First weeks in Campus

Our buddies came to get us from the subway station in Seoul. We took a bus from Seoul to Suwon. It took almost an hour to come here. 

Gate to Campus

The yard in front of library

Library

Amazing views from campus area

The Korean names are really difficult to pronounce and especially to remember, so almost all the Koreans have English name also. My buddy, Stella, have been as an exchange student in Finland, in Tampere, so we had something to talk about immediately, and we didn’t have a awkward silence moments at all. My buddy is really nice and she can talk English really well, which is actually not so common in here. Koreans are afraid to talk English even if they could, but many of them cannot do it. I don’t know why, because they start to study English at the same time as we, in third grade.

There were three dorms at the campus. First one has boys and girls side, and the second one was just for girls and obviously the last one was only for boys. Henri and Pekka were living at the first dorm and I, Noora, was living at the girls’ dorm. There were many weird rules in our dorm. We had our own access cards so we didn’t get in to the elevator without it, and because of that we couldn’t visit at the boy’s floor at all. There was a common kitchen but there was just a table and microwave, so it was impossible to do any food in there. In the other dorm, there was better kitchen, where is was possible to cook, but it was really dirty and they also didn’t have a fridge. It was bad, because we couldn’t do any breakfast or anything. We just ate noodles and stuff like that, unhealthy food.

The first month went well. We met lot of new people every day and we had dinners and parties together, so it was easy to get to know them well. After the first week we already had a huge group of exchange students who we were friends with. It was easy to settle down in here. I also get a Finnish roommate Sonja from Helsinki and it was super easy to live with her. I think in our dorm, they but the girls in the same room with same nationality. There is all together 7 Finnish people in our exchange group. Two of them came here to do their all studies.

The first week in school was actually pretty awful for me. Boys had to do the online registration for choosing the courses, but I didn’t had to do it, because they told me from here, that if I am going to study Architecture, I don’t have to do the online registration before I will come here. So, I came here and we went to Engineering building with my buddy, to choose my courses, but wasn’t so easy than we thought. For some reason that is still a mystery for me, I couldn’t choose all the courses from department of Architecture Design. I think the courses from department of Architectural Design, in third grade, were too difficult to me, and I don’t know why I couldn’t choose for example the courses from that department but in the first grade. Well, then I had to choose the courses from different departments, like Civil Engineering, Architectural Engineering and so on. The courses are all engineering courses so it is really difficult to study those in English, with my English skills. We tried whit Sonja to have Korean basic language course, and Korean Culture and history for International students, but those courses were in Korean language, so we had to forget them. We had many difficulties with choosing courses but I got five courses so it is okay now, if I will pass them. The system in here is that you can choose the courses that you want, and you have the first week time to try them and change your schedule. After that you have to study those courses that you have chosen. It was also a shock how bad Korean accent the teachers have.

Engineering building