Gettin' my feet wet (2/16/09)

To whom it may interest,
So I'm giving my first shot at this whole blogging world. We'll see where it goes from here and how much I maintain it but it seems like a good idea for a trip that will steer the course of my post-collegiate life. For those of you that don't know, I'm out here in Seoul, South Korea doing a semester abroad program at Yonsei University. The semester will last about 4 months until the end of June from which I'll travel around Southeast Asia with a couple buddies from high school. Following the backpacking excursion across Asia I plan on coming back to Seoul to get a job/internship. The rest is up in the air which is kind of goes along with the way I operate. I tend to have a general idea of what direction I wanna go in but never really have the minute details laid out. In the end, it always works itself out.
I landed at the Incheon Airport last Thursday (2/12/09) and that's when it really hit me that I'm am gonna be in this country for a LONG time. I've been looking forward to this trip for some time now but it never felt real because it was hard for me to envision what it would be like to live here in Korea. I've never lived outside of California and I haven't been outside of the country for more than 3 weeks in my life so naturally trying to picture what life would be like in a place like Korea is near impossible. Although Korea is extremely different from home in many ways, I feel unexpectedly comfortable here. Minus some of the language hiccups I have with random people, it feels like Korea is a second home to me and I've only been here for 5 days (but man do I sound retarded sometimes when people ask me questions in Korean)
The past few days I've just been getting situated... Set up a Korean bank account, got a cell phone, and just getting comfortable in my new room and neighborhood (known as Sinchon). I live in what Koreans call a hasukjip, which is basically like a boarding house. The house is made up of 10 guys and girls all with their own rooms and then the household manager known in Korean as the hasuk ahjima cooks breakfast and dinner for the whole house. Almost all the residents are students so it seems like a cool place to set up shop during my stay in Seoul. So far so good (except for the windy 20 degree weather of the past couple days)... Until next time,

Hasta la vista, baby.
ChrisP