Mid-terms

 I'm studying Engineering here in Korea and boys are studying something else, like international relationship and abstract art and so on, so our majors en here are quite different in here. I can tell about my experiences about studying all the way here and boys can tell their own stories about their studies.

So, we had our mid-terms already and it didn't went quite well! I was surprised when I was told that we can not use any formula-book in the exam. In every class the teacher will teach us approximately 10 different kind of formulas twice a week, and we supposed to remember them all. That is not going to happen to me. Usually we don't even understand those formulas right because of the speed of teaching and the intonation and pronunciation of the teacher. Only in one course we are allowed to do a cheating list which we can bring to the exam. 

Engineering building

Also here we have more homework than in my school in Finland. I have to do maybe 3 reports in one every week, but also I have to do my homework as well. In one course the teacher is giving us two homework every week, and usually one homework includes maybe 4 exercises. So I have too much to do. I don't have enough time to actually just study the topics of the course step by step, because I have to do reports and homework all the time. And we can't get any results from the homework, so we don't know how wrong we made them. But I guess that studying here it is not always like this. It depend what major do you have and are you lucky to get good teachers. Some of the exchange-students had also told me that their courses are too easy for them.

I have also many laboratory classes

Colors

Fall is starting to change the colors of South Korea, Korean people are already wearing really much warm clothes but still girls keep on their mini-shorts. Temperatures are not low for a Scandinavian but Koreans seem to take the fall very seriously for upper body clothing. 

The day will not get any shorter in here compared to Finland, where u can get depressed because of the darkness, and the sun id shining everyday. There is no darkness and rainy days like in Finland, so the autumn actually feel more like spring. 

We also saw the first snow already, but of course it didn't stay yet.

Everland

Everland is South Korean amusement park and the second largest in the country. We went to everland before 12am but the place was allready full. Shortest waiting lines were only 1 hour. After spending some time in Everland we noticed that the place is not so much about rides, Korean people were more interested in seeing ”fake” cities like Amsterdam inside the park.

T-express was the best ride in the whole park, with the speed of 104 km/h and 77-degree angle the ride gave some really good memories. We spend the whole day in the park and got time to visit only few rides because the waiting lines, so I would say that it is better to go there in weekdays.

Everland's zoo was the first place I have ever seen lions, white tigers and 2 feet walking bears. Overall I think Everland is more for families with small children, the place is full of beautiful flowers and buildings surrounded by all kinds of shows. The theme of the park was this time Halloween so the whole park looked like it.

DMZ

School offered us free trip to DMZ, so it was good opportunity to use it. Otherwise it would cost like 70-80 €. We had a meeting day before we left where they told us the weird rules. Rules were like how to act in there and what to wear.

The Korean Demilitarized Zone separates South and North Korea. This 4 kilometer wide area is the most heavily guarded places on earth. Soldiers in the picture were there to protect us if something happens, and those guys did not smile. When we saw the North Korean buildings surrounded by soldiers we did actually feel the tension between these two countries.

At our tour to DMZ we saw the North Korean Tunnel to South Koreas side. The tunnel had dynamite ready for exploding the tunnel down if someone tryes to use it.

On the DMZ tour we learned some interesting stuff like how North Korea always has to try show how it is better than south Korea. On DMZ you can see that North Korea does not even have trees because they have cut down to heat up accommodations. 

Trip to Jeju

We heard that we have to hurry if we want to travel around the Korea when the weather is still warm enough to go to the beach and stuff, so we booked our trip to Jeju-island as soon as we could. We had a group of people and first we planned to go to Jeju by a plane. The plane trip takes only 1 or t2 hours and the price is approximately the same as going by a ferry. All the flights were booked already because we were too late booking our flights with a big group, so we just choose to go by the ferry. All the flights were booked already because there was a holiday at the time we wanted to go to Jeju. I think going there just for a weekend is not enough time to do all the things that you would like to do there... The ferry’s booking system on the internet was obviously in Korean, so Sangwan, our Korean friend helped us to book the ferry trip to Jeju.

In afternoon of September 4th our ferry was going to leave from Incheon dock. We took a bus to Incheon, but there was a huge traffic going on because of the holidays, so we almost missed the ferry. We were lucky and we made there in time, because we change the bus to taxi. We had also problems with tickets. Korean names are so short, that our names in the tickets were not correct because of the length of our names. We showed our passports and finally we were able to hurry to the ferry.

When we saw the ferry at the first time we didn’t know should we laugh or cry because the ferry looked like an old cargo ship. Inside the ferry there was one restaurant, one shop, and rooms were we supposed to sleep. In the restaurant, food was like in prison and cost something like 7000 won, so it was quite expensive compared to the quality of the food.

We had common cabin where we supposed to sleep. There were no beds or chairs in the room. We were sleeping on the floor with a blanket and something like a leather pillow. The ferry trip took about 13 hours, so we decided to play with cards and drinking beer that the time would run faster and the trip would not be so boring. After few hours the ferry started to move side to side because of the waves and some of us felt like seasick. There was also women’s arm wrestling competition, live music outside. People were dancing on the ship’s deck and singing with the guy standing on the stage. There was fireworks show too, with music, it was awesome. We had a plenty of fun time in there in the ferry, so it wasn’t so boring 13 hours at all. Only the sleep wasn’t so good because we hadn’t any beds.

In the morning of September 5th we arrived to Jeju dock. Our hostel was other side of the island so we took a taxi to the hostel. Hostel was really nice and the guy in reception spoke good English and he told us where to go and what to do in Jeju. In the roof of the hostel there was sun lounges, table, and chairs and like a little kitchen where we ate breakfast and just hang around.

Right away we arrived to the hostel, we tried to find a place where to rent bikes, but we had too big group of people to having enough bikes for us, so we planned go to beach just to swimming and lying on the sun. In the afternoon we went visit to Jeju sex museum. There was lot of funny things and very weird statues.

Art from sex-museum

In the second morning we went to hiking to highest mountain of Jeju. We took the easiest way to go up, because some of the people in our group didn’t have good shoes, and some of the people had a problem with their feet’s, because of lot of walking with bad shoes. So, they didn’t had any interest to go a hard way, but it was fine, the easiest way took still about 6 hours all together. The way up was about 3 km. The way we took didn’t take us on the top of the mountain, so it was quite easy to hike. And there was really good views! When we planned to go back, we chose the other way down. It was 7km and full of rocks and difficult paths, so I think that was enough hard for us, but not for Philip, because he decided to go there alone at the next day to have a hard way to the top of the mountain. We were leaving at the day after hiking, so he had to take all of his stuff with him. After hiking Noora and Maria went to take a nap, Phillip went to running (he is training for the marathon) and rest of our group went the beach to relax. That day there were good waves and we decided to try surfing. Sonja has tried surfing before, so she was pretty good at it. Surfing wasn’t that easy as it looks like! Tobi was the only one who got the wave! But what we learned is that the next time we try surfing we are going to use a shirt! We didn’t know that, so after surfing we felt awful pain on our skin, because of rough surface of surfing board and the salty water.

In the last morning in Jeju we planned to go hiking on top of the volcano. Going top of the volcano wasn’t hard at all there was stairs and going up takes maybe 20 minutes.

Trip back to Seoul by ferry felt faster than way to Jeju. Maybe just because we were so tired after hiking and at this time we also got more blankets, so the floor didn’t felt so hard. So at this time we actually slept almost the whole trip.