Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Korea Korea Korea

Finally, a week of relaxation mind away from Jakarta Office, even though it was still related to work and training but so much different there in Korea. I miss Korea so much, especially all the great people I met there. I flew to Korea on 9th Oct and stayed for almost 10 days there until 18th Oct 2010.

It was a little awkward when I touched down one of the best international airport, Incheon. I felt like an alien; no directions, no one I knew, no connection in my cell phone, hard to communicate with the people and I just felt alone and really really needed to burn my in-dependency.

LG Twin Tower
From the airport I went to LG Chem Twin Tower to meet one of my colleagues.  I think he forgot that I was in fatigue for 6 hours flying, that he brought me to visit Everland, an amusement park in Gyeonggi-Do area.

Let's act like one of the Korean hehehe

Everland Theme Park
It was so exhausted that I have to be honest to him, I needed him to drop me in Osan, which is 2 hours driving from there. Inside my heart was actually screaming for "hot water, shower shower shower, bed pillow and blankets!!!!!!"

I spent my first night in Osan.It was very cold and I really needed to adapt with the weather. In Jakarta it's usually 27-30 Celsius, and Korea was 8-10 Celsius and was not winter, note that down. What a hard time to get compromise with the new temperature. My room floor was very warm, they applied heater the room floor in the Learning Center. I couldn't sleep easily that night, I decided to open my window so that I could hear some noises from outside. It was very silent, I let the tv on with no sound, my laptop was also on with no internet connection, and nice place with no one I knew. Oups, I forget to inform the time different between Jakarta & Korea. Korea is 2 hours ahead then Jakarta, so not really a jet-lack to me, but it effected my wake up time. For instance, I have to be in the conference hall or discussion room every morning at 09:00 AM, which is 07:00 AM Jakarta time. So I have to wake up even earlier. Oh my!!!!

On my first night, I said to my heart that I didn't have to be worry, because tomorrow I'll be meeting some new friends and you're not gonna be alone hehehhehe.... and lovely, it's true! Even though Alice is not the first person I met, but she is the first person that I felt to have a connection to communicate with. Then followed by Yulia and Kim in our firts tea break.

Alice Leung fr New Jersey

Yulia Valeeva fr Moskow, Rusia
Hee-Kyung Kim fr Germany




Sharma fr New Delhi, India
Further just a couple of hours, I've known almost all of them. We had a simple fine dinning, did toast in different style that usually been use in our country and gathered together in groups to get to know each other more. I was the only Indonesian in that event, we have 7 polish, a girl from Moscow, 1 Turkish man, 4 people of Vietnamese, 6 of Indians and 1 from USA.  .

Kim & Anna were in the same table with me that night
full team without one girl from Vietnam
After that we continued for our "own section" in the cafeteria with beers & snacks. I was glad that we could immediately cohesive as good friends. It's a cross culture relation that easily became like a family with so much harmony ^^.

the girls are mingling on our first hangout
we gathered in the cafeteria after the welcome dinner

For me, what matter is how do we manage to be friend and get along during the training and group discussion... and we did it! I mean, we over doing it, hahahaha.. like you can see in these pic, there were no days without hangout, did so much silly things and drink drink drink... wooowww



 
Beside the weather, I also adapted with the foods and not much of them I could eat, because I can't eat pork and they served pork very often. Everyday I eat Kimchi, Ho Bakjun, and Korean Salad.

I also visited many other places in Korea... and I think It was amazing...