It’s been a long time coming, but I am FINALLY on my way to Seoul, South Korea! My past few months have consisted of me sitting at home pathetically missing Penn State, religiously keeping up with all the adventures on this geoblog, and enduring a constant stream of “North or South?” jokes by anyone who finds out I’m studying in Korea.

Unfortunately, traveling to the other side of the world isn’t exactly the easiest. Currently I’m on a four hour layover in Detroit – proudly wearing my THON hat – and then I head to Seattle for the night. Tomorrow morning starts my official eleven hour flight to Korea! (Thank God for Netflix, amiright?!)

I’m definitely a firm believer in journaling and blogging, so I intend on taking you all on this four month journey with me, if you let me.  Like I said, this trip has been a long time coming. I’m not talking about the past two months at home by myself. I’m not even talking about since last summer when I got accepted to study at Yonsei University. I’m talking about since 2011 when I first became interested in the Korean culture. I used to stay up all night and just dream about visiting Seoul… and now I can’t believe that in just a day I’ll be living there! High School Paige is so jealous right now. It’s surreal and scary and crazy and ridiculous. If I’m being honest, I was starting to have cold feet this past week. Big time. But here I am in Detroit, so I might as well fly all the way!

I still haven’t figured out if the next few months will pass quickly or not, but I have decided that I don’t want to waste a single day.  I only have four months.  I want to make the most of every second.

I have two major goals, and I am determined to complete them:

1 – Have an entire conversation in Korean. I will never stop being amazed by people who are multilingual, and I hope to join them one day. I have been studying the language since my freshman year, taking four semesters. Although my 선생님들 (professors) have been angels sent directly from heaven, I still struggle with the language. It’s a really fun language, and I love learning it, but I get very shy when I speak it. I’m not capable of having a conversation in all Korean just yet, so when that day finally comes, I will let you all know.  There will probably be lots of caps lock and exclamation marks in that blog post.

2 – Educate the rest of the world on how cool South Korea is. When I tell people I’m interested in Korea, I normally get a lot of Kim Jong Un jokes. (I mean, a lot). Which is all good and fun(ish), but then I realize that people genuinely don’t know a lot about Korea. I had someone ask me if I was going to have running water where I going! Seoul is comparable to New York City. It’s truly the city that never sleeps. Of course I could never blame people for not knowing much about Seoul or South Korea… I mean, thinking about it, there are so many countries in this world that I know nothing about.  Up until a few years ago, I knew nothing about Korea as well. I just got a fortune cookie the other day that read “Every wise man started out by asking many questions.” So fear not friends, I will take you on this journey with me and by the end of it all, you’ll all want to travel to Korea for yourself!

Next blog post will come at you from the other side of the world! And I’ll be sure to incorporate a seoul pun title so painful it’ll have you all rolling your eyes. Until then, 안녕 (Annyeong)! 🙂

페이지 / Paige

Location: Seoul, South Korea