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Alicia McCarty (far right) was a member of the 1st graduating class of Hidden Valley High School (2004) and graduated in May from the University of Richmond. She wanted "to see the world" before settling down with a job. She looked into several teaching abroad programs and finally settled on Korea after her friend and fellow Hidden Valley graduate, Jerry Kim, decided she wanted to do it as well.
Jerry is Korean/American, graduated from VT and still has family in Seoul, South Korea where they ended up. Through her family connections, they met Dr. Kim who is the Korean Sister City chairman. He recently gave the two of them a tour of Wonju, which is Roanoke's sister city.
Alicia is teaching English in an English immersion private school to kindergartners. She does not speak a word of Korean! Jerry (the woman beside Alicia in the photo above) teaches at a public school and they live together in the Gangnam-gu section of Seoul. They each signed a 1-year contract and will be there until next September.
-- Submitted by Laura McCarty, Alicia's mom.

Laura also included this blog post from Alicia about her tour of Wonju:

This past weekend Jerry, Tiff and I headed to Wonju, a city about an hour and a half outside of Seoul. Wonju happens to be Roanoke’s sister city (what what). We had been invited by Dr. Kim, a friend of Jerry’s dad (also Dr. Kim…ha), who is the Chairman of the sister city committee. Dr. Kim had taken Jerry and I to an amazing dinner a few weeks before and now wanted to give us a tour of Wonju. On Saturday we took a bus to Wonju (a bus that had NO air conditioning for the majority of the ride, ahh) and got there in about two hours. Once we got there, Dr. Kim and his wife drove us around the city and took us on a tour of Wonju. The city is located in a valley and really reminded me of Roanoke. There were tons of trees with gorgeous colored leaves.
This is us with Dr. and Mrs. Kim in front of the Roanoke/Wonju Sister City plaque. (See photo above.) There’s a Roanoke Street there…haha, love it.
That night they took us to this amazing traditional Korean restaurant and we met all of the other members of the Sister City Committee. I probably would have showered had I known we were going to be taken to this big dinner, whoops. After, the Kim’s took us to this great resort where we spent the night. We did a lot of the same thing the next day, driving around and looking at the sights. Before we headed out they took us to this fantastic restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Apparently people drive all the way from Seoul just to eat here. It’s tagline is “Food is art, medicine and science.” We got served a ten-course meal that stretched my food tastes to the limit.

(Click on each image for a close-up view)

Yes, there were fried grasshoppers on one of the dishes…and I ate one. Go me. After the huge lunch, we headed back to Seoul. It was really nice to get out of Seoul for a weekend and see some actual trees. Wonju reminded me a lot of Roanoke and it made me pretty homesick. Being in such a big city like Seoul often keeps my mind off of home a lot just because it is so vastly different. Wonju was beautiful and Roanoke should be proud to call it their sister city!