Find Your Language Exchange Partner Right Now

How can I practice my Korean if every Korean I know here wants to converse with me in English?... T__T I was supposed to take the TOPIK (Test of Proficiency in Korean)this month when I realized quite realistically that I'd just simply get at most a proficiency level of 2. Taking the TOPIK means taking 80U$D from the ATM, and I think that's about worth 3 or 4 TOPIK proficiency score. 8 is the highest possible level a foreign speaker in my category could attain. I'll postpone taking the test until I'm sure I can get a good score for all my money's worth.

Meh, I'll just study harder.... ^^; How I revel at that thought.

Anyway, the real deal in this post is this:

These days I'm learning informal Korean by talking with my friends in TT4you.com. It's a community of people coming from diverse countries who are eager to know and learn other peoples' culture and language. Think of social networking sites. But this is not just another one of those icky webs. TT4you is a free social networking site that allows members to actually voice chat with one another--for FREE. Yes, you've read it right. TT4you is a browser built in Skype, so to speak, where all registered members appear in the friends list. I was just so happy to have found out about this.

If you want to make international friends I think this place is for you. The website is decent as are the members. Join now and meet me there. ahahaha. my username is elliot86. We could have a good chat if we find a common time. ^^;

Shard Struck: A Precious Wound (Kimchi Pot Chronicles #1)

Every click of My Pictures folder, every hit of Play button of WMP, every Korean song I play-- are the shards that keep my gaping wound open and as fresh as the first day that everything that has been had been...
Since I've been back from Korea, I found it very hard to move on. I'm now inflicted with a chronic laziness that my thesis had been stalled for two months; I've never produced anything that amounts greater than a bug's fart. The stasis has been formed and it's where I'm living now. I think what's more serious is that I am participating in my self incarceration. I know that if I stay inside for long, I'll just rot inside with the memories and friendships I cherish. And these fragments of life had already given me a hell load of joy and lessons learned; they have done their purpose. They are now expired. Should I stay longer, I'll expire too..And clearly, doing that is committing intellectual and interpersonal suicide. So starting tomorrow, I'd start moving in for the kill. I'll work for my future, leave the stasis behind in my growing museum for memories.
My wound will not close, for I will never permit it to.
The certain throbbing sensation will forever remind me that I have lived once in a way that I never will live again...

1st Fragment: The Stasis Forms (Korea Chronicles #1)

My most dreaded day has come. I am about to leave for Korea. That night, I borrowed a weighing scale from my neighbor who sells rice and vegetables. This time, however, it is not the rice nor the vegetables that will be weighed—it would be my clothes. Two of my closest friends Ej and Jabez, whose houses are 2 hours away from mine went that night to help me pack my stuff. It felt the real essence of farewell when I saw them folding and compressing my clothes, praying that my luggage would just weigh all right. As they are graduating this month (March), we spent our last few hours together watching TV, reminiscing college life in UPLB, in the Purple Room (Jabez' dorm unit where we usually hang out). I also fixed Ej's PC for I was their only technician who never asks for fees. Everything that night was not at all an emotional experience for me--perhaps not yet. The atmosphere was such in a state of ambiguity-- that one second I felt like I'm leaving and then in another second I felt that it's just like any ordinary night for me and my family. If there's anything sure, it would be that it was the longest moment in my life. The Waiting. It is the time of my life where I felt that the past, present and future all converge into one uberly cramped time frame. It was a deluge of stimuli of what I had been, what I am now, and what I'm going to be and what will it be in Korea. Agony, excitement, assurance, anxiety, anticipation were all mixed in my head and it's definitely disorienting.
Time to rest. Tomorrow will be the beginning of something really special. It was around 3am that we all slept... Looking at the clock, fixing my eyes on every second that passes by, knowing that I would spend 10 months in a different time zone...the thought made me all the more more jittery. I fell asleep on my bed for the last time. I prayed a lot, close to sweating blood. Next night I’d be in the Land of Kimchi--unseasoned, perhaps a bit bland, but will get savory as each day begins and ends.