In Korea!

We arrived in Korea last night and today was our orientation and my birthday! My host sisters and all the NSLI-Y people sent me birthday messages this morning. And then after orientation tonight a group of us went out to noraebang and then they sang happy birthday to me outside on the sidewalk haha, it was a great birthday! And surprise, we're moving to our host families tomorrow...we all thought we'd be moving in next week. I'm excited but nervous to meet them!

Now going backwards to New York - I arrived at the PDO and we stayed in the International House, which was really nice! We got the best room, that had a fireplace and 2 flatscreen tvs. All 11 of the NSLI-Y kids talked and bonded until midnight and we felt like we were already close after the first night. The group is awesome and I'm excited to spend a year with them! Then the next day we had orientation for most of the day, talking about culture shock and things like that. We were supposed to have Korean food for dinner but the group overruled Curtis and we all voted to get one last American meal, it was really good! The next morning we left for an incredibly long time traveling...about 14 hours to Japan and another 2 to Korea with a 3 hour layover in between. The flights weren't too bad though. We got off the plane in Korean and Yes International was waiting for us. We took a group picture, got on the bus and arrived at a little hostel in Hongdae about 40 minutes later. And then found out there was no elevator and we would have to haul our suitcases up 3 stories...

Today we woke up around 8:30 and went to orientation at the YES office. It makes sense that we're staying in Hongdae since the office is right around the corner and down the street from the hostel. But they just told us we're meeting our families at the office which means we have to haul all our baggage over narrow, uneven, cracked sidewalks...my arms are getting a workout! We had orientation for most of the day and talked about Korean culture and schools and other stuff we needed to know. We also had a language test. There was a pre-test that was written and then we went downstairs to have an interview with a Korean teacher who asked us about things we wrote on the test. She was really nice but it was kind of hard! I knew what she was asking but I didn't know how to respond a lot. She had me read 3 passages and I could only understand the last one. While we were waiting for our turn to interview upstairs in the meeting room we watched some old TV shows from last summer, listened to music, and talked and laughed a lot. The group is so fun! They took us out for lunch at a bibimbap place right nearby and ordered us takeout kimbap for dinner. Then we could go out, which is when we did noraebang. I did a bunch of the raps I've been practicing haha...Now I'm back in the hostel. The wifi is so good here it's kind of amazing. Ahh meeting my host family tomorrow!