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Coming out of winter, Smaragda told me that it wasn’t fair that I only visited Greece at Christmas, because it did not give a good look at the country the way it is meant to be seen. “Greece was made for the summer,” she said, “so you cannot have an opinion until you’ve seen it in both winter and summer.”

I talked with Myrsini and Andreas about my visit, and they both made the same complaint. According to Andreas, summer is a time for the young men to visit bars and get into trouble. Smaragda and Myrsini preferred to use summer as a time to drink coffee, go to the beach, and visit bars. They said to expect maybe 4 hours per night of sleep, since the rest of the day has to be spent doing these three things.

Smaragda has had a book for many years called Σταυροδρόμι των Ψυχών, The Crossroads of the Soul. Normally, it wouldn’t be my first choice of book, but I’m excited that I understand a fair number of words in the first couple pages. If she weren’t there to point out some of the other words, I surely wouldn’t be able to piece it all together, but we read through the first page or two in an almost reasonable amount of time. I’m not much of a romance novel reader, but Σταυροδρόμι των Ψυχών is the only Greek book I have read from, and the ability to read makes me happier than the content necessarily does.

We did a segment on Greek patriotism of Greek Independence Day. Smaragda gave me a song called “Παλληκάπι Είκοσι Χρονώ”, “A Young Lad of 20 Years”. This song tells of a young man who returns from an uneventful war, only to be killed on his way back in a place called Γκιούλ Μπάξες, the Rose Garden (also translated as Pomegranate Garden). We talked about how everything shuts down except for restaurants, and how everyone goes out to eat after the parades hosted by local schools.

Following in the vein of sports and games, we had a class meeting which looked at the rules and etiquette for card games, and things to say during a card game. Smaragda taught me some vocabulary including “to shuffle”, “to deal”, “to bet”, “to win”, and “to lose”. She made me spend the rest of class constructing sentences from these words and vocab we already covered in the Sports & Games section. This way, I will be able to do more than just silently play a hand of poker. We learned more than just the vocabulary, but made sure that I could play some of the more common card games played in Greece. Backgammon is very popular in Greece, so we learned a few terms about it as well. Θέλεις να παίξομε χαρτιά;

On a wild hair, we decided to dedicate a few classes to learning about sports and games. I had mixed feelings learning about this topic. Sporty feeling was in the air, in the wake of March Madness, and with the weather getting a little bit warmer. I’m eager to learn about these topics, so that I might be able to speak about and offer to play with others in Greek. Many of the names for sport are foreign, such as “Μπάσκετ” (“Basket”, basketball). However, a great number of them only have Greek names that would be recognizable to Greeks, such as ορεινή ποδηλασία (mountain biking). My concern for these is that their names for sports tend to be very long, and will be a bit of a struggle to memorize. Fortunately, many of the games have shorter names than the sports, and most of the verbs and people associated with sports have some connections to English. I anticipate that my challenge here will be just memorizing sports names.

We have embarked on another unit of pronouns, this time focusing on indefinites. These are easier to remember, because parts of the words are found in other words, such as καθένας (every one), whose root, κάθε, “every”, is found in words like καθεμέρα, “everyday”. Every one of the indefinite pronouns (or at least the ones we covered) has a recognizable root in other Greek words, so they are not at all difficult to keep track of: much better than memorizing the definite pronouns, which have nothing to recall any parts of their meaning, except their endings to indicate person, number, and gender. They melt into other words and become indistinguishable to me in speech. Even though these past few class meetings have been about indefinite pronouns, I will still be spending more of my energy on remembering the definite ones.

This week we launched into pronouns with in full force, and saw how they and our other topics fit into lyrics from popular Greek songs. I really enjoyed listening and reading through the songs. I have always had trouble understanding Greek songs because I will catch one word and then get swept away by the beat. This practice was fun and helped me get used to the words that commonly get elided or sound differently than in prose.

Hopefully, by hearing words in different contexts, prose versus more poetic, I can start to understand idioms more gracefully. After translating and singing a few pages of Greek, my goal is to have to improve my voice quality more than my pronunciations.

In these past few weeks, Smaragda and I discussed the different endings attached to words to signify size or quality. These include endings to show whether the noun were a place where something is found, a place where there is a lot of something, large, or small. These would be simple enough, except that there are several endings for each of these, and each of these changes by case, number, and gender, adding up to several hundred endings to modify nouns. These took some remembering, but I’ve gotten a decent grasp on general endings, so it hasn’t been too bad, especially since I was already familiar with some of the ones which meant “little”. However, we’ve also started covering pronouns. There are hundreds more of these to learn, even just scratching the surface, so I’m a bit concerned as to how well I’ll be able to handle those.

We started off the semester by reflecting on what I learned while we were in Greece. After returning, I could have kicked myself for my shyness. Many times, I would think of something which I knew I could say in Greek, but I would usually hold myself back. My fear of slipping up or taking too long to say a simple phrase would paralyze me and keep me from offering a simple thought to Smaragda’s family or friends. It was more the awareness of the fact that I would speak slowly that would impede my speech than anything else, even though the “language hacking” video encourages us to speak despite ourselves.

Many of the people I met in Greece did not speak much or any English, so we would not be able to speak except through Smaragda, who was sometimes not around to interpret. This led to many instances of me sitting around looking at someone and just nodding or smiling for long periods of time.

If I could have done anything differently in Greece, I definitely would have spoken up more.

Legislative violence is a very common occurrence in newer democracies. It even dates back to ancient Roman times where discourse in the legislature was settle with violence. Even America had instances of violence in its early years as an independent country. Despite being highly developed, South Korea is still a new democracy. It only had a handful of democratically elected presidents apart from dictators and colonized rule. Because they are still in their infancy, brawls like these and verbal abuse happen from time to time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XcMN6E9B44

This is a conversation script I had with Sarah. With the help of my language partner, I had to use several slang words in the conversation to talk about a new restaurant that opened. This lesson was very useful because I use Kakaotalk to talk to others in Korean a lot. While there is still a lot of new slang words that I am unfamiliar with, I learned a fair amount of new words to use in my everyday talking.

This is an example of a diary entry I completed during the semester. Diaries are a common homework assignment in South Korea and I recall doing many diary entries while attending elementary school in Korea. 

This is a Korean dish called Seolleongtang. It is a beef bone broth soup with sliced beef in it. This is one of my favorite dishes to order at Grandmart. This dish is most popular when the weather is cold and is served in a stone bowl to retain longer. Many believe that broth based dishes were popularized long ago when people had to feed the most amount of people with the least amount of ingredients. 

I have enjoyed every semester of SDLC.  I feel confident in my ability to have a brief conversation in Indonesian.  SDLC has helped me realize how unique language is.  Before SDLC, I would have had no idea how to study a language like Indonesian.  I especially would not have had the interaction with the culture that I was able to have through Bu Julie and Thalia.  I enjoyed every class and look forward studying after I graduate college.  

I have come to understand when to use “bukan” and “tidak” correctly.  These words are used to show negation.  Tidak is used to negate verbal predicates that are composed of verbs, adjectives, or prepositional phrases.  Bukan is used to negate nominal phrases.  When deciding which word to use, the person who responds must understand what is being asked in order to properly respond.  I have learned how to do this by looking at sentences that have both nominal and verbal predicates and practice negating each predicate.  It has really helped to break up sentences and look at it in sections.

This week, we went to Osaka to eat lunch as a celebration for finishing SDLC.  While at the restaurant, we discussed the food and our week in Indonesian.  Bu Julie discussed the Japanese influence on Indonesia and pointed out items on the menu that are similar to meals that are common in Indonesia as well.  I enjoy going to restaurants and discussing the similarities between cultures.  As someone who has never been out of the country, I enjoy these experiences where we learn about another culture the best we can.   

In order to have a better understanding of the culture in Indonesia, I researched the recent election in Indonesia.  This was a big election year because, for the first time, presidential, parliamentary, and regional elections all took place on April 17.  Results are still being counted, but as of now, the incumbent, President Joko Widodo is leading.  Widodo is seen as a man of the people, while Subianto is seen as a member of the political elites in the country due to his relationship with the Suharto family.  According to many news articles, the economy is one of the most important issues this election cycle.  Widodo has seen the economy grow during his presidency, but some believe he is weakening the country by taking foreign investments from China.  Many speculate that voters will decide not to go to the polls as they feel Widodo has failed to demonstrate the qualities of a good president while Subianto has shown the Islamic majority a lot of attention that other religious groups do not like.  This topic fascinates me, and I think I will use this election in my final presentation for SDLC.

Today, I had a conversation with someone in Indonesian.  One of my friends knows someone who is a native speaker, and he was able to set a phone call up.  Since we did not know each other, we just had a simple conversation about our names, the weather, where we go to school, and where we will work.  I was able to follow along pretty easily and use her sentence structure in my own replies.  Our conversation was only a few minutes long, but I was very pleased with my ability to communicate with strangers in Indonesian. 

This week, I decided to try and make some traditional Indonesian food.  I searched online for some recipes and decided to make satay ayam.  These are basically grilled chicken sewers that usually have a peanut sauce with them.  The dish was not very difficult to make, but it was very tasty.  You start by marinating the chicken in sesame oil, peanut butter, and garlic and then put the skewers on a charcoal grill for just a few minutes.  The chicken turned out great.  I especially liked the sauce.  I am excited to try and find some more recipes that I can try.

This week, I looked into dinner etiquette in Indonesia.  Table manners in Indonesia are very eclectic.  Some places use a knife, spoon, and fork, some chopsticks, and others that require you to eat with your hands.  From what I found about the topic online, it seems that there are several rules that are similar to the culture here.  The guest should always say please and thank you, you should be considerate of others when eating, and you should be respectful of elders at the table.  Some characteristics that are different are that some restaurants do not use chairs, instead you sit on the ground in front of a low table.  Another difference is that many of the places to eat have a more communal setup.  Guests at the table share from an assortment of dishes rather than just ordering your own food.  Another difference is the type of food that is eaten.  In most meals, rice is a basic staple.  Additionally, tofu is commonly served.  Other foods that are common that I have seen in videos are stinky bean, oxtail soup, peanut sauce, and it seems that egg is common as a side for most dishes.