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Greetings from Korea! I am currently in Gangnam, Seoul which is for the second part of a Korean speech contest I participated in earlier this year.
I’m here with Korean language students from all over the world studying with King Sejong (the founder of the Korean alphabet) Institute and at the time of writing, it has been exactly one week.
I was told that October is the best time to visit, and considering South Korea saw record-breaking temperatures this summer, I am glad to be here now and not any earlier.
It has been some time since I last travelled, and I’m once again reminded of the importance of time off and some ‘change of weather’ as we Bahrainis like to say.
The last two days saw some rain, which I haven’t experienced in many months, and after some showers I can feel the temperatures slowly coming down in time for winter.
Afternoons are quite sunny with the sunlight beating down on you so that the windbreaker provided by the organisation becomes completely unnecessary.
As I have been informing friends, South Korea is everything I imagined it to be, and the moment we stepped out of the airport I knew I loved it. It’s got beautiful, rich nature while simultaneously being incredibly developed.
South Korea is 80 per cent mountainous, and I don’t think I have ever seen so many hills and mountains in one place before; it makes for great scenery.
There’s also beaches, which I’m yet to visit, an island to the south with a dormant volcano called Hallasan that I am going to have to put off until a future visit and several lakes and rivers going through the country.
We’re situated in the capital, and have had our tours limited to it, but even so there’s so much to do.
Other cities await exploration, and so an endless array of sightseeing activities remain, and it is every Korea-lover’s dream to explore the whole country.
I hope to get into the details of my trip in my next columns, so if you think you may be interested in reading on a Korean language student’s first experience in the country, stay tuned!
