KyungHee's GIP Campus: The Samjeongseoheon Dorm

My first week as a second semester student here at the GIP campus is over, and I have decided to write a short introduction of the Samjeongseoheon dorm where all students are obliged to stay during at least three of their semesters for the master degree programs the school has to offer.

Our Samjeongseoheon Dorm

Entrance to the dorm

The building is situated right behind the gym, and is a rather large 3-floor building with enough space for more than 50 students. Despite this the limit of students accepted to the school is rather small: they only accept approximately 10 students each semester so the total number of students here is around 40.

The dorm entrance

An old poster written with both hanja and hangul by the entrance

One of the common rooms in the building

While all the guy's rooms are on the first floor, girls rooms are on the second, and every student have to share a room with another student (with the exception of the student GDs and the President of the Student Council). Foreigners usually have to share room with a Korean student in order to better adapt to the Korean society. Unfortunately my Korean roommate had an urgent problem to attend to which forced her to delay her entrance to the GIP, so for a while I was quite uncertain of how things would turn out in regards to rooms this semester. But in the end I was very fortunate, as the office accepted the proposal of letting me share room with my Bangladeshi batch-mate Nazzina.
So this shows that there are exceptions to this rule, although I think this situation was a bit extraordinary.

My bedroom for the semester

Other facilities includes a large cafeteria in the basement, where we get three free meals a day. Breakfast usually consist of Western food such as bread, bacon, cornflakes etc etc, while the other two meals tend to be Korean style food. And the quality of the food is impressively good, especially considering that full-time students get the food here for free. Of course, if you have problems with spicy food that kind of limits your range of choice as there usually are quite a selection of just that... But in general there is always something edible on the menu.

Choosing lunch

Lunch time!

The school has also done some investments in our bathrooms during the vacation, and we now have a complete set of new toilets. The shower-room is also really nice, and probably relatively new too. Although we don't have any equipment besides a microwave (which we also got after this vacation) and a refrigerator I think we have all the necessary things to lead a rather comfortable life here.

We have gotten new toilets and sinks during the holiday, so the bathroom looks very nice.

Changing room for the showers

Shower room

Laundry room

Of course, the biggest disadvantages of living here are:
1. Distance to civilization (1 1/2 hour to Seoul by bus)
2. Mandatory morning meditation every weekday at 7 am
...But if you can survive those two factors you can basically lead a rather good life at the GIP. ^^


Address to the dorm:
Samjeongseoheon Dormitory
195 Gwangneun Sumokwon-ro
Jinjeob-eup
Namyangju-shi
Gyeonggi-do 472-464
Korea

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About Anette
Anette came to Japan as an exchange student in 2010, met the love of her life and got stuck. From her base in Tokyo she writes about her experiences as a full-time worker in Tokyo and about her travels in Japan and abroad. She's a free-spirited adventurer who enjoys both the great outdoors and her urban lifestyle.