The first thing I did when reached airport was buying SIM card, T-money card, and power adapter. All these things can be found from convenient store such as 7-eleven or GS25. Korea subway map can be downloaded from Google play store named “Korea Subway”. In the whole journey, I spent less than S$1000 for daily expenses. This was excluded from the program fee and could be a reference about the expenses there in three weeks. 1st June was the first day of this immersion programme. All of us had been waiting excitedly to start the Korean language and culture learning journey. Who knew around the end of the opening ceremony, “There is a placement test,” was announced. Everyone was shocked but no choice to escape from the test. The placement test included short essay writing about the topic chosen among 7 topics given and individual speaking with teacher. The placement test results decided the class (Class 1 or Class 2) we would have our lesson during the three weeks. After that, we had a campus tour guided by Kyung Hee University teachers. Kyung Hee University was a very beautiful campus with full of comfortable greeneries.

Figure 1 (Left) this was the path we walked down from Institute of International Education, the place we had our opening ceremony; (Center & Right) group photos during campus tour

2nd June was the first day of our Korean lessons. We had three textbooks-Speaking, Listening, and Writing and we had two teachers-Park Il Seop and Lee Min Kyung. Both teachers were friendly, interesting, sincere and CUTE! The lessons were very useful and interesting. The teachers had taught us many ways of speaking of a sentence, included the honorific way and the usual way. Besides, we could straight away use those lessons learnt especially Speaking, in our daily activities in Korea. Do not be afraid to speak Korean while in restaurant or shopping, there will be significant improvement in speaking and understanding. 4th June as our fieldtrip day, we went to Icheon to

Figure 2 (Left) Lee Min Kyung teacher (Right) learn making pottery. To me, it was the very first time to Park Il Seop teacher make pottery, so I was very curious and exciting that time. Actually we did not really make the mug, bowl and cup. Instead, we drew picture on the mug given, designed the shape of the bowl with the material given and took up the cup from the pottery wheel when it was shaped nicely enough. After that, all the polishing and covering steps were done by our master. On 12th June, we received our mug, bowl and cup! Thanks to our master, everyone was amazed by the final products.

Figure 3 (Left) Bowls; (Center) Mugs; (Right) Cups

Figure 4 (Left) Bowl: before and after; (Right) Mug: before and after

The fieldtrip initially included visiting Folk Village on 4th June and Everland on 11th June, but unfortunately because of the sickness—MERS was getting severe that time, the itinerary had been called out. Besides, Ji seonsaengnim disallowed us to visit the South part of Hangang which made our journey a little pity. However, Korea really left me plenty of beautiful memories such as the friendly people, beautiful places and super delicious Korean food which made me decide to visit Korea again in future. This program also provided us opportunities to experience various Korean cultural activities. We had Kpop song learning session on the first Wednesday, 3rd June. The song that impressed me was the cutest song ever—The Three Bears. I was so happy that I had finally got to know how to sing all the lyrics of this song. After that, the following two Mondays, we had Kpop dance time! Among all the cultural activities I love the Kpop dance learning session the most because I love dancing, especially songs of SISTAR, T-ARA, and EXID… We learnt Big Bang’s Bang Bang Bang and EXID’s Ah Yeah on the first Monday whereas ZE:A’s Breathe on the second Monday. Everyone looked exhausted but enjoyed

Figure 5 Learning Bang Bang Bang: The person in black cap and black tee and jeans was our dance teacher! (Right) Learning Breathe: Our teacher’s attire was the completely contrast compared to the first time. He was in white cap and white tee and pants. since we all had a great workout! Besides these, we had Korean cooking class on the second and the third Wednesday. We learnt how to make Soy sauce tteokbokki and Hwajeon in the first class whereas in the second class, we had Japchae and Kimchi jeon. Everything was great and delicious!

Figure 6 (Left) Hwajeon and Soy sauce tteokbokki; (Center) Japchae and Kimchi jeon; (Right) The great team and two super teachers XD

Apart from that, on 12th June afternoon, we were told to be inside IIE 210 auditorium. When I and my friend went in, we saw some Korean uncles and aunts sitting there like waiting for us. Yes exactly, they were waiting for us. They were our foster parents of Korea Home Stay program which was included in this journey! We were going to stay with them for one night two days.

Our parent named Kim Min Kyung. She had one daughter who was having her backpack travelling that time, and one son who was Year 3 studying at Kyung Hee University. She asked us to call her Omma, which means Mom in Korean. Ow, so lovely! Her house was very near to Kyung Hee University and it was a very warm house, a house that an ideal normal Korean family stayed. 12th June

Figure 7 Our Omma that night, we learnt how to make kimbap! It was quite easy to learn and was so delicious and was so filling! After dinner, we spent a warm night by watching TV together with Appa (Dad), Omma (Mom) and Oppa (Big brother). The next day, after the sumptuous breakfast, we had our candle-making session and Hanbok (Korean traditional costume) trying session. We were curious about where to buy the materials of making candles, so Omma brought us to the market selling the handicraft materials such as materials for soap, candle and gift packets and so on. After that, our Omma sent us back to Coop Residence. Though the time we spent with Omma, Appa and Oppa was so short, the time was memorable. We asked for Omma’s contact as well to keep each other in touch!

Figure 8 (Left) Kimbap making; (RIght) Candle making: The person stood beside Omma was her sister

Figure 9 Hanbok trying

We had been assigned with a Korean buddy, one for each of us. My Korean buddy named Yoou Myeong Hyun, a Year 2 Genetic Engineering cute guy. He was very nice to me. We met four times in total during the three weeks. There were three times that we had lunch together. Basically we self-introduced to each other and shared about our schools, our cultures, his national service, my interest in learning Korean, our goals in university and so on. He also looked through my Korean textbooks and tried to solve my any questions about Korean. We also went cycling with my other friends and one another Korean buddy together. The only pity thing with him was I FORGOT TO TAKE A PICTURE WITH HIM ㅠㅠ… Actually before the program started, I went to Korea five days earlier to have a short travel. First two days, I stayed around Hongik University. I visited Sejong Daewang with friends. On the other three days I went to Busan with some friends. In Busan, we visited Haedong Yonggung Temple, Taejongdae Park and the seashore. All the sceneries were too beautiful to be written into description. I Figure 10 First row first person from left, the cute guy would rather paste the photos here for you. in white tee was my Korean buddy~

Figure 11 (Left) Sejong Daewang; (Center) Sejong Daewang's story; (Right) Fountain in front of Busan Station

Figure 12 Busan Seashore

Figure 13 Haedong Yonggungsa

Figure 14 Taejongdae Park

Now I am going to share the results of my Korean study in Korea. On 19th June, it was the last day of school. After we had closing ceremony, our teachers brought us to our respective class. Then we had a short session of writing message for each person of our classmates. This was so warm and sweet. After that, we had our report distributed. I am satisfied with my results ^ ^

Figure 15 Last day of school, I was so reluctant to leave ㅠㅠ

Figure 16 My study report in Kyung Hee University

I strongly recommend this program if one really wants his or her Korean to be improved. But of course one has to be hardworking and eager in learning Korean. For me, in Korea was the best background to help improving Korean because there was Korean everywhere such as Korean people, Korean signboard, and Korean description of product and so on. I always tried to speak Korean first during situation like shopping, ordering food, talking to Korean buddy. This really improved my fluency of speaking and my listening in keywords and also I could learn new words from my Korean buddy. I so eagerly hoped that this program could be lasted longer as the three weeks was too short. All in all, I hope my essay really helps and I will be willing to visit Korea again if there is opportunity in the future.