Day 1 in South Korea-Samgyupsal in Sinchon

오늘 친구하고 신촌에 갔었어요. 삼겹살 먹었어요. 맛있었어요.
Today I went with my friends to Sinchon. We ate samgyupsal. It was delicious. 

Okay, enough of the embarrassing Korean short journal. XD I did a lot more on the first day besides eating 삼겹살 (samgyupsal), but I am lazy and don't feel like writing much more than that. Neither am I willing to go through my textbooks to find the 'proper' speech level to use when writing. I'm not writing...I'm talking to people? Something like that.

Anyway, I woke up at around 7:45 AM and hurriedly got ready. My room-mate was already awake, doing her hair and makeup, and so I felt like I had slept in. We had to be outside our dorms waiting for a guide at around 8:30. When we left our dorm we found a guy that looked a lot like this-

(imagine him without the panda hat, bigger glasses, and red hair)

who was just standing around looking like he was waiting for someone. I had no idea if he was the person we were supposed to meet but somehow we found out that he was. His English was pretty good, and he told me he was waiting for one of the other students to come. The other student arrived, introducing himself as Chris, from Hong Kong. I can't remember the name of our guide, just that he was really friendly and immediately started asking us questions like "Where are you from? Are you in college? Where are you going to college?" and making sure we didn't have any questions about the program. I couldn't help but notice he kept glancing in each parking mirror and building window we passed by and he would occasionally fix his hair. I don't know if he'll ever read this but it was terribly funny (and I don't know why he was worried about it-his hair was perfect and his face was so cute!). However, I kept looking in the mirrors too-and noticing how incredibly red-faced I was! But I had an excuse-South Korea was humid and hot. Every morning the humidity was somewhere around 100% and I think it was near 80 degrees Farenheit.
We arrived at the Graduate Building, where our classes and orientation would be. We sat in the lounge while waiting for the teachers to prepare for us to arrive. Here I was, the innocent (and extremely hot) American, expecting that when we walked in the Graduate Building, it would be air-conditioned in the hallways. I'm not sure why I expected that-winded and breathless from the air that was thick enough a knife could've cut it, I suddenly remembered that they do not heat or air condition hallways in South Korean schools. I had several 'revelations' like this throughout my time in South Korea. I'm not sure what I was expecting, because I had already done a lot of research on Korea, but during the plane ride and being lost I seemed to have forgotten everything!
So we waited downstairs until it was time and then rode the elevator up to the 7th floor (we were on the 3rd floor. I soon discovered there is no 2nd or 1st floor in the Graduate Building of Hanyang University, just B1 and B2-why they named the ground floor the 3rd floor I sort-of understand but it seems weird anyway)
I walked into Orientation and was immediately greeted in Korean. I just replied 'Hello!' and hoped they didn't say anything else to me. Wow, was I in for a surprise because the entire Orientation Ceremony was in Korean.
Oh, of course they translated a few things for those of us that spoke English-but it did make more sense for them to translate everything into Chinese first. I discovered after sitting down that I was probably the only American at the camp and I assumed I was the only English speaker. I was happy that after the ceremony and our speaking and writing tests were over, I got to talk with some other members of the group-finding out half of them were from Hong Kong? Delightful! English speakers!

I ate  비빔밥 (bibimbap) for lunch. If anyone is wondering what bibimbap is, here's a picture and if you follow the link, it's a Wikipedia article about the dish. Ours didn't look this good, but it tasted awesome. :) I accidentally put on too much hot sauce and not enough rice, so I nearly cried while eating it. =P
Once I had begun eating, a girl who I had noticed earlier sat down across from me. She was tall, a lot taller than most Korean girls, and she didn't look like she was only of Asian ancestry. She started talking to me, and immediately I recognized that she had a European accent. My first assumption was that she was a German.
Well, her name is Sandra, and she's Swiss. Her mother is Korean, but she didn't really like being in South Korea when she visited as a child. However, she visisted again two years ago and fell in love with the place. I didn't know it then, but we became quite the travelling buddies! We even took several selcas together. :)
Sandra sat down and we had talked for a bit, another fellow sat down next to her. I had heard him talking on the phone behind me earlier and knew from his accent that he was Korean-American. His name was Hughbo and we talked a few times throughout the two weeks there-his father is a diplomat, so he's lived in a LOT of places. It was impressive to hear some of the stories he had to share about his life around the globe, and he could be pretty funny and interesting-and he was American, which somehow was comforting, despite the fact that I normally complain about us. XD Sadly, he wasn't there for some of the camp due to a family emergency so we never got to actually talk.
After meeting Sandra, we decided to go to a cafe. There I drank my first iced caramel latte ever (they're amazing) and we decided that Sandra, myself, and her roommate, Winnie, would walk around campus and visit each other's dorms. It turned out that their dorm was quite a walk from mine...however, Sandra was the voice of reason for me, because at this point I was pretty confused and frustrated with all the walking, the random rain, and my aching feet. She gave me a few tips for things I would need while there, and I'll be honest, I never took those same walks across campus again, but it was really beautiful. After stopping by our dorms, we decided we wanted to visit Ewha Women's University because we had heard that there are a lot of girl-oriented shops and a great student atmosphere there. It was a Monday, though, and we quickly learned that a lot of stores are closed on Monday in South Korea (yet another thing I had read about but forgot). We had a great time-we walked to Sinchon Neighborhood to eat supper in hopes that there would be some good restaurants there. We were searching for a tofu restaurant but couldn't find it. I was feeling relatively indecisive and not very hungry until we walked past a barbeque place. We were peering at the menu from the street when one of the workers came out and handed us a menu-in English. You'd think I would've been happy but as soon as we came in the restaurant I grabbed a Korean menu because I couldn't understand what dishes they were talking about on the English menu! XD

Steps at Ewha Women's University

It rained a lot on this day, but it was still really hot! I didn't have a camera this day. I talked with some of the program directors and they told me I would get my baggage delivered soon! I was relieved because my outlet converter was in my bags and my laptop battery was slowly going.

We settled for a set of different cuts of pork. It was incredibly good-and I got to eat samgyupsal, a kind of thick bacon, for the first time! We got a bowl of dwoenjangjjigae on the side, but we didn't eat much of it because there was so much meat! Something about the kimchi gave me an appetite, thankfully.

I was amazed at how much thicker it is than our bacon, so I wanted to prove it to Mom. :P

 Sadly, once we got back to Wangsimni Station, the area where my friends were dorming, I got entirely, utterly, hopelessly lost on my way back to my dorm. Even though we were at Hanyang by 10PM, it was nearly 11:30 before I found my way back to the dorms. The epic isn't over yet, though-read about the next day to hear of the night I managed to help a Chinese student find his way to a building I had never been to by word of mouth before I actually found my own dorm. 

More on the complete hopeless of me coming soon....

Ahem, thanks for reading. :)

-Argentia