I got my T-money card yesterday and found out that my student card can also act as a transportation card if it’s linked to your NH Bank account. If you use that service, your student card can become a three-in-one: transportation, credit, and your student id. It can definitely save some space in your wallet (unless you just want to get a T-money charm). For me though it was good to get a T-money card since I won’t be getting my student id for quite a while.
I found out one downside to having your shower connected to the facet: forgetting to switch from shower to sink mode. Yeah, it’s a little surprising to turn on the sink only to get shot with water … anyways, hopefully I don’t make that mistake again.
Also, I’ve been thinking about this ever since I got here. There’s a weird smell in Gwanak-gu that I can’t put my finger on. I’ll be walking down a street (any and every street) and I’ll get a big puff of air which smells like pollution or trash or something. Anyone else notice that? It seems to be all over the place. I’ve always heard Koreans compliment the air back home in Utah, is this what they’re talking about?
After taking my shower (twice … though the second time was just for a split second) I left to visit the Office of International Affairs (OIA) on campus to get any tips I needed and to exchange the rest of my American money. I met the ladies who work in the office; they seemed pretty nice. They told me where to go to get my foreign registration card which I’ll talk about in the next post. I believe you get a better rate if you exchange your money on the on-campus NH Bank branch so you’ll probably want to exchange as little as you can at the airport. Today the exchange rate was $1 USD to 1,143.63원 when I bought mine which seems fairly good (though I wish I had bought a lot of Korean money when it was at like 1,500원 to the dollar).
It’s getting late so I’m going to call it a night. I am uploading a new video from the new SNU student party (모꼬지) today so head over to my YouTube account if you want to see it before I post about it here. I’ll post that, talk about the 모꼬지 (which was really fun) and about getting my foreign registration card which I applied for today.
The smell is fromt the Maple Trees in Korea. I have smelled it many times and had to ask my friends about it. I asked them why does it smell like vommit here?
That smell, if it’s anything like The Smell found occasionally here in Jongno-gu, is likely stagnant storm drain. Smaller restaurants and street stall food vendors will wash dishes (with water from a hose) over the nearest storm drain, and they collect a lot of food garbage. They also collect a lot of cigarette butts and other trash, and get clogged very easily. And then they get stinky.
The real problem is during the summer, when there is an incredible amount of rain…and then the mosquitoes breed there.
@David
Ah… that’s the berries from the Gingko tree (which are everywhere in Seoul; just look for the unique fan-shaped leaves). Maple trees don’t really have much scent to them. Gingko berries, when ripe and squashed on the sidewalk (November or so), do indeed smell like vomit (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo_biloba#Reproduction) But that shouldn’t be much of an issue this time of year.
Does Seoul have cicadas? Boy are those things just WONDERFUL in late summertime.
@Andrew
You are right. I looked it up before but I couldn’t remember the exact name.