Month: September 2024

It’s now the weekend after, so I’m a little late, but I figured I’d post an update with the fun stuff I did over my long weekend for the Chuseok holiday!

For those unfamiliar, Chuseok is often referred to as “Korean Thanksgiving” when explaining it to Americans, but it’s definitely an oversimplification. The only real similarities are that both Thanksgiving and Chuseok are holidays originally meant to celebrate bountiful harvests and involve a large family meal, but overall Chuseok has many more customs attached to it and is far more focused on the ‘harvest’ (although how true that is in a much less agricultural Korean society is something I don’t really know).

Continue reading “– chuseok holiday” →

My first week of classes at Yonsei University in Seoul has just come to a close, and tomorrow marks 2 weeks since I first landed in Seoul for the fall semester. The last two weeks have made me incredibly grateful for my summer experience at Ewha, as coming back to the Sinchon neighborhood felt so familiar that I haven’t even been nervous about spending 4 months abroad, a fact that would otherwise have intimidated me so much. I’ve been able to settle into my new routine easily because of this familiarity, and it honestly feels nice to be back!

– week 1

The first week I was here was a lot of shopping for necessities, figuring out school facilities, and readjusting to time zones. My room at Yonsei compared to Ewha is a little smaller, mostly because we have communal bathrooms in the Yonsei dorm I’m staying in compared to the private bathrooms at Ewha. Otherwise, the rooms are very similarly built & laid out, so I was glad to have stored some things in a locker in the Ewha neighborhood for the month that I was back in the US since I didn’t have to do a huge haul.

Continue reading “– first two weeks at yonsei” →