Volunteering Opportunities in Korea

A great thing about our exchange program was that they had internships and volunteering opportunities for students. One of the opportunities that we've mentioned in a previous post was volunteering to teach English at a middle school. Initially we had planned to only teach for a semester, but we loved it so much that we decided to do it for the year. Although it was intimidating at first, but by the end of the year we became a lot more confident and we learned a lot from our students. This was definitely one of our most favorite times in Korea. We taught English to a 3rd year class and most of them were already fluent in English so our goal was to challenge them and encourage them to improve their speaking skills. Since it was our first year teaching we did a lot of trial and error and we spent a lot of time preparing lesson plans. Rather than making them learn from a book we challenged them with a variety of activities that kept them engaged such as spelling bees, critical thinking games, speaking games and so on. Overall it was one of the most rewarding experiences and we really recommend other students studying abroad to volunteer and take advantage of opportunities offered to them. This opportunity made us want to possibly pursue a teaching career in the future and having obtained a year experience under our belt will really benefit us in the future.

Some of our students playing a Jenga english game that consisted of  various challenges on the blocks! 

Pizza party on the last day of class ! 

Seasons in Korea

Since I spoke about the Holiday season in Seoul Kai and I thought we should make a post on the different seasons in Seoul and write a little something about them and what each season has to offer. Having the opportunity to live in Seoul for almost a year gave us the opportunity to experience all the four seasons which was really interesting because we come from a place where it is always hot !
                                                     

                                                       SPRING IN KOREA
 The one thing we really loved about the Spring in Korea was the beautiful scenery. We had previously made a post on the Cherry blossoms in Korea, but we also want to share how beautiful our campus looks when everything is in bloom. Also we didn't really mention the Cherry blossom festival we went to so we'd like to share that as well and Spring festival season at universities which we also mentioned in a different post!

SUMMER IN KOREA 

Summer in Korea is definitely the worst but even though the heat is almost unbearable, at least it was for us, but we really liked going out on summer nights when it cooled down a little. There's always something to do especially in places such as Hongdae. This is an area where many people mostly college students spend a lot of their time. There are places to drink, sing, eat and of course to shop, but our most favorite part about taking trips to Hongdae in the summer were the street performances. You could find all kinds of genres being played from indie to hip hop. Hongdae is a very well known area for hip hop. We didn't take many pictures that could accurately represent the summer like we did for the other seasons, but we thought we'd highlight and focus on what we liked doing the most and it was spending our summer weekend nights in Hongdae.  Also Seoul is a 24/7 kind of place so after a night out with friends in Hongdae's most popular bars and clubs there were always a million places to eat all kinds of food.  

Both street performance pictures were taken by our friend Jacob. For some reason all we had were videos of these performances. 

Eating pizza in a popular hang out area of Hongdae. By this time Pizza Hut was only doing take out so we bought our pizza and ate it outside at a near by park were many people come to hang out with friends and drink and eat and all the good stuff. 

     
                                       
                                                             FALL SEASON IN KOREA
Like the spring all though things are dying instead of blooming the fall time in Korea is also very beautiful. It starts to get a bit chilly and we start taking our jackets out, but for university students the fall means taking out their school's university letterman jackets and representing their school anywhere they go and like them we followed the trend! It's something that is definitely not done in the United States so for us it was something very different and we really liked it. This jacket tradition also applies for the winter!

These pictures starting from the top are all of our campus and the surrounding areas! 

It's quiet popular for students to buy jackets in groups. You can customize your jacket and choose the colors. You can even write your initials or anything you want on it, you also get to pick out a number. In this picture we're with one of our university friend who happened to have the same jacket as us! 

This is our friend Chris modeling the school jacket for us and also trying out different jackets at the shop. 

We actually ended up buy in more than one jacket. We bought black ones the first semester and the next semester we were so tempted that we bought a new one this time we chose maroon and black! 

                                                       WINTER IN KOREA

Our favorite time of the year has always been winter, but in Korea we were able to experience it in a whole different way then what we were used to! From the first snow to the holiday season we really do love winter. Winters in Korea are extremely cold temperatures fall below zero and though we were not used to such temperatures we handled the winter better than we thought. One thing we didn't like very much though was how dangerously slippery sidewalks and streets could get and our campus as well. It was so difficult walking at times! Also when the first snow falls we learned from my friends that people go out and by themselves new clothes or something nice and couples go on a date to celebrate the first snowfall!

The first snow but you can't really see the snow here! We did take a picture from our dorm before heading out which shows all the snow that gathered.