Dormitory

I'd describe my year living in Upper Rez at McGill as a pleasant learning experience but not one that I would be eager to relive. I like having my own apartment, kitchen, living room, bathroom... thank you very much. I knew we had it good at McGill with our single rooms but I had no idea how good we had it. I'm in a four person room that is only twice as large as my old room at McGill. So if you can, imagine a single rez room. Now stick a second bed above the existing one, replace the shelves at the foot of the bed with a second desk, get rid of the dresser and divide the closet in two. Now mirror that image and you have my room. Fortunately we're only three in the room. It is still a lot for such a small place but it sure beats having four. They won't place foreigners with koreans (for a more extensive list of the dormitory's dos and don'ts keep reading) so I'm sharing the room with a Russian (Andre) and a Chinese. Andre is studying international relations and is here to learn Korean. He speaks English quite well so we talk quite a bit. The Chinese doesn't speak English and very little Korean so we don't talk with him much. He seems like a good guy and doesn't cause any problems except for sleeping in the nude on the top bunk (eye level) on the other side of the room.

It isn't all bad though, we do have our own shower, sinks (2) and toilet. Just to make sure that you don't fully enjoy these amenities they stuck them directly in the front entrance. I'm not talking about "Oh Andrew it's terrible, my bathroom is right off of my front entrance." I'm talking about the front entrance BEING THE BATHROOM. When the front door is open, the only thing preventing someone in the hallway from seeing you in your full glory while in the shower is a pane of frosted glass. To get a good idea, the picture shown here is taken while holding the front door open and standing in the hallway.

The kicker in all of this are the dormitory rules. Again, coming from McGill, one of the more liberal schools in the country if not the world, this is what put me over the top. I should apologize for earlier, this is an exclusive list of don'ts.
-No smoking (no problem there)
-No alcohol (is this not a univerisity? but fine)
-No cooking in the dorm rooms (pretty standard. So where are the kitchenettes? There aren't any? Oh, there's one microwave in the basement for the whole building? Cool) Oh and to boot the cafeteria hours are as bad as at BMH, but I don't use it.
-No guests (fine)
-No guys in the girl's dorm (ok...)
-No girls in the guy's dorm (hmm... complete segregation then. What about common space then? A hallway with padded benches and a big screen tv? Lovely)
-There are room inspections every Monday at midnight (Seriously?)
-The doors are locked between 12am and 5am (WHAT?)

So for the first time in I don't know how long I have a curfew. It is not a mandatory curfew (with the exception on Monday nights) you just can't get in or out of the building between midnight and 5am. If I'm out and don't want to be home by midnight (which normally implies leaving wherever I am by about 11:15) I have to either stay out until 5am or I can go see the porter and ask him to let me in. But if I ask the porter I am given two demerit points. 10 of those and I'm kicked out. I could care less about receiving a few demerits for being out late, I'm only here for 90 days. I just have to make sure not to use them all up. Could you imagine living here for the whole year? Other offenses are worth more points, I think having guests is 5, but I shouldn't have any problems with those.

The first thing that crossed my mind when this was explained to me was "What is the age of majority here?" Both the age of majority and the drinking age are around 18 or 19, so it turns out it's just the university being overly aggressive in trying to avoid any problems. Of Course, all of this doesn't prevent beer and soju bottles from appearing in the recycling bins in the morning.

The last fun part of rez life at Kookmin is the laundromat. They have a lady in the basement who takes care of the laundry. That's awesome! Except that she is only open for business from 10am-6:30pm during which I'm at work. So I have to either be late for work or take a break to do my laundry. The place is also closed on the weekend. As soon as I finish writing this I'm heading to Myeong-Dong to do some shopping because I found out too late that today ( Friday the 6th) is a Korean holiday and all of my clothes that I handed in to be washed on Thursday are now locked away until Monday. Leading to my present clothing crisis. Other then the hours, their system is quite good. We all have a basket for our dirty clothes. We bring the lady our basket, she washes and folds the clothes and we just pick the up later in the day. It's $2.50 for a load. A load consists of one basket full. If the clothes go above the lip of the basket she will charge more. This leads to having to fold your dirty laundry in order fit as much as possible into one load. Imagine if you will having to fold your dirty laundry but not your clean laundry. I truly am on the other side of the world.

You can click here to see pictures from my first few days in Seoul as well as pictures of the university and the dormitory.