PDO in NYC

Before heading to Korea [or any country you're going to with NSLI-Y], you have what is called pre-departure orientation for 2 days. For the NSLI-Y Korea group with iEARN, we had our PDO in New York City at Columbia University so if you get accepted to that program, that's where you'll be heading! I'm pretty sure all programs that iEARN is in charge of go to NYC for their PDO, but not ALL NSLI-Y programs will be in New York. American Councils groups usually are in DC for example. 

                          

We arrived at Columbia at around 10am and didn't have anything program-wise to do until 5pm that night so they let us free- we just had to stay within the boundaries (aka don't go to Harlem) and couldn't take the subway. When we first got there, we checked in, received our stipend, NSLI-Y shirts, room keys, and some other things from iEARN. I headed to my room with my cumbersome luggage and other NSLI-Y friends only to see that I'd be alone in a room! I was expecting to share [which I was kind of excited about] but it was still fun. The rooms were really small though.. there was a bed, a desk, table thing, and a sink in the room, but it was really small [and COLD].

       

This won't be exactly how your PDO goes [especially if you're not with iEARN], but this is just to give you an idea of what it was like... and for me to look back on and remember where things all started hehe~

I live pretty close to NY and had a pretty short flight that left early in the morning, so I was in one of the first groups to arrive at Columbia University [after riding the lovely super shuttle], where we would be staying for 2 days, and therefore had a lot of time to explore Columbia and NYC and get to know the others who were there already.


After settling in a little, the group from the Carolinas and NJ/PA decided to go out and explore together. Right when we were about to leave, a girl from Florida came so she joined us as well~ We had talked before actually meeting so I was pretty excited she arrived in time to come with us. [I'd say we bonded after helping her bring her bags to her room and struggling to figure out how the door worked]

We didn't really know what to do or where to go so we just walked around NYC [around the campus] and got something to eat then ate on campus~ We also went to the Columbia University Library... we walked so much around the library and realized that there weren't really books like anywhere.... We also got bubble tea on campus before an iEARN intern, who was a student at Barnard, took us around Columbia and New York City. We went to Insomnia Cookies and this Hungarian bakery as well as a beautiful church [whose name I don't remember]. We sat in there for a while enjoying the air conditioner haha.

  

We went back to Columbia for a bit after exploring and more people started to arrive! So along with some other new people, we went back to the cookie place and walked around the city... after our lovely hallway bonding time haha. We spent a LOT of time in those hallways.... Oh the memories that were made there..

NC, SC, NJ, PA, and FL- we were the first to get there!

                             

Once it was 5PM, we all gathered together [most of us- not everyone was there yet] for some pizza then icebreakers. Get used to icebreakers if you do NSLI-Y... You'll be doing them forever haha, but they're not that bad~ It's pretty fun getting to know interesting things about the other NSLI-Yians and kind of just break the ice. After the ice breakers we were allowed to do whatever until our 10:30 curfew, so a group of us [some of the same people from my earlier group] went back to this nice spot on campus we were at earlier and played games together. We played some card games and heads up and charades [which we failed so badly at LOL], but I got really comfortable with these people very quickly haha. After a failed attempt to go watch a Korean drama inside, we went back outside [a largeeee group of us] and played games together. One of the boys tried to teach the game 아싸, which I had played before, but most people hadn't so it took quite a while to get going. Even so it was fun, though we never really got the the punishments, aka the best part of Korean games ;) We did charades and some other games before heading inside. That night one of the 2013 summer alumni boys arrived, and since I was the only one who knew him [from Facebook], I went and got him and introduced him to the others~

ORIENTATION DAY 2- The Actual Orientation: We had some hallway bonding time all together, along with the alum, so we talked a lot about Korea and his experience as well as just fun things. It's crazy how close you can get to people so quickly. I guess since we all had similar interests [or at least overlapping interests] it wasn't difficult to strike up conversations. Since it was the first night and we all had traveled to NY that day, we followed the curfew pretty well and retreated to our cold, lonely rooms. Then the next morning we had to wake up early to start the actual orientation [and it was a longgg day]. We had breakfast on campus then walked to this place where we were most of the day to hear people speak. We had 2 people from the State Department, 3 alumni, and some other iEARN people speak about program stuff, personal experiences, safety, etc... We also discussed/set goals we had for ourselves on the program, talked about language learning, the goals of the NSLI-Y program, cultural differences/culture shock [on a general level], and of course did icebreakers! My favorite thing, and probably the most helpful/insightful/interesting, was the alumni presentations since we would soon be experiencing similar things~ OH, we also wrote letters to ourselves that we would receive halfway through the program. [When we received those 3ish weeks later oh my goodness.... HA. Our reactions were so great.] After all of this orientation stuff we were free and split up for dinner. A group of us ended up going to get Vietnamese at a place one girl found and ate outside on these benches~ A good last meal haha~

                               

We had a time we had to be in our rooms that night, so eventually after some more hallway bonding time, we headed to our cold, lonely rooms once again. But I wasn't in there for long! After I talked to my mother, finished eating my leftovers from dinner, and was present in my room for the RD roomcheck, one of the girls texted me to come up a floor and hang out with her. She was with like 5 of the guys and I was bored in my room so at like 11pm-ish I headed upstairs [nervously since it was after roomcheck and I didn't want to get on our RD's bad side before even getting to Korea]. That night was sooooooo much fun and I'm so glad I went out with them! We pulled an allnighter and made so many great memories in the hallways. Those memories will stay with us, but here is a picture of our lovely selves riding on no sleep at 4am.

With 0 hours of sleep, we headed to Starbucks at 5:45am after showers and packing again. After getting our drinks there, we walked back to the dorms we were staying in, brought our luggage down and got back on our favorite super shuttles to go to the airport! Finally off to KOREA!!! Well, NY > Detroit > Korea~

NSLI-Y6 and RDs at Columbia University before heading to the airport

EXTRA: Here is a video of PDO one of the girls made >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM4U9VSNVhk

MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy_hqlElMR8P1XoYYdACL4Q