Every single day I spent at Keimyung University was amazing. Starting a new life somewhere unknown is always exciting. My new life in Keimyung University started with excitement and anxiety, and it ended up with satisfaction because of many new experiences I had with my friends. I would give advice to go to Keimyung University if any of my friends wanted to go to Korea to study. While I’m writing this article, I feel thankful to all the people who made my every single day happy.
That first impression of Keimyung University was simply huge. Because the university I study in has only a few majors on a small campus, it was the first time for me to study at such a huge university with so many different majors. To be honest, at the beginning of the first semester, I was worried whether I could make new friends because the campus is too big and it is filled with hundreds of thousands of people, so meeting people constantly until we get close is difficult. However, later I realized it was an unnecessary worry.
Keimyung University has the International Lounge which both Korean students and students from all over the world can use together. It provides various kinds of parties, games, language programs, and so on. Many international and Korean students visit and spend their time there. I used to visit the Lounge almost every day so that I could find and start talking to people who also visit the place constantly. We started to talk to each other with very basic topics at the beginning, but as time went by, some of these people became very good close friends. Because everyone in the Lounge, including the staff working there, was bubbly and friendly, I could meet and talk to new people every day. For meeting new people and making new friends, the International Lounge really worked, and it was my favorite place on campus.
As I wrote above, my university is small, so the people I met were almost always the same. In Keimyung University, however, I could see so many different faces from different majors. My major is English communication, but since I was an exchange student, I could take any class. Therefore, I chose some classes which were offered for both exchange students and Korean students from any field. In these classes, the contents were new to me and some of the other students from different fields. Meeting other students studying different majors was a very new experience to me. We helped other in the courses and talked about what each of us had done in our own major classes. Listening to what and how they study in completely different majors was really interesting. Through taking the classes, I could study subjects from different fields and also know things about different majors which I could never have done in my school.
Another thing I liked while studying at Keimyung University was living in the school dormitory. Every time I told my friends that I was living there, almost all of them started talking about how low the quality of food there is, how small the rooms are, how many bugs there are, and so on. It was very funny to know how dormitory life is considered by students. Many people didn’t like the dormitory, but to be honest, I liked the place. In Japan, I’ve been living with my family for my whole life, so living without them was one of the new things I experienced in Korea. Though I couldn’t really get used to eating the spicy food they provided or to seeing the bugs flying in the dormitory, I really enjoyed living there with other students from other countries. As I was living with JIKU students who study Japanese, I got familiar with them. They asked me some questions about Japan and I asked them about Korea. Through questioning and answering, we could know the realities of Japan and Korea, and sometimes we recognized that we don’t really know about the things in our own countries. Living with other people sometimes could be a bit difficult, but the things I learnt from this experience are countless.
Needless to say, my one year at Keimyung University was more than exciting. Every time I remember the time there, I realize my choice to go to Keimyung University was right. With these valuable experiences and memories in my mind, I want to do my best here in Japan. Fighting!
