Iphak

Today was the first day of classes at my new language school at Seoul National University. SNU is the flagship school of the Korean public education system, and the most respected in the country. Today was not only my first day of class, but also the beginning of the new academic year for all SNU students. (The Korean academic year begins in the spring.)

The main gate of the university was decorated with a sign announcing the matriculation ceremony.

The shape of the gate is quite unusual. It is meant to resemble Korean letters. You can clearly see the first syllable of 'Seoul', 서 (seo). I think the rest maybe is supposed to resemble the first syllable of 'university', 대 (dae), although I can't figure out how that could be. Maybe Erma can help here. [Thanks, Erma for pointing out in a comment that the right side is a small (apparently epiphytic) ㄷ, the letter representing the d sound at the beginning of the Korean word for university. -- note added by Lance March 4.]

SNU is a steeply sloped campus, set in the foothills of Gwanak Mountain. The views can be quite dramatic, although today it was a bit hazy.


There were a lot of banner recruiting signs all over campus. Since SNU has the country's brightest students, its graduates are in high demand. This sign is for the Boston Consulting Group. Most of the signs were announcing meetings with recruiters taking place later in the week.


Let's be sfersian!


There were a number of Pojang Macha like this one set up around campus, selling hot snacks.


I don't know if these are there every day, or if these were serving the large crowds expected for the opening ceremony. [It turns out these are not regularly on campus. I haven't seen them since. -- updated by Lance, March 7.]

As I walked up the hill, the sun looked eerie in the morning haze.


This is the Language Education Institute, where my classes are held. All SNU buildings are designated by a number. If you click on the picture to enlarge, you'll see that this building is number 137-1.


Just uphill from my building there is some major construction going on:


The feeling at the language school here is quite different from Yonsei. For one thing, the program is considerably smaller, so it feels more intimate. Whereas at Yonsei there were 14 classes at my level, with 12 students each, here there are 4 classes at my level, with 10 students each. And while it is a very international set of students, the ratios are more balanced than at Yonsei. This is because SNU, as part of their application process, considers nationality as well as academic merit in order to achieve a balance, whereas Yonsei automatically accepts all minimally qualified applicants.

Before I took my placement test, I jotted down the listed nationalities of the students taking the test with me. (These are only the students entering the program fresh, who need to have their Korean level evaluated; the numbers don't include continuing students.) I'll list the numbers, I found them quite interesting:

Holland: 1
Taiwan: 2
Russia: 4
Germany: 1
Malaysia: 2
Mexico: 1
Mongolian: 13 (!!!)
USA: 16
Vietnam: 1
Brazil: 1
Sweden: 2
Spain: 1
Singapore: 1
United Arab Emirates: 1
Uzbekistan: 2
Japan: 19
China: 15
Hong Kong: 3
Chile: 2
Tajikistan: 1
Thailand: 3
Poland: 1
France: 2
Philippines: 2
Korea: 6
Australia: 5

I was startled to see that one of the people taking the test was an former classmate from Yonsei, a Japanese woman. We'll call her Mayumi (not her real name). Mayumi was a very serious and successful student, but she disappeared without a trace a few weeks before the term ended. We were all worried about her. She told me that she'd had some sort of health problem and had to go back to Japan. Like me, she had spent the winter quarter at home, and was now planning to take spring term classes at SNU. I asked her why she picked SNU this time instead of returning to Yonsei. She said that she wanted to try SNU because it had fewer students and they weren't as young.

From what I could tell she's right -- the average age (and presumably maturity level) of the SNU students appeared to be higher.

In my class there were two students from mainland China (one of whom is of Korean descent, but knew no Korean before), one student from Taiwan, two from Mongolia (one of whom is of Korean descent and speaks Korean), one from Uzbekistan, one from France, one from Australia, and one other American.

[We've since added another Mongolian and a Japanese, for a total of 12 students. I was mistaken about one Mongolian being of Korean descent. They are all of Mongolian ethnicity. Two are from the capital Ulan Bator, and one is from the countryside. It also turns out that both of the mainland Chinese students are of Korean ethnicity; one grew up in a Korean-speaking household, and one didn't. -- Added by Lance, March 7.]

The class seems to be right for my level; from what I can tell, the curricula of Yonsei and SNU are structured very similarly. Some of the students spoke better than me, some worse. I knew pretty all of the material we were given for review at the beginning of class, and I know very little of the material that we'll be learning, judging from the contents of our textbook.

The classroom building is older, more run-down, and cramped compared to Yonsei's language institute. Yonsei runs a huge operation that rakes in a lot of money, which is probably why they could afford to put up a brand-new building. But I actually found the facilities inside the classroom to be better at SNU -- there's a computer built into the teacher's desk, for example.

After class I went over to the Student Union's main dining hall for lunch. I've posted before about student dining halls, but I don't believe I've ever shown a picture of the post-prandial section. Koreans generally don't drink with their meals (unless it's alcohol), and as far as I can tell don't use napkins either. Those are after-meal activities. So after you drop off your tray of dirty dishes, you get in line for a drink.


This is a particularly fancy water dispenser. You grab a clean cup, and then you choose either near-boiling hot water from the left-hand-side taps, or cold water from the right-hand-side taps. I like hot water, but let me tell you, a fashioning a cup out of metal is a pretty stupid idea if you want to drink hot liquids from it. A lot students mix hot and cold to get the right temperature.

You sort of stand there and drink quickly, trying not to slow the line down too much. Then you drop your dirty cup into one of the blue tubes at the far end of the dispenser.

In every dining hall I've been in, right near the exit are some napkin dispensers and a mirror. (They are against the far wall in the photo above.) So you can wipe your face, and then check to see if you've done it right. (It's really a pretty civilized idea to be able to look in a mirror after the messy business of eating.)

One last photo -- this is for Erma. It's Gate #8 on campus.