Apartment Journey

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Finding Housing

Did you know, when applying to live in the dorms at Ewha Womans University, that rooms are first come first serve? I didn’t, so I who submitted my application after the deadline had to go apartment hunting. 

Some context: I found out I didn’t get a space in the dorms a month before I had to start school. It was at home, which was a good and bad thing. The good thing was I wasn’t in Seoul yet, so I wasn’t homeless. The bad thing was I had to find a place remotely.

I joined a Seoul housing group on Facebook and sifted through a lot of houses. There were criteria, though. Rent had to be less than 500,000 won and it had to be a single-sex place. Everyday I bookmarked pages that caught my interest, but none if them were good for me.

Safety is one of the most important things in our lives, so I really wanted to make sure wherever and whoever were safe. I tried recruiting someone from my school to live with me, but sadly that failed.

Even though I put a lot of effort into finding a place, I couldnโ€™t find anything that was right. So I took it to a place that I thought was unreliable.

Craiglist.

Yes, there is a page on Craiglist for housing in Seoul. Thereโ€™s definitively some untrustworthy posts, like one that said something along the lines of, If you are a woman looking for housing contact me. But I found a diamond in the haystack!

 

A view from outside my window.

Post-Apartment Thoughts

I lived in Yeonnam-dong during my first semester at Ewha. Itโ€™s a really awesome place to live and visit, because itโ€™s next to Hongdae, but in a quieter area.

But I think the reason why I had such a great experience was because I was living like an actual adult. My experience is different from others living in dorms, because I didnโ€™t have a community of international students that were close-by. My classes werenโ€™t 15 minutes away. Ewha was 40 minutes away by walking and during the spring, I walked every day.

A snowman once on my way to school.

It was hard. Extremely hard to live without a support system around me. But I am grateful for the struggle I experienced, because I am definitely a stronger person today.

I grew up in a way that wouldnโ€™t have happened if I lived on-campus. Since I am still a student, I haven’t experienced the real world yet, so this was a taste that I am happy to have tried. I’ll be living in the dorms next year, but thank you Yeonnam-dong for teaching me the ropes of growing up. 

 

Tierra Lu

*BASAA Scholarship <i>Hello in your host country language</i>: ์•ˆ๋…•ํ•˜์„ธ์š” (Annyeonghaseyo) <i>University</i>: Middlebury College <i>Expected graduation year</i>: 2019 <i>Destination</i>: Seoul, South Korea <i>Program Provider</i>: Ewha Woman's University International Exchange and Study Abroad Program <i>Major / minor</i>: English and American Literatures <i>Language of Study</i>: Korean <i>Demographic background</i>: First-generation, Asian-American <i>Future career aspirations</i>: Novelist <i>Top 3 goals for study abroad</i>: be able to speak Korean well; take all opportunities given; make friends from all parts of the world