Hello Everyone!

This past July, as many of you know, I was able to return to Korea for a Korean language study program at Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul. This was an excellent opportunity for me to both practice the Korean that I have learned over the years as well as continue to expand my Korean knowledge and practice my listening and speaking skills daily. I participated in a summer language intensive, which was held at Ewha Woman’s University, where I received a full-scholarship from the Eastern Social Welfare Society. This scholarship is offered to Korean adoptees of any age to participate in a 3-week language program where they can learn about the Korean culture and the language of their home country. I attended classes from about 9:10 every morning until 1:00 in the afternoon from Monday through Friday. The classes were taught completely in Korean, and I practiced many dialogues and conversations with other classmates.

I was extremely thankful that I had attended the Central New York Korean School for so many years because much of the grammar portion of the exam and the class was review for me. However, this allowed me to focus more on improving my speaking and listening skills in class. With the help of Dr. Han, my teacher (Kyungha Lee), and many other Koreans at the CNY Korean School, I was able to graduate from this program with the highest final test grade in my class! I wasn’t expecting that type of accomplishment at all, but I was glad that I could finally see all of my efforts in learning Korean in Syracuse as well as in Korea. By the time I left Korea, I was able to hold basic conversations with my Korean friends, order in restaurants, navigate the Seoul subway system, and even understand my Korean language teacher over 80% of the time!!

It is truly exciting to see countless hours of studying reap such high benefits in such a short amount of time. At Liberty University, my current college, I am meeting new Koreans everyday, and it has been so helpful to know basic Korean conversation and be able to understand much of what is being said to me as well. Though having school every Saturday morning was not always the most exciting thing in the world, I don’t think I would have ever accomplished the level of Korean knowledge that I have today. The people at the CNY Korean School have been so supportive of me, and I’m truly blessed that God would allow so many caring people to help me increase my Korean language ability. I would love to be able to attend Korean School again this semester, but I am not able. However, I hope everyone who is attending this semester works really hard and has a great fall semester!

I also have a blogspot that I had posted while I was in Korea about my trip, the language class, and regarding other adoption issues. So you are free to read that and ask me any questions or leave comments! The website is www.kmasten.blogspot.com. Select the blog archive and you can read about my trip from my first post in June.