I finally got a conversation partner meeting under my belt and it was great! I hung out with Jin today, a twenty-five year old South Korean guy who is actually a former professional golfer and currently an awesome guy. We met up at the CIES building and briefly talked and introduced ourselves before heading over to Tomahawk and sharing a brewski! Jin has been in Tallahassee since last August, before that he was in West Palm Beach for eight months studying English. He mentioned that in his CIES classes he's around a Level 4. He's also been to Chicago, Destin, New Jersey, and New York since he arrived in the States. Because this was our first time meeting, I wanted to keep it relaxed and low-key; just get to known each other and whatnot. Turns out we get along really well and it was amazing hanging out. Jin told me all about South Korean night life, what it was like being a professional golfer, family life in South Korea, what he wants to do in America, and what his future plans look like.
South Korean night life sounds crazy. According to Jin, it's a really big deal in all of the major cities in South Korea. Young people will go out around one or two in the morning, which I thought was bananas! Basically that means their night starts around that time. They go hard. They go out to the clubs, which are open until seven in the morning, and they have themselves a grand old time. Jin said those days are mostly behind him, and he still hasn't quite gotten used to the early nights of American nightlife.
He's also a huge fan of baseball, so we talked a bit about his favorite baseball team (the LA Dodgers), and what the cultural significance of baseball is in South Korea. I knew it was big there but I didn't realize just how big it really is. South Korean baseball players are absolute superstars over there. He likened baseball in South Korea to football here in America.
Jin said he hopes to finish his studies at CIES, transfer to TCC to get some credits, and then transfer back to FSU to get a degree in gold management I believe. It was interesting to hear him to talk about how the language barrier prevented him from learning new things in golf and how he thought that inhibited his growth as a player. Now he is thinking about possibly coaching golf or managing a golf team. In fact he's thinking about doing a lot of different things, but his main objective now is to learn English well enough so that he can speak comfortably with any native speaker. Jin was great, I'm psyched to hang out with him again.
That's so awesome to hear that you got along so great! Yes, South Korea's night life is incredibly insane... here most places close at 2am and that's when the usual night begins. Bars and karaoke places will stay open past 4am even all night. People don't start going to clubs until like 1am and will stay until like 5am... it's insane! And yes, golf and baseball is huge over in Korea. Because we don't have many sports that the country can compete in, the sports that we do compete in are just overblown and huge. I hope that he can definitely get more American insight from you and he prospers in his future endeavors!
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