THAILAND J-1

Seoul Musical

Few weeks ago, I went to see a korean musical. Even if I really didn't get the entire purpose of the play, I found it quite funny anyway. I let you enjoy the final scene. In my opinion I thought it looked like a circus representation, with circus music and also circus dance. However it was quite enjoyable.

Pray for Japan




Picture from garancedore.fr

 

Yesterday, I saw on the korean TV news a report about little villages in Japan which were completly destroyed by the tsunami. I don't want to speak about these villages but about their inhabitants. I mean, the report was showing long list of names ... that was actually names of survivors, people who were registrered on lists and who are still alive now. Then, the TV report ends with pictures of families and people gathered again. These pictures where so meaningfull for me, because first people lived with such a big fear of having lost some of their relatives and now they know everything is ok for them, they're safe and I think showing such pictures instead of showing pictures of death and destroyed things are not much that a huge message of hope.

Seeing their happiness trough this report make me think about me ... I mean I really relativize about my own life, more over because I'm just 1 200 km from Fukushima.

Concerning the nuclear clouds and all that stuff I know lots of french medias were exagerating the phenomenon. The fact is that everything is completly normal, I mean everybody was at school, we continue to take parties, and despite of some french speeches asian world is still ok ...People still continue to travel, nobody is sheltering in his house, life must go on ... even in Japan, unversities are still openned, and students can continue to study !

For me the major problem is the economic problem : Since WW2, this is the biggest crisis for Japan and that crisis will have some impacts on the entire asian world. Japan exchange every year more than 40% of its total exchange with Korea, so basically I think Korea will be the first country to suffer from that crisis ... We cannot predict the future but I think the crisis impact will be huge in all the asian area.

Howver, asian countries get that crazy ability to reborn from nothing in few years, so I think asian countries will react quickly and find new ways to keep their grozth competitive on the international scene again

Getting a Chinese Visa : One of the toughest task in Korea

I planned to go to China at the end of April with my family, to visit Shanghai & Beijing, so exciteeeeeeeeeeeed,

But first I will tell you a little story about how to get a chinese visa when you're a french fresh incoming exchange student ... Let's begin !

Getting a chinese visa for a french student reveals of a real fight against the chinese machine (I accentuate it a little :) ...) But the fact is it's really hard to obtain. You need fisrt your plane tickets and your hotel reservation (but you have to think also about what would happen if your visa is refused by the embassy) so you have to take refundable plane tickets, but they're more expenssive than non-refundable ones.

So what I did is quite simple, I took so expensive non refundable plane tickets in a travel agency, then I booked a fake hotel (when I'll be in China I won't take that hotel but I already paid 10% of the entire price). Then I finally went to the chinese Embassy, with my alien registration card, my plane tickets, my hotel reservation, my passport, a certificate of incomes, the enrollment letter from Hanyang University, my application form and so on ...

After having been waiting something like 30 minutes, I finally reached the desk of the person who cares about the international applications forms. Then she just told me 'No, you cannot have it' wow .... problem : that was not in my plans to get my visa refused .... So that was over (for the moment) she told me that other people were waiting and I have to let them apply for their own visa. She added that anyway I had to fill another application form chinese/english whereas the one I gave to her was chinese/french (no difference actually but she wanted that)

So, I was so disappointed, because I really thought I couldn't go to China ... Then, I just tried again to see her, with the new application form. Then she finally explained me what the visa should be refused for me : Because my alien registration card (ARC) is only valid for 5 months and 28 days instead of being available for exactly 6 months ... So she told me I needed an extension of my ARC to get my visa. But the fact is I can't extend my ARC because I'm just a student ... so after lots of explanation concerning the fact that I was a student and lots of tears she told me she could make an exception for me (???) an exception concerning visa application ??? I said YES anyway ... So she told me that giving the visa was an exception and I just could get a 1 entry visa but that was fine for me !!!

So to conclude, all the students who already applied for a chinese visa were ALL exceptions, there are something like hundreds and hundreds of excpetions each year, but chinese embassy and chinese government still consider us as 'exceptions' and if you're just a normal studend, supposed to be here just for one semester you can just get a simple entry visa ...

Anyway, I received my visa, and I can now go to China... I also cancelled my refundable plane tickets and found other ones so much cheaper !!!

I think Chinese embassy just want to discourage lots of people going to china by process this way ...

Calendars are for careful people, not passionate ones.

Long time no see ....Time runs so fast, and I didn't write anything for such a long time ...So many things to talk about. Maybe I should probably begin by the very beginning, and the early days of March.

Hanyang

I began university courses on the 3rd of March, and I have to say that's quite interesting. I take 4 courses a week (basically spattered between Tuesday and Wednesday). So, concerning the courses that I decided to take, they are similar as the ones I used to have in France : Economics, International Business, Marketing ect ...

But the fact is that in Hanyang University, courses turn into something really interesting : professors get such a new way to speak about business, always talking about time as the precious thing that you can get in your all life. So in this way, no time to sleep, no time to eat, time should only be used to study and make korea a more powerful country ... wow

So I take courses of International Economics, Marketing Management  on Tuesday and then, on Wednesday I have International Business and Fashion Business. As you can see, courses seem to be sooooooooooo cool, but they're juste talking about normal things I already learned at school :

In International Economics, we're talking about the things we learned in high school. Then in Marketing Management w're for instance studying SWOT, BCG Matrix ect ....

But the fact is that's not boring at all because teachers are introducing their subject differently, with another approach, so that's still interesting. Also I cannot get boring of ONLY 2 days at school a week obviously ...

Hanyang Dormitories

I'm living in Hanyang Dormitories because it's really cheaper than living in an appartment in Seoul. That's also super good because that's basically ON the campus, so I thought time to go to school is reduced to the strict mimimum (but at that time I didn't figure the size of the campus out yet ...)

What's to say about the dormitories .... haha long story ...

First : no kitchen AT ALL, that means that you cannot cook at all. There's just on fridge for all the dorms and sometimes, when you put something in, next day you cannot find it again (people coming back from parties are usually starving to death and turn into good robbers) so basically you do not put something in that non sure fridge ...

Then, we also get two different dormitories, on ONLY for girls and one for boys. So, no boy is allowed in the girls dormitory but the fact is 4 japanese guys are living on the first floor of our dorms ... Also, there's a guard who is watching everything you can do in the public areas of the dorms through numerous cameras.

Also, there's something such as a curfew from 00:30 to 5:30. So for Hanyang, that should implies that students should NOT come in the dorms during that time ... hahaha is that a joke ??? so now, Hanyang students developed news ways to open the dorms doors : putting a flat paper between the 2 doors, then going up and up to reach the cell in order to activate it and open the doors. All that operation should be really quiet because in addition the guard is sleeping next door ... but that's fine, touch of spy games in the night ...

Concerning my roomate, in my application form I wrote NO FRENCH PLEASE in bold, red, underligned 3 times but the fact is despite of everything, my roomate is ... french ... but not just french, from MY business school. So basically I know her a little. And I think that's a little bit bad because I speak french all day and all night long.

English Lessons

I got plenty of empty time so I can do lots of stuff outside the University. I decided to give some english lessons to earn a little bit of money. So I found 2 people who were interested in learning english  with me. I was first really afraid (can I really handle it ?) because, well english is not my mother tongue. But anyway, I have to say that's good, I meet that people every sunday for 2 hours and we read newspapers and talk about recent world activities. Good for them, they learn english, good for me, I have to speak english and pay attention not to do any mistake.

Ballet lessons

Due to loooooooooots of empty time I also decided to take some ballet lessons, because I do not want to turn into a "thing" which spend her entire day in bed, geeking on facebook or doing any useless thing else. Just a waste of time here ... so to motivate myself I decided to take 4 ballet lessons a week in order to keep me awake and dynamic. Courses are really great, even if sometimes that's a little bit hard. I mean the professor is korean and all the other dancers are korean. So even if the teacher always shows us the gesture first sometimes I don't get the entire explanation ...

I take theses courses outside of the university because the university does not offer ballet lessons. I find the dance studio were I'm going on the internet and then, with the help of my Hanyang mentor, I went there to registrer myself.

Nutshell

Anyway, I enjoy so much Seoul, and life here is really so exiting. In the next few days I'll try to post some new articles because you should be aware of the crazy seoul day&night life

Ah, and at last but not least, not not not at all actually :) I'm going to Thailand in 3 days, to visit Bangkok and Krabi ... I cannot dream of a better life for now ...

Busan Fish Market

Busan Temples