This month I had a hard time keeping a regular routine of writing in the Korean journal my grandmother gave to me because of all the exams and essays due before Thanksgiving break.
Over the Thanksgiving break I was able to visit Maryland. I visited my best friend Saera to spend some time with her family. Over the summer her family came to South Korea and were able to hang out with my family. So they invited me over for thanksgiving.
I rode the train there and then my friend came to pick me up at Washington DC. It was a very refreshing time because of how her family spoke only Korean in the house. I was able to naturally speak with them and open up interesting conversation topics such as how dual citizenship works in Korea and the military service that men have to give to keep their citizenship. Saera and I also met up with our elementary teacher Mr. Smith spoke in Korean with him. He has served in the military in South Korea and it was very cool to hear his stories and experiences that he went through during his service.
For Thanksgiving dinner, I was peeling potatoes all morning. Saera and I made mashed potatoes but helped out her sister to make other Korean food for the big family dinner. I had the opportunity to meet Saera’s cousins and hear a lot of dialects through the family dinner. The family is mostly from Busan so they had a busan accent when they spoke in Korean. Some words had different meanings and I thought it was a cool experience to learn new words and new ways to say them.
On the way back to Maryland I rode the metro system that went to Washington DC. I wanted to experience what it was like to ride American metros and noticed that there wasn’t a big difference. However, there was better air conditioning and the seats were against the windows for Korean metros. I think this is to create more space for people to ride the metros in Korea since the middle space is where they would stand. However, in America or at least for Maryland metros the seats were in a horizontal direction like the buses. Also, it wasn’t too crowded so people would just sit on the seats and not stand. I think the metro was a lot slower compared to the Korean ones.
For my writing progress, I was able to write a very rough draft of my short essay. I showed it to my parents and they gave me some grammatical feedback which I will fix before I also ask my language partner, Somyung to help read it as well. Writing itself is sometimes very poetic in Korean and it takes a lot of time and thought to write just one sentence. Especially for an essay that has a personal meaning to me. I think that may be the reason why it's taking me so long to finish this assignment but I am still making consistent progress.
Replies
I imagine that getting the chance to speak with a family speaking only Korean in the house allowed you to immerse yourself more fully in the language and gain added insight into the nuance of conversation within the household. I agree, it seems like metros everywhere but America are much faster and more efficient. I think sometimes when writing my reflections I can take longer than normal as well, because I feel like I want to get everything right, and I want each word to fit into the sentences logically.
Hello! Happy you had a good Thanksgiving break! I think it is so crucial to be surrounded by people who speak the language when you are trying to learn that language. In a way it forces you to think of words that you want to say but don't know-- so then you can look them up in the translator app. Also, being surrounded by the language helps with your listening comprehension and also speaking skills. I wish I had the opportunity to hang out with Catalan speakers as I think it would help me. People say that being completely immersed in a language is the quickest way to learn!