Dog is Gae

I speak English at work and so many Koreans can communicate well enough in English that I have had a hard time picking up the language. We wanted to take night classes at the local university where Rie takes her English class, but they are on a two month break. Rie checked out a bunch of places and found a school for us. It is just outside the university - a 15 minute walk from our apartment.

We take classes three nights a week, for one our at a time. We had our first class on Monday and practiced making all of the Korean sounds. Some of the vowels are tricky. Our teacher speaks Chinese and a little bit of English. Unfortunately for me, he speaks great Japanese and that is the language he teaches us in. So, I am learning Korean from a Japanese speaker. As you can imagine, that is a bit of a challenge for me. I am not always quick to answer questions because of all the translations involved, but Rie is always next to me to help me out.

Rie started learning to read Korean last weekend. It is not too difficult to learn and she is almost as good as me now. I think she will get good very quickly because of all the overlap in vocabulary and grammar between Korean and Japanese.

The one word I remember from class is Dog. Dog is Gae.