You speak _______ fluently?!

As I walk into a local cafe, the owner greets me with short conversation while I pay for my regular order. I sit down and as I start to edit the video I am making for class, and the owner sets the fragrant hot chocolate coupled with a freshly baked piece of dark chocolate in front of me and cheerfully remarks, “Next time you make it.” As he walks away, the person to my right stares at me astonished and asks “You can speak our language?”

“Sufficiently,” I answer, which unleashes a fury of other questions ranging from what my favorite food is to what brought me here. I have answered the same questions so many times I forgot home is 6,000 miles away, and I am speaking in a language that few years ago I had never heard a word of. A few years ago, people used to inquire where I saw myself in the next few years. I would excitingly reply, “Maybe working for Microsoft like my cousin, starting a business, pursuing my Ph.D., or playing drums in a band.” While the last one isn’t wrong, the context is nothing like I imagined. The only language I use with the band members is Korean and the concerts I play every weekend are 6,000 miles away from my home.

Back home, I still don’t think my dad, who has left California once or twice in his life, can fathom I’m on the other side of the world. Only a couple years ago I wouldn’t have believed it either. So how did I, once a 22 year old who had no interest in languages or traveling, and whose only traveling experience consisted of going to New York to play at Carnegie Hall during high school, end up in Korea, rarely speaking a language other than Korean?

Friends. International friends to be exact. A couple years ago I met a few Koreans studying abroad at my college. After the numerous times editing their essays, participating in an Honors Society together, and inviting them to my house for potluck parties, we became like family. So when they left for home, I made a promise that I would visit them.

So here I am, the exchange student, with less than two months left. After organizing language exchanges where my Korean friends and exchange students practice a slew of languages over lunch on the peak of mountains overlooking the many hills and trees teeming around the skyscrapers of Seoul, playing concerts at festivals and on the streets with friends I met in a music club on campus, and eating a slew of different amazingly flavourful (and spicy!) Korean food, I am ready to disembark on and share my next adventure, in Europe.