Amanda Takes Off...

This weekend I saw H, YJ, and Michael. I got some practice talking about my family with H, YJ helped me with honorifics (frustration!!), and Michael and I went to Costco.

This was my first Costco trip and I am hooked. I have cheese. Real cheese. And salsa. And cream cheese. And Laughing Cow cheese. And frozen pizza. And Honey Nut Cheerios! And I couldn't wait to get home and eat dinner tonight, which mostly consisted of cheese.

Michael asked a friend of his what Westerners smell like to Koreans, since people smell differently depending on what they eat and drink. His friend said, "Cheese. And sometimes milk." When Michael told me, we were both giggling.

Rumor has it that several years ago Seoul held a town-hall meeting with foreigners and the most raised concern was lack of decent cheese.

Poor YJ. I had another one of my "those tricky subject and object markers will get you every time" moments. I couldn't figure out why Tony was worried that he went home drunk. Turns out the writer was worried that Tony went home drunk, alone.

Masochistic freak that I am, I iPod recorded part of my session with YJ. I was reading lesson three's reading activity out loud and discussing some other things with her (honorific grammar, mostly in English).

Ick.

I can't believe anyone listens to me speak. Hearing myself makes me want to cut my own tongue out. (The 려 sound makes me want to cut my tongue out, too. But as Michael helpfully pointed out, "That won't help.")

Since reading out loud in Korean is horrible and I hate it, I'm forcing myself to do it ten minutes a day. Because of my background in education, I believe that reading out loud (especially repeated readings of the same thing) will help improve my comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and vocabulary. And not just of my reading Korean, but speaking Korean, too. I also believe it will help me get used to those tricky markers that are so often dropped in speech but always included in writing.

Interestingly, I've noticed that I self-correct sometimes. I don't want to go on an educational tangent, but this is a great sign. Self-correcting means that the reader recognizes when something doesn't sound right (either in pronunciation or in meaning). And the fact that I can realize something doesn't sound right in Korean—even using a textbook with a limited vocabulary—that makes me feel good. I can tell you that it certainly wasn't the case with my college Spanish classes!

My iPod earbuds broke today. The other earbuds I have are extremely uncomfortable. Apparently I have tiny ears because I can't get them to fit. Because my ear buds were broken, I was doing some Korean homework on the subway without my iPod on.

It was this difficult honorific stuff that I mostly still don't understand. (YJ helped a whole lot, but the idea of speaking to people with differing levels of formality is just so foreign to me.)

The subway was packed.

The man on my left (who spoke very good English) started helping me, with his wife occasionally offering her own opinion. The man on my right (who spoke very little English) started disagreeing with him (politely) and started helping me. The woman standing in front of me (who spoke amazing English) disagreed with both of them (politely) and started helping me.

Somehow, with all three of them, I got through it. I said to nobody in particular, in Korean, that Korean was impossible to learn. Woman laughed, Righty nodded, and Lefty grinned. I thanked them all as they departed and thought, "Maybe I shouldn't wear my iPod all the time."

Don't misunderstand, I tend to get lots of subway help with or without the iPod on, but today was something else!

I got to class with a massive headache. I managed to ask Master for some aspirin, and said "my head has been hurting since last night." Apparently my head didn't hurt too much, because in the middle of asking for aspirin, I checked that I was using the right markers. (I was.)

Later, while we were doing demonstration kicks, I somehow managed to steer the conversation to cheese to I could talk about how happy I was to get some good cheese. Yes, give Amanda cheese and she's happy.

Demonstration kick days are good days.

Before class, I saw a note on the board and read it. I looked up a few words, only one of which I didn't have any idea about (명상, meditation, contemplation) know, the others I guessed about in context but double checked. And I understood. There's a test on Friday starting at 5. Normally on testing days (once a month) he only has one big class.

So out of the blue I asked Master if I'd have class Friday. Since I gave him no context for my question, he thought I was saying I wouldn't be in class. I said, no, that wasn't what I meant. He caught sight of the board and said, "Oh, I don't know. Not sure right now."

I said in Korean, "I read it."

He gave me a "good job!"

Before class started, Ghost showed up with a new haircut. He said, "삭발! 삭발!"

I looked it up.

A tonsure. A what? Ah, a shaved head.

I saw the phrase "삭발하고 중이 되다." I said it out loud. Shave one's head and become a Buddhist priest.

Ghost and His Friend looked at me. "What?" I showed them the phrase and Ghost's Friend put his hands together and bobbed his head back and forth, trying to imitate a Buddhist.

Right or wrong, we all laughed.