Interactions with SNU

My interactions so far with SNU, Seoul National Universary, students has been a bit interesting. The students in our combined class do not seem to me as though they want to talk in class. I am not sure whether this is because they are shy or if the reason is that they may be afraid of being judged when using their English, yet both may be the case.

Although our SNU classmates seem to be shy or nervous, they were very welcoming to us University of Michigan students when entering their class and even when we talked and shared about ourselves. Even when it was not their time to speak, the students would listen very carefully to what we had to say. They seemed to be very respectful to visiting students of our diverse group.

While walking around campus there are many tents in which students sell foods that they make themselves. As we, the University of Michigan students, would walk by we would be excitingly approached by SNU students using a bit of English to come over to buy some food. It was surprising how open the students were to approaching possible foreigners, but they did not seem to mind and, in fact, many students would ask where we were from.

For questions that I wanted to ask we're how many foreigners actually come to do programs, non-degree based, at SNU during a year? I would like to know this because even though there are foreign students, shorter term foreign students may have A harder time making friendships or networking, and I wanted to know if we might have the same problem while we are here if it's harder to make these connections in our 18 days.