South Korea! First few weeks/Basically the end of classes

안녕하세요! (anyeonghaseyo) Hello people, its been a while. This will be my first post about Korea. Its been a great first couple of weeks so far I am all settled in and well into the meat of all three classes that I am taking, Communication with Korean Culture, Globalization and Economy, and Korean Language I. These classes along with the extra curricular activities I have engaged in have kept me way too busy. I will admit though that the UNIST campus is quite secluded similar to how Ozyegin University in Istanbul was separated from everything. So, the place can get boring pretty easily.

I've gotten fairly used to campus life here at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology. Let me begin by introducing you to my roommate, who was soo eager to be seen on my blog and other things in and around campus.

This is my roommate Byung Ha

He is really good at Starcraft. It's like he has spiders for hands

Byung Ha and Lu. Lu is from China and he is really funny and enthusiastic.

Korean lunch from the cafeteria. It wasn't as spicy as I thought.

This bridge lights up every night on campus and the lights are always changing colors. Adds some nice flare to the kind of boring campus

Some street in Ulsan

Some chicken dish for dinner. I have concluded that slippery noodles are impossible to handle with chopsticks

Popular Korean bingsu dessert. It has some sort of yogurt ice flakes and syrup mixed with fruit.

I guess this is a cemetary up in the hills next to our dormitory. The headstones are beautifully decorated

NORAYBANG (karaoke) I have never experienced anything like it. The culture around karaoke in Korea is completely unlike anything I have seen in the USA

After our first week at UNIST our lovely program coordinator, Minji had organized a temple stay for us. We stayed only for one night (more than enough for me) in a hotel type complex very near to the actual Buddhist Temple, in the morning we woke up for some Buddhist morning ceremony. And we also had the chance to do some interesting yoga-like exercise.

These statues were thought to protect the Buddhist temple from all evil. But of course I had nothing to worry about.

My roommates during our stay (left to right) ChulHee, Tao, and Jihoon. After having a very short 5 hours of sleep we woke up promptly at 430am to catch the sunrise and attend the Buddhist Morning ceremony in which they bow 108 times!

Courtyard of the King's Palace, during the Shilla Dynasty

This statue is supposed to be an elephant and is believed to bring good fortune if touched. Because the Koreans had never seen an elephant this was what their imagination came up with a pig-looking creature with tusks

Water trough filled fresh from the mountains. There was something unique about drinking this water 

Every meal in the temple was vegetarian. Tasted a little bland to me.

Kimchi in the making :)

Some yoga-like exercise. I saw the human body bend in ways I never thought were possible 

My chinese flatmate, Gu treated us to some delicious chinese food in the city center of Ulsan, Sam San Dong

One of the big streets in SamSanDong

I was pretty excited to find this beautiful storefront in Ulsan!

Our second weekend we had a tour of Ulsan planned for us. We visited a pottery museum and even had the chang

World's largest onggi (clay pot). These were used to make pickles, kimchi, or spicy pepper paste.

Ulsan has some delicious Bulgogi (beef meat). You grill it yourself and eat it with vegetables :)

Ulsan is famous for whales and whale watching. Every year the city celebrates with the famous whale festival.

Had some 'Moroccan' food for the first time in Korea

Visited a cat cafe, a pretty normal and common thing in Korea. I will say that it smelled like a big litter box though

We had a visit to Hyundai motors and Hyundai Heavy Industries. It was very breathtaking to see the magnitude of the operations done at their shipbuilding yard

A very beautiful seashore park near to the Hyundai shipyard.

It's been almost 4 weeks already in Korea. I am close to finished with school work. Next week I will be starting my research internship, hopefully it will be a little more laid back. Like I said before expect a little more time between posts as travelling in Korea is a little bit harder and UNIST campus is pretty far from everything cool about Korea