I made up some Konglish jokes. They will only be funny if you understand and can read a bit of Korean, and also if your standard for humor is extremely low. I have been testing these on my classmates for the past week and they all want me to shut up. :)
1. What country do all the dogs come from? 개나다
2. What did the annoyed mother tell her annoying baby? 아이고!
3. What is a shepherd's favorite number? 십
4. Looking at a map of Asia, if China is a dragon, what is 한국? 꼬리야
5. What do people get at the post office every day? 매일
6. How does a cow apologize? 소 소리
7. What does oil do to bugs when you fry them in it? 기름
8. What hairstyle do you get if you want to look like the US President? 오파마
9. Where do you go if you want to put a new building in the middle of Busan? 부동산
10. What do you call a movie about rice cakes? 떡큐멘타리
Extra credit! A Japanese joke: What did the one cat say to the other after it took its food? 내 거!
Warning: weird hodgepodge of esoteric linguistic terminology and dumbed-down descriptions of said terminology, as well as smatterings of Korean, straight ahead!
But look left first, before you cross. See the t-shirt? I spotted it while walking around downtown Changwon the other day, and I found it so clever that I just had to take a photo. Why? Look at the writing closely. At first glance, it looks like a list of city names: Seoul, New York, Tokyo... but wait. That's not an "S" at the beginning of Seoul. And the "W" in New York is... pi? What is "Tofyo"? Hm... is this Konglish?
Well, it is, but it's not nonsense "Engrish"-type typography, exactly. What look like mistakes are actually a simple linguistic puzzle. The character that has been subbed in for the "S" in Seoul is a Hangul (1) letter, ㅅ (pronounced she-ut). It makes the "s" sound in Korean, an aspirated alveolar fricative [s]. So, that word still reads "Seoul", but more accurately, in a sense, than the romanized spelling does.
Next, you've got the "you" sound in "New York", represented by the Hangul ㅠ [ju], which has replaced "W". Tokyo's "K" has been replaced with ㅋ [k], the aspirated velar stop.
The next three are an interesting set, because they illustrate the versatility of the Korean liquid /l/ quite well. The letter ㄹ (pronounced ree-ul... or lee-ur... or, actually, let's forget trying to use English for this) is an alveolar liquid, but it changes its expression depending on where in a word it's located. Between vowels, as in the word "Paris", it turns into an alveolar flap [ɾ], like the sound Americans make in the middle of "butter". Same for Milano. Word-initially, however, ㄹ can sound like a flap or like a typical English [l]. So the first letter of "London" has been replaced with the ㄹ, too.
A word to the wise: ㄹ is never a purely rhotic sound; that is, it is never like the American "arrr"! But it is certainly the closest approximation that Korean has for the American [r/ɹ], the American [l], or even the French [χ/ʁ], which is the guttural sound in Paris, which is why one letter is used to transcribe all three foreign sounds (which is why some Koreans are confused about r and l in English).
Here are those city names again, in complete Hangul and in IPA according to the Korean pronunciation:
Seoul = 서울 = [sʰʌ.ul] = SUH-ool
New York = 뉴욕 = [njuː.jok̚] = nyoo-YOHK
Tokyo = 도쿄 = [to.kʰjo] = doe-KYO
London = 런던 = [lʌn.dʌn] = LUN-dun
Milano = 밀라노 = [miːl.la.no] = MEEL-lah-no
Anyway... hope you found this bit of phonetics/phonology interesting. If I ever see that shirt for sale, I'm probably going to buy it.
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(1) Hangul is the name for the Korean writing system. It literally means "Korean writing": 한글.
Lee Keun-ho from the South Korean soccer team. Image from the Guardian.
Although I'm not closely following this year's World Cup, I was still excited when it was announced that instead of going to zero period classes today, students and teachers would be treated to a live streaming of the Korea-versus-Russia World Cup game. Because of the time zone difference, games taking place in Brazil are shown at 1am, 4am, and 7am in Korea. This has definitely dampened enthusiasm for the World Cup in Korea this year, but really, nothing will stop them from supporting the "Red Devils" when they can.
I arrived at school a little after half-time, when the score was tied 0-0. It was exciting being in the auditorium with all my students and fellow teachers. The game was being played on a live stream on the big screen, and it was really exciting! I took some videos. The first clip is of the crowd's reaction when Korea took a shot at the goal, but it was saved by the Russian goalie. The second is just after Korea scored its goal, as the crowd responds to the slow-motion replay. It was amusing how the teachers around me hooted in laughter at the Russian goalie for screwing up. The last clip is the crowd's reaction after Russia scored: pure dismay!
Russia's goal was doubly disappointing because, in fact, we didn't see it happen! Toward the end of the game, so many people were online to watch it that the servers hosting the livestream on Naver and Daum crashed or malfunctioned in some way. Our screen began to freeze again and again, buffering, and then blanking out altogether. So when the Russian forward started toward Korea's goal, we got really excited -- and then the screen froze. Imagine the frustration! And when it started playing again, we saw that the score had changed to 1-1. 아~ 아타깝다! (What a shame!)
By that time, it was almost time to begin the first period classes, but of course nobody had any intention of leaving the auditorium. The game ended in a tie, and students were disappointed because the technical difficulties persisted (I'd have expected more from a science high school, haha) and because we didn't win. But given the low confidence Korea has in its own team, I'd say a tie with Russia is not a bad thing at all.
While I don't know any more about soccer now than I did before this morning, one good thing that comes from the World Cup is that I can use it as a springboard for conversation with my students and connect with them on another level, especially the shier students who like sports but not English.
Anyway, I probably won't watch any more World Cup games until the semifinals and finals, but I'm still hoping for the best for South Korea! 대한민국 화이팅!
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P.S. Konglish time: 화이팅 (sometimes 파이팅, romanized as hwa/pa-i-ting) is the Korean version of jia you (加油) and ganbatte (がんばって), a common sports cheer and all-around picker-upper. It comes from the English word "fighting" and is equivalent to "Let's go!" and "You can do it!" or "BEAT THEM." If I had my way with Konglish and couldn't do away with it altogether, I'd at least change 화이팅 to something that makes a bit more grammatical sense. "Korea fighting!" still sounds odd to me... even though I use it all the time now. I can say 화이팅 to a struggling student, to my taekgyeon teammates as they spar, or to my friend who's had a bad day. It's a very useful word to know!
Several students and my co-teacher have repeatedly told me this past week that I look tired. I don't take offense to this (1), but it's happened often enough that I'm really curious now if I actually appear physically worse than normal. I feel fine, to be honest. But it's true that I've had a lot of work to do.
Speaking tests for my students are just around the corner. Like a true 일벌레 (workaholic), I've committed to having my students write an outline and multiple drafts of their speeches before giving them in class so that they can present polished work. Yes, my students groaned when I told them how much I was going to require of them. Their second drafts are due on the same day as their big math exam. But I didn't suffer their complaints. A quick apology for the unfortunate timing and then I set them loose for an in-class work day. Like the little angels they are, they (mostly) all proved their diligence.
But my work begins once class is over. My inbox has been like a canyon prone to flash foods this past week. First, I got eighty outlines from the first-years, followed by eighty first drafts from the second-years. When I finished the first-years' outlines, there was a five-day reprieve before I received their first drafts. Eighty of them. And today, just before I left the office, I was inundated with my second years' second drafts. Hello, three-day Memorial Weekend, meet my blue pen of correction.
On Monday, when I return the second-years' second drafts, the first-years will turn in their second drafts. It never ends.
I've done this for my speaking tests for the past three semesters, but it's never felt so hard before. I think it has partly to do with wonky scheduling this semester that is forcing me to administer 160 speech tests in five days (2). But another part of it is that I'm just... tired!
And I can feel my teaching persona slowly going to seed. Since my latest classes have all been free working periods, I prepare next to nothing for them. It's just show up, tell the students to be quiet, show them all the major mistakes everyone made and how to fix them, pass back drafts, then put on some working music and meander the rows to monitor students for the last half hour. Yet this is still exhausting. I've found myself getting annoyed when students keep asking to use the computer to look up translations. I find them too loud when they are simply figuring out tricky syntax with their peers. And I've begun to lose my grip on both my slow teacher's speech rate and my penchant for sarcasm.
"English only in my classroom," I warned two chatterbox students today, before the starting bell had rung. They looked at me blankly. I fixed them with my teacher stare.
"Did you know," I shot at them, "that if you try to speak in English, then you will improve your English skill? It's true!" And without waiting for a reply, I turned my attention back to my classroom setup.
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I've come to understand myself a bit better over the past few months, in that I can now tell what my general mood is by how I feel after taekgyeon practice. During the months of March and April, when I was very stressed out about graduate school decisions, I found myself acting very irritable after evening practice. Our weekly indoor soccer games were like torture. My mental disposition was clearly affecting my physical condition (3). In May, the malaise almost magically dissipated. Well, not magic: correlation. Once my graduate school decision was made and a few other issues were resolved, I had fewer mental burdens in my life. Nothing about the weekly routine at taekgyeon changed, but I found that I was cheerful, swimming in endorphins after each practice.
Having managed to notice with my own, usually blindered eyes how pronounced a change I had undergone, it makes me a bit embarrassed to realize that my students and colleagues have undoubtedly been observing me and can tell when I'm not my usual self.
Well, when my students finally work up the guts to actually tell me I look tired (and also proclaim their awe at how I can manage to correct eighty pages of shoddy English every few days), I'm torn between affection because they demonstrate their care, annoyance because I shouldn't be so noticeably tired, and self-consciousness because, well, to be noticed is to be seen.
Anyway, what I want to say is, I'm extremely busy, and the month of June is probably going to be a complete circus, but through it all, I've just got to stay focused and committed to my job. I have to serve my students and help them as much as I can. They care about me, after all, and I in return have so much affection for them. I don't know how to begin telling the students that I won't be here for much longer, but some have already found out. Sigh...
And the Sisyphean task of correcting drafts begins (once again) tomorrow!
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(1) Should I though? Is the taboo against telling people they look tired a Western thing?)
(2) I am already calling June 16-20 the week from 헐.
(3) Can anyone explain how the Konglish word 컨디션 ("condition") gained its notorious present-day status as the umbrella for all ills and the go-to buzzword for hypochondriacs? If someone is feeling under the weather, dizzy, hungry, tired, achey, stuffy, bored, sad, or desperate for sympathy, they'll tell you, "Oh, my condition is not good today." I'm almost used to it by now. But not yet. I want to tell everyone to simply say, "I'm not well", or even "I'm not in good shape", but Konglish will do what Konglish will do.
Happy Pi Day! 3.14. Of course, my students could recite it to the twelfth digit and more. Though they're all quite nerdy, they weren't as excited about Pi Day as they were about White Day, the Korean accompaniment to Valentine's Day. On February 14th, girls give chocolates to boyfriends; then, on March 14th, boys reciprocate and give candy (1). Friends also give candy to friends, and in general everyone in the country is just encouraged to buy unnecessary stuff for the commercial holiday.
Meh... I just really wanted to eat some pie.
Unrelated: a hilarious conversation in mixed Korean and English over dinner today with some teachers at my school.
짜요짜요 and 떡
Biology Teacher holds up a tube of yogurt, similar to Go-Gurt.
Biology Teacher: See this? The brand is called 짜요짜요 (2).
Me: Oh, really? That's Chinese.
Physics Teacher: Chinese? What does it mean in Chinese?
Me: 加油 (3). Um... 가유? 자유? (4)
Biology Teacher: It means 화이팅 (5)!
Me: Yeah, Chinese for 화이팅.
Physics Teacher: Oh! Well in Korean, it means... 짜요. 짜다... Like this: 짜요짜요짜요! Physics Teacher picks up his tube of yogurt and squeezes it quickly and repeatedly in an unintentionally yet extremely suggestive way. I almost lose it.
Biology Teacher: 짜다. Squeeze. Biology Teacher squeezes his tube of yogurt, and then wrings it with both hands like you would a wet towl.
Biology Teacher: This is squeeze. So... what is this?
Me: Oh, that's also squeeze.
Physics Teacher: No, that's tortion!
Conclusion: I eat at least one meal a day with the teachers at my school, but I have got to get them to talk more. Laughter will make you live longer.
---
(1) And then on April 14th, Black Day, anyone who got nothing for the previous two holidays eats 짜장면, or black bean sauce noodles, alone. Forever alone.
(2) jjayo-jjayo
(3) jia1you3
(4) I meant to say "주유/add gasoline"
(5) "Fighting", Konglish for "You can do it!"
Following up on yesterday's post about SNL Korea's offensive adoptee skit, I'd like to share this "Facebook story" that I really like: "Twinsters".
via facebookstories
About a year ago, I was linked by a friend to a Kickstarter page for a documentary that a Korean adoptee wanted to make... about her newly-discovered twin sister. Thanks to YouTube, Facebook, and the crazy power of social media, she found out that she was one of a pair of girls given up for adoption from Busan in 1987. Her sister was raised in France, while she became American. They reunited, visited each other's adoptive families, toured South Korea, and inspired thousands of people along the way as the story of their reunion unfolded together.
Again: they visited South Korea together (for a Korean adoptee conference). They returned to the land of their birth. As far as I'm aware, they did not reunite with their birth mother or family. Goodness knows if they had, it would not have happened remotely similarly to the crude parody that SNL Korea embarrassed itself with last week.
On that note, SNL Korea has apologized for their skit on Twitter, according to allkpop.com. "We bow our heads and sincerely apologize to the Korean adoptees overseas and their families who've been hurt by the skit... Due to the carelessness of the production team, which failed to handle a sensitive matter with the utmost care, we apologize and will get rid of the relevant corner (코너, Konglish for 'feature')." They admitted that they tried satire and failed miserably. Their sad attempt at in-group humor only alienated an already stigmatized and misunderstood section of Korean society. Hence, the apology. Fair enough. I just hope they don't do it again, but honestly, chances are they'll just make the same mistake with a different marginalized group...
Adoption is no joke. I mean, I'm all for finding humor in various family situations, but we must realize that a line has to be drawn somewhere. And really, isn't it ultimately more rewarding to follow a 'feature' like "Twinsters" that explores adoption not through probing, farcical humor but through mystery, surprise, and genuine storytelling?
Anyway, Facebook did some great work with the infinitely more interesting story, and I encourage you to follow the visually-stunning timeline of their intertwined lives. I'm looking forward to watching the documentary when it is released next year.
My flight touched down at the Gimhae airport a little before 8:30am this morning. After two weeks of backpacking, it's good to be ba-- wait. Hold on. It's 4°C outside and raining. This was a mistake. TAKE ME BACK TO THAILAND.
Well, my flight touched down a little before 8:30am this morning, and truthfully, that was the latest possible time I could have afforded to return. You see, my school's graduation ceremony was to begin at 10:00am. I had exactly ninety minutes to take a bus back to my city, taxi home, change out of my tropical-weather shorts and t-shirt into something warm and respectable, and speedwalk to school. No time even for a shower. But I managed to leave my apartment at five past ten, camera in hand.
I ran into my homestay father just outside the gates and we walked into the auditorium together, just minutes before they began calling the names of the 113 graduates this year. I was sitting rather far away, but tried snapping photos of my students as they crossed the stage and received their diplomas. As dazed as I was from having traveled 3500 miles in the past 15 hours, it made me smile to see them in their caps and gowns. Most of them had gotten fresh haircuts and perms, ears pierced, eyelids reshaped, the usual. I wasn't even shocked, since I saw the same thing last year.
A scholarship or prize awarded to the four students who were accepted to Seoul National University.
After the roll call, the distribution of special prizes and scholarships, and a speech by the principal(1), there was a special video by the class captains and some teachers. Also, the school choir performed a song as a thank you to their teachers... something about the sky and rainbows and never forgetting a kindness shown.
Most of the choir is graduating, as you can see! I hope they can continue next year; they sounded wonderful.
Then, the ceremony was over and everything descended into mad chaos for photos, just like graduation is supposed to be! I snagged a few of my favorite students for photos, but there was no way I'd be able to catch them all. When I did manage to have a brief conversation in between their being pulled away for more selcas(2), I asked them, "So how do you feel right now?"
"Awesome," they said.
"Nervous."
"Happy, but also sad."
"Nice."
"Exciting."(3)
And MG said to me, "Well, I don't know. Right now, I don't have any feelings, but I think later, when I think about it, it will be amazing."
And I said to all of them, "Congratulations. I'm very proud of you. Come back to visit, okay?"
The 33 graduating third-years, plus their peers who graduated (early) last year and returned today for a long-awaited reunion. I chatted happily with my old students; they were ecstatic that everyone in their original matriculating class was finally moving on to the next big thing. Alas, I had forgotten many of their names and faces...
It hasn't hit me yet that this was the last time I'll see many of them. I might not be around for graduation next year, when they'll return to reunite with their eight peers who are to move on to the third grade. So how could I say goodbye? I simply didn't. I hope my former students do find me on Facebook or Kakao, actually, because this group was really something special, and I want to keep in touch. And those are all my feelings right now.
My homestay sister graduated today! And she's off to one of Korea's finest universities. I'm very proud of her.
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(1) Which I didn't understand, but was likely about how proud he was that 90% of the second-year students are graduating early and going to really great schools -- I don't have the actual statistics, but I'll get my hands on a program later.
(2) 셀카/Konglish for "selfie"
(3) Eh, this grammar problem will never go away...
And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."
- Luke 2:10-11
A jar of homemade cranberry honey butter I made!
Merry Christmas! (메리 크리스마스!) This is the first Christmas I have ever spent away from home. 그래서 조금 고향과 가족이 그리워요... But I've had a great day and a very cheerful holiday season overall, so no complaints. To get my dose of holiday spirit, there was the Santa Bike Ride and a holiday White Elephant party at a church friend's home. At school, I wiled away free hours by cutting paper snowflakes and trees and showed Elf and Christmas YouTube videos to my students. To top it off, of course, baking Christmas cookies, listening to my Christmas playlist all day, and Skyping with my family, are really what make me feel "at home".
Today, I went to a service at my church, followed by bacon and pancakes at a friend's house, and then ice skating in the afternoon! The day ended with dinner and hanging out with a bunch of 솔크* friends. I'm heading to bed early because tomorrow morning I'll get up early to bake (more!) and go to school to attend my school's festival (it's like an end-of-the-year talent show). After that, it's winter break! 드디어!
Holiday party at a church friend's house last Saturday.
* In Korea, Christmas is all about couples and being romantic. It follows that being single on Christmas Day is considered to be one of the saddest things that can happen to you all year. The Konglish for this is "솔로 크리스마스" (Solo Christmas), which teens have shortened to 솔크. I like this because it sounds like the word "sulk". Got no one to hold hands and watch the pretty snow fall with? No one to buy you chocolate and a new scarf? No one to *gasp* match your red reindeer sweater with a green snowflake one? Too bad! Go sulk about it and better luck next year. Ha.
Pentatonix's "Little Drummer Boy"
The Piano Guys' "Angels We Have Heard on High"
WestJet Christmas Miracle. Good advertising that brought me to tears.
I've never met a man named Sanghyung Lee. But if I do, I hope he's my type.
Get it? ;)
Okay, let me explain. Korean people like romance, and they like talking about their Mr. or Mrs. Right. Or your Mr. or Mrs. Right. I get asked all the time if I have a girlfriend. When I reply in the negative, the next question is always either, "So are you going to get a Korean girlfriend?" or the ever-so-slightly subtler, "So who's your ideal type?" And the word in Korean for "ideal type" (not the Weberian term) is 이상형 (理想型), pronounced ee-sahng-hyoung.
Google Images search of "이상형" returns lots of beautiful women, followed closely by lots of beautiful men. Also, blended portraits of celebrities (remember Average Faces?) to project onto one's 미래의 여친 (future girlfriend).
My Korean teacher once jokingly reminded our class that we were learning how to describe the perfect partner, not a weird older brother (異常兄), which is pronounced the same way. But when I hear the word, rather than thinking of Tim or Dan, I keep thinking that it sounds like one of my students, who is named Sanghyun (without the 'g'). There are definitely Korean men named Sanghyung (상형), although the hanja is probably different. Some people might think the name means "hieroglyphs", since that's all I get from an image search of it.
Google Images search of "상형" (象形), which is the "hiero-" part of "hieroglyphs", returns lots of ancient Chinese characters and stones with Mayan and Egyptian hieroglyphs. My future love (愛) is going to have yellow, heart-shaped hair.
And since Lee (이) is the second most common surname among Koreans, there's got to be a real 이상형 out there. I haven't met one yet. But if I do...
As of last Wednesday, teacher sports day is back! After over a month of wondering if our principal had finally done away with the weekly volleyball, soccer, or badminton games for the teachers at my school, I was pleased to receive a message from the PE teacher announcing pick-up volleyball at 4:30 in the gym.
Although my volleyball skills are rusty (oh, who am I kidding, they were never even greased), I can hold my own on the court. I run fours for whatever team I'm on -- a position I was never permitted to play in high school -- and my mediocre attacks have earned me the admiration of some of my colleagues. Even better, my skills improved a lot last year when we played every week. Needless to say, I love playing volleyball with the other teachers at my school. I also love that we order pizza, fried chicken, and beer after the game, and that some female teachers come to watch and cheer us on, but mostly come for the food. Mr. Pizza is growing on me.
Anyway, yesterday I noticed that one of the chemistry teachers kept saying "Glucose!" over and over again throughout the game. I thought that he might be smack talking a player on the other team, since he always called it out every time the other team missed the ball or made an error. When a particularly good serve wasn't returned: "Glucose!" When I spiked and the ball went through someone's hands: "Glucose!"
I was really amused by the nickname, and I tried to figure out which teacher on the other team it was aimed at. It must have been someone else in the chemistry department -- why else would they be called Glucose? At least two of the teachers on the other team were definitely not very experienced on the court, but neither was responding directly to the name, so I was left uncertain.
Then, the teachers reset the court for a game of foot volleyball (족구), and after making a fool of myself for one match, I sat out the next one and munched on some pizza. The chemistry teacher took my place and resumed his name-calling: "Glucose!" right after a serve. "Glucose!" when we scored a point on an error.
I turned to a physics teacher who was there for the pizza. "Teacher, who is Glucose?"
"What?" he looked at me quizzically.
"Glucose... what that teacher said. Who is it?"
"I don't understand."
Embarrassed, I waited for a pause in the game, and then I called out to the chemistry teacher himself. "Teacher, what is Glucose?"
"Glucose?" he said. "포도당."
"Oh..." He had literally translated glucose into Korean for me. "That's not what I meant," I thought.
The physics teacher turned to me. "Why did you want to know that, anyway?"
"No," I tried to explain, "the teacher was saying 'glucose' to someone on the other team... Glucose! Glucose! Who is it?"
Suddenly, a light bulb lit up in his head. "Oh... 굿코스 (goot-kohss)! Good course! Good shot!"
"What? Good course?"
"It means 'good shot'," he explained. "Wow, then that must be Konglish, right?"
"Yeah, I guess!" I replied. It all made sense: Glucose wasn't a person, I had merely misheard a bit of garbled English. "Good course" was his version of "good shot", and it wasn't directed at the other team, but at our own. The physics teacher found this whole thing very funny and made a point to tell the chemistry teacher that what he had thought was English was actually Konglish.
It reminded me of how some of the teachers had picked up my habit of shouting "Nice serve!" after every serve (even if it wasn't remotely nice), but since I didn't really enunciate and they didn't really speak English, they eventually turned it into "나이서브 (nai-seo-bu)!"
They also laughed at me every time I called for the ball, saying "Got it!" quickly and repeatedly, like a machine gun: "Gotitgotitgotitgotit!" But I haven't yet been able to switch over to what they say: "마이 (mai)!", which I assume comes from the word "mine".
Every time I play sports in Korea, whether it's soccer with my students, padminton with my dojang, or anything with my teachers, I'm constantly amused and intrigued by how English has loaned so many words to Korean athletic vernacular but has also watched them become unflatteringly repurposed by the phenomenon of Konglish. Off the top of my head, there's 아웃(이다), 플레이, 블랙홀, and, of course, 화이팅.
My friends who champion the cause of sports diplomacy assert that sports can unite people from different cultures in a way that language cannot. While I agree, I believe it's also worth noting that sports can rarely be played successfully without verbal communication, and when it comes to the language of sports, English has lived up to its reputation as the language of conquest (or the international language, if you prefer). But this is precisely why it tickles me so much that English's ruthless incursion into Korean athletics has been tripped up by the fact that the Korean language will do whatever the heck it wants with whatever words come its way from outside the peninsula, proper syntax and pronunciation be damned.
Long live Konglish! And long live teacher sports day!
At the 해운대모래축제, in front of a big sculpture featuring PSY! The word I'm blocking is "만세", which means "Hooray".
After a last-minute change of plans, I took a day trip to Busan today for the Haeundae Sand Festival (해운대 모래축제). I woke up at 7am and met up with friends from Changwon, and then we drove straight to Haeundae Beach, one of the most popular and well-known beaches in Korea. By some standards, it's not the best beach (and this is partly because it is one of the most popular -- and consequently the most crowded and most polluted during peak season), but it's still a great spot to spend a nice, summery day.
My friends and I wandered up and down the beach, admiring the large sand sculptures that were the main attraction of the festival. This year's theme is movies, so we saw Marilyn Monroe, E.T., Superman, Iron Man, and a host of other superheroes, and the iconic scene from Titanic. The sculptures were great, but I admit feeling a bit let down because I had imagined them to be flat-out amazing. I mean, just Google "sand sculpture", and then Google "Haeundae Sand Festival", and you'll see what I mean. Nonetheless, I enjoyed strolling along the beach and admiring the sights, and I was also glad that we were there early in the morning so that we could take photos in relative peace. Later on in the afternoon, the beach became insanely crowded.
One of my favorite sculptures was this one, based on Le Petit Prince.
We then settled down to play in the sand and water until noon. I got to work building a castle with a moat, trying only to use my feet since I don't like getting my hands dirty. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy building sandcastles. It's funny; I'm not really into creating a beautiful structure or even finishing the project. It's not about the end result. What I enjoy about sandcastles is the mindlessness of the endeavor, it seems. I dig and dig, and every so often a large wave rushes in and sweeps away half of my work. Well, no matter. Just keep digging. It's simple, meditative, and admittedly fruitless, but as long as I don't physically tire myself out, I could continue for hours. The castle was a purposeless project: water kept demolishing the walls, and eventually my friend's five-year-old came and rampaged all over the tower itself. But I quite enjoyed it all the same.
I will only mention in passing how this may or may not be a metaphor for life.
Andrew, Ben, and Ashley made a giant sea turtle with a volcano on its back as part of the amateur sand sculpture competition.
When Fulbrighters began to arrive on the scene starting at noon, we walked around the beach and enjoyed the sculptures, made one of our own, and watched beautiful people walking by. I also got some blueberry 빙수 at a cafe and watched bits of an airshow by the Black Eagles. Mostly, though, we just chilled under a beach umbrella. There were attempts to sunbathe, but Korea is generally conservative when it comes to beach attire, so I would have felt awkward about taking off my shirt. The beach became extremely crowded in the afternoon, yet ninety percent of the beachgoers were completely covered up, even if they were sleeping in the sun or dunking themselves completely underwater.
The thing about Korea and its no-shoulders, no-midriffs rule is that it's unspoken, enforced passively or subconsciously. An 아줌마 might give you a death glare or even some comments about your exposed shoulders, but nothing's really stopping you, unless you have an aversion to sticking out like a sore thumb. It's partly about modesty and partly about avoiding a tan at any cost, since fairer skin is generally considered more beautiful here. That doesn't mean there weren't some Korean women in bikinis or some Korean men so dark they looked Cambodian -- this is Busan, after all -- but for the most part, any person you saw less than fully clothed was a foreigner. And there were plenty roaming around the festival today, including my friends and me!
Fulbrighters at the beach! (Side note: I'm getting pretty good at this dSLR selfie (or 셀카/selca, as they say in Konglish) thing.
After lazing on the beach for a good few hours, it began to get colder and windier, so we headed inland to get dinner at a barbecue place. (I forget the name, but it was a forgettable restaurant, so no matter.) For dessert, we joined a very long line for 2,000₩ 32cm ice cream cones! That's $1.75 for an ice cream cone over one foot tall. They were great, although they began to melt very quickly, so we had to eat them quickly, so we all got brain freeze because it was cold and we were eating ice cream quickly. Ha! Good job, guys.
After dessert, I took a bus back to Changwon (the bus actually departs from the neighborhood, so I don't have to cross town to get to the main bus terminal first) -- for future reference, the ticket is 5,900₩ -- and arrived home at around 10pm. All in all, a great day. It really ushered in summer!
Anna, Ben, Katelyn, and Lizzie with giant ice cream cones!
Some vocabulary:
모래 (moleh) means "sand".
모래상을 쌓는게 명상적인 활동일 수 있어요. Building a sand castle can be a meditative activity.
바닷가 (padatga) means "beach" or "coast".
오늘 바닷가는 매우 복잡했어요. Today, the beach was very busy and crowded.
일광욕을 하다 (ilgwang-yogeul hada) means "to sunbathe".
제가 반나체에 대해서 많이 자의식이 강하지 않고 일광욕을 하면 좋겠어요. It would be great if I could sunbathe without being self-conscious about being half-naked.
Here is a corny Konglish joke I just made up: What would a particularly excitable mother or father say on May 8th of every year?
Answer: "어버이!" (Oh boy!)
Hee. Okay, so today is 어버이날 (eo-beo-i nal), or Parents' Day, in South Korea. Originally transplanted from the US as Mothers' Day, fathers were allowed in on the celebrations starting from about forty years ago, and the tradition has stuck since then. Children give their parents gifts, the most common being a red carnation (빨간 카네이션) as a brooch, basket, or bouquet. But like many other holidays in Korea, this one has also been mega-commercialized.
My own host family has been particularly low-key on the celebrations lately. May 5th, just a few days ago, was Children's Day (어린이날), when families go out on picnics (소풍) and other nice excursions, but my host siblings stayed at home and studied. They said they were too old (middle- and high school-aged) for Children's Day. And today, well, not much of interest occurred. My host sister found me at school during passing period and asked me to deliver a card she had made to her parents. I did, and in addition, got a small, pretty carnation plant and a basket of kiwifruit to go along with it. In the words of my host brother (who says this every day when I ask him how his day went), "Nothing special." But I know my host parents appreciated the sentiment.
몇일 전 5월5일에 어린이날였어요. 대부분 사람이 가족 함께 소풍 하는데, 우리 홈스테이 동생들이 집에 머물고 공부했어요. 이제 어린이 아니기때문에 어린이날 못 축하한다고 말했어요. 그리고 오늘 5월8일 어버이날 인데, 보통날였어요. 홈스테이 여동생은 학교에서 저를 만났고 저에게 손으로 만든 카드를 부모님께 드린다고 부탁을 했어요. 했고 이 뿐 만 아니라 작은 예쁜 빨간 카네이션과 키위를 홈스테이 부모님께 드렸어요. 대체로, 그냥 하루였지만 홈스테이 부모님 고마워할것 같아요.
P.S. In class today, I was working on acrostic poems with my first-years. One of them happened to recall a cute acrostic she'd heard before:
Father And Mother I Love You
That said, time to call my actual 부모님, if they're awake, and wish them a happy Parents' Day!
멘탈 붕괴 (mental boonggwe) means "mental collapse", another neat pairing of an English loanword and a Korean word to create Konglish slang. It is most often shortened to 멘붕 (men-boong) as an exclamation meaning, "I'm so done," or "My brain is fried".
I heard this today from 관장님 at my taekgyeon gym. We had just finished practicing 대걸이 (a kind of wrestling), and I was absolutely exhausted. I mean, this was half an hour of trying to keep myself from faceplanting on the floor of the gym while up against several black belts. 관장님 was really kind, though; he seemed to sense that I was frustrated and gave me a pep talk: "조금씩," he said. Little by little. I'll improve if I just take it a day at a time and don't get discouraged just because I can't figure it all out right now.
Needless to say, I was drained of energy as we closed up shop (ours is the last class of the day, ending at 10:40pm) and left the building. It wasn't until we had already taken the elevator down from the sixth floor to the basement when I realized that I had left my glasses in the gym! Now, my vision is really bad; obviously I wasn't able to see anything without my glasses. But I was so tired that I hadn't even noticed! 깜빡 잊었다!
관장님 found this funny, though, and joked that I was so pooped that I'd had a 멘붕. Yup, definitely a 멘붕, although not only is my brain so done with today, so is my body. OTL. Time to sleep -- the weekend is almost here!
I learned a pair of interesting new vocabulary the other day. This week is midterms week at my school, so I have exactly zero classes to teach, as well as eight hours a day that I can spend lesson planning. Am I lesson planning? Heh. No. I'm playing Scrabble on Facebook, reading a book (currently, The Princess Bride), or scouring my reader for blog and news updates. This doesn't mean I'm not being productive, though! Because, as I've already said, I learned a pair of interesting new vocabulary.
One of the blogs I follow is TalktomeinKorean.com, which I highly recommend as an excellent resource to learn Korean for language learners of almost any level. And on this blog, I came across the word 귀차니스트 (kwichan-iste).
Unable to find it in a dictionary (I usually use Naver), I asked my co-teacher what it meant. I received a laugh in reply. My co-teacher said it was difficult to translate, but generally, a 귀차니스트 is a person who isn't willing to do anything, even important things, due to a lack of interest or motivation. A slacker. A deadbeat. A teacher who is on Facebook instead of creating his next nifty PowerPoint presentation.
Heh. Oh, how fitting.
The word itself is a linguistic oddball, a kind-of portmanteau of 귀찮다 (kwichanta) and the Latin suffix -ist to denote a person. 귀찮다 means "troublesome, bothersome" or, when used without context, something along the lines of "I don't care to do it". It's said frivolously, like "만사가 귀찮다" ("I can't be bothered to do anything.").
You can also use this verb with a direct object: "나는 그녀를 귀찮다." ("I'm tired of her.") or "학생들을 귀찮다" ("I'm so done with my students.") Hopefully, I'll never find myself saying this latter sentence, but it's a legitimate example my co-teacher gave!
More often, it seems, the verb is used as a modifier (adjective or adverb): 귀찮은 일 (kwichaneun il) is troublesome work, and 귀찮은 존재 (kwichaneun jonjae) is an annoying person. Most importantly, there's "귀찮게 하지 마라!" (kwichanke hajimala!) "Leave me alone!"
So, I've been a bit of a 귀차니스트 this week, since without my regular routine of classes, I've succumbed to the doldrums of procrastination (미루다/miluda). I mean, I've nearly finished my book, and I've written a couple of substantial blog posts lately, but I haven't finished a single lesson plan. And the week has flown by. Already it's Thursday tomorrow, and my goal is to pump out seven lesson plans by Friday. So let's go, 화이팅! No more 귀차니즘 from this 귀차니스트.
I like to watch TV with my host family because it exposes me to Korean culture and language while giving me an easy way to hang out with them. My host brother is very into Running Man, Rule of the Jungle, and Gag Concert, so those are the three that I watch the most often.
Running Man is a really entertaining program. I don't watch a lot of TV so I don't know what kind of American game show or variety show I could compare it to. The gist is that a core group of contestants -- various actors, singers, and entertainers -- along with a few celebrity guest contests compete each week to complete a series of themed missions that move them through interesting landmarks in different locations. For example, I've seen episodes taking place in traditional villages, empty shopping malls, the entire city of Cheongju, and last week they were in Vietnam for some reason. It's part scavenger hunt, part relay race, and part silly game show; I guess it's kind of like The Amazing Race, but definitely a carefree iteration, nowhere near as high-stakes or dramatic.
General Ondal and Princess Pyeonggang (from Wikipedia)
Anyway, tonight's theme was a parody of an old Korean folktale about Princess Pyeonggang and the fool Ondal (평강공주와 바보온달). I was heartily confused at the costumes and the storyline bits of the show, but my host brother managed to explain what was going on.
Princess Pyeonggang used to cry all the time when she was little (either all the time or continuously on one New Year's Day), so her father the King threatened that if she continued to cry, he would make her marry the village idiot (바보/pabo), who was a commoner named Ondal.
When the princess grew up, she refused to marry the man her father arranged for her to marry, citing her father's threat-slash-promise of marrying Ondal. The King tried to explain to his daughter that his threat was just a joke, but when Princess Pyeonggang continued to resist her father's wishes, he grew angry and banished her from the kingdom. Princess Pyeonggang ran away and found Ondal living in the mountains. She then spent many years educating and training the fool in archery and horsemanship, and he ended up "like Napoleon", according to my host brother: in other words, he became a general. They went back to the palace after many years, impressed the King, and lived happily ever after (until Ondal was killed in battle against the Silla).
It's a cool story. I like how the princess stands up to her father's patriarchal expectations of her and does her own thing, also managing to help another outcast and marginalized person overcome the barriers that prevent him from living successfully and with respect. I wish this were the kind of story I saw played out again and again in Korean dramas today.
As it were, the story of Princess Pyeonggang and Pabo Ondal was introduced to me via parody on Running Man, where three female contestants played the role of the princess and had to find their respective Ondals, "educate" them (in a hilarious trivia game where every wrong answer resulted in a huge spray of water to the face of contestants balanced precariously on a small platform in a swimming pool), and eventually win the favor of the king.
Running Man looks like tons of fun. I don't think I'll ever be on a reality TV show or game show of any kind, but if I could just play silly games and light-heartedly mock American culture for months, be filmed, and be paid for it, I think I totally would.
Vocab!
Parody: 패러디 (Konglish)
King: 왕/wang
Princess: 공주/gongju
Fool, or stupid person: 바보/pabo (Incidentally, this was one of the first Korean words I ever learned, from a youth game where screwing up resulted in everyone calling you "pabo". It can refer to a low-class, mentally-challenged person, but today it's used more as a light insult, much like the English "idiot".)
General: 장군/janggun
Patriarchy: 가부장제/kabujangje
Outcast: 왕따/wangdda (Refers mostly to social pariahs in an institution such as a school, and comes up often in references to bullying, a growing problem in Korea. There are many other words for outcasts, including 낙오자 "loser", 이단자 "heretic/excommunicate", and the interesting 꾸어다 놓은 보릿자루 "borrowed barley bag", which is an idiom for feeling like a fish out of water. Full example: 그녀는 꾸어다 놓은 보릿자루처럼 앉아 있었다. "She was sitting like an outcast." My co-teacher explained the story behind this idiom to me: a person once mistook a random bag of barley sitting in a corner for an actual person and suspected it of being a spy keeping quiet. Awkward!)
Pentatonix's a cappella version of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' Thrift Shop, everyone. Ever since I heard this song, I've been bent on doing some thrift shopping here in Korea. As a poor teacher, I'm thrilled when I find clothes for cheap. As an environmentally-conscious consumer, I support Reuse and Recycle and do not mind wearing clothes that have previously belonged to someone else, as long as they fit me and look awesome. Kudos to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis for using music to make thrift shopping look cool. I wear your granddad's coat; I look incredible.
In Korea, it seems as if thrifting and secondhand shopping aren't a big thing. I think the idea of buying old and outdated items runs in opposition to a culture that puts a heavy emphasis on pulling ahead, having the newest and latest of anything (technology, fashion, etc.). Nevertheless, it does exist, manifesting in small and hard-to-find ways. Thrifting is largely like treasure hunting, anyway, so while you may not find an enormous Goodwill or Salvation Army in any strip mall in this country (or any strip malls, for that matter), there are still lots of places to look for your "vintage" fix.
I should first explain some of the things I've learned from experience, however. 중고 (junggo) is the Korean word for "secondhand" or "used", and a thrift shop can be referred to as a 중고품 가게 (junggo-poom ka-ge). "Vintage", on the other hand, does not necessarily refer to clothes from a few decades ago that have retained their style despite years of use. I admit I'm not totally sure how "vintage" is used in the US, but here in Korea, 빈티지 (bin-ti-ji, some excellent Konglish) could mean old knit sweaters and really ugly boots regardless of their year of manufacture. In other words, Korean "vintage" is a certain style of clothing and does not match up perfectly with what I imagine to be American vintage.
With all this in mind, I've been hunting around Hongdae for thrift stores and vintage clothes shops. I figured that, although this neighborhood is populated by young people who love fashion and are probably willing to pay top dollar to keep their wardrobes full and ahead of the curve, I'd be more likely to find any such stores here than in, say, Gangnam (too bougie) or the touristy areas of the city (too glitzy). And a lot of the "forward" Korean fashion is defined by the arguably tacky and unique items you can only find in a thrift store. I've found six vintage and/or thrift stores; some were successes, others not so much.
#1: Vintage Store. This is one of the first that I noticed in Hongdae. I realized after not too long that it is just another one of the hundreds of minuscule pop-up shops that sells only a handful of items for a super-select clientele. This corner shop is so small that it is literally a couple of clear walls put up outside of a building with strange, tacky clothes hung up on racks inside. It's the size of a walk-in closet. This store is Korean 빈티지, not actual thrift. Let's try again. [edit] This store no longer exists, but there are hundreds like it still around. Again, it's "vintage", but it's not thrift. Moving on... [/edit]
#2: Vintage Clothing KD (케이디). Although this store right around the corner from my apartment looks legit, I have walked by it half a dozen times at all different times of the day, and it has never been open. Either you need a secret password to get in somehow, or it has indefinitely closed shop. If you know anything about this vintage shop, do let me know!
#3: Pollala Museum/Mania Recycle Shop (뽈랄라 수집관). A 수집관 (sujibgwan) is a collectors' museum. While I had high hopes when I saw the words "recycle shop", this is actually a hobbyist's store full of retro action figurines, posters, and toys from anime, manga, and sci-fi genres. Basically, it's geek paradise. No clothes, though. Here's a link to some more photos on a Korean blog.
#4: Ropa Usada (로파우사다) is both a Korean brand of vintage clothing and a chain of secondhand clothes stores in Korea. Katelyn pointed out that ropa usada is literally Spanish for "used clothes". This small vintage jackpot is neatly organized but very dense; there's so much for sale that it's a bit overwhelming. Most of the wares are dated American-style clothes: shirts, hoodies, jeans, tees, skirts, hats (likely stuff that foreigners have left behind, amassed in bulk over the years), but there's nothing you couldn't find for a better price at an American Salvation Army.
#5: Cowboy Vintage Shop (카우보이). This one is probably the epitome of vintage in Hongdae. I must stress that while it is legit vintage, it's certainly not thrift. What I like most about the shop is the atmosphere: retro music blasting as you walk into the basement, crazy outfits on the mannequins that actually look good, all of the clothes organized with an eye for style and color, and lots of random accessories like vinyl records on the walls, a Disney-style Pinocchio marionette, and giant Coca-Cola pins. It's all very American in an unsurprisingly in-your-face kind of way. What I dislike about the shop is that while all of its wares must have come from the United States anytime between 1970 and 2012, including the mechanic's uniforms, the cowboy boots, and the University of Wherever sweatshirts, it's all priced as if it's the latest in Korean fashion. Expensive. So this place is fun to browse in, but if I really wanted anything here, I'd go back to the States to find an equivalent.
#6: Beautiful Store (아름다운가게). Finally, a real, honest-to-goodness thrift store! And this one has a social conscience, too. Like the Goodwill or Salvation Army stores, the money raised by these small stores (over a hundred in Korea) goes to charity. The organization's other goals include promoting fair trade, flea markets, volunteering, and recycling, helping marginalized people groups such as women, ex-convicts, and the homeless, and campaigning for the environment. Everything about this really is beautiful. The Beautiful Store in Hongdae is a very small basement shop with not a huge selection of clothes, but I did manage to find a really nice blazer buried beneath dozens of really ugly blazers for only ₩5,500! That's five bucks for a blazer. What a steal! I've noticed a few other Beautiful Stores in other places in Seoul that are larger than the Hongdae branch, so perhaps I will check those out later.
#7: Againuse (어게인유즈). Here's a good vintage store with a small but neat collection for guys and girls. It seems like the theme of the shop is getting clothes secondhand, which I admire. It shows that they're focusing on recycling and not just on a certain style. This shop is on the second story of one of the buildings on Hongdae's "Christmas tree street", not far from the new H&M.
That's it for now! I know for certain that there are many other small vintage shops tucked away in small alleys around Hongdae; this neighborhood is large and I've only seen a fraction of it in my few weeks here. However, I also know that stores of any kind in Hongdae come and go frequently; a shop will close suddenly and a new one will take its place. So, there's no telling what you'll be able to find if you visit in a few years, or even this summer. It's likely that there will be more thrift and secondhand stores in the future. I like the idea that thrifting in general is gaining more popularity in Korea. It's a good sign that a society is taking human over-consumption seriously if more people actively take part in recycling culture.
Oh, and I made a map of the places I found. So if you're ever in the area, you can look for them. If you know of other shops I should check out, let me know in a comment! I'll find it and add it to the map.
Just for kicks, I want to mention Hongdae Free Market, a flea market that specializes in handicraft and local artists' work. It takes place at 1pm every Saturday from March to November. Too bad I'm leaving at the end of this month! If I come back to Seoul later this year, though, I'll make it a point to visit the Free Market.
Lastly, speaking of markets, the holy grail of vintage and thrift shopping in Seoul has to be Gwangjang Market (광장시장) in Jongno. It reminded me of La Boqueria in Barcelona, but instead of wandering aimlessly through a dimly-lit labyrinth surrounded on every side by food, I wandered aimlessly through a dimly-lit labyrinth surrounded on every side by clothes and accessories. It's one of my favorite places to be in in Seoul, let alone shop!
My estimate is that 80% of ESL teachers in Korea know what a "Bomb Game" is. (And if you don't, ask me what it is right now.) Oh, funny you asked! Well, it's a Powerpoint-based trivia game: simple to play, easily adaptable to any class, and, most importantly, remarkably popular with students of any age. The gameplay is simple: students choose questions from a grid. Correct answers get them points. The catch is that some of the questions are special rounds during which teams can steal points from or switch points with other teams, and one or two of the questions are "bombs": choose them and everything blows up, resetting every team's score!
I threw together my own bomb game last night; it took me the better part of five hours because I was doing it from scratch. But getting less sleep was well worth it for the awesomeness that went down in my classes today.
Calvin and Hobbes! All images in this post are copyright Bill Watterson and courtesy random pockets of the Internet.
Here are some things that happens when you play a bomb game with my students:
1) Song. A group of six super-serious boys who are in it to win it gets the question, "Sing one line from any English Christmas song" groans at first, and then immediately launches into a surprisingly synchronized and good rendition of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". I wish I'd recorded it, it was that fantastic.
2) Symbolism. "Spring" becomes ironically synonymous with death, since my version of the Bomb Game, based off of the snowball fights from Calvin and Hobbes, replaces an actual bomb with Spring, which comes to melt everyone and take away their points. Students were actually chanting "spring" like some sort of jinx before rival teams chose their questions.
copyright Bill Watterson
3) Student Said What? You discover that your students have a very poor grasp of American geography. (Q: "What are the two largest cities in the United States?" Everyone gets #1 New York, but what's the other? A: "Texas! San Francisco! Las Vegas! Miami! ALASKA!!!" they shout, to no avail.)
3b) Also, they know absolutely nothing about Hanukkah, or even Judaism for that matter. (Q: "What is the name of the eight-day Jewish winter holiday?" A: "Rebirth day! Black Friday! Maria! Kill sheep and put blood on door!" ... *facepalm*)
4) Suspense. My write-up on Facebook after the first class I tried it on: "Just played this in class. Teams "HyoungraeDolph" and "Snowmen" were tied in the lead with 5 points each. It's team "Eve" (the 6 girls who banded together) up next, with only two items left. They choose ... a BOMB! Everyone's back to zero! Chaos ensues. And now, team "SingleChristmas" has the very last item: and it's a special round! Will they throw, duck, or taunt? They choose to throw... ... ... ... it's a hit! 2 points! SingleChristmas wins!"
copyright Bill Watterson
5) Singleness pathos. On that note, my students seem very fixated on the part of Christmas where they don't have a significant other to take to the Christmas lights show (as the holiday is very couples-oriented here in Korea). I had teams called "SingleChristmas", "Single Bells" (love!), and "Romantic Singles". Also, I had to change all of these names from "solo", the Konglish for "single".
copyright Bill Watterson
6) Surprise. And this is my proudest moment, as a teacher. Team "WhiteChristmas", clearly the underdogs in their class who missed almost every question thus far in the game, had the very last question: a fix-the-incorrect-grammar doozie that freaked them out as soon as they saw it. But they were also riding high on a recent spring melt that had reset the playing field. Only "Single Bells" had a single point, and everyone else was at 0. With confidence I'd never seen before, SB stood up from his seat and proclaimed the heck out of his answer, and he was absolutely correct! Here's a kid that I'd previously written off as one of the "simply uninterested" ones, proving that he knew a thing or two about English grammar. And guess what? That last question was worth three points. He won it for his team, and the entire class went ballistic. My co-teacher said she could hear the screams from our office, two doors down.
Sounds like success to me!
copyright Bill Watterson, a truly gifted cartoonist
Female Student 1: Wowwwww! Me: What! Female Student 1: You are wearing short sleeves. Me: Oh, yeah. Female Student 2: It's cold! Me: I'm not that cold. I have lots of body heat. Female Student 2: Can you give me some? Me: UH... no, haha.
That funny little lunchtime conversation happened on the last day I wore a polo shirt to school. Since then, it's been noticeably colder, and I've taken out the scarves from where they were hiding in the back of my dresser drawer. The day I first wore my favorite scarf, a long gray knit thing that can wrap around my neck at least four times, to school, the other teachers noticed. (They all drive to school, while I walk, so they don't have to bundle up like I do.)
One of them made a point to ask me if I was wearing a scarf, and then chuckled when I replied in the affirmative. Why? Because of Konglish -- English words borrowed into Korean, often resulting in arbitrary changes in meaning. Some examples include: fighting (화이팅/hwa-i-ting) for "You can do it!" cider (사이더/sa-i-duh) for plain soda, like Sprite meeting (미팅/mi-ting) for "blind date" service (서비스/suh-bi-seu) to mean "on the house" hand phone (핸드폰/haen-deu-pone) for cell phone
So there are two Konglish words you must understand. The first is muffler (머플러/muh-peul-luh), which we in the US know as the thing motorcyclists take off their motorcycles so they can annoy the heck out of everyone in the neighborhood. In the UK, however, a muffler is a scarf.
Speaking of which, scarf has also been reappropriated by Konglish (스카프/seu-ka-peu), but it has changed in meaning, from any piece of cloth you wrap around your neck, to specifically small silk scarves, the kind that women tend to wear more often than men.
That said, when I told the other teacher that what I was wearing was a big scarf, he laughed and said no, no, it's a muh-peul-luh. But my English co-teacher knew that there was some Konglish at play there, so she had me explain the differences between the English understanding of words and the altered meanings they sometimes acquired on their way into general usage in Korea.
There's another word for scarf in Korean, one that isn't borrowed: 목도리 (mokdoli), which to me sounds like "neck girder/support". A quick Google Images search indicates that 목도리 and 머플러 are basically the same, although the results page for the Konglish word appears to have more white people on it.
Here is a link to an "Ultimate Konglish List", very extensive but probably incomplete, as language change happens more quickly than you can say "sociolinguistic phenomena". Fun to browse!
The Swatties strike again! I had the pleasure of meeting up with Kevin ('11) and Natalia ('12) this weekend in Busan. Kevin is teaching English at a rural elementary school on a TALK (Teach And Learn in Korea) scholarship, and Natalia is studying Mandarin Chinese in Beijing. Because Natalia has a week-long break following the end of her first semester, she flew over the East China Sea to Korea to visit some of the dozens of Swatties who are here. (To fly from Beijing to Busan takes about two hours.)
Galmaegisal (skirtmeat) barbecue at Seolae.
On the first evening, we met up at Gwangan (neighborhood of the famous Gwangalli Bridge) and got dinner at a great barbecue chain restaurant called 서래 (Seolae). The place was busy and the space inside was pretty cramped for our group of five, but we got some delicious barbecue. The specialty of this restaurant chain is 갈매기살 (galmaegisal), which is called "skirtmeat" in English. This is the meat around the diaphragm and liver, and it's the kind often used in fajitas. Our meat that night had been marinated in something special that made it very tender and very spicy. 억수로 맛있다! Seoul Food has a more comprehensive review here. The price came out to about 10,000₩ (<$10) per person, including drinks (소주 and 맥주, which gave me some embarrassing Asian glow). Great restaurant, right by the beach!
That was our next destination, chilling on Gwangalli Beach just to see the lights on the bridge and cool off after a spicy meal. It was nice to catch up with Natalia and Kevin, chatting about Swat news, of course, among other things.
Swatties at Gwangalli Beach! Me, Natalia, and Kevin. (taken by Jamie)
Natalia and Monica at noraebang.
Later, when Kevin and some others in our group left, Monica, a Fulbrighter in Busan, joined us and we went to a 노래방 (noraebang) for everyone's favorite: karaoke! This 노래방 was right on the beach; I forget its name, but it was just 15,000₩ for an hour, no drink purchase necessary. In fact, we got some free apple juice just for the heck of it. (서비스, or service, is a Konglish word that means "complimentary stuff".) I totally sang Starships. And Mrs. Robinson (Swatsick...). And Beyonce. And I even tried a G-Dragon song and butchered it. It was a blast!
It was around midnight when we finished, and I had already missed the last regular bus back to Busan by several hours. Fortunately, Natalia's couchsurfing host was incredibly gracious and said that I could crash the night at her place, as well, on a spare air mattress she had. I was extremely thankful for this. We talked all night about Korea, weddings, and Glee. I slept well, and we left at noon the next morning.
People have been talking up couchsurfing like nothing else recently (especially my globe-trotting friend Miyuki, and my first experience with it was so generous that I've decided to sign up for it and see where else I can travel. I would gladly host anyone coming through Changwon if only I lived in my own apartment, but unfortunately, that's not really the case right now.
Street food: 호떡 (hotteok), which is so incredibly nommable. Deep-friend pancakes filled with melted cinnamon sugar, pine nuts, and peanuts. This particular vendor had a long line of people waiting, which doesn't mean slow service but instead top-notch quality.
Sunday was a laid-back, drizzly day. Natalia and I took the subway to Seomyeon, the downtown area. At the subway station, we had a "stupid foreigners" moment and I accidentally made Natalia buy a multiple-trip card instead of a one-trip ticket. To our surprise and amazement, we were very quickly and efficiently helped out by some of the workers at the information office, who 1) gave Natalia a refund on the card that she shouldn't have bought and 2) walked us through how to use the correct ticketing machines (which we had not noticed before going to the wrong machines). Three cheers for patient, polite, and helpful Korean public service workers!
Woojung's Bibimbap in Seomyeon.
At Seomyeon, we met up with Kevin again and had lunch at Woojung's Bibimbap, and then chilled the afternoon away at an adorable cafe called Tokyoloose. Perks of the bibimbap restaurant included the cheapest 돌솥 비빔밥 (dolsot bibimbap, or stone bowl mixed rice) that I've had in Korea, at 4,000₩, as well as good service, its plain interior and staff of irritable ajummas notwithstanding.
Tokyoloose, on the other hand, is the very paragon of Korea-cute. Stuffed animals, lacy place mats, decor that looked like we landed in France in the '40s... As Kevin described it, "Like Japan's interpretation of an antique French country house." Really, all you need are some photos in order to understand what I mean. Oh, and the drinks and desserts were just great, with almost everything on the menu in the 4-6,000₩ range.
Cafe Tokyoloose, located on the second floor of a building somewhat far from the main bustling streets of Seomyeon.
The surprisingly large and spacious interior, well-lit and overwhelmingly cute. Light jazz playing on the radio.
Natalia and Kevin at Tokyoloose. Note the lacy place mats, the antique clock, large windows, and the enormous stuffed giraffe.
So there was a "Dress Shop" inside the cafe with clothes that you could try on... but they weren't for sale... And there was a mirror, so I guess the whole point was just to try on cute clothes and silly hats while you waited for your green tea latte?
Oh, yes, and there was also food. A lemon tart presented to us with instructions on how to properly eat it (squeeze the lemon slice over it first, and then alternate small bites of pie and ice cream).
Banana chocolate roll, with truffles and almonds!
I'm planning to write reviews of both of these places on Fulbright Infusion's city guide soon, as they were both fantastic and deserve a bit more attention. As you can probably tell from all the photos I took at Tokyoloose, I really loved it and would definitely go back again. Besides the cafe itself, though, it was a wonderful afternoon spent with friends. As I've said before and will say again, I really enjoy getting together with Swatties in a place that is not Swarthmore. The farther away from Swarthmore, actually, the more fun it seems to be.
