my mouth feels funny

tonight i met a korean man for coffee. i posted an ad to trade language. hangul--the korean alphabet--is completely phonetic, which makes how the words are spelled a total hoot. they are constructed both horizontally and vertically. i'm not going to suggest that i even understand most of it, but the little i was exposed to makes perfect sense.

add to that, i feel great, and that i can actually learn this language. it seems like alot opened up to me, even tho i still know very little. park jin woo (to get all korean on yer ass) or jin woo park as we would approach it (i think i mentioned this earlier, but his name is really baek nam jun) was very kind. the notebook i have for learning korean (thanks to buck downs enterprises) looks like a visual poem. a mixture of english, romanized korean to help with pronunciation, tho it is a just a bridge that needs to be dumped quickly as, as mentioned, it is phonetically based, and hangul/korean. in fact, korean appears like a gigantic visual poem. i imagine dyslexia may be hard to come by in this country? i want to ask my co-teacher about that tomorrow.

we got in his car, which is literally from japan, so the wheel is on the opposite side of american and korean vehicles, and he programmed my address, and viola. of course, before that i took the subway to meet him. we agreed on an exit, and my description was simple: 'Okay, I will be the westerner with a beard--should be pretty easy to spot'.

i'm too excited to type coherently. i will just say i am eager to learn more, and think i actually can.

i've been thinking alot about romance languages, the ones i attempted to learn in middle/high school and college. i think the problem was that they were too similar to english, so i would fight them. like many other things in my korean (limited) experience, if i just lay myself down and am humble before it, it is a much more useful approach. am i aging and gaining maturity? who knows.

there is so much to report.

'guiness is scottish dark beer?'