Prepare for a Summer in Korea

Hi Sharks, my name is Tiffany and I studied abroad in Seoul, South Korea this past summer! My International Summer program was one-month-long with Konkuk University. Here are my experiences and tips for preparing and packing for a month in Korea.

Entry requirements: I did not have to apply for a Visa or a K-ETA since it was only a month-long program; staying longer than 90 days required those mentioned. Things change and sometimes requirements are lifted but please do your due diligence and research any entry requirements. 

Important things to pack: First, I brought my passport and an additional form of government-issued identification such as my driver’s license. My passport was on me everywhere I went since certain places were tax-free. Next, I had physical copies of important documents such as my health insurance and official documents from my host university to show proof I was a part of the program. Although these documents can be accessed electronically, I printed out paper copies just in case. Also, it is required to get international health insurance if your current plan does not cover international. Especially at the airport, I kept these documents readily accessible just in case I ran into any trouble (I had no problems at the airport). Honestly, I think having your passport and one more form of ID is all you really need, the extra documents I brought were because of anxiety. Lastly, payment options. I had credit cards and both US cash and Korean won on me. Exchange rates are better there so I recommend doing it over there. There are even better rates in Seoul so try to find places besides the airport but even the airport is not that bad. Korea is card-friendly but some places only take won like your T-Money card. Also, from what I remember Visa, Mastercard, and Discover are accepted, just remember there might be foreign transaction fees. If you go to Costco, it is only Visa or won. 

Other things to pack: The month was July and it was during their monsoon season; therefore, it was hot, humid, and rainy. So pack according to that 🙂.

Phone Data/Calling: There are plenty of options when it comes to your phone. Your phone carrier will have international plans but it will likely cost a lot. Other options include phone rentals, eSIM/SIM cards, and pocket wifi, and fortunately, these all can be purchased at the airport. If you search around, some websites offer discounts and pick-up at the airport for convenience. I think eSIMs are most convenient but your phone has to be unlocked for it to work. There will be certain conditions depending on your plan; for examples, a plan may or may not give you a Korean phone number, another may allow free incoming calls but charge for outgoing calls, or a certain amount of messages per month will be permitted and any extra will be charged, so check and carefully pick your plan according to what you think you need. If you want to call home back in the US, I suggest third-party apps such as Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, or even Instagram for contact because those are free. *Having a Korean phone number depends on you. It was not necessary for my situation but I assume for a full semester stay, having one would be helpful.* Korea usually has wifi everywhere like in shops, restaurants, and bus/train stations, but it is not strong so I would not chance it and rely on public wifi. 

Transportation: Plan on getting a T-Money card, their version of our Holo card. You will be walking and using public transportation a lot so prepare with cushioned shoes and Korean won. A T-Money card can be purchased in most convenient stores and you refill them with won only, there or at the stations.

Study Abroad Vietnam: Holistic Medicine Course, Educational Review

   

     Studying abroad is an opportunity everyone should take if they can. My course was six weeks long, long enough to get used to life in Vietnam. This country has an interesting history, culture, and tradition. The focus of my study was Traditional Holistic Vietnamese Medicine, a field that views health through a spiritual and accessible lens. We also had language classes to help us acclimate, although I will admit I was really bad at them. 

       We started in Ho Chi Minh, also known as Saigon. I personally had been to Vietnam 4 times before and was happy to be back in the bustling environment. I met my group at the hotel where we were all staying. We stayed there together for a few days before moving in with host families. Everyone had randomly assigned host families, but one of my old bosses applied to a part of the host family program, and I stayed with her. My classmate's host families were all ridiculously wealthy, and many of them had housepets, indoor swimming pools, and rec centers!

    We went to classes at the Univerisity of Medicine and Pharmacology. Our coursework included theoretical lectures, practical workshops, and field visits, providing a comprehensive understanding of this holistic approach. This is where I will admit my greatest disappointment with the course. Our translator and chaperone assigned to us were very bad at translating. She was also very argumentative with the lecturers and with students regarding the kinds of questions we were asking. She would often bypass the information being told to her by lecturers and tell her own stories (she has never been a medical professional). Those who spoke Vietnamese in the group confirmed what she was saying was not at all accurate and would try to help translate it correctly. Because of this, I don't think I got very much out of the lectures and Q&As. Aside from this, though, it was awesome!!

                                     

    I learned the most through observation and through the visits we made to medical sites. We went to a wide range of medical businesses, not just holistic ones. We went to pagodas, western-style hospitals, traditional medicine hospitals, and the medicine street. The streets are often organized by trade, so all medicine is on one street, clothes are on another, food is on another, etc. We were also required to interview with locals and NGOs. I learned more from host families than I did at the university. We got to practice doing acupuncture, massage, meditation, and making herbal pills. We also got to observe procedures being done on patients, mostly acupuncture and consultations. This was another source of culture shock for our group, as Vietnam does not have privacy laws or HIPPA. We were all shocked that we could observe without the patient's permission. Most of them did not seem to mind. Privacy is viewed differently in Vietnamese culture, especially in the city, where there are so many people. Often, families live several to a room. 

    We explored historical sites, enjoyed traditional music and dance performances, and participated in local festivals. Ho Chi Minh has a traditional medicine museum, as well as several war museums. We also traveled around the country quite a bit. We took a vist to Vung Tau, which is a beach town. This was just a fun excursion with no educational intentions. We also went to the Can Gio mangrove forest, where they grow a variety of food and medicine. This forest was destroyed during the Vietnam war and is now mostly grown back. We got our drinks stolen by monkeys, paddled out to see bats, and fed alligators. We also visited Dalat, which is in central Vietnam, and Ben Tre, which is in the Mekong Delta. In these towns, we visited more hospitals. 

    I enjoyed being able to go as a student and not to work. I was able to immerse myself more in the culture. By the time I had to go home, I really didn't want to leave. Hopefully, I will be back soon!

Study Abroad Vietnam: Holistic Medicine Course, Lifestyle Review

  This is part 2 of my last blog. Now, I'm going to talk about all the fun stuff. If I am being honest, this was mostly a fun stuff experience. Even though America is the "Land of the Free", many of my generation find being alive a series of endless compromises. In Vietnam, I never had to compromise on anything. I enjoyed freedom, which I thought was just an intangible and broken promise. I had mental freedom, physical freedom to go anywhere I wanted, academic freedom to explore topics that I found interesting, and, most enlightening, financial freedom. A poor student in America is a very rich one in Vietnam. Remember that this is because of the dollar exchange rate and economic freedom, which only you, as a foreigner, experience and is not necessarily the experience of locals. 

    Not worrying about money means you can afford things that may be a luxury back home. I could buy a coffee every morning and evening for just 50 cents. I could purchase bubble tea and eat steak and fish. I could order a drink with dinner at restaurants. If you ever go to Vietnam, don't get stuck thinking frugally if you already do back home. Go get your nails done, sit in cafes for hours, and go to fancy clubs and bars, which there are many of. Food is cheap and fresh. I lost 10 pounds without changing how much I eat; the food is so clean, and nutrition is based on the five elements. Food is often clean, simple, and rich in vitamins and protein. All fast food joints have virtually the same menu, so I recommend eating at local joints. Saigon has a very large array of cuisines. Thai and Indian food was the best I've had (shoutout to Haveli Restaurant). I also had a waffle and duck leg dish, which I have thought about every day since. 

    Another form of freedom I now had was physical freedom. I could go wherever I wanted. Mornings in Vietnam begin early. I was often awake by 6 am, and my host family was up even earlier. This left me a lot of time to explore the city. Joining the locals, I developed a routine of starting my day with a cup of Vietnamese coffee, often enjoyed at a small street-side café. Banh Mi is a really common and easy food if you are on the go. You can download Grab on your phone and go anywhere in the city for a few dollars. Also, as a female-presenting person, I will note that I felt safe everywhere. People who talk to you on the street are genuine and not creepy. I could walk around with both headphones in without fearing someone creeping up behind me. If you look lost, people will help you. Grab drivers won't drop you off in random locations or try to steal you. Roofing is the only problem when it comes to safety as a woman, so still watch people make your drinks and don't go in unlabeled cabs. Cab scams are also big. 

             

     Activities in Vietnam are also cheap. We can go to the zoo, cat and dog cafes, karaoke, hiking, billiards, museums, and parks for cheap or even free. My favorite bar we went to was acoustic. They had free drinks for ladies' night and live music. They even had some metal artists on the setlist! Several in my group also left with new tattoos and piercings, myself included. It is generally very safe and clean to get tattoos done, and also stupidly cheap. I myself have two tattoos and a piercing. One girl found a place that would do her belly button for about 7 US dollars. I recommend Morgan Ink Studios if you are going. I got to put a pin on a map of where I am from on the wall. 

            

    If you are going to study abroad and find yourself with some free time, do everything you can. Say yes to everything. Our group size was small enough that we could invite everyone to everything. It was really lucky that all of us ended up liking each other. Almost everyone was from Yale, so I could compare my university life with theirs. I made many good friends, and leaving them was hard.  

                                         

    Bring a disposable or digital camera. Also, leave your makeup at home or get tinted sunscreen. Your foundation will be dripping as soon as you step outside. It doesn't matter how good you think it is. Even if you don't care for the course, I highly recommend it for the lifestyle!

My Growth in Spain

        As a Bio major with a concentration in Health and Human Sciences, my degree plan includes an internship component in the health field. And ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to study abroad. I don’t think it was even a month after coming to HPU that I was talking with our wonderful Study Abroad director about my academic prospects. I was focused on finding a program that wouldn’t derail my graduation plan and eventually, I caught wind of a program that would satisfy my internship abroad in Sevilla, Spain. 

        Despite dreams of traveling around the world, I had never left the United States before this program. I found myself 12hours away from my life on Oahu in a place whose culture and language I knew little of. Was it terrifying? Absolutely not. I was completely out of my element, sure, but I had nothing but excitement and wanderlust for the next month of my life. Okay. I talked a big game, but the truth is that I was feeling a tiny bit of uncertainty. While I knew what I had signed up for, there was no telling how everything would play out. From my PHTLS (Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support) training and hospital rotations to simply acclimating to life in Spain, I had no idea what to really expect. I also knew that the language barrier would be a slight obstacle, despite my best efforts to learn as much as I could in a short time. 

        It’s actually kind of funny, my first night in Sevilla, about three hours after I landed, I met the other students in my program. We were a whopping group of three (and eventually just two). I tried striking up a conversation with one of the others, Morgan, asking what her name was, only to be met with a “dos semanas”. She’d misheard me, thinking I was asking how long she’d been in Spain, but my stomach DROPPED when I heard her response in Spanish. After all, with a group this small, I needed people I could communicate with. It ended up being a silly miscommunication and she does in fact speak English. Some people who don’t speak English, though, were my host family.

        I opted to live in a homestay to better immerse myself in the culture and lifestyle here, and boy did I get what I wished for. When I first met Alfredo, he asked me a simple question: “Hablas espanol?”. While I understood that much, I definitely wasn’t anywhere proficient enough to claim that I was good at it. I remember having the stupidest expression of shock on my face as he just smiled and led me up the stairs. In a fun twist of luck, I didn’t speak much Spanish and they didn’t speak much English. Of course, I fully accept that this was on me, since I was the one in their country. But we made it work! Through my limited Spanish, a bit of Google Translate, and a LOT of charades, we were able to communicate.

        It’s easy to play it safe and stick to what feels familiar. For me, that would’ve been holing up in my homestay. But I didn’t travel halfway across the world to play it safe. I thrusted myself into a situation that would push and challenge me because I knew I would be better for it afterwards. So every day, I would leave and explore the city, with or without my newfound friends. My program had a bunch of activities planned, but what I found to be the most gratifying was to just put one step in front of the other and get lost. You notice so much more around you when you aren’t focused on getting somewhere. I found that Sevilla is just another place on Earth. A beautiful city rich with culture, mind you, but it was nothing to be scared of. The people live and laugh, the dogs bark and beg, and the sun rises and sets.

        That being said, there are definitely noticeable differences here in Spain compared to what I knew in Hawaii and other places in the States. For one thing, the days are a lot longer than what I’m used to. The sun doesn’t set until at least 10pm, and the city is still up much later than that. Many places are open quite late and it’s not uncommon to see people, including small children, walking about in the late hours of the night. Nightlife doesn’t even begin until around 1 am to 2 am and it may not end until the early hours of the morning. Even stranger to me is the general atmosphere of safety. Neither me nor the two female students I came here with felt unsafe walking home late at night. I’ve heard the same sentiments from many others, as well.

        Now that I’ve finished my time in Spain, it’s fun to look back on my journey. It’s been humbling, eye-opening, and incredibly empowering. A month is either a short time or a long time, depending on who you ask, but to me, it’s incredible how acclimated I felt to life in Sevilla now. Everything that was strange to me now feels muted, like a simple fact of life. Even outside of my program/internship, I can feel that I’ve grown a bit more. In a way that I can only describe as “stepping into the world”, I feel like I understand life a little bit better. No one way of life is right, people are fascinating, and the key to learning more about both is living it and asking. Thanks for sticking along with my rambles here, I hope it was at least entertaining!