sun moon university

we took the ktx train from busan to cheonan. its a bullet train that travels at like 300km/hr (186mi/hr) which is crazy fast. and then at the train station they had dunkin donuts! it was really nice, like a fancy cafe. except it sold mainly donuts! and they had green tea donuts! anyway from there we took a taxi to sun moon university.

a side not about sun moon - there are two campuses, cheonan campus and asan campus. the cheonan campus is the original campus and is very small. it has one big building with classrooms and offices and a dormitory. that is where the korean language institute is (which is what i'm doing) and also the theology major students stay in the dormitory as well (but they have to commute to the other campus everyday). yea, the cheonan campus really doesn't have much besides those two buildings. there is a soccer field, basketball courts, and some clay/sand tennis courts. the asan campus is the main campus and looks like a real university (although still not that big). there are maybe 9 big buildings, not including the dormitories. its a very nice campus though. there is a shuttle bus that you can take between the campuses, although it can take anywhere from 25 to 40 min.

so i arrived at the cheonan campus and checked in at the kli (korean language institute). one thing about this school is they don't tell you very much. besides getting the papers for my visa, they haven't really told me much about the school or what i need or what i should do. when i checked in, the guy just gave me a business card and told me to call if i needed anything. and to go to the dormitory and they would give me a room. so i went to the dormitory, but there was no one in the office there. someone told me they would come at 7pm, and it was 3pm. so i sat and waited and watched bleach on my computer. i started getting hungry, so i followed my intuition and went downstairs and found the cafeteria. i got in line and grabbed a tray, and then i was supposed to pay. so i pulled out my korean money and then showed it to the lady and she counted how much i needed. it was kind of funny. when the dormitory office opened, i signed some paper, and they gave me a card, some keys, two sheets, and told me to press * then the room number then # and the door to my room would open. eventually i figured out the card was to get into the men's dormitory area (the building is divided in half on every floor between the men's and women's rooms) and the keys were for some drawers you could lock in your room to keep things safe.

there was no one else in the room yet, and it seemed like there was almost no one else on the campus. i'd seen a total of maybe 30 people, but they were all asian and and i only saw most of them when i ate dinner. i wasn't told about any kind of schedule or what i should be doing or anything. the whole thing was kind of strange. there were some public computers in the lobby with internet, so i used those and watched more bleach on my computer. haha, i watched a lot of bleach during that time.

the next day i walked back to the kli office to ask the guy about what was going on because i still didn't really know anything. i had a couple questions answered, then he introduced me to another american girl, tiffany, and a korean girl, kimjin and he told them to tell me about school life. they were both really cool and i went with tiffany to the asan campus. i met some of her friends from nepal that were doing their PhD there (the classes were in english) and at night we went to dinner at kimjin's mom's restaurant with some other kli students from angola. so the second day at sun moon turned out really well. i went from having no idea what to do to going out the entire day.

besides that i didn't do too much the next few days. i had arrived on wednesday, and classes didn't start until monday. so i spent a lot of time just playing warcraft III and watching bleach. haha, i love my computer.