Winter's End
A photo dump of my winter travels
It doesn’t feel like winter is over yet (it just snowed in Seoul again this week!), but the spring semester starts next week and the temps are rising above freezing, so I’m choosing to be optimistic and spend as much time outdoors as possible. Before I know it, it will be brutally hot and humid again, so this isn’t all that bad 😁 This month was full of bike rides around the country, another tasty trip to Japan, my graduate school orientation, and lots of studying to prepare for the challenges ahead!
To start things off, I had my graduate school orientation this month, unfortunately over zoom. Many students are living in other parts of the country until classes start, so a zoom orientation allowed for everybody to attend. It was a full day of introductions, talking about our interests and the political science curriculum here, some unique opportunities on the horizon, and some basic school information (library procedures, etc.). It turns out that I’m the only western foreigner in my department, so I was a bit nervous talking about myself in Korean. I was able to follow along pretty well, but I was surprised several times when my name would randomly be said by a professor due to the topics (military security, US politics, etc.) and had to stay alert and on my toes to properly respond or react. There’s still lots of political science vocabulary that is new to me, so I got my first taste of the challenges lying ahead. I also registered for my classes this upcoming semester. I’m taking the maximum allowable credits, but among my classes is one class in English which shouldn’t add too much to my plate. I was going to just take the 3 core political science classes (in Korean) and the mandatory research ethics course, but there is a regional security class taught in English through another department that was too interesting to pass up, so I signed up for that one as well.
To practice my Korean while waiting for the semester to start, I’ve been continuing to attend small language exchange gatherings, and I found one that is usually 75%+ Koreans which suits me well. Some of the larger more popular language exchanges seem to be more of an excuse to meet people and party afterwards, but this group is much more intimate and structured for natural conversations. We’ve also done extra activities together like hiking, archery, and of course restaurants and coffee shops!
This month also included lots of traveling around the region! While I still had some unscheduled time on my calendar, I decided to take a ferry trip to Japan. I mostly wanted an excuse to try the overnight ferry from Busan to Fukuoka, and a side benefit was that Fukuoka has incredible food.
I did a lot of biking this month too! On warmer days, I biked around Seoul including up to the top of Namsan (pictured below), and I also knocked off two official bike trails this month to continue filling out my bike passport.
First, I did the Yeongsan River trail in southwestern Korea. I hopped on a bus with my little folding bike and cycled from Damyang city to the port city of Mokpo. It rained nearly nonstop the entire trip but I was able to still have fun, eat some good food, and complete the trail.
I also completed the Jeju island bike trail! I know I’ll be back to Jeju again in the future, but I wanted to knock off the official trail now so that I can be more flexible with how I plan my summer trip here. Again, this was a very wet and windy trip, but I learned some crucial wet weather cycling lessons from my previous trip to improve my gear selection. Turns out though that no amount of waterproofing is truly waterproof against big ocean wave splashes in your face 😂
Jeju island was such an interesting place. I learned a lot about the history of the Jeju people and the Jeju language (제주어), which I previously thought was more like a Korean dialect. Turns out, it’s generally classified as a separate and endangered language. Jeju Island is also known for its fishing industry. At night, I saw the iconic squid boats brightly lit with their massive lightbulbs that attract squid (interesting New Yorker documentary linked here which shows what it’s like to fish on a Chinese squid boat), and during the day, saw many of the famous 해녀 (Haenyeo) fearlessly diving for seafood in rough seas. Below is a short video talking about their unique diving culture if you’re interested.
Besides all the cycling this month, I’ve of course been studying as well. Korea has “study cafes” dotted around and they make focused studying much easier. The one I usually go to has a big room of cubicles with no typing allowed (to limit distracting noises) and a break room area with coffee, tea, and small snacks. It comes out to roughly a dollar an hour to study there if you buy small blocks of time so it’s much more economical than buying coffees at loud coffee shops to study. It’s also weirdly motivating seeing these hardworking Korean students focused before I arrive and still there long after I leave…the study culture almost makes me want to study longer and harder!
That’s all for this month — I start classes on Monday and will have a full schedule until the summer break in June, but I’ll send out an update in the meantime.
Until next time!