It's occured to me that I should include more of my own personal reflections in my blog entries. Hopefully I will start doing that a little more. Since I'm no longer able to update my YouTube account for video blogs - until I can get an uploading issue resolved - I'll be using my text blog solely to record my experiences. Now, on to my thoughts.

Wow, it's been almost a full week since I left home for South Korea! It's hard to believe that I've actually arrived and that classes begin tomorrow. Just a few months ago this all seemed like it was all pretty vague and nebulous. Yet here I am sitting in my dorm room at SoonChunHyang University typing this blog entry. It can get kind of hard to wrap my head around that.

This first week's been up and down for me. After arriving and ever since I have had bouts of serious homesickness already - a side effect, I guess, of having lived with family up 'till this point. There's times that I in all seriousness almost cry because I miss my family, and feel a bit alone. Then there come times where I turn around and join in with a group of fellow internationals in a day trip on the subway or the like. It'll get better, I'm sure, now that classes are set to begin tomorrow and we're to get the rest of our Korean suitemates moving in today or tommorrow.

At SCH, foreigners in the International Studies (formerly Asian Studies) program live in dorms with suite arrangements. This means 12 people total in a suite, 2 to a bedroom. Of the 12, only 2 are foreigners and the rest are Koreans. It's honestly one of the reasons that SoonChunHyang was attractive to me in the first place - the interaction with Korean students, sharing our cultures and languages as well as experiences. Until a couple days ago it was just me and my American suitemate. Now there's at least four Koreans who've moved their things in - apparently they mostly go home for the weekends during the academic year. It will be interesting to meet all of them, and during the week, to go out with them for an icebreaker. From what I've heard there may be a noraebang (karaoke room/bar) involved. Could be fun times!

Even though I've only been here a week, I've already taken the subway twice to go see larger cities. SCH is located in Asan, but around the bend from what I think is downtown Asan. The area's largely rural, though our university neighborhood is chock full of convenience stores, restaurants and bars. Maybe not that dissimilar to what you'd see in the States. Just places for the young people who attend school here to go enjoy themselves or get a cheap/quick bite or drink.

Like I said, though, I've been to two bigger cities via the really convenient subway system. It's about a 20 minute walk from the Global Village where I'm staying to the pretty recent Shinchang Station. Once you buy a T-Money card, you just charge it and head out to the platform and await your train. It was by this method that I travelled to the nearest major city, Cheonan, last Tuesday and then to Seoul yesterday. The latter was kind of an abrupt event, but getting the sudden invitation was something I couldn't turn down. I mean, I flew into Seoul Incheon Airport, but I came straight to SCH from there.

Cheonan is, of course, a lot busier than Asan where the university is located. There are stores everywhere, and a number of street vendors for everything from sunglasses to concessions. Side streets also boast a variety of shops, and they all look kind of crammed together. If you're of mind to try the street fare for food, egg bread's not a bad way to go. It's a soft, chewy little bread with, off course, egg cooked in its center. This proved both cheap and tasty.

While I went to Cheonan with my suitemate, a returning international student, as a tour guide I went to Seoul at the invitation of another group of foreign students. It seems kind of oddly fitting that I've spent a lot of time the first few days with the Japanese students here. Having taken Japanese in middle/high school and college, it's been a great opportunity to see how much of the language I remember. This in addition to practicing my Korean!

They're only here a month, so they wanted to go shop in Seoul. Things got kind of bumpy when we got on the regular subway while their coordinator was on the more comfortable and train-like Nuriro. Then we ended up being on a subway route that went on an express route to Yongsam, a stop short of our intended destination of Seoul Station. After a transfer to the regular train we finally got to Seoul Station.. during which we were crammed into the car so tightly there wasn't room to move at all for the most part. So those stories you hear about packed subway cars in Seoul? Absolutely true. Getting off wasn't really all that hard though. And thankfully the Japanese students' coordinator was waiting at Seoul Station, along with one of the students' friends who lives in Seoul.

I liken Seoul to being sort of like Cheonan times a thousand. Seas of people, bright neon lights at night and shops, street vendors and other establishments all smack next to each other. We ended up at Myungdong, a major shopping area with a mix of brand names, brand name products that were of dubious authenticity, and street vendors right in the middle of the walkways. Currency exchanges dotted the area as well, and the whole effect was a little dizzying. Having never been to a place with so many people, it was really a sight to behold. This, to me, was a reflection of a modern Korea - dynamic, always moving.

To have so many stores in such a comparatively small area was also surprising to me. Even the restaurant we stopped in for dinner was fairly narrow, requiring us to climb two flights of stairs (after standing in line on the first) to reach our table. Really an experience. Thankfully we were able to catch the Nuriro train back to Shinchang Station at 8:53 pm, even though we had to stand most of the way back. You have to pay extra for an assigned seat, I think. We ended up back at the Global Village around 11 pm, an hour to spare before the midnight curfew. I was able to go to bed tired but satisfied that I'd not only gotten to go out and have fun with new acquiantances, but that I'd seen a heck of a lot in less than a week already.

An experience on the way back was worth noting too: an older Korean gentleman who spoke to us through an impromptu translator. He told us how the train worked (i.e. that our ticket meant we had to stand) and also seemed very excited to talk to foreigners. As he put it, "Koreans get very emotional when they talk to foreigners". We also learned he was an avid walker, and even had a business card in Japanese for one of the organizations he belonged to. It's this sort of interaction that I hope can make my stay here ever more fulfilling.