2012 EISC Session I Participant: Pooja VenkatramanHarvard University, USA The trick of traveling well is not an easy one. Most people manage to mess up something. Badly handled logistics, poorly planned itineraries, a fatal shortage of snacks. Trips have so many opportunities to fall apart. It was lucky, then, that the Korea Institute and Ewha University made it impossible for my trip to Seoul to fail. It began, for instance, with a pair of plane tickets that I didn＇t have to pay for, and that＇s always a good sign. "The problem with this campus," I declared to my roommate a few days later, after my jet lag had stopped making everything look so blurry, "is that it＇s so pretty that I just want to drop out and come here full-time.""Preach."This as we walked with beautifully maintained trees on one side and an exhibit of ancient Korean relics on the other, on a path leading to a massive, glass-and-steel structure built literally into the side of a mountain. The balance of the traditional with the modern is visible nearly everywhere on campus and made even going to class a joy. Not that class wasn＇t enjoyable in and of itself. With Economics in the morning, a long lunch break, and then nearly three hours of rigorous Korean language study in the afternoon, our weeks Monday to Thursday were delightfully packed (in a good way). The Korean course in particular was exceptional. Being directly in the path of a non-stop surge of full-speed Korean every day certainly wasn＇t easy, but never have I improved in a language as quickly as I did there. Fridays were reserved for field trips that took us to different parts of Seoul: the Korean Folk Village, the DMZ, an amusement park, and even the House of Sharing, a museum and home for former Korean "comfort women," women captured and enslaved as young girls by the Japanese army during World War II. The best days, however, were the weekends, when we could indulge fully in the delicious food and blossoming friendships the city had to offer. Between other Harvard students at Harvard Summer School, international students studying at Ewha, and Korean students in both, there was no limit to the new connections we could form. Whether it was eating dinner in now-infamous Gangnam, going out for karaoke and bingsu, or seeing (okay, dancing around outside of) a Big Bang concert, it was my friends, both old and new, that made the my trip so memorable.And it is in the people that the secret strength of the Ewha program lies. Korea is a beautiful country - exotic, exciting, unbelievably advanced - and there is no shortage of things to do and places to see. But any new city, even one as incredible as Seoul, can quickly become intimidating if faced alone. Between Ewha and Harvard, we had the freedom to explore and experience Seoul however we wanted, but still enough structure to keep us feeling like someone was looking out for us. Sometimes in big ways, like So-Young Kwon and the rest of the Ewha staff tirelessly organizing countless trips and activities for all of us. And sometimes in small, like the day Susan Laurence gave me and my roommate a free pass to skip class so we could come and eat cake.