Sofie to Korea

Here’s a blog post about two very different Korean-learning days. The first one (Saturday) was a very unproductive day. I had so many plans and good intentions for this day. I was going to review my notes from my LP meeting, listen to podcasts, practice speaking and pronunciation, read a news article in Korean, look up words, and study hanjas. Even though I had the whole day to do all of this, I couldn’t get myself in the mood for studying Korean, which is a very rare occurrence. Anyway, whenever I wanted to read a sentence out loud my tongue got twisted, whenever I tried to read in my head I lost my focus, whenever I looked up a word I forgot it immediately. So, eventually I decided to stop forcing myself and went for a run instead. Sunday was better, but because my parents came to visit I didn’t get much done except from a little reading and a brief Iyagi podcast.

Today was something else. I was working from home since all I had to do was grade exam papers (which btw is my least favorite thing about teaching) so I had plenty of opportunity to sneak in a bit a lot of Korean for every 10th paper graded. I’ve listened to podcasts, gone over new vocabulary from news articles, talked (and sung) to myself in Korean all day, and written 4 pages in my notebook with random sentences that just popped into my head. I’ve felt incredibly productive since I’ve basically managed to do all the things I had planned for Saturday. I guess this proves the saying “If you want something done then give it to the busy man”. It also proves that no matter how much you love doing something, you are bound to have days where nothing seems to fall into place. I’ll work harder at not letting these experiences make me feel discouraged and simply take them as signs that my brain needs a little rest.