Aghast, in and out.

Life as an exchange student is not easy. First, you want to play. But OHNO, you realize you have tons of work to do, ‘cos apparently you are supposed to be on a ‘study’ exchange program, not ‘slack’ exchange program. So in the midst of playing you start feeling the pang of guiltiness for not concentrating on your work, meanwhile you remain drowning in denial-land and simply refuse to look at the readings. And then POOF, tests and midterms are soon finding their way here.

I’ve had a great chuseok holiday while traveling to Busan and Gyeongju, eating nice food and visiting lovely places, running around mountains while it rains (Can’t believe my immune system is strong enough to pull me through and not make me fall sick), now that I’m back on my Gwanaksan I’m facing the imminent danger of looming projects, quizzes and homework. It was a pretty frightful sight upon returning to see the cafeterias bombarded with mugging local students late at night, well I’m slapped awake, so here I am starting to stay up to do my homework.

Tonight reveals the sadness of exchange student on a foreign land – life isn’t as good as what we thought after all.

[Breaknews]

3am in the morning. My roommate opened the door, looked at me and muttered in a fearful whisper, "I think someone has fallen in the toilet". We hurried to the toilet, and she added, "I could only see her hair from the next cubicle". Fear rushed through me as thousands of thoughts raced through my mind, for the first time I realized saving a person wasn’t that easy – anytime and you could be facing a corpse. In fact, we were so frightened that we hurried to find our Resident Advisor (something like dorm-in-charge), and she followed us to the toilet to check it out. Ambulance was summoned, and amid the waiting, my roomie and I clung to each other like a pair of mental breakdown blokes.

I mustered all my courage to squat down and look through the gap at the bottom. Seriously, this needed courage, because what flashed through my mind were scenes from horror movies and I-dun-want-to-name-it scenarios. I could see her legs, oh gosh.

After what seemed like centuries, help came as six paramedics raced all the way up to our third storey and used tools to hammer open the door. It was plain commotion with the wrecking sound echoing through the entire building, and waking up all the residents in this wee hour. We held our breath, looked over the shoulders of the big guys, and there the girl was standing, in a daze.

So I must admit, this is Korea. The world of soju and drunk people.

And she scurried back to her room. Seriously. Leaving the jaw-dropped me, embarrassed roomie (because in her opinion she felt that all the commotion arose because of her), and a fuming team of men. Rather than angry I think they were giving the what the heck, this again face. Not the first time I guess. Probably not the last too haha.

Still, I’m thankful this doesn’t evolve to something serious that will grab tomorrow’s news headlines, because I definitely don’t want any haunted toilet whilst I’m staying here, especially when that’s my favourite cubicle. After this turbulent event I guess I couldn’t wake up tomorrow and make it for my morning class. Heh, full of excuses.