How to Get a Korean Pen Pal

"We are good friendship, ok!" -Kim Hyung Joon (SS501)

When you are learning about a new country the best way to learn the truth about it is to talk to the natives. Stacey, my sister Jenny and I thought about all the people we knew who might know some one from Korea to help us learn more about it, but the more we thought we realize there had to be an easier way of finding people. We decided we would look for a website that would help us find penpals from Korea. After some searching we found the website http://penpalwel.com/ As we looked around the website we realized most of the Koreans on the site were looking for people who are native English speakers to help them learn English. We figured someone was bound to write to one of us. Each of us created a profile and waited for people to write to us.

A day later we were amazed to see people had started writing to us asking us to help them learn English. My first pen pal was so excited when I wrote back because he had written to a lot of other people and they never wrote back. He told me he was going to give up trying after writing to me. He was so excited that I was going to help him he went out and bought a book on how to write to pen pals effectively. It made me so happy to write to him.

Now I have about 5 or 6 different pen pals who write to me. It is amazing how different my letters are to each of them. They teach me about Korea and their culture and I teach them about English and living in the USA. It is amazing to me how nice they are. When one of my pen pals found out my favorite genre to read was fairytales she went out and bought Korean fairytale books that are written in English and Korean. I know not every Korean will be nice, but it is reassuring to know when we get to Korea we will have some friends there already.

A lot of the information that we will be posting on here will be coming from our pen pals and other websites that we like to visit. We have posted the links to some of our favorite sites for you to check out.

South Korea and Joanna

If you would have asked me a year ago what I would be working towards in the year 2010, I know the thought of preparing to move to Korea would never have entered my mind. I probably would have said, working or maybe going back to school or both. Little did I know moving back to Utah from Wyoming would change my life so much.

It all started when I found a place to live in Sandy that had 4 other girls living in it. They all seemed to be a lot of fun and the rent was cheep so I thought, "Why not." The more I got to know my roommates I realized that Stacey watched a lot of shows on her computer and hid out in her room. Slowly she started telling us about the shows and they seemed funny so when she suggested watching one I decided what did I have to lose. Stacey chose the drama You're Beautiful. I was hooked after 1 episode and I had to watch more. Everyday after work Stacey, Jenny, Catherine and I watched this show, we could not get enough of it. Finally when we finished this drama I had to find more to watch, now when I have free time you can find me in my room watching Korean dramas.

While we were watching You're Beautiful we fell in love with the music, so Stacey thought this would be the perfect time to introduce us to Kpop (Korean Pop) music. The first band she had us listen to was SS501, we all loved their music right away. Since then we have found many other bands and we listen to them all the time. If you ever drop by our house and there is music playing, odds are it is Kpop.

The more I learned about Korea through the dramas and the music the more interested I got about their culture. I would find my self imagining what it would be like to live there, and it got me so excited. Stacey told me that she wanted to move there to work and I got so excited and said to her, if you go I will join you.

So now this is our story of our journey of going to Korea!

How to start an obsession! I give credit to Google.

Joanna and I have decided to dedicate a blog page to our obsession with Korea and to include all the information we learn as we prepare to go to Korea to work. It is an easy way to keep all our information in one place and share our knowledge with others who are interested in doing the same. We thought that it would be best to start now since we have about a year to go before our dream of moving to Korea will happen.
I must admit the fascination for Korea started because I was sick in bed one day reading an online manga (not Korean manhwa). I've always been fascinated with Asian culture from a young age, yet until last year, the only thing I knew about Korea was that there was a North Korea and South Korea because of war...etc. Back to my original story now.
So I was reading the manga online and googled the title I was reading at that time. Instead of the manga, google brought up the link to a site (i.e. dramafever.com) for the Korean dramatization of the manga. Never one to question the greatness of the google search engine, I clicked on the link. I was sick anyway so I started to watch Boys Over Flowers and fell in love with goofy story. However, there were a lot of pop culture references from Korea and slang that I didn't understand that confused me. I also kept wondering why the heck were they bowing at certain times and why did they keep saying "Oppa." That started google searches to learn more about Korea.
However, the clincher to start the Korean obsession wasn't the drama per se. It was the Yun Ji Hoo character. Yep...I became a fangirl of Ji Hoo. (I'm holding in the three pages of comments I could be making on the fabulousness of the character Ji Hoo ... so be grateful.)
In the middle of watching the drama Ji Hoo sang and played a song. Ever a girl to swoon at a good looking guy singing and playing a guitar, I once again bowed to the power of google and youtube to find out who he was. Ji Hoo was played by Kim Hyun Joong who is a leader of Korean boy band, SS501. I started to listen to his band's music (my favorites being A Love Like This and A Song Calling for You) which also led to my fascination with other Korean bands that youtube recommended. At this point, I probably know more about Korean music than I do about the current American bands.
My roommates, at that time, just thought I was weird as I switched over from watching American movies to Korean dramas and started listenting to mostly Korean music. Luckily I have several friends who have lived a couple years in Korea. I actually did not realize how many people I knew that had lived there until my obsession had started. And they keep popping up in my life. If that isn't a sign, I don't know what is. Thus the Korean Obsession was born which led to our decision to move to Korea for a year and work. Joanna will add her part of the story of how she became fascinated with Korea too.

Each week, Joanna and I decided to put up links to other blogs about Korea, comment about the dramas we are watching (only to practice learning and listening to Korean, of course...keke) and things we are learning about Korea. Super excited!!!!!