Day 3: Buying Sheets

Of course again, I woke up much earlier than I intended.  And, that meant it was early afternoon in America so I was able to skype Joe for a while, which turned into his friend sharing screens with me in google hangout so that I could play video games with them all online.  It was an absolutely wonderful start to the day, being able to hang out like that.

My roommates had woken up by then, and the four of us decided to go out again.  We stopped to get breakfast and then walked around the school's campus a bit.  There, we ran into a few other groups of foreign students who were also wandering around, which was really nice.  We spent a fair amount of time trying to find our way back to the dorms, but in the end we managed it.

Chilled in the dorms for a while more, Heidi, Jasmine and I decided to go out shopping again.  We stopped to get some lunch at a Japanese style restaurant which was really nice - it's so much food though!

Only $6!

We stopped at a small store that carries lots of knickknacks, and a large collection of stuffed animals which seriously had me tempted - $35 to $45 for a giant stuffed bear sounds like a great deal to me~  After that, we decided to try to find a store that sold sheets, as Heidi and I both are unimpressed with the quality of the bedding we rented (Jasmine has her own with, which I'm super jealous about).  Sofia had said there was a "Home Plus" by a different subway station, and that they sold sheets.

So, off we went on the subway.  We went the correct way and got off the subway and the store was no where in sight.  We wandered, nothing.  Searching it on the smartphone was of little help.  I ended up asking a worker in the subway station how to get to it (after being coached on how to properly ask it in Korean).  He responded in broken English, so we got lost again before finding the store.  And you know what?  Closed.

So after that completely productive trip, we went back to our city.  Heidi went back to the dorm while Jasmine and I hit up the dollar store again.  I think I'm finally getting close to having everything I need to live comfortably, or at least I hope so because I've already spent a fair amount of cash on things.  I went back to the dorm alone, stopping at a convenience store to grab some ramen and snacks for dinner.
 

Of course, seeing as how I decided to plan ahead for dinner, that meant my body wasn't going to play along. At barely 830 at night I'm already turning in for bed.  I guess this means I'll be getting up early tomorrow too...

Day 2: Translating the Toilet

After only 11 hours of sleep, I woke up again pretty early in the morning with nothing to do.  I didn't want to walk and around and explore the waterfront because a) my shoes are not meant for that and b) I didn't want to get lost when I was still at the hotel.  So, just took a slow morning to wake up.  Had some tea and snacks I had gotten the night before, called home to let them know I was alive, and just chilled at the hotel.  It's a pretty foggy day, but the view was still pretty nice.

View from my porch

After that, I still had about 2 hours until my shuttle back to the airport, so I decided to try and figure out the toilet.  This is the part about being an exchange student a lot of people don't understand - even the simplest things, the parts of every day life we assume everyone should know, can be a challenge.  It took me longer than I care to admit to figure out the lights here (you have to leave your card in a thing by the door for them to work and they're all controlled by this little box I didn't want to touch at first because I was scared it would like, set off an alarm or something).  The shower was easier, but there were like 4 different knobs and that was confusing at first.  But the toilet.  I mentioned it yesterday - here's a picture of it.

Terrifying.

I managed to find the flush button, which was actually located on the side, and the bidet (the picture was pretty great for it).  I tried to translate it via google translate, which seemed like a mistake, so I tried to find a dictionary app but all the ones I found didn't work for some reason?  Trying to find it on the laptop didn't work either, so that's fun.  Ended up just writing them down in a notebook and hopefully I'll be able to figure it out later :P

After checking out and getting a shuttle back to the airport, I met up with a friend, Cole.  He did his Rotary exchange to Korea the same year I went to Belgium, had come back for a year of university, and just hasn't left yet.  He gave me a card to get on the subway which is GREAT, got me through the subway all the way to the dorm, helped me get checked in, showed me a good place to eat, and showed me where the dollar store and a convenience store were.  SO MUCH HELP.

Super good food!

Then, I finally met two of the four other girls I'll be living with.  The setup is that there are two double bedrooms (I'm in one) and a single room that all share the same toilet/shower.  So we'll see how that ends up...  But anyway, I talked a bit with the two of them (one from Finland [Heidi], the other from New Zealand [Jasmine]) and we ended up going out to the dollar store to get essentials.  Apparently Koreans tend to use the little hand towels as real towels so they can use a new one every day, so the biggest towel I could find still feels too small to me - hopefully I can find a bigger one!  Returned, and I finally unpacked my stuff.  Everything fits pretty well, though I think I'm going to buy my own sheets as the ones I rented through school seem... not completely clean.  There's a stain on the pillowcase so I'm just not going to use that tonight.

Ran into the girl living in the single - she's from Mexico (Sofia) - so the only person not moved in yet is my roommate.  Jasmine and I went out to eat, and after searching and finding a place with a menu she could read easily (she knows quite a bit of Korean), we got our food and just talked, which was really nice.  Showered in our tiny bathroom that's going to make me appreciate the size of real bathrooms when I get home and got all cuddled up in my footie pjs.  It's only around 10pm here but I think it's about time for bed, it's been a pretty eventful day!