In Korea, everything is so different compared to Switzerland. Mostly, it is the small things, but they make a country unique. This makes me quite courious about the differences of the universities and the teaching methods. In this post I will share my first impression of the university on my first day.

Everything is so exciting and new. It is a warm summer day, but it is raining. In my preparing for Korea I read, that you always have to carry on an umbrella when in Korea, at least during summer. And I didn’t have to wait too long to get this experience. A little bit of rain is quite refreshing, because the Korean- summer is tropical. After enjoying my very first metro ride to the university, a new district of Seoul awaited me and with it new expressions, new discoverings and even more excitment. On my first day of university, it was all about the check-in, so there wasn’t any classes, nor any plan I had to follow, expect of being there and informing them that I arrived. I received my “Visiting Student card”, the certificate of the current enrollment and some documents for the ARC (Alien Registration Card) which I need for the visa extend.

After 10 minutes I was done. And I went to check out what you can eat as a vegetarian in this area. The only vegetarian option was not cold, but iced noodles. I really never heard about iced noodles being a thing. Iced Latte, yes totally, but noodles, this was a great first experience. After I tried to tell the cute old lady in the shop, that I do not eat meat (a nice Korean guy eventually helped me with the translation), the iced noodles were the only vegetarian options. Experience new and unknown things is what I crave for, so I was happy to find out about it – and it was delicous. It had a nice fresh taste of cucumber and they provide you mustard and a sort of vinegar to mix it with the noodles. It makes the taste unique. I was in food heaven. And while I tried to eat my noodles with the sticks, slowly the ice melted into a juicy cold soup.