Hi, it’s Teri and Seolhwa here! Are you curious about our story and how our friendship started?
Would you believe if we told you we have been friends for more than 6 years now and that we met through an app? It all started in 2018, when 17 years old Teri and 16 years old Seolhwa wanted to meet new people with the same interests and felt a little depressed and lonely since during that time Teri was struggling to retake the university entrance exam and Seolhwa was having a hard time at school. We all know Pinterest, right? Well, back in 2018, We🧡It was the Pinterest of today, and there was a famous trend going on there called “looking for a friend”. You would add a picture and kind of like the cv requirements you were looking for in a friend in a post. Teri decided to make a post like that on We🧡 it, but she wasn’t expecting much of an answer. However, some days later she received a notification. You can guess who it was from…it was Seolhwa with a message that was gonna change their lives. We started texting 💬 about normal topics, then started to get to know each other more, our music tastes matched, we discovered our shared love for cats, we showed each other pictures of our cats and Teri even gave Seolhwa’s cat a nickname “Tamal” (yes, after the Mexican food). However, what we mainly had in common was that we were both learning a language at that time and we decided to help each other. Seolhwa was helping Teri with English and, in turn, Teri was helping Seolhwa with Spanish. Our conversations were in both languages and it helped us a lot to improve. Surprisingly, we talked about every topic, there was no shyness between us and it was almost like we knew each other for a life time…
Fast forward to 2019 when Seolhwa went to Spain for a month to study Spanish at an academy. Meanwhile, we continued talking and talking, she had a really good time there and shared her experiences and adventures with Teri every day. When she got back to Romania, Seolhwa decided it was time to start learning a new language. She was looking for a challenge, a language that would be harder than Spanish. One day she stumbled upon Han Kang’s book, “The Vegetarian” and the website TalkToMeInKorean (which had free Korean lessons back then). As her passion for reading and languages brought her to Korean, she decided to start learning this language. One day, Seolhwa shared this idea of learning Korean with Teri who thought it was pretty cool, but had 0 knowledge about Korean or Korean culture. Teri, of course, showed her support to Seolhwa. During that time, Teri was feeling pretty bored at home, just finished high school and had to go every morning to her part time job. Seolhwa used to recommend her music and so she gave a try to a kpop song…. And u guessed it right, it was “Fake love” by BTS. She really liked the song but as she was unable to sing it or even understand what the lyrics meant, one day she just thought it would be a good idea to learn Korean with Seolhwa and have a fun time studying together.
And so we did, Seolhwa taught Teri Hangul, the basics of Korean and as the days passed by, we started to take language learning more serious, we had a good time sharing our language learning journey together and talking about our daily life. Teri took the university entrance exam again and got accepted and Seolhwa also entered a good university. We celebrated each other’s small and big achievements, especially when Seolhwa won a scholarship to study in Korea for a whole year and Teri got a good job where she could practice not only languages but enhance her teaching skills. Even though that year when Seolhwa was away, we didn’t get to talk much because of the hour difference, nothing changed between us.
And here we are embarking on a new adventure together, having our own blog. Even though we still haven’t met in person, we both can call each other best friends. We aren’t shy anymore 😂, we do video calls from time to time and even have plans to meet in Korea next year! The moral of this story is: Take a chance on that online stranger! He or she might even become your best friend for life!
If you want to know more, keep following our journey on this blog and see where it will take us next.
Polyglot besties 
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