휴학

"Time off from school"

So I've been here in Seoul now for almost half a year, a full semester and a bit more, and it's been nothing short of fun, educational, and an eye-opening experience. Study abroad has been one of the biggest turning points in my life (a topic which we discussed in the first chapter of Level 5) and is something that I believe that every college student who can financially and temporally do so, should do. Not only have I been able to immerse myself and learn about a new culture and language (I know I've probably said this like 50x in my blog lol), but I've been able to actually take time off from the hectic life of Yale (though I'm pretty busy here too, but in the sense of learning this language and this lifestyle) and figure myself out a bit. One of the most common questions I get here is "So what do you want to be?"--a question I've given several answers too and become more concrete about as I live here and realize how much I value education in all fields and how much I would love to pass on knowledge as a job--so I most often say I want to be a professor. Interestingly, being a professor is a very respectable job here in Korea, whereas it's a "no money making job" to many Asian American parents, including my mother, who does not want me to teach for a living. Alas...(another word I've probably used about 50x in this blog).

I've also become more sure about which track I want to take in my Linguistics major and been able to think more clearly about what classes I want to take when I get back. Hanging out with my Japanese/Chinese/Taiwanese friends has also given me both a motive and solidified my eagerness to improve upon my Chinese and to take up Japanese, a task that will be difficult within my remaining years at Yale, but that I think would be very rewarding, not to mention a great reason and way to keep in touch with the wonderful friends I've made here.

Considering I haven't finished this experience yet, and have not finished my time at Yale yet, I'm not yet sure if I would consider this my "best time at Yale"--I guess we'll see the answer to that in a few years ;). My time here though has definitely added to my Yale education by "extending it." The opportunity to take a year off to JUST learn a language not only gives me some time to stop and think, but also to actually get to learn the language. The problem with learning a language among taking other classes at Yale is that you don't get to focus all your energy into it and there aren't really people around for you to practice so you're going to hit some barrier inevitably, but actually living in Korea has helped me surpass that barrier and become comfortable with speaking Korean, to the point where it just comes naturally out of me now and I don't have to think too much when I speak it (for a lot of conversational topics...harder topics being an issue, as I mentioned about the plateau in my last post)--it almost comes out like English to me, though not even close to as fluent of course haha. But yeah, to be able to take a year off to learn Korean will not only allow me to be able to get to proficiency (hopefully) in Korean before I graduate but also to take the opportunity to learn a new language (Japanese? Chinese?) when I go back. Yay for Light Fellowship!

Now, on a totally unrelated note, I have no idea why Seoul has been so cold (luckily it seems to be starting to let up a little bit this week)! Up to this week, almost every day for about a month, the HIGH has been lower than freezing. Especially in getting used to the Celsius scale, seeing negative numbers is pretty disheartening, but I know it's really cold when I see a temperature like -21 C, which is negative even for Fahrenheit! Ironically, my friends and I yesterday were playing around with the weather application on my computer--seeing how cold it was in different places--and we found out that Juneau, Alaska is a similar temperature to here now...as is Stockholm, Sweden. Good thing winter will pass in a little more than a month!