Week 0 (July):
- Managed to catch a bus from Seoul to Daejeon and meet up with my friends before starving to death.
- Can say my friend's address in Korean and catch a taxi home on my own if necessary.
Week 1 (August):
- Can successfully navigate the subway in Seoul alone....although the stops are all written in English too, and I have a travel card I can top up.
- (Can't read or write)
Week 2:
- Can order coffee or tea with the Konglish name (Korean pronunciation of English words), as well as beer and soju.
- Can navigate a familiar bus route on my own using my travel card.
- (Still can't read or write, still haven't eaten a meal alone)
Week 3:
- Can read consonant characters and a few vowels.
- Have picked up on a few Korean words and phrases.
- Can tell everyone my height in Korean.
- Am getting really good at charades.
Month 1 (September):
- Can properly greet, thank, and say good-bye to people using the correct level of politeness.
- Can read, albeit slowly and often without understanding what I'm saying.
- Slowly learning a few more phrases and getting used to using them every day.
- Am really, really good at charades.
- (Names are so, so hard to remember, you guys...)
- Can communicate with Korean guys when we go out to clubs.
- Have a pay-as-you-go phone
- Have a Korean bank account
Month 2 (October):
- Can count! Able to talk about prices and buy things, say the names of months, and order numbers of things.
- Can comfortably read the menu and order food in a restaurant. Learning more and more Korean foods.
- Can hang out with my coworkers outside of school and have a great time, despite the language barrier.
- Know half of my kids' names.
- Can understand when people are talking about me and can interject with where I'm from or my height (it's always one of these two, and typically the latter).
- Have a real phone....and have to keep answering calls from the previous owner's number.
- Can order furniture and other things online from Korean websites.
- Can use the public transportation system to get anywhere in the country.
Month 3 (November):
- Can order food for delivery over the phone.
- Can communicate with the mailman over the phone and tell him to put packages in my boiler room if I'm not home.
- Have gone on a real date with a Korean guy who speaks minimal English.
- Bought a car. Can use my Korean GPS and can navigate the highways and tolls.
- Can go shopping and an special order sizes to ship to the store.
- Can drop off dry cleaning and communicate pick up dates and times.
And now we've reached December. I can do the majority of these things relatively smoothly, but I'm still thrown by random phone calls or anything that deviates from the conversation I'm expecting. Now I know how Korean's feel when their every day English conversations deviate from the dialogues they've learned in class!
- Can go shopping and an special order sizes to ship to the store.
- Can drop off dry cleaning and communicate pick up dates and times.
And now we've reached December. I can do the majority of these things relatively smoothly, but I'm still thrown by random phone calls or anything that deviates from the conversation I'm expecting. Now I know how Korean's feel when their every day English conversations deviate from the dialogues they've learned in class!
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