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.

Holiday Season in Seoul

This semester was definitely the busiest and most fun semester ever. Seoul during the holiday season is an awesome experience and everywhere you go everything is decorated. Offices, malls, department stores, hospitals, coffee shops and many other places. Although holidays like Christmas are not celebrated in the same way as in the U.S. it doesn't mean that there is no Christmas spirit. I've never loved the holiday season more! Christmas music everywhere and beautiful sights to see. In Korea Christmas is more of a couple holiday so usually people spend it with their significant other or their friends. It's very different from what my sister and I are used to. We spent the holiday season with our friends. We went to Lotte World and ice skated which also happened to be the first time we had ever been ice skating all of us. Lotte World also had a Christmas parade which we happened to catch ! Afterwards we went out to eat some Kimchi Jjigae and we also tried the most delicious kimchi ever. I'll leave you guys with a few pictures I took of everything Christmas and festive things!!

 Lotte World at night looks  beautiful.

Ice skating with my awesome friends! We were all beginners and terrified but after a while we got the hang of it and luckily none of us fell !! Kai was the only one who had experience ice skating. 

While the iced was being cleaned on the floor above the ice rink was the Christmas parade.

Not very good pictures but inside the subway station was a cupcake shop with really cute and delicious cupcakes!

On our way out of Lotte World outside the trees and bushes were covered in Christmas lights !

We ended our day with the best Kimchi Jjigae we've had in a long time! Our friends introduced us to this really great restaurant near Lotte World located in Seongnam. It's really popular for its Jjigae and its kimchi which they sell it was actually 3 year old kimchi and it's the best kimchi we've tried. I just can't recall the name but I'll post it soon.

Here We Go Again

We have been back in Korea for almost 3 weeks! We would of updated sooner but we had been having problems with our laptop until now and it has finally been fixed! A lot has happened in the 3 weeks we've been back, many things have also changed. For some reason we didn't expect for things to be so different, but they are and in a sense it feels like starting all over again! I think it has to do with all our friends being gone. Sure we have some friends in Korea, but all of our close friends from last semester have gone back to their home countries and so it's been hard for us to adjust to all the changes. On the bright side although many of our friends are gone  we've met many new people and made many new friends. This semester we're taking more classes, we also volunteered to teach again and have been busy with many school activities! A lot of things have happened in three weeks so we'll post the highlights!

 

We flew with Korean Air once again. It was much easier getting through the airport this time, but the flight still felt so long. I didn't get to sleep much and neither did my sister, so we arrived extremely jet lagged. The food was pretty good and the flight attendants always look so beautiful! We wanted to take a picture of them, but it was kind of hard!

Since we couldn't sleep much we spent a lot of time playing video games! Yes Korean Air has video games! There were so many to choose from! Our favorites were of course PacMan and Street Fighter! I couldn't get a better picture of the screen, but time went by a little faster while we were playing. 

Once we arrived to the airport our program adviser Jaehoon was waiting for us ! He got us a cab and off we went to the university. We arrived on a Wednesday afternoon and there was so much traffic it took us over 2 hours to reach the school! Above is a picture of our dorm, the traffic and the view from our dorms! Last semester we failed to post a picture of our dorm, but this is what it pretty much looks like! They're actually spacious with a lot of closet space and our very own private bathroom.

This was actually our first meal in Korea. Not quiet sure what it was called, but it was spicy sea food and really tasty too. This was also the first meal we had with our exchange group! Even though we've already been in Korea for a while we have the habit of taking pictures of everything we eat! Sort of like a food diary. 

The first week of September was our birthday and some of the guys from our exchange group bought us a birthday cake and celebrated our birthday with us! We celebrated our birthday for 2 days! We had cake, Korean BBQ and of course Soju. This has definitely been one of our favorite moments in Korea so far ! 

We have yet to take pictures of our new middle school students this semester! Although the first day we met we weren't told that we were suppose to teach ! It was a lot of fun though. A lot of our students from the past semester also signed up again and we were happy to see all of them. 

Reverse Culture Shock

In a previous post we spoke about feeling homesick the first couple weeks we were in Seoul and how we coped with it. Four months later and the homesickness has returned, but this time it's reversed homesickness. We miss Seoul like crazy and most people don't understand why, especially our family. Adjusting to life back home has proven to be really difficult to us. Everything constantly reminds us of Seoul and all we ever want to do is talk about Korea. Lately we've felt really frustrated about our return home. Before embarking on our journey abroad our study abroad advisor gave us a chart that displayed the different stages of transition that students studying abroad will most likely go through as preparation. I couldn't find the exact chart but it's a chart similar to the one below which we found on IES abroad and it's terribly accurate. That chart freaked us out, it's pretty much a roller coaster of emotions and it has definitely felt that way.  We thought we'd take the opportunity to write about the most challenging things we've been experiencing so far. 

 

IES Abroad Stages of Transition Chart

                                                                     

    1. The first challenge has been readjusting our sleeping schedule. Most days we fall asleep at 7:00pm and wake up really early and then go back to sleep, but we're pretty sure jet lag is also to blame. Somedays we just sleep through the whole day and wake up in the evenings. We have to readjust this soon because there is so much to do now that we're back home! 

2. The second challenge would be boredom and alienation. Being back home is nice, but life has not been very exciting since we left Seoul. While we were in Seoul we spent most of the time on our feet exploring as much as possible. Our city is not fast paced like Seoul and there is also not a lot to do here.  We really miss walking everywhere and Seoul's amazing public transportation. We can't wait to go back to Seoul!  Also being home has changed our perspective on things. Take for example the size of things! Back in Seoul beverages and food portions are generally smaller than in North America and so after 4 months in Seoul we grew accustomed to eating less this even resulted in weight loss. We also grew accustomed to sharing our food and drinks which is something we continue to do and many people find this weird or even worse they somehow think we're just being ridiculous because nobody really shares a drink or food.  We technically just buy a meal and split it because now we feel like it's too much food for one person. We can't help it! We understand though because when we initially arrived in Seoul we felt the same way about cultural differences. We've acquired a few habits from Korea and we constantly feel judge by those around us which brings us to our following challenge. People just don't understand. 

3. Everyone has told us we have changed, some say in a good way and others (mostly just our family) think we've  changed in a bad way. We don't think we've changed in a bad way it's just that we're not the same people we were before we left. We acquired some new habits, our clothing style changed, our way of thinking changed too and our family is having a hard time adjusting to these new changes. We grew accustomed to being on our own all the time. We come from a large family so it's been difficult adjusting to this once again. Studying abroad really did change us, we are a lot more independent now then we were back then, and we also became really outgoing. We feel as if we really came out of our shells because we learned to be to take chances and we also overcame many challenges. We had some bad experiences and some really great experiences too and all these have really molded us to who we are now. Though we wished we were in Seoul for the Summer, being back home has helped us reflect on our experiences these past 4 months. 

4. Finally the most most annoying one for us has been people's reaction to our stories. Our family constantly lets us know that we talk too much about Korea and they're not interested in listening. We have the tendency to compare everything to Korea and all we hear is "You're not in Korea anymore." Even when they do listen to us most of the time they don't understand. We can't really explain just how wonderful and amazing our time abroad was and it's frustrating! Most of the time they think we're just boasting. So basically right now we're just really frustrated with the fact that we're no longer in Korea and it's been difficult to adjust back to our usual routine.

 We have been coping with these challenges by keeping in contact with all our friends back in Korea even though sometimes they just make us even more homesick. We also have our favorite Korean music playing 24/7, but this is just a habit we had in Korea too. We just need to listen to music all the time. It's been kind of difficult to do this back home though, we like to play it as loud as we can and this doesn't work back home. I think the best thing we did though was send ourselves our favorite korean foods and snacks before leaving! We received the package this morning!  

The most difficult thing has been getting our parents and siblings to understand that even though we're back home we're still on that study abroad roller coaster and we'll be on it for quite some time especially since we're going back! We know we're not the only ones that have been feeling this way. Many of our  friends have been feeling the same way so it's comforting to know that we're not the only ones dealing with all these crazy emotions! 

This is not the end

It's been almost a week since we arrived back in the states. Our last days in Korea were filled with packing, finals, goodbyes and many other things that we hardly had any spare time. Even though the semester is over and we're back in Texas it does not mean it's the end of our blog! There are still many things we did not get a chance to post about while in Korea so we will still be posting, but most importantly, WE'RE GOING BACK TO KOREA for one more semester! Originally we had only planned to study abroad for a semester, but the opportunity arose and we decided to extend our stay. Studying abroad in Korea has been such an amazing experience that we decided to stay a little longer. We will be spending the summer in Texas and returning to Seoul in August. Although we would have liked to stay in Seoul during the summer changing our flight was too expensive so our only option was to return home.

                                                            The Trip Back Home

The last picture we took of the view from our dorms. It had been raining for the past couple of days. 

The flight back home was much shorter than the flight to Seoul; it was about 13 hours from Seoul to Dallas and from there another 1.5 hour flight from Dallas to our hometown.  Our flight left to Dallas at 11:00am, but we left to the airport about a quarter to 7:00am  and this was because it took about an hour from Konkuk University to reach the airport not including traffic. The cab driver was really nice! Rather than calling an international cab one of our Korean friends called a regular cab for us and it was much cheaper. We paid about $30 each while others had to pay $40 each or more for the international cab. The cab driver gave us candy and had this television in the middle of the cab that played K-pop videos throughout the whole ride. We found ourselves singing to 2NE1 and other kpop artists which was really cool! Also the seats were so comfortable that we took a short nap. Once we were at the airport we searched for Korean Air so we could check in. Navigating Incheon International Airport was so easy and the employees were so nice! Going through security, customs and check in all took less than half an hour. We're not even kidding! After that we spent time with our friends  before boarding our flights and said our goodbyes. We made so many great friends in Seoul, we're really grateful to have met such wonderful people.  Once we reached Dallas we felt really overwhelmed. This is the part where reverse culture shock comes in. Many of our friends spoke about it, our study abroad advisor even tried to prepare us for it, and yet we were not. It must have been a mix of restlessness, stress, jet lag, and lack of sleep that made us feel so out of touch with what was going on, but I think reverse culture shock deserves it's own post because it's something no student who studies abroad can get away from. Adjusting back to life in the U.S.  has proven to be more challenging than adjusting to life in a different country. I'll leave you with a few pictures from our last days in Seoul.  

Kai's students at their farewell party enjoying potato pizza! 

My students at our farewell party! They were adorable! They got me some farewell snacks and wrote the cutest things on the board. I'll miss them a lot. :c

Me (Ro) on the left with my friend Sen on the morning of our departure. We were so sad not only because we were leaving a place we had called home for the past four months, but because this would be the last time we would see each other since we live in different states.

Hello Kitty Cafe inside Incheon Intl' Airport! It was right next to our waiting area. ^^