I was reading an article online the other day about how the Internet is full of deadwood -- websites (mostly online journals) that people start and don't finish. I wonder when that'll happen to this site...
Anways, I'm alive and well and have been getting by the same. As I'm back in school, I've been back to my familiar, hectic pace. Being back at Yonsei University in level three gives me hope that someday I'll figure out this language. They say that once you get past level four you're speaking quite naturally...we'll see. The class is really good and my classmates seem pretty cool...of course only one is an English speaker. There are 5 Japanese, 2 Chinese, 1 Taiwanese girl who speaks some English, myself, and another Canadian girl from Vancouver. In addition, I'm also the only non-Asian person in the class. I find it interesting how, even though we are all foreigners, I'm often referred to as "the foreigner" when we're talking about cultural differences. Some of them seem to use it synonomously with "white person" so I have to keep reminding them that the term they should be using is Seo-yang-sa-ram(westerner) and not "way-gook-een"(foreigner). Last time I did this the girl just looked at my confused, apparantly she (Japanese) doesn't feel like foreigners when she's in Korea because she looks the same.
I'm not looking for perfect marks; I'm just hoping to attend enough classes to get through and ensure that I get a chance to attend level four. It's funny to think that I've now spent over 500 classroom hours (not to mention countless hours studying alone and with language partners) and almost $5000 on Korean classes. I wonder if I'll look at these expenditures in the future as a good investment or not--I guess time will tell.
Life at our hagwon has been going along really well. We've got a bunch of new people. It's hard to believe that the only veterans that are left are Bret, Angela, and myself. I recognize that since I don't seem to get to this website as often as I used to I end up talking about people coming and going. So I'm not going to do that except to mention that we're getting over Rebekah leaving. While I butted heads with her a couple times I really did respect her teaching ability and level of organization. Now that she's gone we're back to doing things the old way and things are back to getting done at the last minute.
A few weeks back I went to my first Korean music concert. I saw Lee So-ra, Park Hyo-shin, and Sung Si-kyung at the outdoor concert hall at Yonsei University. I had heard some of their music in my travels, but I wasn't really familiar with any of the singers. My tastes usually go to young Korean female pop-stars ;-) (I've decided that it's a good thing I don't understand what they're singing about). Anyhow, they are all popular singers and Yun-kyung really wanted to go, so I agreed. The most interesting thing I noticed was that no one clapped. They give you a packet of crap when you come in that includes a 5-inch fluorescent stick (not sure what you call it). so whenever they finish a song, the audience waves it. Having talked about this with a Korean friend, she says that this is a new thing. In the past they would applaud the same as I would expect. The singers also don't ever seem to sing two songs in a row. They pause between songs and talk quite a bit. The theme was winter's first snow, so included in the pack was a white poncho that they wanted everyone to wear. It was night and they had different coloured lights going across the audience so it was nice. They sang quite a few covers of English songs so the overall experience was a good one. I suppose if I hadn't had close to the worst tickets possible I might have enjoyed it more.
I can't remember if I mentioned, but I have a new language exchange partner these days. Sally, who used to work at my school, and I have been meeting afternoons in my precious couple hours of free time when I get off the bus from Yonsei and start teaching. It's great because she speaks English so well, I can get her to explain some of the things that are only explained to me in Korean, which helps a lot. At times, I find that even though I understand all of the words in a sentence I have trouble getting the overall meaning--hearing it in English is a welcome relief.
That's about all I can manage right now as I gotta run along. I'll try to get back to making regular updates, but it's tough when you spend your days running all day and then the weekends trying to get caught up on all of the crap you left for the weekend.
Cheers