Anyway, today was a red letter day (National Foundation Day-celebrates the creation of ancient Korea in 2,333 bc (not sure of validity, I heard it from my bank)), so I didn't have to go to work. Instead, I went on a field trip with the other international students from my university. We went to the Suncheon Garden Exposition and to Nagan Fortress.
The garden expo is being really heavily promoted in Korea right now, perhaps because the Yeosu Expo went so well.
Anyway, they had several different themed areas and lots of collections of plants. They had several gardens that were Korean interpretations of gardens from other countries (ex. "French garden", "English garden", "German garden", etc.).
My favorite thing to see was this big hill they put in the centre of a lake. The designer had put two single-file tracks spiraling up the hill, each meant for an opposite direction of travel. In other words, you could see lines of people going up and lines of people coming down. It reminded me of Teletubby land or something ;)
When my university does these sorts of trips, they love everyone to be in groups, so people can get to mingle and know each other. I got to know my fellow group-mates from Malaysia and Vietnam (for some reason the Chinese students always disappear).
Three things:
1. What a wonderful age we live in now! It's possible to meet people from all over the world and be friends. Give peace a chance!
2. When I was growing up, I didn't know much about South East Asia besides the fact that it was poor and dirty. What a strange experience then, to be lunching with regular teenagers (well, they're not teens now, but I like that word better) from that very region and realize that they're so normal and similar.
3. These students were talking about relative costs. What an eye opener!
Is Korea expensive for Canadians? Well, if you want to buy western food, electronics, gas, and fruit it's more expensive. But other than that, it's a little bit cheaper (especially public transit). In terms of studying abroad, I'd say Korea is a high value destination.
However, from a SE Asian perspective, it's kind of expensive. Some of my fellow students were sad they couldn't go to other festivals in Korea because they don't have the money for it.
One of the students said her Korean roommate works half-time and gets 800,000 won per month for it (around $770 CAD, or about $9.60/hour), to which all the other SE Asian students gasped in jealousy. To us, it's around minimum wage, but to these SE Asian students it's a lot of money per month.
They told me the minimum wage in Malaysia is 5 Ringgit ($1.61 CAD), and having been there myself, I can say the cost of daily life is similar to Korea. Yikes!
So none of those students work there? They just attend university?
ReplyDeleteMom