Today I was busy with church until the afternoon. I added 10 new hanja, finished reading the sermon I started yesterday, and then listened to the corresponding audio. Afterwards, I practiced simultaneous translation, and it looks like it is going to be an interesting challenge. There is actually something really terrifying about doing this, much like talking on the phone in Korean used to be for me. I think it’s the fact that I need to perform in real time or risk failure.
But these days talking on the phone in Korean is not scary at all, and I don’t think about it much anymore. The way I got to that point was just to keep doing it every day until I got used to it. I’m banking on the same method to carry me through this scary phase with the simultaneous translation.
Exercise, 10 new hanja, radio listening, part of a sermon, StarCraft matches, sent off a friend at the airport and welcomed home another.
I only got through half of a sermon today because I had a killer headache. I’m hoping to get some good sleep tonight and feel better.
This was a good week for both my exercising habits and my weight gaining goal.
I worked out 4 times this week, and increased my weight on both main exercises. I’m up to 100 kilograms on deadlift, which is two big plates on each side. It’s a psychological victory, even though I used to lift more than this a few years ago. On the other hand I’m probably lifting too much on standing rows, because I can’t do all 5 sets. I resisted lowering the weight, because it would mean a lot more shifting weights around, but now I think I need to do it anyway.
I hurt my hand while deadlifting this week because of my grip, and got some good tips from Max on correcting the problem. In the next workout I corrected my grip and didn’t hurt my hands. My grip is still weak in my right hand (I’m left handed), but at least I’m not tearing my skin now. I may need to add some grip exercises to my off-days before my deadlift can get much higher.
My body weight went down the first week of Ramadan, but now I’m back up to where I was before, 83 kg / 183 lbs. I am bringing more food to the office, and I also am eating more for dinner. I’m feeling good and have eliminated my chronic back pain.
Next week I mainly want to stay consistent with my workouts. I may add grip exercises and look into setting up a pullup bar in the hallway of my apartment. My standing row weight should also go down so I can make sure to get in all my sets.
10 new hanja, radio listening, 1 sermon transcript, StarCraft matches, informal writing, 10 more new hanja. I read some more 홍길동 before sleeping last night as well.
There were only 26 words I wrote down from this sermon. Still getting closer to 10!
Exercise, radio listening, 10 new hanja, StarCraft matches, informal writing, sermon word mining, 10 more new hanja.
I wrote down 39 words from this sermon transcript. I didn’t count how many words I wrote down from any of the previous ones, but I’m sure this is the lowest number so far. Still I want to get it a bit lower before I move on to the next stage of my training.
While deadlifting today my grip loosened and the skin on my right palm took it pretty tough. My grip has always been my weak point on deadlift, but I’m not sure how else to work on it other than to keep deadlifting.
Radio listening, 10 new hanja, StarCraft matches, non-Korean social commitment, 10 more hanja.
I did 20 hanja today, which is over my limit of 10, but I made sure to wait the 9-10 hours for my first group of failed cards to come back to me before doing another set. I still did 10 at a time and spent the same amount of time on each character, so I think it is ok. I mainly did the second set at night to make up for the time I spent not doing Korean at dinner this evening.
I had some time in the afternoon to read through sermons, but I was so sleepy I just vegged and watched the semifinals of one of the StarCraft leagues. It was actually a really good match. Despite StarCraft being so old, the game has changed a lot since I started watching it. The strategies keep getting more and more complex and exciting to watch. It’s truly a great spectator sport, although the learning curve is probably quite high for someone who has never played the game before.
Dawn prayer, exercise, radio listening, 10 new hanja, word-mined an entire sermon, started reading 홍길동 (동화), went to church.
The number of new words in this sermon was much lower than the previous two. In the second half there were only about 3 per page, which is lower than I expected. When I add hanja, they are from words I listed down while studying these sermons in chronological order.
I was about as productive as I could have been today, which was a good feeling. Exercising was a bit rough though because I was so sleepy. If I’m still struggling by the end of the week I may need to adjust my schedule a bit.
The traffic on the way home from church tonight was absolutely ridiculous. I may have to skip the evening service until Ramadan ends, otherwise I won’t get any sleep.
I got a lot done today. I worked through an entire sermon transcript, learning all the words I wasn’t sure of, and I read the rest of 소나기, which was about 90% of the whole book. I also added 10 new hanja, wrote some e-mails in Korean, exercised, went grocery shopping, did laundry, and cleaned my apartment. 
I did almost all of this with timeboxing, which I’m liking more and more. It doesn’t seem to matter how long my timeboxes are, and sometimes I don’t even hear the alarm go off. Once the timer is set I immediately get to work, and the rest takes care of itself.
I’m finding that I’m learning new words much easier than before, so this sermon study should expand my vocabulary quickly. Also, while reading 소나기 I was thinking, once I get up to par with the church Korean, that mining words and expressions from these novels would be a good next step, and also lead me towards the content of the TOPIK exam.
Last night I started reading 소나기 before sleeping.
Today I had church stuff until about 9 in the evening and then added 10 new hanja. I’m planning not to be so busy on Fridays and am going to try to finish up everything by 4pm so that I can study more on my weekend.
I also worked out in the morning for the first time in about two weeks and made an omelet for breakfast!
Radio listening, 10 new hanja, sermon word-mining, finished reading 콩쥐 팥쥐, talking with friends on the phone.
Just about all of my activities today were done with timeboxing. I also timeboxed cleaning my house, which I had been putting off again.
I finished going through my first sermon transcript finally and have a few thoughts to take away from it. It didn’t take me long to get through this in terms of minutes spent, but since it felt like such a tall task I procrastinated a lot. I think now that I’ve finished one the others will go by faster. There aren’t really that many unknown words, and most of them are from the older Korean used in the Bible verses themselves (i.e. stuff I would be reading a translation of anyway, so I don’t need to be able to translate it on the spot). Once I get down low to about 10 new words per sermon I’ll start practicing with the audio.
I also finished reading 콩쥐 팥쥐, which is the Korean version of Cinderella. This also took me a while to finish considering how short it is, but I did it finally! I have a stack of other Korean literature here, and I think I’m going to read 소나기 (Rain Shower) next.
