Language Partners & Cracker Kisses: About Time (2018) Ep 1-3

 I'm going to write a short blog post today because I'm busy. Good news though: I'm busy with Korean language stuff. 

Language Exchange

I sent one message in Korean the other day, but that guy never got back to me. So today, I jumped in and sent one person a message. His name is Jong Hyun, and he hasn't responded.

I chose him because he was the first I saw around my age. I thought maybe that would make things easier, since I know age is a big deal in Korean culture.

While I was sending the message though, another guy sent me a message. We've been talking off and on all evening. His name is Woong. I'll have to ask for that in Hangul. He is also my age (1 year older). He's handsome too, not that it matters. And his English is much better than my Korean, which is helpful.

I also started talking to a younger guy named David (29). He is super into music and speaks both English and French really well. Maybe I'll brush up on my French too? It has been a long time! Anyway, when I reached out to him, I told him (in Korean) "Hello! I like music too" and followed it with asking what kind of music he likes in English.

His response? "Wow. You can speak Korean?"

I was pretty thrilled that it came off with no issues. So far, the corrections have been spelling only. I feel that's a good sign.

I doubt that these guys will end up being like... my long-term language partners. But you never know. Woong seems particularly nice and helpful... and comfortable talking to me.

About Time (2018)

I started watching this last night. It hooked me within 30 minutes and has been nice so far. I love the whole concept, which is why I chose it. Sort of a dark concept. She knows when everyone will die, to the second... herself included. And she knows she has only a few months left to live.

Then she meets this rich jerk and find that the clock stops when she's with him. And when they touch, it actually reverses!

Above is her remaining time before death, and this is the first time the audience sees the seconds increasing. Very cute. I'm also curious about the meaning or symbolism behind the petal he keeps seeing in the air when he's with her:

That is a shot with the petal in focus over his head. Just... they're clearly going for something with it. I just don't know what it is yet.

There are some other lovely shots and camera work too though. The underwater scenes were lovely. They were much much darker than most scuba scenes I've seen in movies and shows. I should have taken more shots that just this one:

Anyway, this is my first Lee Sang-Yoon project, but I understand that he is a big deal actor. I can see why. Just in the first two episodes, his presence and acting skills are clear. I'm sure there is more depth, but I can already tell he has it.

It's also nice to be watching a handsome star around my age. Most have been 25-32 or so. Not creepy young but young. Lee seems like a grown up. I mean, really...

I'm not prone to creeper ab shots and stuff like that. But I mean, that is a buff 39 year old! His skin even glows.

New Favorite Kdrama Scene

This has to be my current favorite scene. It's from About Time (2018), obviously. The Choi Mika wants to touch Do-Ha's hand. He sees it inching closer to his and says, "Don't. You'll regret it." She does it any way, and his reaction is super amusing.

She grabs a cracker and puts it in her mouth. He leans in and stares until she looks at him. And he...

For real, Do-Ha leans over and eats half her cracker... right out of her mouth. It was shown from a bunch of angles just like kiss shots. And I was left immediately thinking... wtf was that?!

Her face looked as though she was thinking the exact same thing, which cracked me up. It looks like she's thinking, "Wtf was that, man? Why? What?"

And his expression is perfect. Like, "Yeah, Bitch. That just happened. What." Man, I laughed so hard. I was both confused as to why this happened but also just died at the looks on their faces.

His reason? "I warned you. Touching a man who is having thoughts in a dark theater... it's dangerous behavior." Like, yeah... okay. But on some level, I don't care why it happened. I'm just glad it did. Definitely made me smile.

Today & Tomorrow

Today, I finished the conjugations for irregular verbs and practiced some. I'm super comfortable with all of those now. I was conjugating sentences with my Korean language partners without issue too... and doing it all correctly, apparently. 

Improvements! I'm still so excited to have talked to them in Korean. We talked more in English, but if I knew the words in Korean, I responded in Korean.

Maybe they will want to talk to me more if we focus more on English anyway. For now though, just to better understand, we need more English.

Tomorrow, I'm going to talk to some more people. Maybe leave some audio messages on Tandem too. See how my pronunciation is (probably awful). 

I'll also finish the vocab for the next lesson, maybe do the dictation lesson for the last lesson... maybe start the next lesson too. We will see. I'm mostly excited to keep talking to Woong. He seems nice.

파이팅!