Okay, so what is this all about?
For the academic year of 2017/2018, I’m going to be an exchange student at Seoul National University in South Korea, spending my first two Master’s semesters abroad. This part of my website page is supposed to be something like a personal blog about my life as an exchange student far from home, but the actual content you’ll find here heavily depends on my ability to remember that I wanted to maintain a blog on here.
On August 20th 2017, I’ll start my journey from Frankfurt Airport, although many things are still to be settled (for example finding myself a place to sleep lol). What I do know to this date is that I won’t come back to Germany until at least next June after the end of my second exam period, but I’ll most likely stay until my one-year foreing travel insurance wears off on August 19th 2018.
What I expect from my trip abroad? To put it shortly: A good time.
Naturally, I’ve informed myself about the country and what to expect from the people and their habits, from my university, from the country’s landscape and so on. The Mountain Ranges of the peninsula, food that is said to be too spicy for Germans, ESports, Soju, living in a frikkin’ megapolis, living next to a dictatorship including nuclear weapons and a possibly insane leader… all those are things I’ll definitely get myself a taste of in the next months. However, a good friend of mine reminded me of something important: to stay spontaneous when living the foreign student life, to take opportunities as they come and not to stay too focused on trying to achieve a particular thing.
So, for now, my days in Karlsruhe are pretty much numbered. My departure for a far away land is getting closer, and the moments in which I get that heart-tickling feeling of excitement from realizing that I’ll soon be breaking out of my comfortable student life in KA are getting more and more frequent. At the moment, I think taking every situation and opportunity as it comes is the best thing one can do when such an exciting new part of one’s life is about to roll out.
Finally, another good tip I got for my voyage:
When Seoul’s about to get nuked into oblivion, enjoy the view of the explosion as it unfolds, because you won’t see anything comparable for the rest of your life!