Sin­ce mid-Fe­bru­ary I am in South Ko­rea and have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to spend my fourth theo­ry se­mes­ter at Chung-Ang Uni­ver­si­ty in the he­art of the city of Seoul.

Every be­gin­ning is dif­fi­cult and so I had to un­der­go a 14-day qua­ran­ti­ne af­ter my ar­ri­val. When this was fi­nal­ly over, I was able to ex­plo­re the di­ver­si­ty of Seo­ul and get to know many other ex­ch­an­ge stu­dents. All of my lec­tures take place on­line due to the Co­ro­na si­tua­ti­on but I still have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to get to know the uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus as the dor­mi­t­ory is also lo­ca­ted the­re. The lec­tures are most­ly in Eng­lish, but I had to get used to the tea­ching le­vel. In short, here you have to stu­dy a lot, in­ten­si­ve­ly and espe­ci­al­ly quick­ly. Com­pared to the DHBW Mos­bach, I also have two exam pe­ri­ods in the se­mes­ter, one in the midd­le and one at the end of the se­mes­ter. In my free time, I spend a lot of time in Seo­ul and en­joy li­ving in one of the lar­gest ci­ties in the world. It is very im­pres­si­ve how ad­van­ced the in­fra­struc­tu­re and some of the tech­no­lo­gies are here. I have also been on some in-coun­try trips which in­clude the har­bor city Bus­an, the vol­ca­nic is­land Jeju-do as well as the for­mer ca­pi­tal of South Ko­rea Gye­ongju. One of my high­lights so far was the 2‑day Temp­lestay. Far away from the hust­le and bust­le of the big city, I was able to ex­pe­ri­ence the life in a Bud­dhist temp­le for 2 days. The pro­gram star­ted at 05:00 in the mor­ning and con­sis­ted of chan­ting ser­vices, me­di­ta­ti­on, Sun­mun­do training and the pos­si­bi­li­ty to spend a tea ce­rem­o­ny with a monk. I am re­al­ly en­joy­ing my time here in South Ko­rea and I am glad that TecAlliance is sup­port­ing me in this experience.