Continuting Relationships with Koreans - Final Reflections

This spring I have 2 Korean students - a brother and a sister - staying at my house. The sister was one of my Korean language partners in Seoul; I visited her hometown while I was in Korea and visited her home and met her mother. Now she is studying at De Anza College, and her brother is studying at a private language school near here. They are wonderful, friendly, talented, smart, ambitious young people, and even when they go back to Korea, my relationship with them is one I trust will endure.

The professor that I met at Ewha University - the one who introduced me to the students who became my language partners - spends half the year in Seoul and half the year in California, when she returns to stay with her husband in their home in Morgan Hill. She was the main person who helped me wrap up my affairs during my short return trip to Seoul in April - she translated for the landlord, went with me to the bank, etc.. Last summer she brought a group of her Korean students to the Bay Area for a week-long field trip and I helped her with some of the planning. She has just returned from her last 5-month stay in Seoul, and we already have plans to get together next Saturday. Since Myunghee spends so much time in the US and we can easily get together, that is another relationship that I believe will endure.

I still correspond with a few others I met in Korea, but not often, as it takes me so long to compose an email in Korean. Time will tell if I ever see them again.

Here in the Bay Area I still meet with 2 of the students who were my language partners while I was studying at De Anza last spring. We meet on campus or at a coffee shop and continue our practice with English and Korean.

I still feel connected to my teachers and fellow students at Adroit College. Even though I haven't taken classes there for a while, I follow them on Facebook, and I plan to return for a class this summer.

I have not been able to keep up with all the people who showed an interest in maintaining contact with me. I wasn't in Korea long enough to know which relationships would deepen, and I ended up blessed with more potential but still superficial relationships than I could handle. I decided to nurture a few relationships and let the rest go for the time being. If we visit each others' countries in the future, we may well look each other up, and then we'll see what ensues.

I believe that it is through these relationships that my interest in Korea and the Korean language will continue to grow, and ideas for more interaction with Koreans, personally and perhaps even in academic partnerships or projects at our colleges, may emerge.