My new Korean roommate has arrived, and some dorm facts.

Her name is Shim Juyoung, and she is a graduate student majoring in art history. She arrived late Saturday night. She seems to be quite nice. We talked a bit (in broken English and Korean, haha) after she unpacked her boxes that were already here. I think we'll get along just fine. =)

My current dorm living look is a little different from the picture shown. But I still can't find any freaking hangers. Why is it so hard to find hangers in a market around here?? T_T I've been looking forever. Ugh.

So, anyway.

That is my room number. I live on the sixth floor, the very top floor of the international student dormitory. It's conveniently the closest to the bathroom and the stairway entrance. But guess what? There's NO elevator. Had I already mentioned that?

Think I have to climb six flights of stairs to get to my room? Nah. Luckily, the main floor is a floor that separates floors 1-3 down below, and then 4-6 going up. So actually from the entrance, I only have to climb three flights of stairs.

However.

The laundry room is in the basement. So if I wanna do laundry, I have to get ready to lug all my dirty clothes down seven flights of stairs to wash them, and them climb back up seven flights of stairs after they're washed (there's no drying machine, by the way. We have to dry them old school style). Also, the Hongdae campus is all about freaking hills. I thought I finally managed to get away from the hills of Oakland and San Francisco for at least just a little while, but nooooooooooooo. >.<

I guarantee you, by the end of four months, my leg muscles will have muscles. Ew.

This is the view of Hongdae from our floor balcony. Despite those godforsaken stairs, this is a nice sight. But this picture was taken on a rainy day, so uh, pretend that sky there is wonderfully blue and bright.

On my very first night in my dorm, a mosquito somehow flew in the open door while I was unpacking. The next morning, I woke up with three bites. One on both arms, and one on my neck.

Now, I haven't had a serious allergic reaction from a bite in a while, but the bite on my left arm has gotten pretty bad, and it's only been the second day. Compared with the picture above that I just took this afternoon, right now, this bite has probably swollen even more. It's quite disgusting. And frightening. And the bite area itself is a couple degrees warmer than the rest of my body. I hope the swelling stops and the bite fades away soon. The itching is ridiculous. And I don't want to have to try to find allergy medication in Korea. What if I take the wrong drugs??

Sigh. Well, it's been the busy weekend. Now tomorrow, the real interesting stuff begins. I start my first ever overseas courses tomorrow. And I'ma be drawing, hopefully.

I'm pretty nervous, but the first class is instructed by a non Korean, so I hope that would ease my anxiety a bit. His name is Timothy Blum. Doesn't that sound like a voice actor of some sort? Haha. I'm more nervous about the watercolor class, because there was a prior class to take before this one, although, I'm not sure if it's necessary to take them consecutively. There are two teachers for this class, Han Jinman and Choi Changbong. They sound like male names.

Well, wish me luck! Let's pray that my Korean skills will have to at least improve a little bit after a couple weeks of classes. =)