On My Way To Korea

After waiting and waiting, I I just got this in the mail:

Dear Student,
Congratulation on your successful admission to SNU!

The acceptance packet will be sent out by post in the beginning or mid of December.

It will be sent out to your international office if you are an exchange student and if a visiting student, it will be sent out to the address you have written in your application.

I hope you are all excited to come to SNU in March and please don’t hesitate to contact me for further inquiries. However, I suggest you to hold your questions until you get your acceptance packet since it will include all necessary information for you.

Best wishes,

XXX

Well, there ya go.  Now I just need to get my ticket … I think I’m gonna try to go to Korea mid January to do some sight seeing and what not.  I have finally been able to achieve the proposition of the title of this blog and will really be on my way to Korea in the near future.

Even my long-time readers might have no idea just how much I’ve gone through to get to where I am right now.  Let’s see … I:

1. Served as a full-time volunteer LDS/mormon missionary in Vancouver, Canada for two years and taught Koreans, which cemented my love for Korea.
   
2. Came home and returned to BYU, a LDS university
   
3. Was told I would definitely be going to Korea for an internship with SK once and probably with Samsung another time.  You have NO idea how depressed I was after that.
   
4. Decided to leave the Church, forcing me to transfer (also limiting my dating opportunities.  Many people get divorced if a spouse leaves the church so I didn’t want to go through that).  While non-members are allowed to attend BYU, members who leave the church (by sending a letter of resignation to the headquarters) are kicked out.  No questions asked.
   1. Feel free to watch my explanation in Korean about why I left, or message/email me if you’d like to read my 24 page story in English about my life in the church and my findings in the year leading up to my resignation.
5. Endured an extra semester at BYU due to not getting Utah residency in time.  If anyone knew what I was going to do, I might have been excommunicated and immediately kicked out and lost all my credits for the semester.
   
6. Dealt with potentially losing all financial aid, left a pretty cushy job, and added about a year to my degree.
7. Went through the SNU application process essentially two times, doing an entire application just for being nominated for the exchange program and then a whole different application that would actually be sent to SNU.

Saying I’m extremely happy and relieved right now is a gross understatement.

It looks like I really won’t get my acceptance notice till November 30 … ugh.  Well, here’s some more pictures from a while ago.  It’s at an event called “Pioneer Day” celebrating the pioneers who came and started Utah.

If you have a weak stomach, do NOT watch this video.

A friend told me about this section of Gag Concert where the “Committee for the Protection of Men’s Human Rights” talks about the various dating practices which are unfair to men.  It talks about things like having to pay for everything (like a movie ticket and snacks) and having to take girls all the way home.  Of course, they follow the Korean way of protesting wearing red bandannas (well, one) and using a Korean-style drum.  Sorry, there are no English sub-titles.  Here it is for those who can understand Korean: