teach me korean

another part of my self-discovery adventure is something i've been wanting to do since college but never had the time to do: learn korean.

i started my love for kpop, korean dramas and movies back in 2001 when i used to catch the then arirang channel. i just loved it. i remember the first korean acts that i liked were SES, FinKL, g.o.d, S#arp. i remember watching my sassy girl for the very first time that year and watching dramas like All about eve, beautiful days, autumn story, hotelier..

i even bought a korean phrase book and tried to learn the alphabet but i could never muster the language mostly since i was lazy to study on my own. i relied heavily on english subtitles and while i've picked up a few words from all the years of watching and listening to korean, i never learn the language.

and so the deal-addict in me found a wonderful deal -- 30 hours basic korean for P3,000!!! without hesitation, i just bought the deal. i called up Languages Internationale and immediately booked a class every Saturday.

on my first day of class, i met teacher S and my 6 classmates, E, H, M, E, M. when we were introducing each other i felt so shallow because everyone seemed to enroll the class for work purposes while i honestly told them im here because of kpop. later on, i found out that everyone in the class is crazy kpop/kdrama fans too.. the only difference is that i've been a kpop fan for more than 11 years (as far back as the 2nd gen kpop idols) while the rest were mostly suju fans (poor them, they never got the chance to enjoy old school kpop).

the first few classes were a struggle for everyone. one, "nagkakahiyaan pa lahat", second, the teacher sounded strict.. likes handing out shots as penalty for making a mistake and dreading the midterms because we have an exam the lowest grade has to pay for our korean dinner. but it was a fun struggle because we all learned the basics.. from counting to telling time to introducing ourselves to constructing sentence. there was even one session where we watched a korean film called "the bold family" which was fun to watch.

midterms came and i was so happy that i passed! i made stupid mistakes on the exam but that was okay, i learned from it. and so dinner time and to our surprise, the teacher was just kidding. everyone had to shell out only P500 since the teacher paid the lion's share, unfortunately, i think E and I had a bit of soju to drink and for some reason, we know we already gave P500 to the waiter but they insisted we hadn't so we ended up paying again. oh well, we had a good time.. great korean food.. first time to drink soju and loved it.. and good company with new friends.

after the midterms, classes resumed and the atmosphere in class was more relaxed. this time we started learning how to write and read the characters. i admit, until now i still mix up the combined characters but im sure i'll get the hang of it next time. we also started thinking about our final exams. we decided on a karaoke challenge! each one chose a korean song and we are supposed to submit the korean lyrics with our own english translation ( i used google) and practice one song to see at Platinum. i was lazy to practice so i ended up practicing hard the night before and on the day itself.

finals came, we went to Platinum and each one sang his piece. grading will be 50% teacher's rating + 50% karaoke machine score. on my first try (practice), i got a 95% karaoke rating. on my actual exam, i got 85% teacher's score and 93% karaoke score so for the final grade of 89%!!! (yay!) teacher said that even when he went out to get a drink, he could still understand my korean!!

all six of one signed up for the intermediate korean class.. same time.. same class... it officially starts this saturday and this time we will be using the actual korean text book used by grade 1 students in korea. so excited!!!

ps... i forgot to mention.. we plan to go to korea for a "field trip" this sept!!! :)