Student Stories

In Korea, there is a large population and very little space. This means that there are many apartment complexes with many floors. I live in a small apartment complex and I am on the third floor in this walk-up. My apartment building is one of many in the neighborhood that are all sandwiched together. The streets are also quite small. They can fit about one car! I’m also quite close to a subway station. I am probably a 1 minute walk away from the subway! Overall, my neighborhood is pretty quiet and very chill, even though we are very close to a busy main street.

In addition to being heavily populated, Korea likes to stay up late. Many places do not open until the afternoon and they stay open until very late. This means that my night owl tendencies work perfectly here! I usually do get up reasonably early though! ​I usually have some kind of bread or pastry that I’ve bought for breakfast. Korean bakeries make this delicious sweet red bean paste filled bread and other delicious pastries that I love to eat!

After this, I walk to my school. It’s about a ten to fifteen minute walk depending on the traffic light and how fast I decide to walk up the slightly steep hills of my neighborhood. When I get to my school, I change my shoes into my indoor slippers to avoid getting too much dirt in the school. This is something that every student and every teacher does. It’s really neat and it means that I get to wear extremely comfortable shoes all day! I teach a class almost every period. After four periods, it is then lunch time. Lunch is a little different at our school. The school orders the lunch in every day and it is delivered to every classroom. Each class has their own lunch cart that sits in the hallway and near the end of fourth period the carts get filled. We all bring our lunch cart with the different foods on it into the classroom or staff room. There are trays for the food and spoons and chopsticks for silverware. We all serve ourselves lunch from the provided food. Every day is something different but there is always rice, soup, and some kind of kimchi. The other foods could be a protein or a starch or a fruit or vegetable. Sometimes we get special juice or yogurts. It’s a delicious surprise every day! We then clean up our cart and put it back into the hallway where the food containers are whisked away to be returned for another day.

After lunch, I teach a few more classes and eventually the day ends and I head home. By the time I get home, it is just about dinner time. Now, in Korea, eating out is not too expensive. A lot of times, buying and cooking all of your food can be more expensive than simply eating out. So, I usually go home and then I go out to eat somewhere in my neighborhood. There are MANY places to eat near my apartment. I can always go to the convenience store that is a 30 second walk from my apartment or I can go and get kimbap down the street or ddukbokki and twigim across the street. I can walk a little further and go get naengmyeon or cold noodles. I can even go get Burger King if I want. There are so many options and all of them are delicious! Usually, I’ll go out to eat and then depending on how I feel, I will go back home and rest until the next day but sometimes, I go and explore different areas of my neighborhood. In doing this, I’ve found parks, fun restaurants that I want to try, and small street markets where they sell lots of different foods and goods. It’s really fun to see all of the different things that are in my neighborhood!

Now on weekends, when I’m not teaching, I like to go out into Seoul and explore wherever I can. I’ve been to many different places so far! I’ve been to Gangnam, Itaewon, Insadong, Hongdae, and Myeongdong which are all different districts in Seoul. I just hop on the subway and go wherever I want. Currently, it’s cherry blossom season so this weekend, I’m planning on going out to a few different parks to see the beautiful cherry blossoms in bloom.