Blogs

My learning highlights from these past few weeks include making Korean recipes using Korean YouTube tutorials. In particular, I have been enjoying Chef Baek Jong-Won’s recipes. Baek Jong-Won is a famous South Korean chef who owns several restaurant chains and hosts several Korean television series including Top 3 Chef King, Baek Jong-won's Food Truck, and Baek Jong-won's Alley Restaurant. As someone who enjoys cooking and eating Korean foods, my language partner and I decided that it would be a good idea to learn how to comprehend and follow directions in Korean by following along with Chef Baek’s Korean food cooking tutorials. 

We decided to follow Chef Baek’s kimchi-jjigae recipe. Kimchi-jjigae is a classic Korean stew dish made with kimchi, pork or seafood, scallions, onions, and diced tofu. It is one of the most common stews in Korean cuisine. While I understood what the ingredients were in Korean, I found myself struggling to understand Chef Baek’s specific directions on how to prepare the ingredients. I also found it difficult to understand his heavy South Chungcheongnam-do dialect. South Chungcheong Province, also known as Chungnam, is a province of South Korea located in the Hoseo region in the southwest of the Korean Peninsula. As someone who grew up hearing the standard ‘Seoul’ accent from my parents, it was interesting to hear the tonal differences between Chef Baek’s pronunciation and what I am accustomed to. Although cooking a Korean recipe was not a part of my original learning plan, I think it was a good language comprehension exercise for me. 

To practice my hangul writing, I started texting my language partner in Korean, using commonly used words and phrases. Texting was a new challenge for me because I kept making mistakes with the spacing between the words. It was also difficult to type certain words that were difficult to spell.  For example, I misspelled the word “괜찮아” when trying to say “it’s okay” because it contained multiple characters in chunks. I found myself heavily relying on the auto-check function in my phone to fix these mistakes but it was good texting practice for me and my language partner corrected my spacing errors. 

Filial piety, which is called ‘hyodo’ in Korean, is defined as supporting and serving one's parents and is a natural duty of a person. Filial piety is a mutual relationship between parents and their children. In Korea, however, under the influence of Confucianism, more emphasis is placed on a child’s filial duties toward their parents. Grandchildren are also expected to have filial piety and respect for their grandparents. ‘Hyodo’ is a natural emotion and a way of fulfilling filial obligations at the same time. Children must repay their parents with filial piety in return for giving them life and raising them, although this is not a transactional thing. Parents give their children the three “gracious favors” ('eunhye') of birth, upbringing, and wealth while children are expected to carry on the family line, support their parents, and observe memorial rites after their death. The things inherited or passed down from parents including wealth, social status and human relations are at the core of the institutionalization of filial piety. This moral standard is a large part of Korean culture and can be seen in many Korean dramas and movies. In Korea, it is not uncommon to see multi-generational families living under one roof where the children support and take care of their parents and/or grandparents.

For this week’s cultural post, with the suggestion of my language partner, I will be taking a deep dive into the puzzling popularity of American TV show Everybody Hates Chris in Brazil. Everybody Hates Chris is an American TV show created by Chris Rock that is supposed to be based on memories from his teenage years. The show portrays “Chris” in his adolescent years and life within his African American community. The show was rather popular in the US but ultimately stopped running in 2009. Before it’s finale, the show was nominated for 3 Emmy’s and 1 Golden Globe. However, the popularity in America doesn’t come close to what’s seen in Brazil. To this day, the Brazilian population and community are avid watchers and fans of the show.

Before doing this post, I reached out to São Paolo native and Richmond student Pedro Alves de Lima to see if this phenomenon really exists. He confirmed that this is in fact a cultural thing in Brazil. He stated how the show offers something different than the normal telenovelas in Brazil and works to portray a different background of the people. This makes a lot of sense and can be clearly seen through my research. Actress Tichina Arnold, Rochelle on the show, is actually one of the most (if not the most) famous American Actress’s in the whole country. On numerous visits she’s been treated like royalty, drawing thousands of adoring Brazilian fans to come see her. This popularity isn’t just relegated to her on this one show, but the show Wife N Kids, where Tichina also stars, was voted as the second most popular show of its kind in Brazil recently. At any point in time, fans of the show can be seen repeating her famous lines as Chris’s Mom and her recognition is undeniable. Moreover, she’s mentioned her Brazilian following in multiple interviews within the US. It’s quite fascinating to see this popularity and it’s something the average consumer of the show would have no idea about. The same experience is true for actor Tyler James Williams (Chris) who has a huge following as well. On multiple occasions when he was creating his Instagram, he actually deleted his profile because his comment section was overflooded with Portuguese and he wasn’t quite sure what to do. It’s something the whole cast is mostly on record being surprised and appreciative about, but why did the show get so big in Brazil is the main question still?

In Brazil, one of the main forms of entertainment are long-form serial narratives, or better known as telenovelas. The shows draw in millions of domestic viewers and people across the globe in more than 120 countries worldwide. A lot of Brazilian culture and imagery comes from these types of entertainment, and the series have served as a primary source for what it means to be Brazilian globally. The main issue with them, however, is that have shown that the country’s most important television genre of shows has historically underrepresented Brazilians of color. In addition, many also maintain that the telenovelas worked to produce a symbolic good that emphasizes whiteness as the ideal social marker. This works to explain the differentiation of Everybody Hates Chris. It offers the people of Brazil a show that prominently features a culture they don’t often get to see in the manner of comedy. It’s take on the normal American family, mixed in with comedic factors, and its focus on the colored community, all drive to boost the popularity of the show in Brazil.

Overall, this was extremely interesting to learn about and something I would’ve never known without researching. It’s amazing how cultures can differ and what becomes popular within certain places. I’ve included some sources below and some social media posts of fans from Brazil.

Sources:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26744312?seq=1

https://www.flowjournal.org/2013/03/everybody-hates-chris/

Social Media:

https://twitter.com/ajclassic/status/1328033103202414594

https://twitter.com/ajclassic/status/1328038268592590849?s=20&t=0RKMt-Ov9npvV7QQyYKmVA

https://twitter.com/ajclassic/status/1328046792294998021?s=20&t=0RKMt-Ov9npvV7QQyYKmVA

This month I attempted to learn texting and typing in Korean. Korea has a huge video game culture. You can literally find a PC방 every block or two. A lot of people communicate through typing rather than a microphone because of just how loud it is in these PC rooms. However, the idea of learning to type as quickly as I type in English was wishful thinking. There was just too much to cover in such a short period of time. Typing is heavily reliant on muscle memory, so it requires loads of repetition. Jannette showed me some typing games but it's not something you want to do be doing every day. I remember learning how to type really quickly because I played a lot of League of Legends where that was the only form of communication with your teammates. I wish I was able to play in Korean gaming servers where I have that enjoyment paired with learning.

Learning how to text was relatively easier as it is pretty convenient. I’ve been texting in Konglish a bit to my parents already but made it a thing to text with my language partner in Korean as much as possible. So whenever I would ask what time we were meeting I’d type ‘우리 몇 시에 만날까’? Texting is a lot easier to learn as the characters are right there and there is also a very convenient autofill tool on the iPhone. Something I realized I was doing poorly was my spacing between words and phrases. I would find myself relying on the autofill to correct it for me. There are certain rules like markers but a lot of other special cases as well which makes it pretty difficult. This problem is evident in my writing as well but even worse as handwriting also plays a factor. I also learned a few tips to make handwriting a lot easier with cursive forms of certain characters.

For this week, Rachel and I just decided to hold one of our meetings at the local Korean church we both attend called Richmond Central Presbyterian Church. I’ve held previous SDLC meetings at RCPC in the past because it was a good cultural experience, however, for this meeting, I wanted to use this time to practice my Korean in terms of singing. For this year, the church asked me to be one of the praise leaders and the lead female vocalist which I accepted. We mostly sang praise songs in English, but for this week, I asked my pastor if I could sing one song in Korean and he approved. I asked Rachel to help me choose a good Korean praise song and we choose “여호와께 돌아가자" because it was originally sung by a female vocalist, so it seemed very fitting. At first, when I listen to this song, there were so many vocabulary words I did not understand. I knew how to read and sing all of the verses, but I knew only about 30% of what it truly meant. I tried to use context clues to figure the lyrics out on my own, but I noticed it was a lot more difficult since it was a song and not a logical flowing passage. On top of that, I think it was harder for me to understand because it was a Christian song and I did not know a lot of the religious terms in Korean. For instance, the song said “백성" which Rachel later informed me that it meant “the people.” Additionally, I did not know what “여호와" meant and my language partner let me know that it translated to “Jehovah.” It was very frustrating at first because I couldn’t necessarily connect the song to my emotions since I did not understand what the song was trying to say. However, as Rachel helped me to translate each word I did not understand, I started to appreciate the song little by little and I realized that this piece was beautifully written. After about 45 minutes of deciphering and practicing, I finally got to perform this song for a Sunday service and was very proud of the work we did. It made me actually want to sing even more Korean Christian praise songs in the future. Not only did this meeting help me to reach my goal to listen to more Korean arts, but it also helped me to learn more Christian terminologies in Korean. Next time, I hope to try and decipher Christian songs on my own without Rachel by using Google Translate and YouTube. Overall, I really enjoyed the experience, and I hope to continue to be challenged in the future with my Korean skills. 

During Spring break I had the opportunity to visit my childhood best friend in Baltimore, Maryland. My previous language partner, Somyung, actually gave me a ride there on her way home for the break. We had a great conversation in the car in Korean and I learned a lot about her family.  I had so much fun and we did so many different activities that I decided to write down everything we did for each day in Korean. I later showed my writing to my language partner and even my parents to ask for feedback but also share with them the experiences and memories I had with my friend Saera. One thing I really love about Saera’s family is that they speak in a dialect in Korean that is located in Busan. The way they would say a certain word or the tones they used to speak is different from the Seoul dialect. I had so much fun learning and listening to this dialect and also found myself later using some of their words to speak. 

I continued with reading the “magic” book and wrote my ten grateful things to exercise in Korean each day. I also wrote a reflection about what I read in the book for the month in korean. I had a conversation with my parents and they wanted to help out with my Korean language learning. They told me to research and write about the famous figure skater Kim Yuna. They told me I had to research using the Korean language and I cannot use any American sources. 

This task was very challenging for me because I never tried researching things in korean. Also, although Kim Yuna was a famous figure skater, I think my parents chose this topic because I had no knowledge about her at all. They thought it would be challenging but also a fun prompt. 

It took me a couple of days searching for information about Kim Yuna because I had to do it all in korean and also read and interpret the websites in korean. I also took a while to gather my thoughts and write an essay reflection. I figured out how much harder it was writing about a prompt than actually talking about doing it. 

I wrote an inspiring essay that explained about Yuna’s life and her hard work that came from a lot of practice and dedication. I sent the essay to my language partner to get some feedback on grammar and then sent it to my parents. My parents read over it and commented on how to rephrase some of the sentences. But overall, they were very proud of the work I have accomplished. They even stated how I am becoming a true korean student which made me very excited.

I think I would want to continue to develop my writing skills by challenging myself to answer another prompt. Researching the information in Korean actually helped me to develop my reading skills and actually using that knowledge to write an essay helped me formulate a more educational writing.

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.

There is a slight cultural difference in gift giving holidays between Korea and the U.S. - on valentines, it is mostly girls that give gifts to guys, whereas in the U.S. it is usually the opposite. However, there is another day in Korea called White Day, which was just a week ago, and on that day reciprocal gifts are given. But mostly guys receive gifts from girls. The tradition started out in Japan in the 1970s, where supposedly men were given marshmallows as reciprocal gifts for Valentines, but as time went on, various white colored gifts were given, and now there are no specific limitations - just tradition. Such traditions spread to most of east Asia, like Korea and China. It occurs on the 14th of March, a month after Valentines, but it's interesting to see how Korea has developed unofficial romantic holidays for the 14th of every month. 

Here is a list of the holidays I’ve found:

January 14th - “다이어리데이” - Diary Day: New diaries are exchanged between couples.

February 14th - “발렌타인데이” - Valentines

March 14th - “화이트데이” - White Day

April 14th - “블랙데이” - Black Day: Where single people eat 짜장면(Black Bean Noodles).

May 15th -  “로즈데이” - Rose Day: Couples wear yellow clothing and exchange yellow roses.

June 14th - “키스데이” - Kiss Day: Give your partner kisses

July 14th - “실버데이” - Silver Day: Exchange of jewelry.

August 14th - “그린데이” - Green Day: Soju time.

September 14th - “포토데이” - Photo Day: Couples go out to take photos.

October 14th - “와인데이” - Wine Day: Celebrate relationship with wine.

November 14th - “무비데이” - Movie Day: Watch movies.

December 14th - “허그데이” - Hug Day: Give each other hugs.

These days aren’t anything of big significance, but they are an interesting representation of Korean culture. Perhaps when I am in Korea I’ll be able to witness couples partaking in these holidays.

Since I finished watching Uncanny Counter for one of my bi-weekly journal posts, I decided to start a new Korean drama called “Twenty Five Twenty One” with Rachel. “Twenty Five Twenty One” was already trending even before it aired because it had two very famous actors named “Kim Tae Ri” and “Nam Joo Hyuk.” After watching “Our Beloved Summer” for a bi-weekly journal post, I was less hesitant to start another mellow romance drama since I absolutely loved that show. As I have stated previously, I was never a big fan of slow, romantic TV shows called “멜로,” but I can notice that Korean cinematography and their plots have become more complex and sophisticated. Essentially, the show is about two young adults named Na Hee Do and Baek Yi Jin who develop a strong friendship and explore the premises of love with each other. Na Hee Do is a high school fencing prodigy who aspires to be a national fencing player while Baek Yi Jin is the son of a bankrupt CEO who must now start his life all over again. The setting begins in 1998 and goes on to cover the brutal reality of the Asian financial crisis called the “IMF crisis.” Since I was born in 2000, I never really heard anything about the IMF crisis, however, through this drama, I finally got to understand what happened in the late 90s and what my own parents had to experience. The crisis began when South Korea partnered up with the International Monetary Fund to assist the country in managing its financial systems. The structural provisions increased the flexibility of interest rates, tightened monetary policies, and removed features that would stunt future economic growth. However, this ultimately caused interest rates to rise and an entire restructure of the government which greatly affected the South Korean population and families. The drama goes on to cover how unemployment rates affected the households and there were many protests to end this movement. Learning about this part of history really opened my eyes to South Korea’s culture and my parents’ 20s. In terms of cinematography, the first element I noticed about the drama was the use of film and vintage filters. It made the drama even more real and authentic and I really liked how the director incorporated the traditional yellow fonts as well to make it seem like we were really watching the characters from the 90s lens. All in all, “Twenty Five Twenty One” was not only a great romantic drama, but also a great historical show as well.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vCdX7MKS6v4EilDC5NoKYCW0ftpQGvA0t66_KK2nIPw/edit?usp=sharing

     For our SDLAP meeting, we decided to watch Midnight Runners, which was a Korean comedy film. This movie is about two young students in Korea’s Police Academy to train as officers. They have a hard time taking some of the training seriously because some of the movements the professors teach them seem childish. For one night out, these two young trainees witness a young woman being kidnapped in a dark alley way, and chases after the car. They were unable to catch the car, so they thought about their police training and returned to the place where the crime scene occurred. The young woman was carrying a bag of tteok-bokki on her way home, and she dropped it when she was kidnapped. The two trainees investigated origins of the tteok-bokki, notified the nearby police station, and contacted their professor. They were told to stop investigating privately and let the higher ups take care of it, which would take a couple weeks before an investigation begins. The two police trainers could not way that long since they were told during their training that the first seven hours of the crime is the most crucial in saving the victim.

     They continued their private investigation and found that the incident was part of an illegal egg harvesting farm where young women were kidnapped so that their eggs can be harvested. They found the hiding spot of the kidnappers and attempted to rescue the women held hostage. However, they failed to rescue them because the kidnappers found out and a fight broke out. The two police trainees returned to the academy and decided to train relentlessly because they know the women are in danger. Once it was time, they decided to confront the kidnappers, but this time, they are in a hospital parking lot. The kidnappers are delivering the girls to a fertility clinic that was also part of the illegal act, and now the eggs are going to be harvested without their consent. Just before the surgery, the two police trainees broke in and halted all operations and managed to knock out the boss unconscious.

     The two police actions’ must be reviewed by the police academy since the trainees were not officially police officers and did not have the legal right to try to catch the kidnappers. However, the police academy took the trainees’ bravery and courage into account, and they held them back one year and assigned 500 community service hours for both the police trainees.

     This movie allowed me to examine aspects of Korean culture such as the food, Korean police academy, other cultures within Korea, and city-wide surveillance. The bag of tteok-bokki that the woman was holding is a famous dish in Korean culture. It is commonly known as “rice-cakes” for Westerners. This is a dish that is commonly served during special occasions or on a regular basis. They are normally cylindrical and soft mixed in with an orange sauce, and other toppings can be mixed in as well.

      When the two police trainees were trying to locate the illegal egg harvesting farm, they found themselves in a small nook where the words on the signs of shops had Chinese characters. This area was sketchy, and the taxi driver warned them to not enter this area because it is known for crimes. This scene shows that there are other cultures present in Korean society and may have in influence in Korean culture. For an example, the delicious dish called jajeongmyeon is a fusion dish between Korean and Chinese culture. In Chinese, this dish is called zhajiangmian.

     Overall, I quite enjoyed this movie because it was hilariously and serious at the same time with a beautiful ending. Korean movies and entertainment system is gaining popularity all around the world, and I hope to do a cultural analysis on other awesome Korean movies in the future.

It has been around 5 weeks since learning sessions with my partner began, and so my learning plan has a much more rigorous structure. For the past few weeks, we have continued our topic based conversations - some including the recent Ukraine/Russia Conflict, Korean concerts (including recent/upcoming), plot/meaning of Korean dramas, etc. These topic based conversations allow for a better ease of flow, since I don’t have to think about what to talk about next. And because these topic based conversations are slightly niche, it has forced me to use words or phrases I had never used before. Some words that came up in our recent conversation, for example, regarding Ukraine was “민주주의” (democracy) and “제재” (sanctions). Building off of my previous learning journal, I have also taken notes of new things, so I can refer back later and not forget. So as long as topic based conversations go, I think I am quite satisfied with the level of communication/comprehension that I have currently achieved. I am also listening to lots of Korean podcasts/radio shows. I use KBS Kong to listen to recorded radio sessions, which have different hosts. These radio shows in Korea are quite popular, and many celebrities are invited to speak with the host, which I think is rarer in the states. I also use youtube to watch more casual podcasts/interviews. One I really enjoy listening to is HIPHOPLE’s NOW, which features a variety of hip hop stars. All in all, listening to a variety of different shows has helped me to understand korean culture better, and to listen to variety of type of korean, including formal, informal, slang, etc. No learning experience comes with no difficulties, but so far it has been fun and not very frustrating. If anything is frustrating, it’s when I encounter a mistake I already encountered and should have fixed, or blank out when I definitely know what to say. But I just step back and think, so the learning process so far has been fine. Moving forward, I will probably spend less time on topic based conversations and start to study korean grammatical structure more rigorously - like vowel harmony and affixal copula, both which english lacks. Studying these types of characteristics will definitely help me improve my Korean, along with other languages I learn in the future.

This past month, I focused on my learning objective to improve my Korean pronunciation. My language partner, Jannette, and I thought that it would be a good idea to practice reading Korean and work on my Korean pronunciation by reading Korean song lyrics and singing Korean songs. We explored different genres including, ballads, k-pop, and R&B. I was definitely better at reading the lyrics to slower ballad songs than fast k-pop songs and I failed pretty miserably at rapping. However, it was a good and fun way to practice verbalizing Korean. Hearing Jannette’s fluent pronunciation also allowed me to compare and practice making the right sounds. After we sang the songs, we looked at the lyrics and used Papago to find the translations of any words that I was unfamiliar with. By doing this, I got to learn new Korean words from the songs we sang. Some words I learned were:

무뎌진: I got used to it

투명: transparent

그림자: shadow

화려한: glamorous

애태우다: worry/fuss about

Then, to practice using these words, I used them in sentences. For example, I said, “나는 너의 드레스가 화려해서 좋다.” This means, “I like how glamorous your dress is”. This exercise was very successful because it allowed me to grasp a fuller understanding of how these words would be used in an everyday context. Singing Korean karaoke was not only helpful in getting me to read and speak Korean, but I also got to learn more about Korean music culture, popular songs, and various artists in Korea. Although I was already familiar with the genre of Korean popular music (K-pop), Jannette shared some of her favorite Korean ballad songs with me, including 바람기억 (Memory of the Wind) by Naul and 너를 만나 (Me After You) by Paul Kim. I learned that there are a plethora of different types of music in Korea outside of just K-pop. 

In addition to learning Korean through music, I accomplished my objective of learning the Old Testament books of the Bible in Korean- up until the book of Esther, which is the seventeenth book. This was not as difficult as I initially expected because some of the Korean names are pronounced similarly to the English names. For example, Ezra in Korean is ‘에스라’, which is read as ‘esra’. I also learned that ‘상’ (sang) means first and ‘하’ (ha) means latter. Samuel in Korean is ‘사무엘’ which is pronounced the same as in English (Sa-moo-el). So, 1 Samuel is 사무엘상 and 2 Samuel is 사무엘하. Learning this made it so much easier to memorize certain books of the Bible in Korean. 

This month we focused heavily on the cultural aspects of Korean and its use with language. We explored different types of Korean music such as K-pop and rap. Personally, it’s very difficult for me to understand Korean when its sung/rapped because of just how fast paced it is. A lot of the times the words and phrases are slurred together. I usually need the lyrics to be able to follow along and even then, some rapping parts go way too fast. Some of the artists we listened to include Blackpink, Zion T. IU, and many more. One of my favorite ones to listen to was 꺼내 먹어요 (Eat) by Zion T. because its one of the songs I can actually follow along pretty easily. I’ve realized I never really pay attention to the lyrics for even English songs. My music selection is more reliant on the beat which might be why I have trouble following along to Korean songs. For example, I listen to Jay Park but I could never sing any of his songs off the top of my head.

What’s interesting, however, is that when I’m singing or attempting to sing along, I never have trouble with my American accent popping up. It might be because I’m hearing the sound beforehand, but it feels very different from repeating after a normal phrase.

Grace and Jannette are really big K-pop fans so I got to learn a lot of slang terminology used in that field. I learned things like ‘Bias’ which means your most favorite member of a group. ‘Vizhual’ which is pretty straightforward and means the most beautiful member of a group. ‘Lida’ which means leader. ‘Netizen’ which refers to a network of users that writes comments on news and ratings. ‘Sasaeng’ is basically a crazy fan. A lot of it is intuitive.

For the weekend, Rachel and I decided to finally start on the K-drama called “Our Beloved Summer.” Rachel created a simple worksheet for me to fill out with basic questions as I watched the first episode. The paper consisted of questions such as, “what do you think about the main characters,” and “what are your initial thoughts on the drama,” and she instructed me to answer them in Korean. At first, I was kind of bored of the drama because it was a genre that Koreans called “멜로" which literally translates to “mellow romance.” I chose to watch this show because I wanted to start a truly romantic Korean series for the first time. However, I could tell that this was very different the the “romantic” American shows. The show starts off with two characters, Choi Woong and Kook Yeon Su, who end up featuring in a documentary together during their high school days. Interestingly, this documentary was made to showcase the top-performing student (Kook) in the school and the lowest-ranking student (Choi). They wanted to create a documentary and see how the two interacted with one another. Just this background scene, made me think about how strict and punctual Korea’s education system is. My mother used to tell me that it was true schools would post every single students’ academic ranking to be publicly seen. Therefore, it not only created immense pressure for the top-performing students, but embarrassment and bullying for those who didn’t score as well on the exams. Therefore, when they start off, they are seen fighting and Kook Yeon Su seems to look down on Choi Woong for his poor academic stance. Although the documentary shows them fighting and arguing, in 10 years, the viewers realize that these two actually ended up being in a relationship and they were in love. However, we also realize that these two had a terrible breakup and we do not necessarily get to find out what happened yet. Apart from the storyline, I was more drawn in by the cinematography that this film expressed. It absolutely screamed “summer” with its warm colors, nostalgic scenes, and desaturated color palette. Summer reminds me a lot of youth, living, and life, so it was refreshing to see this portrayed in such a soft, mellow way. Overall, this drama got me to think a lot about relationships, work life, and my 20s. It also helped me to see a shift in Korea’s work culture mindset. Before, academics were everything in Korea. You had to be book smart to get by. However, now, society has shifted more towards wanting a balance and living comfortably (portrayed by Choi). This drama got me somewhat hopeful again because one day I would love to professionally work in South Korea, but I always have this fear that I am not cut out to assimilate into the tiger culture. But, I was excited to see that Korea is slowly, but surely starting to change and emphasize a holistic working experience.

For this second language journal, I will be focusing on what my partner and I have accomplished in the month of February. After getting set up with my partner towards the end of last month, we’ve really been making good progress every week. This is my first time taking a language course where it is self-paced and I think that’s a huge benefit for myself and my aspirations. However, what I’ve found is that these weekly meetings are incredibly helpful to hold me accountable for my learning. It’s very easy to try and put this on the back burner, but by having weekly meetings and assignments from my partner, it’s made me much more focused than I otherwise might have been. With that being said, where we left off last month with my first post was just with very basic materials. I was being introduced to the language on a broad scale and really working through things like common words, the alphabet, and numbers 1-40. For this month, we’ve been trying to focus in more on the intricacies of beginning to speak the language of Portuguese, but of course only on a base level. However, it did take me a little longer than hoped to grasp the introductory things we started weeks ago. One thing that was really giving me a hard time was trying to shake some Spanish tendencies of mine. For example, we were trying to read some simple sentences and words, but I kept failing to really recognize when the ão in the portuguese language was used. That combination stayed very foreign to me for a long time when trying to recognize words. However, I have now learned that the Spanish ending of ion is more or less an equivalent to that of ão. Take the word administración in Spanish, that becomes administracão in Portuguese. Tips like this have been really helpful for me starting to learn how to read and speak things. In addition to this, I learned that the typical io/a diphthong in Spanish is not common to the Portuguese language at all. Instead, it would just relatively be an o/a for Portuguese. For example, espacio (spanish) vs. espaço. Those are just some interesting differences I’ve picked up and my language partner has done a great job trying to leverage my Spanish into our learning. 

As for the new areas we’ve moved into this month, we’ve been trying to focus on speech regarding questions and answers. My language partner has been giving me a lot of assignments where you have to fill in blanks or open-ended responses to conversational questions. I’ve been sort of understanding this okay because a lot of the question words are super similar to Spanish. For example, quem, como, and quando are very similar. As for common responses, we’ve been trying to look at to be and have verbs. My favorite one I’ve learned so far is estou com inveja, which means I am jealous. Practice is the most integral part of these lessons for me because I really understand what we’re doing when in the meeting, but once I revisit it, I forget certain things about what I’ve learned. The weekly assignments have been super helpful, and I think that I’m moving in a really good direction. To couple with my weekly meetings, my partner suggested I watch the movie City of God in Portuguese with subtitles. This really helped reinforce a lot of dialogue that we’ve been working on in our meetings.

As for the future, there’s a few goals we have in mind. First, I would like to be rather conversational on a basic level and be able to fully understand these basic questions and phrases by next month’s post. In addition, I’d like to be able to identify different ways to respond to questions and how to ask the right ones within the language. For next month, my partner is going to show me the book pois não and see if it could help me transition from Spanish to Portuguese. However, we aren’t entirely sure if its the best resource for me, but we are going to try it soon. Third, we are hoping to set together some culmination of what I learned for me to practice and keep repeating so I don’t forget the foundation I’ve built. After that, I’m not entirely sure, but we definitely will keep progressing in the best way possible for me and my aspirations.

This past couple of weeks, I continued improving my reading skills with the book called “Magic” translated into Korean. My favorite exercise this month was day 5. This exercise was about gratitude for health. It had short excerpts explaining how health may seem very simple and unimportant in our daily lives. But it is the main root to how we function and do our daily tasks. Staying healthy is very important and we should be grateful for it instead of taking it for granted. The book describes how there are so many people who were born with a disease or deal with health issues throughout their lives. Reading the list of possibilities that could have happened to me, made me realize how I also took my health for granted. This made me very grateful and started changing my routines to a more healthier lifestyle. 

Another exercise that I thought was fun was on day 3. The book instructed you to find a rock from outside and place it by your bed. Before you go to bed you would be thankful for finishing the day and reflect on what happened. When you wake up in the morning and see the rock you could be thankful for being able to start the day in a positive mood. 

I couldn’t find a rock on campus that was pretty so I used a heart stress ball that I got from the dean and carried it around with me. There were times throughout the week where I just wanted to complain and stay in the negative mindset. But the heart ball in my pocket helped me switch my thoughts. It was hard but I tried to stay positive. 

I continued to write daily the ten things I am grateful for in korean. I think writing in the language daily helped me practice a lot and get more comfortable with it. However, there were vocabs that I still was not sure how to translate yet so I had to look them up. I think to improve my writing skills even more I would have to try writing different prompts. I noticed that the list of ten sentences I write every day were very similar and used the same words. I asked my language partner to give me some prompts I could write about and enhance my thinking skills. 

Instead of doing diaries and reading books, I wanted to try something new and be able to think in the language to improve my writing and reading skills. I believe I could truly advance in the language when I can deeply think in the language and be able to come up with my own answers and thoughts that are different from the usual answers to prompts. 

I spent a lot of time with Vivian and also went to a korean church to keep practicing my speaking skills. Even though my goal is to improve my reading and writing skills, I thought it was important to not forget how to speak in the language.

The highlights of this month include finishing TTMIK Level 1 book and textbook and watching a Korean thriller called “All of Us are Dead” on Netflix. The TTMIK workbooks arrived mid-February and I did the older lessons in the workbook to catch up. I am glad that I came across TTMIK because they have a variety of resources online including textbooks, workbooks, grammar workshops, and audio recordings for beginners. Working through the workbook helps reinforce and apply the lessons that I learned from the textbook. This is definitely a resource I would recommend to beginner learners because TTMIK is comprehensive and makes it easy for the average student. 

This month, I learned present and past tense conjugations of verbs, “I want to …”, interrogative words such as “Who”, “What, “How”, “When”, “Where”, “Why”, the native Korean number system, and how to negate sentences. My structured syllabus this semester has really helped me stay on track and utilize my time wisely. Since I plan out what I want to do per week, I can adjust the weeks accordingly if I feel I need more practice on a particular topic such as present and past tense conjugations. I can recognize sentences in past and present tense, but to be able to write them out myself is a bit challenging because some verbs have changes depending on other characters that are attached. The interrogative words were the easiest to understand and applicable to daily life conversations. For example, I watched the Korean thriller “All of Us are Dead”, and I heard many times “nu gu” or “nu ga”, which means “Who”. This was in the movie lines, “Who was bitten by the zombie?”. Compared to the Sino Korean number system, the native Korean system was more difficult to understand. I remember the Sino Korean numbers better because the pronunciations are similar to that of Cantonese and Mandarin. This makes sense because Sino Korean numbers are derived from Chinese. One to ten in native Korean is not difficult to understand, but when you get to higher numbers such as 30, 40, 50, and so on, each ten has its own distinct name. In Sino Korean numbers, 30 is “san sip”. 40 is “sa sip”.  

During our language partner meetings, Somyung does a great job at preparing material for Peace and I to practice speaking and give immediate feedback afterwards. We read Korean children stories and wrote our own introductions. While the Korean stories were a bit hard for me to read, it was a great exercise to improve my reading and pronunciation skills. I read “The Lion and the Mouse” and we all read “The Rabbit and the Turtle” together. The plots were easy to understand since I heard the stories when I was a small child. 

My plan for March is to start TTMIK Level 2 textbook and TTMIK Level 2 workbook. I hope to make a comprehensive list of all the verbs and vocabulary words in TTMIK Level 1 book in Quizlet or in google docs. This way I can easily review the essential verbs and vocabulary.

For this week’s cultural post, my language partner recommended I watch the movie City of God or known as “Cidade de Deus” in Portuguese, and take a dive into the controversy and cultural elements surrounding the film. The film was released in Brazil in 2002, then worldwide in 2003, and is supposedly set loosely on real events. It takes inspiration from the novel with the same name Cidade de Deus and is set in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. This movie fared well amongst critics and was nominated for four Academy awards, with one of them being Brazil’s entry into the category of best film in a foreign language. It’s clear that this movie is very popular and still gets talked about widely as one of the best movies of the 21st century. I personally can see why as I thought it was outstandingly done and was suspenseful enough to keep the audience engaged throughout. There also were many characters you identified with from the Favela and became immensely intrigued in their stories and decisions throughout.

In order to watch the film, I had to force myself to watch in Portuguese and have English subtitles on. This was pretty confusing at first and I had to rewind multiple times to re-watch various parts of the film. In addition, it’s also a rather long movie running over 2 hours but that’s a side point. With all that said, I was able to work through it and actually took a lot away from a dialogue and interaction perspective. It was intriguing to see normal conversations within the movie and then look to the translations to really try and understand how that relates. In my head I was constantly trying to pick out words I knew and seeing how they connected with the very unfamiliar utterances of the characters (which there were a lot). I was really looking for question phrases I know like: Tudo bem, Até amanhã, Eu estoum bem, and other common phrases. One word I seem to remember from the film is fraude which means fraud. Which just is another word to add to my vocabulary.

As for the actual plot, it deals with the growth in organized crime in the city while the main characters are set on two differing paths with one choosing to take part in drug dealing. The main controversy of the film is that many believe that this film was glorifying poverty and violence within favelas, which in turn reinforces many stereotypes about favelas and lower end living in Brazil. Many critics believe that the film doesn’t accurately portray the rich culture of Favela’s and just focuses more on crime/violence within the film. While I can see this argument, I definitely think it did a good job of portraying cultural aspects of favelas like food, music, and other instances of local life. Another big critique of the film was that it inspired a phenomenon called “favela tourism”. This is increased tourism is seen as not being ethical because in many cases it’s not uplifting the actual people or living conditions, but rather just seen as a way of making money.

The second biggest controversy of the film was while casting actual members of favela’s helped improve the authenticity of the film, they weren’t paid a fair wage for their work. It’s been shown that actors across the board, from main characters to supplemental roles, made anywhere from 5,000 - 10,000 reais when the film itself grossed over 100 million. This is quite sad, and many actors seen in the hit film are today still living in poverty within the same locales. This is definitely a big issue and one I was very surprised to learn about. Often times we assume that life is similar to that portrayed in these cultural films or television worlds, but in reality, it’s often far different. 

Overall, this film really immersed me into the Portuguese language and cultural. I learned so much through the film, and in outside research, about Brazilian culture and overall life in the country. Major themes of violence, inequality, and others became a focal point within the film and my research. It was interesting to see how controversial such a hit film was and how that film related to actual life in where it’s set. I definitely learned a lot through this experience linguistically and culturally. 

One of my favorite things to do in South Korea was going to a noraebang (karaoke). Noraebang (노래방), formed by norae (song/sing) and bang (room), literally means a room to sing. It became popular in Korea in the 80s and 90s after karaoke machines were invented in Japan in the 70s. In Korea, noraebang is a huge part of the culture because it’s an affordable and fun way to socialize or de-stress after a long day at work. Noraebangs are so common that you can probably find at least one on any street in Seoul, especially in recreational areas or student areas. It is common for Koreans to eat and have drinks at a bar and then go out to a noraebang to sing. Noraebangs are enjoyed by Koreans of all ages, from children to older adults. Because noraebangs are busiest in the evenings, they are often open until late at night. 

Hongdae is an urban area near Hongik University known for its music culture, street shopping, restaurants, and entertainment. When I was in Hongdae, there were dozens of noraebangs, all within close proximity. Hongdae is one of the most popular places among students and young adults to enjoy nightlife and sing at a noraebang with friends, family, or even coworkers. Besides Hongdae, other popular noraebang areas in Seoul include Gangnam or Myeongdong. 

Noraebang prices are calculated based on time and the number of people you are with. It is also cheaper to go during off-peak hours. The average hourly price ranges from 5,000 ~ 15,000 KRW depending on the time and the number of people. Mornings, 9am-12pm, are usually half the evening price. There are also luxurious noraebang rooms which are more expensive around 20,000 ~ 30,000 won per hour. There are also ‘coin’ noraebangs that have smaller rooms than traditional noraebangs but are less expensive since you pay per song, rather than hourly. Oftentimes, noraebang workers will give you extra time to sing or additional songs as a ‘service’ (for free). One time, my friends and I received a whole extra hour of additional time. 

Sources: https://korealocalpages.com