Hanyang University- Love in truth and in deed

Since I am actually here not only to eat kimchi and various Soju combinations, I thought I would show how my campus looks like. 

I am, for those of you who do not know, doing an exchange on Hanyang University for 4 months. The University is mainly famous for their Engineering faculty, but I must say the have a darn good way of teaching business also. 

So let the tour begin, when you get off at Hanyang University metro station the first building that meets you is the administrations building fronted by the Hanyang lion. As you see the grass is still yellow since spring has not really found its way over here yet. 

Here another administrations building at the main Hanyang plaza

Here we have the "88 stairs", due to student superstition it is believed that you can only walk on the red side of the stairs if you want to have A+. This might explain the relative emptiness on the blue side 

Paiknam main library, open 24/7 to bring out the study monsters in us. And is the largest of the libraries at campus

The business faculty (one of 34 faculties) were I am taking "Business communication - how to integrate social media in to your corporation"

Ahh lunch, best eaten in the Design Faculty which has always a great selection of dishes. 

The even better thing then their excellent kimchi collection is the view from the restaurant (located on the 7th floor)

If feeling a bit sleepy at a class, we have a sick amount of coffee shops (not the Dutch kind) to satisfy our caffeine needs. Maybe with some Dutch coffee?

The entrance to the women's dormitory, aka my crib. Were I share a fabulous 24 square meters with a Turkish girl (Will show you some photos at a later moment)

The dormitory is just next to the Han river, were the a bit more sporty exchange students like to run. I myself stick to walking and waiting for spring for now, maybe with a Gimbap?

Rolling on the river

A couple of years ago the city council of Seoul decided to uncover this ancient stream that used to run through the city. This stream (called Cheong-Gye-Cheon) me and Nina decided was worth the effort of getting out of bed a Sunday. 

Hanging out with Haechi, Seouls official mascot, and quite a handsome fellow if I may say so

All Universities in Korea have their own college jacket, this is our Universities one. Like gangs in Grease Korean students move around the city, and if you happen to belong to a top University you wear yours with a smug smile on your face.

Fruit and vegetables are insanely expensive. You might think this is just an ordinary box of mandarins, but in fact is me and Nina blowing or student budgets.

Saturday in Sunday is couples day in Korea. I can't imagine any country were it you see more couples walking around, sharing an ice cream and holding hands in the sun. Must suck being single, but on the other hand it might be the fear of not getting married that creates this phenomena.

After we had enough of sweet couples and water we decided to walk a bit further to Myeong-dong were we could be a bit less cultural and a bit more wasteful with our money

But before doing that we had to rest our legs, I decided to do this in combination with a sweet blueberry latte.

Day of fun with the lovely Ji

One lovely sunny Saturday I met up with Ji. To make a long story a bit shorter, I met through a common friend in Amsterdam a Spanish girl called Angela. This Angela knew Ji from Italy (?) a South Korean girl called Ji.  

A few facebook messages later and a 17 hour flight to Seoul we decided to meet up to have a "day of fun". We started the day watching the German 60s designer Dieter Rams works on Daelim contemporary museum

 I decided that I wanted to decorate my home with about everything at the exhibition

Ji also wanted to steal the exhibition

After the exhibition we started walking towards this area in Seoul were they still have traditional houses. On the way we passed the Gyeongbokgung palace. Which I need to visit one of these days.

As we passed they were just changing the palace guards

Traditional Hanbok houses

In every single one of them there was a cute cafe or store with even cuter clothes

 Earlier during the day I told Ji about my current obsession with green tea latte, so we went to a tea house who only serves different versions of green tea and food made of green tea.

Here you see our green tea tiramisu, green tea chocolate, green tea brownies and even green tea macaroons. Deliciousness overdose! Thank you Ji for the best day!