Originally published for Reach the World, September 30, 2015

Hello! My name is Janine Perri. I am from Long Island, New York, and I studied English and history at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. It’s nice to meet you!

I love learning about new languages, people and places. That’s why I moved to South Korea to teach English to high school students. South Korea is a country in east Asia, right between China and Japan. South Korea is known for its pop music, beautiful festivals, and a very spicy vegetable dish called kimchi.

As a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant, I teach English classes for 600 Korean students each week. That’s a lot of students! But we still have a ton of fun. Sometimes, we even play games like Jeopardy, Hot Potato, and Twenty Questions.

I also live with a Korean host family about three miles away from my school. I have two Korean host sisters, Su Bin and Ye Bin, who are helping me learn their language—Korean. They taught me the Korean alphabet, which is called Hangul and has 40 letters. Now, I can also say phrases like Annyoung, which means “Hi!”, and Mashissoyo, which means “This is delicious!”

When I am not teaching or traveling around Korea, you can find me at home watching k-dramas, which are the Korean version of soap operas, and reading my favorite books. Join me on my journey in “The Land of the Morning Calm” and on my mission to learn Korean!