got Seoul

Well. What a whirlwind week I’ve had.

So, to begin with, my parents dropped me off at the MSP airport after my flight to O’Hare had been canceled due to the weather. I had called United, and they rebooked me on an American Airlines flight scheduled to leave a little earlier than my United flight. So upon arrival to the ticketing booth, they switched me to an AA flight that had been merged with mine, that ended up being delayed till boarding around 7:45. So I had a little time to chill in the terminal. I found out that it’s damnably hard to track down a copy of Harper’s Magazine in MSP. So The Economist kept me company mid flight.

Waiting by my gate, I got to talking with the gentleman sitting next to me whose flight was also delayed. I mentioned that I was going to Seoul to Study abroad through Coe College, and the guy, who was in his late 40’s/early 50’s, did a brief double-take. It turns out that he had graduated from Coe in ’83, if I remember correctly. We had both had Mickey Wu teach our principles of Macro/Micro classes. He talked about Coe back in the day, and I talked about how it currently stood. Such a small world. Eventually his flight started boarding around 7:30, so we said goodbye. It was great to meet you Steve!

Boarding began, and because the plane was pretty empty, I was able to move up to an exit row seat. I loved the extra leg room. And it’s good we had it, as our plane got held up for over an hour once we had finished boarding. Lame-sauce. After reading my magazine for a little while I struck up a conversation with the man seated across the aisle from me. It turns out that he had just been hired to work as a head accountant for the Waterpark I had worked at for the past 3 years! At this point, I was wondering who the next person with a strong connection to me would be. He told me about some of the extravagant hotels he’s seen or worked at, and I talked about my travels to the Arctic, Europe, and now South Korea. It was a good way to pass the time on our way to O’Hare. Once we arrived he helped me out by pointing me towards the fastest way to the international terminal tram. He kept on going to the parking lot. Nice to meet you, Mark.

After going through security again, I made it to the gate for my flight to Seoul. I got moved to the exit row seat again (this time at the ticketing station), which was AWESOME. I settled in for my 14 hour flight, and asked for the Bibimbob dinner option. At the time, I thought it was tasty, but compared to the amazing Korean food I’ve had since, it wasn’t too great. Still the best airline meal I’ve had yet, however. I slept, wandered around the plane to stretch my legs, read, and slept more. Really not too exciting. At one point we were 32000 ft above the Back River. I will be back to the Back one day, canoeing in the Arctic sun again. We passed over Russia, getting closer to it than Sarah Palin ever has, and god-willing ever will be. Wretched harpy.

We flew to the west of North Korea, and made it to Incheon around 6:10 AM. Seoul time is +15 from Central time. I cleared customs, and got my bags without any trouble. I had to wait till 10 AM for a Sookmyung student to come and pick me up so I could make it to school in my discombobulated state. So I wandered around the airport, ate some Mushroom & Beef Bulgogi, and diddled my thumbs till 10. Sohyun arrived, and we had to wait a little while for another student she was supposed to pick up. Eventually the international office called her to say they would send another student to the airport to pick up the other student, so we got ‘limo bus’ tickets to downtown Seoul. We talked about Korean politics, travel, and made general chit-chat. After getting off at the station near Sookmyung Sohyun hailed a taxi for my two luggage bags, and we made it to International House 1. I have a fair sized double room with a bathroom, and it’s right by the main entrance. My roommate is a German male model, and he’s in China till the 4th of March. So I have the room all to myself till then. We went to get a quick meal, and the server brought out a bottle of ketchup, because clearly, as a ‘Murrican, I slather all my food with ketchup. We shared a laugh over that.

Then it was off to the orientation session, where I met a few of the other International students. There’s John, Jamie, Gabrielle, and two other girls from Gabby’s school who’ve kept to themselves so far. Once classes get started I’m sure I’ll see more of those two. Regardless, we watched an admissions movie, got some information booklets and a bit of paperwork to fill out, and then went to register for classes. As of right now, I’m signed up for Korean 1, Applied Probability, Korean Foreign Policy, Ceramics, Tae Kwon Do, and ‘Easy French taught in English’. Evidently that’s a normal sized courseload, but I’m not going to stick to the French or Ceramics classes if they seem like too much trouble, or too frivolous. Then we had a campus tour. I gotta tell you, Coe Admissions, all the tour guides have matching navy wool peacoats. You’d best step up your game. Perhaps matching crimson blazers for all the tour guides? Otherwise…

After that, one of the guys who had already been here for a semester offered to show us around to some of the good restaurants in the area. We went to a Korean style BBQ, where they bring you the meat, along with all sorts of ban-chan (a wide variety of different foods in small quantities). We took our shoes off at the door, and sat at a low table, sitting cross-legged. You cooked the pre-marinated meat on a grill in the middle of the table, and added various ban-chan to the grill. Some were for cooking, others just eating uncooked. The best comparison I can think of is like going to a super-Tapas bar, where you have one medium sized dish, and a bunch of smaller things on the table that everyone passes around and shares. It’s really fun and social. After that we went to a bar upstairs, (The Korean drinking age is 18-19. Basically, people in Korea are 1 when born, so I’m 21 here) and had some soju, which is a very popular and traditional Korean rice ‘wine’. And pretty tasty. We sat around the table talking about various libidinous topics, and called it a night eventually. I fell asleep quickly, as I was starting to feel jetlagged.

I’ll write up the next few days soon, but I wanted to get the arrival out of the way since it’s the part that had the most stuff going on. I love it here, the food is cheap and delicious, and I’m walking all over. The people are awesome as well.

Stay classy, oh anonymous reader.

Adieu!

I’m in Terminal 5 of O’Hare, waiting to board my 14 hour+ to Incheon. I had a lot of trouble making my way to O’hare, I got rebooked twice and was held on the ground in the plane for over an hour. But I met a guy in the terminal who had graduated from Coe in ’83, and another guy who had just gotten hired at the Waterpark I used to work at as head accountant. What an outrageously small world.

My parents drove me to MSP and saw me off. Lots of hugging and such. Then I chilled in the terminal till 7:45, when we boarded and proceeded to start taxiing out, before being told to turn back and wait, as O’Hare had a ground stop from the numerous delays and weather. Fortunately the flight was quite empty, so I was able to move up to an exit row seat. And at long last I arrived in Chicago again. From originally being scheduled to arrive in O’hare at 9:30 pm, then 9:00 pm, then ????, I arrived at 10:40 pm after flying out around 9. I had to take the train to the international terminal, but fortunately the guy I met on the flight was headed the same way and helped me make it to the terminal. Thanks Matt!

And now I’m sitting just outside from my flight. I was able to get an exit row seat again! They changed me at the ticketing office. It pays to flirt with airline employees 😉

I had to pay $7 to get online, which was worth it as I was able confirm some things with Sookmyung and my pickup there. Gotta love technology.

Bye America!

 

Departure, too near

Well, my flight is scheduled for 8 PM this coming Monday. I’m aiming to get to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport around 5:30 so that I have plenty of time to check in, breathe, check my luggage (which is free as I’m going to Asia!), and find my gate. A big part of me wishes I could just skip the next two days and be in O’hare, waiting for my 1 AM redeye to Seoul. Another part is frantically trying to cram in as much Americana and Minneapolitan culture as I can before my flight. I’ve never been on a redeye flight before, so that should be interesting. Depart at 1 AM, then arrive at 6 AM the next day. I’ll write up the actual experience of the flight after I’ve landed. Then I’ll be waiting 4 jetlagged hours for a Sookmyung student to come and meet me, and take me downtown to the International House. From what I can tell from looking at the train time tables, I’ll have another hour or so till I arrive at Sookmyung at long last. Then I’ll fight lying down, meet my Chinese roommate, run to the nearest store to get bedding, and relax. Orientation is mid-day, hopefully I can get all the classes I’ve looked into. After that… Well, answering that question is why I’m going abroad in the first place.

I’ve accomplished nearly everything on my to do list, barring weening myself off facebook and my phone. That shouldn’t be too tough once I’m out of my current environment. Fortunately, I have skype, and the Korean internet is far superior to anything i could get in the US. So I’ll be able to get in contact with family and friends. But as for my phone… well, I’ll be going cold turkey with texting. Gotta admit, I’m a texting addict at times. Back to old fashioned IMing and email I go.

Squaring away my insurance at home was a ridiculous hassle, and even though Sookmyung has an arrangement with a health insurer based in S. Korea, a new regulation prevented me from buying that ahead of time, and I’ll have to wait till March for coverage by the Korean insurer. So I bought some stopgap travel health insurance. One of the insurers I talked to didn’t seem to understand that, even though I had a Korean-issued student VISA, I was an US citizen with an US-issued PASSPORT. And they wouldn’t sell me their policy specifically marketed to US students going abroad, as I didn’t have the right visa. Ummm, what? I don’t get issued an US visa to go somewhere, that’s what I have my passport for. Regardless, even though that insurer was a bit cheaper than the policy I ended up purchasing, talking to a customer rep who clearly didn’t know what the hell was going on dissuaded me from them. For just a tiny policy I had a disproportionate amount of hassle. I hate to think of what some of the people I know who are studying in Germany had to go through. They have to get into the German national health care system, with wayyyyy more requirements, bureaucratic nonsense, not to mention the language barrier. This is reminding me of my eventual entry into the workforce, and who knows how the current insurance situation will have played out by the time I finish grad school and get a real job. Whether or not the AC Act stands, there will still be a mass of obscure paperwork and heartless bureaucrats to deal with. Shudder.

Let me tell you, the worst part (so far) of going abroad is that other institutions have quite different academic calendars, so I’ve had a two month long break from school. The first 2-3 weeks were great, but I’ve been positively stir-crazy this last month. You can only read so many books, news articles, opinion pieces, and random drivel before it all starts to blend together. I reached that point two weeks ago. I’ll  have to hop right back into school from two months of sleeping in too late and staying up to needlessly distant hours. But there’s nothing like a complete change of your surroundings and companions to knock one out of their past behaviors. Should be fun.

Now that I’m going to have actual experiences to write about my blog updates should be far more frequent. So look forward to that, oh anonymous reader of my blog.

P.S. I’m seeing Cedar Rapids tomorrow at the Uptown Theater, so I’ll get one last taste of Iowa before I’m in Korea for four months.

Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit Corporation

I’m looking forward to being Happy Together with Citizens.

 

I realized another thing I’ll have to do, which is get familiar with the Seoul Mass Transit system. I really loved the Berlin S und U-bahn system, and it really wasn’t difficult to get the hang of. Hopefully the Seoul Subway is just as easy to learn. Either way, I’m sure I’ll be trained up by the end of the trip