I take my small victories, when they come along. In the language learning arena, I mean. I was at my Saturday Korean class, and there was a different teacher from before. And she asked me a very complex question in Korean, and I not only understood, but provided a simple but grammatically correct and accurate answer in response. This was a sort of first, for me. At least, it felt like one of those language-learning milestones.
So, for posterity, the sentence is today's blog title: "I studied Korean in the U.S." Which is to say, I was answering a question to the effect of, "how did you learn what you know in Korean? You studied it in the U.S.?" The teacher seemed impressed with my ability to understand and use the past tense. I felt the same way.
I took a walk over to the Kyobo bookstore after class, and browsed for a while but made only a small purchase of my weekly magazine fix. Then I walked some more and, somewhat impulsively, I went into a Burger King. Honest truth, this is only the second time I've gone into an American-brand fast-food restaurant since I came to Korea in September. That's got to be some kind of record, for me. My ramyeon habit is unhealthy enough, I don't need to make things worse by getting regular doses of American fast food. I've been pretty happy to have mostly shaken my former junk-food-restaurant habit. But today was a relapse, I guess.
Then I took a walk through a rather desolate area where there are gazillions of new high-rise apartment buildings under construction, as the sun set and the winter afternoon got cold… colder. Then I found the express bus terminal, conveniently on the orange number 3 subway line, and came straight home.