it's happening

I went for dinner tonight with a Korean friend. Her communicative English skills are quite good - however, she and I still work to communicate in either English or Korean. And for the first time, it was a more balanced communication -- I was able to understand Korean words that she was using (ie. jja-da/salty) and provide her with the English counterpart! This is the first time that (without a dictionary) I've gone out with a Korean friend and we've _both_ had our notebooks out, writing down vocab and structure stuff. Usually it's just me with the notebook -- or it's me and my Korean friend and a dictionary, where we will both learn a new word (ie. cinnamon/kye-pi). I cannot tell you how fantastic this feels, like all those hours I've spent studying and trying to learn this language are finally starting to bear fruit. I've been feeling on the cusp for a while now, vocab retention has been easier, reading a little more fluent. Grammar is making sense (a bit) and I can identify words and sometimes entire sentences in Korean spoken at native-speaker speed. If I can keep going on this roll, keep my confidence up, then soon (maybe) I will actually be able to have a meaningful conversation in Korean. Is this how babies feel when they move from the two-word phase to sentences?

Also of note - I wrote an entire email in Korean the other day! And it was grammatically correct! Woot! Next big step, I think, is to actually be able to read a (children's) book. Will let you know when that happens. I'm really proud of myself for this whole thing and I'm noticing too that because they know I am learning Korean, my teachers are MUCH more comfortable speaking with me in English.

Side effect: I make high-larious mistakes. I was trying to say: "You're kidding me!" and ended up saying "Don't eat the bread!" (there was no bread in sight) Also, "You must be cold, you have goosebumps." and I said " You are cold, you disgust me." Baby steps, baby steps.