My New Schedule

Hello there fine gentle people! ^^

As mentioned earlier my reason for going to Korea was, is and will still be studying. My schedule also shows that.

We selected courses about two weeks ago, and I am now finally ready to start studying. Times feel really slow when you are not doing anything particular, when there is no structure or particular thing that you have to do. At least this is how I feel, and now that feeling is starting do disappear. We had our first normal classes last week, and in  15 days the language course will be starting as well.


When going to university, studying is usually your own business. You maybe have a couple of hundred pages that you have to read for some lectures that will take place during the week, but on the other side you only have 7-12 lessons/lectures during a week. This makes it a bit more manageable, some people even say easy. But because Yonsei university offers a really intensive language course, which was one of the reasons for me choosing Yonsei, my schedule looks a bit different than a normal university students schedule.

1: 09:00-09:50
2: 10:00-10:50
3: 11:00-11:50
4: 12:00-12:50
5: 13:00-13:50
6: 14:00-14:50
7: 15:00-15:50
8: 16:00-16:50
9: 17:00-17:50

Yeah, 26 lessons a week. This is like high school all over.

I could have chosen to only take the language course and one other course. This would have made the amount of homework less and more manageable. But since taking two courses besides the language course in theory can cut of 3 months of my education, I chose to just go for it.
An easy way to explain it, is just to say that I have to take a certain amount of courses during my education, and if I take a lot early on I only have to take a few later on.




These are the books, + 2 more I have still not received, I am using this semester +  a ton of different academic texts. Even though it looks and sounds really boring I actually find all my classes really interesting!

In the Korean Policy and Democracy classes I have a really awesome professor, he works for ASAN - Asian Institute for Policy Studies.

I know that I used to hate social studies, but our professor is really awesome, and when he mentioned the possibility of getting an internship with ASAN I was instantly hooked. If I actually can squeeze it into my schedule would really like to try and work with this!

http://asaninst.org/eng/     If people want to check it out.








The only thing that I am concerned about, is if my already limited time with my girlfriend will be completely taken away, which I would hate more than anything else.

4931 miles apart, but still under the same sky
www.jeongie.com

Korean Pizza! With Ketchup and sweet mashed potatoes...

  

Pizza, the food almost everyone know and love, if made the right way and with proper skills. They are made differently all over the world, fit to different tastes and cultures. When this is said, it is also the exact same case for Korea.

Being from Denmark a pizza is in my opinion usually built up like something similar to this picture:

Or this:

Or maybe:

To some people this may seem weird, but in Denmark these are perfectly normal ways of making pizza. I like this way of making pizza.

In Korea, "normal" pizzas are apparently not good enough, so they have chosen to knock it up a bit, just so it would fit in with the culture. This makes sense in every possible way, but as I experienced it, it is just not my cup of tea.

Some days ago, two of my friends and I went out to buy books for the new semester. After 4 hours of looking around and only finding some of the books we decided to get something to eat.

1 - "Ohh look!? A Pizza Hut, should we go?"
2 - "Well you know what they say, Korean pizzas are different from ours!"
1 - "Yeah, but then again..."
3 - "Well it can't be that bad can it?"
2 - "Let's check it out then!"

Somewhat optimistic we got ourselves a table and started looking at the menu. Seriously, this looked awesome! Pizza crust stuffed with cheese!? Bring it!
Just in general the idea of making something as boring as a normal pizza crust epic, by just adding in tons of cheese or maybe some other different things is brilliant! Why can we not have cheese crust in Denmark!?

Anyways. These three different kinds of pizzas were what stood out the most:




(please note that this is not a rating, just pictures taken from the Korean pizza Huts homepage)

We all chose the first one (nr. 3. lit. BEST 3). Cheese bites and what seems like nice pizza, just had to try it out.

It actually looks nice and interesting.

To quickly describe the pizza from looks:
 - Cheese crust
 - Cheese toping
 - Bell pepper
 - Meat (cow)
 - Pineapple (I do not approve of this fruit in any way, or people who spill its juices everywhere in a salad-bar, hence it was removed)


BUT! Look what we have in here!

Mashed sweet potatoes camouflaged by cheese, and a ketchup base instead of tomato sauce.

The first bite was actually really nice and it tasted really well, but when the sweetness from the ketchup started taking over, mixed with the mashed sweet potatoes, everything just became too sweet. Imagine eating a pizza sprinkled with sugar.



I must say that this experience was not a good one, but fun to look back on now. I know that you can also get pizza cones and a lot of other different, fun, weird stuff, so for you my dear reader I will just have to try it all!

I do not know how Koreans can ever like this kind of food. Everything just has to be sweet and sugary or mixed up with something totally unexpected. I guess that is just the Korean way of mixing things up a bit.

When I have enough pictures I will write some more about food that is only tasty with our eyes. Exactly like this pizza was.



Btw. You can actually order a pizza sprinkled with sugar.