First week of classes!!

Hey guys! Welcome to my second blog. As you guys know I am studying abroad in Seoul, South Korea for this fall semester for those who didn’t know. Before I start talking about my first week of school experience, I want to talk about my first Korean traditional meal. It was called Kimchi Jjigae which is spicy kimchi stew. It’s served in a hotpot with boiling noodles, spicy kimchi, and green onions. Kimchi is basically fermented napa cabbage with spices, it’s one of South Korea’s famous stews.

Now that I got that over with, my first week of classes was pretty interesting and different than what it would be back at Western Kentucky University. I don’t have any in-person classes which I like and don’t like. I don’t like having online classes because of not getting the full experience of living on campus in a different country and being around other students all the time. I like having online classes because I have a chance to go explore different parts of South Korea while being in school. I also save money because I am not taking buses back and forth every day. I wouldn’t have to take buses every day if all the dorms weren’t taken. I live in an Airbnb with other students from the same university as me! Which I think is pretty cool.

My classes consist from Monday to Wednesday which will be my schedule every week. Mondays are my worst days out of the entire week. My first class starts at nine in the morning and my last class ends at six in the afternoon. After Mondays are over with, it’s a breeze. On Tuesdays, I have one class that starts at eleven and ends at two in the afternoon. Wednesdays consist of two classes that start from 10 in the morning to five in the afternoon. Of course, I do get ten-minute breaks throughout the classes.

One thing that I have noticed that’s way different from classes in the United States than the ones here in South Korea is that they last way longer. I am taking this one international politics class and it is four hours long in one seating. A typical class in the U.S. would last an hour and thirty minutes the most. I have also noticed that the formatting of some classes here is different as well. In my Korean Popular Culture and Korean Wave class, my professor likes to start on zoom to take attendance and then leave the zoom room to watch the lecture videos on our own. Then return at a specific time at the end of class. The last thing that I have noticed at least for me is that the number of students is way less here than in the U.S. None of my classes exceed more than thirty-five students, usually, my classes at home consisted of at least fifty students. Which is a good thing because the professors can focus on each student. That’s it for today, see you next week!