Thursday, October 23, 2008

Trying to hatch eggs

I had the most ridiculous hour in the subway system today, all due to my own stupidity. It was just a series of going around in circles on two or three different lines and missing my stop at least twice, just to end up late to my tutoring session and not getting my package from Fulbright. Coming to Korea really makes me question my ability to be a functional human being. To confirm that, my tutor taught me a word that apparently describes me to a T. Its definition follows:

1. extraordinary; extravagant; fantastic; unreasonable; outrageous; preposterous
2. wrong; different

Another dictionary says it means "bats in the belfry," aka crazy & eccentric. My tutor said that teachers have a hard time w/students like me b/c we don't answer questions in the grammar patterns that are being drilled. I said, that's not true! I answer in the right grammar pattern, but the answers are much more interesting than "I bought this shirt b/c it was cheap" or "I was late because I overslept."

I think I've learned more about American topics while studying Korean: Sandra Day O'Connor, Mickey Mouse, and Thomas Edison. How random is that? Today was kind of a bust but also kind of not, b/c I talked to one guy close to Seoul who might be able to help me w/research, and I made a date to see the Buddhist nun down south this weekend. Guess where??! At a PERSIMMON festival. Hahahaa! If I couldn't even make it across town today, I'm going to have a hard time getting to this place, but it'll work out. I like to think that if I have such a severe directional disability (I just spent way too much time reading about dyspraxia. I think I'm slightly dyslexic w/English but then severely so w/Korean), then it must mean that I must be really good at something ELSE that doesn't involve getting lost. I just need to figure out what that something else is.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That last sentence is key :-)