Ioana_CP1

While at tea time, I met Jaewoo, my conversation partner. He told me he is going to be a sports psychology doctorate student at FSU. He did is undergraduate studies in Physical Education, and his masters in Motor Skills and Function. He is from Seoul, South Korea. He is very interested in sports, and his favorite is swimming. Once he will be done with school he wants to be a professor. Since my friend Jalissa is also his conversation partner, we are excited to all spend time together and have a group of us go to dinner and do other things. After introductions we talked a lot about Korea. I want to learn Korean, so learning more about the culture is always interesting for me. Jaewoo talked about how being friends with someone differs in Korea. He mentioned that since he is a sunbae (senior) in a lot of cases, he cannot look at younger people as being his true friends because of the distinction of the senior, junior relationship/system that is present. I find this interesting because other Koreans I have talked to do not think the same way. It is interesting how different people take the sunbae role differently. Some think of juniors as younger brothers and sisters, the others still see that being a sunbae is a heavy role so they separate themselves from juniors. They are friendly and nice but there is still some kind of barrier present it seems.