Korean Language Study Abroad

After a seemingly never-ending row of flight delays and a couple of hours stuck at Auckland Airport, the eleven of us on the programme were able to get on the plane, and we were welcomed by the Korean Air SUPER M safety video. The flight was 12 hours, and while I have gone on other long flights to Asia before, this was my longest. By the time we arrived at…Continue Reading Weeks 1 & 2: Settling in and Chilling in Seoul (literally) ❄️

Hello, and welcome to my first blog post!!! Going to Korea has always been my dream, and now that I’m here, it still doesn’t feel real! When I got the email telling me I got in, I was shocked and immediately told all my friends and family about the good news. I have been here for almost two weeks now, and since we had no plans for the first week,…Continue Reading Korea in My Eyes!

Since we arrived a week before classes started (13.12.2022), we had free time to explore Seoul. Here is a small recap of what I did the week before classes started! Group dinner at Biya: Following our first full day in Seoul (6.12.22), we decided to have a group dinner together, to catch up with everyone. We chose a place nearby our dorms called Biya (an army stew restaurant). What I…Continue Reading Exploring Seoul

The first two weeks in Korea have felt like a blur. Since we arrived, every day has been filled with exploring new places and never going to the same cafe twice. We had one free week before classes started where we had no plans, so we made the most of the fast and efficient public transport system to visit as many different suburbs as possible! Every day is a new…Continue Reading Week 1 and 2: Settling In

여기에서 together 무질서한 그대로 데카당스 이곳으로 날 던져 generation /we’re here in this together the way that it is disordered the décadence is where it’s at i jump inside, generation/ -tripleS, <Generation> As anyone would expect, moving overseas to a country where you have around the same, if not less, capabilities as a primary school kid is very chaotic and disorientating. Although it is a disorientation filled with excitement and…Continue Reading Chaos-Routine

Arriving in Seoul felt so surreal. The fact that all the signs in Incheon Airport were in Korean made me realise that we had finally made it to Korea. After a long 12-hour flight and a two-hour delay, we finally made it. At the airport, the eleven of us split up into three cars and made our way to the Korea University dorms, our home for the next three months….Continue Reading First impressions of Seoul

As I write this, I’ve been in South Korea for almost two weeks! Before my arrival, I had anticipated that it might take some time to settle in, but funnily, I already have a vague feeling that I’ve been living here for months. Suddenly moving countries and plunging headfirst into a new environment has the slightly disconcerting effect of making you feel as if your other life is simply on…Continue Reading The first week, first impressions (and my first proper snow!)

It’s strange doing mundane things in a place entirely different from your norm. We just finished our first week of classes. When I’m in the classroom, it feels like I’m just in another Korean lesson in Auckland. However, as soon as classes end and I walk out onto the beautiful Korea University campus, I remember that I’m not in Auckland or New Zealand at all.  Things have been more difficult…Continue Reading Snow, School, and other things

Through the amazing opportunity offered by the Prime Minister Scholarship Award, I was able to go to South Korea to study for three months, here is how it is going so far! 5th December Our flight was delayed, but we finally arrived in Seoul, South Korea! We collected our belongings and headed to our dorms in three vans. We each got our room key cards and found out who our…Continue Reading WEEK 1

Tuesday 11 December First day of classes today. I didn’t get enough sleep, but I woke up surprisingly easily. Felt like I was five years old again, walking off by myself to my classroom. When I walked in, it was dead silent, and people were on their phones, faces down. Our homeroom teacher is super lovely and surprisingly progressive, which was really nice. After the introductory stuff, we got to…Continue Reading First day of classes

I took on the advice we received at the Prime Minister’s Scholars orientation day and journaled almost every single day since we arrived, so here is a little wrap-up of the first week in Seoul, presented through excerpts from my journal: Tuesday 6 December It’s 10:56 pm here at Frontier House on the Korea University campus. It’s been just about 24 hours since we arrived at the dormitory. This morning…Continue Reading First week in Seoul

It is 11 pm, and I am sitting in a cafe in my neighbourhood in Seoul, writing this blog. Yes, you read that right – cafes here are open till 11 pm (some 24 hours). This is one of many moments I have had to pinch myself to ensure I am not dreaming. I am here. BACKSTORY: When the scholarship first got announced, I hesitated to apply because I thought my…Continue Reading I Am Here

As our first week of freedom drew to a close and our impending classes loomed on the horizon, I began to settle into a more regular routine. The reality of classes beginning daily at 9am and my insistence on receiving a nightly eight hours of sleep meant I began to closely watch my bedtime in the days leading up to Monday. However, this didn’t end up being much of a…Continue Reading Dorm life and settling into a daily routine

Walk in this 미로 다 아는 건 아니어도 바라던 대로 말해줘 say it back /Walk in this maze Not that I know everything but Just as I want it Say it say it back/ -NewJeans, <Ditto> Firstly, happy new year! I can’t say I was 100% looking forward to it, but like most things in life, it just fell into place. A place that is sometimes in the middle, where…Continue Reading Middle-Ditto

Classes started on the 13th of December. After our zoom placement tests, we found out on the school portal which level we would take. The level structure for Korean classes at KU’s Korean language centre is different to the University of Auckland’s. Having completed only Korean 110 and 111 at UoA, I was confident I would be put into KU’s level 2. But since there are six levels, I got…Continue Reading First week of classes

Perhaps the most pressing concern I had on my mind before I left for South Korea was the need to make friends while on the trip. Prior to leaving New Zealand, I was already incredibly close with many of the other UoA students on the trip as we were in the same 2022 Korean classes in Auckland. What’s more, we also spent significant amounts of time in the weekends and…Continue Reading Making friends

With the last few weeks being intensely busy, I haven’t been able to update what I have been doing in Korea! So here are some highlights from the last couple of weeks. Concerts I had an amazing opportunity to be able to go to these two concerts in the last month. Hoppipolla has been my favourite band with my favourite music for a long time, so it was a life-changing…Continue Reading Update

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Hope everyone is enjoying their holiday season wherever you are. By the time this blog post goes up, it will have officially been 4 weeks in Korea! Out of 12 weeks, that’s already one-third! Time is going by so fast. For us in Korea, there were no breaks over the new year, so we were at school every day, but that meant that things…Continue Reading Happy New Year! 🎊

With all my schoolwork, I haven’t had time to update the blog; somehow, it has become the new year, and so many weeks of school have already passed! I was very nervous about my first school day in a new country. After the first week passed, I was surprised at how enjoyable the teachers and my classmates made every class and how fast it would be to make new friends,…Continue Reading New Year, New Friends, New Things to Experience!

The past couple of weeks have passed me by in a blur – hence my absence from writing these blog posts! Our sixth week of classes brought with it the first somewhat serious part of the course: the mid-semester examinations! Our course’s assessment is almost entirely composed of two exam periods – the mid-semester exam and the final exam (which we sit after we finish the course). I wasn’t too…Continue Reading Mid-semester exams and seeing more of Seoul!