My first impressions

So after entering Seoul and driving down to campus, I noticed three main things. 1) Everything is bright. I do not mean only lots of lights, I mean those lights are BRIGHT. Signs, posters, cars all so bright. It looks like NY time square everywhere. Even when we were on the highway then went to the rural area, I saw a row of restaurants and lan cafes with bright neon sights just in the middle of no where. I wonder what their electricity bill is like! 2) The second thing I noticed was that in Seoul, they seem to be very religeous. In one area I saw around 10 churches with big neon cross signs on the top bunched together and then a few later down. I think I counted around 50 churches from ICN airport to SCH. 3) The last thing is that the drivers are pretty crazy, or maybe it was just our bus driver. The roads were bumpy yet he kept maintaining the same speed. Red lights mean nothing to him as long as there was no cars comming. Just my 2 hour trip from the airport was a great experience to see many things. Now, another 2880 to go!

The First Day!

We had to get up at 11am Korean time which is around 3pm Vancouver time. I did not experience any jet lag because I am used to staying up till 5-6am. Thanks Dota! haha. Anyways, we all met at 11am in the lobby for orientation. I met the rest of my classmates and all are very friendly. We then proceeded to take a mini tour of the campus and then promptly go to a classroom for some touch up info. I ate my first meal in Korea at a small little restaurant. The food was pretty good and cheap. I ate pork chop cutlet and rice which cost roughly $3.50 usd. The great thing about Korea is that there is no tax and no tip; so that helps saves money. We continued the rest of our orientation and then we were off. I met a few people and we decided to play some ultimate frisbee outfront. From there, a few of us went to grab dinner at the same restuarant. I ate some beef with rice which again, was $3.50. Plus of course all you can eat Kimchee! And the kimchee here is very spicey but delicious. At the restaurant, I saw a few familiar faces that were from China. They came to Korea to learn more Korean just as I cam from Canada. They all spoke mandarin so the language barier was tough, but we ended up all going to this bar which is well known around here called E-Z. We ended up drinking quite a bit and learned a few Korean drinking games which was very fun. All 8 of us then went back to one of the Chinese students dorm room and just chatted to get to know each other. They were all very friendly. Thank god we had a guy who can speak both english and chinese that helped us communicate with each other. Posting of pictures will be up asap.


Orientation classroom.

Hello from Korea!

Well I safetly made it to Korea! After flying from YVR (Vancouver) to SFO (San Francisco) on a 2 hour flight, I had a 3 hour wait until my flight to ICN (Korea). The duty free shops there we nice, but I had to control myself to not buy too many things. My 13 hour flight from SFO - ICN was not that bad. I flew United Airlines which was ok. The problem was that my TV was broken so I could not watch any movies :(. I met a nice Korean mother who sat beside me and she had told me she went to visit her daughter who is studying in Las Vegas. The flight was pretty neat because we kept chasing the sun, meaning it was always bright out. When I arrived at ICN airport I met Steven and Il Jong who is Steven's helper. Steven is the main director for the Soonchunhyang University global exchange program. At the airport, I had met a few of my classmates. All very friendly and from all over the place. Mostly USA and Mexico though. We waited around 3 hours until our bus came, and that was another 2 hour ride to campus. We got assigned our rooms and I quickly showered and passed out. Pictures of my journy will be uploaded once I get my laptop working. Right now I am using the community computer in the lobby of the Global Village




Pictures of San Francisco airport and ICN airport. Didn't get much of a chance to take some nicer ones, so these will do!





This is my dorm room. Nice and neat, for now.

View from my window.


This picture is a scale model of an old war boat. One of the first in the world.


This is a scale model of SCH University.


My First meal in Korea was at this restaurant. It was very good and cheap. $3.50usd for a big plate of rice and pork cutlets.