Update!

Hello friends!

I have no idea if anyone still reads this blog but I am alive, lol. This past month and a half has been the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with. I never thought I would be one to experience picking up my life and moving to a different country, but I did. I am. And it is NOT easy. I have so much respect for people that leave their home country and choose to stay in a new one. I can only imagine how hard it is when someone is actually forced to leave their own country because leaving by choice is hard enough.

But anyway, I am adjusting and I am getting back into studying. It’s hard to be consistent because when I get home from teaching at school all day, the only thing I want to do is flop on my bed and sleep (and face chat with my family). So for the past couple of weeks I have only been studying a few days out of the week. As time goes on, I am hoping to become more consistent and study at least 4 to 5 days out of the week. My goal right now is to at least get in an hour on the days I do choose to study. It can be broken up into 15-minute increments, 30-minute sessions, or the whole hour at one time.

Currently, I am on level 2 of the Talk To Me In Korean series but I am reviewing old vocabulary and grammar because this life upheaval has really put my studying on the back burner. So far, I am not doing as bad as I thought I would be with my review. I am remembering things which is great. What’s not so great is that, if I were to hear all these things I’m studying, I would have no idea what they mean. But seeing them written down, I know exactly what they are. So now I know I need to work more on my listening skills.

I purchased a children’s book since I’ve been here and it’s somewhat helpful. I say ‘somewhat’ because it’s literally a book for 3 year olds but I can barely read anything in it; all the directions are in Korean. I clearly overestimated my Korean skills lol.

The most I can learn from this book is the actual names of the Korean letters and some new vocabulary since the book will have a page dedicated to it (see below). As for any exercises and activities in the book, I just kind of piece things together and pull out any random words that I can recognize (which are very few).

There are even pages that have super short passages for reading, and let me tell you! The struggle is real…

I read them even though I don’t understand them so that I can develop some type of reading fluency, but I read sooooo darn slow. Like, it’s really a pain lol. If I were to try and decipher the words that I don’t know, just reading one page will take me an hour. So I just try to practice fluency and pronunciation for now. The actual understanding of it all can come a bit later.

Welp, that’s all that’s been going on with me pertaining to language besides the fact that I want to buy more language books (I have a problem, I know). Since I couldn’t bring my Korean books with me, and I actually really dislike phrasebooks, I have been super tempted to place an order with TwoChois. I got my first paycheck last week and I’m sooooo tempted to place an order. But then I think about how living here is temporary and I don’t want to end up mailing a bunch of things home and paying a boat load of money for it. Gahhh! Le Strug.

Anyway. I hope all you study bees are doing well and I hope to be able to update this blog more often. Until next time!