Finals, Grammar, and some developments...

The grammar and the listening portion of my Korean language finals are tomorrow. While the grammar portion will be a piece of cake, the listening portion will be a lot harder. And here in lies my biggest problem with Korean language in one word: vowels.

I've been studying Japanese for a number of years and had little problem with speaking the language, so I figured tackling Korean would progress in similar fashion (WRONG). There are similarities between the languages. For example, the word order is the same, there is usage of sentence part markers, and many of the words are of Chinese origin. But, whereas Japanese has 5 vowels (あ,い,う,え, and お), Korean has over 20 (여,야,애,에,오,어,아,이,유,우,으,위,외,왜 and it goes on...). There are actually less consonants than there are vowels. Now to be fair, some of those vowels are never used, some are written differently but pronounced the same (score!), and the difference between some vowel sounds is so slight, not even native speakers can tell them apart.

So then it begs the question: if a native speaker can't tell the difference between some vowels, what chance do I have? Yeah, it's kinda tricky. I took the practice test today and I was a bit lost. Although, tomorrow I think they'll take it easy on us.

: - . - :

Oh yeah, I got this e-mail the other day:

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Dear Aaron, Chun Yin, Dustin, Hiromitsu, and Wai Shing,

Hello
Your costumes for Gayagum performance will arrive OGA on Monday(7/19).
In order to make sure your costumes to fit on you, we ask you to come to OGA to try on.
By the way, we heard there are 6 boys in the class, but according to our file, there are only five.
So please take missing boy with you to the OGA at 5:00 PMJ


Best regards
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It's pretty much on now that I'm gonna be in a costume for sure. Definitely going to have to secure video of this affair as it will be fantastic.

I've also got an offer to go to a traditional Korean village and stay there a weekend, the catch is that I will be on national television (if one could call it a catch :D). My friend says:

[You] would go to Ahndong(Korean folk village where you might stay for 2 days this weekend. I think they're going to record your life: eating traditional food, experiencing Yangban's life, wearing Hanbok, learning Korean manner etc.

Anywho, I took the offer and I'm waiting to hear back if they'll accept me.

Until next time! Happy Bastille day, y'all!