==SOUTH KOREA==

When I was 13 years old, my family went to the United States of America, because my father, who is now working as a chief editor at Yonhap news agency, was then a correspondent. For that reason, I went abroad quite often compared to other kids my age. Anyway, all of my Korean friends envied me for I could fluently speak many different languages such as English and Japanese and had travelled around many well-known tourist attractions, but whenever they told me that I acquired the privilege of speaking many foreign languages, just like native speakers without any of my own effort, I could feel my heart shuddering with the desire to reveal the truth, and shrieking with great anger, "That's not true at all!"

My boring, but at the same time peaceful, life as a 13-year-old girl was required to enter a totally unexpected stage of life with an ordinary telephone call. I was watching TV with my mother the day I got the call from my father. He immediately asked me for mom, and from the hasty tone of his voice, I could tell right away that he was in a great hurry to tell mom something very important. An exclamation came out of my mother, and a minute later, my intuition was proved right with my mom, still in bewilderment and confusion, stammering out the five words, "We are leaving for America!"
Finally the day for our departure came and many people came to send us off. While my parents were exchanging parting words with their friends, my grandparents walked toward us and stood still, for how long I don't remember, holding our hands tightly. About five minutes must have passed when my grandmother wiped away her tears and started talking in her feeble voice. "Lives of people at my age are unpredictable. This could even be the last time I'll be able to see you girls. Just remember that your grandparents are always there for you in your hearts although we are physically separated." After stammering out those words with much difficulty, she this time gave each one of us a big and firm hug, again for how long I don't remember.
One day in my art class, an American girl who was sitting opposite to me spoke to me for the first time. She asked me if I could say "Hi" and told me to repeat after her. She was a nice looking girl and I, without any hesitation or doubt, did what she asked me to do because I didn't want to let that valuable opportunity of having a conversation with an American student slip. "Hi" was one of the few expressions I could speak without difficulty, so I proudly said it out loud feeling so sure that it would be good enough to impress this nice looking American girl who probably only had expected the bewilderment of illiteracy on my face instead of a perfect repetition. But a second later, what I got was a scornful smile and banter from the kids around me including the girl herself. "She can say 'Hi'; she is not stupid," were the exact words she said, having a difficult time trying to restrain herself from laughing. I do admit that there is a slight difference in definition between the words 'banter' and 'ridicule' and that there may even be people who would say that it's a common nature of kids that age so that it's not fair referring to it as mean or cruel, but those eight words in that very situation were enough to break my heart to pieces.
I didn't cry in front of them, but that night at home I cried and cried and shed a shower of tears until there was not even one teardrop left in my eyes. I couldn't stop myself from hating my father who had brought me to this hell. I couldn't forgive my father who had made my life so miserable. However, it wasn't that I was expecting some kind of apology from him or I was thinking he deserved the same kind of pain as I had as the punishment for his serious crime of bringing me to America. All I asked him was to allow me to run away from that infernal place and let me go back to my country, Korea, where I could just embrace my grandmother. That was all I hoped for and I didn't think it was too heavy a price to pay for an insult such as the one that American girl gave me. After an hour of crying, my disappointment and sorrow turned into anger and hatred. A revengeful thought sprang up in my mind. Yes, I couldn't speak English at the time, but it couldn't possibly have been the reason for anyone to tease me, nor could it have given them the authority to insult me. I told myself I would make them acknowledge that I wasn't stupid at all.
From that day forth, I stopped hanging out with my Korean friends even in ESL class. I tried to speak only English, at first with other ESL students. Of course, it wasn't even a complete English sentence which I spoke. It sometimes was only a phrase or word that came out of my mouth. But I didn't quit doing it. I reassured myself that there was nothing strange and funny about a foreign student not able to speak a newly learned language very well. Then after becoming comfortable speaking English with other ESL students, although it was not perfect and barely understandable, my aim was elevated to speaking with American students. In the few classes I took with them such as math, art or P.E., I asked them all sorts of unimportant things unquestionably not worth mention- ing, such as asking for the time when I had a watch myself, asking where the cafeteria was when I'd already know it for almost six months by then, and finally asking whether it was homework or not, right after the teacher's long explanation and instruction on how to do that homework. That wasn't all. I stayed up till 2:00 a.m. memorizing 50 words every day.
Exactly a year had passed in that manner and I was at last out of ESL class. So from that time on, I could take all the classes that every American student in my grade took. It meant a lot to me. I mean really a lot in the way others could never imagine. It meant being on the exact same level with American student's progression in having a good command of English and that no one had any right to tease me, make fun of me, or insult me in front of many other people because of my lack of ability to speak English. That year, for the very first time, I got straight A's and an award given out to honor students. In fact I got this award every semester after that without skipping even a single semester. The next year when I became a 10th grader, I took English 10GT, GT being an abbreviation for gifted and talented, and English 11 together in my 10th grade year. In those English classes, let alone other classes, American students who were even older than I came to ask me for my notebooks and projects with the letter A on them, and even asked me questions on English grammar. Letting them use my notes and projects, and teaching them English grammar, I proudly said to them in my mind, 'You see, I wasn't stupid,' and simultaneously I felt something warm coming down my cheek.

From those three years in America, I learned that the most precious and valuable thing in the world that could possibly happen to a person was playing a fair game with oneself and exerting all possible efforts to keep the promise made to oneself and, in the end, win a victory in those battles.