A Good Week!

This week has been very good! Tuesday was my birthday, and it was one of the best birthdays ever! Jin, Misang, Yongsu, and I went to a popular restaurant in Gangnam called Brasilia, where they serve all-you-can-eat steak. When I think "all-u-can-eat" I think probably not very good, but this place was really first class! We decided to go to Brasilia because we had seen it on TV. Thats a pretty good indication that the restaurant is good :)

On the day of my birthday, nature gave me a gift: the weather turned good, and the cherry trees all bloomed. It is really amazing: there are cherry trees all over Seoul, especially at Yonsei, and they are really beautiful!

Yesterday, Jin and I went to Everland, the Korean version of Disneyland. We spent the whole day there, so I had to skip my classes, but it was well-worth it. Everland has the steepest wooden roller-coaster in the world; the first slope appears to be straight down - vertical. Of course I had to sit in the front seat, I dont settle for anything less thrilling.

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera... I have been forgetting too much lately. Later, I will take some pictures of the cherry blossoms and then add them to this blog.

Continuing, my class today was very interesting: Global Business Environment; the lecture was about corporate strategies for entering emerging markets, the advantages and disadvantages of being a large conglomerate (like the Korean chaebols - Samsung, LG, Hyundai, etc), and we studied several cases from Harvard Business Review that talked about our subject. I really feel like I am going in the right direction with my life; it has been my plan for several years now to get into international corporate finance, and this class showed me that that is a really good area for a career.

Yonsei is also showing me that I am not getting an excellent education at UTA- only an adequate one. I am sorry if that disappoints any readers from UTA, but it is glaringly obvious to me, here. The scope of these classes is much more encompassing, and I feel that a graduate from Yonsei will be soo much more prepared to enter business than a graduate from UTA. While I like UTA, and am proud of its status as a good school in Texas, the classes at UTA all have one basic problem : they are boring! The classes here at Yonsei, even though they are taught by Korean professors with terrible English, are interesting, intriguing, eye-opening... the resulting difference is this: Yonsei prepares its students to be executives; UTA prepares its students to be mid-level managers and office workers. I will have to think about how I can compensate for this difference. However, I thank UTA for allowing me the opportunity to study at Yonsei - it is an experience that I believe will pay incalculable returns in the future.

I am really not trying to bash UTA - take what you read here with a positive note. UTA is good, and I am augmenting my UTA education with Yonsei experience. I am making something good into something better.

To anyone reading this that may be thinking about studying in another country: do it! You gotta be crazy to not want to study in another country... Yes, at first it is hard: Yonsei definitely did not do a good enough job with helping us international students to know what to do! However, I have never felt more alive than now, here, in a foreign land. If you want a mediocre, probably secure life, then stay at home. If you want an amazing life where you do new things, overcome obstacles, learn languages, culture, and other people's point of view, and generally get treated really well, then go live in another country for a semester... or a year... or two. Even without the Yonsei experience, I know I understand the world now in a way that would have been impossible without going to another country. Okay, I am out of time; I should go to Korean Language class.