영어 할수 있어요!

Hey, check me out. I've gone from the biggest loser you know to...maybe the second biggest loser you know. At least I'm blogging more frequently. See, wasn't that train analogy fairly relevant? I'm picking up steam again. Now if I could just adopt some sort of writing style that produces a flowing, coherent article then I'd be set fo' lyfe.

Nothing too groundbreaking to update you on. Just a couple of little things:

For some reason, I've never noticed this before probably two weeks ago, but it seems like at least once a period in each 5th and 6th grade class, someone falls over in their chair. Those kids are always leaning back, threatening their necks. I guess we did the same thing when we were their age. Too cool for school. But seriously, you see your friends falling over every single period, why not give it a rest?

If you ever want to piss off an Asian person who is proud of their English speaking abilities, just ask them to repeat after you: "lateral artery." All those years of pronunciation practice have just gone out the window.

Continuing with the language thing, if you've ever gotten far enough along studying a language, you'll realize that you can consume more than you produce. In other words, you can understand a lot more than you can speak. For whatever reason, whether it be shyness when conjugating verbs or lack of pronunciation skills, people don't speak as much as they understand. Also, there's the ability to pick up key words in some jumble of a sentence and getting "the gist." The gist is important. I can get the gist sometimes, even if only 1/100 times, but it's like a little lightbulb when you can put two and two together. This actually made me realize that Koreans, despite not being able to produce any semblence of English, have been exposed to enough English that they can consume and understand "the gist." So instead of reveling in how far I've come in learning Korean (mere inches out of a 500 mile track), I've been kicking myself over how many times I've probably made a complete ass of myself downtown assuming no one around me spoke my language.

My lunch always has a "dessert" item included. This may be something easy to identify like drinking yogurt, fruit, or sweet 빵. Sometimes it is impossible to identify. The designated dessert area is the top right bowl of the tray, but sometimes it is filled with things resembling a party at Corey Feldman's house. Today, I was unsure what was supposed to be dessert until I was about halfway done with it. I identified it as mandu-esque, which is a good thing, but not dessert material. Halfway through, when whatever soy/vinegar concoction they piled onto it was exhausted, I realized it was not mandu. It was frittered cucumber. That's when I could finally taste the sweetness, taste the intended flavor, taste the rainbow. It was actually pretty good and I would suggest the adventurous fritterers out there give it a whirl. Not nearly as sweet as apple fritters, but distinct in its own right. Hell, if it sucks just throw some soy/vinegar concoction on it (recipe pending).

I could keep going about more mundane things until it got down to telling you, "I found some crumbs on my knife this morning before breakfast," but I think we can spare each other that mess. I'll save the excitement for tomorrow's post. Just kidding. What did you think I'd start blogging every day?