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I have realized that language learning comes naturally to me but I do not progress rapidly because I am often impatient and typically avoid reviewing because I want to know the material as soon as I take notes. Though I do grasp the concepts relatively quickly, I forget just as fast because I move forward onto the next concept without reviewing the previous thereby not building a solid foundation. I have attempted to learn various languages on my own over the years and once almost reached A2 in Turkish but I lack self-discipline and ended up losing all of that knowledge just as fast. This is why I am actually proud of myself for learning all that I have and I was astonished to see just how much tangible progress I can make by simply setting aside a couple of hours a week to study the language. 

I choose a language to learn based on the entertainment that I am consuming. Growing up in a Mexican household, I valued watching tv shows and listening to music not in english early on and recognized the talent that goes unseen in mainstream American culture. This is why I am always watching foreign tv shows and listening to foreign music. I have sat down and studied a bit of Norwegian, Turkish, Italian, Tagalog, and Korean on my own after becoming engrossed in their entertainment. I have only held onto my Korean knowledge because their media is a lot more accessible internationally, allowing me to keep up with the language. However, I found it kind of shocking how as soon as I sat to learn Korean officially for a class, I watched the least Korean dramas since starting college. 

I struggled with pushing my pride aside and allowing myself to freely speak and write because we learn from our mistakes. Throughout the semester, I found it difficult to believe my language partner and Korean friends that I had said/written something correctly. I kept thinking they were just trying to be nice when I wanted constructive criticism. As I gradually eased up, I began to read more naturally and speak a lot more than I thought I could. 

I began to focus more on communicating with native speakers and practicing what I was learning with them. I think since my listening skills are better than any other skills in Korean, I spent more time attempting to read more fluidly and writing more naturally. I will continue to use TalktomeinKorean because I learned a lot of grammar from there, reading short stories. Since it helps me familiarize myself with sentence structure and spelling, but also using the little speech I have as much as I can with my Korean friends. I will also be reviewing our class notes on aspect and morphology because it helped me understand Korean grammar a lot more. I would like to learn more about the different dialects that exist in Korean, particularly the difference between North Korea and South Korea but also among Koreans and Korean-Americans. I find it fascinating how dialects can vary so much despite being so geographically close to each other (Korea as a country).

Personal appearance is very important in Korean culture so it is no surprise that skincare starts at a young age. Historically, the goal of skincare has been to promote inner beauty so as to be beautiful on the outside as shown by the coined phrase “영육일치사상” means “within a beautiful body, lies a beautiful soul”. During the Joseon dynasty, confucian values of humility were demonstrated by a clean and natural face as women’s beauty focused on having inner beauty. As of right now, the beauty standard is a soft, dewy, and youthful looking skin hence why moisturization and spf are incredibly prominent in their industry. 

The emphasis placed on protecting one’s skin from harmful chemicals and UV rays has allowed South Korea to become the third largest exporter of beauty cosmetics. Korean beauty products and treatments differ from American ones because they incorporate more organic and organic  ingredients and are known for their cutting edge technology. Some of the ingredients that are often found in their skincare are rice water, snail mucin, and ginseng. Ginseng is known to rejuvenate and restore skin barriers. Snail mucin is also used to rejuvenate the skin, moisturize it, and reduce the appearance of acne scars, fine lines, and discoloration. Rice water decreases hyperpigmentation, reduces redness, and brightens your skin. By contrast, western cosmetics are based on harsh ingredients such as vitamin c, retinoids, and acids which can further cause inflammation and damage one’s skin barrier after prolonged usage. 

Another stark difference between the Western skincare industry and Korean’s is that Korean skincare is aimed at preventing skin concerns. By focusing on creating a healthy skin barrier early on, it is a lot more accessible for Koreans to take care of their skin later on because they are mostly maintaining it instead of treating it. The west, however, is more concerned with treating skin concerns after they have appeared thus encouraging people to spend more money as they identify which products work best for their skin. It must be noted that some of the ingredients in American cosmestics are prohibited by the Korea's Ministry of Food, Drug, and Safety as they are harmful to our skin. Therefore, if your skin has already developed a resistance/ gotten used to harsh American products, Korean ones will no longe be helpful for you.

There is a 10-step Korean skincare routine that is marketed but from my research, Koreans don’t typically follow this regimen completely. There are multiple steps in the Korean skincare process because it is focused on the layering of the products to maximize its effectiveness. The guide is meant to be tailored to your specific needs and it is stressed that the most important steps are deep cleansing, applying a toner to balance pH levels, moisturizing, and sunscreen. Depending on the season, skin type, and age, the products used will vary. Whereas the American skin care regimen prefers to have a few steps to maximize convenience by using products with multiple intents/benefits. Since the American industry concentrates on fixing existing problems, people tend to damage their skin more by relying on harsh products to fix a skin concern that can rarely be cured. It is more difficult to repair the damage than to prevent skin concerns and protect our natural barrier. 
 

Towards the end of the semester, I got to the chapters on verb conjugations and was really excited because it facilitated conversations. I now had a lot more verbs to work with and after discovering I could practically create verbs just by adding a specific ending to the noun, I had a lot of fun doing so. I covered the three basic tenses: present, past and future tense. I thought I would struggle a lot more with the conjugations and tenses since I learned all three almost back to back but was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not nearly as difficult as I had expected. Unlike Russian, French, or Spanish, their conjugations and tenses tend to fit their rules and established patterns. At least, at the level I currently am, it seems to be this way. This is the part of the semester where my goal grew into being able to hold a basic conversation with the Korean students at the University of Richmond. I went to a lot of the Korean American Student Association events this semester and realized I knew quite a few Koreans who were excited about me learning their language. This realization further pushed me to really try to improve my pronunciation and practice my ability to speak spontaneously. As a result, I began to simply chant the sentences I worked on for practice previously so that I am reviewing the structure of the sentence while simultaneously working on my pronunciation. This proved to be very helpful as it made me a much more enthusiastic language learner especially now that I had developed some go to lines to demonstrate my Korean. As time went by, I noticed that I was not just reciting sentences I had almost memorized by heart, I had subconsciously begun to use Korean exclamation words/phrases. It was starting to sound natural for me to just say [a-ra-seo] to get myself to refocus on the task at hand. I brought this up to my language partner and met with my Korean friend to learn more casual phrases that I could use with people my age. Inadvertently, I also learned a few slang words and even how to text. I found out the equivalent of emphasizing a word through text messages like “Noooooo” . In Korean, they also just repeat the last character to emphasize it.  Hand in hand, I asked both my language partner and my friend to help give me ways to express myself as I would in English. They had to ponder some of the phrases I wanted translated like “I see” (in the informal context) given that it is not simply translating every word but also figuring out how to convey the meaning as similarly as possible. These past lessons have been fundamental to my language learning as I have found ways for me to feel comfortable speaking the language and also made it so that it flows more naturally. In the future, I will continue to practice reading the short stories out loud, conversing with my friends in Korean as much as I can, and using the talktomeinkorean website to learn more. 

For the month of November, my goals were to elaborate on speaking about plans by adding specifics to the mix. I learned how to tell time and realized it was a lot more complex than I was expecting. I remembered learning this topic in French class and how my teacher at the time apologized for all the confusion caused from it. Looking back now at that moment, telling time in French is actually so simple and I had taken it for granted. Telling time in Korean ended up taking more time for me to fully grasp because it involves both its native Korean number system and the Sino-Korean system. Before this concept, I knew a few numbers but I was not able to determine which number system they belonged to. Therefore, a big chunk of my time was dedicated to getting comfortable counting in both systems and being able to recognize which system the numbers belong with. Aside from the number system portion of telling time, I had to learn the order of words. In latin languages and in English, the “AM” and “PM” come after the time is said yet in Korean, it is placed before the time. This took a bit of time to get the hang of since I was still translating from English to Korean. My language partner has been very helpful in reexplaining concepts and catching my mistakes which further improves my understanding of the concept. Aside from telling time, my language partner and I began focusing on how to ask and answer the 5 W’s (Who, What, Where, When, Why). We naturally fell into this objective by exploring time given that it answers the “when”. I am still not yet to the “why” but I have been using TalktomeinKorean platform to learn how to discuss the “who”, “what”, and “where”. This online platform has proven to be extremely helpful in learning grammar since I needed to learn several particle endings to denote the “where”, “who” and “what”. Aside from particle endings, I learned the appropriate contexts for each particle. I practiced writing sentences with my language partner, asking any lingering questions I still had after talking notes from the platform and doing their respective activities in the workbook. I continued to practice my pronunciation by reading short stories and it has definitely improved my ability to read hangul. I am now able to read Hangul a lot faster and pronounce characters a lot more correctly. My language partner also suggested I try to listen to a Korean song I really like and attempt to read their lyrics out loud with the soundtrack. I thought this was a very smart idea since I kind of already know what sounds to expect throughout the song allowing me to read the lyrics without as many pauses. It is also very intriguing to understand what is being said in between the lines that I otherwise would not have understood. After going over a couple of verses with my language partner, I will be attempting to finish the song on my own because I should focus on my speech fluency too. 

Throughout October, my focus was on learning vocabulary to discuss plans and traditions. Since it was October break and holidays were quickly approaching, I was keen on learning more about what breaks were like in South Korea. Particularly as a student, I wanted to at least be able to ask my Korean friends at the University of Richmond what their plans were for fall break and later on for Thanksgiving and winter break. I did end up learning some vocabulary to talk about my plans and with that, learned the seasons and some of the key holidays in Korean culture. With my language partner, we continued reading a short story that we had started in September, role playing realistic scenarios, and more grammar aspects such as topic/subject/ and object particles. I further reinforced this by rereading the short story on my own, studying on the TalktomeinKorean platform. I found this theme especially exciting because I was finally reaching a level where I was beyond the basic introductions and could now have a more interesting conversation with Korean students. I find I am still lacking significant vocabulary since I am not getting enough person-to-person practice. I definitely think it also has to do with the fact that I immediately gravitate towards learning the grammar of the language versus learning how to actually use the language. I think this is the case for me because grammar (while writing and reading) I can typically control since I have time to think through my responses. I stray away from practicing speaking because I am most insecure about my inability to produce certain sounds and my poor detection of subtle pronunciation differences. My language partner has definitely noticed and is thankfully pushing me to practice with him and is patient with me as I struggle to imitate him. My biggest issue with every language I learn is that I gravitate towards a Spanish accent since I do not want to have a thick American accent when speaking the language. I am struggling with keeping my tone of voice in a neutral level because it is my instinct to speak using a variety of tones where I constantly go up and then down. Since I speak Spanish, though partly because of my personality, I am used to speaking very animatedly. Now that I have realized this is holding me back from speaking Korean in a more accurate manner, I will be focusing on speaking more slowly so as to calm myself down and not rush through the sentence with a rollercoaster of tones. I only learned about this habit of mine because I started to practice having very short conversations with Korean natives/speakers. Given the revelation I had after speaking Korean a bit more compared to my last reflection post, I will now avoid ruling out speaking during sessions with my language partner because I have learned how valuable they are. Most importantly, I just need to let go of my pride and simply allow myself to make mistakes as a language learner and remind myself that speaking is a crucial part of learning a language. 

I was focused on the planning of what I want the semester to look like for a few weeks in the beginning. This included researching online resources, tv shows , physical textbooks that I can use to immerse myself in the Korean language and culture. After gathering several resources, I then went through them to determine which ones I wanted to use as my main source for learning and categorize the others as either optional for extra work I may want to do or supplemental resources which were designated in my plan as simply a source to use for alternative explanations or practice. I hoped to have gotten through almost half of talk to me in korean as it is a relatively short textbook. I was clearly overestimating my capacity and ability to retain the information. Though some of the concepts were relatively straightforward, I still had to practice being able to withdraw the skills from my brain spontaneously. This has proved difficult to do as I am getting all of the languages I am learning confused.

 One of my main priorities for this section of the semester was to learn hangul well because I know some of the sounds do not have an equivalent sound in our GAE phonetic inventory making it difficult to really produce the same sounds as native korean speakers. I think my solution for the time being at least, has been to sound out the characters using my Spanish accent since the characters are not stressed as much as the english vowels are. By doing a soft trill of the r, I am starting to pick up how to make the ㄹ character as it is between an r/l sound. Overall, learning a language at my own pace is forcing me to learn how to be patient and actually focusing more on the over process than on the objectives as I will learn more from my mistakes. It is definitely nerve wracking though to practice pronunciation with a native korean speaker and frustrating when I can replicate the sounds as it is still hard to really differentiate some of the sounds like the three variations of their [k] and [b] sounds. 

Another challenge I have been facing is simply writing by hand since I do not have the neatest handwriting. Since I need to be able to read the characters, I have been taking longer to write. I am generally a very impatient person so having to take my time with each stroke and making sure I am aligning the characters correctly within their blocks, has been delaying my progress. With my visually unappealing handwriting, it has proven terribly difficult for me to organize 4-character syllables into a single block. Personally, I feel like it is more complex than it seems because the characters are different widths/lengths so it is similar to piecing a puzzle together. As I start to become more familiar with hangul and the characters naturally fall into place in their block, writing full sentences will no longer be a hurdle in my learning process.

One of the most popular things to have come out of Korea is 태권도 (Taekwondo). The martial art is one of the most popular things to have come out of the country (besides the music of course). It’s become a global phenomenon and even made its mark in the Olympics. Let’s start with the historical roots. Taekwondo started a long time ago in Korea, during a time called the Three Kingdoms Period (around 57 BCE to 668 CE). It borrowed some moves from an old Korean martial art called Taekkyeon. But it wasn't until the 1900s that Taekwondo got its name and became an official martial art. People wanted a martial art that was uniquely Korean, especially after Korea experienced some tough times, like the Japanese occupation.

Taekwondo is more than just kicking and punching. It's like a moral lesson. It takes bits of ideas from Confucianism (a Chinese philosophy), Buddhism, and old Korean values. Practicing Taekwondo teaches people to be respectful, honest, never give up, control themselves, and have a strong spirit. These ideas go beyond the gym and become part of a person's character, adding to the charm of Korean culture. Imagine Taekwondo as a dance with kicks and punches. The moves aren't just random; they have special meanings. The forms, called poomsae, are like a dance routine that shows the beauty, control, and power of Korean culture. It's like telling a story through movements, making Taekwondo a unique way of expressing Korea's history and traditions.

As mentioned before, although Taekwondo is and will always be Korean at heart, it has become famous everywhere. It's been an official Olympic sport since the year 2000. This means people from all over the world get to see Taekwondo at the biggest sports event. Taekwondo isn't just a Korean thing; it's like a global friend that helps different countries understand and connect with each other. Although Korea is evolving constantly and becoming, Taekwondo is an example of how certain traditions and cultures can last forever. It helps link the past and the future, making sure the wisdom from long ago isn't forgotten.
Taekwondo isn't just a sport, it's a balanced mix of history, lessons, and cultural stories. As Korea's way of saying hello to the world, Taekwondo teaches not only kicks and punches but also the values that make people better. So, next time you see those high-flying kicks or hear about Taekwondo in the Olympics, remember, it's more than a sport – it's Korea's resilience in history and tradition making way across the globe and introducing deeper aspects of Korea over the commonly seen Kpop and Kdramas.

Over the past few years, there has been a major shift from television to youtube viewership in South Korea -  television broadcast still retains a huge audience, and yet these same people have begun to also consume youtube videos. These aren't just random youtube videos, though - these are talk shows, garnering millions of views per video - considering Korea's population is only ~50 million, this is a wild feat in comparison to the States. 

Whether the talk show is comedic, focused on drinking, centered around a guest's fridge, or just a calm and intimate gathering, these shows clearly appeal a lot to the audience. They key is to invite relevant guests that the audience will enjoy (usually actors and artists). A key reason behind the big upstart on youtube was Covid - although many more people remained at home, entertainment shows were harder to shoot with its hundreds of staff members + stricter laws. One of the people that really jumpstarted this trend was Na Yeong-seok, a very famous PD in Korea, producing countless big-hit shows. After he started creating shows on youtube with fresh concepts, he quickly gained popularity on that platform.

These shows are fun to watch, and highly recommended to those who are trying to learn Korean. Attached are some screenshots of these shows (Psick Show, 차린건 쥐뿔도 없지만, 나불나불 나영석, 덱스 냉터뷰), with some links to the channels.

https://www.youtube.com/@PsickUniv

https://www.youtube.com/@ch117

https://www.youtube.com/@15ya.fullmoon

https://www.youtube.com/@youngji_boxmedia

As the semester approaches its end, my language partner and I are continuing to work on Korean writing, albeit it being more of a deload month. I've continued the same practicum with a far lesser intensity, choosing a topic in our meeting from some news platform or media, writing a very short summary/analysis in Korean, then reviewing/critiquing it in our next meeting. Last month, we also focused on the differences between written and spoken Korean, figuring out the grammatical differences and usage of different words. This month, we’ve also reviewed this, as theres still a lot to learn, but not as much. With finals coming up, we’ve also started to watch Korean media - although this isn’t as practical practice to me, I found it to be a good way to still interact with Korean in someway in the midst of the busy season.

I've also been discussing with my partner on what we would do next semester, as I'm still not sure what I want to improve or focus on next semester. Some ideas that have come up are focusing on Korean history, and old Korean words/terminology, or spontaneous practices in which I’m forced to learn about/use a certain list of vocabulary in a given time frame.

   During my meeting with my community partner last week we completed both the language and grammar books from the MagyarOK series. I enjoyed the structure of the books since they tightly correspond to each other, and cover the same topics in the same order just with the difference in vocabulary and the content of the exercises. 

   One of the most challenging topics that I have learned in the past week is the concept of the different prefixes which change the meaning of verbs. ‘Be-’, ‘ki-’, ‘fel-’, ‘le-’ are the prefixes that have the meaning of ‘in the direction to the object’, ‘in the direction from the object’, ‘up’, and ‘down’ accordingly. Usually, you add those prefixes to verbs such as ‘menni’ (Eng. ‘go to somewhere/something’) and ‘jonni’ (Eng. ‘come from somewhere/something’). For example, ‘bemenni’ would mean ‘go to somewhere’ with the emphasis on the action that one is heading towards some place/object. If you do not add the prefix, sometimes the direction of the action might be unclear. Another example - ‘felmenni’ means ‘go upstairs’. If you use this prefix, you do not necessarily have to use the words ‘stairs’ because it is already clear that one is going upstairs (using stairs). It was a little bit hard and challenging for me to understand this concept because neither in English nor in Russian do you have this kind of prefixes which provide an additional meaning to the verb. 

   In my last language learning journal of this semester, I want to reflect on one of the hardest grammar topics from Hungarian which I worked on a few days ago. Also, I want to acknowledge that I will be working on my understanding of this topic, as well as others. I think consistency and self-discipline are very important while learning a new language. 

One of the most important cultural aspects of Korea is the food and cooking. Since I moved into the apartments, I am able to cook whatever I can. So, I started learning how to cook a lot of Korean dishes. One of my favorite Korean dishes is my mom’s kimchi pork rib stew. However, kimchi is very hard to store due to its strong funky smell. My roommate once bought kimchi and we had to throw it out as the “stinky” smell was taking over the entire kitchen. Because of this I had to find new dishes that I could possibly make without disturbing anyone. One stew that is very similar to the kimchi stew is the gochujang stew. Gochujang is now a very popular sauce/paste that is used globally. Gochujang stew (jjigae) normally contains tofu, green onions, pork or stew meat, and mushrooms. I make this dish quite frequently whenever I crave jjigae. I also go to Trader Joes for frozen Korean food. They recently released frozen kimbap (Korean sushi) that went viral on TikTok, selling out immediately. Other than kimbap, they also have Korean bulgogi, dumplings, and gochujang. 

A good resource for easy Korean food recipes is Baek Jong Won’s YouTube cooking channel. I first encountered his channel when I saw that my brother was relying on it whenever he was making a Korean dish. Baek Jong Won is one of the most popular cooks in Korea and owns multiple restaurants that are cheap and good. He also helps restaurants that are struggling by consulting for them and providing them with resources. He makes the tutorial videos easy to follow even when you have limited materials. 

Korean food has been influenced by many other countries. To list a few popular ones there is jjajangmyeon (짜장면, black bean noodles) from China, ramen influenced from Japan, and a lot of Italian foods. One crucial part of a Korean meal are banchans (side dishes). But sadly it is really hard to create all these side dishes in a dorm apartment. There are a variety of side dishes that are unlimited including fish, meat, and just vegetables. Food is one of my favorite cultural aspects of Korea.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoABXt5mipg6mIdGKBuJlv5tmQFAQ3OYr

Presentation

Podcast

Gyeongbokgung Palace (경복궁) is now one of the most popular tourist attractions in Korea, but it was once the seat of power of the nation. It was completed in 1395 during the rule of King Taejo, the founder and first ruler of the Joseon dynasty. He rules from 1392 to 1398. King Taejo moved Korea’s capital from Kaesong, in current day North Korea, to Seoul, South Korea, and Byeongbokgung was the main and largest of the Five Grand Palaces in Seoul..

Gyeongbokgung directly translates as “palace greatly blessed by Heaven.” It lies underneath Mount Bugaksan and Mount Namsan.

Hwangwonjeong Pavilion

Gyeongbokgung served as the home of the royal family and seat of government for two centuries before it was destroyed by fire during the Japanese invasion of 1592. It was then abandoned for 300 years. It was restored in 1867 by Prince Regent Heungseon during the reign of King Gojong. However, it was not long before most of the palace was dismantled or destroyed again by Japanese forces, this time during the 35 year occupation preceding World War II. In 1926, the Japanese Government Building was built in front of the Palace. The palace saw even more damage during the Korean War of 1950 to 1953.

The Japanese General Government Building behind the main gate prior to demolition

To add insult to injury, the Japanese General Government Building was built on palace grounds during the occupation. The building was demolished in 1995 due its controversy and to make space for palace restorations.

Only three buildings survived the destruction of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Restoration work began in the 90s, and currently less than half of the palace has been restored. The palace is now home to the National Folk Museum of Korea and the National Palace Museum of Korea.

Today, Gyeongbokgung is one of the popular tourist destinations in the country. Tourists are encouraged to visit and wear traditional Hanboks to add to the richness of the historical setting.

Daily changing of the guard ceremony

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  For my fourth cultural post, I have decided to write about Christmas traditions in Hungary and interesting events that happen on Christmas Eve. Since it is almost the middle of December, I think it is a very nice moment to appreciate how beautiful and magical the time of Christmas and winter holidays is. I have never celebrated either Christmas or New Year here, in the United States. Every year I fly back either to Russia or Europe and celebrate these holidays together with my family. Therefore, I would like to reflect on this culture during my time during Christmas in Budapest. 

  Budapest is a very beautiful city in general, but during Christmas and winter holidays it becomes almost unbelievably magical and breathtaking. All of the seven bridges that go through the main area of downtown and which connect two sides of the city - Buda and Pest, get filled with various decorations, lights, statues, symbolic ornaments, etc. Christmas markets and festivals are another big part of Christmas time in Budapest. There are two main squares in Budapest downtown where these markets are located - Vörösmarty Tér (Eng. Vörösmarty Square) and Szent István-Bazilika Tér (Eng. St. Stephen's Basilica Square). It is very interesting and fun to spend time at the markets. Usually, they open in the events from 4 pm to 10 pm because that is when all of the city lights get turned on. On the markets, you can try traditional Hungarian goulash soup, kürtőskalács, or chimney cake (traditional Hungarian sweet pastry), hot wine, and other delicious Hungarian foods. Also, you get to see a lot of local handcrafts, and homemade traditional creative souvenirs. Usually, it gets very busy at the markets because they are open just during one Christmas week, so as many people as possible try to visit them. As I said, last year when I was in Budapest over the winter break, Christmas markets, specifically the one located on Szent István-Bazilika Tér, was my favorite place to spend evenings with my family, siblings, and friends. Below I will include a picture of kürtőskalács and 2 glasses of hot wine which I got at one of the markets. It is a great memory to have, and looking at this picture makes me want to come back to Budapest!

  I like spending Christmas in Europe. I think it is such a  magic time, and Christmas markets make it even more special and fun. I hope you enjoyed reading about this, and it makes you want to visit Budapest once during Christmas time. 

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   Enrolling in Self-Directed Language Course 105 together with 110 sections is one of the best decisions I have made as a student and a language learner. To be honest, I was a little bit worried about whether I would be able to create my schedule for learning Hungarian, allocate specific times in my schedule for the meeting with my community partner, maintain motivation throughout the semester, and other concerns. However, approaching my Hungarian learning ended up being very easy, fun, engaging, and entertaining. I had such a positive experience mostly because of my community partner - Szonja who is a Hungarian native speaker with a fully Hungarian background/family. During our classes, she did not just show me some tricks on how to memorize specific words, structures, and complex topics, but also shared her own stories from her time living in Budapest. We almost immediately connected, and it allowed me to maintain motivation and passion for learning the language the whole time. 

   One of the main insights that I have gained about myself as a language learner is consistency and discipline. No doubt, there were days when I simply did not want to open a Hungarian book and do grammar exercises just because I was tired or overwhelmed with my other responsibilities. However, I realized that it was much more helpful to do some small tasks on a day like this (such as one class on Duolingo, watching a short YouTube video in Hungarian, listen to a song, or doing an easy drill) rather than skip the day completely. Language learning is all about practice, and the more practice I have - the faster I will succeed. And honestly, these little language activities were my favorite part of the learning experience. Me and my community partner - Szonja, we were trying to incorporate as many as possible. 

   One of the most challenging parts of learning Hungarian is a lot of cases, conjugations, and irregularities that are an essential part of Hungarian grammar. It took me a while to get used to some of them because there are no similar concepts neither in Russian nor in English. However, this is something that I got better at by the end of the semester, and this is something that I am planning to work on more!

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Below you can find the summary and the slides for my final cultural project that I have presented for both SDLC 105 and SDLC 110 courses.

final%20project.docxEaster%20Traditions%20in%20Hungary.pptx

final%20project.docx