Mission Korea: How to lose Pounds fast

On March 25 2008 11:05 snowbird wrote:
the sogang books you mentioned are good books, but there are many similar kinds of those.
sogang is a university with its own language program and own set of books, but every other univeristy also owns their own textbooks/woorkbooks/CD. yonsei, ewha, sogang, korea university, kyunghee, etc.. they all have their set of materials, yonsei being the most famous and prestigious. the yonsei press has (to my knowledge) the most material for students of korean, especially if you want to improve own higher levels.

On March 25 2008 10:04 Elric_ wrote:
Soo, after being absolutely overwhelmed with PMs furiously demanding an update on this, I thought I'd flex my mad blog writing skills once more.*
You can read the first two entries here, and here.

A few things have happened since mid-January. Firstly, I booked my flight!! Weeee! Did it in late January at 'The Flight Centre.' I got semi-scammed by a fat bearded ginger bloke saying 'OMGOMG, YOU HAVE TO BOOK NOW!!!!! BEFORE THE JANUARY SALES CLOSE!!!!' As always, I am too trusting / gullible / retarded and booked it. I say semi-scammed because although the prices did not go down after the crazy January sales closed, the prices haven't gone up either. Yay. Anyhow, I'm going to be in Korea from 3rd November - 16 December (~6 weeks) and I cannot fucking wait! It is a lot shorter than the 2-3 months originally planned but ah.. that will be explained in a later entry...

As well as throwing money at my nearest travel agents, I also booked and pre-paid a crapload of ££s to book my Korean tuition for this summer. And Holy Hairy Mother of Moses is that shit expensive. The average rate for 1:1 Korean tuition (in London anyway) is £50 PER HOUR! Yes, I know, DoubleYou-Tee-Eff. Luckily, after much cursing and research, I managed to find a place that did it for £40. Abusing my S-class charisma and negotiation skills*, I managed to get it down to £36 inclusive of books and materials. Woo! Though I've booked 32 hours of lessons from them, so.. well.. you can do the math. :|

As mentioned in my earlier entries, I've been trying to kickstart my Korean in prepartion for the tuition which will start in July. Unfortunately, my love affair with a program called Declan Software ended abruptly (though amicably) when I set my eyes on a Korean language series called Sogang Korean. This sexy little thing hits my intellectual G-spot as it's got a great audio CD which accompanies a textbook and a workbook. The slight downside is that you're meant to do some of the activities in a classroom environment. But that's ok, I can talk to myself in crappy Korean in front of a mirror for 30mins each day without going insane... Seriously though, if anyone of you guys are thinking of learning Korean, definitely hunt around in your local foreign language book store for these gems.

The final significant development is that I've been busy nagging my extensive network of 2 Korean friends to try to ask / persuade/ blackmail them into teaching me some Korean. Amazingly one of these girls managed to resist my said S-class charisma and couldn't help. However, the other managed to hook me up with her Korean friend who was willing to do a 'language swap' where I teach her some English in exchange for some of her virginity / my cock/ Korean.

Now I know what you're thinking as I was thinking what you are now thinking. (And I've already given it away). But y'know.. some "private", "intensive" "Korean tuition" with a cute 21-year old Korean girl?? We all know how that really works, GG NO RE KTHXBAI?!

Sadly however, kickstarting this particular part of my Korean learning didn't happen as...well, I don't want to be too harsh... but apparently they have McDonalds in Korea too. Hmmmm, Fuck, that was harsh. Sorry Mi.

I think I better leave it there! :|

Looking forward to any comments guys and thanks to those that posted encouragement last time <3.


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*This is lies.

On March 25 2008 13:58 Luddite wrote:
When are you planning on coming to Korea? I will probably be there this summer, and I'm also trying to learn as much Korean as I can before I go.

On March 25 2008 13:20 Krohm wrote:
So did you bang your teacher or what? I'm confused.

On March 25 2008 14:00 nevergg wrote:
Good luck in your studies. Being in Korea itself is probably the best form of practise you can have - I practise reading just using street signs on my way to work and coming from a small town where usually only private school educated kids can speak English I've had to learn quickly. It's tough, but alot of fun ^_^ Look me up if you fancy going to any events.