I went with Mr Choi again to meet his tea-making friend, and provide some informal English practice to him and his acquaintances and various children, too. And then we went out for “Chinese.” Going out for Chinese food in Korea is a bit like going out to Chinese in the U.S., in the sense that what you end up eating isn’t actually Chinese cuisine, but rather an American interpretation of Chinese cuisine. So it’s basically a special type of Korean food, that they conventionally call “Chinese.”
It was interesting, and maybe helped to keep my mind off my frustrations with learning, at least while it was happening. Afterward, of course, I could nothing but meditate on how ineffective and stupid my various efforts at using the language were.
It’s obvious I’m feeling very frustrated, lately. This is, from a language-learning standpoint, entirely to-be-expected. But knowing that it’s part of the process doesn’t make it any more pleasant. And my feelings of discouragement tend to rebound against other aspects of my life: feeling like I should be trying harder to find a job; feeling like I should be working on other things, like my writing; feeling lonely.
Of course, there’s the approaching solstice. I always feel like I have some weird seasonal-affective thing going on, around solstices. My mood starts to seem very volatile and shifts around. Not sure what that means, either.