Teaching in Korea!

Hello everyone! I am delighted to tell you that I am reopening my blog! I am back in Korea as an English teacher and want to continue sharing my experiences. I promise I will do a better job at updating my blog unlike when I was a student in Korea! (Sorry for the long delays family members) I am excited to share some more experiences though so keep following if you would like! God Bless and I love you all!

Gil and CMU! :D

As I may have told some of you, my boyfriend was trying to apply to be an exchange student at Central Michigan University for the spring semester when I go back to America. It is difficult to be accepted into CMU, because there is only one spot available for all of the Korean students who want to go to compete for. Therefore, there was a lot of pressure in trying to get my boyfriend prepared for winning that one spot! The first step we had to go through in the process was taking a very difficult and a very expensive test called the TOEFL, which is used to test students on their understanding and knowledge of the English language. So my boyfriend studied very hard during the summer in order to get a good score! We were very relieved when his test scores came back with a very impressive score that many Koreans wish for! However, that was only the first part of trying to study abroad at CMU. The second step required him to send in an application answering questions like "What kinds of classes he planned to take" and "Why he wanted to study abroad as an exchange student" and of course he needed to send in his TOEFL score to show he was qualified to apply to Central. Once his application was accepted, we were able to move on to the final step of the process which was an interview conducted in English with four judges that would decide his fate on whether or not he would be the one person going to CMU in the spring. We studied very long and very hard for the interview. We did not know the exact questions that would be asked during the interview but we tried thinking of some basic questions that most interviews would use for studying abroad such as "Why did you choose to apply to CMU for exchange student?" and "How would you introduce Korean culture to foreign students while abroad?". Gil put so much effort into studying to go abroad to America and I am proud of him for trying his best. He had his interview this past Monday on September 2nd and then we had to wait until Wednesday September 4th to find out the final results. When the interview was over he told me that he tried his very best and left no regrets and it made me so proud of him! He worked so hard and guess what!?!?!?! His hard work paid off!! Gil is the one Korea University student that will be going to America to study at Central Michigan University for the 2014 spring semester!! I am so happy and so proud of him!! I cannot wait until you can all meet him!! He is so amazing and will be flying in with me when I return to America!!:)

Thank you for reading about my exciting news!! I love and miss you all and am excited to introduce you to my boyfriend!! I am so proud of him!! 

Back at Korea University!

I am back in Jochiwon and ready to start classes on Monday. I am taking more North Koreanology classes and a few public policy classes that I hope will count towards my International Relations degree. I am sure this semester will be just as fun as last semester!

Study Abroad Fall 2013!

For those who do not know already, I have extended my semester long study abroad to a full year study abroad in Korea at Korea University. I would have come back to America on August 6th if I was only staying for a semester and the summer, but now I will not be coming back to America until December 29th! I miss you all and hope to see you all then!

Yum!

I just wanted to post some yummy looking treats! 

A stick of butter!! Just kidding! It is a stick of cheesecake! It was delicious!!

This one is a mixed berry tart from a local coffee shop in Hongdae which is a district of Seoul! It was very nice to have fruit! I do not think I have ever craved fruit as much as I do now! So yummy!! 

Fun in Busan!!

I went to Busan on the weekend of Gil's birthday with a bunch of our friends after celebrating his birthday on May 16th. It was a a great weekend, filled with many activities and many different foods that Busan is most famous for. They were for the most part noodle dishes. Two of them were cold noodle dishes and the other was a warm noodle dish. We also went to a fish market and ate raw flounder fish and some eel! It was a really cool place because they had all of the fish down on the first level to pick what you want to eat because all of the fish were in their tanks to look at and then the next floor above was a restaurant where they cook the fish for you! I did not get a picture, but I will next time I go because I definitely want to go to Busan again before I leave to come back to America! It is a nice city!

Here is a picture of the group of friends I went to Busan with outside of Busan Station! 

Here is another picture of everybody!!! Such a great group of friends!

A picture of me hugging Gil in front of Busan Station!

Busan is famous for its beach which is the main reason we went to Busan! The beach is called Haeundae beach and is a very popular destination spot for people in Korea as well as tourists so it is always full of people and close to the city as you can see from all of the buildings in the background. Also, I apologize for the lack of consistency with formatting in this post. My blog does not want to cooperate today I guess.

At a coffee shop in Busan drinking a mocha ice blend! 

Taking pictures in a sky park on top of a huge mall to look all around Busan from up above!! 

At the end of the weekend before heading back to School, in front of the fountains in front of Busan station which was having a light show to music! It was quite nice!!

CNBLUE CONCERT~~!!! :)

On May 25th, I went to the CNBlue concert at the Jamsil Indoor Stadium in Seoul. It was a lot of fun and I got to go with some pretty awesome people! I went with Gil, Charles, and Tara! Their opening song for the concert was amazing and we had standing floor tickets so we were pretty close to the stage! They even did an encore which was also very nice!! They are very talented musicians and it was an amazing opportunity to be able to go to their concert and see them live! I wish you could have been there with me, Lauren! I know you love them!! It was a fun day in Seoul and then afterwards I went to Suwon to hang out with Gil and his best friend! I love CNBlue but maybe next time I will be able to see my most favorite group, B.A.P (Best Absolute Perfect) perform live!!

Yeah! They are awesome!! :)