The Good ~ The Bad ~ The Anxiety, South Korea Here I Come!

I’ve been fortunate enough to have been able to travel fairly often to many places like Hawaii and New York, however those trips were by far easier to plan and prepare for than this.

When traveling domestically, do you need a passport? Pass! A visa? What’s that? Customs? Who cares? But when traveling internationally, who cares? You, you care. The only thing I would say is the same between international and domestic travel? Packing.

I’ve been looking forward to studying abroad since getting accepted into my university and have been excited to study abroad at Yonsei University when I found out I got accepted. I was fairly confident in my own abilities and sense of self when it came to this whole process. However not everything is so easy as I fill out forms and turn in forms, life will make sure everything works itself out easily and quickly.

To be blunt, getting pretty much all of my documents for this study abroad has been stressful in some way or other. Practically none of it has been easy for me, from getting my transcripts to getting my passport, though I wouldn’t be writing any of this if things didn’t eventually work out for me in the end.

I had received my transcripts but was then told they needed to be from within a month or so from applying and had about three days to resubmit them. I did manage to turn them in after emailing my school’s study abroad office daily for my transcripts, no doubt annoying my study abroad office in the process. My passport had been a struggle and a half due to not having all required documents but managing to expedite the process enough to submit it within about a week of it’s due date. Getting my physical was also something I was only able to submit due to a friend being kind enough to give me a ride, seeing as my university has no health office and I have no car to take myself. The last document so far that had given me a bit of heartache was my visa. The Korean University will send you two documents needed in order to get your D-2 visa (Certificate of Business [COB] and Certificate of Admission [COA]). Documents I didn’t receive until a bit over a month before my plane to South Korea but was on a plane for a week long vacation to Japan. All this to say, I eventually did manage to get my visa.

Something I’ve been doing to keep myself entertained away from thinking about how long getting all my documents took, is making a packing list since I’ve always enjoyed doing so. For the spring semester, I’ll be in Korea during temperatures of 14F to 86F (-10C to 30C) meaning packing for cold and moderate weather. Something I intend to use to help are vacuum bags, so even if I do have space in my two checked bags and carry on, I can still have space to bring back new souvenirs.

I like to think that I’m not an over packer, but I think many can agree that we’ve all added more clothes or items than needed. Something I do to make sure I don’t add so much is put everything I want and can fit into my suitcases. It might seem counter intuitive, but when you inevitably can’t fit everything is when I start looking if there are anything that I actually can live without. For example, I intend to bring two extension cords with me but if it turns out I need the space for a shirt or something, then instead of bringing both I’ll only bring one extension cord. It may seem simple, but comparing which items are more important is helpful to make sure you’re not overpacking or making your bag overweight.