Monday, August 3, 2009

This morning I started my day with a traditional Korean meal in the cafeteria downstairs. We had kimche (cabbage in a spicy sauce), steamed greens with dressing, sweet rice noodles, white rice (a staple at every meal), miso soup, and spam. I haven't seen too much spam, but apparently is shows up occasionally in meals. It was all quite good. The food is all fairly healthy, except for all the salt. Overall I'm enjoying the food here much more than in the USA, probably because I love veggies and spicy food, which appear at every Korean meal.

We had our first class from 9am-1pm and it was pretty fun. It was interesting having Korean students in class, though they are fairly quiet. The building we had the class in was a typical academic building, but had a nice cafeteria in the basement where you can get coffee, snacks and meals. After class we went to the student union for lunch and I had noodle soup with fried veggies and seafood. There didn't appear to be much seafood, but there was a cake of fried veggies in the middle. It was quite tasty. I love noodles so that's another reason Korean food is so great.

At 2 we met at the front gate of the university and took cabs to the Korean National Library. The library is huge and pretty fancy. It has 6 floors - the top 3 or 4 floors are where the books are kept. One floor is for rare books/donations, one for government documents, and the others for the regular books. They use a decimal system like the dewey decimal system, but only keep out the books that were published in the last few years. Everything else is in storage, but can be requested. They also have RIFD technology in everything, including books, which means to check out or check in a book you just hold your id in front of the machine, then hold the book in front of it and you're all set. Basically every sort of card can just be held in front of a machine and the transaction is complete - on the subway, for taxis, phone cards etc.

Next we went to the digital library that was built as part of the national library and was just completed a few months ago. It is an over-the-top, massive glass building filled with hundreds of fancy computers, group rooms, recording studios (both tv and audio), interactive exhibits, etc. It's not so much a library as a place to go to use technology to access information. As long as you have an ID from the library you can use the computers and you sign up using huge touch-screen terminals. We definitely don't have anything like it in the US yet.

We got back to Yonsei around 5:30 and then trecked back up the hill. I was pretty tired from being out all day so I did some school work and then ate in the cafeteria downstairs. Tonight we had our staples of rice, steamed greens, miso soup, and kimche. There was also a block of tofu that you put sauce on. I only put a little on and it was still very salty so I'll have to remember to avoid the sauces next time. The main dish was a chicken and noodle stew that was sweet and spicy. The noodles were really thick, which I liked. The chicken was nice and tender, but had bones so you had to be careful eating it. Also, every meal is eaten with a big spoon and chopsticks. The chopsticks are pretty much used for everything except eating rice and soup, in which case you use the spoon. I also used my spoon for the tofu tonight and saw other korean students doing that as well.

Now it's time for more school work and then bed! So far it has been hot and humid here, but today was more cloudy which was a nice change. It was still quite humid, but not nearly as hot.