1st blog posting! How to survive in the UK.

How to survive in the UK.

               I'm writing this to give some advice to someone who wants to stay in the UK more than a month. I've stayed in London for about a year and I've traveled 10 cities in the UK and 5 European countries. During that time I made about really good 30 friends from very colourful back ground. I'd like to help you settle down in a very easy way.

                

               As soon as you take the first step at Heathrow, the first thing you have to sort out is accommodation. Most of Korean people want to stick to their own nationality, so they're usually sharing a flat with Korean. But I mean, there is no point of speaking in Korean in the UK, isn't it? You'd better surrounded by very exotic environment.

               There are some really useful web-sites, such as gumtree.com and 04uk.com. Personally I wouldn't recommend you to use gumtree.com even though it's very popular web-site in England. I've used it a couple of times before, but there were so many peverts who were looking for a girl in a very disgusting way and there were also so many con men too. However, if you are quite confident in speaking in English, you can give it a try. But please be extra careful and choosy.

               I reckon, in someway 04uk.com is much better than gumtree.com. It's a Korean web-site which is for Korean people staying in London. There are a lot of flat sharing with foreign people and I've found a really good flat from here. Even better thing is that normally the landlord is Korean, so you can handle all the tricky problems in Korean.

            

               Secondly, I guess the reason you want to leave your county and stay far away from your family is not just about to learn English, it's more likely to experience another culture. The best way to understand different culture is having foreign friends. We have to remember our culture is very different to European's, so we should try hard to understand them. But it doesn't mean that we have to throw away all the crucial things for us and be huge fan of European custom's.

               I've seen heaps of Korean in London just went straight back to their flats right after the class and were stuck with their laptop. They never tried to hang out with foreigner. I've asked them why they were doing this. And they answered me "I'm so scared to talk to someone who doesn't look like me and I think my English is not enough to communicate with them". That's all nonsense! Most of European students can't speak English perfectly and they just speak as much as we do. I understand they were worried about severe racism and I have to admit that it still exists in Europe and it happened to me a few times. Although they had heard of the racism like an urban myth, they should have went out to make it better.

               Finally, I concluded personality is the key point in surviving in the UK and I strongly suggest that you must go out with people from other countries and have some drinks with them and 6months later, you will find out your English is much better than before.