Right after I got out of school at the end of May, I got busy buying stuff and brushing up on my Korean skills in preparation for the trip. My mom (bless her soul) worked non-stop with me and helped me so much during those first few weeks of summer.
I was a little ambitious and slightly over-packed, but I managed to cover all the bases and didn't forget anything which was great! However, next time I go to Korea, I'll make sure to pack much less. For anyone planning on going there, I recommend packing the following:
- 1 and a half week's worth of clothes
- basic toiletries
- a few pairs of shoes (at least one pair of walking/comfortable shoes, as you will be walking a lot)
- a raincoat/poncho and a sturdy umbrella (it rains there a lot and unexpectedly)
- adapters (for electronics)
- a big bath towel (Korean towels are tiny for some reason)
- Korean currency (won 원)
If you really want to be a minimalist and just buy most of this stuff when you actually get to Korea, that would work too. Korean stuff isn't as expensive as American stuff, so it wouldn't be too expensive to just buy essentials there. The exchange rate was good when I went, and I got more 원 for my dollars. I recommend for a 6 week trip there to bring about $800 worth of 원 and then just pull out more money in Korea or have family wire money to you if needed. Since my program actually ended up paying for most of my food and transportation (which is dirt-cheap in Korea) I brought about $500 and it lasted me a while; I just took out more as necessary.
My mom and I actually pulled an all-nighter packing and ended up driving straight to the airport when we were finished. After saying our good-byes, I made my way into the terminal to try and figure out how to get to my gate.
I had taken a trip to Germany the summer before, so I was vaguely familiar with the airport process, but being sleep-deprived and without a guide, I of course managed to piss some people off by my apparent lack of knowledge of what to do.
I managed to get my boarding ticket and get to security without a problem, but actually going through security was a different experience. My first mistake was wearing lace-up combat boots. It completely slipped my mind that you're supposed to take off your shoes at security, and thus I didn't plan ahead and wear shoes that were less of a pain to take off. Naturally my fellow passengers were not happy when I had to stop in the middle of the line to bend down and unlace my shoes.
My second mistake was forgetting to empty my completely full water bottle. After a failed attempt to chug the bottle, one of the security guards took my bottle and emptied it out for me, returning it to me with a sympathetic look (it was not hard to tell I was a noob).
Afterwards, I managed to put all of my stuff in the box things to get scanned, and all went well until of course, to top off my already embarrassing experience, the box containing my laptop was flagged. Apparently my charger was wrapped in a weird way inside the laptop case so it warranted a search I guess, I don't really know.
After finally making it through security and making it to my gate, I awaited the arrival of my flight. I can't actually remember much of my flight to New York (probably due to sleep deprivation) but I deliberately stayed up in hopes of adjusting to the new sleep schedule (it worked hehe).
After about a 5 hour flight, I arrived in the New York airport from Phoenix. The airport was really cool, and I'm sad I didn't buy a post card while I was there, but I guess there's always next time. I waited for a while to get picked up by my designated taxi driver (all of the program participants were split up into car pool groups) to take me to the Stony Brook University campus for the Pre-Departure Orientation.
This year, my fellow NSLI-Y Korea participants and I set up a group chat a couple months before the trip and had all gotten pretty well-acquainted, so it was really cool to be able to meet them in person for the first time! I met Sarah and Michael H. (love you guys <3) first, as they were the two in my carpool group. We actually all ended up hanging out a lot during the rest of the trip, which was a blast :D
Our taxi driver was super chill, and we all had a nice conversation on the way to the college (which was about 2 hours away from the airport). It was a beautiful, overcast day, and even drizzled a bit on the way there.
New York looks sooo different than Arizona. It was awesome being surrounded by green for a change haha. New York reminded me of Europe a bit, and some of the houses lining the streets reminded me of the tall, thin houses that I saw all over Germany.
We were dropped off at a hotel just across from the university, where we met the rest of our group. The 14 of us chatted for a while and played some card games before going to bed.
The next day, we had a tour of the campus. It was so green, and the buildings were really pretty!
I ended up not taking too many photos of the campus, but I wish I had taken more cause it was really pretty. The only passable pic I got was the one above, and even at that it was shot through a window, so it's not the best, sorry ^^' I promise I took much better pictures throughout the rest of the trip haha.
I can't actually remember much of the PDO, but I do remember that we went over a lot of basic Korean etiquette, and learned some very basic Korean phrases. I'm really glad I had studied up on Korean a bit before the trip, because it made the transition to using Korean infinitely easier, as I was already able to read the writing system and knew some basic vocabulary.
We met one of our TAs (love ya Jamillah ^-^) and our program director, as well as received our 3 group t-shirts!
After our PDO and campus tour, we all went back to the hotel and repacked our stuff to go to the airport the next morning to fly to Detroit! From Detroit, we would fly to Incheon, Korea, where our trip would officially begin.
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