a brief weekly update from me. A lot of interesting things happened and my wish is it – at least personally – to keep going and expand my efforts in Korean and a lot more formal education (which is what is so important here in Korea). Now for my classes:

I visited my Mannam class as usual and also decided to go to the CLS class from next week on, even if the class might end up being too low for my Korean level. But this only pertains to the grammar part anyways, as I still lag behind on the vocabulary side, unfortunately.

Now other than that, I probably will not participate in the 26th TOEFL, but extend the whole period until I actually get my progress formally accreditted until Fall. I will also finally retake the TOEFL, as since 2007 there is a lot of time gone down the river!
This means that I am also studying complicated English vocabulary these days!

Specifically I do so here and upload vocabularies that I want to memorize independently of the aforementioned website here (synonyms) and here (definitions).

So far for this week from Seoul, 23:59 GMT+9.

필립

it is already tuesday here and I almost forgot to blog.

Last week was both busy and uneventful in regards to Korean. Now this week will be an interesting one, all while I’ll meet a lot of old friends and new people!

For Korean language, for this week I can say that I’ll continue to participate in the “Mannam” language class. Unfortunately the government-paid ( = free) “Seoul Global Center” program didn’t accept me for the “Upper Intermediate” level, as I lacked the necessary vocabulary. I unfortunately saw that coming, but I’m not particularly sad. If I see how mostly flexible the non-government, non-profit courses from Mannam and others are, I have to say that puts the government SGC-program to shame! Especially if seven out of eight levels always have a waiting list, while there were only two days for applying (offline, in person!), while the second day was obviously already too late.

But I already found another program “Conversational Learning Seoul” (CLS). Unfortunately they managed to – at least for my level – have the class not only at the same day (saturday) but also at the exact same time as my other Korean lesson from Mannam!! This means that I unfortunately can’t attend the CLS lessons, unless I chose a higher level (the lower levels also conflict), which probably is – unfortunately – not the best idea. Still I will think about it until Friday – I should probably ask my Korean friends.

On the teaching front, I now indeed absolutely clearly know that teaching English even part-time is illegal to do for me, from the governments perspective. Absolutely silly. To add insult to injury, students (university, school) are not allowed to work more than 20 hours / week legally. Of course this makes sense, but I find this an interesting detail.

Further on the teaching front, I got to know a Korean student and his teacher. We’ll probably study together or I’ll try to complement the teacher, for now for free. As just said,  it’s illegal – officially. Concerning German or in general I wasn’t really active on the acquisition front, as I unfortunately have bigger problems right now that don’t get solved by focusing on finding a private tutoring job.

I hope I will be able to continue my journey here in South-Korea. Only time will tell.

Life here is hard, but it is worth it! Hard to believe maybe, but this it what my intuition says. And these days I listen to my gut again.

Cheers,
필립

now I actually have a brief relevant update on my Korean studies:

First of all it should be clear that I won’t attend the 25th TOPIK test this January due to my lack of time for proper preparation due to the complications implied in my last post.
Still, I might as well try to aim for the 26th TOPIK test in April 2012.

For Korean classes, I am now participating in the 2B class of “Mannam Korean Language Class” (see this Korea Herald article) in 구로 for 12 weeks and in the Seoul Global Center Language Class in the ”Upper Beginner” level (there was no other free slot ) from the 6th of February 2012 on for also 12 weeks. The good thing about the “Mannam” class is that we are only four (!) people in one class – and it is still free (except coffee), excellent!

In total those lessons are only six hours per week, but at least this way I can stay flexible.
These hours for me are just question and repetition hours, while I study and practice outside the classroom.

So far, all the best,

필립

due to personal reason I did not publish my weekly progress in calendar week 50-52, as initially intended. Until I have removed certain “roadblocks”, I will not publish any further progress here.

It should be noted though that I participate in a free Korean language class offer from a group called “Mannam” from next week on. I also want to note that I intended this weblog as a means of tracking my progress in Korean language study, nothing more, nothing less.

Cheers,

Philipp

a brief update one day late from my usual Monday post!

Life: This week was and still is quite busy and unfortunately at the moment I can’t talk about much due to the state and nature of the things I’m working on!
But don’t worry, many of you outside of Korea will soon hear from me anyways.

Colophon: I just updated to WordPress 3.3 and also updated my plugins and theme.
Not really important for this small blog, but it’s a good habit I have.

So far already for this week, next week I’ll be in Japan, see you around!

Philipp

and here comes the third weekly update: This time I will keep it brief.

Work: Because in terms of tangible results this week did not happen much, as the last five days I did actually a lot of research and reading. My goal: to acquire skills and knowledge (in an informal way) I consider essential to make a buck on the side here and there.

Life: I will have to follow-up another time with my former landlord (2008-2010) and subtenant who owe me a total of 1.000 EUR combined! Of course you always have to run after the money because they show absolutely no initiative to pay me back in time.

Korean: Nothing to report on this front as I am quite busy otherwise at the moment. I should be free to focus a 100% on this part again from Friday on, at the moment my mid- and long-term success has a higher priority, because the TOPIK meanwhile is actually a purely personal goal to keep me on track and under pressure concerning Korean! This means that presently the TOPIK is no academic or professional requirement, but it is more of a control possibility for me, considering that the test fee is less than 30 Euros.

So far for calendar week 48.

Cheers,

Philipp

here comes my second Weekly update! Seven days already gone, wow, the time is running!

Work: This week was mostly covered by my own efforts to not only find a well-paying part-time job (of which there is only English teaching I guess) and more so the gathering and executing of ideas about other, more unconventional part-time job ideas! Thus also my profiles on eLance and oDesk, even though I didn’t invest much time in them yet.

Japan: Due to my lack of a D-4 or other certificate from an institution or company, I will have to do a visa-run actually. Luckily, my friend was smart and bumming around on coupang finding this deal for a ferry for 35.900 KRW. And then there is the free shuttle bus from Seoul to Busan. And then, as we will be in Japan (the currently Japanese island between Korea and Japan, to be precise ^^), we will couchsurf with some fellas in Busan.
All in all this saves me 197.500 KRW plus lodging in Tokyo (couchsurfing or not) if compared to the second cheapest option (flying to NRT with a discount airline)!

Life: Nothing spectacular happened, except that I finally found the Vegan “Loving Hut” restaraunt of the eponymous chain. I also found an excellent “Western Style” pasta restaurant (Spaghettini Factory), where pasta actually tastes like high quality pasta in an elegant interior design setting – and all that for a normal price! I was impressed.

Korean: A promising new resource I found is the “Easy Korean” series from Chad Meyer and Moon-Jung Kim, that is not actually easy or stops there, but provides the vocabulary and sentences in a rich, context-oriented setting that sure makes learning much easier!

Birthday: And ah yes, it is my birthday today, but I couldn’t care less.

So far for this last week!

Phil

hereby I want to give my first weekly update! Embarrassingly already more than three days too late. This time I want to start out with the life part, to put things into perspective:
After getting a unique invitation and opportunity to attend a Korean music play on my last evening before moving to 신촌 (17.11.) I decided to attend this play as well as enjoying the preceding Vegetarian (!) Korean buffet in 사당. After the play in 여의도 we went to 광화문 to see the 3rd annual Seoul Lantern Festival 2011. On friday I then moved: The weekend was rather chaotic and mostly filled up with organizing myself and shopping for stuff that I need in my new home, which I didn’t have to have before. Because as of now I need to decide how or where to eat inexpensively, as I can’t utilize any university cafeteria.

And that is the big news: I made my decision to study Korean solely on my own from now on until February/March 2012! This means not within a Korean Language Institute, but just with the help of my materials, my friends and language exchange partners! This is a big change from before and saves me quite some money. On the other hand, due to the visa regulations and the additional housing costs (vs. a dorm), which I will detail next week, I will probably “zero out” in the end, esp. if I pay for private tutoring sometimes.

Korean studies: Since the end of the language course at 서울대 I had to think long and hard about how to organize myself, while trying to memorize more vocabulary on a regular basis than before. The last week was frankly no big success in terms of pure quantity, yet it is already getting better, while I upped my efforts and seriousness concerning finding highly committed language partners at two language exchange websites. Before meeting the people from there was more a casual, fun thing and most I never met a second time. But for me it is clear that I don’t want this, not because I don’t like (the) people, but quite for the opposite reason! The amount of people I (can) get to know here and the amount of time I could spend with them is insane, I basically have “too many options”, so for me “taking it slow” is important. I will try to put my language exchange meetings into the same time-slots in my schedule, repeatedly, to keep things rigid and structured.

For the online side, since it went live, I also leverage HaruKorean.com (see my profile) now and continue my studies with and thanks to the websites listed under the “Resources” tab! As insane as it sounds, considering my (preferred) learning style I frankly wouldn’t know how to study if I wouldn’t have tools that could assist me with spaced repetition and “flash card” style learning options that include typing out the detailed and often complicated writing of Korean vocabulary! Yes, the 한글 alphabet is not difficult, but as soon as you are forced to remember tons of words with only slightly different spelling and pronunciation (because the alphabet and their writing system is so limited!), in my opinion you really can’t afford just to casually “flip cards” in the (unfulfillable) hopes that you will retain the proper spelling etc. of a word! This one thing is unfortunately though also the reason that I don’t learn many vocabularies on the go. Because there is simply yet no Android or iOS app that supports the crucial learning modes that one can find in the memrise or Quizlet web edition! Still I know that with more vocabulary cramming (i.e. several hours per day just for vocabulary, excluding the understanding of new grammar patterns, writing, listening and reading exercises!) inside my room, there will be no excuse left anymore in the future to repeat those already well-memorized vocabularies on the go. As of now “memrise” reminds you every ca. 03:45 hours of repeating your studied vocabulary, from my perspective ideal to get your three to four initial repetitions done per day!

Feelings: The new environment here is really “cool” (I don’t mean the minus degrees…), but I am pressured from all sides, so I can’t find much enjoyment in it and I also don’t want to get distracted! I guess I am fine as long as I got my coffee and put my head deeper into my studies until I forget any worries. I actually was at the doctor to let them check on my dry skin problem, diagnosis: Stress, the issue is not curable if I don’t change my feelings. Guess I got another task to work on. The place I am in has several drawbacks, but I know I will be fine as long as I care about getting enough food, water, fresh air, sleep and exercise. (I will work more on the latter one too soon.)

Interesting stuff: Some weeks ago I met the first Vegetarian Korean person! Unfortunately we are not in touch right now, but I hope I will be able to learn more about Vegetarians in Korea soon!… And: This morning, while shopping in GS25 – while not having my smartphone with me – I saw a cute, living bunny sitting on the counter next to a laptop. Hilarious! I guess it was the pet of the shop employee…

Minutia: I will change my Korean bank from 신한 to KEB (Korea Exchange Bank) today, which not only saves me 300 meters and several minutes when visiting the nearest ATM from my home, but more than that KEB is more foreigner friendly and helpful for my current needs. I will keep my 신한 check card though due to the fact that KEB does not have as many ATM’s as 신한은행 does. After all, I will also not take the hassle to travel to 광화문 to 신한’s headquarter within SFC, on the assumption that I don’t make any complicated banking transactions. My former German cellphone provider ‘O2′ still tries to charge me after illegally reactivating my contract. I will clear this issue up this Monday.

This blog post got quite long. I hope this makes up for the three day delay in posting about my current adventures here in Seoul!

Cheers,

Philipp

today I had my final exam in writing, listening and reading comprehension (yesterday was speaking) at 서울대 Korean Language Education Center and I’m really happy and relieved it is over after just short of three hours of sleep on a couch before the exam!

So how was my exam? The reading comprehension went quite well to my surprise and even the listening comprehension was mostly ok. Unfortunately the writing part didn’t go very well! The reason: I admittedly had still problems with one or two grammar points (and very few vocabulary), even though I practiced one of the grammar points just the night before. But compared to the exam, the text- and practice-book exercises were just too easy to be of sufficient training value.

Going with the flow: The main reason though sure was that I was busy the past ten to fourteen days with working out where / how to go concerning my language studies.
Not (!) “going with the flow” clearly was not worth the hassle in this specific case and distracted me from studying as thoroughly for my final and TOPIK as I could have. As Seth Godin already describes in his book “The Dip”, you have to give up on certain things after a time and propel yourself forward! Yet this sounds so negative to me and I think what is actually meant is to “go with the flow” at times, meaning even if a part of you does not like it, there is always a good alternative way to go, even if it feels less secure!
And that’s basically what and why I am here for anyways! I will post further details here soon about what I mean by all that.

Life: Today I successfully reserved my new ‘apartment’ in 신촌 and will move there next week away from 낙성대! While this means a higher cost for rent compared to living in a dorm of 서울대, it will be much more efficient (really near to 신촌역) and I will also have a much better quality of life! And I will be much closer to most of my new and old friends!

Cheers,

필립