First day of PDO

Although I'm not sure this actually counts as our real PDO, the first day of orientation at Columbia in NYC was amazing. I guess I'll start from the beginning haha. I arrived at the airport around nine ish or a little before, but the 'Super Shuttle' which was supposed to take us to Columbia did not live up to its name. I ended up arriving at the school at about 11, and I had taken an 45 minute nap on the ride over (which probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, in hindsight). The driver was a little rude but he was nicer when he dropped me off, probably because he realized I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. He even directed me to the entrance of the building, which I would have never seen even though it had a NSLI-Y sign (I have a special form of blindness know as 'selective seeing' haha). There I checked in,  got my t shirt and bag of free goodies, $30 food stipend for NYC, and my room key which also lets us into the dorm building. I was a little surprised about the dorms, they are super tiny rooms with only one bed! I expected to have a roommate but apparently we aren't sharing this year. As I'm typing this, it's kind of lonely and cold in this room haha. Anyways, after I dropped my stuff off, a group of us went exploring around Columbia. They were just about to leave so I caught them right on time! We walked around the campus, went into the library that didn't actually contain any books, walked down the block and got lunch, got boba, and then just loitered for a while. We still had five more hours until we had the pizza welcome dinner and icebreakers so we went up to the desk we checked in at and basically told them we were bored haha. Coincidentally, an intern for I-earn was at the table and she decided to show us around! I'll put some pictures of Columbia here (and a selfie on the library steps):

The intern walked us around campus a bit and then we walked down the block to a church. I forget the name, but it was absolutely beautiful!

 We ended up sitting in there for a while enjoying the air conditioning. While the low seventy degree weather feels nice to this Floridian, it was pretty hot to some people. After that we went to a little Hungarian bakery, but I didn't buy anything. By the time we got back more NSLI-Y people were arriving, so we sat in the hallway and talked until half of the group left us to explore. The same group from this morning plus a few more people ended up waking back to the Hungarian bakery and eating at Insomnia cookies (insomniac cookies? Im still not sure). I had a mint chocolate cookies and it was the bomb. One of the main things I like about this trip so far is that we seem to have a lot of freedom. The told us a few boundaries, not to take the subway or a bus, and then just let us go eat wherever. When we got back from the cookies, we hung out in this little patch of grass/sculpture garden for a while until it was time to meet with people.

Then we had icebreakers before the pizza dinner. The icebreakers were actually quite fun and a lot less painful than expected. Everyone seems so nice and chill about everything, it's really awesome. Then we had pizza and lemonade out in another patch of grass in Columbia, and then left with the warning about our 10:30 curfew. We played some more games outside in the little sculpture garden

And then went inside with plans to watch a Korean movie or drama. That didn't really work, and we ended up meeting up with another group and going outside (guess where?) to play some Korean games. A guy on the trip taught us a game called 앗싸! (Assa) which is super confusing but really fun. It is basically a rhythm game but with punishments. We were all pretty bad so we never actually got to the intense punishments haha,  just 'dance for 10 seconds alone to Kpop'. Then we played charades and came inside for showers and curfew, and now I'm realizing how much we actually did today haha. I can't imagine what tomorrow will be like! But some things I did realize today was that 1) I need to wear band aids on my feet because I am already getting blisters from all the walking 2) I am really glad I brought a backpack because I have been carrying that thing everywhere and 3) it is so weird to be with a group of people who are as interested in Korea and Korean culture and the Korean language as you are. Like really weird. But also cool. It's been real, PDO day one, I'm glad you're over but I'm looking forward to tomorrow!