Seoul Exchange Life

Time flies so fast. It’s been 2 months already. There were a lot of new and interesting experiences in the past 2 months and those experiences were enjoyable and have helped me more in adapting to the cultures and lifestyle of this place – Seoul.

As all Korean exchanges might know of the most famous and enormous event held at the middle of September, which is known as the KoYong Sports Competition, and I was very lucky to participate in this event. Each individual wears their university T-shirt, logos, hair bandanas and face stickers as well as sings the university cheering songs to support the university.

So far, I really like my exchange university as it provides facilities, for example the hospital, convenience stores, canteen, gym and so on to the students, and community groups such as KUBA (Korea University Buddy Assistance) to all exchange students. The main purpose of establishing KUBA is to introduce exchange students to the korean cultures by taking them out and around 2-3 times a week, as well as helping to sort out problems they might face during their exchange life. Because of KUBA, I feel it is less difficult to adapt to the new environment.

In the beginning of October, there’s a 10 day holiday to celebrate the korean traditional festival named ‘Chusuk’. During ‘Chusuk’, all people including workers, students or other occupations who came from other cities of Korea to Seoul went back to their hometowns to spend time with their families and to celebrate the festival. One of the KUBA leaders I know of, he invited me and my other friend to his hometown – Daegu. Thus, I got to know how Chusuk is like and the way of celebrating in the traditional korean family.

Beyond having fun around Seoul, I am getting better adapted to the education style in Korea – with the most stressful thing, the mid-term exams are coming up in mid-October. I am the same as other Korean students who are concentrating on preparing for the mid-terms and as I expected the library and all other common study rooms are full of students, even at the weekend. Classes are also extended to Saturday for supplementary lectures and examinations.

These have been my exchange experiences so far at Korea University, Seoul.

Name: Jiahui Tan

Student number: 99126839

Bachelor of Civil Engineering

University of Technology Sydney

(Korea University, Korea)