SKKU: Some General Resources and Commentary

It's finals weekend, so no exploring for me. I'm just spending my time procrastinating on finishing a programming assignment by making some resources available.

First off, I made this beautiful map (with the help of Susanna, my lovely roommate) with places I've eaten at and can remember the approximate location! (if you are color blind, I am sorry) For places I haven't really eaten at, but noticed, I added some commentary. By the way, Chinese in Korea means black bean noodles or rice and fried pork, not like greasy mall Chinese food from the States. And some of these places were really hard to categorize. Click for bigger size. Also here's a link for the pdf of the eatery/places to see guide that Hi-Club/Maple compiled because we kind of got this late.

Brief Descriptions of (Notable) Food Places:

•  GRILL/KOREAN: Self-Bar: Ah, what a memorable experience. Our first time eating in Korea (that wasn't convenience store food). You go get some meat from the back and you grill it. 

•  GRILL/KOREAN: Baburger: one of my more favorite places to go; it's rice with some filling and it's usually pretty cheap and filling. 

•  CHICKEN: Fried Chicken Near Tous Les Jours (sorry for typo of that on the map): Ryan said it's the best fried chicken he's tasted around that area. It's pretty hard to find, but just go to Tou Les Jours and you'll get to a 5-way intersection. Go into the most narrow road. 

•  CHICKEN: Fried Chicken Near Mandu: To be honest, this has been like the driest chicken I've eaten. Very unsatisfying, but there's a lot of chicken places up around that area so I'm not sure how to warn you to stay away from it. 

•  CUTLET: Cutlet 1: My favorite so far. The chicken comes with like Chik-fil-A sauce, the people are nice, and I like the sauces here the most. Smallest servings of the three places vaguely numbered cutlet places I listed.

•  CUTLET: Cutlet 2: This place is alright. You get Yakult (yogurt drink) with your meal and I think the serving size is medium.

•  CUTLET: Cutlet 3: Big servings, self-serve corn soup and bread. The portions are really huge.

•  CUTLET: Tomato: More on the bento-box side, you get a meal for around 2000-4000KRW that is pretty filling! I filed this under cutlets though, because a lo of the meals have cutlet options.

•  BEVERAGES: HaHa Papa: Fruit smoothies! I like HaHa Papa more than the other smoot(h)ie place I listed that is near by. Whenever you are craving fruit, this is the place to go.

•  BEVERAGES: Bubble Queen: A bubble tea place. Not much else to say about it. It's good, especially if you have a craving for something sweet. 

•  BEVERAGES: The Lodge: This place hosts the members of the coffee circle/club from campus. The coffee here is hand pressed and really rich. I think Noah recommended the Ethopian.

•  NOODLES & SOUPS: Japanese Ramen: Really good Japanese ramen. I highly suggest the 1st option. Especially good if you have a sore throat, because the salt + hot soup combined is heavenly. 

•  NOODLES & SOUPS: budae jjigae: one of the better budaejjigae places around here. It's really delicious, but make sure to bring friends because this is a group meal sort of thing. 

•  NOODLES & SOUPS: Noodle Tree: Actually has a variety of food. They have pretty good omurice (omelette fried rice) and they have really spicy cold noodles. 

• if you have any other questions about the places I've labeled on here, feel free to email me or leave a comment!

Brief Descriptions of (Notable) Other Places: 

• Issue 9: Literally the first glimpse you catch of Suwon campus when you step off the SKKU subway stop. It's a very lonely sort of department store, but there's a spa/bathhouse on one of the upper floors if you're ever looking to unwind. 

• E-Mart: pretty much a really big grocery store + extra goods. Food on the 1st floor, shampoo/clothes/detergent/etc on the 2nd floor, and electronics and toys on the 3rd floor. 

•  E-Mart Everyday: Just the 1st floor + 2nd floor in a more condensed space. 

•  Wii Room: You can rent a Wii room and play with friends for around 20,000KRW for 2 hours. 

•  Karaoke Places: are not that hard to find. Anything labelled 노래방(noraebang) is a karaoke place.

Some General Tips:

When you go to the Immigration Office in Suwon, the Alien Registration Card costs 30,000KRW instead of the 10,000KRW that was listed on the slip that was given out at orientation. Make sure to bring exact change. Be warned that they actually don't speak that much English there. At the beginning of the year, it gets really crowded. If possible, try to reserve a time online.

Here's the cover page that you need to submit with all of your homework.
You can buy these at the printing room in the library for 40 won, or 4 cents.

I found it extremely useful to take passport/application pictures at the student center here, because I got a lot of hard copies of perfectly sized portrait photos, as well as a high resolution soft copy which I could put on online applications.

You can't charge T-Money at bus stops, so make sure to keep a balance of at least 2000KRW when taking the bus. The 7800/7790 red bus north goes to Sadang in around 30 minutes where you can get off at Sadang station and connect straight to Seoul instead of transferring on the subway. The 82-2 south takes you to Suwon Immigration Office (get off at the stop where Home Plus and Lotte/McDonalds face each other).

Speaking of T-Money, you can usually buy a T-Money card at a convenience store (if they have the T-Money logo). If not, your student ID (which you will probably get late) can hold charge too. However, if you go to Busan, your student ID T-money will not work at the subways there, but if you charge your bank card with T-Money, it'll work. I had some issues with buying 1-way tickets while in Busan.

The Jihachul/Subway map (Seoul) is extremely useful and does not require Wi-Fi to work. However, it updates like daily with new timetables.

I've found that usually there aren't any prices labelled in the convenience stores, so prices are a mystery until you buy. I will, however, mention that the ice cream bin half closest to the door has ice creams for 700KRW, the other half for 850KRW, and then the other whole vat (nearer to Dominos) is usually always 1500KRW.

A/C doesn't kick in until the last week of April. And even then, only from 9AM-8PM or something. Or 8AM-9PM. One or the other.

If something is broken in your dorm, like say your lights went out, there's a front desk in front of the security office and on the piece of paper, you should write the date, what room you're in, your name, your phone #, and then a brief description of what's wrong in your room (Google Translate is your friend for this.)

If you're dorming, I would mention that you might not use all of the meal plan. I had like 200+ meal tickets at the beginning of the year, and even if it's budgeted so that you can eat only 2 meals a day if you eat everyday in the cafeteria faithfully, it's like 1 week before the semester is over and I still have over 70 tickets left.

If you look openly foreign, people will stare and maybe even compliment you. If you don't, like me, then they'll try speaking Korean to you. If you look confused, then they switch over to Chinese, or Japanese, but never English.

If you plan on using the Student Health Center, the dentist is only in on Mon/Wed/Fri and their lunch hours are from 12-1PM. The service is cheap (3000KRW for a filling), but you don't get an appointment until a month later. There's free health screenings in the beginning of the school year too!

Education system wise, I feel like professors here are a lot less willing to help students so don't really expect it. You have to ask for their office hours and their office location, as well as the contact information of the TAs, whereas in UT, the professors make this information readily available. I had one professor who basically used his office hours as a glorified lunch break and was pretty much never there whenever I tried to visit. When I asked if we could go over the midterm together to see what I did wrong, he basically told me that I should "know what I got wrong" and therefore should be able to "study for it myself." On the plus side, I feel like I've had the most days off from class here than I have ever in my whole career as a student at UT. I've never had classes cancelled at UT before unless it was a holiday. Even when my professors were clearly ill, they just got a substitute speaker. It was crazy.

Will add more when I think of it! Again, feel free to ask questions.

SKKU: Week 15, Day 5 & 6

So on Friday, I dragged Glen and Joy to go find a facial place near Suwon Station.

After asking a lot of people in English about a 피부관리 place inside AK Plaza, we got directed to Rodeo Street. We then found a tourist information place, where this nice guy who spoke a lot of different languages gave us instructions for a really long quest to find this pharmacy on the first floor of some building and to call a certain number and someone would appear to lead us to a facial place.

We got super confused and lurked outside a dermatology place upstairs before walking downstairs to give up, and suddenly the store owner appeared out of nowhere and led us to her store.

It was really hard to find.

Joy and I got facials, where I expected pain but it was really just pampering I think.

We went to B1 to get some Krispy Kreme.

Little did we know was that June 7th was International Donut Day but we didn't get these donuts for free unfortunately.

Ate out at Mr. Chef, which is a jigae place.

On Saturday, I went out with Joy, Windter, and Glen to meet up with Ryan to go to Itaewon.

Some really pretty flowers at the bus stop.

Took a lot of transits to get to places.

Ryan left too early.

But we finally did it (in the subway).

We went to eat Mexican in Itaewon at TomaTillo.

Green grape juice was really good (and pricey).

Ryan's meal!

And Glen's.

Guy walked past when I was taking this picture.

Lamb kebab so good!

We found a shady and cool alleyway.

This husky had only his head shaved but I'm too slow at taking pictures.

Crying about life.

Stopped for this banana ice cream.

You could peel the outer layer so it was like a banana.

Went to iPark mall to look at showing times for a movie.

It was hot. And there was no air conditioning inside Seoul Station.

Finally tried one of these things. It wasn't what I was expecting.

Also I got new shoes! Because my old shoes look pretty ratty.

Look at my old shoes I'm so sorry I go through all my shoes so quickly. Also the escalator at iPark Mall casually ripped off an aglet from a shoelace.

SKKU: Week 15 (Gwangjang Market & Seoul Forest)

Yay a post! Starting it off with an irrelevant picture.

One day I woke up to the sounds of a sports festival. I closed my window and went back to sleep. They were gone by late afternoon so I didn't check it out.

 On Sunday I went with Glen and J to the stop Jongno-5.

Emmanuel, Marcus, and Glen were tagging along.

We were told to get off at the wrong exist, so Marcus pointed out a group across the street mentioning "They're young and they're waiting." and he was right. The 6-person group from Suwon suddenly expanded into a group of 40+. This was an event hosted by Pararia (Paradise Korea).

We got split into groups. Glen and I had signed up late to this event so we weren't on the grouping list haha.

The market! I think Running Man has been here before, when it was referred to as G-Market haha.

Super crowded and super hot.

Our group went to go eat Korean pizza. We had "missions" to do. Like take a picture of crab. And take a picture with the owner.

We went to the nearby Cheongyecheon Stream to play dibidibidip (디비디비딥). 

Failed panoramic.

The dibidibidip game took so long because one person had to pass one whole team oh god I never want to do that again.

Beautiful scenery, but it was just too fucking hot.

We did a charades game afterwards, and then headed off to a tourist-y plaza place.

A martial arts demonstration.

Just yesterday Glen and I were talking about constructing a bakery ripped off of Paris Baguette called Paris Croissant. When we saw this sign, Glen turned to look at me and pointed at this haha.

At the super tourist-y place, we got to try on hanboks and took pictures at a photobooth.

The guy on the right, Chris, has like the same face in every picture haha. He said he wasn't photogenic. 

Glen doesn't understand my ice cream needs.

Apparently this place has really good green-tea flavored things.

Glen sleeping on the ride back to campus.

On Monday, the whole UT group went out to eat together (for the first time)!

We went to eat Indian.

Already predicting how pricey it was going to be.

Shifty-eyed.

Delicious appetizer.

Really cute bird-shaped samosas.

Servings were tiny. The price range is pretty normal compared to the states, but I guess I just got used to prices around here haha.

A cool machine located in the restaurant.

The walk back.

On Thursday, it was Memorial Day in Korea, so I went out with Glen and people (which includes Eddy, Joy, Windter, and Noah) to G-Market (again) to eat for lunch before heading out to Seoul Forest.

As hot and crowded as ever.

But this time we got to eat at the street booths outside.

The Doosan Art Center was nearby, so we waited around for other members of Maple to show up.

A walkable piano!

I could jump in this hallway and still not hit the ceiling, it was a sad story. My life is made of sad stories.

Glen taking a picture of the bathroom sign.

We spotted a statue from a far, but we left to a cafe before we could check it out.

This is clearly not red velvet.

Green Tea and Fruit Yogurt bingsu!

Glen's hand.

We ate our bingsu, and then the other group arrived, without having eaten, so we went back to the art center to wait for them to eat.

The statue was so creepy when I went to get a closer look

Re-enacting something from Shingeki no Kyojin.

Yay it was time to go!

Cute wildflowers along the way to Seoul Forest.

We're finally here! Noah looks distant.

Noah's dumbfounded expression.

Glen no longer looking at the camera.

Looking at the map.

Joy, Windter, Glen, and I went off on our own.

Stopped by a butterfly garden along the way.

The chrysalis of the butterflies are hung up on a board.

I pointed to a sign about the different types of butterflies, and I said I wanted to find that one. Immediately afterwards, I found it.

Right next to the butterfly garden was an insect gallery.

Hello Texas, how nice to meet you again.

There were a lot of flowers in this place.

Cute snouted fish.

A hedgehog!

Tadpoles are gross.

A rabbit too for some odd reason.

After walking along to find the Deer Corral, we stopped by a petting place.

Bunnies are so cute.

Waterfall of Wishes.

Windter got his in.

Glen was going to go for the nearer one, but...

...tried for the farther one and failed.

Re-checking our coordinates.

Found a deer food dispensing machine!

1000won for this much.

Most of the deer just kind of ignored people to be honest.

Getting curious.

And then refusing food.

I found one that was willing to eat out of my cup!

And then here's Joy's cup getting in my viewfinder.

It kept on ignoring Windter haha.

Team Glen's 1000won Cup mission successful!

Such a shifty eye.

Here's a cuter picture.

Kids are so cute.

Cute horns~

Glen's Hill of Wind. Not as impressive as it sounded.

Everyone gets too sassy with me.

For Glen.

2sassy4me

I'm a pro.

A really long bridge.

for Glen.

for Glen.

Some Miyazaki stuff going on here.

Deer shelters. 

Far away traditional roofing was spotted.

On the way back down we found a sign.

More rabbits!

And guinea pigs!

Lonely rabbit.

Glen's glowing.

More waiting for people.

Joy and I left early because I'm sick again (like what the 3rd time since I've been in Korea) and I went to go eat ramen. It was so goddamn good, and I was so tired from walking around and waiting, this was so delicious and salty on my throat.

Until next time! One more week of school and then finals.