Currently packing...my winter suitcase is almost done, then I just need to pack the suitcase that I'll be unpacking and repacking (with all my toiletries and summery clothes) as I make my way to Korea! Most of the time I'm incredibly excited to leave, but sometimes a wave of anxiety hits me - my brain's going "What if I can't make friends? I can't speak much Korean, maybe no one will have any patience with me. What if my host family doesn't like me?" But I know it will all work out and I go back to being excited.
Now about my host family. I'll be living on the eastern side of Incheon, in Namdong-gu. I'm super happy with my city placement because when I visited Incheon with my host family last summer, while it's still a big city, it felt smaller and more suburban in some parts. But I'm still only about an hour's subway ride away from Seoul so visiting there to go shopping and whatnot won't be too much of a hassle. My host family seems awesome so far! My host dad is a businessman and my host mom is a nurse. I have two sisters, Korean ages 17 and 20. The 20 year old, Hye-ri, is in her first year of college and lives at home. In American age she's either 18 or 19 so she's close to my age! The 17 year old (15 or 16 American age), Ye-ji, is in the first grade of high school, which is the grade I'll be in. It would be really nice if I get to go to the same school as her. I've been chatting with both of them on Kakao Talk and they both seem so sweet. The older one already listed me as a "family member" on Facebook! I also sent an email to my host parents and I got a very nice reply talking about how they want to show me all about Korea and hope that America and Korea can understand each other a bit better through this exchange, and things like that. My sister told me that they're moving apartments, from the 4th floor to the 18th floor of their building at the end of September, so that should be fun!
We got all our predeparture orientation information today, and everything's finally starting to seem real! In exactly a week from now I'll be getting on the ferry with my mom to stay overnight at a hotel in Seattle close to the airport since my flight leaves at 7am on Tuesday. Since we have to get up around 4, and I usually don't go to bed until 1, I'm probably not going to sleep at all - I'll be so excited and anxious!
