Learning Korean

After making the ritual sandwiches, I hung the fourth panel which I had finished yesterday and forgotten to hang until it was too late. Now I had a dark room. So I went back to bed to enjoy it. I arose around 9 to call Tina and tell her I was staying home to clean, etc. Well, I did more etc., mostly on the computer. There is a website available to AKO members to download e-books for free. So I spent part of the day listening to one of them. Then Michele came home and I made her do all her homework and her hour of Calculus.
AFter supper, Chris drove us to Gate 1, from which we walked to the Samgakji subway system. We were to meet the lady who had taken me to the Hyundai Department Store building the Saturday after Christmas. She wanted to teach us Korean and learn English from us. We didn't see her in the subway and so she called to tell us which exit she was at. As it turned out, it was on the far side of the subway so we had to pay fare to get in and walk across. That irked me. But we found her and she walked us to a coffee shop. We sat down and she opened a grocery bag with snacks. I was a little embarrasssed to have brought snacks to a coffee shop which sells their own. But we did order drinks then so it was not so bad. She gave each of us a laminated subway map, and several Korean worksheets. We talked about pronunciation, and the names of Korean letters. It was very hard for me because she spoke little English. Michele had a much easier time. A lot of Korean consonants are a misture of our own. One letter is a cross between a j and a ch sound. Some letters appear to have the same sound. She insisted they were different, but I could not hear the difference. It didn't help that there was music playing in the back ground. Then when it was time to go, she wanted to set up a regular schedule of every Friday. That was way more than I wanted, but Michele seemed eager and I wanted to support her. AFterwards, the two of us walked back ABOVE ground, eschewing the subway and the fare we would have paid. Luckily there were some highrise buildings that we could triangulate on to make sure we went the right way. It took us 15 minutes in the freezing cold. I kept thinking there must be a shorter way. Chris met us at Gate 1 and drove us home. I spent the rest of the evening working on my computer game skills and listening to the e-book.