Contrary to what you may think, I am still alive.  I am also still in Seoul.  I just haven’t been blogging so muc here. I have been doing it here.  Also, I feel like there hasn’t been a whole lot of things to say over the past fe months.  My life has been pretty consistent recently.

Anyway, I do want to spend some time talking about the recent protests here in Seoul.  Perhaps you heard about them.  If not, read this.  It will bring you up to speed in a very fair way.  The most recent news is that the South Korean presdident has agreed to some of the citizen’s demands.

The recent protests mentioned have been quite a spectacle.  I have dozens and dozens of pictures that will eventually make it on my my flikr site.  I’m also working on a video to share some scenes from a recent march and to translate some of the picket signs I collected.  Look for that in the next few days or so.

Anyway, comments make me feel loved, and probably encourage me to write more. (hint, hint)

If you don’t know, Koreans students have it pretty rough. The following video does a great job of explaining the Korean education system in the context of their SAT

I don’t know what to say.  I haven’t been faithful to you.  I haven’t been writing entries.  I’ve been spending my time with other websites like this, this, this, this and this.  I’ve even been making a few movies.

Sunday I am going to Taiwan.  My friend Josh needs to get a new visa to Korea, and I have oodles of time off right now, so we’re going to the land of sub-tropic-democracy-that-flies-in-the-face-of-a-larger-country’s-communism.  Maybe I’ll let you know how it went.  I might even share some pictures!

Yes, it has been ages since I’ve posted.  It’s not that I’ve forgotten about you…I actually did think about writing a couple posts, but then I decided that I didn’t really have anything interesting to say.  But, I guess I do have a few interesting things to tell you about……

But you won’t hear about all of them in this post!

If you recall, I’ve talked about applying to graduate school before.  Last summer, I visited the campus and sat in on some classes.  It was great.  Portland seems like a wonderful city, and the degree (Master in International Management) is right where I want to be.  The small glimpse I got really felt great, and I got very excited about the possibility of studying there.  But I tend to get really excited about things like that and over invest myself thinking about it before it becomes a reality.  In college, I spent 6 months thinking I was going to join the Navy, before I finally resigned myself to the fact those doors weren’t opening.

Anyway, I got back to Seoul and took the GMAT in October.  I was reasonably pleased with the result… I did really well on the verbal sections, and horrible on the math part!  But it averaged out to a slightly above average 560.  I decided to stick with it, since those tests are pretty reliable and the chances of increasing my math score are probably slim!

So, shortly after the new year, I sent off my application, expecting to hear in early February.  Well, as it turns out, schools are e-mailing applicants these days.  This morning I woke up to an e-mail offering me a place in the upcoming class!!

Cool, huh?!

Actually, I am likely going to defer the application for 1 year.  Accepting a space in this fall’s cohort means I’d have to leave Korea ahead of schedule.  It would also mean that I couldn’t make good on my plan to go study Spanish this fall and winter!   On that note, I’ve bought a ticket to Honduras in mid-September.  My goal is to spend about 4-5 months traveling through and studying in Central America.

I won’t make any apologies about my rather infrequent updates! You’ll just have to deal with it!

The school year is winding down in a couple weeks (sort of) and winter vacation is coming up! I ’say sort’ of because the semester isn’t actually over. School closes December 22nd, and opens again on Jauary 28. Then, closes again from the 6th, reopens on the 11th, only to close yet again on the 14th. The second semester officially begins March 3rd. Part of the craziness is due to the Lunar new year, but I still can’t understand why they close for all of January, only to have 10 more days of nothing (all exams and what not are finished) before students graduate or move up, and then close again for 2 weeks. It defies my Western logic.

Anyway, even though that’s a LOT of vacation time, I still have to work during 3 weeks in January teaching English day camp. Better than doing nothing, I guess, but I wouldn’t turn down vacation!

Some of you may recall that I want to go study Spanish in Latin America after leaving Korea. I’ve toyed with Spanish before, albeit very briefly when I was teaching in Maryland. The school was developing a Spanish immersion program, and I got to learn some Spanish there. Spanish comes pretty easy to me, but I’ve never really studied it formally. I want to. Right now, I’d like to go to Honduras, and maybe Mexico for a few months just to study Spanish. But I’d like to start right now! Leaving Korea right now isn’t really an option, but I can take advantage of the internet and all the new language learning tools available! So, in the midst of my Korean, I’m also going to be working on Spanish.

Adios!

In some respects, Korean is the easy way out when studying an Asian language. Chinese has those dreaded “tones” which for a non-musical guy like me are really scary. Then there are the thousands of pictograph characters that must be learned. They aren’t letters. Japanese also makes use of the Chinese characters in a major way. Japanese is further complicated by having 2 completely different “alphabets” that are mixed along with the Chinese characters.

To the untrained eye, a Korean sentence like “제가 사과를 좋아해요” (I like apples) looks incredibly daunting, it really isn’t. Chinese and Japanese have a huge barrier to being able to read. Let me betray a secret of Korean: Learning to “read” is really quite easy. Understanding what you read is of course another matter….as it is in any second language. But in Korean, because the reading barrier is so low, one can easy move on to meaning, and the arch nemesis of grammar!

In middle school I studied Latin, which according to Mr. Dare (yes, that is really his name) is responsible for some 65% of English words. So, knowing Latin can really help improve your English vocabulary. Of course Greek also influences English, especially in science and medicine.

The relationship is similar between Korean and Chinese. 70% of Korean is derived from Chinese, and therefore, understanding some basic Chinese characters can really improve your Korean vocabulary. So I’ve bought a new book aimed at helping foreign learners of Korean master 500 of the most common and useful 漢子 in Korean.

You probably aren’t as excited about this as I am, but that’s OK… this is my blog after all.

I’m having dinner with a former Korean teacher tonight.  When I see him, I almost always learn something new about Koreans or their language. See this post for what happened last time.  I’ll let you know what happens.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, here’s another video, this time starring some kids from the orphanage:

If you go to the actual  YouTube page you can find a rough English transcript in the description.

You already know that I live in Korea. You probably know that I am working hard to learn the language. But you might not know how easy it is for you to get started learning the language! Visit KoreanClass101.com for a wonderful Korean language podcast. I feel like I’ve seen every website there is for learning Korean - and this is absolutely one of the best. It has been in full production for just a couple months, so it is easy to get started and up to speed. The staff is very helpful in responding to comments and questions, and there is an active user community in the forums to support your learning. If you want to learn Korean, this is a great tool to add to your arsenal.

Perhaps the best feature is that you will learn about standard and intimate politeness levels early on! Many textbooks, and some classes don’t bother to teach you the common everyday Korean. You will really hear Korean as I do in Seoul!

They asked me to join their blogging team, so from time to time, you can read about my linguistic and cultural experiences with the kids at the orphanage there.

I guess that title has a double meaning, although that was unintentional! I am playing with some different themes for the blog, but I am picky, so it isn’t easy to find one that has everything I want..

But that isn’t what this post is about. I am trying to do a little soul searching to determine “what I want to be when I grow up.” I really believe that people are happiest when they are doing work that really excites them and ignites their passions. I’m trying to figure out what that looks like for me. I know one thing: I don’t want to be an English teacher forever. This is a good job now, but not something that will sustain me professionally!

I also know that I love languages, especially learning them. I have always said that if I could get paid to learn foreign languages, I would really have found a great job. I’m not sure such a job exists, per se, but there are a few ways I see to exploit that interest.

1) An obvious choice would be to become a translator/interpreter. I’m learning a bit about what that entails. There are full-fledged MA degrees to be had in that field. Some cost ALOT of money, others are less expensive. But the biggest barrier would be my language level. Because right now, Korean is my second language and I’ve already invested more than a year studying it, I would make that my profession. That’s great since I really do like Korea and Korean. And I think there is tremendous growth potential for that. But I am really, really far away from being fluent enough to call myself an interpretor.

2) I would also love to learn Spanish. Another plan is to spend a few months in Latin America studying Spanish when I leave Korea - before I head to grad school. That plan fits with going to Portland for an International Management degree where I would also study Chinese or Japanese. But not to the level of being an interpreter. That language study is really just for simple business communication.

I believe that I could get to the necessary level in Korean, but there is a long road ahead of me! In a way, each of those options is a great fit. Both would let me travel the world and engage different people in a variety of ways… ah…

한국어가 아무리 어려워도 끝까지 배우겠습니다!

(I will study Korean to the bitter end!)

With as much Korean as I speak, I don’t really have any funny stories about using the wrong word and embarrassing myself. I do have one…but it is really rather bland. I’ll tell you about it and then share another funnier story about some other poor foreigners language faux pas.

I was in the kitchen of the orphanage one day searching for some chopsticks, so with my hands in the air I asked:

“손가락 어디에 있어요!” (son-karak awdi-ay ess-aw-yo
Which got a big laugh from the cook. It was then I realized I had really asked:

“Where are my fingers?”

You see, fingers is “손가락” (son-karak) and chopsticks are “젓가락” (cheot-karak)

Silly me….

But at least I’m not this guy:

A friend of a friend (OK, I know that’s lame..but the story is good) who was pretty new to Korea, and had gone to the grocery store in search of some salsa and chips. One thing that foreigners learn quickly is that there are a lot of Korean words that have been borrowed from English. So if you don’t know a particular Korean word, one possible solution is to use the English word, and it just might work. Especially if you pronounce using Korean pronunciation rules.

So, the guy finds a store clerk and proceeds to ask for the salsa. But he doesn’t speak any Korean, he pantomimes dipping chips into some chips into a bowl of salsa, and he says “SALSA, SALSA!” The clerk gave him a mortified look.

In Korean what he was saying was really “설사” (sawl-sa) Precise pronunciation is really very important in Korean, as s slight vowel change can completely alter the meaning. He learned that lesson. In English, it might be sawl-sa, or sall-sa, etc. In Korean it is ONLY “살사” (sall-sa) “설사” (sawl-sa) as it turns out is diarrhea . Notice the difference?! It’s really slight! So this poor chap thought he was showing the clerk dipping ships into a delicious crushed tomato sauce, but he communicated a very different message!