kangmi | How to Learn Korean (even if you live in Korea): Part 1 in an occasional series

How to Learn Korean (even if you live in Korea): Part 1 in an occasional series

I’m the first to admit that Korea is not the ideal place to learn Korean. There are numerous obstacles:

- Work
- Overwork
- Significant others
- Children
- Roommates
- Expat friends
- Koreans who won’t speak Korean to you
- Lack of time
- Stress
- Managing the extra details of expat life (everything is twice as hard)
- Exercise
- Eating
- Sleeping
- Traveling
- Shopping
- Split schedules
- Traffic
- Hagwon bosses
- Hangovers
- Colleagues

I know the feeling that you get when you walk out the door and the weather is too cold or too hot or too wet or too dreary. On top of that, you can read the signs but you can’t understand everything; you overhear conversations but have no idea what people are talking about, or if they’re talking about you, or if they’re talking about the weather; you wonder how to pay the bills; you wonder if you’re paying them right; you wonder what the fine print says; you wonder if there’s a better way to do it; you wonder what they’re giving you at the hospital; you wonder whether the taxi driver is ripping you off; you wonder where this bus is going; you wonder why you’re coughing so much; you wonder if you’ll ever get married; you wonder why getting married isn’t all it was cracked up to be; you wonder how to find a marriage counselor in a place like this; you make do with the marriage counselors you do find; you wonder why your director hired your co-worker, because he’s a complete idiot and makes work life harder than it has any right to be; you wonder where your roommate is at three o’clock in the morning; you wander around downtown Seoul for a year before defining a route to Kyobo Bookstore; you wonder how to buy a train ticket, the right train ticket, without a friend to handle translation, because you’d like to do it yourself, this once; you wonder where the best place to buy used furniture is; you wonder why there’s corn on the pizza; you wonder what that smell is; someone speaks Korean to you, and you understand what they said, but the words you need are stuck somewhere in your head, and you can’t pry them loose; and all that isn’t even the half of it. Everything seems new, everything seems different, everything seems uncertain, everything seems hard, and on top of that they expect you to learn the language. Some days (weeks, months, years), you’re just trying to keep your head above water.

I’ve learned over the years that in many respects, managing my life here in the States is not that different than managing my (former) life in Korea. Work, family life, exercise, and sleep take up so much of my time that I wonder how I’ll ever accomplish anything else.

I’ve found that simplicity is a key component in creating the space that I need to not only learn Korean but to work on a couple of other projects. How I learned that is a long, boring story, but the results are clear: I say no a lot; I don’t expect perfection from myself or others (oh all right, I’m still working on that one); I know why I’m doing what I’m doing. Routines are essential, but I can handle flexibility, too.

I’ve learned that life seasons come and go. You’ve just had a baby? Maybe now isn’t the right time to apply yourself to Korean studies. Your boss has you teaching an exhausting schedule for the next couple of months? Perhaps ditto, and give yourself another month to recover. You’ve just moved? Take a couple of weeks to get used to the new neighborhood. You’re burned out? Take care of yourself for a while. Life conspires to make it just plain hard? kangmi will be back later to give you a much-needed kick in the pants.

Read Part 2.

Posted by kangmi on October 25, 2006 at 6:07 PM5 comments

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Amanda 26 Oct, 2006 09:42 AM	You forgot, "you're trying to figure out which level of language to use, how deep to bow, and when you are or are not supposed to be the person to hand out chopsticks and pour water." It's not just the financial logistics of living here, but the social logistics. I think logisitics of all sorts is part of the reason it's really important to build a social network of both ex-pats and Koreans in Korea, but even that's hard. When you don't speak a lot of the language, it's hard to make a network of Koreans, and sometimes (oftentimes?) you feel like people only want to be friends for your English skills. It's not cool to feel like someone's "adjective" friend. (This is my foreign friend/this is my gay friend/this is my licensed friend/etc.) As for the other foriegners here, I freely admit that I have only one good friend here. He is a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend back home and we, luckily, got along very well when we met here! I have a few other people that I can call upon for information, but I really try not to. I wouldn't be friends with most of the foreigners I've met here if we were back home; call me picky, but I'm not going to do it here just because they speak the same language. I swear, the best thing I've done for ME was to join a good taekwondo studio within a week of arriving. Although it was tough at first, and I really wondered if I'd feel comfortable with them, it has become my lifeblood here. I run into these boys in the neighborhood, they've gotten to know the way I speak pidgin Korean, so they understand my questions and they help me with my Korean, the two hours a day of Korean-language that is somewhat predictable but not entirely so helps my comprehension in uncountable ways (and helped Korean sound like words and not just white noise!), and I feel like I can actually go to Master for help, even though he doesn't speak much English. (Things that would be so easy at home--like sending a fax, finding shoes that fit my big feet, finding a good place to buy gimbap!) And on even my worst Bad Korea Days, the studio keeps me going, keeps me from hating Koreans and Korea.
Amanda 26 Oct, 2006 09:46 AM	Oh yeah, and you're also trying to avoid fan death (: and trying to find a way to answer--for the 7th time in 3 days--being told that "there are four seasons in Korea, you know." (By the way, I realize that many of the things you listed do have to do with social logistics. Didn't mean to make it seem like I didn't realize that.)
강미 26 Oct, 2006 01:09 PM MSN: kangmi	No, it's really all of those things. They all add up, and unless one learns to manage the stress they cause, it can be really difficult to spend time on something like learning the language. A lot of people don't recognize the stress they're experiencing, and they don't develop a strategy for dealing with it. And when they don't, they miss the best parts of life in Korea. Somehow the phrase "culture shock" doesn't cover it, because it's so much bigger than that. There are at least two reasons why I think taekwondo works for you. First, it sounds like it's something you did before, so you've connected the past to the present. And second, exercise is a great stress reliever.
Amanda 27 Oct, 2006 01:49 AM	Yes, you're right, it is something I did in America. It's practiced differently here, but at least when I have the odd bad day in taekwondo, I know it's not KOREA that makes it that way. It's the nature of the sport/art. The best advice my friend Scott (who taught here several years ago with the friend I mentioned above, who's still here) gave me before I came was to learn the alphabet and to join something "outside of work, with as few foreigners are possible around, something you know you enjoy." He promised that it would make Korea better, and he was right.
강미 27 Oct, 2006 05:34 AM MSN: kangmi	Smart guy, that Scott.