deralte | life and learning

Still alive. Plan to finish all my phd apps by next week at the latest. So it goes.

I had the first part of my Korean oral exam on Monday. We were given a list of questions we had to answer when asked us by one of the assistant teachers. One of my Korean friends quizzed me the week before and I discovered I had no idea what he was saying half the time. Going over the questions, I knew how to answer each one, so the real problem was listening comprehension. I needed a way to practice that without having to listen over and over to the boring book conversations since that hadn't helped before. So, in order to study for my exam, I marathoned the Korean drama, My Name is Kim Sam Soon on Sunday. I'd repeat any phrases I knew, or pause it and go back when the show used a word I knew in a sentence. Much to my shock, it worked. I went from having to listen to a question several times in my homework, to having to listen 1 or 2 times to understand. And the oral exam went well too. I only had to ask what one word meant and was able to confidently answer the rest of the questions.

Internship continues to be amazing. Friday was a symposium on Kublai Khan and I pretty much had the day off to attend all the lectures, most of which were on the boring side, but the last one about identifying a Manichean painting of Jesus was fascinating. Today, we got a tour of the East Asian Art conservation (which looks exactly like the apartment of my dreams, situated in the middle of the Met *L*) and a demonstration of how to mount a painting in Japanese style. We also got a ride in the oldest elevator in the museum (with cast iron doors, wooden floors and one of those levers to make it stop and go). I'm also making a lot of friends with most of the interns. I still hate the commute, but I think my body is getting used to it considering how I keep waking up *before* my 6:30am alarm.

Anyway, I have more work to do. Ja ne!