"Life is a succession of unpredictable actions. You don't realize what you've lost until you can't find it anymore... »
Gwenelia
I can hardly get out of the flames of my nightmare. I'm hot and I'm sweating... I wish I could finally forget the heat, but it's always here with me.
After a long hot shower, during which water is not the only liquid that slides on my cheeks, I prepare myself to face this day. With my Disney playlist in the background, I sit on my couch and wait for time to pass... It's 5:43 AM, so at least today, I'm sure I will not late for school... I turn on my reader and continue my reading of D.I.M.I.L.Y Volume 1. My headphones and my reader are my most precious possessions, they help me to remain inked in reality; If I lose them, I lose everything.
At 8:50 a.m., I'm already in the middle of the classroom for my first Korean class of the year. I am studying AFL (Applied Foreign Languages). I've always loved languages. My parents wanted to preserve the heritage of their country, the Congo that they left to study university in France. After their studies, they did not want to leave this country which had become their adopted home so they stayed and built their lives here. At home we spoke three languages: French, Kikongo, one of Congo's national languages, and lari, the language spoken in my parents' ethnicity. At the age of 10, I was already trilingual. For my university course I chose to specialize in English, Spanish and Korean. I fell in love with English and Spanish as soon as I entered middle school. As for Korean, my desire to learn this language comes mainly from my passion for K-Dramas that I started watching around the age of fourteen.
Students arrive one by one and settle into the classroom. At 9:00 a.m., a rather old man, he looks like he is in his fifties, enters the room and the class begins. Mr. Lee tells us that the class will start with a short personal presentation. There are only about fifteen of us in the classroom so it shouldn't be that hard. I have never been comfortable speaking but after two years of language studies, I have made enormous progress, I can now express myself without shaking all over.
Half of the students have already shown up when a red tornado walks through the door of the room. She apologizes to Mr. Lee and glances into the room before deciding to sit in the spare chair next to me. It is when she gets closer that I recognize her: she is the girl from the amphitheater.
- Hello. She wispers.
I answer "Hi", but the conversation ends there because it is now, my turn to introduce myself.
- Hello. My name is Ana, I am 20 years old. This is my first year here so I'm going to work hard, please take care of me.
When my presentation was over, I sit back down while the red haired girl stands up to introduce herself. Listening to her presentation, I discover that her name is Tamara, that she is 22 years old and that she has been fluent in Korean all her life: she lived in Korea during the first ten years of her life. She concludes her presentation by wishing us enough strength to bear with her throughout this year.
When the presentations are over, Mr. Lee asks us to form groups of four for the rest of the class:
- "At the end of the class each of you must be able to tell me the lives of your three partners," he explains.
Tamara looks around and asks:
- Are you guys coming?
Seconds later, two people appear and settle down next to her.
- "Here's our group of four!" she says as if it were obvious for us to be together. "Ana, this is Tim and Eric, we've known each other for two years now, since the beginning of the license. Tim, Eric, this is Ana, she's the new student. »
This situation makes me uncomfortable. However, when I dip my dark brown eyes into Tamara's green eyes, I understand that she only wants to help me fit in more easily. I don't know why she's doing that, but I'm grateful, so I say "Hi" to the boys. They tell me in their low voices that they are happy to meet me.
Korean expression: « 잘 부탁드립니다(jal butagdeulibnida) »