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Friday, February 21, 2014

2-21-14 Wicked the Musical, Language Learning,and Spring Break Continues

5 PM:

Spring break is still going well. For days, I just studied with my buddies in town, spending the day tidying the apartment and making it look like a home and the evening learning more Korean grammar forms.

I've got a Korean-language tutor now, a girl a couple of years younger than me who has great English, a fun personality, and more inherent coolness than any person has a right to. My Tutor has met with me 4 times now, and I can say that she really has helped me. I study harder, knowing I'll have to speak with her once a week.

I also do writign homework--I type up a journal in Korean, and each week she corrects it in red. This is a sample entry of me talking about my visit home to America and how my family's moving to another state:


우리 동생들 네명을 아이를 돌보았어요/돌봤어요. 부모님은 텍사스 왔어요. 그들은 새로운 집을 찾을 거예요. 삼월에, 텍사스에서 아버지는  일할 거예요. 다른 거기 동생들에게 좋아, 같아요. 거기가 동생들에게 좋을 같아요.


여동생 나를 보고 싶었어요. 지금 선생님/교사인데, 한국어 공부도 배우도 하고 있어요. 이번 여름 바빠도 텍사스에 거예요.


It's goes like that. Sometimes I don't have enough vocabulary to say what I want to say, and sometimes I mess up by trying a to translate an English sentence directly into Korean, which doesn't work because Korean has a totally different sentence order. Anyhow, I started writing my thought on what I'm reading or watching, so I get to discuss in the diary the kind of things I'd talk about in a real chat with friends--my opinions on what's good and what's not.

Even though she considers me to be a low-intermediate learner (which is good), my Tutor still has an issue with me...she can scarcely get me to speak Korean unless I first figure out a perfect sentence in my head. She's trying to get me to just talk off the top of my head, even if I sound like a caveman ("last weekend, Seoul, in Seoul, and many people! So many people. People good. Lots of more people is good, I think"--Myself, trying to explain that I enjoy large crowds.) 

I don't like saying things when I know they're probably not correct. I want to say perfect things. So I stare off into the sky, looking up and slighty to my right, and I painstakingly come up with a flawless sentence, which I say after 60 full seconds of thought. She says, "Don't think of sentences! Just talk." But. But sentences are my friends.

After our lesson was over, Tutor came to sit with me and my friend in the coffeeshop, and we all spoke English. I want to ask Tutor something in Korean, so I looked up and to the right, and she said, "Are you thinking up a sentence?" I loudly protested that I wasn't, I totally wasn't! 

How Could She Disbelieve Me?

It's funny to me that I have a "thinking of grammar" face. But as frustrated as I am at being pushed to speak messily, I appreciated it because I spent yesterday (Thursday) and all this morning in Seoul, and Korean came more easily to me.

At a bakery in Seoul, the lady asked in Korean if my friend and I were buying food together and I replied, "Yes, together" in Korean without glancing away from the art on the walls, so the lady thought I was fluent and started saying far more complicated things because I knew what she meant instantly without having to process it.

On the ride home from Seoul, I was also benefited by having more language ability.A grandmother got on the train and seemed to have a ticket for my exact seat. I told her in Korean to take the seat and she sat down, but then the girl next to me read the grandmother's ticket and told her "다음 기차!" or "next train". I stepped out of the way as the grandmother went to exit our train to wait for the next one, which her ticket was actually for. Knowing how to politely give her the seat smoothed the interaction, and knowing the words for "next train" enabled me to know why she left so quickly.

I got into a big discussion with a middle-aged man in a Korean dinner place last night because he noticed that I was reading the hangul-only menu. He told us to ask him if we had any questions about the food, and I should have asked some because I know he wanted to practice his English. 

I need to get better at reading people's desire to talk--I'm so used to people in my hometown cringing at the thought of using English, I forget that folks in other places are longing for the chance to have a social chat in English. It's like how I learned French in high school and never had the chance to use it with a French person.

At the hotel I stayed at, the man at the desk asked if I was going back to America (if you're an American staying overnight in Seoul, they just assume you're a tourist, not a resident from a rural place). I told him that I lived here and used a little Korean to tell him where I was from, which pleased him. Everywhere I turn, knowing more words has helped me or made people around me happier.

The Only Picture I Took In Seoul, Yesterday--
White Art-Tree With Butterflies.

Me and my friend from Cheonan saw Wicked the musical last night. It's a retelling of the "Wizard of Oz," without Dorothy; the story of the Wicked Witch of the West (Elphaba), only she's not wicked, just a strong girl with green skin. It's a totally different interpretation than the evil character in the movie, to the extent that whatever you know about the Wizard of Oz barely applies to the plot of the musical--this story is its own world.

This musical has been around for 10 years and my college roomate was obsessed with the soundtrack during our freshman year. (HOLY MOLY, IT HAS BEEN 10 YEARS SINCE I ENTERED COLLEGE IN FALL OF 2004. I CANT EVEN.) We were both theater majors at the time, so we were really into acting and musicals, and even though I'd never seen "Wicked" performed, I knew about 6 of the songs by heart.

In fact, at the 2012 Christmas party I had for my American students, one of the boys changed the Christmas mix he'd been playing for us on his iPod to the "Wicked" soundtrack. None of the girls knew it, but me and two of the boys knew every word to "Popular" the song where  Glinda and Elphaba are becoming friends and Glinda offers to give her a makeover. This is the funnest song in English, and it was good in Korean, too. Here's the original cast recording:





I didn't know the full plot of the show and was surprised when it had a happy ending for all the important characters--how awesome! There were so many intense/sad musical numbers, I figured the show had a downer ending, but I left smiling because they didn't mess it up. Of course, I couldn't understand most of it, but I got really tickled at the few jokes I managed to understand.

It was a great two days, and I'm off to do more study!

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2/22/14 

5:30 PM: Went to the Lake in our province with a friend, and had the best time!

On the way back, I was happily greeted by Peter-Pan Taehoon! He was walking with Walk-to-School-Mingi of all people, and I called both of them by name, but then a third kid drew my attention--Laryngitis Seonghoon was with them and asked, "Teacher, my name, my name?" I replied with his name, satisfying his hope that I wouldn't forget somebody as important as him. :-)

Today, After the Lake Trip!
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2/23/14 9 PM:

I made a serious effort to go to church in Seoul today, but church would just not be gotten to. I had bought my tickets, checked out the location, printed papers with precise directions to Yeoido, but 'twas fruitless.

Because after a 90-minute train ride, I got on the subway for the church...only to have the subway SKIP THE STOP. I had never been on the metro when it had skipped a stop that was on the map. Then I realized that I was on some sort of express train leading to the airport--the gold line only went to the "important" stops on its own line.

So when it stopped way past where I wanted to be, I rode the subway around in a little circle, changing from gold to purple to green line, getting off and on until I got back to where I first was, hoping there was something other than the express line to take--maybe there were two versions of the gold line and one of them actually stopped at the church location.

Nope.

The metro breezed right past the church stop once again. By this time, I'd been standing on the subway and walking up and down staircases for an hour. I was starting to sway on my feet a bit, and I was already late for the service. I knew that if I got off at a stop too far away from the church, I would have to walk another half-hour to get there, if I could find it at all, depending on how far the neighborhood was.

So I got back on the subway and rode the short distance to Itaewon instead, to a district where I knew there was good food. Next week, I'm going to try for this church again; this time I'll get off the subway on the blue line and take a bus to the church, as the directions say can be done. I didn't go that route before because none of the website directions indicated that the bus was the quicker option, but it may be my only one.

In Itaewon, I ate breakfast food at the brunch place where I went with my former roommate last week. I was right proud of myself for finding it on my own, considering that I'd spent all morning not-finding important things. Afterward, I found the English-language bookstore on my own! Which is special, because like a lot of businesses in big towns, it doesn't have signs on the ground pointing you to it because it exists only on the second floor of a building. You have to look up to even catch sight of it, and I did! (See, if I can find things like this I can find Yeoido. I can do it!)

In the bookstore, I did a very Korean thing. I couldn't see books on the bottom shelf, so I dropped into a squat and just sat there for a couple minutes, reading the bottom shelf.

I've never seen an American do this, but in Korea when people are waiting around, instead of just standing they will squat.

Waiting in lines, reading a newspaper, smoking outdoors, having a conversation outside the convenience store--these are all prime times to squat for several minutes. It's most common among middle aged men, but I've seen kids, teens and grandmothers do it--there's no age limit. This looks like the most uncomfortable position ever, and last year I couldn't process why any human body was capable of doing this, let alone why anyone would want to do it.

But I got more flexible after all these months of walking/hiking, I guess, and it's socially acceptable to squat, so I picked up the ability. As long as I don't have squat-conversations with my friends in the street, I'll assume I've not taken it too far. Here are some Google-images of the position that so many people use:

Young Women Squat.
(An Exact Duplication of What I Was Doing In the Bookstore)


Ahjusshis Squat.

Babies Squat.

He's Taiwanese-American, Not Korean,
But Jeremy Lin Squats, Too.

And thus I get more Korean with every passing month.

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