No tags yet.
Recently I received my host family information; it was really funny because just before I got the email I was talking about how long of a wait it would be for me because of my last name. Usually NSLI-Y email notifications come in through alphabetical order. Therefore, I honestly thought I would have to wait a long time to receive my host family information. Then I checked my email, very randomly, was not expecting anything at all because in the past I would obsess over my email (especially during finalist notifications), constantly refreshing and this time I decided not to get super crazy over it.
Imagine my surprise when I was one of the first to get the email notification. For obvious reasons, I can’t tell you everything about my host family but I can say that I live about an hour away from our school, Sookmyung Women’s University. And I have 2 host sisters, both are really young, ages 6 and 8. I think they gave us Korean age, so they might be younger in the Western way of counting age. My host dad works as a researcher and my host mom is housewife, so I’ll probably be spending a lot of time with her and maybe she can teach me how to cook Korean food.
I think have younger siblings will help my Korean comprehension, since I am a beginner, we will kind of be at the same level. I’ll probably watch a lot of kid television shows with them like Pororo and many others.
Another part of the email is about your rooming situation, so I have a private room, which is cool. They even get to specifics like if you have a bed or ondol. For me, it says ondol, I still don’t really know what that is but when I looked it up it is a type of Korean heating system, so I’m assuming that I will be sleeping in the more traditional Korean way.
The ultimate struggle with the host family right now has been getting the gifts. In the email from NSLIY we are given an email address to contact them, but sometimes the host families don’t respond/ never receive your email. Unfortunately for me, I’ve fallen in the category of people that don’t get responses, so I have no idea what my host family likes.
I got a bunch of scented candles and organic honey as a family gift. I bought my host dad a North Carolina mug that has a bunch of cool facts about the state, for my host mom I got her Bath and Body works perfume and shower gel. And for my host sisters, I got them these really cute purses from Claire’s, flower rings, and a bracelet that says “lil sis” and I will wear the one that says “big sis”.
I also bought a few postcards from my state, so that I can write a note on it and give it to people that I meet so they can have something to remind themselves of me.
I’m really excited about meeting my host family and I’ll be pleasantly surprised on host family day because I have no idea what they look like. The email notification doesn’t give us pictures, and it didn’t say if my host family speaks English. If they do speak English, then that’s great because they can help me out a lot but if they don’t then I ‘m definitely going to have to study a lot and work hard to learn Korean so I can communicate better with them.
The above picture is a map of most NSLI-Y Seoul students nearest subway stations, so you can see how spread out we are in South Korea. Big thank you to Daphne for making it!