After my beautiful drive from Seoul I arrived on campus in Daejeon. The first thing I did was fill out paperwork and then run around campus with my friend, while trying to complete all sorts of boring bureaucratic tasks. While going back and forth between buildings, and having people who didn’t speak English attempt to explain to me that the form I needed had to be completed at the bank before the security team could give me my key, I got my first view of the campus. Many colleges try to keep a standard aesthetic around campus, like with Harvard’s red brick buildings, Wellesley’s Hogwartsian towers, and MIT’s cement cubes. That is clearly not the case here. It is apparent that groups of buildings were built at different times with drastically different styles. This isn’t an issue at a place like Harvard, where if they feel like importing bricks from the original kiln that fired the bricks in their oldest building, they just rain money down on the factory owners like they were Lil’ Wayne. Korea clearly didn’t have this luxury at the time this school was built. Most of the old buildings look like they were covered in a façade of pool tiles. Some of the buildings currently under construction, however, are beautiful modern edifices of stainless steel and glass that nearly any institution would be proud to call their Sports Center.
It was during this walk around campus that my friend and I crossed over a pond in front of one of these new buildings. My friend alerted my attention downwards to a group of swans swimming around. He told me at this point that the swan is a symbol of my college and that the penalty for catching and eating one is immediate expulsion. This indicates what my friends think of me. It also made me wonder who first found out the consequence for breaching this unwritten rule. Whoever it is, I admire his ambition. Most schools have pigeons or squirrels that own the green patches of the campus. This school has swans. Oh, and cats.
It is impossible to walk around the grounds here without coming across cats. They live everywhere. They’ve even been given the nickname “leftover tigers” because of their noble status and tendency to eat garbage. I have never before seen a college where the primary animals were cats. My school has hawks. I used to think that was badass. I had no idea. I want “leftover tigers.” Oh, and yesterday I saw a bunny. Seriously, what the hell is going on here?
After my exploration of both the bureaucratic underbelly and natural fauna of the campus I finally brought my bags to my room. I was hoping for a good dormitory situation. That was not what I got. My dorm is in one of the older buildings on campus, in an area known as “bachelor housing.” I’ve never before thought of myself as a “bachelor.” Perhaps single, maybe desperately lonely even. But it has never even crossed my mind to define myself as a bachelor. I’m pretty sure you can’t be a bachelor until at least the age of 30. You have to have a cushy job and a sweet loft in some cool city. I am currently residing in a dirty cramped double with a shared shower room in the nerdiest city in Korea, and I don’t have any crappy art prints or HD TVs anywhere in sight. In addition, I’ve always understood the best part of being a bachelor to be the endless parade of beautiful women promised to me by television and movies. Instead I have a group of three old Korean men whom I have collectively titled “Mr. Anti-fun” whose sole job, as far as I can tell, is to watch people coming in the door and make sure they don’t have any women with them. That’s it. I do not think this is a fair trade.
The day after moving in my stuff all the exchange students had to go to the local hospital for a checkup. I assumed this would be a normal hospital and a routine checkup. I was immensely wrong on both counts. To begin with, we were all led down to a cafeteria in the basement and groups of about ten people at a time were led upstairs to see the nurses. As group after group left but didn’t return even after 30 minutes I knew something was amiss. Eventually, I was called upstairs with the second-to-last group of students. As the doors of the elevator opened I was shocked at the scene in front of me. This was easily the nicest hospital I have ever seen. There were cushy chairs, carpeted floors, and wood paneled walls. If a normal hospital waiting room is the Holiday Inn this was the Ritz Carleton. After changing into the hospital top and slippers I was led into the hall where my other schoolmates were seated. There was a bevy of nurses attending to everyone and soon I was being shuttled to a room where the attendant made me open my mouth and say “ahh.” I had no idea what was taking everybody so long, as this seemed like an incredibly routine checkup. And the first few tests were. Looking at my throat, taking my temperature, even bloodwork and a chest x-ray seemed normal. I figured they didn’t want me brining in HIV or TB to their country. They wanted to make sure I didn’t have Swine Flu. I got it. And then it started to get weird. The next test was a urine analysis. I was asked to pee in a cup, but not just any cup. This was not a standard American sterile plastic container with lid. This was literally a Dixie cup with my name written on it. And at the end I was asked to leave it in a tray next to the toilet. This actually proved to be a problem for some, as I was told by some girls in my exchange program that they had to do the test again after the janitor threw out their cups. I am not even joking. At this point I was getting a bit weirded out. The only reasons I could come up with for this test were that they didn’t want me brining gonorrhea or chlamydia or some new form of contagious diabetes to Korea. At this point they asked me about my family medical history and if any of my family members had died, which seems useless unless they are under the impression that twenty-somethings spontaneously develop cancer or heart disease or plane crashes based on family history. Next I had an eye test, then a hearing test. Finally, they hooked me up to an EKG before sending me off. At this point I am working on the assumption that this is like a plan out of a bad sci-fi movie where the Koreans are desperate to improve their national basketball ability, so they need tall outsiders who are free of any physical or genetic defects for a forced breeding program. If that’s true, I had better get something out of it. All I ask is that it isn’t some artificial insemination program. That would be a total rip-off.
