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Tag: GW Exchange

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By jlee4946

Hi everyone! So this week is actually a really long break in Korea because of 추석 (Chuseok), Korean Thanksgiving. So while the holiday is technically 10/3-6, 10/2 is a Monday so the government made Monday a holiday, and then 10/9 is 한글날 (Hangeul Day) to honor the creation of the written Korean language. Therefore, basically Koreans have 10 days of vacations that started Saturday, and I took advantage and am currently in Hanoi, Vietnam! But here are some of my favorite Korean foods that I'm excited to eat for the rest of the semester:

• Fish cake (오뎅): for me, it's not necessarily the fish cake itself, but more of the environment of standing around the street food cart eating fish cake off the skewers, drinking the soup and conversing with the cute lady in charge of the cart. It's probably one of the things I was looking forward to the most about being in Korea and I wanted to wait until wintertime when it's really cold but gave in 2 weeks into my time here.

• Spicy rice cake (떡볶이): this is a dish that is served as street food as well as in proper restaurants. The first 떡볶이 I had in Korea was from this little restaurant next to my aunt's apartment complex and even though I'd had 떡볶이 hundreds of times over, nothing can quite beat the 떡볶이 in its takeaway box (other than my mom's).

• Korean sausage (순대): this is another dish that is often served on the streets and if you couldn't tell, I really really like street food. 순대 is basically a Korean sausage stuffed with various ingredients such as vermicelli noodles. It's definitely less meaty than American sausages and hits the spot when looking for a midnight snack.

...continue reading "5 Food Favorites from Korea!"

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Even though I arrived in Australia over two months ago, I’m going to start this blog at the beginning of my adventures in Melbourne. As of right now, we have already finished nine (!!!) weeks of classes and are headed into mid-semester break.

So rewind to July 11, the first day I arrived… Two main things shocked me: the temperature/weather and the many different ethnicities and cultures in Melbourne. Obviously being in the Southern Hemisphere, Australia is experiencing winter during June, July and August. However, when I think of Australia, I usually picture warm beaches and sunshine. This, unfortunately, is not the case in the winter months (especially in Melbourne)! I did not pack a winter jacket or scarf and wound up freezing for a lot of the first month.

My body was definitely not used to the cold weather, coming from the hot summer in the States, and it took a couple weeks to adjust. While it’s not actually freezing weather here, the temperatures would dip below 40°F and the wind would blast in your face throughout July and early August. Melbourne also famously has all four seasons in one day, which meant I never knew what to wear in the morning. Some days it would be sunny and fairly warm in the morning, but it would transition to spitting rain and cold by 3 p.m.!

...continue reading "First Melbournian Impressions"

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At first glance, Hong Kong is just like the online pictures - a metropolis built on mountains and islands; unique and majestic. Upon arrival, however, there are details available to you that an image cannot capture. Details may be small and easy to overlook, but they can reveal the real story of the environment, culture, and daily life of a place and its people. Allow my first blog post to share how I have come to know Hong Kong through its details.

...continue reading "It's All in the Details"

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By keeganblogsfromabroad

As the United 757 I was riding on banked around a large and ominous looking cloud formation on descent into Edinburgh Airport I stared intently out my window. I hoped that at any moment my eyes would pierce the lower cloud layer and catch a glimpse of what awaited below. I had never been visited Scotland  before, or any part of the United Kingdom for that matter, and despite the vast amount of information available on the internet to help me prepare I was anxious. I felt prepared, or at least I had until the plane's wheels left the tarmac. Then I thought "wow, we're really doing this." Almost 7 hours after that moment I caught my first glimpse of Scotland off in the distance, verdant, hilly, and dotted with rays of sun. It was a huge relief. In the foreground ships lie at anchor in the ocean and as we dropped lower I spotted the iconic Fourth Rail Bridge. A few minutes later the plane made a smooth landing, slightly ahead of schedule, and my day went downhill from there.

...continue reading "Arrival in Edinburgh"

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Ireland is visited and loved by thousands of visitors each year, most of whom do not have any complains. No one really tells you about the rainy weather which plagues Ireland almost every day, they only tell you to bring a raincoat. Well let me tell you now, it rains a few times a day, every day.

Despite the notoriously bad weather, the Irish are hopeful, cheerful, and fun loving. They're charming and almost everyone is willing to help a lost American trying to read her map in downtown Dublin. It's exactly the type of warm welcoming you need when you're 3,000 miles away from home.

I arrived at The University College Dublin in Ireland as part of the GW Exchange program about two weeks ago and have been enjoying it ever since. There were several receptions which allowed for international students to mingle and take part in traditional Irish dancing- which is something everyone should try at least once. I have also enrolled in several clubs since the beginning of classes which include the engineering society, food society, and mountaineering club. Clubs are the best way to meet the locals and not only are they fun and social, but they come with a ton of benefits as well! For example, each club you join (only 2 EUROS) will give you a membership card that provides you with discounts at several stores and restaurants, and comes with weekly trips to take part in.

...continue reading "Ireland! Where it rains 16/7 days a week…"

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Hi everyone! I can't believe it's already been nearly a month since I scrambled to get my suitcases' under 50 lbs the night before my flight to South Korea.

I think I have been having an abroad experience slightly different to those around me, as I have all of my extended family here in South Korea and as a result, have visited Korea several times in the past. Because of this, I believe the difficulties I have faced are unique to my experience as well, as they are for everyone's unique experiences.

Having been born and raised in the US but having spoken mostly Korean with my family my entire life, I've come to be accustomed to the traditional Korean culture and mannerisms. Therefore, an aspect I've come to notice is in general, I am treated as someone from Korea, for example when I enter a store or a cafe. However, this makes things slightly awkward when I order something and my slight American accent makes an appearance, or when the cashier asks me something that I've never heard of since I've never checked out of a store using Korean. In cases like these, my first reaction was to just nod or shake my head and pretend like I understand what's going on. However, after the first few weeks, I've come to understand what they were asking and answer appropriately.

...continue reading "Introduction to Korea"

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Me: Hi, my name is Robin Kim!
(S)he: Hi! Your last name is Kim? You must be Korean!
Me: Yeah, I’m Korean American!
(S)he: Oh, cool! So you were born in the US?
Me: Uh… Well… I was actually born in Japan.
(S)he: Oh… so you’re Japanese?
Me: Well, no. I’m Korean American! I'm ethnically Korean but born an American citizen.
(S)he: But you were born in Japan…

...continue reading "Defining Self: My Middle Ground"

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By riakkim

As my time in Korea has increased and I increasingly acclimate to Korean society, I have felt a strong longing to meet and chat with 교포들, "gyopos," a term used for Koreans who didn't grow up in Korea. Perhaps because the glow of being in Korea has begun to fade and I feel that surreal-ness fading with it, I still have not been able to make any close "Korean-Korean" friends, despite being proficient enough in the language, and instead building close friendships with Korean-Americans, Korean-Brazillians, Korean-Australians, etc.

I've found that the gyopo community here is really its own within Korea, just as it is back home in America, both feeling that they don't really belong in either place, lending me to my post title, perpetual foreigner. I can't deny my American childhood despite growing up with Korean customs, and its frustrating to be treated coldly by many of my Korean peers as well, as Koreans can be very cold, particularly to foreigners.

Yet finding my gyopo community within Korea has also been more rewarding and comforting than my Korean-American community back home, perhaps because of the short period its been and many are only here for a short period. Yet between schools and my church community, I feel that the gyopo here feel like an even tighter community, using a mix of English and Korean as we usually do, and perhaps even looking like a group of normal Koreans on the streets, yet the mutual understanding and feeling of being considered "not a Korean" in Korea and "Korean" anywhere else in the world perhaps has a stronger effect than I ever could have imagined.

...continue reading "Perpetual Foreigner"

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By riakkim

七寶/Qibao Traditional Boat Village

I'm sure you've all heard of it- China's Great Firewall, that blocks most everything convenient to Americans; our social media, video streaming sites, to our beloved Google. The obvious answer that I hear around this is "VPN!," but it was hard for me to really fathom how suffocating and suppressing it really was on the inside when I arrived in Shanghai.

The small things I really take for granted back home and in Seoul- like all my social media, all my chatting apps, Google (and not Bing), YouTube, WordPress- they're all blocked in China, and coming back from such a controlled environment felt surprisingly liberating and entirely refreshing. Perhaps it's because I'm part of a generation addicted to their smartphones and used to information, it was frustrating to not only have slow internet, but to even use sites such as Bing in order to find more information. Even when planning my brief visit towards Macau on my way back to Seoul, or trying to access my airline tickets on Gmail- everything was quite difficult and roundabout- taking far more time than it should have.

...continue reading "Great Firewall + Shanghai"

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By riakkim

After months of quite cold weather, spring has finally arrived in Seoul. While the nights are still chilly and the weather is still fickle, the moods of everyone seemed to have brightened with the better weather. Springs songs abound, and popular spring songs such as Busker Busker's Cherry Blossom Ending, HIGH4&IU's Not Spring, Cherry Blossoms, or Love, and Roy Kim's Spring Spring Spring are making their yearly rounds.

The winter jackets have been stowed away as lighter clothes take their place, and its lovely to see pastels, florals, skirts and dresses take their place. And then there are couples, which can be seen even more frequently than before, wearing their matching outfits. And much like cuffing season in the US, there is much talk floating around about who has started dating with the start of spring.

좌천로망스다리 / Yeojwa Cheonro Romance Path

I spent the past weekend in Jinhae, a part of Changwon, located in the very southernmost part of Korea along the shoreline. It's the most famous area in Korea for Cherry Blossoms, and it has many areas filled with Cherry Blossoms and accompanying festivals. We went to the 여좌천로망스다리 (Yeojwa Cheonro Romance Path), the 경화역 벚꽃길 (Gyeonghwa Station Cherry Blossom Road), and 제황산공원 (Jehwangsan Park). Each one was filled with not only cherry blossoms, but stalls upon stalls of food, gifts, and vendors, while the path was full of visitors, all taking pictures, eating, or buying food.

...continue reading "Spring, Spring, Spring"

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