I arrived in Korea the 17th of January 2007, knowing very little Korean. I had only the basics, hello, goodbye, thank you, yes, no, please, sorry, and some numbers.

After being here for two months, I had learnt the alphabet, and some other phrases but progress was slow. I work in an English hagwon, which is a private school for teaching English. I am not allowed to speak Korean to the students, and they are not allowed to speak it to me. There are three non-Korean teachers in the school, and three Korean teachers, one of whom has excellent English as he lived in Australia from the age of four, until he was twenty two.

As my progress was so slow, I decided to look for a teacher. For the last month I have been learning from the Korean teacher I share most classes with. While she has never taught Korean before, she is an excellent teacher. Now the only thing slowing my progress is my old and feeble mind, coupled with a natural inclination to procrastination.

I take lessons twice a week, for an hour each, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. 은아 prepares small conversations for me, typed in Korean, and I go and learn them. Then we practice them. I was using an excellent book, maybe the best for learning without a teacher, Survival Korean by Steven Revere. Later I bought a much smaller book, with more colloquial language, Making Out In Korean by Peter Constantine. Most of the vocabulary 은아 uses comes from these books.