Korea and Culture

From my new good friend the OED.

ODu. bezich (mod.Du. bezig), LG. besig; no cognate words are known in any other Teut. or Aryan lang. The ME. typical form was bisi, bisy, bysy: the form busi (with ü = OE. y) occurs in the later text of Layamon, but otherwise the u form is not found before the 15th c.: its prevalence in modern spelling, while the pronunciation is with i, as in ME., is difficult to account for.]

We started school last Wednesday. I began working my assistaintship hours the Wednesday before. I won’t go into too much detail on my GA work but will say that it is challenging and hopefully will be rewarding as well.  JJ started her GA as well and is working in the Math Lab and Math Zone tutoring students.

I am taking 12 hours/4 classes this semester with only one of those classes having tests. I was thrilled about this at first and then I started looking at the amount of work required for each class. 2 of my classes are online and require an insane amount of work. History of English , the one class that has tests, will probably be one of my favorites. This class is going to require hours upon hours of studying but the subject matter and the professor are great. Dr. Hauer is going to be a thorn in my side great motivator.  His knowledge of the material and excitement for the subject matter is contagious.  I have already tried to find out if he will be teaching any possible electives for me next semester.

Besides History of English, I am also taking Reading in ESL/EFL Instruction, Applied Linguistics in Second and Foreign Languages, and Teaching Second Languages: Theory into Practice.  Teaching Second Languages is my other class that I am taking on campus.  I met with the instructor this past summer and am really looking forward to her class as well.  I really like her teaching style and can see that this class is going to be a lot of work as well.

About two weeks ago, I finally ordered my new computer.  I ended up getting a Dell Studio XPS Laptop(I didn’t pay near as much as the one that the link shows, don’t know why that one is so expensive) and really am enjoying it.  The screen quality is so good that my eyes have been killing me.  I am probably going to have to get a screen cover or lower the resolution.

Ever since I moved to Korea, I have felt a connection with the country.  When we moved back to the states, I thought that bond would slowly diminish.  I was extremely wrong.  Not only did we meet some great new Korean friends when we first arrived but have already met a few new Korean students at USM as well.

• Strange connection #1- JJ had her first day of tutoring in the Math Zone when she met a nice young who worked in the zone last year.  He asked if she was Korean and went on to explain that his girlfriend is Korean.  We later ran into them at Walmart and I ended up giving him my Sogang Series #1 book.
• Strange connection #2- I have to read Second Language Teaching & Learning by David Nunan for one of my classes. I bought a used book and opened it to start reading and noticed that through out the book there are notes written in Hangul.  Apparently, a Korean student used it before me.
• Strange connection #3-Go to my first class and guess who is sitting next to me?  A Korean doctoral student who I just happened to have met the week before at a party.
• Strange connection #4-Get an email a couple of weeks ago from a Korean student who needed to a ride to his university.  There are two universities in Hattiesburg and he was going to the one south of town.  He was going to be stuck at his hotel so I offered to give him a ride to his new dorm.  JJ and I drove him to the school, helped him find his dorm, wished him luck, and dropped him off.

We are patiently waiting for our student loan refunds.  Refunds are processed on September the first and then a few days after that our money should be deposited into our accounts.  Our first GA paychecks should come through at the end of September.  Even though the extra GA money is nice, it won’t cover all of our expenses.  We are really going to have budget well.  That should not be a problem as we have almost lived entirely on savings for almost a year now. (I did bring in a few extra dollars doing landscape work and then there were the Korean classes that we got paid for as well)

Han Books- I ordered two books from this online company and was thrilled with their service and speed.  If you need any Korean language learning resources, I highly recommend them.  I will review the books in a later post!