Seoul Orientation and Myeongdong!

OKAY. This is the third time I've typed this post. -_- the stupid Blogger app I downloaded keeps deleting my posts for no apparent reason. SO I'll retype this AGAIN, but I'm keeping it short and sweet.

-Three hour layover in Tokyo. Spoke lots of Japanese and felt indescribably nostalgic.

-Boarded plane to Seoul. Everyone was exhausted. Nearly all the people in our group fell asleep before the flight even took off, including myself.

-Landed an hour and a half later in Seoul. Filled out customs forms. Claimed luggage. Had a VERY warm welcome outside the airport by the members of YES and I-EARN, two organizations that run inbound exchange programs to Korea. To future NSLI-Y Korea scholars, all I'll say is that it was full of unexpected cameras.

-Took hour bus ride to the youth hostel we would stay at for the next couple of days. Arrived around 12:30 in the morning. The hostel was SO nice, especially after Colombia's dorms. I shared a room with five other girls who I think are pretty darn fantastic.

-Went to sleep around 2:30 after getting settled in and taking advantage of the hostel's free wi-fi.

-Woke up the next day around 7:30ish. The sun rises so early here! Breakfast was delivered to our room (yes, delivered!) around 8:15. Showered in the super awesome (for real!) hostel showers, and then I went down to the third floor for orientation with my roommates. We listened to lots of speeches and presentations, including a few from the U.S. Embassy here in Seoul. We also had more typical exchange orientation presentations. Then at 1, we met our supporters! Our supporters are native Korean college students (who do speak English) who we will meet with twice a week for language practice and cultural trips. I'm in a group with Amy and Erick, and our supporter is Yoori, who is so sweet! All the students and supporters played icebreaker games for a bit, and then we went out for our "mission". Our group's was to go to this children's museum to learn about ancient pottery? Haha, something along those lines! It was my first time really seeing Seoul, and this city is amazing! It's the rainy season here though, so it was pouring down! We went to the museum and hung out with Yoori for awhile, and went out for bibimbap, the yummy dish for which the blog was named. Then we went back to the hostel.

-The next day was basically another day of orientation, but afterwards we had some free time after dinner! A few of us walked to Myeongdong, a shopping district fifteen minutes by foot away from the hostel. I LOVE MYEONGDONG. I went there with Amy and Jacqueline, two of my roommates, and we walked around and shopped and just had an awesome time. Amy went to Korea for a couple weeks last summer, so she knew a lot about the area! We went to this restaurant called Canmoro and ate this awesome sherbet with fruit and it was super yummy. After we walked around more, and I bought a hair pin and some earrings. A lot of us wanted to buy clothes, but in Korea you typical aren't allowed to try on tops because it's possible to get makeup on them? Which makes sense I guess, but I personally don't want to buy most of my clothes without trying them on, especially since I don't want to deal with wanting to return an item in a country in which I don't speak the language. haha. XD Anywho, the past few days were awesome and I bonded a lot with the other NSLI-Yers.

-Now I'm at my host family's (I've been here for a few days!) and I've started my uni classes at Sogang! I'll post more about these later so this post won't be so long, haha. Sorry this post was lacking in detail, haha, I'm kind of sick of writing about the exact same things for the third time. Until next time!

-Grace

Plane Thoughts

Currently I'm on a plane to Tokyo! Us (meaning the other NSLI-Y scholars and I) have a three hour layover in Tokyo before boarding another plane to Seoul. I am BEYOND excited to go back to Japan. It's only three weeks shy of a year since I returned from the country that changed my life. It's going to be indescribably nostalgic to walk through the airport. After I leave the plane I'll see the same "Welcome to Japan" sign that greeted me last year, and it's just...it'll be crazy, haha. Deja vu much? Anywho, I can't wait to speak some Japanese, and I'm dying to pick up a bottle of Oi Ocha (the green tea I drank like, every day last summer).  Orientation in New York City was pretty swell! On July 1st I left my house at 4AM to go to the airport and catch my 7AM flight. There I met four other NSLI-Y students, all from the Houston area. We flew to North Carolina, waited a short half-hour layover (thank goodness there were no delays on the first flight!) and then took another short flight to Newark, New Jersey, where we took a shuttle bus to NYC. There were some students already there, so we mingled a bit and then I got settled into my room...which was...ah...terrible, to be quite honest. Columbia University's campus is gorgeous, but the dorms (or at least the building we stayed at) are in very poor shape...extremely old and dirty, peeling paint and walls that were once white were now a sketchy brownish-gray color. And don't even get me started on the restrooms. But other than the accommodations I had a fantastic time! My roommate, Jenna, was super awesome and she's from Hawaii, so we talked a lot about the differences between Hawaii and Texas and it was pretty cool. After getting somewhat settled we went to the campus plaza and chilled with the other exchange students and played icebreaker games. It was super weird seeing everyone from the Facebook group in "real life", haha. After dinner and icebreaker games, groups of us walked around New York (we had to stay within ten blocks of Columbia, though), and we got bubble tea and just walked around after being on planes all day, haha. Then we went back to the dorms and played card games, haha. Everyone is super chill and overall a fantastic bunch-I'm really enjoying getting to know everybody! The next day we had a pretty standard exchange orientation type presentations. As this is my second foreign exchange, I was pretty familiar with all the things they talked about regarding language-learning, being foreign, etc, but they had some fantastic Korea-specific tips that I'm quite grateful for. We also listened to a presentation by a representative from the U.S. State Department (who sponsored our scholarships), and two alumni, Elaine (NSLI-Y Korea Summer 2011) and Dmitri (NSLI-Y Semester 2011, and returning for an NSLI-Y Korea Year soon) gave presentations and talked about their experiences. We had a Q and A with them and Seohyun, a really sweet Korean girl who's one of our representatives in Seoul. It was really informative and I'm glad they were there to give us advice and such! I ended the night by going out for dinner with a few of the other students (Cat, Navya, Kate, and Christine) to Tom's Restaurant, which is apparently the restaurant that they filmed Seinfeld in! I never watched the show, so I was unaware, but that was pretty cool anyway, haha. Then we walked around somewhere and then went back to the dorms.  The next morning was our flight to Korea! The sun rises a lot earlier in New York than I'm used to in Texas, so I woke up at like six-thirty ish. I re-arranged and re-packed my suitcases (TSA totally messed them all up. -_-), grabbed a quick breakfast at the Columbia cafeteria, snapped a few photos of the campus, and then at 9:30 we all left by shuttle bus to the airport. Our flight from NYC to Tokyo takes 13 hours-I've got exactly 7 and 1/2 left. This airplane is AMAZING. You see, I was really dreading the long flight, especially because I flew with Delta last year to Japan and it was horrible-the plane was old, and there were no tvs or anything. I've been pleasantly surprised here though! Not only is the Delta staff super friendly, but each seat has an individual tv, filled with games/music/tv episodes/movies...and GOOD ones, too! I spent the first ten minutes or so of my flight trying to nap (I had a huge headache), but then they served the first meal and my headache went away after that. The airplane food isn't fabulous, but it wasn't horrible either. Then, I watched The Incredibles, and then some Korean movie called Always, which was about this blind girl falling in love with this ex-boxer security guard dude who risked his life in some underground ring to get money so she can have a surgery to regain her eyesight...it was a typical Korean drama, haha.  And so, here I am. I've got Good Time by Owl City and Carly Rae Jepsen playing on my iPhone while I sip apple juice and type up this lengthy blog post. I'm feeling really great. In the past few days I've met some fantastic people and I've already made great memories. I can't wait for what's yet to come! From 34052 feet in the sky somewhere above Canada's Yukon province (according to my tv), until next post! -Grace

Placement!

A couple weeks ago I got my host family! I will be living in Eunpyeong-gu, Seoul! Eunpyeong is on the edge of Seoul, near the mountains, and it's a newer district and still developing So, it's a little more on the "country" side of Seoul, or at least that's what I've gathered from the internet. Apparently a lot of Koreans go here to go hiking!

So, in my opinion, it looks like a great mix of both the modern city life and natural sights that Seoul has to offer. I CANNOT wait. :D Eunpyeong looks fantastic. I've outlined it in green in the map above, and the college where I will be taking Korean classes everyday, Sogang University, is in Mapo-gu, which I've outlined in purple. So, I'm not too far away! Using Google Maps I've been able to figure out that my daily commute will be roughly 40 minutes by bus, which is not too bad at all! It's actually quite similar to the time it took me to get to school in Japan. And I love public transit (in Asia, haha), so I'm quite happy.

Now, for my host family, I have a host father who's an architect, a host mom who's a cook (YUMMY KOREAN FOOD! <3), a host grandmother, and a 21 year-old host sister. However, there was also a message attached to my host family information that my program sent me, and I had the message translated (since my Korean is...ah, well...yeah). The message said was from my host sister, who said she was 18, and she also said that there are five people in her family, and that's she's excited and wants to go to the movies and visit rice fields with me on the weekends and such. Sounds great, right? And it is! I'm thrilled with my host family, they sound fantastic. The only problem I have is that my information from NSLI-Y said that there are only FOUR members in my host family (the mom, dad, grandmother, and 21 year old sister), but the message was from someone who said she's eighteen, and who also said there's five people in her family. So, I'm a little confused, but I'd be totally happy with either situation, haha. Unfortunately, I cannot contact my host family at this time. The email address NSLI-Y included with the information is wrong. I wrote up an email to my host family, and when I tried to send it, the email bounced back, and gmail said that the email address did not exist. So, either my host family wrote it down wrong or NSLI-Y made a mistake. When I discovered this I emailed NSLI-Y, but unfortunately they don't have any other email address listed. So, I guess I'll find out about my host family situation when I get there! But it's all good since I love surprises. :P

I leave on Sunday! :O Oh my goodness. There's still a ton left for me to do! I have to finish packing and last minute shopping, and I need to buy host family gifts as well! So, I'll update soon!

Pre-Departure Ups and Downs

Orenmanyeyo! It's been awhile hasn't it? I've been crazy busy with all the usual end-of-the-school-year chores. I've got final exams this week and next, the SAT on June 2nd, banquets, theatre stuff, and a ton of stress. These days I feel dependent on caffeine to get me through the day in place of a good night's sleep. but I've just gotta tough it out until next Thursday, my last day of the chaos that's been Junior year. Roughly five weeks until I leave for Korea. Between now and then, I'll go to Disney World for the first time in my life, say goodbye to one of my closest friends, begin to learn my fourth language, receive my host family, and prepare for this life-changing experience. I'm much more nervous this year than I was around the same time last year.Americans are exposed to more Japanese culture as opposed to Korean culture over the years, so last year I felt like I knew what I was getting into. With Korea, however, I feel like I'm in a fog that won't clear until I step off the plane in Seoul. I can study and read about the Korean culture as much as I can, but I still feel uncertain about it. In the dark. Like taking a test over a book you didn't read. But the newness of everything is indescribably exciting, and I know I'm ready. As my departure date draws closer feel more and more confident in myself and my abilities. I'm good at picking up languages. I'm independent. I'm easygoing and flexible. I'm an optimist and a life's-what-you-make-it kind of girl. Despite my nervousness, I still feel confident that I can do this. is it possible to be nervous and confident at the same time? Haha, I'm not sure. But right now, this is how I feel. And I love it. Because it means I'm feeling like an exchange student, something I know I was just meant to be. Last summer in Japan confirmed that. There's just no way to explain how undeniably right it feels to be where you were meant to be, doing what you're meant to do. And that's how I feel when I'm studying abroad. Everything just falls into place. So Seoul, bring it on. ;D I'm ready.

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

Countdowns and Comparisons

So, it's April 1st, 2012...three months before I depart to my NSLI-Y orientation in New York City, and then to Korea! I'm quite excited, and whenever I start thinking about the amazing experience I'm going to have this summer I get all happy and start grinning like crazy...which looks a bit weird if, say, I'm walking down the hallway at school with this huge stupid grin on my face...but I digress...three months seems like so long! Perhaps it's just because when I found out I was going to Japan last year, I didn't find out until mid-to-late April (I don't remember the exact date), which was a little less than two months before I would  leave for Japan. So, this time around it seems to be a longer wait.

Just typing that above, I realized that I am comparing this journey with my experience with Japan last year...which I find I have been doing quite a lot lately. Which is unsettling to me. I don't want to be comparing my Korea experience to the one I had in Japan. South Korea and Japan are some similar traits, but they are completely different countries. I feel like people categorize China, Japan, and the Koreas into one big blur of...Asian-ness, for the lack of a better term to describe it. The architecture, foods, culture, and history of these three countries are often confused with one another, especially to people who haven't studied the differences as closely as others. But, looking beyond what little we are taught in American school about other countries of the world (other than very basic and generalized information that most forget within a short period of time) there are such differences between the countries. South Korea is not Japan. Japan is not China. China is not North Korea, nor is it South Korea or Taiwan or Vietnam.

Apart from the cultural traits, the aspects of the NSLI-Y program are much different than the YFU Japan program my scholarship went through last year. With YFU, the program was very focused on immersion. I lived with a host family and went to a Japanese high school my entire stay. Which was great, because I was interacting with mostly Japanese people, and wasn't speaking very much English, and got to see how life is in Japan on a normal basis. With the summer NSLI-Y program, I'll be going to language school everyday with the other American scholarship recipients. And although I will be staying with a host family, I won't be going to high school (summer students don't go to Korean high school during their stay, but the semester and year students do), so it's unlikely I'll interact with many Korean high school students. Both programs are fantastic, but the goal of NSLI-Y is language proficiency, while I feel that YFU was more lifestyle-focused. Because of the different nature of the programs, I feel that it's unfair to compare the experiences with each other. I had a fantastic time in Japan and I have no doubt that I'll have an equally amazing experience in South Korea! But it'll definitely be a different experience than Japan, and I want to view it as such (which is difficult for exchange students!). One of my favorite phrases is that "it's not better or worse, it's just different!", which is the mindset I want to have while participating in the NSLI-Y program.

My main point (although I feel that I've strayed far from it, with my rambling and whatnot!) is that I don't want to compare Japan with Korea. Yes, they are both in Asia. Yes, they have a few shared aspects of their culture. But, Japan is not Korea, nor is it vice versa. I'm going to try my best to dive head-first into the experience, with an open-mind, fresh eyes, and loose expectations. I want to see South Korea for how it is, not in comparison to Japan. If I can do it, then I think I'll be able to fully immerse myself in South Korea and get the most out of my journey. :)

Thanks for reading!

Awkward, yet necessary first post. :)

Welcome to my blog! :) My name is Grace, and I'm a seventeen year old high school student from Texas. For the most part, I'm just an average person. But something that sets me apart from the typical American teenager is my experience with living and studying abroad. This blog, in particular, will document my adventures as an exchange student in Seoul, South Korea. Stick around if you're interested! Meanwhile, here's a bit about me, as I think it's important to explain the kind of person I am so that you, as a reader, will know a little about the person whose viewpoints and opinions you'll be reading about in the future.

Basics: Female. 17 years old. From Texas.

My Interests and Hobbies: I enjoy writing, music, martial arts, shopping, penguins, purses big enough to hold all the random stuff I insist on carrying around, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, not Twilight, photography, noritama, Japanese, world geography/history, foreign cultures and languages (Korean will be language #4!), being a theatre techie, procrastinating, fish, Powerade Zero, and the internet.

Background: Grew up in the Dallas area. Half-Vietnamese from my mom's side, but quite frankly, I look white. For some reason, people always look shocked when they see I'm able to use chopsticks. -_- Um. Yes. I've been doing karate/tae kwon do/various martial arts for roughly nine years. I'm also a theatre techie. Before I went to Japan (see below), I had never been out of the country, so I feel it's fair to say that for a long time I lived a fairly isolated life-all that I really knew was in the small, middle class suburb that I grew up in for fourteen years. And then I moved to Houston, Texas and my life gradually began to change.

Japan: Yes, Japan gets it's own section. It's that important to me. :P Haha. Anyway, in the summer of 2011 I traveled to Hiroshima, Japan, where I became a foreign exchange student under the Japan-U.S. Senate Scholarship through Youth For Understanding (YFU). I lived in Hiroshima for six weeks, and they were the most amazing, life-changing six weeks of my entire life. I lived with the most amazing host family (whom I miss to pieces!), attended an all-girls Japanese high school (that I'd give anything to return to and visit), and experienced a city full of culture, history, and vibrance. In Hiroshima I met Marin, who was trying to spend a year in America, also through YFU, but didn't have a host family yet. And so, we worked things out and she's currently spending her exchange year here in Texas with my family.

Japan totally changed my life. I spent six weeks living an entirely new life in a country know to the world as the land of sushi and samurai, and explored the depths of it's culture and lifestyle, away from other Americans and even other English speakers. I grew as a person as my language skills thrived and I experienced the ups and downs-yes, there are both, but the ups far outweigh the downs, and if anything the downs helped me grow-of being immersed in a culture so different from what I was used to. And I loved it. Being on exchange, and being in Japan, just felt so right to me. In Japan, I felt like, personality wise, it was a perfect fit. At the end of the six weeks covered by my scholarship I couldn't believe I had to leave. I wasn't ready to leave, it was too soon. But as soon as that plane landed back in Houston I searched for more ways to get back overseas.

How I Became an NSLI-Y Scholar: As I am highly involved in the exchange community, I know great deal of information about dozens of the exchange programs that exist out there. So, with the knowledge of all the different programs and scholarships available to me, I set out on a quest to find one that fit me best.

For most programs, you pick a country and pay tuition (ranging from 6000$ to 9000$ for a summer program and 7000$ to 15,000$+ for a year or semester) to go on the program. For others, like Rotary, you put down a list of countries you are interested in and you'll be assigned to one of those countries. Some programs (that go through other programs in the bigger picture) are scholarship only, meaning that you cannot participate unless you win the scholarship. These are usually highly competitive and include CBYX, YES, and NSLI-Y, which are all sponsored by the United States Government. Because I'm unable to miss school to go on exchange at this time, I decided to again apply for summer study abroad programs (although most (including NSLI-Y) give both summer and long-term options).  NSLI-Y places a ton of emphasis on language learning, which is something that I also value because I firmly believe that a country's language offers a huge amount of insight into their culture, lifestyle and history. In fact, a few of my favorite moments from my exchange in Japan were the "click" moments I felt when I realized that I was speaking and understanding so much Japanese. So, I felt that NSLI-Y would be a great fit for what I was looking for. Because my host family in Japan was half-Korean, I had become quite interested in the Korean culture, prompting me to put Korea as my first choice on the application.

As you're probably aware of, after months of waiting I found out two days before my birthday that I've been selected to receive an NSLI-Y scholarship to spend seven weeks in Seoul, South Korea, and I am so grateful! After applications, essays, and interviews, I'm still shocked that I got the scholarship. Thank you to the State Department and NSLI-Y for giving me this incredible opportunity and I'll certainly make the most of it!

Blog Name? My blog is a semi-clever play on the words Bi Bim Bap, which is the name of a Korean dish of mixed rice, vegetables, and meat. Although I have yet to try the authentic Korean version, I've had the Vietnamese adaptation and I love it, and well, I wanted a creative name for this blog. Hey, it was the best I could do. XD

What This Blog Will Cover: I'll be writing about my pre-departure experiences, exchange in general, the NSLI-Y program, and of course my experiences living in Seoul with my host family and attending Korean classes at Sogang University. Those are just the basics though, and if you have any comments or suggestions feel free to comment below each post!