Making International Friends
Written by Nancy Shao, Foster undergraduate
One of the best decisions I made in Korea was signing up for the intensive Korean language classes. Even though it was two hours every day Monday to Friday, I learned a lot of Korean and really bonded with my amazing classmates. We had people from the Netherlands, England, Phillipines, China, Canada and America all in that one classroom. It was the first time I was in such a diverse situation. We all became really close friends and it makes me sad to think we will probably never all be gathered in the same place again.
Our teacher was really nice too even though she didn’t speak much English, we would communicate with bits of Korean, English and Charades. By the end of level 1, we learned how to order food, tell time, haggle and read. Reading is really important I realized. You just feel so insecure when you’re in a country where you are illiterate. You don’t know where you are if you can’t read road signs and it’s hard to find restaurants and even the bathroom. Life got a lot better in Korea after I learned how to read. It was like the world finally started making sense. Karaoke was definitely a lot easier. I also realized I lived next to a lot of fried chicken and beer places.
