김치 연구 (The Kimchi Studies): First School week and the beginning of Chuseok

Been to all the classes the first week and I was a little bit surprised that the teaching methods, level and style was quite similar to what I'm used to in Sweden. I've heard stories before I got here that it was going to be different, a little bit easier, less analytical and critical thinking. But that is not the case, thinking it might be because there is a bigger difference between stepping up from undergraduate to graduate here than back home (regarding style and level of teaching). Anyway I am quite satisfied with that even though the workload could be slightly less (don't want to be buried with studies during my time here). So I'm starting to get to know the school by now.

About the university, SKKU is one of the oldest university in Asia and is ranked at 162 in the world. Samsung has been a partner with the university for a period now and they have special programs and courses connected to them.

The location of the Seoul Campus

My second week will start with some vacation due to the fact that Korea is celebrating their thanksgiving, which is called Chuseok. At this holiday you get a couple of days of and normally you travel back to your hometown and spend some time with your family. The school arranged a food festival for the international students this Thursday so we could experience the Chuseok. We tried some food, got the opportunity to try their traditional clothes (Hanbok) and then we made some Songpyeon (typical Chuseok food).

Quite difficult to make, we were suppose to be creative
but all I could manage was to create an alien.

We made them to thick so they were a little bit raw.
What you do is take a piece of dough - roll it to a ball
- then flatten it out and make a dimp - fill it with either
red beans or anything else - then you fold it together.

Tomi in Handbok, quite satisfied

Annyoung Haseyo

The other day I decided to take the metro to another area to have dinner. We went to Myeong-Dong, which consists of tall buildings, a lot of shopping areas, and big streets. We were looking for a restaurant that we couldn't find so we wandered around for some time, but then we got to see quite much of the area.