오랜 만이에요!

It’s been a while. You’ve gotten prettier….ah wait, those are the opening lines to Monster. Ahem. Life’s been busy! I mentioned this in a previous post but I applied to an exchange program with Yonsei University in South Korea. About a month ago, my university accepted my application and forwarded it with a recommendation to Yonsei. And so now I wait until April 30th for the official news – although everyone tells me not to worry because everyone who passes the initial application to the program through my university is accepted.

But still. 긴장! 긴장! I feel like I have little Running Man variety show subtitles floating about my head whenever I talk to someone about it. It’s not official until it’s official.

There are tons of pre-departure things to do (even though I won’t leave until August), like get everything in the world organized and all the forms filled out and orientations and info gathered. I don’t have much time left to study Korean on my own, so my independent studies have been almost completely abandoned for the time being – and thus I don’t have much to write about in the meantime.

I did just win 2nd place for my level in a small essay contest – it’s held annually for all Korean language students at the University of Michigan; the Nam Center for Korean Studies chooses an overall theme and level-specific themes for each class. My level’s optional topic was face; the overall theme for all classes was ‘seasons’. I felt like being tricky and combining the two topics, so I wrote a few lines less than a page about the ‘faces of the four seasons’. I didn’t realize that the directions said we had to write an entire page;; Oops…..

It’s exciting though! I’ve never won anything let alone competed for anything in Korean so this was an exciting opportunity to do my best and be recognized for the studying that I’ve done outside this class. I think the fact that I used some more colloquial and interesting Korean vocabulary/phrases than just what my level has officially studied contributed to my success.

Once I receive the official copy of my essay, I’ll upload a picture!^^ Just so you can laugh at the awkwardness and feel better about your own Korean abilities 🙂

In other news. . .I’m also part of U of M’s chapter for Liberty in North Korea, a fundraising and awareness group that seeks to, well, raise funds and awareness about the situation that North Korean refugees find themselves in once they escape into China. We held a benefit show several weeks ago that was an amazing success and resulted in us raising almost a $1000 more than our goal of $2500 ($2500 is the total cost for rescuing one refugee from China and taking them to a safe country – usually South Korea or sometimes the United States). I am incredibly proud of the hard work my chapter has done this year and so grateful to be a part of it! I’m excited for our visit from HQ’s nomads tonight. . .

Yes, all these Running Man gifs are quite necessary.

Thanks for reading!^^ What have you been up to lately? I’ve been partying to TVXQ’s Something and TROY’s Green Light while I study.

And today just really seems to be the day to jam to this song….