Before we moved to Taiwan we studied Chinese with a tutor for a few months and really enjoyed it, so when we moved back to Korea we started looking into taking lessons. No, you don't need to know Korean to get by here, but it makes life easier and I've always enjoyed being a student, studying and being a nerd. Unfortunately, Korean lessons are expensive! Especially if you've spent 6 months in poverty in Taiwan. So I was pleased as punch when my assistant teacher, Mindy, offered to tutor Melodie and I. For free. Schwing!
It's fun! Mindy is the most supportive teacher. If we pronounce anything at all correctly she applauds. We all know I'll do anything for applause. In three months she's taught us loads of new vocabulary like numbers, time, colors, and classroom English. I even know how to ask where the bathroom is. Important stuff. Pretty useful stuff.
But guess what? Mindy's moving to sunny California in 3 weeks. Not only am I going to be minus 1 assistant teacher that would bend over backwards to do anything for my class, but we're in need of a new Korean tutor. Conveniently, we were able to enroll in Korean classes at Yeoksam Global Village. I'm not sure why they're free, but they are, and we start July 5th. I'm glad that we'll be able to continue studying Korean.
The coolest thing that's come of this studying is that we can now both read and write in Korean. We don't always know what we're reading, but we're working on that. I can read the whole menu in the above picture, which blows my mind. I never thought I'd be able to learn to read Hangul. It always just looked like a game of Tetris to me. I didn't even study the characters all that hard... it's almost like one day everything suddenly clicked and I could read it. Being literate is really useful! Some restaurants don't have English menus and reading signs is a fun way to pass the time on the bus. Plus now that I can read the sign, I now know that I live behind a dog soup restaurant. Who's hungry?
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