well, before i left for Korea, i told many people how i hoped to update my website very often with stories of living here, but i haven’t done a very good job at that yet

so it’s been over a month living here. i started school a few weeks ago and really like it! there are over 1000 students here at Yonsei University trying to learn Korean. they split everyone up into 12-13 students per class. the class is 4 hours per day with 3 breaks in between. during the 3rd hour, a different teacher comes in to teach reading. the toughest part of the class for me is memorizing the vocabulary and understanding the speaking parts because it is spoken very fast. i think with more vocab knowledge, as well as practice, i’ll be able to understand the speaking better. my class is a mix of American, Japanese, Mongolian, Spanish, German and Italian. the teacher tries to keep everything spoken in the class in Korean, but sometimes she has to briefly explain things in English. she knows a bit of Japanese too. the Mongolian guys have difficulty with both the Korean and the English… and those without English as their first language have to do some double translating when the teacher explains something in English. the class is very fast-paced, and i worry about even missing a few minutes of the class or i’ll fall behind.

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i decided a while back after visiting Korea back in February to look into the possibility of going to school there to learn the Korean language. actually, only after a few days of being there, i started having thoughts of either teaching English there or studying Hangul (the Korean language). i really liked it there, but it may have mostly been the vacation to a new country… whatever the feeling at that time, when arriving back in the US, i’ve been craving to go back and have been studying Hangul on and off ever since. i applied to Yonsei University and was accepted to the fall semester! the plan is to move to Seoul at the end of August, stay with the Hong family, which are very cool, and then search for an apartment and take care of other things like Alien ID, Student Visa, bank account, etc. for a few weeks before the semester starts near the end of September. everything is falling into place so far. i still have a big list of things to take care of in the next few months. i’m excited about it and a bit nervous–mainly i worry about getting everything taken care of when i’m over there and also hopefully not getting lost in the giant city of Seoul…

Yonsei has a one and a half year language program split into 6 semesters with an optional 7th semester afterwards. it’s 4 hours per day, 5 days a week. i’ll probably look for a job after getting the hang of the language enough. it should be an interesting adventure i also want to make some “tutorials” on how to move to Korea and go to school once i get settled to help out anyone else who may be considering it