Leaving for Korea

I just finished packing for my trip to South Korea. I am going with 3 other girls from Lander University as a beginning to Lander's Asia Initiative. We are going to be traveling in Incheon and Busan, South Korea and will be there for a total of 5 weeks. I am so excited to be going because I never dreamed I would get to do study aboad, much less 2 opportunities in 2 different continents!!! I hope to do better with my blogging than I did when I was in Spain.

The things I am worried about most are the food and the language. Dr. Park, the Asian study abroad director at Lander, and his wife cooked for the students and a few others from Lander a couple of weeks ago. It was delicious but not the type of food I eat every day. I am not a picky eater, and I will try all types of foods, but eating different types of food is going to be something that will definitely be something to get used to. Most of the people I will be in contact with in Korea will speak English, but I am still going to learn as much of the language as I can in the weeks I am there. Hopefully, I will pick it up easily, but if not, I can always learn more when I get back to SC.

Three people from the second university we are staying at came to Lander on Monday to visit and sign formal contracts as sister univerisities. Jane Na will be in charge of all the international students, so this was a great opportunity to meet her and go through orientation. I learned that there will be 5 American students (4 from Lander and one from another university), 1 Irish, and 10 English students in the program n Busan. One of my favorite parts of Spain was taking classes with people from other countries, and this is the thing I am looking forward to the most. Each of us will have a Korean "buddy" that will help us when we get there. We will help them with their English and they will definitely be helping us with our Korean. We also get to do a home-stay in our buddy's home one weekend. Most of the time we will be in a dorm room.

I'm flying out of GSP tomorrow and between flights, layovers, time change, and crossing the international date line, I am going to be so confused when I finally get to South Korea, so wish me luck ;)