I used to think study abroad was something only rich people did when they were in university, but it's actually much more affordable that I thought. However a lot of factors play into how much the total cost will be. This is my experience as an American student and getting enough funding to study abroad on two different occasions.

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Exactly two weeks left until I board that plane to Korea!

In the morning, I went down to the Korean Consulate to pick up my visa. They were really fast in processing it. I went to apply Monday morning and they called me yesterday afternoon(Tuesday) to let me know it was ready!

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I mentioned before that I like to pack early. There's still two and a half weeks left before I leave, and I'm almost done packing! Since I've just been lazying around my parent's house all day I have plenty of extra time to write on this blog.

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During the Fall 2013 semester, I took three study abroad classes: Early Modern Korea and its Historical Sites in Seoul, Media Communication in Korea, and Korean (1). Overall, they were easy courses. Yonsei offers these courses so exchange students can have more free time. However, they are REALLY strict about attendance, so you start losing letter grades after a certain amount of absences/tardies. Just go to class, do the assignments, and you'll do fine.

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I'll be staying at I-house again this upcoming semester. Most people apply to SK global since they are newer and have a shower and restroom in the room. I, however really recommend staying in I-house. First of all, it's 329,000KRW cheaper than SK. They rooms come with a mini fridge inside. In SK, you have to use the fridge that's located in the lounge of each floor, and I always heard people complaining about their food being stolen.  I'm very.... protective... of my food, so I really appreciate that mini fridge.

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This title should be more like, "What to pack for Korea for the last part of Summer, the short Autumn and Winter for people living in dorms." Even though I did a lot of research last time I packed, there were some things I really didn't need and things I really wished I had packed. Here is a short guide on packing!

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Last time I studied abroad I said I would blog about it, but I failed to keep up an actual blog and started using Instagram to capture all my adventures in South Korea. Fast forward two years later and here I am again, getting ready to study at Yonsei once more. However, this time I'll make sure to keep up with this blog and share my adventure with ya'll(Yes, I'm from Texas.)

So far, I've been accepted to go by my home university. Now the real fun begins. I have to send my application to Yonsei, wait for my acceptance packet, apply for my visa and for the dorms, and the real fun part of course registration!

I'll start blogging about the application process again, so I can get used to this blogging thing. Maybe I'll start blogging about some of my daily life activities here in Texas, but I'm sure you guys want to get to the good part. Korea, here I come!

I think that this part has been the most difficult step so far, even more than applying to Yonsei and for a student visa, but it didn't have to be as difficult and stressful as they made it seem. I was stressing out for no reason worrying that I wouldn't get the classes I needed.

First of all, Yonsei sent us this e-mail:



I was like, "Oh, that doesn't sound so hard," so I waited until Aug. 6 to see if I could log into the portal. I tried to log in on Aug. 6 at 12am KST, but had no success. I tried again around 8am KST(it's not set up to open automatically at midnight, someone has to be at the office to actually open the portal) and was able to log in with the default password(birthday in YYMMDD format) they set up for me. A lot of other people were having trouble logging in, but it turned out that Yonsei had gotten their birth dates wrong.

Then on Aug. 8 at 7am KST I logged on to make my wishlist and had no problems, just remember to use IE because the portal may not work properly on another browser. I was just waiting until 10am KST to actually enroll into my classes when I saw something like this:

MAX CAPACITY:5!! I started searching everywhere to see if it was really true that only 2-5 people could enroll per class. Then I stumbled across this blog:



This girl does a really good job at guiding you through the course registration up until where she mentions that there are only 5 slots per class and that she was lucky to have gotten the classes she wanted because a lot of her friends didn't get a slot. So there I was ready to click away once the clock hit excatly 10am KST. I managed to enroll in 3/5 of the classes I wanted, and after the FIVE seconds it took me to enroll in those 3 the others said there were no more seats available! I was upset because Korean and Intro to Korean Marketing Practices were already filled up. Pretty much all the other classes taught in English said 0 seats available so I thought I was going to have to wait until the second course registration.

However, I checked again about an hour later and almost all of the classes had increased their max. capacity by A LOT! So I signed up for the two classes I was missing and felt stupid for panicking so much. I guess Yonsei just wanted to torment us by making us think the majority of us wouldn't get the classes we wanted.

I hope this saves someone in the future from panicking like I did. You'll most likely get the class you want!

UPDATE 7/21/15:
So people have told me that the registration systems is not on a first-come first-serve basis anymore. I'm not sure how it works yet, but you choose classes and then are notified which ones you made it into.

I had been procrastinating on making this blog since I got my acceptance letter(which was around 3 week ago), and I finally decided to make it since I bought my new laptop for Korea. I probably won't update it that often until I'm actually in Korea, but that won't be until mid-August. The only things I have left to do are to get an official bank statement to send my visa application and buy my insurance card. Oh, and most importantly, I still need to buy my airplane ticket but I'll wait another month until it's cheaper. I haven't really had the time to be scared or nervous about living in another country where I don't even speak the language, but I'm sure all of that will catch up to me once I finish my summer semester. I only have around 55 days until I leave and hopefully they go by fast!