Tuntuu hassulta myöntää tää, mutta miulla on edelleen ikävä takaisin Koreaan. Koko reissusta on jo menny jo melkeen puol vuotta mutt en siltikään oo yli tästä ikävästä. Joskus nään jotain miun ottamia kuvia tai viestittelen miun Koreasta saatujen ystävien kanssa ja se vaan iskee. Kauhea ikävä maahan jossa vietin vaan neljä kuukautta. Ymmärtäsin tän ikävän ihan täysin, jos oisin viettäny siellä vuoden tai jotain mutta neljä kuukautta on niin lyhyt aika.

Feels funny to admit this but I still miss back to Korea. It's been almost half a year since the whole trip but I'm still not over this yearning. Sometimes I see pictures I took or talk to my friends who I got from Korea and it just hits me. A horrible yearning to a country where I spent only 4 months. Iwould completely understand this missing if I had spent there a year or something but four months is such a short time. 


Joskus miun ikävä menee niinkin pitkälle että alan suunnittelemaan paluuta takasin Koreaan. Tällä hetkellä minnuu houkuttelis niin kovasti mennä sinne opiskelemaan maisterivaihe (tai siis näin suomalaisittain ylempi AMK), mutta se maksaa toisin kuin mitä Suomessa. Tietysti en katus maksaa siitä, koska se ois aivan mahtava kokemus ja pääsisin opiskelemaan tätä miun alaa vielä entistä enemmän.

Sometimes I miss Korea so much that I start planning my return to Korea. Right now I'm really tempted to go there to study for my Master's, but it costs money and in Finland I would get it completely free. Of course I wouldn't regret paying for that since it would be such an amazing experience and I would get to study my area of studies even more.
  

Mutta saa nähdä mitä tapahtuu, oon nyt kyllä kattonu että oisko siellä yliopistoissa ees tarjota matkailualaa ja on siellä peräti kolmessa Soulin yliopistossa sitä tarjota. Mutta vaan yks tai kaks niistä on enkkupolkuja.

But we shall see what happens, I've been looking if the universities there even offer Tourism Management and as many as three universities in Seoul offer it. But only one or two of them are offered in English.

I have this love-hate relationship with Finland. Sometimes I really hate being in Finland. But sometimes I also love it more than anything. We have fresh air, good bread and amazing chocolate. Now, I am aware that most of the things I love about Finland are food. But listen, I also love how when I look outside my window in middle of the night, I see the Puijo tower and there are no people and no cars anywhere to be seen. It feels so relaxing after 4 months in Korea just to finally get some peace and quiet. In Korea I had to share a room so whenever I was in the room I was never truly alone. And that was really frustrating and draining sometimes. I need some time to be able to be alone sometimes. I need some time to breathe. And here in Finland I have my own room, my own space with a beautiful view. And whenever I look outside my window here, I feel peaceful. It's quiet and I can breathe.
Still I really miss Korea. Sometimes I miss Korea so much that I feel like I can't do anything. I miss my friends who I made during my time there, I miss bibimbap, I miss the skyscrapers, I miss trying to talk in Korean. I miss so many things and even thinking about those things makes my heart ache. Of course I can still someday meet my friends, I can make my own bibimbap and I can still try to talk in Korean. Even if people will look at me like I'm crazy. But it doesn't feel the same. It doesn't have the same magic in it, the wonder of doing all these things in a foreign country. Here the only thing I keep thinking about is "This is it? This is all? Is this really my life now?".
I googled to find out if there were others who felt like this when they got back from their exchange and apparently almost everyone gets post exchange blues or reverse culture shock. I'm not sure if those are the same things, but I can definitely relate to the definitions of both of those. I feel so lonely to be back in Finland because I have no one to talk about this experience. Someone who has gone through the same thing as I have. And as for the reverse culture shock, I still keep bowing whenever I go to a store, always receive everything with two hands and wonder when the cashier doesn't give my bank card back to me. In Korea I got so used to the cashiers giving my card back to me after paying. I actually forgot it wasn't a thing in Finland and accidentally left my bank card at a store on my first week back.. So now I'm without a bank card.

Are there others out there who have just returned from their exchange?

What is it like to be an exchange student in Korea? Well, like you could probably see from the title, I am here to tell you what it is like and a few tips to make your exchange semester/year in Korea easier!

People stare, a lot.

For me this took a long time to get used to. People stare. They actually stare a lot. Especially the older people. But after I visited Shanghai I realized that in Korea they really don't stare as badly as in Shanghai.

If you're not really that into K-pop or K-dramas you might sometimes feel a bit like an outsider with the other exchange students.

At the beginning of my semester this is how I felt. A lot of people kind of knew each other already because they had created fan chats on kakaotalk, outside of the exchange student groups. But you don't have to worry, you will find your people eventually. But be prepared that a lot of people ask you questions like "Do you like BTS?" or "What's your favorite group?". I do watch korean dramas and listen to korean pop sometimes, but I'm not that big of a fan. Or more like I wasn't that big of a fan. Now due to curiosity I have kind of turned into ARMY (BTS fans) trash and I also started liking a lot of different groups after seeing them perform live.

Try to learn the hangul before going

I really wished in the beginning of my exchange that I would know the hangul, "korean alphabet", because it would have helped a little with everyday things. Besides hangul, I recommed learning the basics like "Hello","Thank you", "Goodbye". One of the resources I used when learning hangul was Korean Wiki Project. Of course I also learned quite a lot through my elementary korean, but lots of the time I didn't really listen during the classes.

Be prepared that you will be hanging out with mostly international students - unless you speak Korean

 A lot of exchange students I know didn't really get the change to meet that many Koreans, which meant that they usually hung out with other exchange students or international student. In our university we have e- and f-lounges, which are lounges for korean students to learn english and french. And that's how the native english speakers and native french speakers often made korean friends. For other's you either had to get to know the people in your classes or get to know korean through connections.

It's okay to feel homesick 

I had hard time accepting that I was homesick. After all, I was in one of the biggest journeys of my lifetime, why would I want to be somewhere else? But as soon as you accept that you're feeling homesick, the faster you will start feeling better. I promise that even though it feels awful in the beginning, it will get better.

Try to do something new every week

This is something that I really regret not doing. Usually I would just stick to the same daily routines and eventually it would have gotten boring. I definitely advise you to at least try to do something new everyday. Even if it's something small like going to the library for the first time, or eating something you have never eaten before.

You will probably gain some weight

Oh the harsh truth. You will eat a lot of new foods and you will probably snack quite a lot as well. And that means that you will probably gain some weight. And that is completely okay and normal and it happens to almost every single exchange student.

Remember to study 

I know, you've come to Korea to see the culture and to experience new things. But the thing is, that studying is actually big part of korean culture. A lot of times during exam periods I would see students staying in the library until the morning. They would take some naps at the library, get some food from the library's convenience store (who would have believed that there's a convenience store inside the library??) and just continue their studies. But I'd rather not recommend going that extreme. Just do as much as your home university requires you to do. In my case they only wanted me to pass my courses and they didn't really care about my grades that much.

When you go home everything is still probably the same, but you're not

Sometimes it will probably be hard to understand that even though you're gone, people home will just continue their lifes normally. And when you get back you would expect that things have changed as drastically as you have. But the harsh truth is, that most probably everything is just the same as it was when you left. It might be hard to accept at first that you now kind of have to return to the same old life you had before you went to Korea and probably no one around you won't really understand, because they have not been through the same things as you have gone through during your exchange in Korea. And they might not understand why you keep talking about your experiences there over and over again, but you can still message the friends you made during your exchange. Or if you're lucky enough, you can meet with them and talk about your experiences together and think about the good old days when you still were exchange students in Korea.

I'm back in Finland. What the heck. Everything feels still really unreal, I can't believe the adventure is already over. It felt just like a yesterday when I flew from Finland all the way to the other side of the world, to South Korea all by myself. Even though I hate to admit this, time really does fly.
My exchange semester has been one of the greatest and weirdest experiences in my life. I have made friends from different countries (though it seems that I have surrounded myself with mostly people coming from Germany), experienced a culture completely different from my own, felt homesick for the first time in my life and learned to be more me.
But what does the life have in store for me now? Well, first of all I'm moving in with my friend and I'm planning on going on Interrail next summer. And I continue my tourism studies, which honestly I am very happy about. Studying business in Chung Ang just made me realise how much I actually like studying tourism. Sometimes I was so confused because it just wasn't my major and I honestly couldn't care any less. I only wanted to pass my courses and get the needed credits. Besides studying and travel planning, I've been planning something else as well, something that kind of combines both of those things. But since I'm not quite sure about that thing yet, I won't write that much about it. I might write some kind of thinking of doing this thing, but still not quite sure so here's some reasons why I should do the thing and why I shouldn't - post. But we shall see.

It's only starting to hit me that in two weeks I'm no longer in Korea. I honestly have no idea what to do when I go back to Finland. How do things even work in Finland? Do I bow when I go to the store? Do I even greet the worker at the shop? How do I go to school? How does finnish university even work? The other day I even forgot where I live in Kuopio, because I haven't been to my own apartment in over half a year now. I actually had to message my friend and ask her what my address is and what floor do I live in.. And I'm pretty sure she thought I was drunk..
Of course it's nice to go back again and get to eat Fazer's chocolate and proper breakfast again. And I get to cook again! If I still remember how.. I haven't been able to cook or bake since the end of May and it has slowly started to drive me insane. Who would have known that there would be a day when I wish I could cook to myself again. I honestly hated it so much before. Now all I can just about is what I'm going to cook first as soon as I get to my apartment on the 22nd. I can't wait to be able to eat whatever I cook myself.
Now that my return to Finland is getting nearer and nearer I just keep thinking about the things that I miss there. It's funny how previously the only thing I've missed has been my friends and my family, but now I've started to realize that I've actually missed a lot of other stuff. Like normal bread. Bread, that is not sweet but salty. I don't honestly understand how Koreans can eat the "bread" they sell here. It's more like a pastry than a bread. I've also missed cheap fruit and vegetables. Bananas are no longer going to pay me 5,000 won but instead just few euros.
And talking about money.. I don't have to change wons to euros in my head anymore. I can just instantly know the price and whether or not it's expensive. And I don't have to pay to withdraw money from my account! Nor do I actually have to carry cash around or go to the ATM to check how much money I have on my account.
There are so may things I've missed about Finland without even realizing it. But there are so many different things that I'm going to miss about Korea too. Like how my school building right next door and Juicy (oh my dear Juicy please come to Finland) and the subway and the big city and the people I've met here and so many other things. I will miss learning korean and speaking english all the time. I will miss being surrounded by people who have no idea what I'm talking when I speak in finnish. I will even miss those weird guys that ask for pictures with you when you're out with your friends. I don't even know why, I'll just miss them, even though I always found them creepy.
I shouldn't think about the things that I'm going to miss yet, I still have few weeks left. But I can't really help but think that soon I'm out of Korea and I might not be able to come back here in a really long time. My time in Korea has been just amazing, even though sometimes I really haven't felt like that. But it has. I don't really know when it will really really hit me that I realize that this might be the last time seeing most of these people and the last time of me studying abroad (thought at the moment I am seriously considering doing a double degree which would mean a year of studying in belgium).
It still feels so unreal, that after almost 7 months abroad I actually have to return to Finland.
In the beginning of this year I definitely would not have believed how big of an impact Germany and Korea would leave on me and how much would happen on my 7 month adventure.
I still can't believe I'm actually going home.

Today our school organized our 4th, and last, CAU Korea Exploration Program (or shortly CKEP). We left early in the morning towards Paju, which is located at Gyeonggi province. Our first destination was Camp Greaves, former US base know as a filming spot of the korean drama Descendants of the Sun. Descendants of the Sun is one of my favorite dramas, so it was really interesting to go there. And we even got to wear the uniforms, take lots of photos and make our own dog tags. I wrote my name in korean (안니) and Korea 2017 to mine. Visiting the place honestly made me feel like rewatching the drama again since I don't really remember that much about it.

Me and my friend in our military uniforms

After Camp Greaves we ate our free lunch and headed to the 3rd tunnel. The 3rd tunnel is a tunnel digged by North Koreans and it was designed for a suprise attack on Seoul from North Korea. The North Korea however claimed they built it for coal mining, but that is not possible since there is no coal in the soil at that area. We walked down a really steep incline and the tunnel just kept getting smaller and smaller until you had to walk with your head bowed down. At the end of the tunnel we got to see the second barricade. Getting down there was really easy, but going back was a completely different thing. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take photos in the tunnel, and after coming up I was too tired to even take photos from around and just went back to the bus instead.

After the 3rd tunnel we started heading to the Dora observatory, where you could actually see one of North Korean's cities, Gaeseong and a village called Kijong-dong. It is also know as a propaganda village, since the North Korean propaganda music is played there and the city is empty. Unfortunately the view wasn't the best possible since there was quite a lot of fog. We could actually hear North Korean propaganda music being played from other side of the border. I've also heard that once South Korea got revenge on that by playing known south korean pop from their side's speakers. 

You can't really see it from this photo, but over there in the fog is Gaeseong and on the right is the propaganda village.

We only had 20 minutes of time to be at the observatory since our schedule was kind of tight. When we were done at the observatory our next destination was the Dorasan station. It is South Korea's most northern train station and the first station towards North. It is only used once a day for tourists travelling from Seoul to DMZ area and it was built in hope of the Koreas uniting one day. If the Koreas were to be united the trains would be able to come all the way from Europe to Seoul. I really wish I get to see Koreas unite in my lifetime and get to take the train from Russia, near the Finnish border, all the way to Seoul. 

The station is 205 kilometres from the North Korean capital Pyeongyang and 56 kilometres from Seoul. It is also located just 7 kilometres from Gaeseong.

Sometimes because of homesickness and feelings of loneliness I forget how lucky I am to be in Seoul. The other day I had the worst case of homesickness in my whole time here. All of my friends were either busy or I just didn't feel like bothering them, so I was just in my room. Bored, homesick and feeling kind of lonely. So I went out for a walk. I got lost and walked way too much with wrong pair of shoes, but I got to see so many beautiful views on my way. And it made me remember again how lucky I was to be in this beautiful city.
After walking for god knows how long, I ended up to a subway station and just decided to take the subway back home. Just the fresh air and the views I saw made my day so much better and made me forget about all the homesickness. Because I remembered again why I do this, why time after time I go to places where I know no one and leave my comfort zone. I do it because if I stay home, I wouldn't be able to see so many beautiful places, I wouldn't be able to meet people from all over the world and I wouldn't be able to experience the things I've experienced while being on my adventures. I am so lucky to be here, but sometimes I just seem to forget that.
That's all for today, see you next time.

The island is not that big so it doesn't take more than 4~5 hours to explore everything, making it a good day trip destination from Seoul.

Alcohol. People love to hate it or either love to drink it. It is a social lubricant for people like me, a bit shy and kind of not good at talking. Here in Korea people work really hard, which means that they also have to party hard. Right? Well, not really. But I've noticed a lot of people like to let their steams out by partying. And because Koreans drink quite a lot they of course have many drinking games. And as I am Tourism Managment student, who are apparently known to party a lot, I felt kind of obligated to write about this. So here we go.

3-6-9
The first drinking game I'm gonna tell you guys about is called 3-6-9. It's a counting game and the more intoxicated people are the more harder it is.
You don't need anything special for this game except a big bunch of people and alcohol (or water if you don't drink alcohol). Literally any kind of alcohol is good enough.
So you start with one person saying the number one and the second saying the number two. When it's the third person's turn, instead of saying number three they must clap. If instead of clapping the person says three, they have to drink and the game starts from the beginning. The same rule also applies to numbers six and nine. Whenever there is either three, six or nine in the number, the person has to clap intead of saying the number. If you get to thirty that's when it gets a bit more complicated. Since every number from 29 to 39 has one of those numbers you just have to keep clapping. Usually at this point someone will make the mistake of saying the number instead of clapping and they have to drink.

Baskin Robbins 31
This is yet another counting game. In this game the dreaded number is the number 31. You start counting from the number 1 and go all he way to the number 31. The person who is the number 31 has to drink. However one person can also say 1-2-3, and then the next person 4-5-6. However the max. number of numbers you can say is 3.  So you can either say 1, 1-2 or 1-2-3. There's also some kind of dance and a song involved, but I don't know enough about those to give the instructions.

Have or have not 
This is a really good game for getting to know the people you're playing with. At the beginning of this game you raise five fingers just like you were about to give someone a high-five. Go around in order and say something like "I've never lost my phone while drunk". And the people who have done that thing, fold a finger. Then the next one says and it goes on until one of the players has no fingers left. That person loses and has to drink. I was taught that the loser has to drink their whole drink, but you can do however feels the best.

And those are the ones I've heard most about. I might make an updatet list later on if I find someone who teaches me more drinking games.

But that's all for this time, see you next time!

What is it like to study at my korean university? What university do I even go to? Those are the things people might be wondering about. That's why I'm writing this post.
So, I study Business administration in Seoul at Chung Ang University (충앙대학교). I'm going to be here for one semester so until 18th of December. So far it has been really easy for me to study here, since I only have four courses and school only 3 times a week (Mon, Tue & Thu). I have two courses from general studies and two from my own major. In Finland I study Tourism Management but since CAU doesn't offer tourism managment studies in english, I have to study business administration. But it doesn't really bother me, since I have to take some business courses in Finland as well.

 
Elementary Korean language
Just a basic Korean course. We have one 95 minute class once a week, on Mondays. So far we've just been studying hanguls and some basic words. I have my midterm on this course next Monday and I still haven't learned the hangul perfectly.. It looks like the whole weekend is going to be full of stuidying. On this course we have midterm and a final exam, which also has an oral exam.

Business Communication
This course is one of my favorites. No exams, just two or three quizzes and quite a lot of assignments. At the beginning of the class the professor explains how to do a thing and then we do the thing. For example how to write a negative message or how to tell directions. Then we do an assignment on it and after we're done we discuss it either as groups, pairs or with the whole class. Quite an easy and interesting course.

Marketing
Also one of my favorites. The professor in this class mostly just lectures, sometimes ask questions and suddenly might just say "okay i'm done" and the class is over. At first his teaching method annoyed me but now I've gotten used to it. This course is actually really easy for me because I've already taken 3 courses of marketing before (2 in vocational school and 1 at my home university). Sometimes the teacher has a really bad english but I'll manage. Two exams and a big group project.

Contemporary Korean Popular Culture
Quite a boring course to be honest. It sounded really good when I chose it, but it ended up not being the way I expected it to be. We just learn about how Korean popular culture became the way it is these days and how hallyu wave started. It could be more interesting, but so far I'm not really interested in the K-Pop history. However I do believe it's going to be more interesting after the midterm, since we start learning more about cinematic history. Two exams and maybe one group project, not quite sure.

At the beginning of the semester I had some other courses as well, but I ended up dropping them. I am now doing the minium amount of credits needed, but it's okay. And I know for certain that as soon as I get back to my home university it is going to be really hard and busy, since I have to start completing my project studies and the courses that I have missed while being in Korea. Thankfully I still have three more months to just relax.

Okay, that's all for this time. If you want to get a notification to your email whenever I post a new post, you can find a subscribtion box from the right. See you next time!

Me and two of my friends have started a habit of going to a new cafe every Wednesday. Last wednesday we went to a sheep cafe called Thanks Nature Cafe in Hongdae and this week we ended up going to a cat cafe. And because I love cats more than life itself I, of course, had to write a post about it.

The cat cafe was called Cat Cafe Playground and it is located in Myeongdong. The entry fee is 6,000 won (~ 4 €) and it included one drink. Not that bad if you ask me. The cafe had probably close to 30 cats, many different breeds and sizes. Some cats had collars that told something about them e.g. yellow meant that the cat was on an diet, red that the cat might sometimes bite etc. Some of the cats also had blue collars and at first we didn't know what those meant. However we found it the hard way.. It apparently meant that those cats get upset stomach and throw up, if they are fed a bit too much. And how did we find that out? Well, let's just say that we apparently had given too much food to one of the cats and it decided to return the food to us..

Last friday our school organized us a trip to see Doosan Bears vs. SK Wyverns game at Jamsil Baseball Stadium as part of our CKEP (Cultural Korean Exploration Program). The trip was completely free and the competition to get there was quite intense. I myself signed up for it as one of the first people and thankfully I got a spot. I don't really like baseball but I heard that Korean baseball game is something you really have to experience. The atmosphere at the stadium was amazing and I ended up staying until the end of the game, even though the bus back to the school already left at 9pm.


I was also cheering Doosan Bears to win. We got inflatable sticks from our school, and we just beat those together instead of clapping. Below there is a video showing the atmosphere at the stadium. Like you can see in the video, right in front of the audience there is a stage where someone was telling us how to cheer at that moment and what to sing or yell. Sometimes cheerleaders also danced on the stage.

In the end we ended up losing to SK Wyverns 11-4. Of course it's sad, but truthfully speaking Doosan Bears did play really poorly. 

Homesickness.  It might just suddenly suprise you in middle of the day. Even if you are out having fun, homesickness can just suddenly appear and ruin your whole day. I miss Germany. I miss my friends in Finland. I miss the summer nights in Berlin. There are so many things that I miss. Sometimes I feel really lonely here. I have gotten new friends from all over the world but I still feel so lonely. Of course I've only been here for a week and I'm probably just feeling the culture shock. This is so different than in Western countries. But that's what I came here for, to see and experience a new culture that is different from my own.


I believe that when I get used to life here I won't feel so lonely anymore. However sometimes the loneliness just appears, especially when I see my friends in Finland having fun with each other or when no one has time for a video call because of the time difference. But everything is gonna be alright. Today I thankfully have stuff to do so that I don't have too much time to think about what people in Finland are doing. 

Today marks my 5th day here! School started on monday and so far it's been really easy. But easiness might be because it's "shopping week" which means that this week people can drop and add their courses. I dropped one of my courses already because it ended up being too hard for me. I'm studying Business Administration here, even though in Finland I study Tourism Management. The course I dropped was Global Business and it was Master's course. Maybe it was better to drop it and take Business Communications instead. Hopefully it's a little bit easier. I actually have really easy schedule because I'm only taking 5 courses here. 

I haven't really had that much time to explore because of jet lag. Thankfully I'm starting to slowly get used to the local time. Sometimes it's really annoying to live in a different time zone than most of my friends since keeping in contact with them is really hard. But I'll manage, the world won't end if I can't contact my friends in Finland all the time. But that's all for today, I was just thinking of updating you guys a little about the life here.  

I've finally bought my flight ticket from Helsinki to Seoul and from Berlin to Helsinki. So scary. My work here ends already on the 14th and then I have 10 days to rest and panic about Korea. On the 24th I will be flying from Helsinki to Seoul and on the 25th I'm in Korea at 8am and my airport pick-up towards the dorm leaves at 10am. 


The thought about leaving Berlin feels really sad at the moment and too unreal. Soon I won't be here anymore. Soon I'm all alone in a new country, getting used to the new timezone, concentrating to studying and finding a completely new friend group. Berlin has maybe been a little too safe for me because I've had my friend with me all the time at the same hotel and on top of that some people from my university, who I've been able to hang out with and have fun with. 


Even though leaving Berlin is sad, I'm kind of happy to go to a new place. I already know that Seoul will be an amazing place and that everything is gonna be alright. Besides, I'm returning to Berlin in December. Yes, I already have a trip planned. In December, right after my semester in Seoul ends, I'm going to Berlin for a few days and I'll meet my friend there.


Feels so weird that soon I won't be seeing my friend in 4 months. Huhhuh. So in short I'm soon leaving Berlin and it's sad, but at the same time I can't wait for my new adventure in South Korea and I kind of can't wait for school to start.