Daily Life at Soonchunhyang University

Hi everyone!

Since we talked about a kind of heavy topic last week, I figured we’d talk about something a little lighter this week! I’ve gotten a lot of questions about my daily life in Korea so this week I decided to make you all a video about my daily life and my experience at my university! First, here’s a little background:

I’ve already mentioned that I live in a small town called Sinchang and attend Soonchunhyang University. The blue dot on the map marks my university. Sinchang is a pretty small city and there’s not much to do. Luckily, there is a subway station very close by so it’s easy to go explore other places! To get to Seoul on the subway it takes about 3 hours and costs about $5.

I’ve been told that Soonchunhyang is one of the most beautiful campuses in Korea, especially in spring when all the cherry trees bloom! Click here to see a Google street view by the back gate of campus.

During a typical week I have class during the weekdays and then on the weekends I explore with my friends. I am also part of an exchange program where I meet with 7 Korean students once a week for an hour. The purpose of the exchange it to practice speaking both English and Korean in a comfortable environment as well as learn more about each other’s culture. We’re allowed to do pretty much anything we want during our exchanges so it’s a lot of fun! I also volunteer once a week to be a TA for an English class. I really want to teach English in Korea some day so I use this as an opportunity to get experience in the classroom.

Here’s an outline of my weekly schedule:

Monday: Korean speaking class, an exchange, and calligraphy (I posted a picture of my writing a couple weeks ago, remember?).

Tuesday: Exchanges (x2), study abroad discussion class, TA

Wednesday: Korean writing, exchange (x3)

Thursday: Korean culture and society, exchange

Friday-Sunday: Spending time with friends and exploring!

As for the exploring part, I’ve already shared a lot of the things that I’ve done with you guys. I’ve been to Seoul 3 times now but there’s still a lot of things I want to see there! I also traveled to a very small island called Sindo which was really amazing (I’ll post some pictures of this soon). My friends and I also love to go to some of the other towns very close to us because they have some really cool traditional markets and cheap shopping!

So that’s pretty much it! Overall, life here is not outrageously different than life back home. It really surprised me how easy it was to get into a routine and feel comfortable even though I’m in a different country!

Now please take the time to watch the video I put together!

This week’s response:

This week we’re going to be doing a slightly different response! Sometime in the next few weeks I am going to interview a local Korean middle schooler. Before I go meet them, it’s your job to give me questions to ask! You can ask anything! What their schedule is like, what their favorite food is, what kind of super power they would want to have, what their favorite thing about America is, anything! Please come up with 3 questions that you would like to ask this Korean student and post them in the comments. Also, as always, respond with any questions or comments you have about this week’s post!