Week 1

The first week here has gone really well. I have had only one day on school, which was only introduction lectures, and I think it is going to be quite easy for me. What I can tell already is that the teaching style is really different from the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, classes are interactive and students feel free to ask questions while the teacher is presented. In South Korea, only the teachers are talking and students keep silent throughout the 1,5 hours of lecture. Furthermore I really have to get used to the use of English and the English accent of some professors. In my home university, the professors are all really good in English, but in South Korea some professors seem to be really nervous to talk in English and talk really slowly. This makes the lectures a bit boring, but I can keep up easily because they explain each topic very thoroughly in order to make us understand it. I go to school by subway and subway stations are huge here. When I enter the subway station I have to walk 10 minutes underground to get to the right tracks, and there are loads of stairs. Furthermore the school campus is very hilly so when I exit the subway station I walk 10 minutes up a hill and then down for 5 minutes before arriving at the Business Building, so my leg muscles are growing every day. Furthermore I went on a sports camp for a few days to Gurye, in the Southern part of South Korea. I got this chance because I was asked by a Dutch person who is a full-time student here to join their team because one of the team members left. We are practicing ‘’ssireum’’ which is one of the oldest Korean fighting sports and is similar to wrestling. It is all being recorded by a Korean TV Channel and they will make a documentary about it on TV. The TV programme is called ‘’Foreign woman’s wrestling competition’’ and we will have a real match in addition to it next Tuesday and it will be live on TV. So we went with all 4 teams, consisting of only foreign woman (from all over the world: Finland, America, El Salvador, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam..) to the city of Gurye and practiced wrestling there in addition to other nice activities. However the whole camp was in Korean so I really had to get used to it. Luckily I already knew some Korean words, so I could respond in Korean from time to time, but most of the time I had to communicate with hands and feet and via my Dutch friend translating for me. It was a really nice and unique experience to meet old Korean wrestling masters and practice with them. We also went to watch a real wrestling match in a stadium, but I felt a bit uncomfortable because they were filming us the whole time and we would appear in the big screen in the stadiums. But of course seeing foreign people in such a small town (only 20,000 people) was not an every-day experience to most Koreans. When on the weekend, I experienced quite a lot of ‘’culture shocks’’. Every time we went to restaurants we sat on the ground on a low table, with our legs crossed, and of course we had Korean meals and ate with chopsticks. I really enjoyed the Korean meals but my stomach had to get used to rice in the morning. Furthermore we slept on the ground which was also a new experience for me, my back had to get used to that as well ;) On the last day we went to visit a beautiful old Korean temple and went to the top of the second highest mountain of South Korea, and then we went home. This Monday I have one more day of school, then the wrestling match day, and then there is a Korean Thanksgiving holiday from Wednesday to Sunday, in which I am going to explore Seoul!