[Context Is Key]

I realize that my posts are becoming more and more infrequent. It isn't necessarily because I'm strapped for time (although sometimes that may be the case). It's mostly just because there's not much interesting going on from my perspective. Most of the pictures I take go up on facebook, and I'm becoming less and less of a clutz in Korean. The opportunity for me to regale you with horrendous mistakes is dwindling. The mistakes I make now are either a result of "I didn't quite understand, but I'm gonna respond anyway" or tense errors (using past instead of future etc). I don't consider the last one to be a huge mistake seeing as most people understand anyway. I've dealt with enough people in English that are exactly the same. Obviously, I'm going to continue working on it, but writing a paragraph on "I said came instead of come" doesn't make for the best read.

The more Korean I learn, the harder and harder it is to translate it to English. I find a lot of it poetic in the way it conveys ideas. For example, "please let me know [fill in the blank]" in Korean would be something more like, "Please give me knowledge about [fill in the blank]." I am now also in the stage where I can understand a whole lot, but I don't remember quite how to say it when I speak. So, for example, instead of saying, "The people elected a president." I would say, "The people did the thing where they choose a person who is above them." Understandable? Yes. Raise eyebrows? Yes. Takes me a long time to put the sentence together? Yes. Have I ever said that? No.

I got my midterm grades back. Speaking - 88.5, Writing - 93.9, Reading - 88, Listening - 82. My teacher actually trolled me about my grades. (For those of you who may not know what "trolling" is, or why I used quotation marks there, please keep reading. Trolling is a relatively new word invented in an online context to refer to teasing or making someone's life difficult for no other reason that to obtain pleasure from it. And I don't know why I used quotation marks there.) Anyway, after we all got our grades back, she was going over certain mistakes we had made on the tests. Surprisingly, she was very open with who got good/bad grades on certain things. (I know that in college in America, a teacher sharing grades is illegal.) When it became my turn, she looked over the scores and said the following. "Hmmm. I heard from your teacher last term that you normally test better on the final [than on the midterm]. [I was kind of surprised] to see your scores [were so low].  I guess we'll wait for the final [to see if you're really that good]." I put brackets in because she didn't actually say that, but since Korean is a very high context language, I just want to make sure you get the full implication of what she was actually saying. 

After the whole class, including me, laughed for a bit (which was good because I needed time to form a retort) I responded with, "I'll show you [what I can do on the final]." Granted, not the wittiest of comebacks, but at least it has motivated me to try a lot harder. 2 of my classmates beat me in scores by a little bit, so that's also another motivating factor. I'm going to do my best to get another scholarship, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. If I can keep listening at a B and pull the other 2 up to A's, then I should be OK.

I've finally been invited to a soccer group that plays every Thursday. Maybe from there, I can stem off into playing more days. I guess it depends if I'll be able to walk the next day or not. I've been inactive for so long, I'm not sure exactly how my body will react to the sudden demand. I just went for a run today and wasn't much pleased with my fitness. I did make it about half a mile before my mind started, "Hey, you don't wanna run past these people. It will make them feel awkward. Why don't you just walk for now? The sidewalk is too narrow here anyway."  

I'm also seriously considering trying to get a part time job working in a Korean company like a hotel or something else. A lot of companies want people who speak English to teach the staff, and it would be a great opportunity for me to practice Korean as well as make a little spending money so I can upgrade my meals from ramen to something a bit more substantial. We'll see how it goes I guess.

2 Days of Solitary with 2 Birds and a Stone

Not much new this week. I haven't worked all week, which means I had the whole week to study. And believe it or not, I did study quite a bit. This week definitely came at the right time. We've been learning so much vocabulary recently, it's hard to keep track. I find it really amazing at just how much our brains can store. If you think about the amount of vocabulary you have stored in your brain, it's kind of amazing. And then your brain remembers how to use each specific word in certain orders to convey certain meanings. Language really is an interesting study. Unfortunately, the theory is much easier than the actual day to day.

Since I now am able to have a somewhat vague thought process in Korean now, I practice using it when I can. It is definitely helping with memorizing new vocabulary. I write down example sentences with the new vocabulary I've learned. I get the examples either from class or an online dictionary. The association of the word to a situation helps the memorization as well as speaking. 2 birds with one stone?

My language blunders are definitely decreasing. I was able to have about an hour conversation with a Chinese girl in my school. The only real blunders had to do with misused transition words (so instead of and, but instead of so, etc.) I guess the biggest embarrassment is how much better she is at Korean than I am, which of course gives me renewed vigor to study even harder. It's a good thing I'm not competitive or anything.

I'm finding my overall retention is increasing as well. Now that I'm familiar with some of the Chinese roots, words in the same family come a lot easier. I'm even starting to remember things I only hear. Sometimes though, I can't get over how juvenile some of the words sound when literally translated. For example, ventilation (which my landlord so courteously taught me) literally translates to "Change/exchange machine." I was able to pick out the Chinese roots and then got stuck at "Change machine." I then pretended to get it and be on my merry way only later to look it up in the dictionary. The wave of "OOOOOOOOOHHHHHH" hit me pretty hard.

I've been sick these past two days (Saturday and Sunday). Not sure exactly what's wrong, but if it persists, I'm going to the health center at my school to let them take a look. Pretty sure it's some kind of bacterial infection due to the white spots on the back of my throat. Either way, this too has cleared my plans for the weekend and allowed me to study. YAHHH! or not.

I also got another scholarship! Once again, it was for half of the tuition cost. So I essentially have take one free semester there. The dude who gave a speech after said that we were the top 3 percent of students in the school for grades, attendance, participation, being nice to others, and something else I didn't understand, but I'm sure had to do something with just being generally awesome. Maybe most likely to rule a 3rd world country? OK, here's the Joe Lee translation. Words in brackets are guesses. "The above person during the 2013 spring semester of Yonsei language school tried very hard and showed great [improvement] in his Korean ability [through this] this excellent student is awarded 840,000 won. [Man, this guy sucks. I guess we have to give him something though.]

Even though I've made all of these strides in the language, I still feel incredibly inadequate in social situations. It's like climbing a mountain with no peak. I look at natives and realize I will never be that good or natural. This experience has really given me a great respect for those that come to America and learn the language. Some of them with no actual academic training in the language at all. I can't imagine trying to do that with Korean.