Repotted but in need of fertilizer

I worked hard this weekend at Korean, filled with new resolve to learn as much as I can in the time I have left here, but in class today, I felt like a wilted lettuce leaf all over again. I was okay as long as we stuck to the material in the text that I'd previewed, but the teacher gave us a handout that was just incomprehensible because it incorporated vocabulary that wasn't in the book.

This may be whiny, but I'm really unused to putting in the effort and still feeling like a dunce during class. Undoubtedly, I'm learning a lot -- being forced to put in more effort will have that effect -- but it sucks to feel like the stupidest person in the class.

It was gratifying, though, to sit with my dad and his two friends at dinner tonight and be able to recognize vocabulary that I'd just learned that day. I think I understood some 80 percent or so of the conversation, which I tried to follow more than usual, mindful of my new resolution. Quite fruitful, actually, since I learned that my brother was born after my parents' wedding. I mean, they were legally married and all before he was born, but they delayed having the ceremony for some time.

The reason requires a little explaining: my dad was serving his mandatory 2.5 years in the army then, and was poor, as all soldiers doing their service are. In Korea, your office will give you a tidy sum of money when you get married, and your coworkers all come and give you more money. So it's definitely worth it to wait until you get into a nice job at a nice office before getting hitched. So they waited for my dad to finish his army service, and while they waited, my brother was born. So now, in all the pictures I've seen of my parents in their traditional wedding outfits, I now imagine my brother, one year old, off to the side, being held by one of my grandmothers.

The things you learn when your dad's friends are sitting around drinking a bottle of 17-year-old Ballantine's. Heh.