General Language Studies Update

          I wanted to update you guys on my language studies. This week I did something different. I decided not to take classes at all and focus on studying what I already took in my classes for Korean and Chinese. I also wanted to work a little more on my Udemy classes and my books. 

          To help me do that I first used my journal but realized that I can’t focus and look ahead so I found something that works along side my journal. This tool helps me plan ahead and see what I have to do one week ahead and I can add the tasks to my journal daily. 

As you can see I have this page that has week days and I set it up every Sunday with my mini tasks for my study goals. I was using the calendars previously but the calendars didn’t give me enough space to write what I want. 

KOREAN:

This week I am focusing on these things in Korean:

1. I wanted to look over the subjects I took with my Korean teachers.

2. I wanted to finish specific lessons on Talk to Me in Korean, part of my mini goals for the month.

3. I wanted to finish Korean from Zero 1 this month.

4. I wanted to finish the Vocabulary Building Course, or at least move forward through it. 

5. I want to finish 비타민 한국어 1 

CHINESE:

This week I wanted to focus on these things in Chinese:

1. I wanted to finish at least 2 Udemy courses.

2. Review my iTalki Chinese Lessons and get in more practice.

3. Get familiar with Hanja, with respect to the words learned in the iTalki classes.

Breaking things into chunks really helped me to get things done and see what I’ve been neglecting or what is sucking up my time. 

          My goal now is to take TOPIK I level 2 in Korean at least and HSK 2 at least in Chinese at the end of next year. 

Thoughts on my journal (Part 2)

          I was going to give you a break from my journalling madness this week but...oh well! I continued thinking over the structure of my journal moving forward and I decided that I liked the idea of a goal refresh every three months. However, not all the questions were meaningful to me so here is what I came up with: 

I simplified the questions and streamlined them and kept the Word For the Next Three Months portion.

          Next I looked at the upfront work that you have to do at the beginning of each year. And again lots of things just did not resonate with me and needed to be removed or streamlined so this is what my upfront work is going to look like:

Next I looked at the section where you develop an action plan for your goals and this is what I came up with:

And that is it. My thoughts on the new setup are done. I will try the monthly setup and see what works what needs to be changed and what needs to be dropped and when the time comes I will do the same for the yearly setup. I’m also in the mood to add color and stuff but that could change 😂  

Thoughts on my journal (Part 1)

          I'm sure you all know by now how much I like the Power-Sheets Journal and how it makes me think, but now that I have tried it for 7 months the verdict is in. While I love the current journal and liked working in it but I've also come to see its limitations for me. Some of the questions posed in the summaries of each month and a few of the questions in the 3 month check in don't work for me. I've been filling them in mainly because I hate leaving them empty. I've come to realize that the "Tending Sheet" is basically a big tracker (Daily, Weekly and Monthly), and I've got a perfectly good one in my journal. I also have come to hate the fact that I have two journals. I prefer just using one. Yep, I know in the beginning of the year I wanted many but now I realized that is not the kind of person I am. So starting next month I'm going to try my own system. I'm going to take what I liked from the Power-Sheets and add my own spin on it in my journal. 

I've counted boxes and this helps me know how to size my two page calendar.

This is what my monthly calendar will look like. I've counted boxes and know exactly where the lines should go. Our week starts on a Sunday so that is how I'm going to start my calendar.

This page is where I will break down my main goals into small mini steps and also prioritize my goals.

This is my "Tending Sheet" AKA Tracker page.

This is my month in review page at the end of the month. I love it in the Power Sheets, but I hate the questions on it so I changed that.

I'm keeping the "Ideas for Blog and Books Read" page, and next I'm going to think about how to structure my 3 month check in pages and the work that needs to be done up front each year... The second part to this might not come next week but it will come :-)

Happy Birthday to the Best Family in the World

Today is our family’s 6th birthday. And despite a limited small minded few we are the best fandom(family) in the world. 

꧁Happy Birthday EXO-Ls꧂

And just to show how much our boys love us we got messages from most of them. 

Even though he is serving his time in the military our leadernim still sent us a beautiful message.



I swear we stand dorks, but they are our dorks and we love them. 


I was so happy to hear from Chen. I was so worried that we wouldn’t hear from him today. He still got some hateful messages on his post but the majority were positive. EXOLACE-Cafe are not going to ruin this day for us.

Our healing Unicorn and the China sheep didn’t forget us today. But then we knew he wouldn’t.

I’m so looking forward to his solo debut, our cute bear!

I love that we got two messages from Chanyeol. We love him double too. 

Chanyeol’s message on Instagram

This baby is cuter than cute...what?! He is taller than me? You think I care? He is still the baby!

Xuimin and DO are in the military too but unlike Suho who is doing community service because of his eye sight, they are in actual camps so I was not expecting to hear from them.

Monthly Update August

          Last month I talked about wanting to journal more because I lost track of time and also memories. So July with the exception of a couple of days I kept up my bullet journalling and journaled a little. This month I’m hoping to do more journalling wise.

          My trackers in my journal is the part I kept up with the most and it helped me keep on track. 

This month I added the same exact tracker. 

Yeah, I love that little sticker 🤣 

I decided to go with a simple theme for the title page. 

The line drawings are actually stamps. I was going to color them but I like the whole black and white theme.

          My Powersheet notebook is the one where I really did a lot of work as usual. I Love the tending sheet page and the calendar was a lot of help. I also added the small goals that I finished during the month and it has been motivating!

I’ve also loved the separate calendars for tasks divided by topic so I’ve used that again this month. 

As usual I’ve worked on my month in review. 

I also put together my tending sheet and calendar for this month and made specific goals for this month. 

I really am enjoying my Power Sheet journal. I’m about 95% sure I will be getting one for next year.

Mpop Lay’s full Album LIT

          In a previous post, I talked a little about Lay’s album LIT, but that was only about the first part of the album. Well now the full album has been released and if the first part was “lit” this second part is fire!

LIT:

Part One:

1. Lit

2. Jade

3. Eagle

4. H2O

5. Fly

6. Soul

*see my previous post above

Part Two:

7. Changsha

8. Mama

9. Boom

10. Call My Name

11. Late Night

12. Wish

This part is more western than the first part and is a whole mood. You can really hear just how beautiful Lay’s voice is and how pure. I honestly can’t tell you which of these songs is my favorite because each one has its own mood and sound and each is unique. I love the way he mixes English lyrics with Chinese lyrics in this part. 

It seems like the first part of the album was about mixing Chinese music with western music with mostly Chinese music but in this part, it is western sounds with English and Chinese lyrics and it works so well. How can I explain it....you just have to go take a listen to the creative musical genius that our healing unicorn has turned out to be!

Before I go let me leave you with this song from Part Two:

BOOM

WISH

CALL MY NAME

Honestly, I could probably put the whole album here but please go take a listen to his beautiful voice and judge for yourself. 

Chinese Language Study

          So I wanted to update you on my Chinese language studies. After careful consideration, I have decided to also get a Chinese teacher alongside my Udemy classes, if you don’t know what I am talking about please check my previous post about My Language Study Plans, and so far I have taken 3 classes with the teacher. 

          Each of these classes included a pinyin portion and then a dialogue portion. In case you don’t know what pinyin is it is the system used to teach you how to speak the characters in Chinese. Each syllable is made up of an initial (a consonant) and a final (vowels) and a tone. Tones, if read wrong can turn a harmless word into a curse 😬. So a Chinese pinyin syllable would look like this mā while its character would look like this 妈 in simplified Chinese.

  Where the dialogue portion is concerned, so far I can greet you, tell you my name, where I am from, what my occupation is, what my hobby is and what my dream is and why. 

     I’ve also started learning to write some Chinese characters too. 

 Not exactly pretty but definitely a challenge I loved doing. 

         So far I’m enjoying my classes with my teacher and he works well with me. I found him on Preply.com which is also where I found my Korean teacher. I was lucky with both.