My name is Eun Lee. In June 2009, I graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Music Education. I moved to Korea in late September to teach English and to study Korean folk music. This weekly blog is meant to share the experiences and insights I will gain during my time abroad.
A question I get a lot from my friends back in the states is, “How’s the food?” I could probably devote a separate blog just for all the new food I’m experiencing in Korea, but instead, I’ll introduce you guys to some of my favorite foods one entry at a time.
So first, I’d like to show you my new favorite breakfast food:
Not particularly appetizing, right? Well, these tuber-ish looking things are 고구마/Gogooma, or Korean sweet potatoes, and this is what they look like uncooked. Typically, gogoomas are steamed, sliced and deep fried, or baked.
This is a batch of gogoomas, baking for breakfast:
And this is what they look like, fresh from the oven:
Do you see that brown syrup-y looking stuff? That’s caramelized sugar that comes out of the gogooma as it bakes. Meaning, that is pure deliciousness. Mm.
Like all produce, there are a number of gogooma varieties. The ones I know of are: “Chestnut” gogooma, which tastes a lot like chestnuts; “Water” gogooma, which is very moist; and the above mentioned gogooma, which is “Squash” gogooma. This is considered the sweetest variety, and gets its name from that golden yellow color it gets after being cooked.
While there is a list of American foods that I miss (BURGERS!), I am really enjoying and exploring Korean cuisine, and will make sure to show you guys the highlights of my food-related adventures.
I’m still tweaking a few things, but I wanted to know what you guys thought of the new layout for the blog. Any thoughts or suggestions? Anyone like the old way better? Let me know by leaving a comment or shoot me an email.
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Well, to be perfectly frank with you all, I was in a funk for a couple of weeks. I was growing depressed at my poor language skills, lack of friends, and seemingly slow progress at drumming.
But I realized I needed to take my own teacherly advice. In class last week, I sat in front of a group of students who, petrified at making mistakes in speaking English, weren’t speaking any English at all. Finally, I drew this on the blackboard:
My students laughed, and loosened up some. In order to understand this teaching moment, 실수 is best romanized as “Shilshoo,” and it means “Mistake.” I told my students that mistakes were not only okay, but at this point in their study, they were inevitable. “What is most important when you’re beginning to learn a new language is not speaking correctly, but speaking comfortably. Once we have you guys speaking more, then we can start to fix some things.”
Looking back on this class, I realized that I too needed to be okay with making mistakes. As a foreigner here, I am bound to make a great many of them (and a great many more), and I shouldn’t take it so hard when I do.
So, in order to lighten up, and hopefully get a few chuckles out of you guys, I’ve decided to share some of my funnier mistakes so that we can all laugh at me them together.
Shilsoo #1: Booby parties:
While walking around Hongik University with my friend, I passed an ad that basically looked like this:
부비파티 would best be romanized as “Booby Party.” So, I had to ask. “Is that a party where… girls show their breasts?” My friend laughed and said, “No, ‘booby’ is slang for a kind of dancing where people rub against each another. If it’s a ‘booby’ party, it’s a party advertising that kind of dancing.” I laughed, and then explained that in America, that sort of dancing is called “grinding.” Then we both laughed at our respective culture’s way of describing unsavory teenage dancing, and I saved myself from future moments of evoking Janet Jackson circa the 2004 Super Bowl.
Shilsoo #2: Mean People My parents and I visited one of their publishers a few weeks ago. We had tea with a group of ladies who worked there, and it was the first time I had met them. After having worked with my parents for years, they were very excited to finally meet me. During a lull in the conversation, one of them turned to me and told me I was a “Mean.” Not knowing what this word meant, I demurely responded that my Korean wasn’t very good, and I didn’t know what a “Mean” was.
A brief moment of chaos ensued. The woman who called me a “Mean” started gesticulating wildly and saying synonyms such as “Pretty!” “Good looking!” in Korean, while the woman next to her said, “Byoo-tee-full. Bee-YOO-tee-full.” My mother, sitting next to me, was doing her best to hold in her laughter, and I sat petrified in the center of this hurricane of explanations.
“Mean,” or 미인, is “One who is beautiful.” This poor woman was trying to pay me a high compliment, and the most I could do was tell her I didn’t understand what she was saying. At least now, I’m able to reply more graciously if I am called a “mean” again.
Shilsoo #3: Tea-Blood-Water When I was waiting for my bus to return to Sokcho last weekend, I spied a vending machine across the way with a sign that read as such:
Reading it from left to right, I couldn’t understand what the top word (Nok-Kuh-Chan) was supposed to mean. The bottom word seemed to read as “Cha-Pee-Mool,” which could be translated as “Tea-Blood Water.” Curious as to what kind of beverage would have such a name, I asked my brother’s girlfriend what “Cha-pee-mool” was. She stared at the sign, puzzled for a few minutes, before she suddenly started laughing and clapped her hands together. She then rubbed my face a whole lot, and told me how cute I was. “You’re not supposed to read it from left to right,” she said, pointing to the sign. “You’re supposed to read it up and down, and then left to right!”
She then reread the sign to me. So instead of Nok-Kuh-Chan and Cha-Pee-Mool, it is supposed to be Nok-Cha (which is Green Tea), Kuh-Pee (Which is Coffee), and Chan-Mool (which is cold water).
The LEFT is the WRONG way to read it, and the RIGHT is the RIGHT way
I’m sure this will be one of many posts detailing the errors I make here, so for your convenience, all such entries will be tagged with “Shilsoo!,” along with any other appropriate categories.
To my friends who are abroad or have been abroad; what “shilsoos” or mistakes have you made in your respective foreign cultures? Feel free to share in the comments below.
I’m working on a number of posts, but none seemed finish enough for me to publish, so while I tweak those, feel free to take a look at some of the pictures I’ve taken in Korea:
Click on the photo above to see pictures from our trip to the Korean Botanical Garden
After getting some feedback from a friend, I decided to retract the previous post, in order to better organize my explanation of addressing people in Korea. I really do marvel at the ease with which Koreans navigate this social system, and I hope to make it a little bit more clear to you all with some further editing.
Not wanting to cheat you of your weekly blog entry, I wanted to introduce you to this handsome fellow:
This is a jang-seung/장승. Jang-seungs used to be posted at the entrances of villages to scare off bad ghosts. Villagers would also visit their village jang-seungs and ask for relief from problems; anything from healing a sick member of the family, to finding a kind bride for a son. My mom always points out that even though they’re supposed to have a frightening appearance, they always somehow resembled the people who lived in the village they were protecting.
My mom wrote and illustrated a children’s book about jang-seungs, which you can see a few photos from by clicking on the picture below:
While our jang-seungs are here warding ghosts off in the Korean country-side, I’m sure everyone back in the states is getting ready for all the little ghosts who’ll be trick-or-treating. Happy Halloween to those who celebrate it, and see you all next week!
The start of our laundry. That heaving sound you hear after the musical tones is the machine weighing the amount of laundry that is inside, so it sets whether or not it is a small, medium, or large load. A “smart machine,” as my mom puts it.
Now, (for classical music nerds) this is where the awesome is:
That is how our laundry announces that it is finished.
(For those of you who don’t know the tune, see the all-star performance of the piece below):
Today marks my first full month of living in Korea, and I thought it was about time to start writing about some of the differences I’ve noticed between life in Korea and live in the U.S.
Let’s start with where I live, and what that’s like:
Apartments/아파트 I live in the Sam Hwan/삼환 apartments, in Sokcho. These kinds of apartment complexes are very common in Korea; some even exist in the country side, where they are the only buildings over one-story tall for miles around.
A common feature of these kinds of apartments is an enclosed balcony, or what Koreans call a veranda/배란다 (pronounced “beh-lan-da”).
Most Korean homes do not use a dryer, because of high electricity costs, and instead, they dry their clothes in the veranda.
A view of the inside of our veranda
Verandas also serve as a place for storage, or where people do miscellaneous housework.
Those orange fruits hanging from the railing are drying persimmons
Now, let’s talk garbage:
Korean has a national recycling program. All people are required to separate food garbage and waste from paper, plastic, and glass recyclables. The food garbage is purportedly used to feed livestock (whether or not this is true, my mom is highly skeptical).
This is the garbage drop-off for my apartment building. In the picture above, from left to right you have food garbage; the big box in the center is for paper recycling; the plastic bags in front of it are waste; and the white bags to the far right are plastic and glass recyclables.
Whether or not the food garbage is actually used to feed livestock I can’t say for certain, but sorting garbage on a daily basis does make you consider how much garbage your household produces.
Onto the bathroom!
This is a picture of my relative’s bathroom. Notice anything missing? Most Korean bathrooms don’t use a shower curtain; I would bet good money our apartment is the only one in Sokcho that does. My theory is: back in the day when Korean bathrooms were more multi-purpose, they basically had a shower head, a toilet, a faucet, and a drain (no sink or tub); housewives often washed their family’s laundry by hand in the bathroom as well. While some Western things gradually become incorporated (namely, a tub and a sink), the shower curtain somehow didn’t make it over.
And see how the toilet seat has all those buttons? I don’t know how common these are in the states, but in Korea, and also Japan, many people enjoy customizing their toilets. By pressing certain buttons, you’re able to activate a seat warmer; a little fountain of water to wash your, how shall we say, bits; and other such luxuries. Every time I sit down on my aunt’s toilet, there’s always some strange whirring sound and the seat starts to heat up, but I try not to sit on it long enough to see what’s going on behind me.
Lastly, bathroom slippers. Pretty much every bathroom in Korea has rubber or plastic slippers for you to wear so you don’t get your feet wet.
Slippers aren’t just for the bathroom, either:
As with many other Asian countries, it is custom for Koreans to take their shoes off at the threshold of a home, and even at many restaurants and businesses. Most homes and businesses also provide slippers for guests to wears.
Other domestic noticeables: When you move from apartment to apartment, you take your appliances with you. This includes: your fridge, oven (most kitchens do not have one installed), stovetop, washing machine, and dish washer.
In older apartments, you have to turn on the gas in order to use your stovetop. The same is with your hot water.
Many apartments don’t use keys, but instead use an electronic lock where you press a numerical code in order to unlock your front door.
Lastly, Korean appliances are NOISY. Here are some video clips:
Our front door:
Our rice cooker:
Our home phone (don’t even get me started on cell phones):
And the elevator:
As I come across more differences that strike me, what I’ve decided to call “noticeables,” I’ll make sure to tag them as such.
For anyone else who’s had experiences abroad; I’d love to hear if there are any particular domestic noticeables from your respective locations. Feel free to share them in the comments!
PS: The washing machine is quite possibly the best sounding appliance of all, but I still need to edit that footage. String players and classical music aficianados, make sure to check back here tomorrow!
At the suggestion of one of my friends, you are now able to leave comments! To do so, click on where it says “comments” on the bottom left of every post, and feel free to leave any questions, comments, or other messages.
