What an eventful couple of weeks :)
During a fire drill run through, another RA and I realized we both speak Korean! We’ve actually known of each other since freshman year, but I never asked her if she spoke Korean with her family. We were the first ones to arrive to start the drill and she asked me if I regularly spoke Korean and we were both surprised to learn that we were quite proficient. We proceeded to speak in Korean and bonded for a while until the fire alarm blared at us.
Maybe it’s because I’m socializing a bit more this year, but I’ve been meeting many new Korean speakers these past weeks. Whether meeting the new international students or getting to know others I didn’t meet in the previous years, I noticed that I’ve been speaking in Korean to more friends and course, my language partner. This has been a great way to introduce myself and welcome the new students across campus.
This past week, an interesting opportunity came up. My art history professor asked me to be a guest speaker for her Korean Art course to talk about the SDLAP program and to teach the students how to write their name in Korean so that they can sign their paintings. It has been some time since I had to teach writing at a beginning level, so I did lots of research and watched videos on the best way to explain the pronunciations and the word building concepts. Thankfully, the students were wonderful participants and engaged well with my small talk. Reviewing the actual step by step procedure on writing in Korean was also beneficial to me. When I normally write, I don’t think about how to place my consonants and vowels- I just do it. But now, I am aware of it and writing in Korean feels more intentional.
Additionally, my professor asked the class to attend the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) for the class. Since we had to attend the East Asian exhibit, I also toured the ancient Korean art section. It was quite small, so there was not as many paintings or sculptures as I hoped, but it was obvious that I had entered the Korean art section by looking at the minimalistic styles of the vases and chests.
In addition to the general speaking of the language, I thought about journaling in Korean. Many of my friends do a 5 minute daily journaling session, so I want to start writing down my thoughts in Korean. Hopefully this will help me reflect on myself while continuing to get comfortable writing in Korean every day. I frequently do small researches of both significant people in Korean history and of interesting cultural facts throughout my weeks. One fun example was researching Kyung-Chik Han. He is the only Korean who received the Templeton Prize (equivalent of Noble Peace Prize but for philanthropists). I was having a normal conversation with my dad and his name came up, so I decided to do some more research while my dad shared the info he knew.
Comments
I completely agree with Elspeth! You've been doing amazing work, Somyung! Keep it up :)
There is so much awesome news in this post. It is amazing that you are finding opportunities to speak, teach, and write in Korean and that these experiences are giving you a new perspective on the language I'm also glad that you were able to engage with some Korean art. I know you had mentioned that as one of your goals previously.