These days...

New Years' resolutions are made to be broken right? Right? (sigh).

So the 'writing on my blog once a week' one has not been happening... and the 'one book every two weeks?' NOPE.

Since I returned to teaching in the beginning of March, I have become a work monster by week and slacker extraodinaire as soon as Friday afternoon hits (read: this is what happens when Eileen's boyfriend moves to Korea and lives a five-hour train ride away....) Planning for my classes this semester has proven quite a challenge, but with extra work comes the increased possibility that my lessons can actually improve my students' English (Assah!) due to my newly level-tailored topics and activities.

I've also been busy preparing for and going to the Fulbright Spring Conference on the lovley semi-tropical Jeju Island, at which I gave a presentation on keeping students, classes, and lessons organized (no easy feat when you teach more than 1,000 different faces every two weeks!) The conference provided a lot of helpful teaching tips, but it was also an amazing time to reconnect with all my ETA friends who are scattered around the country.

 The view from the terrace of our conference hotel

 Beilin, Rachel and me with John Mark being creepy in the background

Mount Halla: at 1,950 meters, the highest mountain in South Korea. A group of hiking buddies and I attempted this, but the unexpected snow covering the trail and the miserable rain that dampened our day off turned us all around at the half-way point (except for Jenna, Sonja, and Sean, who are just tough!) Next time, Halla... I'll be back!

Hikers and our plastic ponchos before the hike

Future plans have also kept me super busy lately. Eddie and I are busy planning a trip to Thailand during my students' midterm week, May 6-15th. So while my poor, stressed students hunch over exams, I'll be bird watching from a kayak in Khao Sok National Park, learning to cook from a Thai woman in a mountain bungalow, riding an elephant, and bumming around on a tiny island with some sea gypsies! Assah! "Teacher mean!" Yes, I know ;)

I've also been going crazy trying to figure out my plans for next year and beyond. As of now, it looks like I'll be staying in Korea for another year, hopefully teaching elementary school this time. Eddie and I plan to live in a bigger city, Daegu, teach itty bitty babies their ABC's, and save money for grad school and some more traveling (I want to go to Nepal and India and possibly take a road trip from Korea to Europe via ferry around North Korea!) Then we'll head back home to Kentucky for a year. I want to move in with my parents (if they'll have me!) and soak up much-missed family time while applying to masters programs in library and information science. Of course anyone who knows me knows I change my mind once every couple seconds, so we'll see what actually happens.

I am also sooooo excited to be coming home this summer for almost a month! I finish teaching on July 15th (but who's counting?), and after a potential trip to the Boryeong mud festival, I'll hop on a plane to Kentucky. In August, I'll head to North Carolina to beach bum with my family a bit and then go to Asheville to be the maid of honor in Rhiannon and Alex's wedding!

It's great to have plans to look forward to when lesson plans fail, computers break and students go crazy. But sometimes my students' antics are just as diverting as planning my time away from work:

Imitation is the highest form of flattery? This student, who chose my name as his English name, brought on the charm again the next week when he answered "How are you today?" with "I am happy because I see you."

You have to love a woman who can make you laugh at yourself

With her frequent worry about my whereabouts and state of being, as evidenced by the onslaught of queries - "Where are you?" "Are you hungry?" "Are you tired?" "Are you cold?" - and her determination to replace the rice, always absent from my bowl at mealtimes, with half a loaf of bread, I started in the past few days to feel the slightest bit frustrated with my host mom. I'm sure this jaded sentiment came only from the fact that I've been pretty independent (in spirit, if not in reality) for the past three to four years, and any time I felt that constrained sensation, I immediately reminded myself how profound it is that this woman is expressing the same worry and care toward me after only a week that she does toward her own children.

The best moments so far though, the ones that make me feel like part of this family, are not the meals or the checking-on-you text messages, but when my host mom makes me laugh heartily at myself. This came as a bit of a shock to me the first time a few nights ago, when I very discretely and with the help of my phone dictionary explained to my host mom why I would be shortly revisiting the western hospital in Seoul. My attempted secrecy was to no avail, for she nodded vigorously and explained to the whole family about my chronic constipation (hence, the lack of rice on my plate) in Korean, then proceeded to tell me that one of my host sisters suffers the same way, and commenced mimicking said affliction by grasping her buttocks and crying "Oh-Ma, apayo, apayo!" ("Mom, it hurts it hurts!") while the rest of the family, and shortly the mimicked sister and I, cracked up into laughter.

Tonight, we engaged in a brief accent mocking session during dinner - she highlighting my poor ability to pronounce the Korean-style "L" in my school's name, and me jokingly coaching her in her attempts to pronounce "full," which comes out as "puh" - before she started speaking in a bear voice. Apparently, when I speak in Korean (always poorly), my attempts at enthusiasm always come out exaggerated and grizzly, so when I explained that I would go to Daegu this weekend to celebrate an anniversary with Eddie, she threw her hands up in the air and repeated "Ah-ma Daegu kayo! Ah-ma KTX tago kayo" ("Maybe I will go to Daegu, maybe I will take the express train") in this throaty, dramatic bear voice. After a moment of shocked silence, my host sis Ja-Hee and I, again, cracked up at my expense. This is certainly a different way to unwind from a hectic day of teaching, but perhaps I like it because it reminds me of the teasing my own family often dishes out and receives. It's strange how much the opposite experiences of feeling alone among a group of people and feeling very included into a group of people can both make me miss my own people back home.

Busy Weekend

My transition between host families has been one of extremes. I got used to spending a lot of time by myself, and now I am a member of a busy, close family. And when I say close, I mean it. Put a family of five (plus another daughter who lives away from home) in a 17th-story apartment, and you will see a lot more interaction than you typically do in American homes. Not that this apartment is small, but there aren't really a lot of places to go to be alone. So I often see my 23-year-old host sister and my 14-year-old host brother sharing a chair and the computer screen while the rest of the family settles elsewhere in the living room with the news or a Korean drama on for the evening.

Saturday, my host parents took me hiking at the mountain near our apartment. Upon reaching the top, we found an assortment of Korean-style outdoor gym equipment - a sit-up bench, pull-up bars, and a hoola hoop. While my host dad hoola hooped, my host mom and I sat down to do sit-ups. When we were finished, she asked me in Korean how many I did. I told her "42," and she said. "I did 100." I sat back down and kept going. After hiking, we went to the grocery to get foods that I like and the ingredients for me to cook American food for dinner - BLTs, per Dad's suggestion!

Today, we hiked again, this time with my oldest host sister, Ja-Hee. At the workout park, I sat down to do my 100 sit-ups, stood up when finished, and answered my host-mom's question with "100, this time." She smiled and said "Today, I did 200." Drat.

I cooked the BLTs, and they were a huge success! As I was waiting for the bread to toast and the bacon to fry and the whole family was telling me how hungry they were, I was getting pretty nervous. After we started eating, though, all I heard was "Oh, tasty! Oh really tasty!" in Korean [*side note: one thing kind of strange about the Korean language, from a foreigner's perspective, is how frequently people verbally express their current feeling with one word. I can't count how often I hear "Oh, tired / hungry / full / hot / cold / stressed." So in translation, a meal in my home-stay sounds to me (as in, to a person who can't understand more complex utterances) like,"oh hungry, hungry!" "oh, delicious, delicious!" "oh full, full, so full!"] Also, the BLTs earned me the third and fourth English phrases I've heard from my host brother. The first was when I introduced Eddie to my host family on Skype and Jun-Myeong asked him "What server do you play on?" regarding Starcraft. The second was a bashful pre-BLT "Thank-you!" and the third an enthusiastic "Wonderful!" in between bites. He devoured two and a half sandwiches! 

Above, counter-clockwise from the bottom left, are Jun-Myeong, 14, My host-mom who I call "Oh-ma," my host sister Ja-Hee, 23, my host-dad "Ah-pa," and Min-Hee (Minnie), 16, who is also my student.

NEW NEW NEW

My life and everything in it is just about as different from last semester as it could be! Yesterday, I moved in with a new host family, moved to a new teachers' office, and met some of the 5 new English teachers at my school. I'll start with the homestay:

So my new homestay family consists of two host parents only a tad younger than my own, a host sister my age, two younger host sisters (one of whom is a 2nd grader, or Junior, at my school) and a host brother in middle school. My host parents are both extremely nice, but they speak only a bit more English than I do Korean. This is actually a blast, because every piece of information we want to convey requires a great deal of charades and phone-dictionary consultations and is celebrated with a high five! My extremely gregarious and energetic host mom has told me that she knows I must miss my parents, and she will be my Korean mother. Whenever I try to wash my own dish, she takes it away, points to herself, and says "엄마" or "oh-ma," which means "mom." My middle host sister, who is also my student, is the one who called to invite me to live with her family. She is extremely smart and sweet, and speaks the best English in the family.

For breakfast this morning, we had what, to me, was a full supper: bulgogi, rice, kimchi, and doenjang jjigae (soybean stew). I had to smile and hold my fingers in a pinching position while saying "a little, a little" in Korean three times to get my host mom to reduce my portion to a 1/4 of a cup (this is for a girl who does NOT eat breakfast, mind you.)

The apartment is on the 17th floor, and my room has a gloriously large window facing east that lets in morning light. I also have a little window nook with a tiny comfy couch! The best part of the technicalities: my apartment is a mere FIVE MINUTES' WALK FROM WORK!!!! and also in Cheonan City proper, so I can now take buses more often than every hour, AND buses will go to my apt later than 9:00 p.m.! Woo!

Everything is different at school now too. I have a new co-teacher, Mr. Han, and there are five new English teachers. In my gyomushil (teacher's office), the English teachers are Mr. Han, my friend Yoon, and a new teacher, Alice, who is really nice and gave me chocolate after I made press pot coffee for her. There are also history and Korean literature teachers who are very nice and who speak great English. All of these people are pretty young, which makes everything feel a bit different. Last semester, my co-workers were amazing, but the age difference sometimes added to the barriers already existing due to culture and language. Plus, with my newly improved Korean skills, I can cobble together shoddy sentences and contribute a bit more to the communication effort with the new people in my life now, and I'm so glad!

My class schedule is different now, too! I'll be teaching the 1st and 2nd graders in leveled classes divided into beginner, low-intermediate, high-intermediate, and advanced, and I will only see each class once every two weeks. I'm pretty bummed about that part, because it means I will not be able to connect to my students in class nearly as much, and I will have to teach the same lessons for two weeks (booooooooring), but the leveling will make the class so much more meaningful to the students (since I can actually teach to specific abilities now!) and so much more fulfilling for me.

Well, I'm gonna head back to the apartment now for dinner. Tomorrow I have another day of planning at school while they try to hammer out a final schedule for me, and at night I'm heading to Seoul to meet Eddie! (another factor making my life sooooooo much easier and happier this semester!)

~ later that night ~

I just finished an evening that made me say to myself, "WOW, that's how living with a host family should feel!" My host mom invited me in for oranges, tea and rice cakes for snack around 6, and I spent the next 5 hours in the living room. My oldest host sister, Ja-hee, joined us, and we talked about everything from my family background and my brother getting married to Ja-hee's belly dancing classes (!) and my host parents' upcoming trip to Jeju Island. This was done in my broken and their slow Korean or their broken and my slow English, but surprisingly effectively. My host dad came home and joined us on the floor, cracking peanuts and passing them around the table, until he saw my Korean language workbook that I had brought to the living room. Theeeeennnnnnnn, the studying began. He would point to a sentence, and say in English, "repeat after me please:" and in this fashion, we worked our way through the instructions and examples on each page. I answered and wrote the questions, and then we read them together too. When reviewing times (which is really difficult in Korean, since 2 different sets of numbers are used for hours and minutes), I kept stumbling on 8:00, and he kept making me repeat it until we and the rest of the family were cracking up. The delivery fried chicken came for dinner and we ate it with a Czech beer. Then we sat and watched some T.V. while my host brother played Starcraft and my host dad hula hooped (which to a Westerner might seem strange, but in Korea, it is a very popular means of exercise.) I feel so comfortable here, and I am so happy! Assah!

잘 지냈어요 (been doin' great!)

It is absolutely amazing to me that I've sat through 108 hours of intense Korean study in the past 18 days, but the most shocking part is how much fun I've had. My teachers, Lee Gyeong-Ryoon and Kim Seong-Soo, are great at presenting a ton of information and making it understandable, and my class, elementary level 1 (the lowest level of the 4 classes) is a blast. We know so little Korean (but so much more now!) that we don't have to get very profound or complex in our sentence formation for our classmates to applaud and offer up a very Korean "Wah!" (like the English "wow"). We are all humble enough to laugh at ourselves and eager enough to learn to take chances and play with this new, slippery language. I definitely cracked up at myself when my teacher pointed out that my page in our class's "Thank You" scrapbook featured, instead of the intended "it is raining" (비), a squirrel cartoon saying, "the blood is coming" (피). I then imagined this may be a karmic payback for buying all those shirts with the hilarious and poorly-translated English phrases...

Here is my stellar roommate and language partner, Beilin Ye, cheesin' it up while 김 선생님 ("Kim Teacher") teaches us how to describe what we did "in order to" do something else.

Class pictures with Kim and Lee Teachers, and Olenka and Michelle and Beilin and I reacting in shock and confusion to our perplexing textbook.

Studying this language has helped me understand the Korean culture so much better. It's amazing how much a society's worldview is reflected in the phrases and words it chooses to represent, as best as any language can, human thought and the world surrounding it's people. Confucianism plays a strong role in this language, which has at least 4 different levels of verb conjugation to use, depending on the hierarchical level of the speaker and the listener. I now know how to conjugate my measly handful of verb flashcards for speaking in formal interviews or military or business settings; with people with whom I feel familiar but must still defer to formally; with people with whom I feel friendly but still polite; and with peers, those younger than myself, and people with whom I can be most intimate and not at all formal. This lowest form is called "반 말" or ban mal, literally "rough speak," and it is advised never to use this with someone without express permission or without being 100% sure of their younger age.

Then there's the whole "Konglish" can of worms.... Many words were introduced to Korea along with the item/concept they represent from the English-speaking world, either directly or via Japan. Instead of inventing new words, Koreans just took the English and fit it into the consistent and logical pronunciation patterns of their alphabet, Hangul, which was invented in the mid-15th Century at the behest of King Sejong. Often enough, when my classmates and I ask for the Korean version of a word related to 20th century electronics or trends, it comes out as something like "텔레비전" = "tay-lay-bee-jeon" = television, "스웨터" = ("suh-way-tah") = sweater, "오토바이" = ("oh-toe-baa-ee,") = autobike/motorcycle, or "패스트푸드" = ("pay-suh-tuh-poo-duh") = fast food. The first time I stumbled upon Konglish was after an evening of drinking soju and beer and singing in a noraebang with a couple of my fellow grantees and coordinators during orientation. We had all gone back to the hotel we were staying at in Haeinsa, and while I took a tipsy shower, I stared at the Korean writing on the dispenser in the shower. My slightly blurred vision and newly acquired knowledge of Hangul made deciphering the sounds difficult, but I finally said, "shawm-poo reen-suh..." aloud before it dawned on me that I had "shampoo and rinse!" in front of me.

Back to the world of CLEA, tonight we gave our teachers the scrapbooks we made for them and mini tiramisu cakes to thank them for their tireless work and excellent instruction. Later in the evening a few classmates and I threw a surprise birthday party for Erin and Michelle, complete with pizza, cheesecake, and Apples to Apples:

We have one more day of class before our final on Sunday, then more class (don't ask me why) and a graduation ceremony on Monday. On Tuesday, we move back to our respective homestays, at which point I get to a "T" in my story. The other night, I called my co-teacher to find out if she had booked my plane tickets to Jeju Island for the Fulbright Spring Conference, and she informed me that my host family needs me to move out ASAP because my host sister -who is going into the 3rd grade of high school and facing the "Su Neung" SAT test in the fall- needs to have her own bedroom. This is totally a legitimate reason to ask me to find a different place to stay. I won't go into detail about how I felt about finding this out from a third party less than a week and a half before I'm expected to move, despite the fact that the conditions for which I am required to leave have been foreseen throughout my stay thus far.... I was certainly bummed to hear that my school had not successfully found me a new homestay, and that I would be heading back to Cheonan with no permanent place to stay and no new co-teacher (since the AMAZING Ms. Na has moved to her new teaching job at a boy's middle school near Boryeong). After only a few hours, though, my phone rang, and one of my favorite students (not that I have favorites... cough cough) asked me if I would like to come live with her family. I am so excited! She is a great English student and is very enthusiastic about learning, and with my renewed enthusiasm for Korean, I'm sure we'll have a ball trying to communicate! Also, her apartment is a mere FIVE MINUTE WALK from my school! Good bye, 40-minute bus rides; Hello, convenience!

I'm so excited to move and get the new semester started (not to mention implement my new curriculum, discipline plan, and lesson format,) but I am really REALLY going to miss the mighty marble Jungwon University, my 36-hours of class per week, and my ETA and Jungwon friends.

ER + ER4 in Korea part II

After a week divided into 36 hours in the classroom learning Korean, at least 10 hours of studying, and 6 hours in the gym, by Saturday afternoon, I was feeling pretty used up. BUT I was soooo excited to head to Cheongju to meet up with Eddie for the first time since he moved to Korea! He's currently at TaLK Orientation in a town called Jochiwon, where he'll be until he moves to his placement in a few weeks. We decided to meet at the Cheongju Station at six. I arrived about ten minutes early. I waited. 6:00 rolled by. 6:30. 6:45. By 7:45 I was worried sick. What if Ed had gotten off at the wrong stop or taken the wrong bus? What if something had happened to him and he was lost in Korea with no Korean language ability and no phone? I paced, I drank some hot chocolate, I walked laps around the bus station in case he slipped in and I missed him. Finally at 9:15, I had resigned myself to renting a motel room to get out of the cold. I was in a lobby walking to a check-in counter when my phone rang:

"Hello?"
"Eileen where were you?"
"Where are you?"
"I'm back in my dorm in Jochiwon. I waited three hours for you!"
(at this point, after waiting a month and a half to see him and realizing it may not happen, I start crying)
"Where did you wait?! I've been here for three hours!"
"I waited at the station in Cheongju..."
"Are you sure it was Cheongju? c-h-e-o-n-g-j-u?"
"Yes, Cheongju train station, but you said it was a big city, and this Cheongju didn't look very..."
"Did you say TRAIN station?"
"Yea..."
"I've been at the bus station."

Still calming down and wiping my eyes, and still on the phone, I hailed a taxi for the 25 minute drive to Jochiwon and finally met Eddie outside the men's dorm of Korea University. After experiencing numb toes, frustration and worry already that night, we hugged and laughed and walked towards downtown Jochiwon for dinner. We marveled that we were a 5 minute drive away from each other, isolated, and feeling the exact same way. The next day, after crashing in Jochiwon for the night, we returned to the scenes of the mix-up. This is were Eddie and I, respectively, waited for each other:

In Jochiwon, after dinner, I introduced Eddie to the wonderful world of the noraebang. Notice the random Belgian/German-looking towers in the music video for "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Duet.

The next day we took the train back to Cheongju. The train station, which I was previously unaware of, is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by freight containers. No wonder Ed was confused. We made our way to a shopping center where I helped him buy some jeans and a jacket. I used my (so very) basic Korean to tell the saleswomen "많이 봅니다, 아마 다시 옵니다," or "Many looking, maybe again come," and "조금 큽니다/작습니다," or "a little big/small," and "이고 얼마예요?" or "how much is this?"

We went ice skating and at the rink caused a bit of a stir. I guess it was exciting to have a foreign couple there. Three little girls insisted upon racing us several times, and one of them proudly proclaimed, "I am the winner and you are the loser!" in what I told her was very good English. Another called me "ajumma," which is the Korean for "adult woman / married woman," but is most often used to indicate the old ladies with purple-tinted perms. This took me aback, but I guess I'm too young to get offended by being called old, because I really just thought it was funny. Three high school boys asked to have their pictures taken with us too, informing us that we were a "good couple" and that Ed was "handsome man." So strange how foreigners get this celebrity treatment in Korea sometimes. Once a man on a subway in Seoul asked me if I was British. I told him no, and he said, "Oh, I thought you were Kate Beckinsale," which was kind of awesome.

Ed showing off his new Korean pants and jacket in the skating rink.

My new sweatshirt, featuring cat ears, plaid, quilting, a crazed-looking pink-haired girl, and the words "Cheer up! Sweet! Hey, that's not a big deal! Fighting!" Awesome, thanks Korea! This was taken at an Indian restaurant; nothing wraps up a day of shopping and skating like aloo gobi, naan, and 1000cc's of Cass beer!

 

On the bus in Cheongju shortly before we parted ways... until next weekend! I'm so excited that we now live in the same hemisphere and timezone! Hooray for short-distance relationships!!!!

The adventures of "Jumpin' January!" and "나는 많은 한극어 공부해요"

With three free weeks in January, a penny-pinching budget (saving for Thailand and New Zealand later), and many friends gone off a-travelin', I spent a fair amount of the month reading and watching the Korean drama "Secret Garden" (this gets its own entry later), but my sporadic jaunts out into the world beyond my apartment, or as they say in Konglish, "ah-pah-te," were varied and eye-opening.

I went to stay with the lovely Jillian Moga at her home-stay in Cheongju for a  few days to help her teach part of her school's winter camp. It was fun to team teach again and see how each others' styles had developed and changed since we taught together during Camp Fulbright back in July, and working with such a small group of students - 8 to 12 - was a treat. Her host mom, Adero, and siblings, James, Kevin, and Kristen, were super welcoming. We went out to celebrate our Fulbright friend Amy's birthday with Indian food and, in true Korean party style, noraebang (karaoke). Noraebangs always come with a song list packed with Korean pop and traditional songs, along with a few dozen pages of English and American songs, tambourines, beer and soju to order, and bizarre music videos that play behind the lyrics and absolutely never correspond to the song.

Jillian and I before going out for Amy's party!

My host sisters threw a surprise 20th anniversary party for my host parents, and I helped blow up the balloons they stuck to the ceiling and covered the floor with. Damhee decorated a sweet potato cream cake with chocolate and fruit for the occasion.

I went back to Cheongju to visit Jillian and her host family again, and Jillian and I went to see Adero's English kindergarten's winter performance. This school provides a well-rounded education for 3-5 year olds, with Taekwondo, mini violin lessons, dance, and more than three hours of English instruction, all for the modest fee of $800 per month. The show put on by these renaissance toddlers felt like a trip to Wonka's chocolate factory or Munchikinland with it's black and white checkered stage and at least 3 costume changes for each class of tiny people. The audience was packed with beaming parents toting glitter-covered bouquets for their star children.

 

I've been thinking a lot about Korean education lately, especially after a thoughtful forum Fulbright organized to showcase the research of grantee Michael Alison Chandler, a Washington Post writer who has spent part of the last year researching the education system here. Her blog provides a concise and informative look at the situation. Most students, perhaps after a misleadingly kaleidoscopic introduction to school life like the one pictured above, settle into study regime around the age of 10, dedicating hours more than their American counterparts to the school day and hours on top of that in private cram schools called hagwons. Most of the curriculum is based around rote fact memorization with very little critical thinking or creative expression. Most students do not know how to compose an essay in their own language.

From the perspective of a girl who grew up with long summers spent playing kickball in the street and hunting fireflies, the ability to choose classes and extracurriculars according to her interests, and a slight tendency towards laziness and procrastination, it seems most Korean children are robbed of a childhood. So when Jillian and I were heading out to go ice skating and Adero asked us to take Kevin and James (both in elementary school), we agreed. I admit I was reluctant for my "girls' fun afternoon" to turn into babysitting. That evening, after a day of zooming and shuffling around the rink, spending part of their taxi money on video games, and devouring a plate of tteokbokki, a spicy winter street-food that they rarely get at home, the usually quiet and docile boys skipped and giggled their way to the taxi, and Jillian and I were both so glad to have contributed to a day of good plain fun for them.

A few days later, I left Cheonan again for the Onyang hot springs. I met up with some fellow Fulbrighters, and we spent the day steaming and boiling ourselves in the herb and nutrient infused waters of the spa. We all got scrubbed, which is basically when you lay on a massage table and have your skin attacked by a woman wearing two abrasive, cloth mitts. There is no room for a shy attitude when getting a scrub, because that woman is determined to rid your entire body of dead skin, which comes off in little grey-white bits (gross, huh?) The next day, with our newly smooth baby skin, we headed to Boryeong for the sea-parting on Muchangpo Beach. Once a year, the tide goes out so far that a path to a small island becomes exposed, and we were ready to pull a 'Moses' and hike on out to it, except that our information was a year out of date, and the sea did not part. Bummer. Really though, it was awesome to see a snow-covered beach, and we took advantage of the famous Boryeong mud in yet another spa before heading home.

Now I'm settled back into the marble palace, a.k.a. Jungwon University, for my crazy-intense Korean class. Our first day was great, and my eyes didn't start to glaze over until after the 5th hour of class. My teachers seem very patient and fun, so as long as I can make myself study enough to keep up with 36 hours of new material each week, it should be a pretty darn productive month!

P.S. that second part of the title says "I study much Korean."  : )