Early this morning Shawn left with the boys to take their little cousins camp vacation, so I'm officially home alone.
It occured to me while I was sitting here in silence today that in the entire 12 years of our marriage, I've only slept apart from Shawn maybe 4-5 times at the most. I've only been home overnight without the kids once, and that was just for one night. (that doesn't count the nights that I've been on vacation away from them, just the nights that I've been in the house and they haven't.)
What I'm trying to say is that I'm a little lonely today!! It's weird to be home alone. I slept late, which was nice. Then I practiced my Korean for awhile, went to the store, had Thai food for lunch, came home, worked on my Korean again...and now here I am. It's really quiet.
Thank goodness for Korean to keep my busy though. I've been practicing what I learned with my Korean friend yesterday and then I decided to give Rosetta Stone another try.
I tried Rosetta Stone last December in an attempt to teach myself Korean. It was working really well for a while, I was following along learning how to say several things, and then it just kept getting more complicated. Rosetta Stone is a complete immersion program. There's not a single word of it in English. It shows you photos and says the word in Korea and then you repeat it. Then it starts using those words in sentences and it just keeps building. The problem is that the sentences started getting longer and more complex, but they don't explain sentence structure or anything to you. They don't explain verb usage and word endings or any of that. So I was picking up vocabulary words, but I would never be able to use those words in a spontaneous conversation. I don't understand how to form proper sentences. Korean sentence structure is completely backward from English sentences. It's confusing.
So after a while I gave up. It was too confusing and frustrating and it just make me more frustrated that I didn't know anyone who spoke fluent Korean to help me. My friend Larry is Korean but he's lived in the US most of his life and his Korean is a little rusty. He was able to help me some, but I felt bad constantly bombarding him with questions. I finally decided that until I could find some sort of college class or something to take I was just going to have to give up on learning to speak Korean.
That is until I met my new Korean friend!!! (Have I talked way too much about my new Korean friend yet!?! lol) Now that I have someone to help explain things to me and I have someone to practice with, I'm all excited about learning again. So today I got Rosetta Stone going again and I'm going to give it another shot. With her help I think I might be able to get somewhere.
So that's what I'll be doing for the next three days while I'm home alone. I've got plenty of time to immerse myself in Korean, so I'm going to do it. I think I'll watch Korean movies and practice Rosetta Stone and talk to my friend. It's a Korean extravaganza! :)
Speaking of Korea, there's nothing new in adoption news yet. Still waiting on legals. It's 8:30 in the morning in Seoul right now. Clarissa is probably just starting her day. I hope her foster mother is kissing her sweet chubby cheeks and giving her all the love that I'm not there to give. I hope my sweet girl has a wonderful day.
2 comments:
the boys will be gone to school for full days soon (wait....they already are aren't they? Yours is one up on mine) heck, either way you'll be having your mornings free soon huh?
NOPE!!! You'll be having that baby girl to love on and give those fat cheekers some kisses soon! I can't wait!!! (to see pics :) :) :)
Gotta say though, sleeping alone after not doing it for some time is reaaaally creepy to me, especially in this new house after being in the apartment so long. Enjoy the quiet while you can :)
Hey Wendy,
I hope you don't take this as spam - just some guy dropping his link.
6 years ago I actually moved to Korea and at the time didn't speak a word of it. I had a hard time finding resources that explained things very well, but still hit it pretty hard and then 3 years into it, finding that there were a lot of people who were in the same position as I had been in, I decided to start teaching it. The nice part, I've been told, is that I could explain the building blocks that people needed 'cause I had come exactly from where they were. Anyways, that was 3 years ago and it's still rolling along pretty successfully today.
But the point is, I've recently turned my in-class course into an online thing. That is for sale, but that's not why I'm writing you.
I'm writing 'cause I also have a blog going where, for the time being anyways (as long as I can handle the time commitment), I'm taking questions and answering them with videos (I try to have them answered within a day or two).
So, if for whatever reason the Rosetta Stone thing doesn't work for you, or even if it does and you still have a question or something you want cleared up at any point, feel free to drop in and reply to any one of the posts and ask your question (If you do, just mention your name so I remember it's you).
I assume you can already read and write - that must be the first thing you learn with Rosetta Stone, no? - but if I'm mistaken and you can't, there are videos up taken from class#1 of my in-class course that teach people exactly how to read and write and get as close to the proper pronunciation as we, as English speakers, can get.
And if you can already read, just use it to ask questions if you'd like. No worries.
Anyways, sorry for the long rant. But if you would like to check it out, it's at www.learnkoreanonline.net
Cheers Linda, and good luck with the adoption process (sorry, don't think I'll be much help in that area!)
Take care,
Rob..
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