Arriving in KoreaI can't quite believe it but I'm writing this from our apartment in Korea! We arrived yesterday after 27hrs of travel and so we're now on our second day here, the only thing I have to say about it so far is it's SO HOT and humid, we're all dying a bit. Both days so far have been about 34C and up to 85% humidity... But it's a beautiful place and I'm excited to see more of it
Before we left, I paid the deposit and first semester of rent for my dorm (I added the price to the previous post where I listed costs) and got all my packing done. I stupidly left all my packing until 3 days before we left, so it was a bit of a mammoth task. It's harder than you would think trying to pack your whole life into 2 suitcases! I only took the 23kg bag allowed by the airline with a 10kg carry-on, but I had the luxury of being able to use space in my parents' suitcases since they're visiting with me for 2 weeks. They took most of my heavy stuff like shoes and books, but the friend I was travelling with went way overweight with her stuff. She had 36kg which was 13kg overweight and also over the absolute limit of 34kg, so she had to put some of her stuff in my case and paid the £125 fee (for Lufthansa). Honestly there's no way I would've been within in the limit if I'd had everything in my case, so if you have a lot of stuff it might be worth paying for an extra case if it's cheaper than the overweight fee. It tends to be especially expensive for intercontinental flights not going to North or South America.
I was also sent an invitation to join the SNU buddy programme and pick my buddy. Most universities have a buddy programme (I know for certain SNU and KU have one) where you are paired with a native Korean student for the semester. You and your buddy are then in a bigger group of buddies and exchange students and this essentially becomes your initial friendship group - they'll take you out for meals and go drinking together, there are lots of events held throughout the year, and they can help you with whatever you need help with. At SNU you sign up and get to pick from of a long list of 40 or so of buddies. It has their age, major, the languages they can speak, and a short profile they've written to help you decide who to choose. You then write your own profile so they can know a bit about you too. Each Korean buddy usually looks after 3-5 exchange students total so it's a nicely sized group to begin with. I personally chose a theory of music composition major and the other exchange students are both students from Hong Kong. I'm looking forward to meeting them at orientation! It cost 50,000 won for a semester but everyone I've spoken to really strongly recommends it as it can be quite intimidating to make friends in other ways and is difficult to find Korean friends unless you're very confident in your language skills.
On the day we left, we set off pretty early to go to Heathrow for our 9:30am flight. My friend and I took a non-direct flight which stopped off at Frankfurt as you can't get direct flights reimbursed by student finance, so my parents and sister took a later direct flight. We flew Lufthansa who were really good, they gave us plenty of snacks on the plane and their staff were great (although one flight attendant didn't like me asking to have my water bottle refilled when he brought round drinks for some reason?). We had a 4hr layover at Frankfurt which wasn't too bad, there were a lot of shops and cafes in the airport and it was a nice opportunity to stretch your legs. Our only other option was a 2hr layover which would've been very tight, and several of the Frankfurt flights that day had been delayed, although we luckily made up time on ours. Then we went straight from Frankfurt to Incheon which was a 10.5hr flight. It was rough, we didn't sleep much so we were exhausted when we arrived in Seoul at 11:30am. We then had to wait for my parents to arrive and took the metro to our Airbnb which is about 25mins away. All in all, it was a long day but definitely could've been worse!
That's all so far, the next thing I have coming up is the placement test and orientation on 28th August which means I need to get back to serious studying pretty soon... I also have to apply for my alien registration card at the immigration office so hopefully that's not too much of a faff.
Wishing everyone the best of luck for A-Level results tomorrow! I hope you're all pleased with your grades but if not there's always a way to get to where you want to be regardless of your results <3 화이팅!!