post-soju Saturday update

So not cool that it's been a week since I posted, but cool that I've remained within the one week mark. And I do have a lot of news, so this should be a fun update. I guess I'll go in reverse order, for no apparent reason.

Yesterday was Korean Language graduation. Now, I had been bitching about this amongst friends (I'm not sure if I did so on here), because I felt that the entire proceeding was a sham and meaningless, because there are loads of people who never studied or made any effort and who didn't actually achieve a passing grade, but all of them "passed" the class and graduated. So I personally thought that was annoying, but I suppose it's only them that will suffer when they're suddenly the only English speaker in their corner of Rural Town, South Korea. And, I'd agreed to write and give a speech at graduation, so rather than being able to celebrate on Thursday after the last class, I stressed out all day Thursday trying to memorize this speech. The reason I didn't write the speech sooner and start practicing was because I discovered that I still didn't know enough Korean grammar (vocabulary wasn't such a problem, thanks to the dictionary) to put together two minutes of speech on the topic of "My Korean Lifestyle" that didn't sound... stupid. So the speeches were supposed to be due Friday, and I didn't write one, so I assumed I wasn't giving one.

But then during class on Monday, my teacher asked me if I had a speech. I tried to explain my dilemma, and she made a sad face. So I had already written one in English and attempted to translate it myself with no luck. But Monday I sat down with Tim and he helped me translate it, and Monday I showed it to my teacher and she dashed up the stairs in joy to show it to the other teachers. I told her, although it was obvious, that someone had helped me. I thought perhaps it was disingenuous to have one of the two speeches given by beginners be really advanced, since I didn't learn much of what was in my speech in class. But she was pleased, and I just assumed they hadn't had anyone else turn speeches in. Although I did hear that two other girls might have. So then I skipped lunch the next three days to practice. The problem is that although I completely understand everything I'm saying because I wrote the English version of the speech, I am not familiar with the grammar patterns I (meaning Tim) used, so it's not as if I can just form the sentences in my head... I have to memorize the sounds. Which has always been super difficult for me, as a non-auditory learner.

I knew I would be able to have the speech in front of me, but I couldn't just read it for two reasons. You're not supposed to just read it, and also, I can't read Korean quickly. I still have to sound out most words. Think of it this way... you learn to read in elementary school by sounding out words. But nowadays, you don't do that when you read, except when you see a word you've never seen before, which is probably not often. Nowadays you just see a word, a whole word, and recognize the shape of it, and meaning leaps to your mind. There's no sounding out/slow recognition process. But in Korean, there is. It's a completely different alphabet, and I still end up sounding out the first few syllables of even words I know, and then going... oh, shit, it's post office. It's even better because a lot of words are just Korean renditions of English words, like kaw-pi, which sound even dumber when I have to read them slow. So anyway, I had to practice the speech a lot because I couldn't just get up there and read, because I can't read quickly. And I got to the point where I had the speech mostly memorized, and I had memorized all the words, so if I did need to read, it would go smoothly.

But still I was super-nervous on Friday morning when I headed over to the building where graduation was being held. The head of Korea University's Korean Language Center was there, as was the Director of Fulbright Korea, Mrs. Shim. And I found out that morning that the other beginner speech giver's teacher had told him he had to memorize his. So I was freaking out, basically. But then the program started. First, one person from our seventy came up to accept the diploma on behalf of all of us, and then the two dignitaries gave congratulatory speeches that included fun anecdotes about misspeaking Korean. Unfortunately, the words for die and go are close, so one ETA once misspoke and said "Die peacefully" instead of "Go in peace," which is typically used to say goodbye. And another story was about a Korean studying in the States who was hosted by a university president, and who at the end of his visit accidentally said "Thank you for your hostility" (rather that hospitality). Fun!

So then they gave out High Achievement awards to one person from each class, which I didn't know they were doing, and I was really disappointed that I didn't get the one for my class, although the guy who got it came in knowing more Korean than me, so he certainly still knows more. Tim got the one for the Intermediate class, which was cool. So I was still a little disappointed when they suddenly announced they were giving the Highest Achievement award to the person who'd gotten the highest average score on the final exam, a 97%, and you can guess which baller that was. Fact: I'm amazing. I got A+'s in every subject (Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking), an extra certificate describing in Korean how amazing I am, and a little clock from Korea University. So that was a nice feeling. Then I gave my speech and it went fine (better than Drew's!), and the guy from Korea University said he saw why I got my award, and perhaps I deserved a 100%. I got some compliments from the Korean Americans, who generally just spend their time in a clique mocking the pronunciation of the beginners, so I took those with real appreciation.

After graduation we had a workshop, and then... I think I went back to bed for awhile. Anyway, at some point I got up and went to dinner and drinking with my five favorite people (Meghan, Tony, Amy, Dana, and Tim). I vowed to get really drunk to celebrate my success, and was mostly successful in that goal. We ate Dalkalbi, the tasty pork/cabbage/rice cake concoction, and then sat outside of the 24 hour shop at a picnic table and drank. A girl who I find super-annoying showed up at one point, and that gave me the inspiration to have those last few shots of Soju, and at some point, it started pouring, which was amazing. The walk home was drenching but not unpleasant, and I did a fabulous job of deciding exactly when I should stop, so I'm not even remotely hungover. Success! Let me take a moment to digress and say that I love my roommate. She's a super-cool girl, and I'm sad our placements aren't closer to each other. But I also love Tim, and he's 40 minutes away--joy!

Today I got up very late (joy again!) and I've succeeded pretty much only in doing my laundry. But I have big plans to start packing (we leave Wednesday) and go to lunch and DVD bang with Tim. Then, I get to play SPADES, which is my new favorite pastime (aside from studying Korean).

Going backwards... Wednesday we had our exam, but after that a guy from the US Embassy in Seoul came and talked to us, mostly about the Foreign Service, and it reminded me why I was so interested in that to begin with. He also said something I appreciated--that Korean is classified by the State Department as one of the four most difficult languages to learn. (The others are Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic.) That's gratifying to me, as I'm sure you can imagine. Oh yeah... I recorded an MP3 file of me reading my speech, and I'll email it to you if you want to hear me speaking Korean. Also, I was a big loser and didn't bring my camera to Korean Language graduation, but lots of pictures were taken, so I'll try to find some taken by other people and post them here so you can see.

I'm not sure anything else super-interesting happened earlier in the week. I went to DVD bang and saw a decent movie which added a second actor to my list of Korean guys I love and whose movies I want to see all of. (Ending a sentence with a preposition? To think I'm going to be teaching English!)