Being abroad during the Christmas is not something easy. I though beforehand that it might be a little bit challenging, but the truth is that it is more challenging that I expected. Not only the thing that I am so far away from my family and everything familiar, but also that here in Seoul, there is no such a thing as Christmas, at least not in a way I know it.
For me Christmas is about relaxing, peaceful feeling, quietness, family. And on top of all, food. I am not sure when the best part of Christmas Eve changed from opening presents when I was kid to current, when I eagerly wait for Christmas dinner to start and enjoying all the good food. But in here Christmas is a holiday for couples, it is time when couples are spending time together, not families. I liked in Finland when everything quiets down, that after afternoon there are no cars driving on the streets at all, no trains, whole country stops and everybody are just relaxing and enjoying quiet times. Here, nothing stops, contrary even more peoples were outside walking and shopping.

But few days ago when I realized that it is almost Christmas and didn’t felt like that at all yet, I decided to go search for some Christmas feel by looking some Christmas lights in the city. Well, found some. And some more. And even some more. And all these were in the same small bush… I got a book from a friend that explains in funny way of Korean culture and habits and one thing the book mentioned is that Koreans can be described by using word ‘extreme’. And that was true at least what comes to Christmas lights. Honestly, I got blind. I have never seen as many lights at the same time. There were just too many lights together. In a small tree, it was just endless amount of lights. Small lamps right next to each other. It was bright, but the nice peaceful feeling that I get from Christmas lights from back home was just somewhere far, far away. I felt like everybody were just competing who can put more lights in the smallest bush they can find… Luckily there were couple, but just couple, trees with really beautiful snow flake lights. Those looked really peaceful and calming.

Wasn't quite sure how umbrellas has anything to do with Christmas...

Snow flake lights

More snowflakes

Got blinded

There's an empty spot... Not anymore...

Christmas lights

Today I had my last final exam, which also meant last study related thing for me on this semester. (Okey, I still have one Korean class tomorrow, but I don’t count that). So I think it’s time to sum up this semester and studies (and life) here.

I really can’t believe that my semester is over already. It feels like I just landed to Incheon yesterday, chosen my courses for coming semester – and, now it all gone. And still I have been here three and half months already.

Studies

In the beginning of semester I ended up to choose in a hurry (more or less) courses that seemed interesting. My selection was Mass Media, International Relations in Northeast Asia, Korean Language for Foreigners I, Modern Korean History and Advertising and Promotion Strategy. Mass media started by professor speaking only Korean for the first ten minutes unless she realized that I was sitting there and made huge conclusion that there might be non-Korean speakers in the English-speaking class… nd course didn’t got any better from that point. Professors English was quite bad and her preparation for course was just horrible. It has been a long time since I have seen such a bad course or teaching, I’m not even sure if I have ever encountered anything similar before. During the time I noticed that that course is more than useless for me and just decided to drop it. Definitely not worth of wasting time there – especially as lectures were in the morning

Other courses were much better, luckily. About Korean learning, I have wrote earlier here. Modern Korean History was good enough, I haven’t been taking any history courses at my home university, so I don’t know if this was any different from those, but I doubt that. It was a little bit boring teaching, as it is always when teacher is just speaking in the front and that’s all. In the first half of the course we had student presentations in the beginning of the class, but after mid-term those just disappeared. I luckily was among the students who didn’t had to keep any presentation.

Advertising and Promotion Strategy was also good course, professor was interesting and his teaching style was vivid. It was enjoyable to sit on the class and listen. And we needed to do advertising critic/analysis and then make our own story-board (in a group), which was fun. Only bad thing about the course was that the textbook we used was too american point of view – so in the end I wanted to come to here to learn about local markets, marketing, and I ended up to course that most examples was about US markets. ell, I guess that there’s not so many English books about Korean or Asian markets.

The best course was definitely International Relations in Northeast Asia. The whole course was about student presentation, in every lecture we had two presentations about some topics. As usual, some pairs made really good job, others didn’t achieved as good. But after all presentations we had discussion, which meant that mostly the professor was talking more about the topic. And similar way as in the end, last year in Jordan Intercultural communications ended up to be giving a lot of information about Arabic culture, this course ended up also to be most useful about local cultures and problems around here. It was interesting to hear and learn about views of US present, about North Korea, and how locals see other world.

Living

In three and half months I am started to get quite used to of living here. This is definitely different place than Tampere or Finland but not too much. What I mean with this is that normal daily life is easy enough. Things works pretty much in similar way, you find products you need where you expect mostly, snacks, drinking, food, go to nearby convenient store or supermarket. Beer, alcohol, same thing. Medicine, go to pharmacy. And so on. Want to eat something, well this is part that differs the most, if you want to eat something, it is easy to go to restaurant. Depending what you want, it is either cheap or even cheaper… I have ability to cook now at my apartment, but I haven’t been cooking so much, all the time, first, as I am sometimes too lazy, and second, it seems that it is actually cheaper to eat outside than make yourself. Well, when I cook by myself, it means that I use much more meat for the meal than I get in restaurant, which probable explains the difference. But I really like being able to cook – mostly my morning now contains instant coffee (coffee maker is still on todo list) and toast.

For coffee lover and addict as I am, this place is just amazing. I have never seen anywhere else as many coffee shops as Seoul has. This place is full of them. And I have even seen two Starbucks in the same block, distance between those was less than 20 meters. Some places are more expensive than others and the atmosphere differs also more or less. I personally like Starbucks, not only as I can get a lot of coffee at one time (gotta love Ventiâ„¢…) but also cause its atmosphere is pretty much for working and studying. Most people I see there are either working with their laptops or having a book in front of them. Its nice place for studying or working, when you just start to hate library and its quietness (seriously, I get feeling that even my breathing is too laud in there, it’s quieter place than morgue). Other places feels much more for meeting people, and I would prefer those places over Starbucks if I just want to hang with friends.
Coffee tastes also different in different places, I am still searching for my favorite place, but have to admit, I really like Flanel Coffee’s Hazelnut Latte. It is sweet but not too much and tastes good. Bonsol Coffee around here is really popular, but it is too sweet for me. Finding a good Latte without anything is still under searching, school coffee shops offers lattes for really cheap (I think it is about 2100KRW ~ 1,40EUR), but it can be tasted, not as good as elsewhere. Don’t know why actually, but it just tastes different. And as coffee lover, it is kinda funny to notice that I miss little bit bad tasting basic Finnish coffee, not because how it tastes but because its simplicity. Here the normal coffee is americano, which is just not for my taste. I need sometimes just caffeine, and for that, finnish coffee with milk is easiest way to deliver that. Juvenes Ala-Kuppila and big coffee… Not such a bad thing after all

I was too lazy to get outside today to find interesting looking restaurant that I would like to spend some time and eat something. So I decided to dig out my fridge and make something. As I did had some sausages and couple eggs, I was planning to be lazy and just make scramble eggs with sausages. But, as I was frying sausages, I got a better idea, I decided to make some pancakes (with Finnish ‘lätty’ receipt) and eat those. And as I started to make dough for them, I realized that I didn’t had any milk, so replacing milk with Mango juice.

2 eggs
wheat flour, about 5-6 spoons
mango juice, about 1dl
1 spoon oil
salt

As you might guess from receipt, my adding ingredients was more that what looks good than actually measuring those. I was mixing everything, left dough to settle down for a while and then frying those. Put some dough to frying pan, add pre-fried sausages (I cut those to small pieces) on top of pancake, fry, flip over and eat.

As the result, I was a little bit afraid how those would taste, as I am not big fan of mango. (Reason why I had mango juice in the first place was that I bought it by accident, I thought it was orange juice…). But in the end I couldn’t taste mango at all and those tastes like pancakes that I ate in Shanghai hostel. Pretty good. And what’s most important, I’m not hungry anymore

It has been a while since I have updated this blog, sorry about that but no worries, I haven’t forgotten you! I just happened to had a lots of other things to do so it seemed always that I didn’t had enough time to write anything here – or when I had, then I was just too tired to write anything. And then it end up to this, posting several posts and updates at the same night, writing until 3am in the night while I should be sleeping already. Well, anything for you my dear readers…

For the October, I had couple nice trips, which I have already written something about, Korail trip and Kimchi festival. And last week of October it was our mid-terms, so couple last weeks I was just preparing for exams, and, well, believe or not, studying.
And then, in the end of mid-term exam week, three last days of October I was visiting Shanghai. The story and photos of this trip is yet to come, but I promise that you don’t have to wait for long anymore to hear my experiences of Shanghai, or World Expo. It was nice trip but funny thing was that it was nice to get back to home, back to Seoul. I haven’t felt homesick or missed home at all so far, although I haven’t been traveling lot around the globe yet, but when I was in Shanghai, I missed Seoul. It was weird feeling and I’m not quite sure what it really means, maybe just that I feel like Seoul is my home now.

During the October I got really tired of living in the dorm. My room and dorm has few things that I have learned to hate during these two months I have spend here. Biggest problem is quality of this building. For a country that has all four seasons and during the winter temperatures under 0ËšC, it is really weird to live in a room that has only one glass in the windows. In other words, it is already quite cold in my room and in my bed I can feel a cold breeze all the time. Which in turn means, that when the real winter comes, I am going to freeze in my bed while trying to sleep. Floor heating works well though, my roommate likes to keep it maximum which means that room feels like I would be in sauna, and my feet are burning as floor is too hot. And still I feel cold breeze in my bed but otherwise I am just sweating a lot. So not pleasant place to sleep at all. And of course not being able to cook anything. In my dorm there is shared kitchen but so far it has been quite well occupied by other students and so far, shared fridges in kitchen is as well filled with other students food and ingredients. My room has a small fridge, but my roommate has taken over that more or less. And not to mention some extra creatures living in our bathroom, so far I have spotted three bugs in bathroom and one bug outside of bathroom, all are history now but … And not to mention curfew, I just don’t like the idea of that I have to be back to my dorm before 12am and cannot leave dorm until 5am. Although this has not been so big problem when I have came late as so far somebody as always came to open the door – but I don’t like rules that doesn’t make any sense.

All these caused me to start searching better place to live, and my own apartment. I was able to find quite quickly nice apartment from the building that is brand new. Actually I was able to choose my room as there were a lot of empty space and the room I picked and wanted, the top floor apartment with two windows (other apartments in that floor has only one window) was not even finished yet. So while I was in Shanghai the finished it and I was ready to move in – almost. After getting keys and after some language barriers I got Internet there, I found out two small problems, 1. internet was not working and 2. i didn’t get any hot water. Well, despite these problems I was able to clean up the whole place (yes, you are allowed to laugh, I have now cleaned my own apartment almost every possible place…) and while still trying to figure how to use boiler, as it seemed to be too difficult to use to get hot water. Although boiler only had one dial to set hot water temperature and on/off button… But while I was getting some of my stuff already to apartment on Saturday, thinking about seeing if real estate office has anyone present so I could try to complain about missing internet and hot water, real estate person and maintenance person came to knock my door and as the result, I found out that I had broken modem and broken boiler. Modem in switched now so I have working Internet in my apartment now, which is nice, but boiler is going to be fixed/changed in this week, which I hope that means the beginning of week and not the end of the week. It is quite impossible for me to move there until I can take shower and just wash e.g. dishes with hot water.

So still stuck in my dorm room, but hopefully not for long.

Three weeks ago I signed myself to waiting list for getting iPhone 4 here in Korea. And yesterday my wait was finally over. It made enough sense to buy it from here, as I am going to be here around one year, and hopefully I can unlock it (or it is unlocked) when I leave country. At the moment I have no idea if this is the case and so far there is no possibility to even test it. Well, I don’t even care about it so much right now…
I have seen and played a little bit with iPhone 4 before when my brother got his. It was amazing device and especially the Retina screen was amazing. But nothing so big at that time. But now when I got my own iPhone, using it everyday situations, seeing new screen with programs that I use all the time – I have to say that it still keeps amazing me every time when I see how sharp the text looks like.

And then the future part. I did play and tested Facetime with my brother’s phone over month ago, but that was just testing. At that time it was nice toy, nothing else. But yesterday I made Facetime call to my brother when he was at summer cottage and my family was there also at the same time. I know that video calls have been here a long time, video chatting has also been a long time. But either it has always required too many choices, it has been expensive and bad quality or just needed laptop/computer. This time, making Facetime call was just as simple as making normal phone call. Nothing else. And as it was on the phone, seeing all my family members was just turning phone towards them, talking with another person, just giving phone to him/her and that’s all. The video calling has nothing new, but the easy of using it, that’s the future part that we are having now.

I have been little bit over one month in Seoul now and right now I am doing my own record, I have never been abroad or away from home so long time before. Interesting thing is that I fell quite much as home here. I was waiting a little bit some kind of culture shock, some things that I find really irritating, but nothing bigger so far. Sure, not all things round here are the best and nicest things, but pretty much nothing that I cannot survive.
Food is one thing though that I am starting to fell little bit bored. What I have found out is that Korean food is actually little bit boring, mostly. Too often I have just found a lot of rice, little amount of meat (seriously, it is not good that I have to find pieces of meat and that I can count them in a meal) and a lots of spices. Problem is that spices are usually quite same, the food is colored to red and it is quite spicy and hot. But the taste is same. Too often exactly same. And it doesn’t matter if I eat either chicken or pork, as it still taste same spices.
But sometimes I found some positive surprised as couple days ago. I went with a friend to try restaurant that in my orientation material was labeled to have Korean style soup. What it meant was actually quite close to hotpot, stuff boiling in the table in some liquid, it was closer to white in color, some spices, but not too much. And what was nice surprise was that I actually was able to taste different sausages, even potato was tasting something else than just the same spices. So I just need to search different restaurants for better experiences about the food.

But after a month I have to say that not a once have I regret my decision to come here. Life here is easy enough that it is not frustrating all the time. With English it is possible to survive some places and in other places, it’s amazing how much it is possible to communicate with just sign language and smiling. So far I have always got what I wanted (expect in one time at school cafeteria person just wanted to give me Americano instead of latte, I gave up finally…). So just waiting what happens next months while I am staying here. During this month I haven’t been outside of Seoul yet and actually haven’t travelled so much inside Seoul either. I have just enjoying life as normal student life, and why wouldn’t I, I am not in hurry, I still have many months left to enjoy life here and to see Korea.

During this month I have seen a lot of readers in my blog. It’s nice to see that people are interested to reading what I am doing here – though now there are much more readers than during my trip to Jordan. But I do write much more also now ^_^. In September my blog was visited 241 times, and totally 6 hours has spent reading it. Thanks for all readers, this keeps me motivated to write updates. Just keep following what happens next…