back to school again

today i woke up sore from the tae kwon do. it's been over a month since i've done any excerising and let me tell you i could definitely feel it. had a pretty lazy morning. went to carrefour for some pepsi. came back and made breakfast. i was trying to be somewhat creative with my eggs and added seaweed. unfortunately even after soaking the seaweed for a couple of days it still tasted very salt. so i did what anyone else would do and threw it away. i imed horace. yes i was too lazy to go down 3 floors to see what time we need to leave for class. today was going to be our first day of korean class. they teach classes on saturday for a $1. since we weren't leaving til 2:30 i decided to nap. yes, i'm that lazy.

its actually starting to feel like fall here. there's a nice crispness to the air and a slight chill. while i was napping i realized i just might have to buy a blanket. my sheet, which barely covers me to begin with, is not going to be enough in the winter. i had some time before meeting horace so i filled out my absentee ballot. yes, it actually made it to me. that was a surpise. i thought for sure that i'd never see it. it only took about 3 weeks. now all i have to do is mail it.

we arrived at the building where the classes are held. as i walked up the stairs i had that feeling you get on the first day of school. the nervousness and excitement all pile in one. there were a lot of people there. we filled out some form and selected the beginning class [i don't know the alphabet one]. we went into our classroom which was already packed and very tiny. there were no seats at the tables so we had to sit at the little individual cube type desks. remember the ones in the library where you could sit and not be bothered. thats where we were. more and more people piled in. every seat was taking and they starting sitting along the walls.

the teacher started off by saying we were going to learn personal information today. and here i thought we were going to learn the consonants and vowels. the first thing he writes is children and asks if anyone knows how to say it. say it i don't even know the alphabet yet. what happened to learning the basics. then he writes the word in korean and makes us pronunciate it. he does the same for age, marriage, single, driver, teacher, professor, and housewife. at this point i'm thinking, "are we in the wrong class". now i know how my students feel when i'm talking. from these words he said we were going to write sentences. now i really start sweating. sentences. i had a had enough time with the words. and the worst thing is that most people actually knew what was going on. the first sentence we learn is "how old are you." he writes it in korean, i copy. he says it aloud and we all say it and then he drops the bomb. we have to go around the room and all say it ourselves. of course my hands start sweating. sure its easy to pretend you know whats going on when everyone is talking but saying it ourselves. i can't even read the alphabet. as people were saying it i wrote it out phonetically. when my turn came around i actually said it with no problem. i had a little more difficultly the second time we did this drill with the sentence "are you married." i said a "won" somewhere when it should of been a "hon". at least that drill was over. i haven't felt that big rush of nervousness since i was in speech class. it actually felt really good.

the rest of the clas period was spent going over the alphabet. hello, maybe we should have done that first. i was actually quite impressed with some of the people there. they knew a few words here and there that started with the letters we were discussing. i was relieved when the class was over. its time for me to break out the alphabet and study before next time. i'm pretty sure we'll go again. horace is really excited about it. he's a step ahead of me cuz he knows the consonants and vowels already.

tomorrow we're off to a temple to mediate with monks. not sure what to expect but i think it'll be a cool experience. time to watch some more "strangers with candy". until next time. stay tuned to ketv…