After a few months in the United States, my family and I started to go to English classes at Oxford College of Emory University in Covington, Georgia. The professors were freshmen and sophomore students, most of them with different backgrounds, nationalities, and ethnicities. During that time I was in high school, and one Korean student in particular started to help me out with my homework. One day she invited me and my family to her church.
Immanuel Church of Atlanta is a Korean church located in Duluth, Georgia. The first time I went, I thought it would be a church with American people, but it was not; it was a Korean church with Korean people and a Korean priest. Something else that I was surprised by was the size and the amount of people who were in the place. The church was very small, and there were only like ten people, but those people were the sweetest in the world, even if we were unable to communicate. My family and I ended up going for six months.
Then they started to translate from Korean to English, and I was trying my best to translate in Spanish for my parents. We were not only immersed in the world of Jesus Christ but also in Korean culture and traditions. We started to eat Korean dishes every Sunday after the service, and I even started to do things that were not in my culture, such as this particular bow that Koreans do when they are greeting or saying thank you to someone.
My family and I also started to go to Korean bakeries. Since there are a good number of Koreans in Georgia, we started to visit a lot of them, and now we have our favorite Korean bakery. This random but beautiful experience allows me to know and learn about a country that is completely different from mine.
