Amanda Takes Off...

My Christmas holiday was interesting. A pipe broke in my house and I somehow managed to get hold of my landlord, say "I don't have water in my bathroom, are you coming?" (not exactly the truth, I could get water, it was just leaking) and get it fixed.

I baked Snickerdoodles and brought them to a friend's house for Christmas. Five of us spent Christmas Day together and four of us spent the next day together too. We. Ate. So. Much. Food. It was great fun and meant staying up way too late discussing all things under the sun.

Some of the sentences heard included: "We were all communists, but then Tiananmen Square happened. And we had to rethink communism. So most of us became nationalists...", "I can send some of my fetishist students to you...", "Did you just speak Korean?", "I know you're a sympathizer...", "That wine bottle holds 9 liters. You need a cart to drag it around.", and "You'd have to consider which market had been hit by AK-47s and decide if they'd get hit two days in a row..."

I was too exhausted to go to class last night, and besides, I didn't wake up until after noon and just couldn't get there on time. I called Master and managed to make myself understood in Korean. "I'm at a friend's house. We are talking a lot. I'm tired and I don't feel well. I can't come tonight." Two of the people at Christmas were Koreans and said my Korean was good. I think it's still abysmal for having been here nearly 6 months, but it was nice to hear.

Tonight I made it to class. I asked if we were playing soccer since Friday (soccer day) is a test this week and since he was pumping up a soccer ball. He asked if I wanted to play and Cocky, Grin's Brother, and Ghost all turned around, grinned, nodded at me and gave me "OK" hand signs. I said, "네!" He kept asking if I wanted to play and I got more and more excited, "Yes, I love it!" However...I think maybe "love" is only used for people here, based on the way he cracked up about it. And, in Korean fashion, I omitted the object, so it's very possible it sounded like "I love you" directed at him. Of course, everyone knew what I meant, but even so, I'll have to ask someone around using 사랑.

We did poomse (and I totally screwed up 8, which is what I'm testing on Friday!) and then played soccer. I ended up tripping over my own feet, fell backwards, landed on my hip, and slid across the floor a bit. When the older boys were playing, one of them fell. Another fell backwards over him, and another tripped over them. There was a heap of three of them on the ground. Those of us waiting were amused.

I (relearned) the word 구신 (ghost). I think I'll remember it this time since the student who said it grabbed his ear (Korean, 귀) then hit his (English) shin: gouishin. I also asked Master about 하나씩 (one by one, point by point, step by step) and how to say "week" (주).

I two interesting Studying Korean Realizations.

1) I asked Heidi about word-order when using day/date, time of the day, specific time. I couldn't figure out what order they went in. I've been told that often word order isn't super important in Korean since markers are used on everything. However, I'm very fresh as this and would prefer to use the most common word order. She told me "biggest to smallest." In other words, if you have "9:15," "morning," and "Thursday," you'd put them in the order of "Thursday, morning, 9:15." (They writes dates as year:month:date, too.)

Last night I had just put myself to sleep and I was trying to decide how I would ask Master what "week" was. (Yes, yes, I know, why couldn't I just look it up? Because I didn't want to.) I considered writing on the white board "day/일, week/___, month/월, year/년." Then, remembering what Heidi had said, I decided I'd start with year and work my way down.

Then I recalled a study described in Nisbett's book The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why. In this book he describes a study where Japanese and American students were shown brief clips of fish in a tank, with one focal fish. They made about an equal number of statements about the focal fish, but the first sentence Japanese started with was likely to me one about the environment ("It looked like a pond"), when the Americans were three times as likely to first talk about the focal fish ("there was a big fish"). Although the point of this study was to see if both groups could separate objects from their background/context, my thoughts wandered elsewhere...the Japanese (albeit not Korean) students started with the big picture whereas the Americans started with the details.

I literally sat up in bed.

When there are sales in Korea, the percentage off is written "80~50%!" or whatever. They start with the larger number and work towards the smaller, the opposite of how we write signs in the West. When Master tells me to do forms, he starts with 8. He'll usually say, "Do 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1" and sometimes say, "Do 8, 1, 2..."

A Korean sentence is complete with a verb. Subjects and objects are very often implied. As infants, Korean children learn verbs (relationships) faster than Western children do, whereas Western children learn nouns (categories) faster than verbs. Western toddlers categorize objects sooner than Korean children do. The verb is the big thing; the subject and object (nouns) are details.

This "biggest to smallest" thing suddenly made complete sense to me and it all seemed interconnected.

Tonight, when I asked Master, we were sitting on the bench. I held up four fingers and said in Korean, "Year, month," I folded down the third finger, while leaving the others straight, "day." Right away he understood what I was asking. Master's a smart guy, but I wonder if he would've understood so quickly had I started the other way.

2) The word for week is 주. I decided that since "every day/daily/per day" is 매일, perhaps yearly, monthly, and weekly were 매년, 매월, and 매주. I was right. They are. I am very clever.

3) I skipped studying some mostly known words for a day or two and seemed to know them better. This was true for my Sogang vocab and my taekwondo vocab. I'm thinking maybe I've been over studying the words, not giving them enough time to sink into my memory. A few months ago I was bent on learning the body parts. I finally gave up on the last six and three days later, like magic, I knew them. I wasn't trying and suddenly they stuck. I didn't consider what that meant before. I am now.