This Spring was my fourth semester as a member of the international club, OU Cousins. As a freshman I became “cousins” with a student from South Korea. I got to know her and her culture and we became good friends. In fact, this past summer I went to South Korea to study abroad for a month. While I was there I got to see my friend twice! Together we explored Seoul and tried a lot of delicious foods.

This year I wasn’t too worried about getting an official cousin. I decided I would try to make more friends through the club. I went to the match party last semester with two friends, both of whom are also from the United States. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go to the match party this semester because of class I had. However, I was able to make a few friends last semester that I have kept in touch with over the school year. 

I made a friend from Japan who was, coincidentally, in my friend’s class last semester. I’ve gotten to learn more about Japanese culture through him and he’s helped some friends and I by explaining some of the grammar patterns we’ve learned in class. He’s really nice and does a good job at explaining things. He’s definitely the reason we all did really well on our Japanese finals last semester! A few of my friends (from my Japanese class) actually had the opportunity to go to Dallas and bring him with us. It was a really fun time and we even went to a photobooth to take pictures! Trying to fit everyone into the frame was a bit of a challenge though. 

My other friend/ unofficial cousin (we never actually filled out the form, both of us forgot) is from South Korea. We were able to go to OU Cousingiving together last semester and it was really fun. He’s a very easy-going person who is always down to do anything. At one point, I took him to a Korean restaurant to see if he would like it, in comparison to the food in Korea, and he did. 

Overall I’m pretty happy to be part of OU Cousins, I think it’s a lot of fun and you can make a lot of really great friends out of it.

Thanks for reading!

Yailin