This month I wrote a lot in my notebook that my grandma gave me. It is very long and tedious but doing this everyday is very helpful for me to maintain my writing skills. I started searching for topics that I wanted to do my writing assignment about this semester. Just a few days ago my grandfather passed away so I am leaning more on writing about him and writing down the memories I had with him for this assignment.
I met up with my language partner, Somyung and we would talk about my progress and also enjoy Korean meals. I never knew Somyung was such an amazing cook. She would serve me Korean food and it felt like I was back home in South Korea. We also took a trip down to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and visited the east asian section. Although the section was small, we found the Korean section that portrayed a lot of pictures and artifacts. There was a Korean door that was used a long time ago. I never knew it was so short because when I viewed them over Korean dramas they seemed a lot bigger.
I met up with a lot of Korean freshmen this month and got to connect with them speaking in Korean. Talking to them made me feel like I was back in South Korea because they would use a certain style of dialect or slang words continuously in their sentences. This helped me maintain my Korean because I haven’t been using it a lot when I came back to the states. I learned new stuff such as 깻잎사주기 where I learned it has been a popular topic in Korea recently. People would debate if it would be okay to pull a leaf for your girlfriend’s friend or if you can place one for them. This is a very debatable topic that expands to more various scenarios. I learned that people would use this topic while they drink alcohol or socialize in South Korea.
I am glad that I can keep my connections with my language but I was a little bit frustrated with myself for not being able to figure out a topic for my writing assignment. I was so busy trying to write everyday and maintain my other academics. I think this is one challenge for learning a language by yourself. Next month I will be setting mini deadlines with my language partner so I can be on top of things. But I am glad I am still able to achieve more of my short term goals that I had, which were just writing the book that my grandmother gave me and keeping up with the culture. My goal next month’s goal is to figure out a topic to write about which I am most likely leaning towards just writing about my grandfather. I want to be able to write a rough draft or come up with ideas and thoughts to write about.
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