May 29 - Day 1 in Korea

Now is already end of spring, so the weather is not very cold. The weather is almost like in Cameron Highlands. It is cold in the morning and at night, but cooling in the afternoon. The first thing that we noticed as arrived was the many tall buildings in the city. There are many buildings on the hill slopes as well. The cars here left hand driving. Most of the cars here are Hyundai. I didn’t see any Malaysian cars around.

Before we arrived at Dongseo University, we saw a lot of shops along the way. Dongseo University is located on the top part of the hill. The road up is quite steep. Yet, there are so many small shops along the way, located very close to each other and selling all sorts of things, especially food. We noticed that in such a small area, most of the buildings have their own design, even if it is a small shop. Cables for the lamp post is hanging everywhere, crossing here and there and it looks very untidy, this is very similar to same places in Japan.

As we arrived at the International House, Wei Shi introduced to us 2 of his friends here, one from China and the other one from Japan. They are very friendly and even helped us with our luggage to our dooms. Supposingly, 5th floor is the girls’ dormitory and 6th floor is the guys’ dormitory. However, due to the lack of rooms, some of the guys are staying in the girls’ dormitory. Eileen, Bee Jun and I share a room. Ryan and Yushu share another room and it is located just opposite our room. But, the guys still need to use the bathrooms and toilets on the 6th floor. The rooms are not as big as we imagine it to be, but bigger than the ones in the hostel. There are 2 double deckers, 4 wardrobes, 4 tables, 2 heaters, a fridge and an air-conditioner. The room is quite dusty, as if no one has being staying there for ages. As it’s reaching 2pm, we dropped our luggage in the room and then Wei Shi introduce us to some of the international students staying there as well. They are from Germany, Japan, China, Russia or India. They are very friendly. Then, we went for lunch.

Wei Shi guided us to a small restaurant or café located near the university. We need to walk a long way down the hill to get our lunch, looks like we’ll need a lot of walking, to be more specific, mountain climbing in the next 4 months. The price of the food there range from 2,000 won to 2,500 won. The taste is a bit weird, spicy and sour. Kimchi is served in all the meals, for free. There’s a variety of kimchi. Some taste okay but some too spicy or sour. I think of it as appetizer. I have Bibimbap for my lunch. It’s something like mixed rice, with eggs, some vegetables and rice. Somehow, it tasted a bit like rojak in Malaysia. It’s quite a big plate and we need to mix all the stuff in the bowl before eating. Water is free and it’s self-service. Then, we went back to our hostel to unpack our luggage and clean up the room.

At around 7.30pm, we went to dinner together with Wei Shi. He brought us to a newly open restaurant, which is located underground. The place is very small, with less than 10 tables. They showed us a menu with no pictures and written in Korean. Since Wei Shi was going to “belanja” us for this meal, he made the ordering. The food here is very modern and it taste almost like Malaysian food, with a bit of spicy or weird taste. There are a lot of side dishes with only some main dishes. We have sprout soup, a big plate of thin egg with carrot and other vegetable ingredients inside, corn with cheese(tasted almost like corn with butter, except that it’s using cheese instead and it’s a bit more sticky) for the side dishes. For the main dish, we have rice, a big sushi row like egg and seafood soup. The soup is rather salty and weird to me, but it’s okay. After dinner, we did some small shopping at a minimart nearby. Suprisingly, we need to pay 50 won for a plastic bag. It's FOC(Free of Charge) in Malaysia.

After that, we went back to our rooms and continue our cleaning.