Nia was born in Brooklyn.
Her mother, Denise Brooks, worked as a public school music teacher in Queens, and her father had been a subway maintenance technician until his death when Nia was sixteen.
Music filled their home.
Her mother sang gospel.
Her father loved jazz.
Her younger brother, Malik, played drums on practically every surface he could reach.
And Nia grew up believing that songs could say things people struggled to explain.
Her interest in Korean began when she was thirteen.
A Korean American family moved into the apartment above theirs, and their daughter became Nia's closest friend. They studied together, exchanged music, and spent afternoons translating songs for each other.
At first, Nia learned phrases simply because she wanted to understand what her friend was saying to her grandmother.
Then curiosity became fascination.
She began studying Hangul.
Borrowed grammar books.
Watched Korean interviews without subtitles.
And eventually enrolled in formal language courses.
By the time she entered college, she could hold conversations comfortably.
By graduation, she was advanced enough to pursue graduate study in Korean linguistics and cultural communication.
But speaking a language fluently wasn't the same thing as understanding every person who used it.
That was something Seoul taught her.
Nia's first months in South Korea were filled with mistakes.
She misunderstood regional expressions, became confused by unfamiliar levels of formality, and occasionally found herself standing outside the wrong subway exit wondering how she'd managed to travel in the opposite direction from her destination.
Her friends laughed with her.
She laughed at herself.
And slowly, the city began feeling less foreign.
She loved the public transportation system.
Loved the cafés where students worked late into the night.
Loved the little neighborhood restaurants where elderly owners asked whether she'd eaten enough.
But she also missed home.
Her mother's cooking.
Malik's terrible jokes.
And the sound of rain against the old apartment windows in Brooklyn.
Sometimes, when loneliness became overwhelming, she listened to music that reminded her why she'd wanted to study in Korea.
One song was "Haru Haru" by BIGBANG.
She had first heard it years earlier while sitting beside her Korean American friend on the floor of their apartment.
The song's emotional intensity fascinated her.
Later, while studying Korean, she'd examined how its title and story expressed the passage of time and the pain of separation.
By the time she moved to Seoul, the song had become connected to memories of adolescence, friendship, and the complicated experience of loving people who weren't always nearby.