Hey everyone, this summer I am going to an exchange program in Seoul, South Korea so I thought I would write this weekly blog to share my experiences! I hope you enjoy!
A little about me: My name is Marco and I attend the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. I am a rising 3rd year majoring in Discrete Mathematics. I have been playing StarCraft for around 5 years and am currently the captain of the Georgia Tech CSL team and the president of the StarCraft club on campus. I play Terran at a high masters level (hopefully gm soon ^^).
This is a somewhat recent picture of me (I am the one on the right zz)
I have been learning Korean for a year now through classes at my university and some self study. During my time in Korea I will be staying at Sogang University (서강대학교) in Seoul while taking 9 hours (3 classes) of Korean. At the end of each blog post I will post a paragraph or two in Korean demonstrating something new that I have learned or something like that. I appreciate any help that the TL Korean speakers are willing to give.
My Trip:
I will be leaving for Korea during the first week of June and my classes start on the 9th. Before the semester starts I am probably just going to be living in a hostel, visiting PC방s, going to Proleague/GSL, and exploring the city. During my two month semester there are a number of trips planned out by my teacher including: SM Entertainment, Jeju Island (not actually sure if this is confirmed), Busan, a Buddhist temple, etc.
Around 14 other students will be going on this trip as well. Most of them are from Georgia Tech, but a few are from an ROTC program in schools around the US. Additionally, almost everyone on the trip is Korean-American (off the top of my head I can think of only three non-Koreans, including myself, going).
CSL:
For those who do not know, the CSL is the Collegiate Starleague, a college based StarCraft league. Hundreds of schools around North America and Europe compete every year.
I am the captain of Georgia Tech's CSL team and I have great faith in our abilities. Currently we are in the Ro8 and are scheduled to play the University of Maryland College Park (this is actually outdated as of a few hours ago but I will not post spoilers).
A quick rundown of our roster: ReMiiX - Terran - Masters - Captain - Stream - I am bad.
Quantic.MaSsan - Zerg - Grandmasters - Stream - I had the honor of housing MaSsan under my bed for the past year and I must say that he is one of the scariest zergs in NA. He has unbelievable analysis and game sense. In my opinion, his stream has the most useful zerg analysis in all of NA and should be watched by all aspiring zerg players.
FXO.TheoRy - Protoss - Grandmasters - Stream - TheoRy is a super solid NA Protoss. He is constantly in the top 50 of NA GM and regularly beats top players. I would rank him in the top 5 NA Protosses. He streams at the weirdest hours (4:30am our time -_-) but his stream has some of the highest level protoss play that you can find.
FXO.Shield - Zerg - Grandmasters - If this kid had a computer that ran SC at more than 15 frames per second, he would put all of NA to shame. His macro and mechanics are on a level only seen in Korean gamers. I have personally witnessed the destruction of poor noobs at the hand of this kid in beautiful 240p/10 fps.
BORAT - Zerg - Grandmasters - James, if you read this start playing again and live with us next year. This kid took a 3 month break (girlfriend......) and then came back and reached #1 masters in NA within a week. He is kinda good, guys.
Aucamazn - Random - Masters - He recently switched to random from zerg and it shows haha. Just kidding, this kid is solid due to him living with MaSsan for a semester. He is really good at holding my 11/11, much to my dismay.
Rane - Zerg - Grandmasters (SEA lol) - This kid is actually GM level if he ever played SC instead of DotA. He comes straight from the forest of Indo and tears up NA ladder with his nydus cheese. He is part of the legendary Georgia Tech 2v2 team "The City Boyz" who are yet to be defeated in the CSL or tournament play.
Outside of this line up, we have more than 20 masters players in our club (of around 100 semi active members).
Our competition:
Berkeley. This is all we care about. Suppy...
Closing: I hope you guys enjoyed this first post. I will be updating this weekly on the weekend. I will do segments on different trips during my visit to Korea as well as a food blog. The future blogs will have more content and pictures so stay tuned!
한국어 (please excuse errors, I am still a beginner!):
안녕하세요! 저는 마르코 입니다. 한국어 잘 못해요 ㅋㅋ. 저는 20년 입니다. 탈라하시에서 (Tallahassee - sp.?) 왔어. 6월4일부터 8월2일까지 서울에 살고 있어요.
Have fun! I couldnt find the CSL results for you guys with a quick glance but hopefully you won. Maybe I should come check out the club before I graduate. Aucamazn is a bio 1520 pro btw.
Shellshock, last season we got to the Ro8 before losing to Washington. This season we won our qualifier without dropping a single map (beating Washington 3-0 on the way). We are now in the playoffs with 7 other schools.
I was gonna actually apply to Sokang, until I found out it was a catholic school (I'm not very religious).
I don't know about now as things may have changed, but people used to call Sokang University, "Sokang High School" because of the amount of work they assign (high school in Korea is very rigorous as you might have heard). But you probably don't need to deal with that as an exchange student. Just wanted to share some info; I've been researching a lot about Korean universities, although I know very little about Sokang.
In fact, I'll be leaving to Korea at the end of the month or early June as well PM me if you wanna kick it with a fellow TLer and good luck!
On May 06 2013 02:15 ReMiiX wrote: Shellshock, last season we got to the Ro8 before losing to Washington. This season we won our qualifier without dropping a single map (beating Washington 3-0 on the way). We are now in the playoffs with 7 other schools.
On May 06 2013 04:02 danmooj1 wrote: You should add "요" after "왔어"
I was gonna actually apply to Sokang, until I found out it was a catholic school (I'm not very religious).
I don't know about now as things may have changed, but people used to call Sokang University, "Sokang High School" because of the amount of work they assign (high school in Korea is very rigorous as you might have heard). But you probably don't need to deal with that as an exchange student. Just wanted to share some info; I've been researching a lot about Korean universities, although I know very little about Sokang.
In fact, I'll be leaving to Korea at the end of the month or early June as well PM me if you wanna kick it with a fellow TLer and good luck!
Oh yeah, I just forgot that.
I am not religious either, but this university is apparently known for its study abroad Korean program so it was chosen by Georgia Tech. I think in the fall and spring semesters you can go to other schools like Seoul National and KIEST.
I will probably not have the work load of a regular student as my classes are mostly going to be taught by my Georgia Tech professor.
I'll definitely hit you up if you want, thanks for reading!
On May 06 2013 05:18 Chaggi wrote: I go to Yonsei University, it's at the same place where Sogang is. Send me a PM if you want a Terran friend
Don't expect to learn too much Korean during your stay here, just try to have as much fun as possible and making some Korean friends you can keep in touch with if you ever come back. 2 Months isn't a lot of time. I'm currently half-way through level 5 at Yonsei, and I can honestly say I still feel like a newbie sometimes when I'm speaking/reading/writing Korean. I didn't get comfortable in conversations until the middle of level 3. I've heard that sogang focuses more on speaking and less on grammar though.
Anyways, if you have any questions, just hit me up I live around 5 minutes away(close to 이대) from Sogang so I know the area pretty well.
On May 06 2013 08:04 snipealot wrote: Don't expect to learn too much Korean during your stay here, just try to have as much fun as possible and making some Korean friends you can keep in touch with if you ever come back. 2 Months isn't a lot of time. I'm currently half-way through level 5 at Yonsei, and I can honestly say I still feel like a newbie sometimes when I'm speaking/reading/writing Korean. I didn't get comfortable in conversations until the middle of level 3. I've heard that sogang focuses more on speaking and less on grammar though.
Anyways, if you have any questions, just hit me up I live around 5 minutes away(close to 이대) from Sogang so I know the area pretty well.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/CM7lqtG.jpg)
