Reserving through Global E&S Something extremely new that was needed to figure out for my study abroad was the mandatory two-week quarantine in order to enter South Korea. I landed in Korea during the second week of August and completed my quarantine towards the end of the month. For exchange students, since we were long-time visitors that needed a visa, we were required to quarantine on our own. Therefore, Korean universities all partnered with an organization called Global E&S, and all exchange students were recommended to reserve their quarantine through this organization. The cost was even a little less than the average price of quarantine stays, and we were able to pay beforehand before our flight. Once again due to the high number of students that were traveling to Korea on similar days like us, these quarantine spots filled up very quickly, so I highly recommend immediately booking it once your flight is confirmed. Each school had a different limit amount of spots for quarantine, and therefore I knew a few people who had to reserve their quarantine through other programs. The quarantine price at Global E&S also included all meals, the two COVID tests that you take, and a Korean sim card. We had to pay transportation costs separately on our last day, one for the taxi from Incheon Airport to the hotel and the taxi fees for the two COVID tests so make sure to bring Korean cash or have a foreign-friendly credit card to be prepared for these costs. Having a Korean sim card was pretty helpful in some ways because the wifi at my hotel was at times very weak and for other students that I met, they used it to order food delivery if they did not like the meals. Daily Meals For the meals, I personally was okay with it, there were some days where I did not enjoy it as much, however, I was pretty happy that they were overall pretty balanced. For breakfast, they would usually get bread and bento boxes with rice and soup for lunch and dinner. A bigger issue for my food was that the portions of these meals were much larger than what I usually eat and therefore a lot of the food had to go to waste. For drinks, they provided around thirty water bottles and provided many juice boxes and milk boxes that they will give with their meals. No Trash Pickup Continuing with the food waste, our hotel did not take away our trash until our check out day and therefore I had to separate food trash and clean all of the plastic containers that our food came in to reduce smells as much as possible. The hotel recommended flushing down our food waste, but I did not want to risk clogging the toilet and therefore mostly collected my food waste into containers and only flushed liquids like the soups and the milk boxes. Highly recommend cleaning them out daily before they start to smell and become extremely gross. At the end of quarantine, my room was filled with trash bags and other bags that had washed plastic containers and utensils.
My Experience...
Now for how my quarantine experience was…aside from this one issue, it was pretty okay. This issue exclusively only happened to my room. On the night I got to my room I realized that my bed was covered with lots of fine black particles. I was so confused at first, and still to this day do not know what it exactly was. Then I saw the area right to my bed was also all covered in black particles but they were even bigger pieces. They were extremely fine and would smear if I tried dusting them off. Eventually, I found out that they were coming from my AC, and every time I turn on the AC, the same particles will fall on my bed again. Not knowing what to do I called my parents and they ended up calling the hotel staff to ask to get a new room. I also saw other dirty spots that had things like hair and food crumbs. I did not expect the room to be 100% spotless clean, but at this point, I felt extremely uncomfortable staying in this room for the next 14 days. Even though I felt bad for asking for a new room, my parents were also worried for me because those black particles could have possibly been mold or ashes. However, the hotel staff said that I could not change rooms and told my parents that “your daughter has high cleaning standards” and so I could not do anything about it. How I Went Through it In the end, I could not get my room changed nor get it vacuumed. The only solution they had was to give me new sheets to cover over the particles. I was very thankful to bring cleaning wipes and a lint roller because these black particles could not be dusted off, a lot of force was needed with the lint roller to completely remove the particles. Every time I turned on the AC I had to avoid my bed for a good twenty min and then I would use the lint roller to take off any particles that would get on. Overall, I did enjoy the relaxing time alone, however, I could not fully be comfortable in my room during my time in quarantine. However, my favorite thing about my experience was that I got really lucky with the view from my room. I enjoyed looking at the sunset every day and often found myself just sitting by my window looking at the view. Other things I enjoyed doing were catching up on TV shows and exploring all the channels on the TV, watching new reality shows and dramas that I have never seen before.
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