I got support from the Tourism & Leisure Education Center. They gave me an opportunity for students to get experiences and knowledge about other countries’ cultures, tourism and so on.

Thanks to this opportunity, our team was able to go to the Philippines. Our duty was promoting Jeju Island, including Jeju-NU, and to communicate with local people when a local festival was proceeding.

The festival’s name is “Ati-Atihan Festival”. The Ati-Atihan is a festival in honor of the Santo Niño, celebrated in every 3rd week in January. During the last three days of this festival, the long parade was held. It was a very colorful parade with celebrants painting their faces in many different ways and dressing in the most exceptional costumes. The dancing to the rhythms of the drums made this festival comparable with Carnival in Rio in Brazil. This festival is celebrated in Kalibo every January.

To succeed our duty, our team prepared a dance, leaflets about attractions in Jeju, Jeju-NU’s promotion brochure, face painting, and Bi-bim-bap and Korean traditional clothes for this festival.  

It was my first time to introduce about my country and school to foreign people. Fortunately, local people were very interested in our promotion. So I could enjoy talking with them. Each promotion day, we offered free face painting and Bi-bim-bap to them. Students, many children and their parents came into our booth. As we know, Korea is well known for K-pop stars or drama talents. As a result most local people recognize Korea as their favorite stars’ country name. This point made me feel inconvenienced for a second. I thought we need many Korea students to go out into the world and they should spread Korea’s own excellences of culture and history.

This was a very meaningful time that I spread our country, province and school in other country’s festival because I felt the bond to my motherland at that time.

And I finally know how to do something in foreign countries in the future. I hope many opportunities can be given to other students so that students get some similar memories that I got.