Surrounded by cameras on the red carpet

On Thursday I got to see the other freshmen of my major for the first time and all together we were brought by busses to our second campus in Seoul to attend the Entrance ceremony. You think you have seen nice ceremonies in Germany? Forget it all in comparison to what happens in Korea!

The Peace hall

After arriving with the bus on a sport field, we should stand in line by two next to each other (ohh when have I done this the last time... in elementary school?! we just missed holding hands during walking) while the first person was given a big flag with our Department (International Studies) on it. Like this one department after the other walked through the campus like a parade to our final destination (padadadam): The Notre-dame-doppelganger-place-of-many-concerts-and-today-our-entrance-ceremony-hall. On our way there all the people around us were congratulating us to be accpeted to Kyung Hee University, just like we would have won a gold medal in olympia. Also many clubs of our both campuses made advertisment for themselves and gave us many flyers for I don't know what all.
The last few meters up to the entrance of the Peace Hall I couldn't believe my eyes: They rolled out the red carpet for us! Feeling like a movie star we went inside the building and searching our place, looking around the big opera hall.

The stage with our department flags on the left and right side

After all the I don't know how many thousands of freshman found their seats, the moderation started to announce the presidents speech. And it followed another speech. And another speach. And... Well, all of it was in Korean, so mostly I just understood all the congratulations again, that we were accepted to this great university (Honestly, yes i feel kinda proud :-) ) and we should give our best by studying hard.
Oh wait one weird thing was happening before the speeches: The moderation team said something about standing up (that was all I understood) and suddenly really everybody around me got on their feet. Ehm, guys what's going on??? I asked someone next to me and well, we should just do the same as he does, which means: put your hand to the heart, look to the left... and greet the korean national flag! Ah..yea...nice....oh girl watch out that you don't burst out in laugh!
After all the talking the performances could start. Our university is famous for having a lot of singers studying in our school and also the amateurs are quite awesome! It started by a choir with orchestra, going up to performances of the musical department playing a scene out of "Fame".
You all know the song YMCA? Well, a group of the postmodern music major changed the song or better the choreaography a little bit so instead of the handsigns for YMCA, the whole audience should do together with them KHU, which is the short form of Kyung Hee University. Yep, the relationship between the students in Korea and their university is a bit different then students would feel in Germany.
The Highlight for some of the students might be the two Kpop (Korean Pop Music, you hear it everywhere walking along a street out of the shops) groups. I didn't know any of them, but they were quite good. The boyband is still pretty new, like I heard and is called "Speed".

But really fascinating was the behaviour of the male students, when the girlband arrived: They were running to the stage, screaming, singing along (Ohh babyyyy ohhh be my ladyyy, ah well don't remember more of the text) and everywhere were the newest smartphones (that's a korean phenomen that really everybody has a big new smartphone) risen in the air not to miss any centimeter of the girls on the stage. If I understood it right, one of the girls is even studying at my campus. It was really amusing, most of the time I didn't look on the stage, but just at the boys around going crazy. Yea, it was fun :-)
Ah their name was Davichi by the way, others told me that they are pretty famous in Korea.
What also impressed me, was the performance of the Taekwondoteam, this guys are amazing!

Unfortunatly I didn't expect such a big event, so I haven't brought my Camcorder and camera along. The pictures and videos added in here are just made with my Iphone, so sorry for the bad quality at some of them.

Inside the Peace Hall

On the way back home with the school busses you really noticed that you are in Korea: As soon as you enter a kind of transportation, 90 % fall asleep. And while I would be the one to miss my destination and just staying a bit longer in my dreamland, they wake up right at the right time... I definitly need to learn this.

Let's try to study well to make the university proud of us, like we are proud to belong to it, freshmen Hwaiting!