Yes, we’re from North Korea!

As a 1.5 generation Korean-American, two questions I get asked over and over are “Where are you from and where are you really from?” Upon hearing my answer as “I’m originally from Korea,” the next question follows “Are you from North or South Korea?” Almost all Koreans or Korean descendants living in the U.S. Read the rest.

Chinese Characters as Ancient “Emoji”

Studying a foreign language is not an easy task. This is especially the case when you try to learn a language of the country or region whose culture has little in common with your own. For foreign learners of Japanese, for example, a massive number of originally Chinese characters are one of the biggest challenges in developing Japanese language skills. Read the rest.

Romania and Dracula: Fact and Fiction

With Halloween fast approaching, mentions of the macabre, the ghoulish, and the otherwise spooky begin to fill the ever-cooling air. For me, the literary mainstays of the season include Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein, the eerie short works of American sci-fi pioneer H.P. Lovecraft, the poems of Edgar Allan Poe, and Anglo-Irishman Bram Stoker’s best-selling novel Dracula. Read the rest.

Adventures in Arabic, Part II

Welcome back, Arabophiles! And thank you for joining us at Glocal Notes for the second edition of “Adventures in Arabic.” As promised, this week we will share “Ways To Cope with Difficulty” and “Miscellany.”

As always with this blog, one of our most pertinent goals is to make you more aware of the resources that we have in our library and on campus to help you with your needs. Read the rest.