Straight A's :)

Today I wen't to get my transcriptions from the International Office at LUT. Finished all my classes with A's :) Now the only thing left is to request my Korean classes to be accepted to my Finnish degree. This might be a whole lot easier if I'd gotten any syllabus for the classes in Korea, oops :).

Because I had basically completed my studies in Finland when I left for exchange, I didn't overload myself and only took classes that seemed appealing. In this text I'm going to focus on the classes I took.

Korean Language Practice:

Like the title, this class was meant for beginners in learning the Korean language. Course started with learning the Korean alphabet hangul which proved to be much easier than I thought. Our lovely young teacher took us through the basics from introducing one self to giving directions. At the end of semester I was able to do my shopping without difficulties and knew how to order basic dishes in restaurants. We had also a lot of fun in the class: one morning we made kimbap for breakfast. Our teacher Ji Young Kim proved to be teacher I liked best. Korean Language Practice was considered one of the obligatory classes for exchange students.

Introduction to Korean Culture:

This one was also considered one of the obligatory classes. You had to pick either class about culture or history. Since I really don't like history I chose culture which still proved to be all about history and nothing about contemporary Korea. And it was a huge disappointment!!! Professor Finch (englishman married to a korean) took us through Korean history, religion, literature, poetry, the Korean traditional singing art Pansori and ceramics. We had two lectures per week: first one was a traditional lecture with Finch introducing week's theme to us and the other lecture was discussion about our home reading. We also had to write two essays about our visits to a historical place in Korea and museum. This was the trickiest task for me :) Even though I defied Finch and modified the essays to a theme that was more appealing to me, I got good scores. And of course, Korean style, we had mid-term and final exams.

International Management:

This was the only business course I took. Classes were about FDI and it's different theories and applications. Depending on the week, we had one or two lectures and the traditional mid- term and final exams. We also wrote an independent assignment about self chosen topic in the field of international competitiveness, basically it could have been about anything :) How ever, because being a finn, I was asked to write my assignment about Finland's national innovation system and Finnish competitiveness. The professor was all about Finland and in the end it started to be a bit tiring, he also asked if he could use my assignment in his own research about Finland's competitiveness :( And, if u have hard time with accents in pronouciating English, don't take this class :D

Cross-Cultural Communication:

The easiest class ever: The only task for foreigners was to show up in class and participate in discussion and help Koreans to prepare theis presentations about their home countries :) Korean students prepared presentations on various topics concerning contemporary Korean culture and the cultures of different nationalities that were represented in the class.

And finally my favourite... TAE-KWON-DO:

Like I probably mentioned earlier one of the reasons I chose Korea was Taekwondo. I tried to enroll in a Sparring class but since they didn't have found an instructor for the class I ended up to the same class with other exchange students. This was a class for total beginners and my friends were graduated from white belts to blue belts. Since I couldn't take part in classes of my own level, I was allowed to train higher level stuff with cute Korean black belted boys at the same time others were training basics. The grandmaster Lee Kyu Hyung was really inspiring and I'm so glad I got to learn right at the source of Taekwondo :)

And a little tip for students who wanna do as much studies in their own study field and wouldn't have time to take the "obligatory classes": there were few people who were able to skip these obligatory classes, if they didn't want to take them, all thanks to Chris Lee at the International Office :)

And BTW.. studying in Korea was a whole lot easier than in Finland, so I got to be stress-free for whole semester :)