still here. working on a new project. love you all.

Nicki Minaj

Hello students,

• What do you think about Nicki Minaj?
• Did you see her video with Will.I.Am called "Check It Out" (above)?
• There are a lot of Korean Hangeul words there...why do you think they used Korean words?
• Is Nicki MInaj Korean?
• Has she been to Korea?
• Have you ever heard of her before this video came out?
• Do you like her videos?
• Compare her with Lady Gaga and Barbie and even Lee, Hyori. Do you think one is copying the other?

Write your answers below in the comments or email me your opinion...I want to know what the Koreans are saying about this!

I am looking for students

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Please let me know DO YOU WANT TO LEARN ENGLISH?

Do you know someone who needs some extra help?

Apartments in America

Hello! Please watch this. Your teacher will quiz you later. There is a LOT of vocabulary. And please don't mind the mess!! The things on the ground are moisture-eating balls and on the wall I have a sticker for Christmas tree lights. Yes, and my bed wasn't made...what do you want from me!? ;P

Anyway, this video is mainly for my students explaining the difference between the way things work in Korea and America. I should probably make another one in English for the Americans. You are probably going to watch this and think, "Oh my GOD, they don't have light switches there!!??" This is not the case, the light switches actually move to the SIDE instead of up and down, and ours are much prettier, hehe...so a lot of it is explaining the difference in the way things work.

Have fun!

Chuseok: Korean Thanksgiving?

Hi everyone! Thanks for stopping by...if it's your first time, the first blog is at the bottom and this is the latest one. I'm not as tech-savvy as some others, so I still haven't figured out how to do a few things yet, like get video up here and it's driving me crazy!!!!! Actually, it doesn't matter what order you read them in, it's just that the first blog has an introduction about me and why I'm doing this. If you have any suggestions, questions or comments on my blog/design/Korea/China/anything at all, comment below or contact me. (o_O)  

        In honor of Thanksgiving, I have uploaded this vlog written this blog about our cherished Turkey Day and the Korean equivalent, Chuseok, although to me it's not really an equivalent at all. Let me explain more now, as I'm not restricted by time and language. I'm guessing you know a little about Thanksgiving. In America, we hope to gather with all of our family members under one roof and eat a HUGE meal at the same time. Though my family is quite small, this is a huge task. I think gathering the family the biggest reason that people compare it to Chuseok. It usually takes five hours to get from Seoul to Busan...on Chuseok it takes 19. This is the truth coming from a friend who came to visit me during the vacation. So in Korea, you get two or three days off before the holiday to make sure you get there.

     I'm not married, but this is a tangent worth noting: in Korea, there is much tension and frustration about whose house to go to on Chuseok. It must always be the husband's family's, and within that, it must be at the oldest living male's home(or hometown, I never got clarification on that, but it would make sense that in most cases they would be the same place because most older people in Korea don't want to be bothered with moving around the way young people do, which is another blog entirely). I am a teacher, and most English teachers in Korea are women, so I know that this is true because Korean women don't openly complain about their family issues but this is one that is well-known by MANY wives...the husband and the husband's family come first. One of my coworkers was in tears to me between classes because her mother-in-law had given her husband and all of the other children in her family some free herbs from the acupuncturist, but not her because the daughter-in-law doesn't matter. It's almost like America's "evil stepmother" in Cinderella, but in Korea, the monster-in-law becomes the real thing.

     Speaking about it now, that did happen to me! (No, I didn't get married and I wasn't upset my not receiving some herbs---and no, they weren't the kind you can smoke!!!) Being away from home when you're sick makes being sick even more painful and seemingly endless..so I would complain to my (Korean) ex-boyfriend and tell him how in America, when people get sick, their loved ones make hem soup and bring it to their door (that rarely happened for me but I wanted to see if he'd do it) and so he did something better: he invited me to his mother's house for a home-cooked meal. This was just about the next best thing to my own mommy cooking me soup, so I said yes, and forgot about all of the connotations and problems that could come with meeting your partner's mother for the first time. I wasn't nervous on the bus, I was more happy about getting food cooked by someone's mommy especially for me. She knew I was coming and made "sam gye tang", a stew similar to chicken noodle soup that involves stuffing a little beheaded chicken with rice and ginseng and boiling the whole thing in bone broth and onions..really good for you, but a mission for me to eat a whole chicken!

     The dinner was fine. It was weird because she just sat there and watched at me eat. She stared and smiled occasionally, and then told me to eat more. This process repeated throughout the whole thing until I finished my bowl of rice. A meal is not complete in a Korean household until you have eaten all of your rice. She spoke NO English and her dialect was SO thick I could only get a few words out of each sentence (I said I speak in the dialect of Busan, but the older the people get, the thicker and more indistinguishable their accents become). When she was satisfied that I had eaten enough, my then-boyfriend translated questions and answers. It turned out she would serve her husband dinner after we left and she'd eat with him. Korean mothers (maybe ALL mothers) live to see their sons eat. It was strange for me to hear this, one because it reminded me of the mom in A Christmas Story in the nineteen FIFTIES, and, two because I'm an only female child and there was so much food around that no one had to worry about if I was eating or not.  So then we got to talking and as soon as I started to understand her thick dialect a bit more, it was time for us to leave. As she hugged me goodbye(a strange thing to do, usually youngsters bow and parents nod their head in a shooing motion), she said "You know, I never had a daughter and I always wanted one...maybe you can be like my daughter." Ha ha ha, we all laughed that awkward laugh when someone gives you a great compliment but you both don't believe it. I told a co-worker and she said "Oh, she said that? To YOU? Haha, that's what they all say....in the beginning."

You must take off your shoes in homes, restaurants, schools and even hotel rooms

     I almost did believe it though. I started to believe it when I was invited over more and more often for dinner and visits, and even to meet the other members of the family. Things were going well, despite the fact that I was this white chick from America and they were this small-town Korean family who believed that if you brought a girl home to mom, you were going to marry her (and I made it clear to all of them that I was not interested in marriage). To make this sweet(because it's already not short), I started to hate her as much as Ariel hates Ursula and Cinderella hates the evil stepmother...to the point that the last time I saw her I just wanted her out of my face. The woman did nothing to me. She was kind. I was upset at all of the things she "did" to my boyfriend and what a momma's boy she made him into. I hope he's not reading this! Almost all Korean males are "momma's boys" to American standards, because it is expected that the eldest son stay at home for the rest of his life and care for his parents, since they so "lovingly" cared for him. If he is to be married, the wife would move into the mother's house with them. However it in Korean minds, living with and taking care of your parents is an extremely adult and honorable thing to do. It is the "right" thing to do. There, it's been said many times that "You don't just marry a man, you marry his family", and it's so true. This doesn't happen so much anymore, but the attitudes are still there in terms of the wife and the wife's family not being as important as the husband's.

     Thanksgiving and Chuseok are different in the reasons that families gather for unbelievable amounts of food. Americans (today) gather and eat to "give thanks" -hence the title. The most revered pastime of Thanksgiving as a family (no, not football) is going around the table and saying what each person is thankful for. God, I hope families still do this, because every day I am more and more embarrassed about being a citizen of this great country. Please DON'T comment on my patriotism or lack of it, ESPECIALLY if you've never actually lived outside of the country for a considerable amount of time...there are many blogs and  books already on the subject; I will digress no further. 

Halmoni(an elderly woman) selling vegetables at a traditional Korean street market

     The purpose of gathering in Korean families on Chuseok is the ritual called "Je Sa". Many Koreans have converted to Christianity and refuse to perform this Buddhist ritual, but as mentioned before, if the eldest male or husband's family does Je Sa, so will you, regardless of your present religion. It's only one day a year so some Christian families will do Je Sa only to commemorate their families and ancestors but not go to temple or do Je Sa on other holidays or anniversaries. What is Je Sa? It's an offering to and worship of one's ancestors. In modern America we don't use the word "ancestors" a lot in daily conversation, but in Korea, pride of one's ancestors may be one of the biggest reasons the small country has survived the way it has. 

At a palace in Seoul

     Unfortunately, I have never witnessed Je Sa or Chuseok with a Korean family, because like a dumb American, I thought it was a private thing and didn't want to impose. Also, I didn't want to meet every single member of my boyfriend's family and have them all asking me thousands of questions and staring at me all day and staring at my boyfriend for bringing home a white girl...you know, awkward stuff. But I did do a smaller version of Je Sa at a weekend temple stay and have had numerous people tell me all about it. The women get up at dawn to start preparing the feast. No, I think they might even start the night before. The women's role is to be in the kitchen of course (another reason I didn't want to go, and didn't want to sit with all of the men while they were doing manly things, although I really did enjoy the time I spent with manly men in Korea because even though they are worse than football jocks at a game, it was a world I rarely entered into, even in America, so I may have had a good time making them feel awkward having the foreign girl around.) 

A Buddhist temple right near my apartment in Jinhae!

     So they make food and food and more food. Then when everyone is together and in one room, they light incense(??) and they put some food on a table for their ancestors to "eat". After they have chanted/prayed/sang/whatever is said at Je Sa, the eating begins. And I'm sure, the drinking. That is the pastime of every day that ends in Y in Korea, but then after everyone leaves, the family puts a bowl of food in the doorway with chopsticks sticking out of it, ready for the ancestors to eat. This is the reason why you should never stick your chopsticks directly into your rice during or after a meal, because it is only done for the dead and is seen as very rude. I bet some young kids might not even realize that. You can put your spoon in the bowl, but never the chopsticks. Lay them alongside the plate or in the plate if there's no more food, but never jutting out of the food.

     I lived in Jinhae for three years, and for three years I thoroughly enjoyed walking around the neighborhood the day after Chuseok because in the morning, there are bowls of uneaten food outside of many doorsteps. It's a really strange sight for an American like me, where you'd be worried about raccoons or rats or people trying to eat that food. Well, they have cats...they are like big rats, always sneaking around the garbage areas at night, hunting for leftovers from humans. 

     That's it for tonight, folks! Happy Turkey Day! Oh one more thing: they don't eat turkey in South Korea. Not on Thanksgiving, not any day. A lot of Korean kids think a Turkey is a big chicken and only know about it from movies and American holidays where their foreign teachers tell them about it. Oh and sorry the pics don't match the writing, I just know that everybody likes to look at pictures once in a while (and they are all MY pictures, not copied and pasted from other websites--most of them are Jinhae or Busan^^). 

Okay, that's it. <3

All middle school students must wear uniforms and give "victory" signs in all pictures

P.S. Each of these pictures has an incredible story behind it and I feel like I'm doing you and this blog an injustice by not telling you...like a caption is not enough. From now on maybe I'll post pictures and then write about them instead of picking a topic and adding pictures. 

Thanks for reading this one, have a great WONDERFUL day!

Saranghaeyo

(I love you)

Jumping Around...

    Just trying it out..want to see if I can actually get a video up here...if I do, that would be awesome! Then I can do vlogging as well! But it will all be from this site or I will give you a link. This video is a short self-introduction in my favorite and second-most proficient language, Korean. It's not just you, my voice DID suddenly get really nasal, it's how some Korean girls talk, and along with the nasality, I've also adopted a large part of the South Gyeongsang dialect, which I've heard described as "the Texas of Korea" because it's so distinct. When I went to other cities and spoke to bartenders and waitresses in Korean, they would all say "Oh my goodness! You speak just like a South Gyeongsang person!" It wasn't even something I really tried to do, it was just where I was living and using and hearing the language.

     I didn't go to school to learn Korean, I mainly got friends and joined social events and salsa clubs and got really close with my co-workers. Trust me, in Korea, you want your co-workers to be on your side. In America, you can leave the office and not have to worry about or hang out with your co-workers or depend on them for mostly anything (I'm generalizing here). However, in Korea as a Westerner who doesn't speak the language, your co-workers basically control your life. I mean, they teach with you in he classroom and they translate for you to the principal and other people...they are even in charge of getting you your first apartment/cell phone/immigration card/bank account! So a lot of people buy presents for their co-workers before they even meet them!

     I read that it might be because Koreans work so many hours and they are sometimes as work and see their coworkers more often than they do their own children or families! The line between friends and coworkers is also very blurred. I can't count how many times I was invited out to dinner with my "department" (the people who shared my block of cubicles) or all of the English staff or the whole school. I heard that Obama wants the US to be more like Korea...well, I haven't seen the clip or any of the reactions or explanations, but my opinion is he only knows half the story. Korean kids are absolute geniuses and they study harder than anyone I've ever seen...they are in school for 10-12 hours a day if not more! But Obama may have failed to mention that South Korea has like, suicide rate #2 in the world...and it's mostly the young kids who are jumping off buildings because they failed their college entrance exams...more on that fun stuff another time...I totally didn't plan to digress like this.

     Thank you for reading this post and watching a video of me after a very, very long day...

     Let me get one thing straight. I'm not making light of anything or offending anyone. Well, I'm not trying to offend anyone so if you feel that I am wrong, PLEASE tell me and that would be awesome, because I LIKE a difference of opinion. It makes for interesting conversation. I am simply stating my experience and my feelings about what I saw, heard and did in Asia. I'm not a politician or historian, I just want to record my memories while they're still fresh in my mind. Thanks!!! ^^*

Girl Meets World

Here is the first picture, and pretty much what encapsulated it all for me: the Great Wall of China. I didn't really think it was a big deal until we got there and started climbing. I can't remember how far up I got, but the tour guides gave us FOUR HOURS to climb up and down, so it may have taken about two or three hours to get to the height shown in the picture above. It was amazing. I really started to become aware of all the people who suffered and died in building this wall as I was so selfishly complaining about climbing up! I also became saddened when I saw the locks that people had put on the sides of the walls in memory of the dead. Whenever we passed such a collection of hanging locks with red string, the crowd always seemed to have gotten quieter and their complaints about the steep steps and their shin splints became suddenly subdued. That has always amazed me; the effect and power of a simple object or image that can instantly change our emotions or actions.

    So I went to Montclair State University in New Jersey and studied Linguistics. One of the cutest and funniest professors we had in the Linguistics department was Dr. Longxing Wei (pictured above, pronounced Long-Shing Way). He was a tall, skinny Chinese man who had found a way to talk about drinking with former students, study abroad in China, and drinking with former students in China in every single lecture. The funny thing is, he was teaching us Semantics and Syntax! If you don't know what those words mean, trust me, it's the Calculus of Linguistics-- BORING with a capital B! Actually semantics in conversation is very exciting, but add a textbook and a bunch of linguists to the equation and it's not like we're chatting at a party anymore.

When I first declared my major as linguistics, I did know that I wanted to travel the world while teaching English. I just didn't really know how that was going to happen. So every week I would listen to Dr. Wei talk about China ever-so-subtly between our noun phrase diagrams and imperative politeness factors in speech, and one day he said something like, "We are offering a study abroad program in China and you will get college credit for two classes for coming, as well as an opportunity to experience the great country of China" and I was so excited! I really didn't know how I was going to do it, but it seemed like such a cool thing to do! Go to China for five weeks! Yeah! But I was working at Starbucks and couldn't figure out a way to pay for a trip to Asia....so I went home and did what most kids do, I told my parents my conundrum.

     The next thing I know, I'm getting my passport and packing my bags and saying goodbye to my friends and family at the airport, and then I'm on the plane to China!!! It's a blur now, but I know that my stepmother supported me and reassured me that this will be a really great thing for me, in life in general and since I want to be an EFL teacher abroad. I met a curly-haired, sweet-looking girl outside near the ash tray (what a GREAT place to meet people, by the way!) and we started to talk. We had our last cigarette together before boarding the plane, and I think because of that, we were bonded for the rest of the trip. She was my partner in crime, my smoking buddy, my clubbing friend...yes, there is clubbing in China! 

     I hope you've enjoyed so far and there is a LOT more to come, from China, Japan, Thailand, and of course, Korea...this was just to start writing. Thanks again for stopping by! If you have any questions let me know...I know I didn't explain every single picture but I will try to do what I have time for...have a wonderful day!