Arrival in Korea&In-Country Orientation

Originally we were supposed to arrive on the 27th at around 6pm, but due to a [8ish hour] delay at the Detroit airport, we ended up arriving at Incheon at around 2am.

The Detroit airport delay was quite fun, however, since I was able to watch the Korea vs Belgium game [World Cup]. I was pretty disappointed I wasn't going to be able to watch it since I was going to be on the plane during it, but we ended up watching it at the airport with a woman who was streaming it on her laptop! YAY for soccer and bonding with random Korean people over it haha. I am a huge soccer fan so the girl who was streaming it and I bonded very quickly hehe. Unfortunately Korea lost [which was really disappointing because I wanted to watch soccer in the streets while I was in Korea], but it was SO much fun watching the game with people in the airport!

Also while in the airport, I got to practice my Korean! I've only self-studied [and when I say self-study I mean pick up from texting and being with Korean friends and watching Korean TV, etc..] so I'm not that great, especially in grammar. So I was pretty nervous and self-conscious speaking Korean with them, but they kept wanting to talk to me and kept praising my Korean so I felt more comfortable with it. As one man described, I'm the 수줍은 스타일 haha. We talked a lot in Korean about a bunch of different things, and I was able to see how much I actually knew! I also....
helped some of my fellow nsliyians study Korean because they were being good students and studying during the delay! We played cards as well and explored the airport which was all pretty fun. We went up and down those walking things in these tunnels with lights and music for like an hour haha. The only thing was I was exhausted from pulling an allnighter the night before and riding on like an hour of sleep [on the plane from NY to Detroit]. The airport fed us and gave us sandwhiches but they were gross lol. A group of us went to eat earlier on when we get there but I was so hungry still... and those sandwhiches were not good. Anyway, it was a fun time and we all got to know each other a bit better during the delay~ 

Eventually we finally boarded the plane! It was a little hectic getting all 50 of us on board, but by 10:34 I was seated and we were getting ready for takeoff! [I just checked a post I made when on the plane which is why I have that specific time haha]~ The plane ride was about 13.5 hours... long time. 

As I said earlier, we landed at around 2:30am at the airport in Incheon! We still had to get off the plane, all of us had to get our luggage, and go through customs, so it was pretty long before we actually got out to where the poor staff was waiting for us to arrive. We took a bunch of pictures before finally getting on our party bus! Okay, not really a party bus but it was pretty cool....

We arrived at the hostel at like 4-4:30am and still had to do room assignments and bring our luggage in and up to our rooms, so it was a night of pretty much no sleep [for me] since we had orientation early that morning. We had orientation in NYC with iEARN, but this orientation in Korea was more program and country-specific. A lot of this stuff you don't really need to know, and if you get accepted, you'll get it then~

We did more ice breakers such as human bingo, heard some staff speak as well as a man from the Korean embassy, got talked to about host families, adjusting to Korean life, cultural differences/culture shock, blah blah....

We also got split into groups for our scavenger hunt mission around Seoul. or the scavenger hunt, my group went to 혜화 (대학로) and had to ask people about our topic, societal relationships. I wasn't so confident going up to strangers and asking in Korea, but neither was my group so I ended up doing a lot of talking that day. It helped me feel better about speaking Korea because I sometimes get super nervous speaking Korean to Korean people. A lot of the strangers were really kind and helped answer the questions, but some questions were hard since we couldn't translate them well or couldn't understand the replies very well. Oh well haha it was interesting and we got it done! We walked around Hyehwa/DaehagWe then had to do a poster on it and a short little presentation... After listening to more people speak, we were free for the night- I stayed and talked to some alumni and ate fruit.

         

         

The second day of orientation was getting us really ready for what we're about to experience [like with host families] and we got our stipend/phone/etc.. The program staff reviewed the rules again but in a more fun way for us; we did skits acting out how we would behave in certain scenarios while following the program rules. After the morning orientation we ate lunch then waited for our host families to pick us up! It was pretty fun seeing all of the nsliyians meet their host families and go with them haha. I was one of the middle people to leave~ My host mother came and picked me up and I said goodbye to the hostel for 6 weeks. The experience is really about to start! ^^

With the staff and my NSLI-Y6 group before meeting our host families♥