You have returned from spending an amazing summer in South Korea, and you are sitting in your dormitory in the Fall semester wondering what you are still doing back home. You have got an entire new set of classes and a job to distract you, when suddenly, an alert from your e-mail inbox on your computer.
    It is your advisor. She is looking for new students to join a study abroad program at Chonnam National University while teaching English for six months. “Generous government support provided. If granted this scholarship, you will study at CNU as an exchange student while teaching nine hours a week as an English teacher at a public elementary school near Gwangju,” it said. I had never heard of this city but having just returned from South Korea not even two months before, my heart and mind was telling me to go back. I could not imagine being anywhere else at that point in time and by great fortune, this e-mail was my ticket out of the United States. By then, it was clear: I am now headed for South Korea once again.
    After months spent retrieving my documents (including my Criminal Record Check) and preparing my application, while at the same time balancing my course load and part-time job, I finally found myself with my visa literally two days before my departure from my home airport in Washington, DC and was itching for my Spring semester at CNU. I have made so many lifelong friends whom I have explored South Korean culture with and supported me along the way, especially when my best friend moved to Australia during the time of my grandmother’s death last August. When I extended my program into the Fall semester, my circle of friends from the previous semester expanded to the new students as well as my fellow Korean interns at the Gwangju International Center where I still continue to work today.
    Now in my third semester, it is unreal to think that I have been here for so long, at least as far as student exchange goes. South Korea has challenged me to experience almost every emotion possible, but it is the group of friends I have made that convinces me to stay. My understanding of Korean culture only scratched the surface when I arrived, but when it is officially my time to depart, I can leave with much more than I brought in from a city I can now call my home.
 

By Jeremy Azurin, Exchange Student, USA