Amanda Takes Off...

My brother is back from Iraq and I got to talk to him on the phone today. It was wonderful to get to talk to him. Soon he's going to be a member of the Marine Corps Special Forces. I think that's pretty cool; my black belt impresses him.

I also got to talk to my friend Mark, who joked that now I could sneak up on people so fast "they wouldn't even know [I was] there until [I was] already gone."

Apparently I can also (maybe) deliver FedEx packages!

(It says something about easily overcoming difficult China together with FedEx. I think. I'll check with H and YJ next week. If I can ever do a flying sidekick over the Great Wall, I'm sure as heck getting out of teaching.)

I've briefly mentioned that I have two language exchanges going on most weekends now. One, YJ, is a woman one or two years older than me. The other, H, is a man a year younger than me. I get along with each of them very nicely, and I'm learning a lot from them. Oddly, it seems like each weekend flip-flops—last time we met, I was promising H I'd speak more Korean next time, this time I was promising YJ the same thing.

I met with YJ yesterday near 이화여자대학교 (Ewha Women's University). I didn't realize she graduated from there, so we talked about our respective women's college experiences and she showed me a bit of the campus. Unfortunately, we mostly spoke in English, which was my fault, though she did help me with some new grammar forms. Also, I didn't understand the "Let's Talk!" section of my new lesson and she didn't either, which made me feel vindicated.

Today I met with H. He wanted to learn how to play chess but hadn't picked up a board, so we had coffee instead. Since nothing very interesting has happened in my life, and since I'd practiced my current Sogang lesson with YJ yesterday, I was sort of at a loss for conversation ideas.

Then I decided to describe what happened with Grin's Brother this week. I learned a bunch of new vocabulary as well as how to say "I said/ ~ said/to someone/from someone..." In other words, I can now retell entire conversations. (Read: with some practice, I will be able to retell entire conversations.)

We talked about Caro having her baby, and my brother's wife being pregnant. I conjugated 임신하다 in the present tense, trying to say "she is pregnant" only to be told that I always need to put that in the past tense. Why? Because putting it in the present tense means that she is currently in the process of becoming pregnant. Using that newfound knowledge, I used the -고 싶다 form to create a really inappropriate sentence.

He laughed, "Oh, your Korean is getting very good! You can talk like my Korean friends now."

Considering he taught me some curse words three weeks ago ("So you understand them if people say them to you"), he's probably right. (No, I don't curse in Korean.)

I was supposed to meet Michael tonight, but he's sick, so H and I continued our lesson over dinner at Mr. Pizza. Mr. Pizza uses the slogan "Made for Women!" and according to their menu (they automatically gave me the English menu), Korean women love them!

Although the English in their restaurant was actually quite good, some of it was a bit off.

Let's check the toppings
when you eat delicious pizza

No more effortless toppings!
See the effort we put in to make each and
every good-looking Mr.pizza.

Over dinner I got going on politics, why North Korea has every reason not to trust Bush, how the collapse of the USSR lead to America having no superpower to check it, and how I do not believe the "confession" by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is accurate. We talked a bit about his time in Canada and what he's studying in school.

We talked about my parents (mom and stepdad) visiting and May and he asked what I had planned. I threw out some rough ideas and said, "Maybe you'll meet them."

"Oooh, they would love me, right?"

"Why do you think that?" I teased.

"Because I am perfect. And you are perfect, too."

I laughed and it became a running joke for the rest of the meeting. Later, when we were saying goodbye at the subway station, he asked me if I knew any other people who wanted an exchange partner because one of his friends does. It needs to be female because her boyfriend is sort of jealous. I said no and asked if he'd gotten any other responses to his CL ad for language partners (how we met). He said, "Yes, but I only meet with you. Because you're perfect." Then he taught me how to say it in Korean. 완벽하다.

I said, "맞아요. 우리는 완벽해요." That's right. We're perfect.

"That's right, 우리는 완벽해요," he replied.

As I was walking down the steps, his head popped over the stairway ledge above me. "완벽해요!"

H Using His New Camera to Take a Picture of Me Taking a Picture of Him