B.A.P. Concert

On April 16th, I attended the B.A.P. Concert with my roommates Roya and Chelsea. We left for Dallas right after our classes so we were able to stop by a Korean restaurant to have dinner before the concert. We truly enjoyed eating authentic Korean food before going to a Korean concert, for some reason it just made it much more exciting!

When we got to the venue, it was PACKED!! There was at least 3 times more people than at the last Kpop concert I went to and the energy was just amazing!! B.A.P. has very up beat and energetic music so you couldn’t help but jump around and sing with them most of the time (I even got some really embarrassing videos in which you can hear me singing along 😛 ). It wasn’t their first time here in the U.S. so they were able to interact more with the fans in English, which was really nice. We all enjoyed the concert so much and had such a hard time leaving that we decided to stay and wait for the members of the band to leave in their vans through the back. There were dozens of others waiting for them too, and their back up dancers even took pictures with us. Lol Over all, it was a really amazing experience! 😀

Bowling Challenge

(This is an image a bowling set of a very famous Korean children’s cartoon named 뽀로로 Pororo)

On March 27th, Chelsea, Stephen and I worked on the suite-theme challenge for the week. We came up with terms that are used when bowling in Korean like: 화이팅! (Good luck or Let’s go),  and 잘했어! (Good job or well done)

보이프렌드 (BOYFRIEND) Concert

On March 13th, I attended a Kpop concert for the band Boyfriend with a high school friend named Isabel.  They were absolutely amazing!! The whole concert was a blast! They sang and danced so much but they also had so much fan interaction. It was so cute how they tried to speak to us in English at first, but in the end the translators had to take over. Lol

My favorite member, 민우 (Minwoo pictured in the signed Polaroid picture), even sang parts of “Do you want to build a snowman” from the movie Frozen! It was completely adorable! I was also one of the lucky fans that got to see them up close and high-five them after the concert!! It was completely unreal, I even got to tell Minwoo that I really liked him in Korean! He was so surprised and it was adorable! I also got a poster which was signed by all of the members! Needless to say, it was a great night! 🙂

Life After Baylor: What’s Next?

On March 5th, I attended the talk held by a representative from the Career and Professional Development here in Brooks Flats. I received quite a bit of information on what I could do with my major in Asian Studies, like working for the government, teaching about the cultures, or even being an English teacher in Asian countries! 🙂

Global Snack Hour

On February 27th, I attended the Global Snack hour and got to meet up and talk to my liaison while enjoying some delicious cookies from around the world.

Korean Dinner

On February 24th, my friends and I had a delicious Korean dinner consisting of 미역국 (seaweed soup) and 삼겹살 (pork).

KSA Movie Night

On December 6th, the Korean Student Association held a movie night. The original plan was to watch a movie called Thieves, but when we got there, it turned out that most of us had already seen it (including me), so we voted on a different one. We ended up watching a historical movie called Masquerade about a normal man who ends up playing the role of the king when he is drugged and unable to fulfill his duties. The movie was really interesting and it showed more of the historical culture in Korea, which is something I am really interested in. For the movie night they also had snacks, one of which was a type of Korean pancake, it was very delicious and seemed to be a very common food in Korea by the way everyone was talking about it.

KUMC Thanksgiving Service

The Sunday before Thanksgiving, I attended a Korean service at KUMC. It was my first time attending a service there that was ALL in Korean. It was definitely something different and interesting. They had a PowerPoint that followed along with part of the service and it was in Korean and had an English translation below it so that people could follow along if they we’rent fluent Korean speakers. They also had a small device that I used in which someone was translating most of the service into English. All of the music during the service was in Korean and was performed by the choir they had, which Dr. Yoo, my suite-liason, is a part of. After the service, we had mostly Thanksgiving food with some Korean elements to it.

Asian Fest

On November 15th, I attended Baylor’s Asian Fest. I had a great time while I was there! The combination of modern and traditional elements of different Asian cultures was great. The night opened up with a modern part of Korean culture, a group of students dancing to Kpop songs, all of which I already knew and loved. 😛  There was also a trio of music majors that performed a medley of songs form the Hayao Miyazaki films which was absolutely beautiful! I also really enjoyed all the beautiful colors and dancing in the Bollywood dances performed by Baylor’s Indian Subcontinent Students Association. I really enjoyed all of the different performances in Asian Fest and will definitely attend every year I am at Baylor.

VIXX Concert

On November 9th, I attended my very first Kpop concert!! It was absolutely one of the best experiences in my life! I had been waiting for a Kpop concert to come to Texas for years, and for once, instead of going to just California and New York, VIXX came to Dallas! 🙂 They were completely amazing! They couldn’t speak English well so most of the time, they spoke Korean. They had a translator, but because I’ve been studying Korean, I was able to understand them sometimes without the translator, which was really exciting!! While they performed their songs, the crowd either sang along, or said fan chants. In Korea, the fans create fan chants that go with the songs and say them at every concert, so we learned a few ourselves! Singing along with the group was so much and I am definitely glad that I was able to sing along with them! Going to a Kpop concert was a dream come true and an over all amazing experience!! ^_^

Korean Student Association 

KSA meeting with the President Seon Lee and VP Josh Yun!

On Wednesday October 9th, I attended the first official KSA meeting! It was so fun, even though we didn’t do anything besides introduce ourselves and talk about the upcoming events hosted by KSA! It definitely helped to already have a bunch of friends who were in it from the KUMC retreat that i attended! ^_^

Everyone was super friendly and wanted us to get involved and learn more about their culture and customs! I signed up to attend two of the events that KSA is hosting: a Running Man event and a Korean Movie Night! Running Man is a very popular Korean game show and i watch it all the time so I’m very excited to be able to participate in an activity based off of the show! As for the movie night, they are showing a Korean movie called ‘The Thieves.’ I love the movie! I’ve already watched it because one of my favorite actors, Kim Soo Hyun is in it, but I would love to watch it again with new friends!! I am very excited for the events to come and am definitely glad I’m joining KSA!! 😀

Korean-US Relations Presentation

On Tuesday October 1st, I, along with Dr. Yoo, attended a speech by Consul General Suk-Bum Park in which he talked about the relations between Korea and the United States. He gave us information on the history of the relationship between the two countries and what the relationship means to both of the countries. It turns out that South Korea is actually an important part of the US economy and the US is even more so to South Korea. He also talked a bit about the ‘Korean Wave’ and how things like Kpop and Korean television was becoming more global.

After the presentation, many different type of Korean foods were served for us to enjoy! There was even a cake with the flags of both countries together to signify the relations between them! 🙂

KUMC Retreat September 27-29

If you would have told me a few months ago, that I was going to go to a Korean church retreat, I would have told you that you were crazy. But last week, I did just that! I have been attending Korean classes on Sundays at KUMC since I began classes here at Baylor, and one Sunday, one of my friends at the church asked me if I’d like to go on the retreat, and reluctantly, I said yes!! I was so nervous because even though I’d gone on many church retreats, none of them had ever been with a church of mostly Koreans…
But I am so glad I went!! Everyone was super nice and loved that I wanted to know more about their culture! Most of the retreat was like any other church retreat, we had worship and small discussion groups, and even played a bunch of games to get to know each other well. But we also did things that I had never done before! We played a few Korean games, all of which included some kind of punishment for not winning, and had Korean snacks, and a big Korean dinner on Saturday night! I loved getting to experience all these parts of the Korean culture that I had never done myself before! 🙂 and throughout the whole weekend, lots of the people spoke Korean a bunch so I was forced to learn more of the language as well! 🙂
Overall, it was an amazing experience!! ^_^