Two months ago, after countless hours of preparation, I finally stepped out of the gate at Incheon International Airport and said my first hello to Seoul, the city that would be my new home for the semester. While in the taxi on the way to my new dorm, I couldn’t help but admire everything, from the impossibly tall buildings with architecture that – I still want to believe -appears to defy gravity, to the surprising amount of vibrant greenery and mystic-looking rivers, which while seeming completely out of place in a megacity, are very much welcome.
Finally, after making my way into my new dorm and beginning to unpack, reality began to set in. I was quickly overwhelmed by the reality that I am now several thousand miles from everyone I hold dear, and I thought to myself that because I only have so much time in Korea, even just one minute of complacency could be a missed opportunity. However, after walking around my dorm building and asking some of the other people who just arrived, it seemed as though this was a common fear and a source of common ground.
As a result, after two months of living in Seoul and experiencing both the magnificent and mediocre parts of settling down in South Korea, I can safely say that I have put my fears to rest. In such a short time, I was able to make all sorts of amazing memories with people from all over the globe, and my hopes are that I can help others find their own place within this majestic cityscape. With that in mind, here are my three biggest tips to make the most of your time abroad!
Use your resources
Entering a new country can be overwhelming, but when you’re traveling to attend a school, you’re definitely not the only person who has been in your exact situation. Because of that, doing research online and using your resources given by your host university is key to surviving the first couple of weeks, as while you may be alone for some points while adjusting to your new environment, that doesn’t mean you can’t have help.
As someone who is studying abroad through direct exchange, I do not personally have any experience about using program resources, but some of my friends have attested to just how much more convenient their programs had made their time adjusting to life in Korea. However, like anyone else who is studying abroad, I have access to the internet, and that changed everything.
From just looking up something vague like “Yonsei study abroad,” I was able to find a community of more than a thousand exchange students – past, present, and future – who compiled all sorts of information about life at one of South Korea’s top universities. From dealing with the bureaucratic waiting game of getting our Alien Registration Cards to simple things like getting concert tickets and where to find the best pancakes near campus, there is an unbelievable amount of information to be found and so many wonderful people to meet from finding these communities.
Don’t be afraid to start superficial
One of the most important parts of settling into a new community is finding friends, and especially in Korea, most activities and restaurants are designed for parties of two or more people in mind, so finding people is paramount, Luckily, there is one universal form of common ground that everyone studying abroad has: they’re studying abroad. Our time abroad is limited, and because everyone has the same objective of taking as much advantage of that limited time as our bank accounts will allow, it’s super easy to meet people, even if some of these relationships may be a little superficial at first.
As for me, I have a decent amount of social anxiety, but I was able to make a bunch of friends in the most random ways. For starters, I met two of my best friends out of pure coincidence. One of them, I met at the airport and discovered from sheer coincidence that they were also going to Yonsei, so just like that we were able to split the cost of the airport taxi, and after discovering that we were both going to the same concert, we hit it off pretty quickly. In a similar vein, I met my other friend for the first time on the elevator as we were both going down to the lobby for that aforementioned concert, where I noticed, he was listening to the same artist on his admittedly broken AirPods. In just a couple of minutes from that quick coincidence, I went from knowing just one person going to that concert to meeting his entire friend group, introducing them to mine, and now having a bigger group of soon-to-be friends bound on the same quest of enjoying this concert.
However, because these friendships can be somewhat superficial and based on just the events you all are going to, it’s important to be more cordial as it’s much easier to distance yourself from this person who you may barely know and not get along with as compared to starting drama in a more temporary environment.
Follow your heart, not your plans
When exploring a city as massive and as dense as Seoul, it’s very important to be more observant to your surroundings and understand that, whether because of traffic or other complications, exploring the city with specific goals and specific time constraints might be difficult at times. At the same time, because there is so much to see and so much to do in Seoul, getting over the mindset that we’ll be able to do absolutely everything in the little time we’re abroad is very important to getting over the FOMO of being in one of the world’s most Instagrammable cities.
So, while exploring Seoul, instead of going around the city with the objective of just seeing a single store or location, unless you would be at that location all day, embrace the journey and don’t be afraid to just look around and go where your heart desires. For example, two of my friends and I were walking through an area of Seoul called Yeonnam-dong on the way to Koriko, a Studio Ghibli themed cafe that we all wanted to visit. However, while we were walking, we noticed two stores: a photo booth with live fish swimming in the frame, and a caricature store that looked pretty interesting. So, despite having plans and some level of a time crunch, we decided to explore these places anyways. And with Koriko being an absolutely wonderful cafe that was a blast to visit, it was these little sidequests to the photo booth and caricature store that made the most impact in my memory, and none of this would have happened if we just followed our plans instead of our hearts.
