KoreanClass101.com Blog

Just a little while ago, I wrote about two pre-school boys who were going to graduate to the elementary house. I said that these kids were pretty tough. What became clear last night was that they are absolutely on the bottom rung. Now, they might not take it from the 2nd graders, everyone else will be dishing it out in a big way.

This is 한규 who cries pretty easily. He usually cries for an extended period of time in order to get what he wants. His little brother pulls this trick ALL time and it works for him. That kid is spoiled beyond belief..but that’s a different story! 한규 just cries and cries.. you know what I mean, when the crying is just for effect, and not because he is still hurt.

Anyway, last night just about everyone got into trouble going into some room they weren’t supposed to (I’ll explain next week). So, with the adult who was working their night night missing (I don’t know where they went) the freshly-minted 6th graders were in charge of the discipline. Physical discipline is pretty common in Korea. These kids are doing something that both the army and gangsters are famous for! One of the 6th grade boys shouts “엎드려!”

For some reason only the 4th grade boys had to do this…but can you recognize the boy in the chair reading a book? That’s 이나라. If you are relatively new to KClass you might not remember this lesson from several months ago which inspired me to make this video. Yes, 나라 is still not listening!

March seems very long compared to the short month of February right before it but a lot of things happen in this month of the year to make it a very short one actually. Schools start again in March in Korea, and the weather gets much warmer in March, it almost stops snowing, the flowers start blooming, and so on. But, somehow, when I think of the word “March”, there isn’t as much that comes to my mind as when I think of the other months. I am not sure, but I guess it might have something to do with all the celebrations of the new year that go on before March…

What do you think of when you think about the month of March?

Winters in Korea are cold. When I lived in Korea the one thing that kept the winters bearable was the warm floors. Korea uses, I think universally, radiant heat as its primary heat source. The comfort of having warmfloors heating the house without the noise and discomfort of having forced air is really nice. The one thing that I did not like about radiant heat in Korea was having to rotate the 연탄 (coal briquettes). I don’t think 얀탄 are very popular in Korea right now though. I think it used to be that every year there were news reports of people dying from carbon monoxide poisoning from 얀탄. Nowadays the floors are heated primarily from a gas boiler.

We finished building our house last year and we decided that our primary source of heat would also be radiant. Unfortunately, here in the United States the radiant heat market is left to some very high dollar specialists, especially here in sunny California. So, after getting some very outrageous bids for the job, we decided to do it ourselves.

A friend of mine builds greenhouses and most commercial greenhouses have a radiant heat system built in. So he was very helpful to us in getting the job done. We literally did all of the work ourselves. I spent a lot of time on the phone with manufacturers and suppliers who were more than happy to help create a system that suited my needs and then sell me the materials to build that system. Here is a photo of the pex tubing once we have zip-tied it to the rebar, before pouring the concrete slab:

The system is powered by a boiler that pumps hot water through all of the tubing in the floor to warm the house. The boiler also does the same thing through a water tank for hot water. It is very efficient. Here is the boiler plumbing setup. It looks more complicated than it is:

The boiler can be seen on the left. Not shown is the indirect water heater to the left of the boiler. 

This has been our first full winter living in our new house. While our radiant system is not perfect, we have really enjoyed having 온돌방 in our house. By doing it ourselves we saved a lot of money (really, a lot) and learned a lot too.

I usually write about my experiences with Korean orphans, but I’ve just spent a week in Taipei, so I decided to switch things up a little bit…

Of course, the language of Taiwan in Chinese, but a lot of Koreans travel there, and my Korean came in handy at least once. I was entirely unprepared for the Chinese… I should have spent some time with SurvivalPhrases.com before the trip. Alas, I was hopelessly lost, except for the precious few Hanja I understand and recognize.

In Taipei, there is a section of town called Snake Alley. It must have been much more exciting in it’s hey day, but now is just another street market. The name comes from store fronts where the guy will pull out a large (2m) long snake and bash it’s head to stun it, hang it by the “neck” and then slice open the main artery to drain all the blood. I guess they serve the meat as well - but I didn’t try. We also weren’t allowed to take pictures…which is where my Korean came in handy. I was standing in front of one such snake butcher, and recognized some Korean tourists. After living in Seoul for a while, Koreans can be pretty easy to identify. But they were also speaking Korean. I stepped over to one woman and said:

“혹시요..뱀고기를 목고 싶어요? ” (Excuse me.. do you want to eat snake meat?)

She responded by shaking her hand and head, and saying in English “”No.” She ran back to her friends, who must have said something like “I think he just spoke Korean to you!” She came back, and we proceeded to have a pretty standard conversation about how well I supposedly know Korean, where I live, what I do for a job, etc. Then she wanted to take a picture of the snake gutting. But the man behind the counter said “No Picture!” I guess these Koreans don’t speak English, because she kept right on clicking. So I stepped in:

“사진 찍지 마세요” (Don’t take pictures)

-”왜요?” (Why?)

“저 남자가 찍지마래요” (That man said not to take any)

So, you never know when your Korean will come in handy! Have any of you had some great experiences with Korean outside of Korea?