Los Angeles is home to many different cultures and languages and I didn’t want to limit myself to only learning about the linguistic and cultural experiences of my own heritage. Although I love learning about different cultures, one country and language in particular caught my attention in my early teenage years.
When I was in middle school, I heard a K-pop song for the first time. It was the song “Gee” by a girl group named Girls’ Generation and I’ll never forget it because this song changed the course of my life. I became a huge fan of K-pop and I wanted nothing more than to be able to understand the lyrics of the songs I was listening to. At the age of 13, my friend taught me how to write in 한글 (hangeul), the Korean alphabet, so I could read the titles of songs I had downloaded into my iPod touch. As time went on, I wanted to learn more about Korean culture and history so I researched on YouTube and I sighed with envy each time I saw students my age talking about their experiences with exchange students in South Korea. I wanted to study in South Korea but without financial resources, my dream seemed impossible. It wasn’t until I found the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) scholarship that I had hope that I’d be able to visit the country I’d admired for so many years. The day I received the notification that I was a scholarship finalist, I was so overwhelmed with emotion. And so it was when I was a junior in high school in 2015 that I came to study in South Korea for the first time.
I had a Korean family who hosted me and I took Korean language classes five times a week for four hours a day. I made a lot of friends and I also became very close to my homestay family.
