Asian Pride

The other day, I was talking to a Korean kid in my English class about when I lived in Korea. He was pretty amazed that I could read Korean, and so we were writing notes to each other with English words, but written with Korean letters. Korean is completely phonetic, which makes it extremely easy to learn, so long as you stick with it long enough to remember the 24 letters, as well as a couple basic rules. For example, consonants can't be the first character in a syllable, or when -character- is next to -character-, it makes -such and such- sound.
Anyways, so my English teacher saw me talking to the Korean kid, and jokingly asked me if I was speaking Korean...and I said yes. Also, a joke...but a terrible idea. I explained that I don't actually speak fluently, I just know a few phrases, and I can read/write it phonetically, but she is now determined that I will learn Korean by the end of the year. The up-side is that Harris is a pretty neat guy, and he's been teaching me some Korean cultural things, and I have diplomatic immunity to talk during class, so long as it's in Korean. The down-side, however, outweighs the good side. My teacher expects me to all of the sudden try WAY harder in class, because she figures if I can finish my work faster, I can do my 'daily Korean lesson' with Harris.

"Josh, this is all very interesting, but where's the part where you talk about something crazy and exciting?"

I knew you'd ask. Generally I wouldn't tell a story like this, but recently, Kayla Black has been learning some Korean, and I have been having fun helping her a bit, as well as talking about Korean stuff. If anyone else is learning Korean, there are some pretty wicked-easy websites that teach basic Korean (to learn to sound out the characters). Also, a few phrases to impress your Korean friends.

Speaking of languages...my parents wouldn't sign a form allowing me to watch a movie in French class, due to 'excessive coarse language' and 'sexual scenes'. This is fairly normal, and expected, but the annoying part is that instead of watching the movie, then doing a little worksheet that takes about 20 minutes max, my teacher is making me do a 300 word essay...in French. This usually wouldn't be a huge problem, I've done a couple already this year in-class, which is about an hour and 15 minutes. It's just the whole idea behind it...I have to make up for the time that the class spent watching Bon Cop Bad Cop by writing an essay.