Category: School Posts

There is a couple school cafeterias on campus, but this one is the main one on the second floor of the Student Union Building.

Its called Love Room 사랑방!

There are usually 4-5 different options you can choose from that vary in price that change daily. You can go and look outside at what the menu is. They is 1-2 soup options (top row), 2 regular (typically Korean) food options (middle row, The Dish), and then 1 Noodle box. They give a lot of food and it is only around $3!!!

You can go inside and pay on a self service machine, at the counter, or with card right before you get your food. Then you get a tray and utensils and go down the line, school lunch style. This made me feel like a Korean student in a Korean drama!!

Here are a couple meals I had. This was rice cake dumpling soup (떡만두국). They always have a few side dishes to take too.

This one was Omerice (fried rice with sauce).

 

It is super fast, easy, and a cheap meal to get with friends or by yourself. (In Korea it is totally normal for people to eat alone too). I regret not going earlier, I only decided to visit towards the end of the semester and went a couple times.

Ah and it feels like I am a freshman again! The dorms here are pretty nice though, I live in Roseville which is a 10 minute walk to the center of campus, 5 minutes to Wangsimri Station. It is filled with International students who mostly speak English. I live on the fourth floor of the narrow building. There are a lot of restaurants and cafes nearby, as well as a convenience store right next door.

The dorm has its own little kitchen, laundry machine, bathroom (with a shower rod, not a separate shower), desks and bunk beds!

The bathroom doubles as the shower, there is a shower rod next to the sink and the floor has the drain. So make sure to always wear shower shoes!

Immediately upon arriving I set forth to find the gym, knowing I would need some sort of physical activity to accompany the massive amount of sweet desserts and bakery goodness I am eating here. Here are pictures of the Fitness Center on campus that I was able to take on a Saturday morning, where I was one of two people there.

These pictures aren’t really the best, but it is a pretty small gym. This is really all that it is- one big room with weights, treadmills on the side (I was taking the picture from one), and a mirror room.

I’ve only ever gone in the mornings, but around 8am it won’t be that crowded and then gets busier around 10am. You check in with your student id and they give you a key to a locker that you can use. You can also pay 5,000 per month to rent your own locker.

Mirror room with yoga mats and balls in the back.

Now the poopy part is that you have to pay for a membership here. It is 50,000 per month, but for 4 months its 35,000 per month. It gets cheaper if you stay longer than that too. Apparently that is a really good deal in Korea where gym memberships can get up to 70-100 per month. You can also pay more and they have clothes that you can rent to wear. A pink shirt (that the girl in the pic is wearing) for girls, blue for guys (yes, gender norms very apparent here), and long black shorts. I didn’t pay extra for those and feel very abnormal in my own gym clothes because most people do wear the gym attire. Also, I am usually one of 3-4 girls every time I go, and especially one of the only ones doing weights.

It was worth it for me to get the membership and I enjoy starting my day off well with working out, but walking around in Korea alone (with all of the hills and stairs) is also an extra dose of exercise compared to the standard American life!

Hanyang University has this intensive Korean course that is 10 weeks long and is M-F from 2-6pm. So I am in this small little classroom everyday! I do enjoy it for the most part, the class is divided up in 50 minute sections and we get a 10 minute break every hour. I have 13 people in the class, mostly consisting of Chinese students, one from England, and one from Vietnam. I am the only American in the class and only the student from England can speak English. It is a first to be in a classroom where Korean is the base language to be able to communicate, even amongst peers.

It’s pretty much your standard language class but jammed packed. Considering that Korean at U of O was everyday for 50 minutes long, you can think of one class as a weeks worth of learning. At UO we would learn a new grammar point and study it for a couple days with practice, but here we learn about 3-4 new grammar structures everyday and move on quickly. You are expected to do outside review and studying to stay on top of it, on top of the normal 4 pages of homework (with a writing short essay every time). It is pretty manageable and though the class time is pretty sucky since its in the middle of the day, you get accustomed to it.

The teachers are super nice and helpful, and we even have a Kakao chat room for our class that was made from day one. As for tests, we only have our midterm exam and final exam, but have four speeches from our essays dispersed throughout the semester. You need to buy your workbook, textbook, and homework book and bring them everyday (~ $30 for all). Class is all located in the International Building which is at the center of campus, and they have this Korean class available for all international students from levels 1-6.