First Day of Class

Not wanting to be beat out for the front row seats in my Introduction to English Literature class at 9 this morning, I made sure to wake up extra early. That's what they told us to do at orientation. But then I laid in bed for a while because who wants to go to class after being on break for two and a half months? Not me. Besides, I don't like front row seats anyways. I still ended up being 15 minutes early, but the classroom was already more than half full. Good for them, being enthusiastic about their education. I learned later as the class progressed that many, if not most, of the students in the class were freshman. And in Korea, the first semester of a school year begins in March (the current semester), so it was the first day and first class of university for these kids. No wonder why they were so excited to be there.

It was pretty obvious once class starts that I'm one of two exchange students in the room. The other girl was from Germany, so when the professor asks if there are any native English speakers in the room, I alone slowly raise my hand up. He then asks what my name is, which results in everyone turning in my direction. Yup, hello everyone. So I tell him my name, and he then designates me as the person to go to if anyone has questions about English. Great plan, considering they all can probably form a better sentence than I can. At least they (hopefully) won't notice my strong Wisconsin accent, with subtle hints of Canadian, because other Americans around here sure have.

That class, my only one for the day, ended, but my day was just beginning. Good lord, it felt like I did so much today. A few of us went to open bank accounts on campus for various reasons. We stroll in thinking this will just take a few minutes, we'll sign some stuff, and we'll be good. Yeah, I don't even remember how long we were in there. I felt bad for the young woman helping us. We probably seemed like the least competent people ever. We'd write something wrong, or be confused about something else, or forget to check some box. There seemed to be an unending number of pages in the packets we had to fill out, and we apparently couldn't do anything right. She smiled through it all, but I bet that smile got a lot bigger once we left. Anyways, we then attempted to find the place on campus to pick up my SIM card. Naturally, that wasn't easy either, but I managed to get it after walking completely in a loop and asking (having Jen ask) some guy nearby at another phone place where to go. I still don't even know if it's working properly, but I'll deal with that tomorrow.

So we then take to the streets to find the two girls I'm with somewhere to get some kind of phone plan/service for themselves. We go to one place, and they tell us to go to another branch nearby. So we go, and they tell us to go somewhere else. At that point we called it quits and found somewhere to get coffee (not like it was hard since cafes are everywhere here). Today it was Namu Cafe, where the drinks and honey bread were quite good. I also may or may not have answered the worker's question with "Si," I don't know why I suddenly thought I was in Mexico, but it was definitely super embarrassing.

So sweet, but so good! (Don't worry, we split it three ways).

We do a little shopping at some makeup and beauty stores because we're in Korea, so you basically have to. If I don't leave here with flawless skin, I want my money back but I still want to keep the strawberry hand cream. It smells amazing. So then we actually went to Daiso again. I was in desperate need of a little sewing kit since the buttons on my jacket keep falling off. But then we returned to campus, and it was maybe only 4 p.m. To be honest, I haven't left the room since. It felt like a full day, but it really wasn't. However, to cap everything off, our room lost power less than an hour ago. Jen unplugged something from the outlet, and then almost immediately afterwards we heard something pop/click and the room went dark. Great. Jen went downstairs to get a maintenance guy to come to our room. Apparently, this happens a lot, and the guy got it fixed in just a few minutes. We were worried we'd be in darkness until tomorrow, which would be awful, but it's all good now. I just have to convince myself to go to sleep now because I don't really want to go to class tomorrow.