That’s the school chant- the sound that an eagle, the Yonsei mascot, makes.
Aside from classes this week was really exciting because there is a famous 3-day event here in Seoul called 연고전 (Yon-ko Jon), where our university (Yonsei) and Korea university have a huge sports match and everyone goes crazy. From what I surmise the Yeon is for Yonsei (weird romanization) and the ko for Korea University. There’s so much to say about those three days that I don’t know if I can put it all in one post, but it was definitely new and wonderful, that’s for sure.
There were several events leading up to the sports matches where we could go and learn the school cheers because supposedly you can’t have any fun at the games without knowing them. I did not appreciate these words of wisdom adequately. “Cheer” is not an appropriately descriptive word. They were a bunch of random old pop songs songs with new lyrics in Korean that didn’t really have anything to do with sports– songs like the Ghost Busters theme song, love ballads, etc.
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The Korean language placement test turned out to be a completely useless thing. On Monday all of the international students went into separate classrooms and were handed this packet of papers about 20 pages long. It started out so easy and I felt so confident! Then I turned the page, and the next page… four pages in and I didn’t even know what was going on anymore. I was thinking, “is this even Korean?” nothing looked familiar. I was writing random things and guessing un-educatedly at the multiple choice and then they called me in to take the oral portion. It was abysmal. I was nervous and managed to spit out how long I’d been studying Korean, where I was from, and that I had a pencil (yeah). She told me to just stop taking the written test and turn it in. Turns out a lot of people made it about 3-4 pages in as well so I didn’t feel so bad.
The next day we got our placement results and I was actually placed into the absolute beginner class. Don’t even get me started on how it doesn’t make sense to put anyone in there if they can at least read the alphabet and form basic sentences. Laura and Haruka were both in my class and we got in there and, yes, were learning the alphabet. The next day they told us to be patient if we wanted to change classes and we learned how to say our names. I was getting pretty depressed because my main goal in coming here is to actually learn Korean and at that point I’d neither come into direct contact with actual Koreans nor was I going to learn anything in class. Anyway, after some pestering me and Laura moved up to level 3 which is perfect, we are reading passages and having conversations about them which is perfectly comfortable and not at all deserving of being placed in level one. (bitter) The course is actually too advanced for me, but I don’t mind working harder in order to learn something.
I actually ended up changing the rest of my courses as well, so all of the classes I attended last week were not actually classes I will be taking. Essentially this will be my first week, but I got into a pre-modern Korean history class (we were learning about neolithic man today; very pre-modern) and an awesome pop-culture class where we watch Korean dramas and movies and talk about movie stars. It’s going to be an excellent semester.
Yonsei University – Main campus, seen if walking north up main road
I have officially been here for one week now, and my impressions of Seoul have only improved since I arrived. Because classes don’t start until today I had the entire week to explore the city to the best of my ability and get some errands run. The first few days here everyone tentatively tried to make friends with other people in the international dorm since these are the people we’ll be in close quarters with for our entire stay. Last Tuesday we had orientation and were introduced to a bunch of clubs on campus that are oriented towards the international students. The faculty are all extremely kind and helpful and the Korean Yonsei students that are in the international clubs are really friendly and outgoing as well. I was sitting at orientation watching these introduction videos being overwhelmed by the “korean-ness” of it all, which I don’t really know to explain, other than that it was exactly what I expected. I love all the English catch-phrases that are used everywhere in slogans and sign-age that probably sound cute to Koreans but are often silly to me. Everything here is packed full of extremely positive, light-hearted and ‘cutesy’ messages. The night of orientation they were having a welcoming party and it was really strange to attend a school sponsored event where they offered us shots. The legal drinking age here is 19 and I think you have to be 19 to be an exchange student, but that was still pretty bizzarre.
I hung out with Laura, my roommate Haruka from Japan, and a girl Susie across the hall who is American but speaks Korean fluently. Susie has been incredibly helpful to all of us and helped me when I was trying to open up a bank account, showed me how to ride the subway etc etc. It’s hard to sleep in here at the dorm because there is construction outside that starts at 6:30 every morning as well as the sun always comes up and shines directly on my pillow at roughly 7:15. As a result I’ve been up and ready for the day extremely early and spent a lot of time exploring campus and the areas around the campus.
The campus here is so beautiful. It’s got a lot of beautiful landscaping and is a lot more lush than I thought it would be, though for the most part the rest of Seoul is pretty devoid of plant-life. People who live in roof-top apartments grow a lot of plants (you see that all over the place) and some people who are lucky enough to have houses have “yards” which are actually patches of grass planted on top of the first floor (a lot of the older houses have a tiered design, it’s kind of difficult to describe). Susie actually took me and Laura to meet her grandparents which was one of my favourite experiences so far. They were soooo kind and completely adorable. Her grandmother kept offering us bananas and apples and trying to make us stuff our faces. They live in a really nice older house with a yard as well. On Thursday there were graduation ceremonies at Yonsei so there were street vendors all around the gate selling flowers and people walking around in the Yonsei robes etc. I’m not sure if they traditionally do graduation at the end of the summer or if it was just a small portion of people graduating after the summer, but I’m pretty sure their school year goes from fall to the end of summer, without a break, unlike ours.
