THE ULTIMATE
TRAVEL BLOG
UNIVERSITY OF SEOUL
SPRING 2019
SPRING 2019
After coming home from Korea, I wish I had more time there. It was an amazing experience I will never forget. I would definitely study abroad again if given the chance. Studying abroad was a truly great opportunity and I encourage all students to do it!
Living on my own gave me the freedom I didn't know I was craving. Korea was the perfect place to study abroad because there are low crime rates here and it's SO CHEAP. I have a new appreciation for Korea after visiting Japan and coming back to the US. Closing this short chapter of my life was hard, but here are the most recommended things I think one should do when visiting Korea! TOP TEN PLACES TO SEE:
A couple last tips I have for you guys is to download apps such as Naver Map, KakaoT (Kakao Taxi), and KakaoTalk. I used all of these apps almost everyday. Naver Map was very useful in helping me get around. It was like a Google Maps, but ten times better. And try to do something every day that you are in Korea!! My only regret was staying at home a lot. There are so many things Korea has to offer. Go and explore them! :)
0 Comments
This week, my girlfriend and I decided to take a short intercountry trip to Busan. Busan is a seaport city in South Korea that is famous for its fish markets. In order to get there, we needed to take the KTX train, which is similar to the bullet train in Japan. It's much faster than the other trains in South Korea. It's a 325 kilometer one-way trip, which is roughly equivalent to 201 miles. The train ride took three and a half hours. It was a lot longer than expected. I was able to eat dinner, study for final exams, work on my business, and take a short nap. Very productive! Here's a picture of the KTX train as it was coming into the station: By the time we got to Busan, it was 5pm so we didn't have much time to explore before the sun went down. The first thing we did was take a taxi to the Busan Air Cruise. It's a famous tourist landmark that has cable cars with clear glass bottoms. The cable cars start at one end of Songdo Marine Beach Park and go over the water towards the other end of the bay. It was really cool because we could see coral, fishing boats, waves, crab nets, etc. We lucked out and got onto the cable cars right around 6pm when the sun was setting. After the sun went down, we took a taxi over to the Jagalchi Fish Market. It's the largest seafood market in Korea and it's rumored to have the freshest seafood in the country! We got a snow crab, 6 sea urchins, 4 tiger shrimps, and 2 abalones. After purchasing the live seafood, the fisherman took us upstairs where they had their cooks prepare our meal. That's about as fresh as it can get!
With midterms week finally over and supplementary week in full swing, I finally have more time to relax and work on my business. When I first heard of supplementary week, I was confused as to what it was. Supplementary week is basically a week for make-up classes. If a professor cancelled class any time during the previous weeks, this would be the week you have to come to class. Interestingly, Professor YK said this is unusual for colleges in Korea - definitely loving UoS 😉 Since my girlfriend and I have more free time, we decided to accept a challenge. As you can recall in my last post, we are fostering a Jindo pup named Mocha. Well, turns out Mocha's sister's foster family couldn't foster her any longer due to medical issues. We decided to help them out and foster her as well! Her name is now Mochi :) On another note, we also had the chance to check out the iconic Nansam Seoul Tower. Despite living so close to it, we never got a chance to visit until now. The views were amazing - you can see the vast city of Seoul stretching out all the way to the horizon. Seoul is such a big city. We also got to attach a lock to the famous love locks. Couples head to the tower to lock their "padlock of love" onto the railing and to dream that their love will last forever. Hello again,
This past week has been quite hectic. It was midterm week here at the University of Seoul and I spent most of my time studying. Two of my classes had midterm examinations, one had a physical performance evaluation, and one had two oral presentations. The first exam was for my derivatives, options, and securities class. It's a fourth year business finance class that includes a mixture of investment theory and technical analysis. This was by far my most difficult midterm because the professor's Korean perspective on investment theory is much different than the American perspective that l have been learning at Shidler. He discusses many things on a macro level and shares his opinions on how different countries have unique policies, regulations, and laws that influence the way investors are able to trade. However, many of the things he discusses in class don't apply to the United States investment market. For example, one of the questions on the exam was about CFD investments, which is something you don't typically learn in the US because CFD trading is illegal in the States. My second exam was for my global marketing class. I studied hard for this exam because it was covering a total of 10 chapters worth of content. All the hard work paid off because I got an A+ on this exam! I was pleasantly surprised and relieved with the results. The physical performance evaluation was for my lifestyle fitness class, which is very similar to the KRS classes at UH Manoa. Throughout the first half of the semester, we have been learning 3 different sports: ultimate frisbee, badminton, and basketball. For the performance evaluation, the professor had us play each sport and he graded us on factors such as proper form, accuracy, and communication. He also had us take a short written exam to test our knowledge of the rules and regulations for each sport. My human resource management class didn't have any midterms, but we had two group presentations instead. These presentations were based on various chapters throughout the textbook and were both expected to be 30 minutes in length. My groups opted to do our presentations first and second, so we had two weeks of presentations back-to-back. Our first presentation was on performance management and evaluation. Our second presentation was on employee benefits and compensation. I think we did well on both of the presentations because everyone on our team was comfortable with public speaking and we did our research on the topics thoroughly. Overall I'm very happy with my personal performance and my group's performances this week. The grades haven't all been released yet, but I'm confident that I did well in all of my classes. I'm glad that midterm week is finally over! 안녕하세요 means 'Hello' in Korean! I'm learning more and more about the Korean culture every day. There are so many places to see and so many things to do! I'm disappointed that I might not have enough time to do all of these things (I've included a list of places I recommend visiting while in Seoul at the bottom of this post).
The University of Seoul also provides foreign exchange students with a group called Seoulmates. This group helps you navigate through life in Korea and hosts a lot of events for exchange students to participate in. Some of those events include visiting the Gyeongbokgung Palace, going to the night market, and many more. I definitely recommend participating in as many of the events as possible because you have the opportunity to network with people from different parts of the world. Another big update is that my girlfriend joined a Facebook group called Animal Rescue Network Korea and we are now foster parents to a cute Jindo mix puppy :) We named him Mocha! He's a really cute and energetic puppy. He's only one month old, but surprisingly he's very well-behaved and never barks. He e̶a̶t̶s̶ inhales all of his food without hesitation and doesn't require much attention. The Animal Rescue Network Korea Facebook group helps find new homes for animals that are going to be euthanized. In Asia, animal rights aren't strict and animal cruelty rates are extremely high. Some of them are even sent to meat houses. We decided to foster Mocha because he would have contracted diseases from the other dogs if he was left at the shelter. He needed a clean foster environment for about a month, which would allow enough time for him to get the proper vaccinations before being shipped to his new owners in the US. If you get a chance to help one of these poor babies, please do! It has been a very rewarding experience to be able to make a small difference for Mocha. Korea does not mess around with its public transportation. Buses, subways, and taxis can be found in abundance and at almost any time of the day. They are more efficient and a lot less expensive compared to back home. Usually a single journey ticket would cost about 1,350 won, which is about half the price of the $2.50 bus fare back home. Another cultural difference that I've noticed is that Koreans seem to not value individuality as much as people do back home. Many people have extremely similar haircuts, clothing styles, shoes, etc. There is not as much emphasis on individuality and being unique.
One of the things I really like here is that you don't have to tip when you eat out. Call me cheap, but that actually saves me a lot of money! And lastly, one of the most important cultural differences is that drivers are CRAZY here. Tip: PLEASE be careful when you cross the street. Even if you have already looked both ways before going, LOOK AGAIN! There is a blatant disregard for pedestrian safety. A car will drive inches near you and sometimes even cut you off while you're walking. It's amazing how I haven't seen a car-related accident here yet. If the drivers here were to drive like that in the US, I can almost guarantee that someone would knock their side mirror out. There are so many culturally different aspects here. However, I am enjoying my time here while immersing myself deeper into this unique culture. I'm loving my classes here so far! The professors seem to be a lot more laidback compared to back home. Most of our grades are based on presentations, which aren't too bad. Some of my classes don't even have a midterm or a final! For my Global Marketing class, the professor actually decided to cut the final out and have us focus more on our final presentations. Honestly, I'd rather do presentations over exams any day. My professor in my Global Marketing class (Professor YK) is extremely knowledgeable on business related topics. Even though I dreaded waking up at 7 a.m. for his class, I'm glad I decided to stick with it because he makes the class intriguing. He was an investment banker for 18 years and is now the CFO of a large Korean IOT technology startup. He often relates information from the textbook to his own experiences in the workforce which makes it easy to understand and internalize complex concepts. The classes are different compared to classes in Hawai'i and the Korean culture in general is much different as well.
It's been a couple of weeks and I'm finally situated in my new home. I also survived the second week of school with lots of upcoming assignments. It's interesting how different University of Seoul's class times are from UH Manoa. At UOS, each class meets once per week, BUT they are three hours long. As opposed to UH Manoa, where it's either two or three days a week with a significantly shorter class period. I think I prefer how UH's class periods work because sitting in class for three straight hours is painful. After class ends, I try my best to beat the sunset and explore with whatever daylight there is left. Seoul is an extremely big city and I've only been able to explore Myeong-Dong, Itaewon, and Dongdae-Mun. My favorite place so far has to be Myeong-Dong. There are so many stores and STREET FOOD STANDS! The street food is the best experience by far. I also recommend trying Din Tai Fung in Myeong-Dong. Din Tai Fung is well-known for their Xiao Long Bao and they definitely live up to their reputation. After a dreadful 11 hour flight, my plane finally landed at 7:30 PM in Incheon International Airport. Going through immigrations was quick! Luckily, thanks to my girlfriend's friend, our checked in luggages were labeled priority and were the first ones to pop out. Navigating through the airport was definitely a struggle. I was planning to stay at URSeoul, which was right by Seoul Station. They gave us instructions on how to get there from the airport via the airport railroad, but we did not end up where we were supposed to be. We ended up taking the taxi. All of that took about 2-3 hours, so I do recommend getting a taxi if you're not familiar with how you're going to get to your destination.
University of Seoul recommended URSeoul if you preferred to live off-campus. I opted for this option because I didn't want to be restrained to a multitude of strict rules. However, the housing registration for UOS is fairly easy. You are able to check in a day before orientation and you pay for the dorms on the day of orientation. During our orientation, we talked about "shopping" for classes. Registration is only open for a couple of days, so be aware of that. They're strict on their registration period and will not let you register after a certain date. This registration was actually in Korean! I was a bit nervous about this. Fortunately, it was not hard to navigate because IICE gives you clear instructions on how to register. The classes I chose to take were Derivative Securities, Lifetime Physical Activity, Global Marketing Management, and Special Issues In Management Of Human Resources. Looking forward to how these courses are going to be compared to the ones back at home! Things are getting real. I'm about to start my next adventure. Booking my flight was one of the easier tasks. I had booked it a few months in advance and got a good price from Hawaiian Airlines. The ticket was about $260 one-way. I plan to travel around Asia while I'm here, thus I didn't book a flight back to Hawaii yet. I am planning to book a flight back to Hawaii from another country in Asia (possibly Vietnam?).
Some other steps I needed to take before venturing off to Korea was obtaining my visa. It was a process that took me one too many trips to the Consulate of Korea in Honolulu. (Note: They are VERY strict about how your photo looks for your visa. There are several requirements that your photo needs to meet. For example, you MUST show your ears.) It also takes about five business days for your visa to come in. My last visit was the last day I could've attempted to obtain my visa before my flight. Luckily, they accepted my visa application! One errand done, several more to go... Before traveling to Korea, I had to fill out the Shidler Course Equivalency Form to make sure my credits would transfer over. Since the University of Seoul class registration is from March 4 - March 8, it was a little difficult to petition for classes because I was flying out on February 24th. I had to pick the classes that I was hoping to register for and submit the syllabi to Shidler B-101 ahead of time before having a set class schedule. The process was a bit daunting at first, but Rikki helped me to understand that I didn't need EXACT transfer credits and simply needed business electives to graduate. This made the class registration process much less stressful! Once I submitted all of my paperwork, I had to exchange my USD to Korean won. A major tip is to go to DFS to exchange your money! They have the best exchange rates on the island. Although, sometimes they don't always carry won. It depends if anyone from Korea flies in and exchanges their won for USD. Parking in Waikiki is also difficult to find. Fortunately, my girlfriend worked near DFS and was able to check every day for won. Another helpful tip is to pause your car insurance (you can temporarily lower your insurance premium if you don't want to completely pause your insurance policy). You should also download the Kakao Talk App because that's the main communication channel in Korea. Make sure to take care of all paperwork that needs your physical presence and signature before leaving (such as filing your taxes and adding authorized users to your bank accounts). You should also make sure to figure out your phone plan before leaving. I opted to purchase a phone plan with T-Mobile in Hawaii because it gave me unlimited calls, texts, and data while traveling internationally. One last tip is to start packing EARLY!!! I procrastinated and waited until the very last minute to pack. This definitely wasn't a good idea because I had to pack 4 months worth of supplies in less than 6 hours. I packed about 7 days worth of shirts, jeans, underwear, socks, and shorts. I also packed two jackets (one heavy double-layered parka and one thinner casual hoodie) because the Spring semester in Korea starts off at the end of the Korean winter and the semester ends during the beginning of the Korean Summer. If you are traveling during the Spring semester, make sure to pack clothes for both cold and warm weather. Or come prepared to purchase some clothes while here in Seoul. I also packed the typical toiletries such as toothbrush, toothpaste, hair gel, mouthwash, a razor, shampoo, conditioner, etc. Overall, I think it's better to pack light and only bring the absolute necessities in your suitcases. All of the small miscellaneous items can be purchased while traveling. Also one more tip is to make xerox copies of all of your important documents such as your passport, ID, visa, etc. Xerox copies won't bleed like normal printer ink if it gets wet. You'll want to have these copies stored separately from your other important documents to reduce the chances of losing both at the same time. That's about it for this blog post! I hope you found this both entertaining and informative. Please leave a comment down below if you have any questions 👇 |
Michael ImaiEntrepreneur, Archives
July 2019
Categories |