Lunar New Year

I don't have much time to blog right now, but I'm trying to get this one out before I pass out. This past week was Lunar New Year, which meant Thursday and Friday, I no Korean classes or English classes to teach! I ENJOYED the time off. Recently, I've been going crazy with all of the work, so I definitely enjoyed sleeping in till 11, 12, and even 1 pm. I went to a traditional Korean performance on the actual day with friends, and it was pretty cool. I've seen these performances before, but this one was a bit different because I can now actually understand most of what they are singing about/saying.

This week, I have to debate about whether plastic surgery is a good thing or not. I say "debate" but in reality, it's just a classroom discussion that's graded. I'm not too worried about it, but then again, I don't care too much about my grades this semester either. However, my classmates are going crazy. They are all trying to memorize their arguments, which I tried to tell them is pointless for debate because you have to listen to what your opponent says and respond to it with research you've done. My classmates are trying to get me to write down all of my arguments and memorize them so that I can just repeat them like a toy monkey. I'm more of the opinion that just knowing your arguments well serves a whole lot better than straight up memorization. I guess it's the difference in learning styles.

I'm actually starting to get tired of learning Korean everyday because of it. I want to be able to talk about these issues without having to memorize a paragraph. Granted, you have to work a lot to be able to talk about something like this, but I think at this point I would rather just do it with Korean natives. I'm kind of glad that this is my last term here. I definitely care about whether I pass or fail, but that "care percentage" is beginning to drop. After all, I'm here to learn the language (vocab and grammar) not necessarily how to hold a formal debate or how to memorize a page of Korean.

Anyway, I'm gonna turn in for the night now. I'll be sure to write in a lot more detail next week. I hope everyone is doing great back home!