Korean Category
Oluwatobi is from Houston, Texas and participated in the 2017 Korea summer program. My relationship with my host family was great from the beginning. I played with my 2 younger host sisters, and I talked to my host mom frequently. However, my relationship with my host dad was a little awkward. Anytime we would run into each other, there were rushed greetings and rushed goodbyes. I am quite a shy person, and my host dad is too. We struggled to find things to connect over. It wasn’t until one ofRead More
Jacquelin is from Irvine,CA and participated in the 2017 Korea summer program. Another tea house I’m trying out! Probably my 3rd time experiencing a traditional tea house. Out of the other tea houses, Mok Hyang I rate it a 3/5. It’s in the middle range and is not bad. But there really isn’t much of a traditional experience to it. The tea house is located on the second floor of a traditional Hanok house and is pretty small compared to other tea houses I’ve been to. We sat at aRead More
Sofia is from Mililani, HI and participated in the 2017 Korea summer program. I’ll be honest, my time with my host family wasn’t easy in the beginning. My host family and I were both very shy, and to make matters worse, none of them spoke English very well, with the exception of my little nine-year-old sister with whom I still couldn’t discuss international affairs or the intricacies of South Korean culture with. I was disappointed because I knew that the riveting and eye-opening discussions about culture and politics that IRead More
Carlie is from Dallas, TX and participated in the 2017 Korea summer program. For International Education Week I’ve decided to share one of my favorite experiences while studying in Seoul, South Korea over the summer. Every Seoul summer NSLI-Yan is required to choose a culture club to participate in each Friday during the program. I chose Fan Dance (부채춤), a Korean performing art where a group of dancers utilizes hand fans to create elegant shapes and stories. Soon after making my choice, I received some performance fans (부채) to bringRead More
Cheyenne is from LaGrange, GA and participated in the 2017 Korea summer program. It must have been a strange sight to see 50 kids crying and hugging each other at an airport terminal. It was at Incheon Airport where we were full of excitement at first, then 6 weeks later we arrived back at the airport as a bittersweet moment. For me to have the opportunity to go to Korea was a blessing itself. I have always dreamed and wished of traveling the world, and Korea was the start ofRead More
Katie is from Libertyville, IL and participated in the 2017 Korea summer program. With a bittersweet taste on my tongue, I sat on the cold metal seats of the line 2 subway returning from Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul towards my host family’s apartment for the last time. Korean conversations that no longer sounded foreign to me fluttered in and out of my ears as I stared into the harsh blackness of the subway tunnel, eyes filled to the brim with tears at what I saw. I’d spent the pastRead More
On October 17, three current students from the 2017-2018 NSLI-Y Academic Year program in Seoul, South Korea connected with two Korean language classrooms in Virginia to talk about Korean language learning strategies. The NSLI-Y students gave presentations to the students in the U.S. and the students in the U.S. had the opportunity to ask the NSLI-Y students questions. We invite you to watch the recording of the event! Please note that some of the presentations are conducted in Korean. Interested in having your classroom participate in a virtual event? CompleteRead More
Excerpts from an interview with alumna Bilqees, NSLI-Y South Korea, Summer 2015 Bilqees sought out opportunities to study Korean even before she knew about NSLI-Y. Early in high school, she started learning it online “on a whim” and later enrolled in weekly classes at a Chicago-area Korean-American Community Center. Bilqees learned about NSLI-Y in her high school Arabic class and was ecstatic to learn of the Korean language option. It is this curiosity and openness to new experiences that seems to have helped Bilqees develop her language skills as aRead More
