Seoul Mates ~ ATEEZ

Chapter 8

The end of the month approaches, and I'm now on the plane that will take me from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and then from there, I will then switch from a Delta plane to a Korea Air plane. This is the first time I'll be traveling anywhere alone, but I know I've created a good support group in Korea. I won't be completely alone when I get there. The flight from Las Vegas to LA was super short, so now I find my gate for Korea Air, and the gate that leads to my plane to Seoul. One boarding my flight, I take a seat in my seat, which is a window seat, yes. I love that. I've always loved window seats. I'm still wearing the necklace San gave me. I only take it off when I sleep or take showers, so it rarely leaves my person. One funny part was when they showed SuperM's Let's Go Everywhere, as the safety instructions. I sent the clip of Mark saying, "Enjoy yo flight," to all my friends and to MaMA. He sent laughing emojis and cringe emojis haha. He tends to cringe whenever he sees himself on camera, so it makes sense.

Finally, I land back in Seoul, Korea for the first time in almost 2 years. The first thing I have to do is find my apartment which I chose over living on campus at the dorms because they have communal showers. I don't feel comfortable showering with other people around me, so I opted for my own apartment, and I'm glad that was one of the options. I'm easily able to find my apartment since I'm quite familiar with Seoul now. It's only been a year a half since I've last been, so the city is still quite familiar to me. Yonsei University is located in the neighborhood of Seodaemun-gu, so that is where my apartment is located as well. It is relatively close to the university, so that's good. I can practically walk from my apartment to school every day. That being said, I'm not sure how far away Seodaemun and Gangnam are from each other. For those who don't know, Gangnam is where the majority of Korean entertainment companies are located. Seodaemun is known as the university neighborhood as it houses Yonsei University within the neighborhood limits. I could probably take a train if it's a bit far. I look on Naver Map and discover how far away Seodaemun is from Gangnam. Hmm, looks like Gangnam is 15km away and 18.8km by car, which is about 9.3mi away and 11.7mi by car.

I'm quickly realizing that I will have to get used to the metric system for the time I'll be here, or I won't understand anything. Everything is by "kilo", which is the metric system. In America, we use a completely different system called the Imperial system of measurement. We measure things in feet, inches, pounds, ounces, etc. Whereas, with the metric system, things are measured in; yards, centimeters, kilometers, gram, kilograms, etc. My brain needs to make a quick switch from the usual American system to the metric system. I learned the metric system in my science classes from high school, but I don't remember anything. All I remember is that everything in the metric system is measured in counts of tens. Which is much easier.

Adjusting to the new system of measurement is not the only thing that I'll have to try hard to adjust to. While all my classes I'll be taking at Yonsei University, not every student will be able to speak English fluently, so I'll have to try my best to speak Korean in order to make new friends. That is, if I make friends with other foreign students, then that would be the only exception to speak English. All other times, I will need to bust out my Korean to make friends. Learning an entirely new language on my own was not easy. I used the very helpful Korean-learning company, Talk To Me In Korean. Then, alongside using their textbooks, I also take a class at UNLV and start taking a class at Yonsei University in Korean and Literature Arts. It's similar to my major, English and Literature Arts, but my Korean course will be my double-major. I can't believe I decided to double-major in two completely different languages, but hey, I wanted a challenge. I asked for lots of advice when it comes to double-majoring in languages, and my counselor said it's a brilliant idea to double major in languages since it will help a lot in future business opportunities. I'm glad my counselor was so encouraging when I presented her with my stress of wanting to tackle double-majoring in English and Korean.