How my lifestory in Korea has started

I am telling about Korea, it's culture and history, travel tips and experience, my personal study and work experience, just about my life in Korea, but I didn't tell you a story about how I appeared here. So, I dediced to share that story now.

My ‘Korean story’ has started about 12 years ago when I had a chance to visit Korea for the first time. Actually, I was lucky enough and at the year, at the same trip I have been to North Korea too. It was just a one day trip, but many South Koreans were super jealous because they are not allowed to pass the board.

So, in summer 2007 I got an invitation to the Summer International Youth Camp in Korea which was fully free. I was really surprised and happy. But that was my first time when I supposed to go abroad alone and not just to the neighbor country. The flight from my hometown to Korea takes almost a day because there is no direct one, and I needed to take 2-hours flight to Alma-Aty (Kazakhstan) and the from there to Korea a 7-hours flight. But before talking about flights I will share my preparations to the trip.

Well, if be honest, my parents were super worrying. I was always a ‘home kid’, and my parents were taking care about me a lot. But on other side, they knew that it is a great opportunity for me and they allowed me to join that journey.

So, I started to collecting documents, applied for a VISA and bought my ‘Lucky tickets’!

About GKYN

Global Korean Youth Camp is an annual 7-days camp for Koreans from all over the world. The camp is organized by Overseas Korean Foundation and sponsored by different associations and companies which support the Korean culture, history, society etc.

I was lucky enough to be a part of that camp in 2007 as a participant.

The participation in that camp was totally FREE. Organizers paid for everything…for the round-way flight, accommodation, food, transportation etc. So, I needed to do was just to come to Korea.

The program schedule was very active and tough. We almost didn’t have a free time. Every morning waking up early and doing exercise, then breakfast and start to explore Korea.

Every day we were learning something new about Korean history and culture, visiting new places, eating Korean yummies.

About 300 Koreans from all around the world participated in the camp. We were divided into groups of 15 or 20 people and visiting other cities in Korea, staying in traditional Korean villages.

Once we even did some volunteering by selling Korean coffee on the street.

One of the most important part was networking. The Global Korean Youth Networking is a very good opportunity to meet new friends and to learn about culture in other countries, and how do Koreans live in other parts of the world.

It was a very short camp, but experience that I got there is precious. Also, I met so many nice people, visited beautiful places and, of course, tried a lot of yummies!

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@irisworld

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More articles about my travel adventures you can find here