Sunday, August 20, 2006

Homestay

I woke up kind of late from the party we had last night which actually lasted until 4 am. Even thought I was tired, my host buddy dragged me out of bed because we had to be at his house around lunch time. Actually, for the next two days, I will do homestay at his family's house. I am not the only one doing homestay at my hostbuddy's house. My friend Yu will also do a homestay with my hostbuddy.

One of the first things we did when we got to my hostbuddy's(Hwa mwyung) house, was cook lunch. His mother taught us how to make bulgogi and prepare other items that are eaten with bulgogi. Bulgogi seems to be pretty easy to make. You just have to marinate some beef in some ingredients, and then cook it. Preparation time takes less than 15 minutes. Amazing!

After lunch, we met up with a friend of Hwa Myung and went to a board game cafe. In Korea, this seems to be a popular past time for college students and people on a date. The have almost every board game thats hot right now and they have more than one set, so you don't have to worry about waiting for someone to return a game set. Interestingly enough, we decided to play Jenga. A fun thing about Jenga over here is that if you lose, you get hit by this gigantic orange hammer. Afterwards, we decided to play this game called Halli Galli which was quite fun because I won quite a lot.

Afterwards, we went back to Hwa Mwyung's house and had dinner. When we arrived back to his house, we met had dinner with his mother and his father. They were really warm and laughed quite a bit. The mother is an awesome cook. She made Bulgogi again, except this time, she made it with duck instead of beef. I have not had duck in years, so I was quite happy that she made it for us. The only downside was that I didn't get to see how she made it. But I guess it shouldn't be too different from how she made lunch.

Afterwards, we went outside for a stroll and decided to rent a movie. We rented "Meet the Flockers" on DVD. However, half way through the movie, everyone fell asleep, so we didn't get to finish the movie. Don't know what we are doing tomorrow, but so far, homestay has been awesome.

Posted by Ramon at 11:59 PM | | Comments

Monday, July 31, 2006

Happy Birthday To Me!

July 31st is the offical start of the Program at the University of Seoul. It also happens to be the same day as my birthday. However, I haven't really told anyone that it is my birthday.

In the morning, we had an orientation about the school as well as activities that are planned for the month that we are here in Korea. This is the first time I had a chance to meet everyone in the program. There seemed to be more people from East Asia than from anywhere else in the world.

After the orientation, I took a placement test to see if my Korean language abilities were beginner, intermediate, or advanced. The test was one of the most difficult tests I have ever taken in my life. I couldn't understand about half the test and the part I did understand, I didn't have that much confidence in my answers.

After the test, we had about an hour break to get something to eat and relax. In the early evening, we went to the opening reception for the program. Surprisingly, the coordinator asked me to give some opening remarks about the program during the opening reception! Luckily for me, I have give quite a few speeches before, so I was not totally blank on what to say.

The food at the opening reception was buffet style with Korean food. So I had a chance to try a sample of Korean food. I guess after my speech, I became kind of popular because while I was eating, people kept asking me to take a picture with them. Some of them were quite cute : )

The results of our test will be posted tomorrow. Tomorrow is also the first day of class, so I guess I won't go out and party too much tonight : )

Posted by Ramon at 11:59 PM | | Comments

Sunday, July 30, 2006

My Own Room Again!

I moved into my new dorm in the afternoon, but my camera had run out of batteries. So I will have to show a picture of the dormitory another time. Not too much to talk about the second day as much of it was spent unpacking my bag and messing around with my computer connection to the internet.

My host buddy, which is the one who is kind of taking care of me during my stay in Korea was still in Japan for some reason, so I could not meet him that day. I did however, meet lots of other people from the dorm who were kind enough to chat with me a little and even go out for dinner.

I went to the this restaurant where I had Chicken Kalbi with 3 other people from the dorm. Two of them were Korean Host buddies and the other one was an exchange student like me, except she was from Japan. The above picture is a picture of the utensils that are commonly used in Korea. As you can see, there is no fork, so you must settle with a spoon and chopsticks.

This was the first time I have ever had Chicken Kalbi and I must say, it will not be the last time. Tomorrow is the opening ceremony of the program, so I am excited to meet the rest of the people in the program. It should be a fun day. Talk to you later.

Posted by Ramon at 11:59 PM | | Comments

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Land of the Kimchee

Hello everyone. As you may know, I spent the last two weeks in Japan traveling and eating lots of delicious Japanese food. I really wanted to go to the Sumidigawa Fireworks near Tokyo on July 29, but my study abroad program starts on July 30th, so I had already reserved a plane ticket to Seoul on that day. Oh well, maybe next year.

The plane ride from Tokyo to Seoul was only about 2 hours, but there was a lot of waiting time before take off and after landing at the airport. So it was almost like 3 hours. The coordinator of the program at the University of Seoul picked me up at the airport and drove me to an apartment.


Apparently, the dorm for the international students had not been built yet, so I had to stay at an apartment for one night. I can't complain because there were 4 girls at the apartment in the same situation. So I ended up spending the night with 4 girls.

I had not eaten since I left Tokyo, so the coordinator treated me out to some Bulgogi, which is one of my favorite Korean foods. Not bad for a first night in Korea. Tomorrow, I move into the newly built dorms for the international students. Talk to you later.

Posted by Ramon at 11:59 PM | | Comments