New Teacher

Andrew left last week, and was replaced the next day by a new full-time teacher named Bettina. Great news for me, as Andrew was part time, and that meant I was doing 10-11 hour days in August. Now I work less hours. Also, Bettina seems like a great teacher (she's been teaching children in Korea for one year already) and I can probably learn a lot from her.

I can finally read Korean! (although very slowly).

Here's how I would write Tom in Korean (Hangul): 텀

The "터" makes the "Taw" sound, and the "ㅁ" on the bottom makes the "m" sound. Pretty simple, eh? Everything in hangul always makes the same sound (no silent "e" or "ph" "th" etc. sounds that make English so difficult), so it is easy to learn how to read and write. Although I can read, it is still mostly gibberish to me.

On Saturday, my Korean tutor, Yunghe, took me to see Insadong - the old city. There is a statue of King Sejong, who is credited with inventing the written language of Korea.