A Week of Many "Firsts"; Track Workout Gone Wild; 운동회 (Field Day) at 안락 (Allak) - Part 1

I'm dividing this post up into two parts, because I'm not even going to pretend that I will be able to finish it in an hour and ten minutes (which is the amount of time I have until I go play volleyball with my co-workers in the schoolyard!! yayyy) Anyway. Ok I will start with the Korean lessons, because...that is abiding by chronological actuality (I could definitely take that sentence out and it would probably make this post better, but I am keeping it just to remind you all how much of a nerd I am).

A few days ago, I asked my co-teacher's friend 대길 (Dae-gil, but I will refer to him as Gil from here on) if he would give me Korean lessons. I've been in this country for over one month now and I know maybe 100-150 words, which is just sad. And most of them are nouns. So that really doesn't help me unless I want to act out every single verb (including abstract verbs like ''need' and 'seem', that would be interesting...) that I want to use if I want to be understood. Anyway. So I asked Gil because he speaks the best English out of every Korean that I have met here and spent more than a few hours with. So we meet at 6:30p and go off to a coffee shop and I start hammering him with grammar questions. Haha - I'm so glad I asked him to help me, because he explained everything so clearly, and understood everything I was asking (while I don't expect most people to be able to understand everything I say by any means, I think I assume that they would be able to answer my grammar questions, like "why do you add 'ga' to the end of this word?", because it is their language and I think I assume that that would be an easy question for them to answer. But even if they could answer it if I were asking them in their language (I can't assume that everyone would be able to answer every single grammar question I have even if it is about their language - some Americans might not even be able to identify an adjective - I know I have made a mistake on identifying certain adjectives once in a while...)...even if they could answer it in their language, there are the additional steps of a) translation, and b) trying to understand what it is I am actually asking - e.g. even if they knew which words I was using to ask the question, in their minds it has to make sense as to why I am asking the question and what information I am trying to retrieve. Do I mean 'why is it 'ga' ... as opposed to 'i'? ('Ga' and 'i' are the two subject markers which denote the same grammatical purpose, but their usage is dependent on whether the word ends in a consonant or a vowel) Or do I mean 'what purpose does 'ga' serve in this sentence?') <- Yes, that parenthesis is supposed to be there, I started this paranthetical phrase about 13 lines above, and I am aware that I added in about 3 or 4 sub-paranthetical phrases in between...I have probably lost most of my readers by this point because of the confusion...I'm sorry!!! It's stream of consciousness...not really but the same idea...anyways I'm sorry. I'm starting a new paragraph. Even though I am continuing on with the same topic.

I was talking about how I'm so glad I asked Gil to help me with Korean because he understood all of my questions. It literally took him 5-10 minutes to explain to me most of the grammatical questions that I had been trying to answer in the past 2-3 weeks by asking other people, but they couldn't explain them to me because of certain barriers that I explained above. It feels SO good to be able to make a sentence!!!! About a half hour later, his friend comes to join us (I forget her name...ahh!). She studies English - I don't remember if that is her main area of study or if she just studies it a lot - but she is very very helpful also. They taught me a bunch of the verbs that I have been wanting to know (and how to make present tense from the form they give you in the dictionary...that has been a burning desire of mine for weeks), and then she starts to make a worksheet for me from scratch!!! She starts out with a sentence, and divides it up into three parts - subject, object, and verb - and folds the paper and has a new piece of information on the right hand side of the paper for me to substitute into the old sentence to make a new sentence. And then on the left hand side of the paper she wrote all of the answers :) awww.

It is now 12:30am on Friday and I am just posting this first part...my co teacher came in at 2:30p and took me away to volleyball early so now I am way behind...but hopefully I will have time tomorrow to write more. So much more to tell...