Continuing from part 1 about my experience at HISS, this part will be on my recounts about the stay in Korea.
These are some of the key recounts that I would like to share from the four weeks stay in Korea:
· Time management – Juggling between school assignments and leisure activities
· Adaption of cultural differences within short timeframe
· Growth in independency
Time management – Juggling between school assignments and leisure activities
With the duration of HISS programme lasted only for four weeks, it is inevitable that the timetable will be packed with lessons. For my case, lessons were conducted from Monday to Thursday, 9am to 4pm. It was relatively challenging for me as not only I have to complete the pre-course quizzes from my home university, I need to complete the daily assignments assigned by my HISS professors as well. At the same time, I will need to prepare for the quizzes, exams and presentations for the modules I took in HISS.
With the limited free time on hand, I had learnt to better prioritize the tasks on hand and complete them accordingly. For instances, I will try to do my revision for quizzes and exams while travelling to the campus. Or, I will practice my presentation during lunch break after I had my meal. Even though there isn’t much availability of time in between these periods, but it did help to lessen my workloads upon returning to dormitory. Also, as the hosting university, HISS had organized various activities (e.g. Han River Boat Cruise, Everland theme park trip as well as SM Town COEX tour) for international students like us to participate in. These activities are usually held on a Friday or Saturday. By completing what I need earlier, I am able to free up time for the leisure activities.
Despite the struggle I faced with the limited time, I never regret packing my weekdays with revisions etc. so that I can participate in the leisure activities over the weekends. This is also a reminder to me that when I step into the working society, similar issue of overwhelming works with limited availability of time could surface too. Hence, I would need to learn to priortise and strive for work-life balance. This explained why time management was one my greatest takeaways from this trip.
Adaption of cultural differences within short timeframe
I believe that the impression that most of us have of Korea are rather positive based on what the media have depict to us. Hence, I would say that I kind of had a culture shock during the first week of my stay there.
First of all, I realised that most Koreans do not have the habit of saying “excuse me” when they are trying to get past you. They will simply push through you. As rude as it sounds, it seems to be the norms there; none of the Koreans feel amiss about it. I guess it is probably due to their “fast-pace culture”, where things are supposed to be completed fast. Thus, they are seen to be rushing and pushing through at the subway stations during peak hours. Even when I raised this issue to one of my Korean professor, he could not provide an explanation to this phenomenon too.
It had also come to my attention that the Korean authorities take recycling seriously, with law being enforced for its waste management system. Not forgetting, there are also special garbage bags for the disposal of general and food wastes which individuals have to purchase. This mean that we must separate our garbage according to the different types of waste and recyclable items, to ensure that no harmful substances are being disposed into the land and usable items are being recycled for good cause. I would not deny that I had a hard time trying to sort out the garbage, identifying which are the waste and which are the recyclable items during the first few days of stay in Korea.
To further emphasize their sense of environmentalist, most of the retail stores do not provide shopping bags. If you need one, you have to pay for it. Personally, I feel that it is a good measure, though it might bring inconvenience to people at times. Even though we might not see the immediate effect of reducing the usage of plastic bags or recycling right away, in times to come, little effort from each of us will become influential to the majority. This element reminds me of the corporate social responsibility policies that companies are adopting, as some companies adopted policies such as recycling or conserving energy utilisation. Besides, by enforcing regulation on waste separation, it will ensure that Koreans do not abuse their right on waste disposal, since now they have to pay more to throw more waste. This will reduce wastages significantly.
Growth in independency
Since this is the first time I am away from home for a relatively long period of time, it is a good opportunity to enhance my independency. For example, I had to do my own groceries shopping and prepare my own meal when I decided to stay-in over the weekends.
Nonetheless, the incident that left me with deepest impression happened during the last week of my stay in Korea, where I suffered from an inflammation on gum. As such, I need to seek for dental treatment at the local dental clinic. It was a rather intimidating experience for me due to the communication barrier, since I am not proficient enough to converse about my medical conditions in Korean language. Thankfully, the dentist and staffs at the clinic I patronized was rather helpful and they were proficient in English language. Thus, we managed to converse with mixture of English and Korean.
From the experience, I realised that I can be more independent than I thought. Being away from home and having to visit a clinic alone is not the most delightful event, but it reminded me that in the future when I have to travel abroad for work, my family members wouldn’t be always by my side too.
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