I can't get no...

Well, I really feel like in Korea one never gets what one was promised.

And specially with weather. It started some months ago: they promised typhoon but delivered small rain.

And it seems like we are out of luck seeing normal conditions again. Just before we ended semester, everyone was telling that summer rainy season is coming. Well, I hate rain, so I was not happy. You know, strong wind, water and all that rain shitty stuff. Me no like. My imagination worked well: humid day, cloudy, raining all the time, all my socks wet, all my t-shirts wet, all my pants. Guess what? All my shoes too!

But only in my imagination, as last few weeks showed.

So how it was?  

It's end of July and I haven't seen rain that I am used on from Slovakia. To explain: in Slovakia we usually get what I wrote up there somewhere - few days or even weeks of constant rain during summer. And that's not what we understand as rainy season. It's normal summer with some rain, as my friend says.

Seems like Rainy Season in Korea means 3-5 one hour small rains.

A month.

That's what I've seen so far in July. This website says that "Most rainfall (rainy season) is seen in June, July, August and September.". I probably have to apply the answer of a lot of Koreans when we asked them about this "abnormalities": This year is special. We had this with typhoon, sand storms and we should use it about Rainy Season of 2013, too.

Other possibility is that their meaning of rain, typhoon etc. is pretty much different from ours. No rain means Rainy Season etc....    

But in the end I am happy- no rain, no problem. Except of damned humidity.    

Classes pt. II

Last time I wrote about 2 classes: Korean and Liberal Arts. I guess it's time to move on and write about the rest. And I planned to do that some days ago, but unfortunately I was busy doing nothing.

Here they are: 
      Special    창의공학설계기초 - Creative Engineering Drawing Basic          
     Special    기계부품설계 - Machine Parts Design          
     Special    기계공학기초 - Machine Engineering Basic          
     Special    프로젝트프레젠테이션 - Project Presentation  

I have to be guessing here a bit, because the names have usually not much in common with what we studied.

That's actually the joy of knowing names of classes at the beginning of semester. You are like: "shit, this is gonna be interesting class" but then you are like "that escalated quickly". And boredom begins.

Waking up is sometimes pretty hard. We were all hoping that being in special group will bring something that they promised us (2 semesters of practical training), but ... Well, I'll better stop myself from writing.

For example Project Presentation. Damn it, I remember we talked like "we will probably do some mechanical project, school got pretty good and new equipment, we can do some seriously interesting shit". I'm no mechanical engineer, but this stuff can get you excited. School got some 3D printers and so equipment. Jesus, I am pretty much imaginative. Don't ask me where my mind can go.

So, can you guess what we did in this class? I let you think. (And play first K-POP song that YouTube showed me.)

I hope you enjoyed. I did not.

Anyway the awesome class named Project Presentation was: tadaaaa Excel and PowerPoint. Very creative, ha?

Final project of my group was excel sheet, where you could write your +- of your money, and it would show you your balance.

Stop laughing, please, I am not kidding! 

The rest of classes counts 3:  Machine Engineering Basic, Machine Parts Design, Creative Engineering Drawing. And that somehow doesn't work. I only remember 2 more classes. It might change or whatever.

Anyway, one class, I would guess Machine Engineering Basic, was some basic stuff like Newton Laws and so. It was with Slovak teacher, so we actually studied. Only that I don't see reason why, but anyway, I am not one to judge whether it makes sense or not, right? The most of us remembered it from primary or secondary school, so you can guess class was extremely easy...  Car A and B meeting at the nearest pub.

Second class I would name Creative Engineering Drawing, because sometimes we were drawing. We had 4 classes a week. As teacher said, it was not enough time. And he was saying it almost every class. The same as repeating everything we studied every class. So you can imagine we were light-speed fast. We studied about drawing, stuff like 1st person view or kinda that. I don't know, it was mostly making fun of whatever (and mostly of some Korean student - and that's something I can't get through - Imagine teacher makes fun of you in front of whole class , noone would try in Slovakia ). But in fact, during some classes , like twice, teacher took us and showed 3D printer and stuff. At least something interesting.

So this was practical training they promised us. Ahhh, I see. Apologies. 

At the end, we had some exam.

I don't know my results, but I might find out one day. They are for school anyway. And made by school. So whatever. 

Classes and so...

Some long long time ago I wrote about how special my group is. And about what classes we have. Well, that was the beginning of semester, and I pretty much didn't know what we will study there.

And guess what? Now, after semester is over, I pretty much know what we studied. Not weird, ha?

Yea.

     Special/Regular    전공한국어 - Major Korean          
     Special/Regular    중급한국어 - Intermediate Korean          
     Regular    6-sigma(II)          
     Regular    PLC제어실습 - PLC Control Practice          
     Regular    도면해독 및 3D CAD - Drawing Info. And 3D CAD          
     Special    인문학강좌 - Liberal Arts          
     Special    창의공학설계기초 - Creative Engineering Drawing Basic          
     Special    기계부품설계 - Machine Parts Design          
     Special    기계공학기초 - Machine Engineering Basic          
     Special    프로젝트프레젠테이션 - Project Presentation        

So bold ones were my classes during last semester. As you know from my previous posts, what is written on paper, in Korea doesn't mean that it's really what's gonna happen, so you might wonder what we really did on those classes.

So Korean was Korean Korean. 

A lot of words to learn, not much speaking. Why would I need it anyway.

Damn. They are totally right: I don't need to speak. Since I've arrived in Korea, I didn't use Korean language. (And phrases like "Hello", "How much?","Thanks", "1,2,3..." etc. I do not count as language use. We can all agree that that is knowledge that can one learn without having more than 5 hours of language every week; without actually understanding the language.) So I guess they system works fine. I go to school a lot, I don't speak, and everybody is happy. The only thing they didn't think through (at least it's like that at my school) is that they teach the English the same way: they know hundreds of words, but if you ask them any basic question (like what you did today, tell me short story about whatever, what is weather today) they wont be able to say more than OK, yes, good. You can consider yourself happy, if they understood you. Anyway...

If my memory works like it should, we had 8 hours of Korean every week. Plus twice a week 3 hours at evening. So 14 hours altogether. Sweet.

Liberal Arts 

Thinking, thinking...

 Ah yeah, that was one hour a week, we called it Humanities and it was time when teacher asked us "How are you?". At the end of semester we prepared small presentation about "Human and car" and that's it. Wasted time.

Next classes next time ;] Go grab some beer!

It's been some time (aka food in dorm)

Indeed it's been some time since I wrote something. I've been lazy, bored, and bored, and bored.

And bored.

Anyway. My memories tell me that last time I was writing about our new dorm. The one in forest, where is nowhere to go, nothing to do. Except school and forest.

I mentioned that we need to pay for breakfast and dinner, even we don't eat it. As semester is over, I can somehow summarize it.

So food. After week or two, they created special breakfast for us, I mean for foreigners: usually cornflakes and milk, coffee, sometimes bread and jam, or some weird stuff (sweet bread with kinda fish cream and raisin). I always ate breakfast. And it was not that enjoyable as one would thought. Because Koreans could not eat with us. We were separated and we had different food. That sucks. They wanted (and sometimes they stole our food) to eat our food, but they were not able to take it.

Once they gave us eggs, salt (SALT! after weeks!) and milk.

Launch was always some Korean stuff, cheap spicy meat without taste and rice with rice and rice. For whole semester I've been there maybe 3 times. Once they had chicken. But with no taste whatsoever, just plain chicken in soup without any taste with rice without taste neither. Damn. After that I've never even bothered to be optimistic about food. Sometimes they made spaghetti, but I don't like them anyway. And salty apple salad.

Dinner.  Pretty much like launch. Fish bones, fish, kimchi, pig skin, fat from meat and some weird salads I was afraid to try. I had to pay for it, so I tried to eat it sometimes, but just enough not to die hunger.

In dorm there is shop, but not so much to buy, sweets and ramen, milk and cereals.
    
But to be complete, they were foreigners that could eat food without as big problems as mine.

Not sure what was that, but probably dinner.

I've had some more pics of food, but no idea where I put them, so I will post them when I find them.