From hell and back..

Oiy. It's only been one month of language school and I can't stop crying about it. It's supposed to be this 'break', or so people have let on, but it's just torturous. I haven't felt this weighted, this crapped on, and I know this is the result of everything just going biserk. Something's gotta give, and it's not going to be anyone else but me. >_<

[As for real information about Sogang's Language Program, it has a good schedule in which you cover 2 chapters in a week in all of you classes, aside from the Video class that starts in level 5. After you cover 2 chapters, one a day, there is then a day of reviewing, which is excellent for solidifying the infomation acquistion process. And the writing class acts as a review, anyway, where you often go through the information that you went through in the reading/speaking class the day before.

As for the video class - which calls for much praise - it's fun: movies and dramas are split into scenes and you go through each scene and talk about all of the expressions unique to Korean culture and, of course, the vocabulary, and lots of it.

It's a lot more thorough than the other schools, in terms of presenting new information about Korean popular culture than other language schools, like Yonsei and Ewha. Plus, the teachers seem super catty and sorority-ish. I'm sort of glad I have a 'crew' with me, and yet I hate it, too. The 'gossiping' just gets to me.

Ewha probably has the most relaxed program if you take the regular course, which is less hours and they only have 2 books (classbook and workbook), rather than 3 at Yonsei (grammar, workbook, storybook) and 3 or 4 (writing, reading/speaking, workbook, video book) at Sogang. Yonsei and Sogang each have 200-hr programs, which comes down to 4 hours a day for like 10/11 weeks. And Sogang has a week of vacation!

As for Edae, which doesn't seem to get as much hype as the other two schools, well, Edae's strong point is the easy schedule and emphasis on conversation, therefore leading to a slower pace, but much more comfortable and manageable; Yonsei loads you up on grammar and has a listening class; Sogang is really into current culture and reading and writing about it.]

Anyway, luckily for me just when I think that it can't get any worse, it doesn't. Fate, or the "Gods" or whatever you want to call them, has a way of shedding some mercy upon my unfortunate soul, and I find some sort of solace through this down period, my temporary hell. Call it sharpening the saw, or honing something or another, but it's just testing my patience more than anything else, and keeping things at bay. AND I will not give up the idea that my nervous system is what ends up getting dulled through everything.

Looking for nice pick-me-ups or mood-makers is the best thing to do, and I find some piece of heaven, some movement through the media of music more than anything else.

But everything else just irritates me after awhile, and I get really angry and fedup. I sound maladjusted and anti-social, and it's all bugging me out, but I know this. ARG. I thought I left that chip on my shoulder back in Michigan, but apparently not.