Hello!
Nice to meet you!
It's my first time greeting to you only with my voice like this.
Well, you might wonder what this is about.
Nothing else, I'm trying to newly start a Korean podcast from today.
Well, I think you might wonder why I start this.
To tell this story,
I think I need to tell you a little bit about what I'm recently doing.
As some of you know, I'm now half a student and half a teacher in the UK.
Let me first tell you about me as a student,
I am currently studying applied linguistics at a graduate school related to education.
I didn't study this field before, and it's actually my first time studying abroad,
so I think being as a graduate student is not that easy for me.
Still, I am doing what I really wanted to learn, so I find it interesting to study.
At the same time, I'm teaching Korean as a Korean teacher.
I teach a wide variety of students from very young children to those in their 50s.
When teaching, students often ask me to recommend things to read or listen in Korean other than lesson materials.
But it was not that easy to find those materials than I thought.
So I just thought 'then I should make it, I should try it', so I started.
In this podcast, I won't teach vocabulary, grammar, or expressions, but just naturally talk about everyday life.
Besides, other than educational purpose,
at the same time, I also hope that it would be a place where I can talk to my family and friends in Korea and tell them how I'm doing.
I'm thinking of recording and uploading around once a week,
and when I feel a little more comfortable, I'd like to invite other people to record in a conversational format.
Anyway, uh, I happened to start something new like this.
If you have anything you'd like to tell me, please feel free to do so.
I'll be happy with a mail or comment or personal way.
Whatever it might be, it will be very helpful and really grateful.
I'm recording this on Monday, November 9, 2020.
I was thinking about what to talk about for the first time,
and I'm going to talk a bit about covid which is so important to all of us in this era.
In the UK where I am currently living, the lockdown has been imposed nationwide.(*only in England!)
All of the places are closed except for essential places such as supermarkets, hospitals, and schools.
Recently the number of confirmed cases has grown so rapidly
that it has been decided to re-impose this lockdown for a month.
Now it's been about 5 days since then.
Today I visited the BBC news website to see how the number of confirmed cases changed after lockdown.
When I checked now, yesterday, about 20,000 cases, (to be specific,) 20,572 cases increased in a day.
Actually, this is something you can't really imagine in Korea, isn't it?
At the beginning of this year,
the lockdown situation, the number of confirmed cases and the death toll was a bit scary for me,
but the situation in European countries, including the UK makes me feel a little dull about the number.
I hope this lockdown would help this situation to become alright early next year.
And today I saw a piece of vaccine news.
When a vaccine gets developed, things will get better, right ?
I hope that things get better soon.
I think this covid is really affecting our lives.
In my case, I'm actually doing a part-time master's degree,
so I have to go to London at least once a week to take classes.
At first, I was told that only the first term classes would be online.
But not so long ago, I was informed that it was decided that all of the classes for this year would be online.
So it means, during this year, I can’t meet all of my professors and friends.
In fact, as the UK Masters is a one-year course,
I may not be able to meet them at all after the course is over.
It's such a shame.
I have teammates working on group assignments.
We only did online meetings, but I got along a lot for weeks.
However, most of these friends are in their own country now,
and they are not planning to come to the UK.
Will there ever be a chance to meet them in person?
Are there any opportunities?
It makes me sad when I think about it.
And even on the campus, you may meet other people as you come and go,
but this year is a little disappointing because there is no such thing.
I think there would be many other people like me.
And the other thing I feel bad about is that I couldn't travel.
Before starting graduate school in September, I really wanted to travel to nearby European countries.
Actually, it seems that quite many people were travelling in the UK around July and August.
So I really thought a lot about whether I would travel or not.
But if I ever get sick, I thought I would really regret it.
Actually, it's a bit scary.
So this year, I decided to take a break from travelling.
Instead, this year, I've been looking for things to do in or near my home.
I wasn't really good at cooking before, but as I tried a lot of cooking, it improved quite a lot.
I started a new sport like tennis.
Also, I enjoyed seeing the cows living near home,
fed ducks, fed swans, took a walk and
enjoyed my neighbourhood leisurely.
Of course, it is sad that I couldn't travel, but I feel like I tried to find my own pleasure instead.
Anyway, I really like to talk, so I think I've already been talking for about 10 minutes.
oh it seems to be over 10 min...
If it gets longer, it would be too difficult to edit later, so it's time to wrap up.
Those who are listening to my story,
are you doing well in this covid time?
Are you staying in good health?
The days are getting shorter and the weather is getting colder.
I hope you stay healthy both physically and mentally.
And just in case, if people around me listen to this,
I hope you don't make fun of it, saying 'what's this?',
and I hope you give me good feedback instead.
Then see you again next time.
Thank you for listening.
Goodbye.