110 Biweekly Journal #8

[Seokjoon Han]

I am realizing how much I am able to practice Korean with my family! During the car ride from Virginia to Ohio, I was able to play some Korean word games with my family. One of the games we played was a game where there is an established topic such as food and each person has to say a Korean word associated with that topic. Another game that we played was the translation game. It’s pretty simple. A person says a word in Korean and the other people have to say that word in English. The first person to translate the word gets a point. My brother and I played against each other and I destroyed him. I was decently surprised because before this semester he was definitely better than me in Korean and had a wider range of vocabulary. It looks like studying Korean this semester really paid off! We eventually took a break from driving at stopped at the NOVA/D.C. Area and went to this Korean BBQ restaurant called Honey Pig at Centreville. Man, it was good. Their pork belly tasted really tender and juicy. They also had this oily dipping sauce that was really good with the beef. I ate until I was very satisfied. Once back home, my brother and I started watching this show called Start-up. It’s a show on Netflix that is on air right now and is pretty popular in Korea and on an international scale. Also, our family was able to sing some nostalgic Korean hymns in the evening. Even though, I really did not like Korean hymns when I was younger, singing them now brings back memories of when I lived in Korea. I also was able to meet up with Somyung and Tommy over zoom for our language partner meeting. We practiced speaking in Korean and she told me that she really has not a lot to do while on campus. She said that she really wants to go home. Tommy seems to be fine on campus, he told me that he is watching this show called “Show Me the Money”. Apparently, it is a Korean reality tv show that introduces upcoming rappers in a competitive setting. The show has popular celebrities as judges kind of like the Voice. Tommy talked about this one upcoming rapper that is also Christian. We also reviewed our semester together and kind of recapped what we learned. Samsung also asked Tommy and me for feedback on the things we did. I told her that only speaking in Korean was really uncomfortable at first but it proved to be really fruitful as I could tell that my communicative skills improved a lot. Tommy told her that he thought the historical and cultural lessons were really helpful to him. He said that it helped him contextualize some of the things he was learning, but also made learning Korean more personal and fun. We also discussed other Korean Dramas that we should watch. Tommy suggested Extracurricular and Itaewon Class.