Daily life
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Korean Monday blues
The main picture says it all. It’s Monday! It also happens to be the last Monday before I leave for Korea (which will be exactly one week from today), and needless to say I’m super excited to be going. In fact the weekend cannot roll around quickly enough so I can start packing (very lightly…
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How my office dinner turned Korean
Yesterday I went out to dinner with some colleagues. The purpose of the dinner was to entertain a Japanese professor who is briefly visiting our department. This is common practice at my uni whenever we have a professor visiting from abroad. Since the professor was from Japan, the talk of the evening naturally centered around cultural…
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Dreaming in Korean
I love to ask bilingual people this question: “Which language do you dream in?” Since our dreams are determined by our subconscious mind they are in many ways a true reflection of the exposure we get to a certain language. I came to think about this yesterday, when I woke up from a dream in Korean.…
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Do you believe in destiny?
I recently learned a very beautiful Korean proverb: “옷깃만 스쳐도 인연이다” This roughly means that even though you just quickly brush by other people, they will somehow become part of your destiny. I honestly never used to believe in destiny, and I still don’t think that I do. However, I do believe that we may shape…
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Mindful Korean learning
Heavily inspired by a tweet from Jeremy (founder of Motivate Korean), I got to thinking about how I go about my language learning and how I may improve my learning approach. On an average day I start out early in the morning so that I am able to study Korean for 1-1.5 hours before heading off to work. I…
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New rom-com “Twenty again” with Choi Ji Woo
This weekend has presented me with quite a few pleasant surprises. Friday night I received a text from a friend telling me that Saturday would be Korea day in our city. That meant a day full of Korean entertainment and (of course) Korean street food. Needless to say I dragged my hubby along for the…
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How to become a better Korean conversation partner
I often feel that my Korean skills develop rather asymmetrically. For instance, I feel my listening comprehension has increased quite a bit recently, while I still feel that my writing skills are lacking. A while ago I started feeling more confident when talking, while I felt that my ability to give feedback in a Korean…
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What a week…
This week was probably the most densely packed week in a long time. Twice I had friends over for dinner, one day I visited my inlaws, yesterday I spent the entire day at my parents’, and Thursday I was planning and co-hosting our research group’s annual summer party. To make matters worse I’ve now come…
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Korean ups and downs
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…
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How I all of a sudden got plenty of time to study Korean today
Today was supposed to be a busy day. My schedule looked something like this: 8:00-10:00 Give econ lecture 10:30-11:00 Attend meeting with professor 12:00-12:45 Lunch date with colleague Afternoon: Attend seminar and meet with discussion group Well, whilst giving the lecture this morning an hour and a half into the lecture a student yells out:…
Sofie to Korea 