Posts Tagged ‘homework’

The past week has been one for the books. Thursday was my 21^st Birthday, and it was a good one. I had dinner with my boyfriend at my favourite restaurant in Kingston so far: Little Italy. Then, we met up with some friends at the King’s Tun pub. After that, we went just down the road to a club called Barcadia. Tip: Entrance to the club is free, but it’s not your typical club. It’s more of a bar and it’s very small. But, if you’re looking to go dancing for free, Barcadia’s your place.

Friday, I went to class as usual. Then, around 6, Eric and I headed for Victoria station where we met the tour group. Our means of transportation was the same as the Amsterdam/Bruges trip – overnight on a train, then a coach bus. We arrived in Paris at 7:30 a.m. Saturday morning. The day started off pretty cold, but it warmed up a little when the sun came out and we started walking. I got to see the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Champs Elysees, and everything in between. Tip: An underground rail pass for the day is only €4. So if you want to see a lot that is spread across the city, an underground pass is a cheap way to make it happen. Eric and I opted not to get the pass so that we could get some exercise and see more. We didn’t have a specific plan, just a few things we wanted to see throughout the day, which weren’t too spread out. I also got my crêpes. Yummy!

Sunday, we spent a few hours wandering the gardens and town of Versailles. The gardens were pretty, but I feel they would have been better earlier in the season – none of the fountains were running and quite a few of the statues were covered. But, it was fun walking around the gardens and the nearby food market. After Versailles, we spent a few hours in Montmartre – home of the Montmartre Palace and Moulin Rouge… and lots of pick-pocketers. No one I knew had any run-ins with them, but we did see a girl get roped into having a bracelet made for her. I’m happy to say I’d been warned ahead of time about them. After Montmartre, our group headed back to the UK.

Private Forest Field Trip

The first week of class is officially finished, and I am exhausted! The first day of class was a field trip to a private forest owner’s property. The owners were a married couple from Sweden, both with forestry backgrounds. Interestingly enough, the husband worked for the timber sector of IKEA. They had a large property that they use for firewood, mushrooming, hunting, an ornamental tree nursery, and rent out some of the land for  farming. We spent the afternoon wandering their property learning about Swedish forestry practices, policy, and private ownership. As a challenge the students were split into groups and told to come up with future forestry and land management options for the couple. It was a fun challenge, and the winning group had even suggested converting part of the property into a paintball field! The long day ended with a much needed bonfire and warm food.

SLU Campus

Juggling class time and homework, it was a challenge to sneak in an ‘official’ campus tour or even welcome for that matter. Luckily I was able to make it to a brief afternoon session to get my networking, computer, and library accounts in order. The system here is very different from anything I have ever had to use before; printers que documents and require double passwords, I also have to put money in an electronic account to pay for copies, faxes, and printing, and if I do not have enough money in my account, I cannot print – no exceptions! Hopefully I will not be printing much this semester. The campus itself is gorgeous, with whimsical looking buildings and a large park. There might have been a few Harry Potter Hogwarts jokes mentioned throughout the tour…

As for classes, it has been intense. The long days remind me of being in high school again, or at the ‘Fall Camp’ that I had to go through for Michigan Tech. I really enjoyed my schedule in Helsinki – I had long days, but they did not start at seven in the morning. I am definitely a night owl.

After a long week, I was invited out with the other new SLU students to go bowling. I have not been bowling in a very long time, and for good reason – I am not very good. I was excited to go out with my new friends, and was even more excited to be meeting more new people. I had to take the bus into Malmö, which costs 22 krona (about $3.40) one way! Not only is Sweden expensive (like Finland), but they use the “Swedish crown” or Krona as their currency. It has been quite the conversion adjustment for me. I miss using the Euro  1 Euro equals 8.87 Krona, which is currently equal to $1.36. Luckily, I kept my NORDEA bank account active in Finland so I do not have to pay common currency conversion fees like most people.

Tastes like home!

To finish the first week myself and a few other ATLANTIS students got together for a hearty brunch. Each person contributed a dish; there was sausage, scrambled eggs, traditional Finnish crepes, fresh bread, lingonberry jam, and someone even bought real Canadian maple syrup! I mad a warm winter citrus salad of grapefruit, blood oranges, and pineapple with a brown sugar glaze. After our spectacular brunch, reality woke us from our mid-morning food-comas and reminded us why we had really gathered, that pesky group homework assignment. It was nice to distract ourselves for an hour or so with brunch though. In short, the weekend and evenings after class have been filled with group assignments, personal homework, and enough take-home reading to kindle fires for a month. This will definitely be a challenging semester!

Next week is the Superbowl! Yes, my hometown team, The Green Bay Packers, have made it to the Super Bowl. It is also one of my Finnish ATLANTIS colleague’s birthdays, as well as Runeberg’s Birthday (a Finnish holiday for the famous Finnish poet). I look forward to writing about the upcoming fun, but busy week.

Kassidy

My own hair salon . . . sort of o_O

On my way back to Seoul on Sunday, I realized I was down to the last dollar on my pre-paid phone. So after class on Monday, I went to the store outside the apartment to buy more minutes only to be told that my subscription had ended. However, I had talked to a representative on the phone a week before who had told me that the subscription was valid until September. Unfortunately, the man working there was not very friendly and told me I had to apply to extend my subscription in the Sinchon store since the Mapo store didn’t have that service. Extremely annoyed, I ended up drowning my frustrations in blue hair dye and nail polish. I don’t know why I thought that trying to streak my own hair navy blue by myself was a good idea, but I ended up doing so nonetheless. However, since my hair is extremely resilient, the dye didn’t seem to take so I decided to go ahead and use up the rest of the dye the next day . . . I suppose the upside is that my hair no longer looks brown because of the sun ^^;;

Need I say more?? ^_~

Tuesday, I was on my way out the door when my host sister decided to apply a temporary tattoo to my arm, probably because I had tried to look good since my host mom and I were FINALLY going to CoEx, the largest underground mall in the world. Even though there wasn’t an exhibition that day, it was still cool to be able to look around a mall that was somewhat similar to American malls . . . No claustrophobic “department” organization or employees following you around! After she was finished with classes, my host sister met us there and the three of us went to Sinchon to resolve the issue with my phone: yes, there were only two weeks left, but that’s why having a phone is that much more important! Fortunately, the people at that store were much more helpful and friendly, and I ended up just having to sign a paper and pay for more minutes . . . A happy ending I must say!

Burger King in Korea . . . just as inedible as in America

Wednesday, I had made plans to meet another former exchange student at Tech after class, but since she didn’t have a phone number I could call, I had to wait for her to contact me. Unfortunately, she never called, so I ended up attempting to occupy myself with some homework. Thanks to the stifling heat and humidity, however, my computer overheated way too quickly to accomplish anything (all of my homework involved the use of my computer) so any attempt to be productive was rendered useless. And so, I spent a pretty boring and uneventful Wednesday at home

My last day of classes was supposed to be a long one . . . Normally, my Thursday classes began at nine in the morning and I had to stay on campus until my second class in the afternoon concluded at three, but I was supposed to meet with my friend to work on our group paper until seven. Since I had a break between eleven and one, I took the opportunity to have lunch one last time with my Yonsei mentor. I’m glad that worked out, since he’s one of three good friends I had made at Yonsei and that may have been the last time I could see him . . . I don’t like saying goodbyes ^^;;

My Yonsei mentor

As for the rest of my plans, however, things weren’t as successful. My partner ended up having other things to do, so he canceled on me and we set up a time to meet the next day. Since my plans had fell through the day before, being canceled on didn’t put me in a very good mood. To make matters worse, I had woken up late that morning and had to lug my computer and text books to class in order to work on this project. (Note to self: disregard Korean standards and use a backpack if you’re carrying more than five pounds . . . your shoulders will thank you.) So, feeling a bit rejected and in an overall bad mood, I decided to take a walk along the Han-gang to take pictures and spend some time alone. However, this is Seoul, so it’s impossible to be alone. Therefore, although I had tried to find an isolated corner to jump rope to burn off some negative energy, I found myself being stared at by random bikers and senior citizens using the low-impact exercise equipment. Normally, I think Americans would either ignore me or say something to me if they thought what I was doing was interesting (I used to be on a competitive jump rope team in middle school), but these people just stopped and stared . . . and stared some more. It was extremely awkward, so instead of dispelling my bad mood, it was only aggravated under the uncomfortable scrutiny.

How older Koreans stay healthy

The next day, my partner ended up canceling on me again, so my day started to look like another failure. However, my oldest host sister needed some help translating a contract of some sort from English to Korean, so she asked me to come visit her in Jincheon. Since Jincheon is a city about an hour and a half from Seoul, I would just spend the night at her apartment and we’d return to Seoul together the next day. Since this weekend was the last time I’d be able to spend time with her, it was really nice to be able to hang out with her one-on-one . . . After I helped her sort through the extremely convoluted contents of the contract, we went out to eat pizza and visited some street shops before going to her apartment to catch the opening ceremonies for the World Cup . . . I ended up falling asleep during the South Africa/Mexico game. ^^;;

No host-dad, I can't eat it all!

After we arrived in Seoul and had dinner, my host family had a goodbye party for me. They were so sweet- they bought a chocolate cake in the shape of a soccer jersey with PARK Ji Sung’s number and strategically placed candles that spelled “I love you” on top of it . . . They even ended up moving the captain’s band in front of the “7” to recreate my soccer number, 17! After singing “happy birthday” since they didn’t know what else to sing (I don’t blame them), we more or less decimated the cake while we watched South Korea cream Greece 2:0… Although I thought my host family was loud when PARK Ji Sung scored the second goal, I could hear horns honking and people screaming outside for a couple hours after the game ended!

Thanks to the World Cup, I think I can say my somewhat disappointing week turned out alright . . . There is definitely a reason why I love that sport! ^^