Last Class

Yesterday was my last Korean class at Ulsan University, and so we had a farewell pizza party, played Korean bingo with the advanced class and had a chance to say good-bye to each other and to our fantastic teacher, Yoon Hye-Sook. I had so much fun in this class over the past six months; for me, learning Korean was an adventure and never at all stressful or frustrating. Which is not to say that Korean is an easy language to learn, but my classmates were always enthusiastic and the teacher made many jokes so it became something I looked forward to every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I am the only member of my class who will not be continuing on with the intermediate classes in September because I am returning to the States, so it was also a little sad for me. Korean class has become such a part of my routine that I'm not sure what I'll do in the mornings now! As our final project we all had to write a page or so about ourselves in Korean which the teacher compiled into a sort of "yearbook." While I'm sure all of us made a slew of spelling and grammatical errors, it's kind of amazing that we've come from barely being able to read and write in hangeul to being able to compose an entire page. I hope to continue studying Korean in the future, although I fear losing some of my ability. I guess I will have to practice even harder! Here are some photos from Nguyen Ducanh (one of my Vietnamese classmates):