After only a few hours of sleep, we had to wake up pretty early for a packed schedule. This definitely feels like a Monday morning. With the standard butter-and-jam-toast in our bellies, we left on our first trip of the day to our first company visit, LG. Finally! So far, we have perceived the Korean people to be very warm, polite and modest. We felt very welcome the moment we walked into the LG conference room. They gave us a presentation about the company, the current status and their products in the building service range. The presentation also included an interesting timeline of the development of South Korea. Next to LG, it was also Samsung and Hyundai that stimulated the economy after the Korean war in 1953. The presentation was very insightful and it was great to see the Korean modesty here also and not just marketing talk.

After LG we had to hurry off to Seoul National University (SNU). SNU is regarded as the #1 university in South-Korea. Three students of the “SNU Student Ambassador” (SSA) of the International Student Office gave us a tour around the biggest in South Korea. It is as large as 600 football fields! During the tour they enlightened us with a lot information about student life in South Korea. Side-note of the day: It was very refreshing meeting people that could speak proper English.

With the SNU tour behind us, we were very close to the war memorial. This being a pivotal piece in Korean history, we could not skip this in our program even though it is closed on Mondays. However we were able to walk around the building. There were tanks, missiles, airplanes and battleships set up on the War Memorial ground.

This busy day gave us really empty stomachs. The hostel owner tipped us with his “favourite restaurant in Seoul”, which coincidentally happened to be around the corner of our hostel. Well… there was no word lied about that. The typical small Korean restaurant was amazing! It is run by two old ladies. We felt like sitting at tables in their homes. We ate a typical Korean meal, which consist of a stew of chicken with different small side-dishes.

With this delicious meal in our stomachs we rolled out on our bellies to a cool Karaoke bar in the neighbourhood. Needless to say…things got out of hand. It was really a lot of fun to sing our guilty pleasures with each other. After two hours of singing, we went to a bar for a few drinks. Also, in other news, this was the evening where our Supreme Leader Bram was promoted to Supreme Leader “El Caliente”.

-Written by Arjan & Diyako-