KoreanClass101.com Blog

My wife and I were recently driving through a typical suburban neighborhood when we saw a blond woman pushing a stroller down the sidewalk. My wife was captivated by her to the point that our conversation stopped. Before I could ask her what she was looking at, she said something like, “우와, 여기 미국 사람 있네.” And then she laughed because she realized that obviously 미국 사람 should be here as this is 미국! 

When we travelled to Korea last year we had a similar experience. We were at a museum and it was full of middle school and elementary school children visiting on a field trip. I think we were in 경주; that seems to be the place to go for extended school field trips. While my dad was enjoying saying hello to all of the students and his new found celebrity status my wife and I were commenting to each other that it was amazing to see so many Korean students visiting America! That bit of insanity only lasted a second before we both realized that we were the visitors.

But even here in America sometimes it is easy to forget my native culture and feel completely at ease in the grocery store when the bus of Japanese or Korean tourists take over on their way to Yosemite. When I lived in Korea I could spot a foreigner a mile away. They were pretty hard to miss and then I would realize with a bit of unease that, “hey, that is me.”

The diversity of America is such that people who do not know that my wife is not an American by birth assume that she has always lived here. A foreigner in Korea does not typically enjoy that kind of anonymity. Even so, I was happy to know that a Korean in America (or Korea) can feel the same cultural disconnect as I have experienced. Is it universal? Has anyone else had a similar experience? 

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We spent last weekend at Disneyland. Amazingly, my younger two children did not want to go. My youngest feels clastrophobic in the lines (I don’t blame him.) and Alexia would rather hang out with the girls. So it turned out that I went to Disneyland with only Michael and my son. It actually made the park easier to navigate but that is another story.

We stayed with some Korean friends while we were in L.A. They live quite close to Disneyland and would have been offended if we came all that way and didn’t stay with them. (My sister lives down there too but she was probably relieved that she didn’t have to entertain seven extra people!) They have a daughter, five, who didn’t speak any English a year ago but now naturally switches between Korean and English depending on who she is talking to. As I only spoke Korean to her she was very comfortable speaking Korean to me and not at all surprised that I spoke Korean. Her mother, on the other hand, can’t speak English at all. The five year old very easily translates from English to Korean and back again if necessary. I thought she did very well for her age.

They also have two daughters who are in high school. Their English is not as good as their younger sister’s. In fact, their mother turns to the youngest whenever she needs help understanding what is going on. Regardless, the high schoolers are getting straight A’s in school. Their plan is to use their high school experience to get into an American college and then take that credential back to Korea. My feeling is that they will probably end up staying here in the states.

Their mother is very comfortable living in L.A. While I was having fun standing in line at Disneyland (a record breaking day for heat by the way) everyone else was… shopping, of course. The Korean area of Los Angeles is very big and, as it turns out, very close to Disneyland. Our friend literally has no reason or opportunity to speak English if she doesn’t actively seek it out. Restaurants, supermarkets, clothing stores, you name it and you can find it run by a Korean. Interestingly, I didn’t see even one Korean while at Disneyland.

Of course, with so much shopping to be done you can guess that “the girls” did not pass up the opportunity. My wife stocked up on Korean groceries while my oldest took advantage of some excellent prices on clothes. It turns out that if you know where to go you can get some great bargains on Korean stuff without the plane trip. Then again, I may have actually saved money if everyone came with me to Disneyland instead of shopping.

It is spring in Korea, and summer is probably just a week or two away.  It makes me think about when I’m planning to leave.  My contract finishes at the end of August.  That’s more than 4 months from now, but of course will come much faster than I expect.

Anyway, it brings up an important issue regarding the orphanage.  Those kids are used to seeing me on a regular basis over the past two years, and soon enough, I won’t be coming around at all.  So I am starting to think about how I can make my exit without causing a lot of trauma.  There isn’t a lot of consistency in their lives, and the mere fact thay live at an orphanage means that some deal with abandonment issues, so it is no simple matter to extract myself from their lives and leave them with some positive memories.

I’d love hear what your thoughts about this are.  These kids are pretty resilient, they will survive just fine without me, but I do want to minimize any fallout.

So, what do you think?

We have a new feature again. Now it’s easier to keep track of the recent updates in the forum and the blog! If you look at the right-hand side of the lessons page, you can see the lists of 5 recent posts in the forum and in the blog!

또 하나의 새로운 기능이 생겼어요! 이제 포럼과 블로그에 올라온 최신 글들을 더 쉽게 파악할 수 있어요! 레슨 페이지의 오른쪽을 보시면, 포럼과 블로그에 가장 최근에 올라온 글 5개의 목록을 볼 수 있습니다.

We’ve posted a thread in the forum asking for participation in the making of the 5th Korean Word Relay video, and Austin, James, and rooraa helped out with the word relay ideas! 참여해 주셔서 고맙습니다 ^^! Thank you for your participation!!

And here’s the outcome of your 참여!

We will be posting new threads for future videos too, so be sure to join in!

Thank you!

We went to Pier 39 last weekend, mainly to see the Aquarium of the Bay but also to see San Francisco. As a teenager I spent a lot of time in San Francisco either just hanging out or working. It is fun to visit every once in a while, and our visitor (I’ll call him ‘Michael’ from now on) wanted to see the city. When he first came to the states he flew into San Francisco but he really doesn’t remeber seeing any of the city or the bay.

Pier 39 was fun. They have some interesting shops and a whole lot of touristy stuff. The aquarium was a bit of a disappointment in that I was expecting more, something on par with the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We were expecting to spend much more time there than we actually did. So we spent more time wandering the pier and Embarcadero, the road in front of the pier.

Along the Embarcadero you can find many street performers of various levels of ability. There was the every popular “take a picture with a punk: $2″ guy with foot long spiked mohawk and all, the bongo drum dude, the steel drum guys, the acrobats, and the robot guy. The robot guy was painted all in silver and just standing there with a cup in his hands. If you paid him any attention he bagan to move and make odd noises. All of these things were very new and jaw-dropping for Michael.

We went to eat at the pier at Chowders. As you may guess, it sells as its specialty clam chowder. Michael, being Korean, thinks that every Asian person that he sees might also be Korean. The person that took our order in Chowders was Asian, but come to think of it, everyone working there was Asian. Anyway, he wanted to know if she was Korean. She wasn’t.

Chowders is unique in that they serve their soup in a bowl made out of a round loaf of sourdough bread. I was hungry and ate my bowl…

On the way out of the restaurant the woman who waited on us was heading quickly out the door with a cigarette in her mouth. Michael was very shocked and surprised to see a probably college aged woman smoking. In Korea, it is very unusual to see college age women smoking. Perhaps society has changed some, but I would say that there is a definite negative stigma attached to women who smoke. The exception to that would be the 할머니 crowd. They can smoke without any problem.

I asked Michael if he would smoke when he got older. He said that he didn’t want to but that he probably would. There seems to be a social obligation to smoke if you are a man. Michael seems to understand this and most likely will not try to oppose it, whether he wants to smoke or not.

All in all it was a very interesting day. Everyone got an interesting view of the world beyond the country. Nobody started smoking, yet.

Last week I wrote about one particular day.  Here is what happened after dinner.

As it turned out there really was no one working in the elementary boys side that night. After dinner is usually shower time, and even with an 엄마 it can be hectic (it depends on which 엄마 is there)!

The kids don’t really wash every day. Often they do little more than splash some water around their waists.  Shower time is not managed well.  Granted, it is a big undertaking. Some parents struggle with just a few of their own kids, but 20+ kids is a whole different battle.  And only the oldest kids really do it themselves. 1st-3rd and sometimes 4th graders are washed by an adult. It struck me as odd when I first saw it happen, but it is indicative of an aspect of Korean culture, and perhaps living in an orphanage. Since no staff was around the fell falls to me. Of course, kids are also supposed to be doing some homework, but that definitely didn’t happen.

After cleaning up from dinner, Josh (my friend who also volunteers there) and I announce that it time to wash . Starting with 1st graders. One of them is obedient and goes right in, but the other tries to object saying he washed two days ago, so he doesn’t need to tonight. After much cajoling (forcing) he surrendered. It was slow going all the way up the line.
In the middle of all this one of the staff members finally appears with all of the pre-school kids in tow. Apparently there was a staffing shortage that night, and he would have to watch all of the kids for a time. So he brought the little ones over to the elementary boys house with a movie to pacify everyone. But his movie choice … Die Hard 4 is probably not one that I would show kids.

I don’t mind being a firm figure in their lives, they certainly need it, but I cannot do that for them 24-7.  Often I feel like I don’t have any solutions either, and staff shortages are a real problem! That day gave a bigger picture for the magnitude of their circumstances. There is nothing easy about their life. I can intersect it from time to time, but they need positive input on a daily and sustained basis!

This is a very common question that I get from my non-Korean friends.

“What’s 곰탕? Is there really 곰 in there?”

And as you know, 곰 means “bear”, the animal. So imagine - a bear soup … hehe.

But in fact it has nothing to do with bears(곰) although it’s 곰 + 탕(soup). If you look at the sign in the picture above, it says 닭곰탕 too. So it must have something to do with 닭(chicken) and 곰(bear) together in a soup?

The truth is, 곰 is actually a noun coming from the verb “고다”. And 고다 means to boil something to a pulp or let the flavor come out of something by boiling in water (usually with various spices added) for many hours. So, 곰 is not the animal ‘bear’ but a nominalization of 고다, therefore the act of 고다. So 곰탕 is a soup that you make by boiling something for a long period of time until the soup decreases in volume and turns very thick and rich.

What usually goes into a 곰탕 is cow bones, but here they also put in chicken.

I don’t know how tasty it might sound to you now, it’s one of the must-try menus when you come to Korea! Has anyone had 곰탕 before?

Hi guys! It’s been a looong time since my last post, I know. Really big apologies for that, I won’t make any excuses for it but life has really been eating me alive, and I’m having so much trouble balancing everything and finding time for all my obligations and other things. These past two weeks have been especially crazy; I’m still studying so I live with my parents at the moment, and they’ve just adopted two little girls. So two weeks ago they moved in here, and it’s really sucked up a lot of our time and energy getting them settled in and adjusting ourselves to the change. I feel exhausted from it all! But things are settling now, and it’s not so crazy anymore, so my fingers are crossed when I say that hopefully I’ll be able to resume posting regularly here again.

Since the last few posts of mine were about male artists, I decided that today I’d bring you a female one And who better than the sexy 이효리 (Lee Hyori)~?

이효리 began her career in 1998 as part of Fin.K.L, one of the most successful Korean girlgroups (and groups in general). When 이효리 began to release solo works in 2003, she enjoyed much of the same success. Her debut album, Stylish…E won several of the 2003 Daesung awards, which was a pretty huge achievement for the singer.

Her music is mostly pop and dance, although later releases have had an R&B edge to them. She’s worked a pretty sexy image in her solo career, which has gained her plenty of attention and of course not all of that attention has been good. In 2007 though, she made a slight move away from her sexy image with the release of Toc Toc Toc, an R&B digital single that let her show a different side of herself.

Some of you may know of the Talk, Play, Love song that was pretty much all the hype a few months back, with BoA, Junsu, Tablo and Jin Bora; it was one of the latest commercials for Samsung’s Anycall cellphone. In 2005, 이효리 was part of a similiar Anycall advertising campaign. The first part was Anymotion, featuring 신화’s Eric in both the song and MV. In 2006, the next part was released, Anyclub. The Anyclub MV featured Eric and 권상우 (Kwon Sang Woo), and the song featured 1TYM’s Teddy. Later that same year, the final MV and song, Anystar, was released and it featured 박봄 (Park Bom) and actor 이준기 (Lee Junki).

이효리 has also delved into acting, like many Korean artists do, co-starring in Three Leaf Clover and a 4 episode mini-drama with actor/singer 이동건 (Lee Dong Gun), If In Love… Like Them.

I personally am not a big fan of female vocalists. I’m pretty picky, and I don’t like voices that are super sweet or that grate on my ears - but 이효리 has a really nice voice, smooth and rounded, it’s definitely nice to listen to (and she’s definitely nice to look at XD;).

Here are some of her MVs for you to enjoy:
Hey Girl This was the second single from her debut album
Anymotion The first of her Anycall commercials
Anyclub The second of her Anycall commercials
Get Ya This was the first single of her second album
Shall We Dance The final single of her second album
Anystar The third of her Anycall commercials
잔소리 From the If In Love… Like Them drama
그녀를 사랑하지마 Also from the If In Love… Like Them drama