The highlights of this month include eating Korean BBQ, listening to a Korean podcast, and finishing TTMIK Level 1 and starting on TTMIK Level 2. The Korean BBQ experience was unique and memorable. Not only was the food scrumptious, it was a nice get-away from Richmond, VA and explored Northern Virginia. Our group decided to go to SO BBQ and it was located in a small shopping center with a variety of Korean shops including a herbal shop, milk tea shop, a bakery, and other American shops as well. We made a reservation at 5:30pm on a Saturday evening, and I was not expecting the place to be busy. However, the place was packed with BBQ smoke filling the air and happy faces all around. When we arrived at our table, there were bonchon (small side dishes) arranged neatly, and we were ready to feast upon them. My favorite side dishes were the pickled radish and pajeon (Korean style pancakes). Our goal during this meal was to try a variety of meats including bulgogi, samgyeopsal, squid, shrimp, and even intestine! My favorite was the squid and the bulgogi because I love seafood and the marinated beef was delicious when paired with rice. I was not a huge fan of the intestine because it was difficult to chew, but at least I tried. Overall, it was a great experience and I had a great time with Somyung and Peace. The best part of the trip was that the University generously reimbursed the meal and the drive!
This month, I learned the conjugation for future tense, and surprisingly it was not as difficult as I thought it was going to be. The conjugation was consistent depending on if the word stem has a batchim or not. Compared to past and present tense conjugation, the future tense is a lot simpler to conjugate. However, the one part that I am starting to get confused on is the order arrangement of the sentences. I know that the Korean sentence structure follows SOV (subject-object-verb), but where does time and location fit into the sentence structure?
Additionally, I learned the characters for “and”, “with”, “and then”, and “but”. These were helpful characters to learn because they exist in daily conversations. Furthermore, I hear these words the most when I listen to Korean youtubers, podcasts, and movies. Therefore, these are helpful words to learn to speak conversational Korean. The most recent lesson I learned is telling time and learning the days of the week. The days of the week were not difficult to learn, but the pronunciation is a bit harder for me. The reason was because most of the names I had to bring the batchim over were combined with the character (yo). The pronunciation isn’t natural to me so it takes me a few tries. Telling time in Korean combines their native Korean numbers and sino-Korean numbers together. The hour number uses native Korean while the minute number uses Sino Korean.
In this month, I also tried listening to everyday Korean conversations through a podcast on spotify to help me with listening skills. The beginner conversations were incredibly helpful, but I wish they were a bit longer. I listened to Real Life Conversations in Korean, which I found out was produced by TTMIK!
I thought March was quite eventful, and the most memorable Korean-related activity during this time was eating KBBQ with Somyung and Peace. I hope that we can do more social activities in the future to engage more with Korean culture and not only the language.
Comments
I am such a huge fan of Korean BBQ. One of my best friends is Korean and she has made us Korean BBQ a couple of times. I could honestly go for some Korean BBQ right now. I would probably say the thing that I like most about the food itself is how it is marinated and seasoned. It is extremely flavorsome.
Hi Anna, I'm really glad that you, Somyung, and Peace got to enjoy Korean BBQ. I love bulgogi and squid, too, and am also not a fan of intestines. I think that listening to podcasts is a great way to learn, especially if you're driving or on-the-go.