Second Day in Korea

On February 24, my second day in South Korea, I woke up at 4:00 am because I was cold, so I snuggled in my blankets and went back to sleep. I woke up again at 7:57 am and rolled out of bed. After turnign off my three alarms I got ready for my day. The showers have amazing water pressure but...there is no privacy whatsoever, well I guess there is a glass wall on each side between two shower heads. However if you turn away from the wall you can pretty much see everyone else in the room. Personally, I didn't care and jumped right in without a care in the world but most of the other exchange students did not like this one bit. To this day I have not seen another exchange student in the shower when I'm in there, they probably go in at different times than most people.

After a little organization.

After organizing my room a little, I met up with the rest of the Global Village exchange students and hiked over to the computer lab. Here there was a lecture introducing the Global Village program. After everything was said and done we had a campus tour. Yonsei University Global Village in Wonju is so beautiful.

 Then after buying an ethernet cord and putting it in my room we returned to the computer lab to fill out loads of paperwork for the Alien Registration Card, Yonsei ID card, and bank account. Then we registered for classes but since I had already registered I just enjoyed wifi for a little while and messaged my family and friends. At the end, we were given free coat hangers and I grabbed a mini laundry basket. Everyone gathered in the bank downstairs and we handed in our paperwork. After all of this I went back to my room to discover that one of my roommates had moved in. Her name was 예원. She brought me to the Emart gathering area and helped me get a Transportation Card for the bus and subway. Soon a large group of exchange students was led by three Korean students to Emart. We rode the bus and filled up the entire thing. After a few minutes we arrived at Emart.

Emart in Wonju South Korea.

Emart was a three story store that reminded me of Walmart or Target since it seemed to have everything. Instead of esculators they had inclined moving sidewalks so you could take your carts up and down to different floors. I stuck close to My roommate Yewon and even used her cart to put my stuff in. Something different from America was that we had to pay 100 won to use a shopping cart. This is about ten cents but it is weird to think about paying for a cart but they were nice carts.

Emart shopping cart.

While we were exploring the food court two little kids pointed at us and shouted "American! American!" in Korean. It was so cute! Then Yewon asked the kids if they knew any English and the kids said, "Hi," and waved. They were super cute.

After everyone got what they needed, we went to check out. Yewon had to help me because I didn't speak enough Korean. And to get a paper bag, you had to pay for it. This was also a foreign concept for me but I didn't mind. As we were waiting at the door we realized Melanie and Gabriela didn't know we planned on meeting at a certain time so Yewon and Soojin went back in to look for them. It turned out that Gabriela's card wasn't working so she had to withdraw money in order to pay for her groceries. it took a while but everything got sorted out and we all headed to the bus stop.

View next to bus stop.

Once we had returned, our third roommate had moved in, her name was Hwayoung. We all talked for a while and organized our desks. Then at one point they asked me to help them decide their English names. I asked if they wanted simple names or unique names and they of course said unique. Then I asked for their favorite American letter and threw out ideas from there. Eventually Yewon got the name, Destiny, and Hwayoung received the name, Ariella. 

We worked for hours on my Internet but could not get it to work. Eventually we decided we were hungry so we ordered chicken. it was delicious! After we finished eating, our neighbor came to our room saying she needed to go to Emart so we decided to go with her and help her. 

Bus ride to Emart.

Eventually we made it back to the dorm and I was able to connect to temporary wifi and contacted all my friends and family. After that i fell right asleep, I was exhausted.