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{{#babel: en-N | ko-3 }}
| Matt Strum | |
| |
| Basic Information | |
|---|---|
| Gender | Male |
| Age | 24 |
| Blood type | A+ |
| Hometown | Anchorage, AK, USA |
| Current location | Seoul, South Korea |
| Native languages | English |
| Education | |
| University | University of Utah |
| Major | Computer Engineering |
| Studying Korean since | October 2005 |
| Misc | |
| Music | Big Bang, 2NE1, Epik High |
| Movies/drama | Soulmate, Classic |
| Food | Kimbap and Spicy rice cake |
| Hobbies | Programming, photography, ukulele |
| Social | |
| Homepage | Mstrum.com |
| Blog | On My Way To Korea |
| Mstrum | |
| me2day | Mstrum |
| Mstrum | |
| YouTube | mattstrum |
| MySpace | Mstrum |
| Mstrum | |
| Cyworld | Mstrum |
| 화이팅! | |
Korean Projects
How, Where and Why I Learned Korean
I have always loved studying languages. I studied French for one year in middle school, German for two years in high school and one year of Chinese (including traditional characters) in university. I had thought I would settle on Chinese, but fate has something different in store for me. Although I am no longer LDS/Mormon, I did serve two years as a full-time volunteer as a missionary. My church told me to learn Korean and teach the Korean people in Vancouver, Canada. I was so surprised, I had thought they would send me to Taiwan because of the recent language study I had taken. Sadly, I couldn't even tell you where Korea was on a map let alone anything about the culture or people. In October 2005, I entered the missionary training center where I studied Korean (along with missionary stuff) everyday for twelve weeks before being sent out on my own. All of my fellow missionaries (except one) were being sent to Korea, so I knew I would have to study extra hard to master the language without being immersed in it.
Once I arrived in Vancouver in January 2006, I finally got to use the Korean I had learned in the classroom. For two years strait, I was constantly street contacting and meeting with Koreans every day. I was always going through whatever study material I could get my hands on. I kept a notepad on me where I would write about ten words to study every day. I immediately fell in love with everything, the culture, the food, and the people. As missionaries we weren't allowed to listen to music or watch TV or movies so I never got to experience Korean dramas or K-pop the whole time (or even anything English). Missionaries are also not allowed to date or be in relationships, so I kept everything professional. Better than anything I can listen to or watch, I was able to build 정 with the wonderful Koreans I met and that was enough.
When I returned home in October 2007, I immediately started to watch some Korean dramas and listen to music which I absolutely loved. I went back to my university in January 2008 and took some extra Korean classes for personal interest. Ever since then I have been continually watching movies and dramas (I have a HUGE collection now) and listening to new music. I'm currently studying at Seoul National University and will be here for all of 2010. My long-term dream is that I can involve Korea in my job in the future.
Hobbies
- Playing the ukulele
- Taking pictures
- Programming (see Hangeul Assistant)
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To-do List
- Learning Hangeul
- Flesh out the Jamo pages
- Chinese roots
- More roots
- Connect pages to the roots
- Chinese character redirects
- Work on and release another minor version of Hangeul Assistant
- Work on virtual cellphone input method
- Add ALT button method to be able to type english letters
- Learn the MediaWiki extension engine
- Section with songs and vocab lists
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