Korean Language Update #5

This update will not be much of an update on my Korean language abilities but just an update in general. I will be putting my language journey on hold until the end of the school year which is in 5 weeks. The reason I am doing this is because for whatever reason, my teachers have decided to leave all the big course projects for these last weeks of class. I have a part-time internship, counseling recording sessions to complete, interventions to come up with and present, and case conceptualization proposals to present; all while having smaller class assignments in between. It’s annoying, but that’s what you can expect from graduate school I guess.

I know that 5 weeks is a long time to go without practicing the language, but let’s be real. I really hadn’t gotten that far anyway lol. If you read my previous language update posts, my abilities were very low. I know that waiting so long to start up again, I will most likely have to start over but I feel it’s for the best because I really can’t focus when I try to open my language book. I start feeling guilty and that if I can sit here and try to learn a language, then I can for sure be doing the work I need done for my classes. And other times, I am just so mentally exhausted from school that I don’t even want to look at my language book smh. My language journey will pick back up again after I have taken my finals. That way, I can devote way more time to studying and not have to worry about submitting assignments and big projects for school.

I also wanted to share some good news. Korean will not be the only language I will be learning. Starting this summer, I will be taking Spanish lessons. FOR FREE! There is a woman at my mom’s job from Costa Rica who used to teach Spanish and when my mom was telling her about my desire to learn languages (Spanish being one of them) she got really excited and wanted to meet me. After my telling her that I was studying to be a school counselor, she became even more excited and told me that Spanish will most definitely be needed in my career (because in the state that I live, there are only three bilingual school counselors!) and that she would love to teach me. So starting around the end of May, I will be taking Spanish lessons. I am so excited and feeling very blessed to be able to take these lessons without a cost.

I did plan on having a full-time job this Summer but seeing as said job has not been back in contact with me (even though they contacted me first), I am not counting on it. That’s the one thing that sucks about being a full-time, out of state grad student; it’s too hard to find a job when the school year ends and you return home. Especially since my chosen career field is in a school….and school lets out for the Summer. If I do end up working for them, this will be my third summer in a row working for them. But I will not be surprised if they hire someone else that can start work before I even return home. If that happens, then so be it. I will try to pick up a part-time job somewhere and have more time to devote to studying my languages.

In the meantime, for Korean, I still plan on immersing myself in many things Korean; watching Korean film and series, listening to podcasts and live feeds, and listening to Talk to Me in Korean’s online lessons. Those are brief and fun and do not take much mental challenge.

Well that’s all for today. I am so ready for this school year to be over. Although I like the majority of what I do, I am tired of doing school work. That could also be influenced by the fact that I’m so ready to devote my Summer to Spanish and Korean. Super excited!

Until next time,

Adiós! 안녕히 계세요!

P.S. I still really want to learn Thai. Like really REALLY want to learn Thai and I wish it was much more available to prospective learners. All the books I find are either for tourists, extremely old and dated, or are written by former expats who think they know everything about living in Thailand when they were only there for a few years. If anyone knows anything – anything at all! –  about where I can find a good Thai language textbook for beginners, please let me know! The series by Poomsan-Becker seems to be the best and most popular so far.