{"id":202,"date":"2016-03-28T04:13:08","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T11:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/kwongkat\/?p=202"},"modified":"2016-03-19T09:53:57","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T16:53:57","slug":"making-your-room-seem-like-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/kwongkat\/2016\/03\/28\/making-your-room-seem-like-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Your Room Seem Like Home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\">(I am upset because I literally finished this blog post, came back, and realized that I hadn&#8217;t saved any of it. But that&#8217;s okay, because now I have a new perspective of things (even though I just finished two days ago)!)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">It&#8217;s really hard to make a space yours, you know? You always have to add your own personal touch to things. And now that you&#8217;re in a completely new place on your own, you don&#8217;t want to be splurging money on everything &#8211; you&#8217;re still a university student, and you&#8217;re still on a budget. So how do you make your room yours? How do you make it functional yet comfortable?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>TIP:<\/strong> Don&#8217;t bring so much stuff. You&#8217;ll end up not needing that much, and if you do need something you can always buy a new one &#8211; things are quite cheap to buy in Korea (except for groceries). If you insist on bringing so much stuff, try to bring things that you&#8217;re going to be able to throw away so there will be more room in your suitcase.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Where to buy things:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>GS25<\/strong> &#8211; level B2 of SK Global House<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Other convenience stores (Ministop, CVS for U)<\/strong>&#8211; exit from the back door and just walk around, they&#8217;re not hard to find<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Daiso<\/strong> &#8211; there&#8217;s 2 in the Sinchon area, one near SPAO (Sinchon Station Exit 8) and one near A Twosome Place (I don&#8217;t remember the station exit)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Homeplus<\/strong> &#8211; I went to the one at Mullae Station, it&#8217;s connected to the station; there&#8217;s also another one at Hapjeong station (closer and you don&#8217;t have to cross the river!)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Grand Mart<\/strong> &#8211; Sinchon Station Exit 7, good for groceries<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Lotte Mart 999<\/strong> \u00a0&#8211; Sinchon Station Exit 8, next to Daiso<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>NOTE:<\/strong> Daiso will easily become your best friend. We&#8217;ve been here for 2 weeks and we&#8217;ve literally been to Daiso more than 7 times already &#8211; and, there are Daisos all over the city. The things there are cheap (less than 5000KRW usually) and the quality is good enough that it&#8217;ll survive for 4 months. You can&#8217;t really complain!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Things I would really suggest <strong>bringing<\/strong> (aka things you can&#8217;t easily find in Korea for cheap):<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">a few hangers, 2 rolls of toilet paper,\u00a0<strong>adapter, power bar<\/strong>, water bottle, snack box (seriously comes in handy), towels, a reusable bag, toothpaste, shampoo, soap, conditioner, deodorant, duvet cover, pillowcase, fitted sheet (twin size), fabric softener, Lysol wipes, female hygiene products<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Power bar is key. That way you don&#8217;t have to bring 5 different adapters. And I can&#8217;t tell you how important my snack box is right now &#8211; it lets me pack lunch to class (and to think I questioned my mom for telling me to pack it&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Soap, conditioner, and shampoo are\u00a0<strong>so expensive here<\/strong>. I had heard about this previously before, but I thought it was just because they were buying Western brands &#8211; but I was wrong. Same thing with female hygiene products.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Like a lot of other countries, Korea makes their customers pay for plastic bags &#8211; which is good, since it&#8217;s better for the environment. Not good if you don&#8217;t have a bag with you, though.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Things I would really suggest <strong>buying instead of bringing<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">utensils, cookware (Daiso has 5 dollar pots and pans&#8230; good enough for the 4 months that I&#8217;m going to be here), laundry detergent, cleaning supplies, house\/bathroom slippers, beauty products (Korea is famous for skincare and beauty products- just bring the minimum, or medicinal creams that you need)<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">&#8212;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Again.. just buy everything from Daiso. If they don&#8217;t have it at Daiso, try the Homeplus.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>TIP:<\/strong> Try to buy things when they&#8217;re on sale; there are often 1+1 sales (buy one get one free).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>ANOTHER TIP<\/strong>: Don&#8217;t buy so much &#8216;stuff&#8217;. By that, I mean things that don&#8217;t have any use. Yes, you want to make your room yours, but you&#8217;re only living here for 4 months &#8211; I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ll be able to live with having minimal things. You&#8217;ll feel better when you pack everything up to leave, and you&#8217;ll save money as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(I am upset because I literally finished this blog post, came back, and realized that I hadn&#8217;t saved any of it. But that&#8217;s okay, because now I have a new perspective of things (even though I just finished two days ago)!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32883,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4181,300,1158995,524089],"class_list":["post-202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-korea","tag-life","tag-seoul","tag-yonsei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/kwongkat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/kwongkat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/kwongkat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/kwongkat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32883"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/kwongkat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/kwongkat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/kwongkat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions\/233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/kwongkat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/kwongkat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/kwongkat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}