I haven’t spoken about this at all on my blog but everyone in real life would sort of know that I recently fell into the Korean skincare hype and am now super in love with it.
korean
Meeting my Korean Language partner for the first time!
The day had come! In so many months I had been keeping in touch with several Koreans and doing language exchange with them, but never really had the opportunity to actually meet up. Well that opportunity came that day when Jinho asked to meet up.
I brought Zenn along just in case to make things less awkward, and we met up at A Twosome Place!
It turned out great! He was happy to chat with us in Korean and English, and he refuses to let us forget that we’re doing language exchange. So whenever we switch back to English he would tell us to repeat everything we just said, but in Korean. Zenn was taking down notes and new vocabs we learned xD We chatted comfortably for about 1.5hours, and his friend Sooyoung arrived! She knew we were learning Korean so she just spoke to us in Korean and didn’t slow down on anything for us. Sometimes we had to struggle to catch what they were saying but Zenn and I helped each other out! But I liked that they talked to us like they would to normal friends and it helps us learn that more local way of speaking and what are the more commonly used grammars. And also it helps us see which vocab was appropriate for which situation.
Before we knew it 2+ hours had passed and Zenn had another appointment. So we bid goodbye and later on created a kakao group chat.
So I’m sharing this experience i guess just to prove that language exchanges do work, and it might just be the best way to learn if you’re wililng to go out there and meet people and step out of your comfort zone by speaking in a language you might not be entirely comfortable in. So for anyone hesitating, do it, because I did and it worked out fine! 🙂
I found my friends mainly through conversationexchange.com 🙂 completely free and an efficient way to find language partners.
That’s all! Keeping this post short and sweet.
the korean fatigue
Not that I’m sick of Korea or Korean language.
But that I’ve come to a point in my Korean learning where I’m not sure how to proceed. I’ve just realized not too long ago that I’m really bad at speaking the language. I know a lot of things in Korean, pretty decent knowledge and coverage in terms of grammar and sentence composition, but none of all that comes to mind when I try to speak. I think it’s because I learn Korean rather visually, so I memorize things on visual. So when I construct sentences and write them down, I know what goes together and what grammar to use because I’m putting them down on paper or typography and I can see and read the sentence. But when I speak, sometimes it’s like an entirely different language because I’m unable to visualize the words fast enough to form them into a coherent sentence, and I end up making errors or pronouncing things wrong. It’s the same reason why I could take 10 seconds to read a sentence and understand it perfectly, but have someone read the sentence slowly in 10 seconds in perfect pronunciation but being unable to understand a thing.
SIGH PIE. OTTOKE.
Not much point of this post obviously, so I’m just gonna add a fun fact.
Planned for the korean trip today with the fox and omg so excited. We don’t have much planned except a skiing trip, a city travel to explore Yonsei, Ehwa and Sogang (YES!) universities, get the winter necessities and phone lines etc, and trying for M Countdown for Soshi’s comeback. And we searched for accomms which was SO EXCITING CUZ I FELL IN LOVE WITH THIS DORM THAT COSTS 18 BUCKS PER DAY BUT ISN’T AVAILABLE ON THE DAY THAT WE FLY OFF SO CREYCREY
It’s so perfect I could cry. So cosy and shit. So perfect like good night and close the curtains all. This is really just the loner part of me speaking but yknow, still. It’s so cute. This is called Moon Hostel, pretty near Hongdae station which is near both our schools, would love to stay here but too bad it’s not available on the day we’re landing. So we’re getting a much cheaper alternative ($15 ish) that’s just normal bunk beds. 😦
darmawanders 