The trip was very, very long. My day started at 5:00am on July 28 and we finally got to the dorm (University of Ulsan) on July 29 at around 10:30p.m. (We lost some time because of the huge time difference)
The plane trip was okay for the first half of the trip. We took a very large Korean Air plane with no stops all the way to Incheon. There were enough things to keep us busy on the free in-flight entertainment system. Everyone got his or her own screen with a built in privacy filter. You couldn’t see what the guy next to you was watching because of the way the screen was made. There were games, music of all kinds and a lot of new movies. I watched National Treasure: Book of Secrets entirely and watched a little bit of some others.
I also watched some Korean news channel for a while, as well as a Korean music channel. Overall, the entertainment system gets 2 thumbs up from me.
I met a nice fellow that I was sitting next to on the plane; I can’t remember his name, but he was nice and helped me with a few things like filling out a customs sheet and how the skymall program worked. (I couldn’t believe you could buy things like mp3 players, whiskey, perfume, and a whole slew of other things right there on the plane)
The first meal I had on the plane was a Korean dish called bi bim bap. It is a mixtue of rice, meat, veggies, and hot pepper paste. Having had this dish back home, I thought the quality was very good for being on a plane. The second meal was a western style baked chicken dish which was pretty good.
The second half of plane ride (the last 7 hours) was pretty boring. I felt as if the trip would never end. I tried to watch some tv shows on the entertainment system like Friends to help pass the time. I find that sleeping (which I couldn’t do much of) and watching an entire movie are two good ways to kill some time quick.
ANNNNNND finally we reach Incheon and we took a subway / marta esque system to the Kimpo airport in Seoul. While waiting to board, I wrote the previous update. The flight from Kimpo airport to Ulsan only took about 40 minutes.
When we finally made it to the dormitory, we met for a quick orientation in the staff room and then met our roomates. My roommate is named Gil Yong and he seems really nice. In fact, everyone I’ve encountered so far on this trip has been really nice. Everyone is willing to help you navigate around (whether it be in stores or around cities) if you are sincere and appreciate the help.
Well we have a lot to do tomorrow, we will have the big orientation for the entire study abroad program e.g. the opening ceremony.
Here are some initial pictures:
(Excuse the late-night quality)
Contrary to what I was told at one point, I don’t have to take a community shower:
Here is the view from the back porch (5th floor where my dorm room is):
I got top bunk:
Here is my desk area in the dorm:
I will take some better pictures later, for now, it’s late.
P.S. Don’t worry if your comments on this site don’t show up instantly, it’s because I have to manually approve all of them before they become “live”. If you want to e-mail me directly, you can use joshuafriesen[@]gmail[dot]com . (remove the [ and ] and replace “dot” with a period, this keeps spam e-mail harvesters from getting my e-mail)
