-Three hour layover in Tokyo. Spoke lots of Japanese and felt indescribably nostalgic.
-Boarded plane to Seoul. Everyone was exhausted. Nearly all the people in our group fell asleep before the flight even took off, including myself.
-Landed an hour and a half later in Seoul. Filled out customs forms. Claimed luggage. Had a VERY warm welcome outside the airport by the members of YES and I-EARN, two organizations that run inbound exchange programs to Korea. To future NSLI-Y Korea scholars, all I'll say is that it was full of unexpected cameras.
-Took hour bus ride to the youth hostel we would stay at for the next couple of days. Arrived around 12:30 in the morning. The hostel was SO nice, especially after Colombia's dorms. I shared a room with five other girls who I think are pretty darn fantastic.
-Went to sleep around 2:30 after getting settled in and taking advantage of the hostel's free wi-fi.
-Woke up the next day around 7:30ish. The sun rises so early here! Breakfast was delivered to our room (yes, delivered!) around 8:15. Showered in the super awesome (for real!) hostel showers, and then I went down to the third floor for orientation with my roommates. We listened to lots of speeches and presentations, including a few from the U.S. Embassy here in Seoul. We also had more typical exchange orientation presentations. Then at 1, we met our supporters! Our supporters are native Korean college students (who do speak English) who we will meet with twice a week for language practice and cultural trips. I'm in a group with Amy and Erick, and our supporter is Yoori, who is so sweet! All the students and supporters played icebreaker games for a bit, and then we went out for our "mission". Our group's was to go to this children's museum to learn about ancient pottery? Haha, something along those lines! It was my first time really seeing Seoul, and this city is amazing! It's the rainy season here though, so it was pouring down! We went to the museum and hung out with Yoori for awhile, and went out for bibimbap, the yummy dish for which the blog was named. Then we went back to the hostel.
-The next day was basically another day of orientation, but afterwards we had some free time after dinner! A few of us walked to Myeongdong, a shopping district fifteen minutes by foot away from the hostel. I LOVE MYEONGDONG. I went there with Amy and Jacqueline, two of my roommates, and we walked around and shopped and just had an awesome time. Amy went to Korea for a couple weeks last summer, so she knew a lot about the area! We went to this restaurant called Canmoro and ate this awesome sherbet with fruit and it was super yummy. After we walked around more, and I bought a hair pin and some earrings. A lot of us wanted to buy clothes, but in Korea you typical aren't allowed to try on tops because it's possible to get makeup on them? Which makes sense I guess, but I personally don't want to buy most of my clothes without trying them on, especially since I don't want to deal with wanting to return an item in a country in which I don't speak the language. haha. XD Anywho, the past few days were awesome and I bonded a lot with the other NSLI-Yers.
-Now I'm at my host family's (I've been here for a few days!) and I've started my uni classes at Sogang! I'll post more about these later so this post won't be so long, haha. Sorry this post was lacking in detail, haha, I'm kind of sick of writing about the exact same things for the third time. Until next time!
-Grace
I hate it when you post pictures of delicious food from other countries, you know. I'm going to have to get my butt on a plane to some really exotic place and upstage you sometime soon...XD
ReplyDeleteAnyway, sounds like everything has been marvelous so far!