Saudi student recalls freezing winter in Korea

Ahmad Aldhafeeri, left, and Nabil Algarni, right, pose after an interview at the Plaza Hotel in Seoul. Hesham Khadawardi, center, is the head of the Saudi Arabia Cultural Mission in Seoul. / Korea Times

By Kang Hyun-kyung

Ahmad Aldhafeeri, a fourth year Saudi student of Korea Polytechnic University based in Siheung City, Gyeonggi Province, had a clear memory of the freezing winter in his first year after arriving in Korea in 2012.

The 28-year-old computer science major said that the cold weather was an extremely trying time for him.

“The first couple of months after I arrived here were great because I came in the summer and the weather here was quite similar to Saudi Arabia,” he said in fluent Korean. “In fact, it was a little bit cooler here, compared with Saudi Arabia. And people were nice. So living here was great.”

But all that soon changed with the onset of winter.

“We had snow. I felt it was so great. Then I got a flu, a really nasty one. I caught a cold when I was in Saudi Arabia. But the one that I came down with here was much worse. I was so sick and sick in bed for several days,” he said.

The challenges continued even after he overcame the flu. One and half years after he took the Korean language program, Aldhafeeri joined the university to take computer science courses.

He was a computer science major in his home country, too. But what he learned at KPU was completely different. In Saudi Arabia the courses he took were all about hardware, such as how to fix computers when they went out of order.

“What I learned in the Korean university was all about software, such as lots of programming. Adapting to such a demanding academic environment was very challenging because I learned a whole new thing in Korean,” he said.

Aldhafeeri said his fluent Korean is the result of his hard work over the past two and half years. He was very confident about having the interview conducted in Korean and his answers reflected a deep understanding of the reporter’s questions.

“It is true that learning Korean was really challenging especially for Arab students. But they can work it out if they work really hard.”

Another Saudi student Nabil Algarni said he had no major problems in adapting to Korea because unlike many other Saudi people, he was exposed to the Korean culture.

Algarni, a Ph.D. student at Yonsei University, had several Korean friends whom he met in London while studying there.

“I decided to come to Korea to study because I was very much interested in the Korean culture. I have many Korean friends and visited Korea before,” the law major said.

Algarni and Aldhafeeri attended the annual conference hosted by the Saudi Arabia Cultural Mission at the Plaza Hotel in Seoul.

Nearly 500 Saudi Arabian students and some Korean students who had travelled to the Middle Eastern country in January participated in the conference. The Saudi government sponsored their trip.