luther

Back to work . vacation was far too short! I've got final exams next week...where did the semester go? I've got 2 weeks off from school before the new semester starts in June (I attend a year-round language school and semesters are only 3 months long). I have no idea if I will pass this level or not. Part of me feels like I should, I've learned a ton. Part of me feels like there's no way I should, I know about 1/3 of the vocabulary I am supposed to have learned and there's soooo much material I know only a fraction of it has probably gone in. It's such a good feeling though- at the end of last semester, I had learned how to do all the basic things one might need to do while living abroad, like use a library, visit a real estate agent, describe clothes, order in a restaurant, etc. It's 3 months later and we're reading poetry and short essays, discussing plastic surgery, sexual discrimination, famous people who've started companies and charitable organizations, watching drama clips with no subtitles, and learning songs. And I keep having these moments when I'm reading something, or singing along with some song, and suddenly it's like everything just fits together in my head and the meaning filters through clearly and completely. The best part of this is it's really making me fall in love with Korean- it's always been challenging gramatically and there's such a mish-mash of vocabulary that's made its way into everyday usage from English, Japanese, Chinese, and even German, that I've found myself wondering how the hell people communicate at all more than once. But being able to read and understand metaphors and idioms and proverbs has suddenly given me a much deeper appreciation for the overall aesthetic and...I don't know how to explain it, just the way people express themselves? It's renewing my drive to get into this graduate school program for translation.

What else. Work is tedious, I've got a student who calls himself Sagacious Kong who I think should be a comic book character...imagine a man, mid-thirties, very wide-eyed and intense to the point that talking to him for a long time makes one somewhat uncomfortable, who regularly prays in class, demonstrated his use of qi to move cigarettes without touching them in class, meditates daily, is a licensed masseuse who offered the young college guy a free massage (but no one else), smokes 3 packs daily, is taking magic trick lessons, is allergic to sunlight, and told us he was stressed out because he is lonely and can't make friends in Korea. The last part made me sad. I'm always surprised by what my students will confess in class to people they don't know particularly well. But he's amazing! So enthusiastic, and just thoroughly, absolutely, weird. He's also really polite. Sagacious Kong. Don't you just imagine this guy sailing around on a cloud Journey to the West style with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, in a pose of meditation? I do.

isn't this man handsome?


xoxo