My Day with Mrs. Park

On Tuesday I left my luggage here at the hotel where I stayed for the first 3 nights, and took off in a taxi with my overnight bag for Mrs. Park's apartment. This visit had been arranged by, once again, my most generous colleague John Song and his family. Mrs. Park is a very close family relative of theirs, and she had so kindly offered to let me stay there until I found a place of my own. She received me warmly and had a room all cleared for me. After settling in, we sat down to visit. I am glad to say her English is better than my Korean - but actually not much better. So it took us a while to exchange information about our families, why I'm here (always a hard one to explain - even in English - even to myself sometimes!) etc. Talking about the future and how we might arrange things between us proved too much, however. In the evening we ate Japanese sushi in her apartment together and watched some TV; in the morning I came back to the hotel, leaving things indefinite as to whether I would return or not.

I am so grateful for the day I spent in a real Korean high-rise apartment with a lovely, kind and gracious Korean hostess. Even though it looks like I will not be staying there (more in the next blog), I am glad to have met her and hope to have more chances to visit in the coming year....when my Korean gets better.....!!

"Ne" and "Aniyo"

"Ne" means "yes" and "aniyo" means "no." These are the magic words. Hear a "Ne" - and the all the world becomes bright. Something is working, a step toward settlement is being made, there is someone who can help. Hear an "aniyo" - and a world of troubles descends. That idea won't work - now what?? How do I figure out an alternative? Amazing how much power those 2 words have to a newcomer. This is the hard part - setting up living, bank accounts, phone accounts etc. - trying to finish all before school starts next week. Stay tuned for news about how all this works out. Wish me luck!! Ne!!

A Terrific Morning

Right up that tree-lined street is Yonsei Korean Language Institute, where I will be studying. And right next to me is Young Kim-Parker, a family friend of SJCC colleague John Song. Young is American but spent the last year here in Korea studying at the same institute. She is going back to the States this week but graciously spent one of her last mornings here with me, showing me how to cash money, ride the subway, get to Yonsei, order food, etc. We had a terrific morning, and I learned a lot! Thank you, Young!!

In Seoul

I made it this far! This is the view from my hotel room - there is Namsan (or "South Mountain" - the hill behind the buildings) and the Seoul tower right there in the hazy background. Somehow I managed to get my tons of luggage and myself to this hotel last night, had a good sleep, and spent this morning walking around. Now this afternoon I'm sitting in my cool hotel room and contemplating next steps.

Some early observations:

Traveling alone: not easy! Things that seem easy with a partner seem daunting when doing them alone. Fortunately, the need for food, and money - and coffee! - and the need to learn - force me out the door.

Speaking Korean: Day 1: Total failure! Every time I tried to say something to someone in Korean, they either just looked at me and said "huh?" - or acted as though I hadn't spoken at all. In the end, it was just easier to use English - almost everyone I spoke to had at least a smattering of English, and I became too intimidated to try any more Korean. Day 2 (today): partial success! I could not figure out how to set the air conditioning in my room - so with a combination of English, Korean and sign language I asked a maid about it. Turned out I had been monkeying with the floor heating settings instead of the air conditioner - when she saw what I had done she looked aghast, punched a bunch of buttons, said "hot, hot!' and "No touch, no touch." The air conditioner control turned out to be a remote control device I had overlooked. In all this I did keep saying things in Korean like "It's too hot" and "I don't know how." Whether she understood my Korean words or just the gestures I don't know, but at least she didn't say "Huh?"

Seoul: Wild and crazy! Traffic like Guadalajara (ie it doesn't move; lanes are narrow with no shoulders; taxis, buses, motorcycles, cars all vie with each other over any possible space that opens up to move forward). Layout of the city seems complicated with hills and tunnels and twisting roadways seeming to separate and intertwine sections. Lots of standard, block-style high-rises, and a few spectacularly dramatic modern buildings, art work, arenas, bridges, etc. Lots of pedestrians. In my hotel area, there is a mixture of main thoroughfares and big buildings and places like Starbucks and KFC and Dunkin Donuts and signs in English, and little alleys with little shops and sidewalk venders and mysterious stairways and nothing in English. So far I have only ventured into establishments on the main thoroughfares, but time and growing (hopefully!) confidence may lead me down some of those alleys...

Night comes early here in Seoul; it's now almost 4 o'clock and daylight will end soon, so I'll be off for one more foray.

I'm Off

I'll be catching the plane in a few hours and arrive in Seoul tomorrow evening. This week has been busy with all the packing and gathering of documents and advice and saying good-bye and whatnot. Someone asked me how I was feeling. Excited? Yes. Nervous? Yes. But mostly amazed - that all the preparation and anticipation is over and the actual journey about to begin. I am also feeling that I will miss dear friends and family and home... but onward to Seoul I go.

Packing

Somehow all of this:

Has to fit into this:

Hmmm...

How to Learn Korean

How to learn Korean? I wish I knew. I teach students how to learn English as a second language, but I am not at all sure I can apply what I teach to learning Korean myself. So for now I turn to a different expert .

Kato Lomb supposedly was proficient in 17 different languages. She began learning languages as an adult and took up her last language, Hebrew, at age 86. Wow - she even impressed Stephen Krashen, who was inspired by her to take up a new language at age 54. How did SHE do it? The main thing - she taught herself! The drive, the methodology, the persistence, came from her own invention. So that's the main thing I picked up:

• It's not really HOW, it's the inner drive to learn, to question, to figure out, to try, to communicate that makes language learning successful.

I also picked up this:

• Lomb is supremely confident. She KNOWS she can learn. She isn't daunted by the difficulties. So CONFIDENCE really helps.
• Lomb suggests jumping into hard stuff right off the bat. Start reading a book even if you can't understand much of it. If you take a class, try to get into a class more advanced than the one you placed into. Start with a full, thick (even monolingual!) dictionary. Then actively try to figure out what is going on; make your own discoveries about how the language works.

For most of us, this goes against the grain. We want to start at the beginning, go step by step. We want "comprehensible input." We are overwhelmed and frustrated when the material is too hard. But perhaps for the student with enough MOTIVATION and CONFIDENCE, this is a shortcut to faster learning. It worked for Lomb. (Should we give our ESL students who want to take a higher class than they placed into a chance to do this too?)

For me, I do not yet seem to have sufficient motivation and confidence to make this work in learning Korean. But perhaps when I get there...

Colleague Scott Alkire is the one who managed to get this book translated and published in the US, and he wrote a wonderful preface to the book comparing Lomb's experiences to modern Second Language Acquisition theory. The book is available online at TESL-EJ.