Orientation

So upon arriving at the airport, I was graciously picked up by my Ewha PEACE buddy (their official names). Her name is Sora Choi, and she is totally rock.

We waited a bit for some other students to arrive from Hong Kong and Mexico, and then took a bus from Incheon to Seoul. The bus ride was about an hour long, and the taxi which we took to the dorm was very nice inside. Just to set this down in black and white: my dorm, Hanwoori House, is on top of a mountain. I exaggerated, but it is much higher than a hill (maybe 700 feet up). That night we went out to eat with the buddies at a local Korean restaurant which was really good. Additionally, and I know my mother would be proud, it was extremely cheap. The total, for the eight of us, came to 30 dollars. Needless to say, I covered the entire bill in a show of gratitude to the buddies. Note: there is no tipping in Korea. I then returned back to the main gate of Ewha. This gate, which opens up to a huge shopping district is at the bottom of the hilltain (my new word) so we walked for about 30 minutes and by the top we had not only burned off hundreds of calories, but also managed to sweat ourselves to dehydration. I called it an early night in disgust at the fact that my internet was not working and looked forward the next day to orientation.

Orientation began with an abbreviated tour of the campus from my lovely buddy Sora and then shortly after we were herded onto buses to head out to Vivaldi Park. During the drip we passed through the rural Kwangju province which is very lovely. It looks like all the misty mountains you see in traditional style Chinese movies. I couldn’t get a good picture to do them justice, but I did manage a photo from the bus of a small village in Kwangju.

We then arrived at Vivaldi Park Resort and started the international student/buddy orientation.

First, we sat through about an hour of technical information regarding classes and housing. Then, the fun began. Unfortunately, I had decided to put my bag in my room for safe keeping during orientation so I could not take any pictures with my camera. I will try to describe the ensuing chaos here:

First we broke into four teams and sat in lines. The girls then had to choose “the most handsome man in the group” to be the team captain. I use quotations to express some doubt as to what kind of male captains they were supposed to choose. I say this because one of the really good-looking German guys was in my group and he didn’t get picked. Anyway, the captains were then forced to go up on stage in this huge conference room and dance. What I did looked more like a seizure, but it got the girls laughing, so that was good. It was very embarrassing at first because everyone there is at least mediocre at dancing, but after some time I just found that they enjoyed my attempt. Then we started to play games. We played a game where we had to walk around while music played and when it stopped they would call numbers and we’d have to pile into corresponding groups. The people who couldn’t form groups of the right numbers were out. This was pretty chaotic because there were about 280 girls and 20 guys in the room. We then played other games which got increasingly more embarrassing for the team captains…like charades that were rigged so that I had to start crawling around on stage and clawing at people to get them to guess grizzly bear. Another game we played, which very well describes Korean society was called “Guess who drank the soju.” I found this to be very surprising since all the teachers were there and this was paid for by the school. Basically, ten people from each team went on stage and there were ten cups. Only one had soju. So for example, when the ten people from blue team (my team) went up and drank, all the other teams had to try and guess who drank the soju. Of course, I HAD to go according to the rules the buddies had made because I was a guy and also the captain. Luckily, my cup had water, but my friend Hiroki was not so fortunate! Apparently he had tasted soju before so he could disguise the fact that he drank soju…thus the other teams guessed wrong and received no points. After several games, and tallying up the points, Blue team won. Of course, the captain had to go up on stage to receive the reward of chips and junk food. The almost made me dance and sing again, but I jumped off the stage and threw the bags of food into the crowd.

After the buddy-prepared game night we went back to our Korean style room. I was with a bunch of German guys, so of course they decided to go buy TONS of soju and beer and throw a party. We all went down to the local market and bought soju and beer, which is interestingly cheaper than bottled water (1000 won, or about a dollar). I tried the soju and found it to be a mix between rubbing alcohol and turpentine.

Now, every guide book I had read prior to Korea had made bold mention of the fact that drinking is part of Korean life. I found this to be undeniably TRUE. At first our room of men went back to the public lounge and started to drink…it took about 15 to 20 seconds for about 20 of the Korean peace buddies and other Japanese people to come out and teach us drinking games. My research shows that although Korean women love to drink, they cannot drink very much without completely losing their wits. After some time, a hotel manager came up and told us we couldn’t hang out in the lounge…so of course the only next logical movement was to our room. I had a great time without getting drunk (see kids, drinking is unnecessary). The Japanese and Korean girls were lots of fun and we hung out, took pictures, and practiced Japanese and Korean with each other. I think a huge reason all the girls came to our room was because of the Swedish, Finnish, and German guys who are very attractive. One actually models for Pepsi in Asia. On a down note, we got a warning from the hotel and the dean of Ewha international department came up to scold us all for disturbing other rooms. The following pictures sum up the party that went from 11 until 4 in our room:

Some girl and my friend Hiroki

Buddy Hyo Jin and another friend on the right.

Hyo Jin and I!

The crazy Su Min next to some of my roommates (the only other white guys at Ewha).

Some girl, japanese friend, me, model guy from Sweden, Angie.
As you can see, I'm terrible with names.

The next morning...I'm very friendly with most of these guys now. The shirtless guy is Nico from Holland.

Fact: Although Koreans like to think they are super trendy and materialistic...the only drive shitty Hyundais or Kias...and they only buy them in black, white, or some gradient combination thereof.

The lovely Rutgers Folks before leaving...

Christina and I



Olivia and Angie

Some stuff from the ride home: