Learning Korean

These days, Loren and I are doing two lots of Korean language lessons per week. We have our 2 hour lesson at the YMCA on Tuesday. We are also doing a 1 hour lesson at a near by english cafe.

We are learning alot and are much better than we were 3 months ago. However, we are still very very far from being referred to as "good" at Korean.

For instance, this week at the Korean lesson my teacher came in and said "ann neeyong ha say yo" which means hello. I decide to go all out and say hello back followed by "how are you?". My teacher understood the hello part but was very confused at my "how are you?". It turns out I didn't ask how she was, instead I asked "how is your cup of tea?". So, as you can imagine, her response was not the "im doing fine" I was expecting.

Later that same lesson the teacher, who was in her second week teaching the group, asked if we remember her name. She receive a room of blank faces. So she wrote the first letter of her name on the board to
help.



This jogged my memory and I had a guess at her name. She looked very surprised at my guess. I thought I must have got it first try. She asked me to repeat what I had guessed so she could see if I was correct. So I repeated her name and got ready for some praise for being the only student who remembered.
Instead she told me to never say that again as instead of saying her name I had just said the Korean word for "bitch"....twice.

I'm glad our teacher is super nice or she may not speak to me again. In a ten minute period I managed to ask her how her cup of tea was and guess that her name is bitch.....I guess I still have a lot of learn.

Things are different in Korea-3

Eating out in Korea is CHEAP. It is going to be hard to go back home and have to pay upwards of $10 for a cheap meal. The photo below is of the menu in our local Kim-Bap Restaurant. Kim-Bap restaurants are everywhere, they are basic little places that do very casual eat in and lots of takeaway. They have a wide selection of standard Korean food: Kim-Bap (Korea's sushi), Mandu (dumplings), Bibimbap (rice with veggies and egg), Ramon, Jjigae (kinda a spicy stew hotpot thing), Donkkasu (crumbed and fried pork schnitzel with a yummy sauce) and a heap of other things that I am yet to try/translate. The most expensive thing on our local Kim-Bap shops menu is 4,500 WON (around $4.50) and is a Chi-Juh (cheese) Donkkasu. So for $4.50 you can stuff yourself with a pork schnitzel with cheese in it, topped with a delicious sauce, rice and salad.

More expensive restaurants (foreign food and Korean BBQ) are rarely more than $10-$15 a dish. Some of these "nicer" restaurants would be similar to Blue Train in Southbank (in food type, quality and atmosphere), but are basically half the price.

Holiday camp

Things are different in Korea-2

Difference number 2: Korean bathrooms.

All of the bathrooms I have come across in Korea (apart from the occasional motel) have no shower stall or bath. Rather, they just have a shower head in the middle of the bathroom, or annoyingly over the sink. The water then just drains through a drain in the floor. This may seem strange, but it has come to grow on me. It makes cleaning the bathroom really easy, you can just use the shower hose to spray down the entire room. The downsides are that the bathroom floor is often wet, this is easily combated by wearing specific bathroom slippers:

I am in the habit of putting on bathroom slippers now, so I do it even if the floor is dry. The second downside is things getting wet, but after a few showers you work out where you can and can't put things, plus most stuff in the bathrooms is waterproof anyway!

In other news Brenton took my away for my birthday last weekend (we had a 3 day weekend, woo hoo) to Chuncheon. It was a really nice river town and we had a great time relaxing and being tourists with a million other Koreans. Here are some pictures:

Ferry ride to Nami Island

Nami Island

Nami Island

Yummy! Chuncheon's famous culinary delight, Dakgalbi

Chuncheon

A Weekend with Adventure Korea

Last weekend Brenton, Amy, Rachel and I went on a trip with Adventure Korea. A few months ago Amy, Brenton and I went with Adventure Korea to the DMZ and had a lot of fun, so we wanted to give a different trip a go. First up we went to the Pumba Festival in Eumsong. Here is a little blurb about the festival that I copied from Rachel's blog:

Pumba was the word repeated in the songs of street singers, especially when Korea was once impoverished. They strolled around marketplaces or villages seeking food, money, or anything they could get. Pumba doesn’t have a specific meaning but is a language mechanism for keeping a rhythm. These days, the word pumba generally refers to gakseori. These performers do not beg for food or money, but do sing at events or festivals.  The festival has multiple gakseori (performers) who were on stage all day as well as a plethora of booths where you can learn about cutting yeot (Korean malt candy), pound rice for rice cakes (tteok), or buy some delicious festival food.

The festival itself was pretty good, but nothing too exciting. We had been told that we could dress up in traditional Pumba costumes and make-up and join in the festival. What we didn't realise was that we were actually the main attraction of the festival! I now know what it is like to be famous and I did not enjoy it. There were camera's in our faces non stop, Brenton's especially because he opted to go for the full Pumba make-up. Some of the other wagook-ins loved the attention but we promptly ditched the costumes and make-up (Although, there were remains of Brenton's make-up for a few days).

Tradition Pumba costumes

Brenton in the make-up seat

Brenton post make-up but pre paparazzi, so he is still smiling

Paparazzi

Paparazzi

and more Paparazzi, ok this is starting to get old!

They especially loved Brenton because of his crazy make-up.
They were even telling him where to stand and how to pose!

After the interesting Pumba Festival we jumped on the bus and headed to Daecheon Beach (which is home to the  Boryeong Mud Festival in July, watch out for a blog on that later). This part of the trip was much more relaxing. We spent Saturday night drinking on the beach, making new friends. Sunday we went ocean rafting and then in the afternoon Amy and Brenton went paint balling while Rachel and I relaxed on the beach. All in all a good, but interesting, weekend.

Daecheon Beach

Things are different in Korea

During our 3 and half months in South Korea we have noticed a lot of differences between Korea and Australia (some good, some bad, and some just different). Here is difference number one:

It seems that the standard Korean kitchen comes in size small and is missing one very standard feature for an Australian kitchen an oven! We have rectified this by buying a toaster oven which can fit a normal size tray and a small chicken in it. Since oven's are not standard in Korean kitchens it has also been a little difficult to buy oven proof cookware. There are chopsticks galore in our local Home Plus but the oven proof section is very small and mostly very expensive.