Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Afternoon update

I spent about two hours learning Korean today! Rosetta Stone is a pretty cool program. It is a complete immersion program, they don't teach you anything in English. They want you to figure everything out in Korean from the very start. So they're not just having you memorize common phrases or anything like that, they want you to really learn the how's and why's of the whole language. After two hours this morning I can now tell you in Korean all about how the the boy eats dinner, the boy reads a book, the girl runs and the girl drinks water. Oh yeah, I rock. :)

When I first started I felt like I was totally in over my head, but it ended up not being as hard to understand as I thought because of the really great way they teach it. The hardest part was pronouncing some of the sounds. My mouth doesn't make some Korean sounds! It has voice recognition software, so you have to repeat words and they'll tell you if you're saying it right or wrong. I was OK for the most part, but there were a few sounds that I just can't make. To ME it sounded like I was saying what they were saying, but I guess not. It's tricky.

I'm excited to keep practicing though! I'm sure it will take me months to learn enough to even feel comfortable with a very basic conversation, but I'm up for the challenge.

And then I got the mail today and I was very excited to find that a t-shirt that I ordered online from a Korean store came today! It's just a while t-shirt that says The Republic of Korea in Korean on the front and there's a Korean flag on the back. It sounds stupid, but the reason I ordered it is because it actually ships straight from Korea! To get it in the mail today knowing that a few days ago it was actually in Korea was oddly exciting. I'm such a nerd. I just wanted something that came from Korea. Not a Korean t-shirt from an American store, but a Korean shirt that really came from Korea. For some reason anything Korean just makes me feel closer to Clarissa these days. It's like if Korea becomes a real place to me then Clarissa becomes a real person who lives there. That probably doesn't make sense, but it's working for me. It's making the wait easier.

2 comments:

The Driftwood Collector said...

Glad to hear that you're finding the Rosetta Stone program helpful - my husband ordered the Chinese language program to help prepare for a trip in the spring, and he's been very impressed with the quality. And I think your rationale about wanting something from Korea makes perfect sense!

Do you think either of your boys will be interested in learning Korean as well? I keep hearing that learning a language is much easier during childhood, so I was just curious.

Wendy said...

When Josh saw me working on it today he asked it he could learn too. I noticed that Rosetta Stone has a homeschool version of their program meant more for kids. It's expensive, but I just might get it for them at some point. It would be a nice thing to have so that all the kids could learn when they get a little older. Maybe Clarissa will want to learn it someday! :)