Parallel Universe.

Mostly a learn Korean post! Too bad I like talking about this almost as much as I do actually studying... :(

Back in the summer, I knew I wanted to do TEFL but hadn't decided between Korea and China. Japan was still in the mix too. I did some research and found Japan too expensive. I thought China would be too much of a cultural shock, especially for the first year. So here I am. If I had known earlier / was a bit more motivated, I would done this to pick up some Korean to make some things easier:

Buy the whole Korean pack from Declan (a bit expensive).

Buy Suvival Korean by the guy who does the Let's Speak Korean show here on Arirang TV.

Spend alot of time on the Sogang University site.

See if there's anything useful I can pick up from Mith's place, link on the top right.

Go to the same guy's website, click on 게시판, click Korean lessons / music and memorize some songs.

Or you could just do a Google search and find something like this, pick up some of the alphabet and wing it when you get here. Make Korean friends, try out your skills on them... but this might be tough since most of the younger people here have been studying English for a bunch of years and really want to practice their second language with a native speaker. You'll be the one living in Korea where Korean would be pretty useful but... you've only studied for a few weeks.

Oh, and don't listen to Pimsleur Korean until your Korean is good enough to figure out how flawed the product is... almost not worth the time, especially if you've arrived in Korea.

It snowed like 4 inches on Thursday. Horrible. Luckily even though I'm really tired of the winter, I felt great on Friday. Mostly because it was Friday.

I wish there were windows where you could actually see outside where I work. The windows have been covered over with huge logos/stickers.

"Webster, good morning time. What?" I'm trying to get my kids to turn this sentence into... "Hey, Mr. Webster. What did you eat for breakfast?" :)

Weekdays: Study, work out, go to work. Saturday: Bum around, Saturday night hang out. Sunday: All day with friends / at church. Repeat. Ah well, hard to avoid not getting into some kind of routine since I do have to work after all.

Listening to: RHCP, 자우림, Johnny Cash, The White Stripes, Pearl Jam.
Reading: Confucius Lives Next Door by T.R. Reid.
Watched: My Wife is a Gangster. Alright I guess, too much slang in it to make it too useful for me to study. But the subtitles in it are excellent.