Winding Down Italian, Winding Up Korean

More Italian grammar today. I need to review verbs tomorrow so I can do well on my Italian exit exam, scheduled for Monday with ALTA Language Services!

I begin my next language, Korean, in two days, so this afternoon I went to Barnes & Noble on 66th Street and bought about $120 worth of Korean books, a dictionary, and flashcards. It was hard to find appealing materials. The main book, which is truly a textbooky looking thing, cost nearly $70. I don’t like textbooky things—I for one do not feel like reliving college—and I am concerned it won’t be fun. I’m going to keep looking for something better.

Okay, as I was writing this, I just opened a browser and ordered another two books from Barnes & Noble for a total of $50. While I was looking around, I also saw a customer posting, I think on Amazon.com, that said materials for self-study in Korean are not great. That is definitely my impression based on what I saw today.

Fortunately, there is always Pimsleur, which I know will be great. I ordered Level I today, from PimsleurAudio.com. I am very sad that I, and others, can no longer get electronic versions of Pimsleur for free through the New York Public Library.

Until a few months ago, I would have been able to access these lessons electronically, through the library, without leaving my desk or paying a penny. Although the library offers CD versions of Pimsleur, the Level I CDs almost always seem to be checked out, for many of the languages offered.

Pimsleur offers no Level III for Korean, so this will be my first language where I can’t go all the way through the (ostensibly) advanced level.

I had kind of a funny experience in the Barnes & Noble store earlier today: while I was sitting on the floor in the foreign language section, a 20ish-year-old Asian woman handed me a short essay she had written in English and asked me to correct it. It was an unusual request from a stranger.

I smiled; I didn’t mind. I told her, “I’m an English teacher.”

And she said something that sounded like, “I am rocky,” but I am pretty sure she was saying, “I am lucky.”

When I was done marking the essay, she asked me for my e-mail and gave me hers. She wrote her last name first and her first name last, as it is done in Korean, and also wrote it for me both in Korean letters and in the Roman alphabet (that is, the one we use in English).

The Korean font is so beautiful. I’m excited.