You've Got Mail!

Sixty-five days left until departure! But who's counting? :) Oh wait, ME! :D As time goes on I just get more and more excited to go to New York and Korea and meet the other exchange students and learn Korean and just everything. Sometimes I'll be daydreaming in class and I'll think about the amazing experience that this summer will be and I just start grinning to myself like a crazy person, haha.

In other news, a couple days ago I received a package from NSLI-Y! It contained some more forms (fun...), but it also had a great packet about the Korean culture and lifestyle, studying abroad in general, and best of all a Korean for Beginners book!

"Korean for Beginners"

I haven't gotten a chance to really sit down and study it yet, but I've skimmed through it and it looks like a great book to introduce me to Korean! NSLI-Y sent this to us with a note saying that this is not the book we'll be using during our classes at Sogang, but it's to introduce us to the language and the basics before the program starts.

Although my vocabulary is limited to maybe six or seven words/phrases, I can write about half of the hangul letters. XD Hey, it's a start. But I'll definitely need to start speaking practice somehow soon; Korean is difficult to pronounce, and of course when you meet someone, you don't write them a letter, you speak to them!

School ends in one month for me. Then I'll have another month in which I'll take the SAT, start seriously studying Korean, receive my host family information, start packing, hang out with my exchange sister Marin (who returns to Japan five days before I leave for Korea), and start to prepare for my second summer abroad.

I think my next few posts will be more about NSLI-Y and other State Department scholarships (or maybe just studying abroad in general?), learning languages, things I'll be looking forward to/things I'll miss, etc. If anyone has any topic suggestions, feel free to leave a comment in the box below!

-Grace