Summer Studies Orientation

I am back again after almost a week away! Chinese New Year and midterms do that to you. Now, let's go back to sharing with you Day 2 and 3 of my summer studies. We spent both days exploring the school mainly and going for the orientation session held on the third day.

I will be showing you random snapshots of SNU along the post. First up, we were given a short school tour by the student leaders - by walking (aka Bus 11, haha). I would describe the whole walk as "Up and Down the Sloppy Slopes". Generally, South Korea has loads of slopes. That would explain why we were sweating buckets at the end of the tour. Along the way, we were shown where the bus stop is located and I took a photo of the shuttle bus route for future reference.

Basically, there are both public and school shuttle buses at each station. Here is one from the Business School stop:

I would alight at this stop to walk to the Arts building, which is where my electives are taught. I took Introduction to Sumukhua Painting as my AHSS GERPE and Ceramics as my UE, clearing a total of 6AUs over there. Those classes are fun since I have an interest in arts!

Take a look at the walls of the Arts building! It is so freaking cool! Imagine the amount of effort needed to draw on every single tile. If I am not wrong, the word is "He", like a lot of "Hehehehe" (laughing sounds). But sadly, near the end of my summer studies, I spotted some students cleaning up the walls.

There are a lot of flowers in that area as well. Here is one of my favourites:

All in all, the University is... HUGE as compared to NTU? I did not manage to explore the whole school during my stay there but you could if you are adventurous! I spent more time looking for places with nice sceneries, good food and great shopping deals. I took a lot more photos of SNU, so you can take a look at the gallery if you want to.

Moving on to Day 3 - Orientation Day, we reported to the venue slightly earlier to collect our goodie bags and to find some opportunities to talk to international students as well. Basically, they welcomed us to their University and briefed us on some administrative matters such as adding/dropping classes and how to set up a bank account. For your information, the school offers help in setting up a bank account and it is free. You do not even need to close the bank account after leaving Korea. One major plus point would be that you could use it again if you ever visit Korea next time. I did not apply for one although it is quite an easy process. Oh well, I just find it more convenient to keep the money with me and it is not a large amount either.

Let's take a look at the goodie bag! I think it contains pretty AWESOME things like a jacket, a shirt, an umbrella and tumbler. All useful in one way or another, so that is why the goodie bag is awesome!

We were then led to another building to have lunch buffet. The food is good and I just felt that the whole orientation program was well organised. So good job there!

After that, we went back to our dormitory. But before that... we realised from the previous day, we need power detergent for the washing machines. So we visited this tiny convenience store not too far away from the dormitory. It is just a slope down from the dormitory. The funny thing that happened was we could not read the words on the packaging. The words on the box looked like "Detergent" in my opinion. In the end, I ended up google translating "Detergent" from English to Korean so I could ask the lady at the counter if the box contained detergent. The whole exchange was comical, but I survived!

So that is how we got our detergent, hahaha.

One last thing before I sign off for this post! One other issue that had been weighting on my mind even before reaching Korea was how I could get Internet access. Questions like "Do I need to get a SIM card? Where could I get it from? Is it compatible with my phone?" because I have heard of people getting cards that do not work for their phone models. We were told on our first day that we could visit the bookstore in SNU to get a SIM card so we could get internet access. Unfortunately, the SIM card was out of stock when I visited the bookstore. Wasted trip but I guess it was a blessing in disguise?

Although the dormitory does not have wi-fi, other places in SNU do have school wi-fi and most places in South Korea do have wi-fi as well, especially cafes. You would be able to connect to school wi-fi with the help of the instructions given on Orientation Day. So what I want to say was, I survived without getting a data plan! However, if you are staying longer than 6 weeks or a month, you should consider getting a SIM card. Make sure that the card is compatible with your phone though! You can get them at convenience stores as well.

That is all for today! Good night.