Movement By Lydia

Congratulations to all of you finalists who just recently found out you will be going to Korea for the summer!! I am so excited for you guys [and super jealous]! You are going to have an amazing time.. I know I did. One of the reasons I had such a great time was because of my Korean friends! So this post will be about the importance of making Korean friends, or at least why I think it's important and helpful during your time studying in Korea ^^ So I have a lot of Korean friends as my school has been hosting Korean exchange students since I was in 3rd grade and I go to a camp with lots of Korean people who come from Korea... I got to meet some of them while I was in Korea which was awesome, but I also made Korean friends while in Korea. I'm not going to lie, making Korean friends during the summer program isn't easy- it requires a big effort on your part because besides the day camp and supporters (and for us, the cooking class), you really don't have much interacti...

I spent a lot of time exploring the city and what city life was like, but there are some really beautiful, peaceful places in Korea that I loved! This post will be about a place called Naksan Park (낙산공원) I went to one night. 낙산공원, which is how I'm going to refer to it in the post for the most part, is located in the middle of Seoul. (Directions at the end of this post) "Naksan Park gets its name from its camel hump-like appearance. In Korean ‘nakta’ means camel and ‘san’ means mountain. So people refer to the park as Nakta Park or Naksan Park. The mountain is solid granite bedrock. The Joseon royal family enjoyed the natural beauty of the granite mountain, but during the Japanese Colonial Period a hasty manner of urban planning resulted in the demolition of most of the mountain. In an effort to save the remaining green belts, Naksan was designated a park on June 10, 2002. Located in the center of the Seoul, this historical and beautiful park allows its visitors to view...

외국인 Above is the word "foreigner" in Korean, and if you aren't Korean, you will be called this in Korea. Don't take it personally when they call you this... It's just what they call people who aren't Korean. A lot of people have asked me questions like "What is it like being a foreigner in Korea?" and "Do you get treated differently since you are a foreigner?" so I decided to make a blog post about it. Everyone will obviously have a different experience with this, but since mine honestly won't be much help to many of the people asking these questions, I got some help from my fellow NSLI-Yians! My Personal Experience: Looking Korean So I am Chinese, but everyone in Korea thought I was Korean. I speak a good amount of Korean and have been told I have very little of accent, so I was mistaken all the time for being Korean, even when I was speaking (although I have terrible grammar so that could give it away lol). This was good i...

I just got back to America after spending my summer in Seoul, South Korea with NSLI-Y. I miss the program, the classes, the country, and the people so much... This summer has seriously been the best summer of my life! I love my NSLI-Y family so much♥ Now that I'm home, I have some time to post about my summer in Korea so I will be posting more about the trip! It takes a lot of energy and time to make blog posts [which is why I didn't really in Korea], but I'm going to try and recap this experience to show you all. I'm sorry I didn't post while there! I know a lot of people were really curious about how I was doing and what I was doing, but our schedules were sooo busy and I didn't ever use a computer so I only had my phone. Anyway, more posts about Korea after this! I'm going to start way back at the PDO in NYC [which was in June... wow..]~ This is going to make me so nostalgic... If you want me to talk about certain places or aspects of this trip, let me ...

I apologize once again for not posting at all, but I wanted to make a post about yesterday's day camp before I forget all the details so that will be today's post. First off, I've got to say that this was probably one of my favorite days so far in Korea. I love my team members and had soooo much fun with them yesterday♡ We made a lot of good memories yesterday that I won't forget, and we also built great friendships during the course of the camp. Thanks to my team for making my day so great yesterday and working hard together despite the hot hot weather! I'll never forget my elephants♥                                  So now about the camp and what we did. When we first got there they gave us nametags to wear for the day. We got them and then sat with the other 50 Korean students who were already there and got to know them a little. After the intro stuff, we played icebreakers as a ...

One thing I really enjoy about walking around Korea at night is the STREET PERFORMERS. They are all over the place- bands, guitarists, dancers, rappers, etc... Because I have seen so many street performers and have videos and stories for each of them, I've decided to dedicate multiple posts to various street performers. PART 1:  일루와 밴드 ------------------------------------ This was the first street performance I really remember enjoying. After spending the night eating at a restaurant and going to Starbucks with my Korean friend in 신촌, we were walking outside on the streets and heard music playing! When I stumbled upon this group, they were playing their version of the 귀요미송 haha, quite an interesting song selection for an all-male group. I stayed watching them until their performance was over, and they were really entertaining! These are my boys~~~ The  일루와 밴드 ^^                          ...

First off, keeping a blog is NOT as easy as I thought it would be, so I apologize for not updating it since I left for my NSLI-Y journey back in June. I've been sooo busy between school, program stuff, exploring, etc.. and by the time I come home I am exhausted. I literally fall asleep doing my homework sometimes. So this post will be very long because it'll be a summary of my first week in Korea (minus the in-country orientation we did). Our flight to Korea got delayed so we arrived 8 hours later than we were supposed to. Originally we were supposed to land at around 6pm but instead we arrived at 2:30am. We stayed in a hostel for 2 nights while doing in-country orientation then met our host families on a Sunday. My host family is wonderful♥ I have a little brother who is the cutest thing ever and so much fun. My parents are so sweet and try really hard to make sure I'm comfortable. I even had lunch (갈비) with my grandparents, and one of the first things we talked a...