Above: over fifty postcards I have collected from my students at MCC to share with Korean students this summer
I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Orlando trying to go over my checklist one more time. I have the essentials. Passports? - Check. Dive cards? - Check. Itineraries, hotel information, flight confirmation numbers? - Check. But did I actually remember everything? If I did, I will be bragging of my mad packing skills for months to come. Preparing for this trip has been a monstrously daunting task.
As soon as school ended this year, I flew to Fort Collins, Colorado to read hundreds of AP World History essays for seven days straight. When I came home I was excited to finally experience my summer, but I also dove into trip preparation. I have spent the past week doing online research, communicating with the other teachers who will be participating in the Korea Fellowship program with me, attending an online orientation web-conference with the Korea Society, buying presents for the directors of the program, ordering dehydrated "astronaut ice cream" online and hoping that it arrived at my house before I left (it did!), and much much more.
My husband and I are first traveling to Yap, one of the Federated States of Micronesia, and to Palau to spend the next two weeks diving and enjoying the beautiful blue seas of the Pacific. Psyched would not begin to describe our emotions...I'm so excited I don't know if I will be able to sleep tonight. But I suppose I had better - because in the morning I have to endure a two or three hour flight to Houston, followed by a seventeen and a half hour flight to Guam, accompanied by a two or three hour flight to Yap. Yikes!
After our trip, my husband will be flying home and I will be flying on to Seoul, Korea by myself. Once I reach Seoul, one of my students, Jenny Park, will hopefully be meeting me in the airport to help me navigate the city! I will then have a day and a half in Seoul to visit with Jenny and her family before meeting up with the Korea Society program on July 7th. I'm really excited!
As I have looked over my checklist one last time, I feel more and more confident that I may have remembered all of the essentials! I have dozens of socks so I can enter the buildings in Korea (we were advised to pack a bunch and then pack more, and to always have a pair of socks in our purse/pocket.) When you enter buildings in Korea, you remove your shoes and put on socks. I also had to bring an umbrella and rain jacket because it will be monsoon season. For my school visit to a Korean classroom in which I will be working with a class of about fifty students, I am supposed to bring gifts, so I packed 10 packages of dehydrated ice cream and over fifty postcards with friendly messages from my MCC students. I also am supposed to have gift-wrapped gifts for the directors of the travel program, so I have gift bags, colorful "coffee table" books full of beautiful Florida scenery, tissue paper, and a Wynton Marsalis jazz CD (it's a Hals favorite). I have a semi-formal dress, professional clothes for our school visit and days at the university, semi-casual clothing...and then don't forget, we're diving for two weeks so I have fifty pounds of dive gear and two weeks of sun dresses and swimsuits. I think if security tries to figure out what I'm up to they will wind up very confused.
So to recap - I am packed, excited, and ready to go! Communication will be very spotty in Yap and Palau, but as of July 5th, I hope to be posting regularly about my adventures in Korea! :)
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