had a good 2-hour talk with my very first student from the tuition centre today. he’d just returned from a 2-week holiday in korea and apparently had been thinking about his future during those 2 weeks.
so basically during those 2 hours, he spoke completely in korean while i answered in a mixture of korean and english. towards the end of our conversation, he told me that he had wanted to seek the opinion of his other teacher as well (he had another tuition class before mine) but the teacher was singaporean and didn’t speak any korean, and he felt that he couldn’t express himself articulately enough in english to have a proper discussion.
it’s times like this that i am really glad that i know a third language. i know how helpless it can sometimes feel when you are looking for advice or direction and there’s no one you can turn to because you don’t speak the language well enough. somehow, i always feel that my ‘mission’ in sg is to help as many koreans as possible. kind of like it’s payback time, for all the help i was rendered during my 2 years in korea.
looking back i still don’t know why i fell in love with korean (then again, love has no reason, does it?) but if it means that i get to help others in my own little way, i guess that’s good enough for me.
besides, knowing korean has opened up many doors, and led me to meet many wonderful people.
i love teaching korean kids. the younger ones may be a mischievous bunch, but they’re really good kids at heart, and the older ones seem to appreciate the fact that i know korean, so we form a bond pretty quickly.
i hope my student will get into the US university of his choice. i’m sure life will work out for the best anyway, it always does.