Day 0 - Another departure from Frankfurt#
It was finally Saturday, the beginning of my Korea trip. This time I slept considerably well. I wasn’t as excited as last time, probably because I had worked normally and I haven‘t fully realized that my vocation had just begun. We started the day with a nice German breakfast. A bun with salmon and red onion is the best. I took a shower and made final preparations before me and my dad sat off to Frankfurt. We arrived about 3.5 hours early. I handed in the luggage and exchanged some Korean Won. We then strolled around and checkout out some of the stores before my dad brought me to the security gates. I said good bye to him and proceeded. I must have chosen the right time slot since I didn’t have to wait neither for the luggage nor the security check, so it just took me a few minutes to be inside the travelers area. I bought some souvenirs in the duty free shop and then waited at the gate. It didn’t take too long before I could board the airplane.
I was sitting at the right seat of the center row. Unfortunately for me the whole center row had issues with the entertainment system which was unusable for the whole duration of the flight. Luckily we were said to get compensation. It wasn’t a big issue for me since I had downloaded the TV show Silo beforehand which I watched for a while. The flight was mostly eventful, I fell a couple of times but I think I‘ve just dozed a few minutes to half an hour. For the dinner we were able to choose between a pasta dish and a beef dish. I took the beef dish which had kimchi stew and beef with rice. The dinner was big enough and tasted quite fine. For the breakfast we only had one option which was a German breakfast consisting of a bun with jam and a Joghurt. About half an hour later we started with the landing procedure.
Day 1 - Arrival in Hongdae#
TODO: train ride
Since I‘m a big fan of taking photos of my hotel rooms, I also took a 360 photo of my room just to give you an idea of how tiny my Mini Studio actually is.
At that point I was a bit hungry and needed to buy some necessities. Thus I walked around the area and bought some things in a GS store. I passed by a vintage looking hair dresser. Since I haven‘t had the chance to get a haircut before the trip I made an appointment at 4 PM. Since I had about 2 hours, I decided to have lunch in the meantime. I found a nice Chinese restaurant that served food from Hangzhou. The waiter was the daughter of the owners of the restaurant. I talked with her a bit in Chinese. She told me that they came here so she can study in Seoul. I had my favorite Mapo Tofu. The waiter suggested me to also take the Baozi since it was their signature dish. The food was tasty and not too spicy. I finished early so I decided to go back to the apartment before going to the hairdresser.
I brought back the stuff I bought and rested a bit. Then I went back to the hairdresser. The hairdresser was pretty nice and she understood what kind of haircut I wanted. The whole process took longer than my normal hairdresser appointment in Germany but I really enjoyed the whole process. I was still a bit exhausted from the flight and It felt so relaxing that I almost fell asleep. With a fresh haircut, I walked back to the apartment to relax and finally fell asleep around 1 AM.
I got up around 11 AM due to jet lag. I wanted to explore Hongdae as I haven‘t been here before. I walked through all small streets in my neighborhood in pursuit to find a nice restaurant where I can eat Garlic Chicken. I was very surprised by how many cafés there are, it felt like every third shop was a café here. The streets were full of people that were queueing in front of cafés, restaurants of photo shops, or simply were walking around. During my search I‘ve seen many Korean BBQ places but just saw a couple of shops that served fried chicken. One shop consisted of two floors but was pretty full, the other store was completely empty. I must have walked for over 2 hours before I had found a Japanese style restaurant that offered spicy chicken. It really reminded me of a tonkatsu restaurant that I‘ve been to the year prior during my Japan trip. The waitress helped me picking the sweet and spicy chicken together with some portion of rice and a beer. The food was pretty tasty and I really enjoyed the atmosphere there.
After my lunch I‘ve strolled some more around the area to reach 10.000 steps. I then bought some food and drinks before I walked back. I was still a bit tired from the jet lag therefore I relaxed the rest of the day.
Day 4 - First day at Lexis Korea#
I got up early since I didn’t know where exactly the school was. I took a quick shower, then walked out my room and got my shoes on. I walked down the stairs, and passing by the TV with loud music that advertises the Karaoke shop in the cellar of my building. I walked down the road next to my building. Passing by two cafes and a restaurant until I reached a big road with the Hongik University (홍대입구) metro station. I went down the escalator of the metro station, just to go up the stairs on the other side of the road. I then just walked straight passing by some big Samsung store and a AK Plaza department store. Next to the department store was a building with a Starbucks in its basement. I entered the building through the entrance next to the Starbucks und climbed up the stairs to the 4th floor. I only remember that there was a plastic surgery at one of the other floors. What was peculiar about the stairs leading up to the school is that they were not normed. Specifically one step of the stairs was a bit lower than the rest of the steps which would trip me up the following weeks.
I arrived at the entrance of the school. Around the same time one of the teachers arrived and pressed a button next to the door to make it automatically open up. I also walked in at went to the reception on the left where I was told to take a seat in on of the class rooms on the right of the entrance. I found the seat with my name tag and sat down. I was the second person to arrive. Somehow I felt a bit nervous. More and more new students arrived and took their seats. Eventually one of the teachers came a started a welcome video. While listening to the video I was studying the info material that was provided to the new students. Once the video was finished, two more teachers came and they would start to do a placement test with us, interviewing three students simultaneously. I was among the first students doing the placement test. I was quite nervous and made several mistakes that in retrospective were quite obvious. Because of that I was assigned to Beginner level. At first I thought it was a bit low, but in the end it turned out to be a blessing because I could review and improve my foundation. Below Beginner level was only Foundation, while above Beginner was the Elementary level.
TODO: Mention somewhere that due to Buddha’s holiday classes started on Wednesday so we had longer classes and an additional class on Friday afternoon
We had a short break where I tried to get to know some of the new students. I got to know Evelyn a linguistics student from London and Juli from France. It turned out that both of them were my classmates. Apart from them we also had a younger and older woman from Mexico, a girl from Switzerland, a girl from the US, an older woman from Japan and a guy from France. The latter one was called Lennaic.
TODO: talk about the teacher and the class
After the morning class we had a one hour break before the afternoon classes would start. Evelyn and Juli only took the morning classes and thus left after the morning session. Thus I went out for lunch with Lennaic. He knew a steak restaurant near the school where he wanted to eat so we went there. It wasn’t really the food that I planned to eat when I came to Korea, but it was fine for its price. One hour wasn’t much time, so we had to hurry back to school after lunch.
In the first week we had the same teacher for the morning and afternoon classes. The afternoon class had different students. Besides me and Lennaic were also the two women from Mexico, the older Japanese lady and the girl from the US. In addition there were three girls from Taiwan, a guy from the US, a girl from Germany, a guy from El Salvador who knew some German words and a young girl from Japan. The afternoon classes were more focus on grammar. In retrospective, I always enjoyed the afternoon sessions a bit more than the morning session. Maybe because I was already familiar with most of the vocabulary in the morning classes, but was eager to practice the grammar in the afternoon session.
After class I had dinner with Evelyn and Juli (is that true??? Check!!!), before I would go back home. I take a short rest but then I decided to go to Holly’s cafe which was in the same building as my apartment. It was quite big as it had three floors. I ordered some coffee and cake and then sat down in the second floor where I would do my homework and reviewed the vocabulary and grammar. I went back to my Goshiwon around 11 and got ready to sleep. I was quite tired since I still suffered from jet lag.
A weekend in Tokyo (Days 06 - 08)#
A few weeks back I’ve already planned to meet with my colleague. He had been working at the University of Tokyo for half a year as part of an scholarship. His stay was about to end, but I still wanted to meet him while he was there. A year prior I had been to Japan for the first time and I’ve really loved the Japanese food. Thus I wrote a list of things I want to eat when I would meet my colleague. A friend of his was so kind planned the whole weekend for us and suggested restaurants where we could eat these dishes.
On friday afternoon I headed to Gimpo airport. Just about two hours prior to my departure. Everything went quite smoothly and I’ve arrived around 10 PM at Haneda airport. I had to take the metro to Higashi Ginza station, but I was a bit lost when checking out the connections and how much I had to pay. Luckily a Japanese guy with a guitar on his back and tattoos on his leg and arm approached me and asked me if he could help me. I told him where I wanted to go and he helped me buying a ticket and he accompanied me to the right station. I thanked him before he left. The ride was long but uneventful. I finally arrived at the Higashi Ginza station. My friend arrived shortly after and we both went to eat Ramen - the first Japanese dish for this weekend. We then walked back to our hotel. I insisted that we would stay in a hotel with an Onsen since I really wanted to have the Onsen experience if I was to go to Japan. A few weeks prior we spent probably around 7 hours to find a hotel that had an Onsen, was close to the city center, not too expensive, and had two single beds. I turned out that this was not as easy as we had thought, mostly since Japanese hotels tended to had one double bed. Only the more expensive hotel rooms had two single beds. In the end we chose the SQUARE Hotel in Ginza. The Onsen was great as expected. After the Onsen we got an Asahi beer from a vending machine at the entrance to the Onsen area. We drank the beer and then get ready to bed.
