Hi everyone,
My name is Veronica and I will be your Geoblogging representative for the Summer 2014 semester at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea. I just want to give myself a little introduction before I start this blog. I am an English major going into my senior year this fall, although I think I’ve had senioritis since the first day of freshman year. I have a concentration in professional and media writing and I have a minor in Italian. You might be wondering why I am going to South Korea instead of Italy for a round of education abroad, but I will get to that in a moment. I was not born, but I was raised in State College and I am twenty years old. I work two jobs, one is at the front desk at the hotel and the other is a reference assistant at the university library. I pretty much work every single day of the week, so not working for a few weeks will be refreshing in and of itself, not to mention spending those weeks in another country! In my free time (which is rare) I like to cross stitch, read, or play video games. I subscribe to too many video streaming websites, which I am sure you can guess what the side effects of that would be (my current addiction is The X-Files). Ashamedly, I spend a good portion of my paycheck on eating out or fueling my bubble tea addiction and the other half of my paycheck usually goes to my gas guzzling hand-me-down car. What I am trying to say is that you should probably expect some food posts.
So back to the question of why Seoul? Why go to South Korea, especially after only one shotgun semester of Korean? Well I had a couple of options in front of me: I could go to Italy for my Italian minor or I could do the Literary London program for my English major, or I could go somewhere completely different like Seoul. When I was browsing the programs, the Sogang program seemed like a great option for me. The courses seemed really interesting and the program seemed pretty all-inclusive. Plus, Seoul is one of the trendiest and rapidly growing cities in the world! While I am there, I will be taking two courses at Sogang, the first being course on the history of Korean literature, and the second is a Korean language seminar. We just got our syllabi for the courses and I am pretty stoked to say the least.
Even though I will be taking classes four day out of the week, I want to make the most of my time in Seoul (hopefully without getting too lost). I’ve been spending, albiet, a little too much time on travel sites, and I found a cool bucket list on my favorite site Seoulistic. There is another site that is super helpful on events or popular places to go called Seoul Sync. I would definitely check them out if you’re interested. I have about nine extra days in Korea after the summer program ends and I am the middle of planning out what I should do with those days. I have a really good friend who lives in Seoul during the summer, so I might stay with her and her family for a couple of days, but I was also was thinking about going to Busan and maybe even Japan if I can pull it off. I just really want to take in as much as possible and learn as much as I can while I am there because I might not get this kind of opportunity again.
Anyway, I won’t make this post too long. I still have a lot of packing to do and I am still waiting diligently for my visa approval. The days are going by so quickly, I only have eleven more days until I leave (June 19th)!
One more thing I wanted to add: I made a travel twitter so if you want to follow, my twitter handle is @coconutgelato and I also have an instagram, although I don’t know how much I will use it because I don’t use it a lot now, but that one is @beroberos.
See you in Seoul!
Veronica
Location: State College, PA
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Wow! I can’t imagine going to a country I can’t speak the language for just for the summer. That doesn’t seem like enough time to learn the language (Which I guess is why you’re taking a language seminar).
I’m really jealous, have fun trying to get as much of those 101 things in during your trip!