My back aches.
We decided to set out for our big move to Yonsei at 9am. After dawdling a bit and having one of our hostel guys find the taxi driver to help them find their way to us at our hostel (as it’s quite hard to find the first time), we finally left by 9:45 ish. Our taxi driver got quite lost finding the East gate, which was closest to SK Global, our dorms, as he has never been through there before. Anyhow, we finally made the hectic trip to the sign in area. The process was quicker than I thought it be and something unexpected even happened. Apparently, I had signed up as a male when I applied for dorms and was placed on the guy’s floor (Yonsei separates floors according to your gender), but when I looked at the list of rooms to see who my roommate was, I didn’t notice because my roommate’s name was in Korean and I couldn’t tell the difference if it was a female or male name and had assumed it to be the former obviously. Thus, when I got to the front desk to grab my key, the lady looked flustered and ended up changing my room number on the card key and I was like to her why I was being moved to another floor. She told me they didn’t realize the mistake until they saw that my name was a female one, imagine if I had walked into my room with a male roommate already there…awkward.
I was ecstatic to settle into my room! It’s like the size of a small hotel room with a bathroom, shower and sink to share and a shelf, desk and small clothing and footwear closet to myself. My new roommate is from Russia and she has yet to arrive. I have noticed that the room I got switched into is not on the room list; I assume it’s probably a ‘just in case’ room if scenarios such as the one that happened to me occurred.
We decided to get some household items at Daiso in Myeongdong as we didn’t even have any necessities including toilet paper. The trip to Myeongdong was unexpectedly long as our dormitories are at the upper right hand side of the campus and the station was about a 20 to 30 minute walk, but the trip back was just horrendous. I was holding two big plastic bags that contained 12 rolls of toilet paper, a washroom mat and other toiletry necessities, a garbage can, slippers, tissue box, and a regular size shampoo and conditioner from Watsons (similar to a Shoppers Drug Mart). It so happened that the trains were packed so we looked so out of place and I felt so ‘see lai’/adjumma during the whole trip back (though you never do see older ladies holding large plastic bags of stuff). AND, we saw a Daiso and a Watsons on the way back in Sinchon, why did we go all the way to Myeondong again? Also, we decided it be shorter walking through the main gate, but not to our surprise, we had misjudged the size of Yonsei and the amount of trekking we had to do uphill; at one point it felt like a 45 degree angle walk. Never again will we venture on that route with bags of stuff weighing us down. Though, I must say it was a pretty good workout. In the evening, Ann and I headed out with the Australian exchange student we met, Chloe,to Sinchon for western food with the other Australian girls as they have been missing it in their diet. We were going to go to a place called Ashley's, but the wait was two hours too long, thus one of the guys from the hostel brought us to a place called Spaghettini Factory. This was a really fancy place and it smelled heavenly as we entered it. It was similar to The Spaghetti Factory, but they had a better selection of pasta and other dishes. I ordered a Fungi (mushroom) cream sauce fettuccine and it was so creamy and flavorful! Better than pasta back home I must say. Afterwards, we parted from the Australian girls as they (minus Chloe) were leaving Korea on Thursday, while Ann and I took the long dark walk back home.
I can’t believe that after two weeks, five flights and six moves, I finally have a place to call ‘home’ for the next four plus months.
Welcome to the official start of my student exchange experience. Tomorrow begins a long day of orientation.