On Speaking Korean

I'm not really sure what I should title this blog post or exactly what the topic should be. So much has happened over the last couple of days, I don't even know where to begin. My time here has been absolutely amazing so far, even though I have been a little sick. I'm still trying to get a proper sleep schedule down, as the jet lag's been a bit tough, but I think I'm almost over it at this point. I've met a number of awesome people and I'm really excited to meet even more people.

I've come to realize that my ability to speak a little bit of Korean is incredibly important. Even though I don't fully understand what people are saying, I'm able to at the very least get my point across. Also, the fact that I can read Hangul is very helpful, as I can at least sound out some of the stuff I see. So I can read any English words that are written in Korean, which makes it a lot easier to order food.

Originally, I was afraid that if I came to Korea, people would try to speak English with me. This has really been very far from my actual experiences. I do speak a fair bit of English, mainly with my co-workers and other foreigners, but all of my interactions outside of that have been predominately in Korean. I order all my food in Korean, I get directions in Korean, and I speak Korean with most of the Korean people I meet. And while that can be pretty daunting and challenging at times, I'm finding it much better than just defaulting to English. I can actually feel myself getting more and more familiar with Korean, and find it's almost natural sometimes to be speaking Korean.

I think it would be possible to survive without knowing any of the language, but it's definitely something I didn't want to do when I came to Korea. Maybe it's just the area I live in, maybe it's just the way that when I enter a store I speak Korean, or maybe it's something completely different, but either way, I'm very glad that most people speak Korean with me.