Day 9 to 14 of Korean in 80 days

This is part of "Learning Korean in a Jiffy" where I attempt to become speak-ready for an upcoming trip to South Korea.

T-67. In about 10 weeks, I'll be landing in Seoul, moving through the crowd with confidence, speaking to the locals and fellow Korean speakers with ease and pulling my sister along behind me, her face in full seismic shock. That's the dream anyway.

In current reality, I am no where near confident with speaking Korean and my sister is probably secretly learning Korean because I can't keep my mouth shut and had told her about my attempt to learn a few days ago. Being the younger, she won't be outdone.

Well, good. At least one of us will be able to during our winter traipse.

The plan was to learn about 100 words in all, using mainly two learning techniques:

1. Shadowing, where I repeat phrases in Korean no matter how garbled I sound and without the need to understand what I'm saying. The point is simply to familiarise myself with listening to and sounding out the language. The hope is this will lead me faster towards speaking.

2. Spend 15 minutes, three times a day starting with no effort (pure fun) in the morning, moderate effort (an attempt at understanding) in the afternoon and recall (digging deep into the memory and hopefully re-wiring some brain matter) in the evening.

Honestly, even though learning Korean was on my mind, I could only nibble at it. I have downloaded the "Drops" language app and that gives me 5 mins of fun. At some point during the day, I would go over my initial list of 100 words, pick a word or phrase, and repeat the sounds.

The result: I am remembering through repetition at a snail's pace.

Kudos for keeping the learning alive, though. The pulse is weak but it's there.

For Week 3, the plan is to get a tutor. I had somebody in mind but I'm now doubting that I will spend on anything to formally learn the language. As it happens, some unexpected expenses dropped by and waltzed away with a portion of my wallet. Thankfully, I discovered the following resources where I can learn for free:

1. How to study Korean. They are also on YouTube.
2. Billy, an American who teaches Korean on several platforms. I chose his YouTube channel.

Billy has a playlist with various series which span from learning the language to travel and understanding the culture. I found the beginner's course and was delighted to see that each of the videos are pretty short. It is a long series, though, but I figured I could probably get through most of it, if not all by the time I'm ready to fly, especially if I apply the 15mins x 3 times a day technique.

Fingers crossed that I actually stay on course, because I had to press forward on his videos a lot. Billy is very enthused in his videos, probably to keep watchers entertained and engaged. It's not my style of learning but I think I could live with it. In fact, I'm eager to go through the series so that, at some point, I'll be able to start on the courses offered on howtostudyKorean.com

I'll also continue to dream about being fluent. Don't hack it! What the mind believes, it can achieve. I don't know why I forgot to apply that trick to creating fluency. Call it dreaming, imagining or visualising - that's my hot sauce for being able to order a plate of chicken from an ajuma like a native 67 days from today.

Alright, fellow learners. Let's keep cracking (up) ♡

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Read about the journey so far here:

• Day 1 - I was so gung-ho!
• Day 2 - Still excited
• Day 3 - 7 - Travelled and, ugh, broke the momentum
• Day 8 - I realised at this point that I don't have the muscle - yet. Resolved to keep showing up