Mikaela Phang
Prime Minister’s Scholarship for Asia, Korean Language Study Abroad
Introduction
Hi! My name is Mikaela. I was born and raised in New Zealand, but my parents are from Singapore, where most of my family lives. At UoA, I am studying a BA in Communication and Japanese and a Diploma in Languages, where my main focus is the Korean language.
I applied for this PMSA programme because I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone and experience living in a foreign country where I didn’t completely understand or speak the language. I have studied Korean at university for two years, but I felt like this opportunity would allow me to improve both my language skills and my general communication ability while trying to navigate this new culture and language.
I am most excited about gaining a deeper understanding of Korean culture and people, making new friends, and seeing how I grow overall as a person over the next three months. Through this experience, I hope to attain knowledge that I can bring back and share with my community back home and become someone capable of building bonds and increasing understanding between New Zealand and Asia in the future.
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Final Update
Guess it’s time to wrap up these updates! The past three months felt like forever but also like they went by in the blink of an eye. I’m back in NZ now, savouring the last few days of warm weather before it gets cold again. I say that, but it has just started raining pretty heavily (and…Continue…
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The Last Week
I didn’t go to a theme park recently, but the past few weeks have been a bit of a rollercoaster. To put it nicely, I had a bit of an experience at a hair salon here, and as a warning from me to you: don’t get your hair bleached if your shower doesn’t have a…Continue…
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Halfway through!
Time is going super fast.It’s already been a month since Christmas, and there’s only a month left until we leave Korea. We had our Midterm Exams two weeks ago, which took place over two days. The exams included Reading, Listening, Writing, and an individual spoken interview with our teacher, which lasted 10 minutes each! Definitely…Continue…