"You Might As Well Face It, You're Addicted To .......Language Learning?!"

Last Friday I was ambushed by a stomach bug and spent most of the weekend in bed.  I was feeling too lethargic to do any reading or writing, so I was browsing around online, looking for some mental candy floss. On a whim, I chose a currently airing Taiwanese drama, called 'Refresh Man'.  It's been a few years since I watched any movies or dramas from Taiwan, but I remembered them as being light, sweet and wonderfully innocent.  Just the tonic for a girl who's feeling wretched.

Oh boy, did I land on a good 'un!  I marathoned the first eight episodes but sadly, now I'm all caught up and will have to wait for each weekly installment like everyone else. Le sigh.  In the meantime, I have the ending credits theme song firmly lodged in my brain.  Which is fine, because it's a gorgeous song........but it's also a Chinese song. And I don't speak Chinese.

The language I am actually trying to learn is Korean, and having mumbled Chinese running through my brain does not help. Though, I have noticed over the last few days that when I'm not paying attention, my subconscious plays the song and shoehorns random Korean phrases into it.
So there's that.

In a desperate bid to get the song out of my system, I decided to try and transcribe the lyrics, learn the damn thing, and try to move on.  Which led to this conversation last night:

Me:    Jeez! This romanised Chinese........almost every vowel has a flipping squiggle over it!

Ms.Amused:  Are you learning Chinese?!

Me:  (defensively) No!  It's just one song!

Ms.Amused: (laughs) It's just one song! I can quit anytime I like!

***********

Heh. She has a point. The evidence against me is pretty damning. I rarely go on holiday without swallowing the phrase book first, my weekly Korean class is at 1am (because my teacher is in Korea) and I think it's totally worth it, and just a few days ago, I went into the Google Play Store to looking for a particular app for my mum and ended up downloading three Korean language learning apps for myself instead!

So yeah, Ms. Amused is probably right. It's only a matter of time before I properly tackle Chinese.
Especially if I keep watching these adorable Taiwanese dramas! ;)

And here is the song that started this whole train of thought, 'Think of You First', from 'Refresh Man':

Fear Factor

Fear. It's a curious beast. 
An action which may seem mundane and positively ho hum to one person will give the next person a serious case of the heebie jeebies.

Take my friend Martha* for example.  Martha is intelligent, vivacious and awesomely confindent.
When she finishes her time in Korea she will return home to set up TWO new businesses.
And yet, this powerful, independent go-getter would rather gnaw off her own foot than speak in public.

For myself, speaking in public is no problem at all. At school, on stage, in church, anywhere at all - I'll start declaming at the drop of a hat.
(if that hat could have small denominations dropped into it, well, so much the better!)
On the other hand, ask me to approach a stranger on the street to ask for directions in a foreign language, and you'll find me in the corner with Martha.....gnawing on my own foot.

For years I dreamed of moving to France, particularly to the south east, the Langue D'Oc region. 
It is a country where I speak the language (functionally), where I know the food and the history, the legends and the customs. It is a simple two hour flight from home - and yet, I kept back pedalling and postponing, telling myself, "Next year in Carcassone!"
I was afraid that my french wasn't good enough, that I wouldn't, simply couldn't, make it on my own.
"What?! Stand in front of a classroom and teach english?! And demand payment for these paltry services?! Are you mad??" 
"Rent an apartment and pay bills in another country!" That is something that grown ups can do.
I am not a grown up!  My fraud would be discovered in no time.

So I dickered about the British Isles for a few years instead, doing nonsense jobs that I wasn't particularly interested in, because I was too scared to risk following my dream and failing.

Time passed, plans fell apart, and this contrary pilgrim who is too scared to move to France, where does she end up?

Korea!!

A country where I didn't read the alphabet, much less speak the language. 
I didn't know the food or the history, the legends or the customs. And this patch of ground is a two DAY flight from home. 
In fact, so vast was my ignorance of this country that I can tell you precisely what I knew about it before coming here.
Four things.
That's it.
I knew four things about a country the size of the United Kingdom and with a history spanning thousands of years.  (hangs head in shame)
"And which four gems were these?" I hear you ask. Which four nuggets of wisdom had I garnerd on my way?

1. Korea is a country divided by war into North and South.
2. Korea hosted the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
3. Korean high school students place very high in mathematics in international league tables. (Honestly, the flotsam and jetsom that sticks in your head from talk radio!)
4. My Dad's Korean student told him that the Koreans were the Irish of Asia - but didn't explain why.  (Then I got here and discovered, oh boy! Was she ever on the money!)

How on earth I found the courage to do this, when I spent years bottling out of the easier option, is a mystery I am still trying to unravel.
Though I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact that when I my original plans fell apart and I found myself applying for jobs absolutely everywhere in the world, I was simply too worn down to be scared.

When I tell people how I ended up in Korea, and that I could never have guessed in a million years how I would fall head over heels in love with the place, I often finish by remarking how much I relish that life can surprise me like this.

Perhaps though, what I really mean is that I love that I can surprise myself.

For here I am, on the other side of the world.

Without fear.

Flourishing.


* names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Woohoo! Asaah! and various other exclamations of delight!

All the mulling and brooding I did on Tuesday about language and barriers seemed to break through a mental block I had about using the (very) few Korean words I actually have command of.

And yet again, as is so often the case, once I had made the mental shift, the universe obligingly re-aligned itself to facilitate this epiphany.  Composing Tuesday's blog post in my head all day left me bound and determined to stick my neck out and be willing to look like an idiot.  After all, it worked for learning how to roll my French 'r's' - which I now do delectably thank you very much!

Accordingly, on Tuesday evening, for the first time in four and a half months, I found myself leaving work at the same time as the very Kindergarten teachers that I want to talk to most.

A quick explanation as to why this is extraordinary:  In my daily school routine I usually only see some of the Kindy teachers when I am teaching their students.  They start work before me and finish after, while throughout the day itself they work from the Teacher's room on the top floor, while I'm rocking the English Zone.  We don't even have lunch together.  Yet every day, they are so gracious and respectful to me and so phenomenal with their kids, that I feel like these are exactly the kind of Korean women I would like to have as friends.

So anyway, Tuesday evening, and I am walking down the street with four of the Kindy teachers and one of them, Miss G,  asks me:

"You going home?"

"Aniyeo (no).  DVD Bang."

Four very startled girls exclaim "Alone??!!"

"Aniyeo!!  Chingu Elizabeth!" (no. friend)

(I wanted it crystal clear I was going with a girl, cos when a guy and a gal go to a DVD bang, they ain't there to watch a movie.)

Four very relieved girls, "Aaaahh!"

"We watch Korean movie with Gong Yoo."  (korean actor)

Beautiful bonding moment as five women stroll along, contemplating the gorgeousness that is Gong Yoo.

"Maeil, I watch 'Coffee Prince'.  Chincha chua!" (everyday, really good)

That was it.  A pretty short exchange, but it completely changed the landscape of our relationship.  It made us real to each other.  They saw me trying.  They learned that I know enough to know going solo to a DVD bang is weird and they now know I like Korean men.  Progress.

The next day, by yet another freak of timing, I was in the office while they were collecting the kids milk. 

"You see movie?  DVD Bang?"

"Neh. (yes) Gong Yoo movie absoyeo (not there).  We watched 'Naesarang ssagaji'. (my love slave)  Kyeopta! Chincha jaemi!" (cute. very funny)

That evening as I was leaving, Miss G looked up and said "DVD Bang?"

"Aniyeo." I grinned, "Tae Kwon Do!"

"Tae Kwon Do?! Chincha?!"

"Chincha!" I replied, still grinning.

I love it when life just works!

To have another language is to possess a second soul. Charlemagne

I received an e-mail this morning from a shiny, new friend, who shared something hugely and incredibly significant. (No, I'm not going to tell you what it was!) With just three short sentences I was left feeling impressed, awed, humbled and honoured.
It got me to thinking yet again, about that subject which is closest to every writer's heart - communication.

We writers have this foolish conviction, this hope masquerading as arrogance, that we have something worth saying. Something that someone out there will respond to. So we hone our skills and polish our words, before hurtling them into cyberspace. It's why every single one of us update our Facebook status with everything from the mundane, the bizarre and the downright random. We hope to connect, to hear, "Really?!", or better still, "Me too!"

This morning's email brought to a head something I have been mulling over for a while now. The message was so short, yet so effective that it brought me face to face with my gnawing inability to do the same in the language of my newly adopted home. For the past week in particular I have been increasingly frustrated by my lack of Korean.
Mostly because I have been measuring myself with the wrong yardstick. By that I mean that I have been comparing my current rate of learning with previous experiences in Europe - somehow managing to completely discount the fact that having learned both French and German in school, I had a whopping great head start for assimilating any European language I found myself in need of.
Nah, that would have been far too rational. Instead I was beating myself over the head with the aforementioned yardstick, telling myself that after four and a half months in any country in Europe I would be damn near fluent, not the stuttering idiot I am over here! From that perspective, my tiny cache of Korean words looks pathetically insignificant.

To the staff at my school, and various other Koreans I converse with regularly however, I am making incredibly impressive progress. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder!
Though I deeply suspect that they are judging me not on liguistics alone but rather on my assimilation into Korean culture as a whole,
Now on that head I do feel quite proud of myself.

I can say 'Hello' in three different levels of politeness and these days automatically bow instead of shaking hands.
I know my eating and drinking etiquette and which inoffensive Western hand gestures are considered rude here.
I watch Korean dramas (fairly obsessively it must be admitted) and listen to Korean pop music - I even have my own Korean party piece for the Norae Bang!
I have started learning Tae Kwon Do and speak of my future in Korea in terms of several years rather than the standard 12 months.

I even eat the dried squid!!

All of this seems to add up to a case of my actions speaking for me when I myself cannot.

I am grateful that I can offer these gestures of good intent to my Korean colleagues; tiny acts of gratitude for their endless warmth, grace and generosity. But for an Irish girl who fattens on conversation like it was good red meat, this is a paltry consolation.

I want to speak with the women I work with - I want harmless chats about our favourite Korean actors and singers and deep, long talks about the differences and similarities of our cultures. We both come from colonised countries which were divided in civil war: add some beer and soju to that conversation and we've got ourselves an all-nighter!

In September I will begin a four month course in Korean at Ulsan University. Boy am I ever looking forward to the competence I'll have by Christmas!

Travelling to Korea has been by far the biggest adventure of my life time. I have moved entire continents beyond my comfort zone and yet landed into a state of unremitting happiness that I have never known before. The greatest cause of wonder to me is that, as deliriously happy as I am here right now - I know, that I know, that I know, this is just the beginning.

Once I have a way to fully and meaningful communicate with everyone around me.............wow! How my world here will open up!

And since you've stayed with me for the whole post - away and make a cup of tea for yourself!