In-Korea Tips, Week 1

After careful consideration, I've elected to use my second text blog update of each week to provide advice for those considering coming to Korea. This is mostly for those who, like me, plan to be in the country for an extended period of time. So each week I'll bring you one post about cultural, historical and personal experiences here in South Korea and one about how to survive while in-country.

Today, I'll try to breifly discuss what you'll need to buy if you're studying abroad. Many of these things may not seem obvious at first but once you're here they'll become fairly important. They might even be things that you'll want to pack with you rather than purchasing them in Korea. Most of these came up during a shopping trip I made with other international students this past Tuesday, and I'll have a small picture supplement after this post to illustrate a few items.

First of all you're going to need to buy your own toilet paper. This is vital. It will not be provided in your dorm room for you. Unless you want to continually travel down to a public restroom that does have it, you'll eventually need to purchase your own. Since I have not done so yet (I admittedly do just run down to the public restroom), I can't give you any guess as to how much this will cost in Korea. A bit more expensive than in America to be sure.

Secondly you'll be doing your own laundry, so laundry soap is obviously a must. Soonchunhyang University does have a laundry room where you can take your clothes to be washed for a small fee. But to really save cash you're going to want to get your own. A 2.02 liter bag of detergent cost me 7,800 won - about $7.80. It should last at least half the semester though, so the price is right.

Especially for the warmer summer and late spring here, getting a water bottle that you can reuse is very useful. This is one item you can acquire very cheaply in Korea. I myself purchesed a 2 liter bottle for 880 won, about 88 cents in the US. SCH has water coolers on every odd floor of the Global Village dorm, so you can easily find somewhere to refill your bottle when it gets low. It's really nice to have that cold (or lukewarm, depending on how long you've been out) water ready with how humid it gets in addition to the warmth here.

Finally if you can find a way to pack it safely, bring shampoo with you. This is another item that is prohibitively expensive in Korea compared to being dirt cheap in the USA. A more or less regular sized bottle of Head & Shoulders cost me almost $10 here! It should last a while, but it's still pretty spendy when you're also worrying about how to pay for food and the like.

Hopefully this has been informational to you readers out there. As always I really encourage reader interaction, so if you have any feedback, questions or comments, send them to my email address: HangukMartyn@yahoo.com.