Emily in Korea: Part 2
Recently, Emily Restad had the opportunity to travel to South Korea for 5 days as we reported in an earlier article. Read it here. She returned after Thanksgiving and has sent us her experience. Enjoy!
Prior to your arrival in Korea, you take a 3-day preliminary course where you are put into groups and study Korean poems and essays for up to 5-6 hours each day. With this group, you do small introductions and analyze Korean poems and essays in hopes you may be chosen to present it during the final performance. The poems and essays vary from beginner to advanced, and you can choose whichever you want to do. Afterwards, you present your thoughts and feelings of what you read with your teacher and peers.
The program covers all costs: the flight, food, housing, etc. When you first arrive in Korea, you are taken to the Hana Global Campus in Incheon where you will stay in dorms with all the other students and teachers. You will be assigned a roommate to share a room with upon arrival, and you will also be taken to take a test to measure your level of fluency and proficiency in Korean.
By the second day everyone has arrived and is divided into groups from the preliminary training to do self-introductions in front of all 100 students and the staff. After introductions, we listened to lectures about Korea history and are then divided into different groups to practice the song, “그대의 길을 따르리,” which we would be performing at the end of the program.
We spent ninety percent of the time practicing singing and dancing for our performance. However, on day 4 we finally left the dorms and traveled to Seoul. There, we went to Hana Bank, Gyeongbokgung Palace, the National Museum of South Korea, and a shopping mall.
On Day 5 we performed our musical in front of government officials, those in the Ministry of Education. The performance was broadcast with author Keum-Hee Lee (이금희) as the announcer who also spoke of how incredible it is that we are all able to become friends under Korean. Students selected also performed their speech about the poem or essay they chose from the preliminary training. Later, two KPOP groups, Drippin and Viviz, performed. Afterwards, the student KPOP auditions began where those who signed up sang and/or danced in front of real producers as judges.
Overall, I really enjoyed the experience. This experience was fun and made me meet amazing people. I would love to do something like this again someday and I am incredibly thankful to be given this opportunity.
By Emily Restad
