Sitting on the plane, sophomore Chris Noh watched his homeland drift away as he prepared to land across the globe. One flight — 14 hours later — he stepped off the plane to step foot into his new life.

During Thanksgiving break, Chris moved away from Seoul, South Korea, for his father’s career as an English professor and started attending Hebron. He said leaving Seoul meant leaving his friends behind and starting a journey in a foreign world, but when he first stepped onto the plane, it wasn’t the first thing on his mind.

“When I usually ride an airplane, my ears start to hurt,” Chris said. “At the time, I was more worried about my ears hurting, so I didn’t really think about what to expect when I would arrive.”

Chris said he was focused on letting his past go, rather than overthinking about what was to come in a new country after leaving 16 years of his life behind. 

“I miss my friends the most,” Chris said. “During my last day in Korea, me and my friends kept playing and talking until two in the morning at the playground.”

Because his father used to work as an English professor at Seoul Women’s University, Chris was able to come into America without being completely blind to the English language.

“Communicating with people is the hardest for me here,” Chris said. “If talking starts to get easier for me, I could say that I like it here better [than Korea].”

Although Chris said he struggles with speaking, his ESL teacher, Lanelle Urias, said she noticed his efforts in class. He skipped the newcomers ESL course and went straight into English 1.

“I feel proud of him every day, because he comes here not afraid,” Urias said. “He tries, uses what he knows, and he takes risks in English. He will express himself, he will ask questions and he will clarify and have conversations. That’s a very difficult thing to do if you don’t know that much English.”

Chris has connected with his peers who speak both English and Korean. Junior Jimo Lee’s first interaction with him was when she translated for him while introducing him to others.

“I have noticed that he started making more friends,” Lee said. “[He has] more Korean friends because [it’s] easier for him to communicate with them.”

Chris said he entered America with an open mind of the cultural differences compared to his hometown and opening up to new experiences allowed him to adapt more smoothly into the new environment.

“[What surprised me the most] is when schools take breaks when it snows,” Chris said. “[In Korea,] we just go. Even when it rains, people [here] usually just walk under the rain. Their fashion sense is very different here, too.”

Chris found it difficult to create interactions with his peers. The language barrier made it challenging to communicate freely, while the cultural differences added another layer of difficulty.

“When I first came to Texas, my greatest goal was to make friends [and] connections,” Lee said. “Even small talk conversations with people you see in the hallways [will] all add up later on. Chris might’ve had that problem more because [he was] a middle of the year transfer student.”

Although Chris just began the process of his move to the U.S., he said he already has his own goals for the future.

“I wish I could change my [first] language from Korean into English,” Chris said. “But as time goes by, everything starts to become more familiar.”