2002-08-29 - 11:34 p.m.

Thursday, August 22, 2002

Noon -- I met Min and her cousin, Chung Hwan, at 11 a.m. We went to a nice coffee house near here (my treat, since Min has been so good to me) and talked for about 45 minutes. Chung Hwan will be coming to practice speaking English at 10 a.m. on Tuesdays. That is flexible until his class schedule is firmed up for the coming semester. He is involved in a group who builds cars for some type of competition; that takes up a lot of his free time in the evenings. He was very shy about talking in front of Min. Her mastery of English seems to overwhelm him. He seems like a bright and kinesthetically talented young man, reminds me of Pete, my younger son. Engineering is his course of study.

I got the place reasonably presentable for their visit, given my lack of furniture. Min says she'll see if she can locate a small table at which we can work.

It's raining lightly today. Good thing we moved the fridge yesterday, when it was clear.

Later -- Put in several hours between afternoon and midnight practicing my HTML coding and "buffing up" some of Ray's Book pages. All the graphics stayed at KVTC, so I need to draw and scan a bunch.

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Friday, August 23

(16:10)

Still cloudy, hot and humid. It poured last night when a thunderhead passed over. People, on the street when it hit, shouted and squealed! I was snug at home and glad of it.

Someone mentioned [in a recent journal] not liking tofu. When I first encountered tofu, maybe 30 years ago in the food co-op, the person who made it for taste-testing fried it in butter with onions. Now, that's tasty! Cut it thin and cook each side until it has a light golden crust. Since I came to Corea, where every convenience store sells sesame oil, I've been sauteing it in that. Just a few drops of natural soy sauce perks it up most flavourfully! You can add slivers of carrots and apples to this, and some green veggies to make a really pretty stir-fry. The trick is to get the firm tofu and slice it thin, maybe a quarter-inch. Peanut or corn oil are also good frying media, but keep the heat medium-low, so they don't smoke.

Last April, when we went to Mt. Sorak National Park, I had home-made tofu ("tubu") for the first time. It was so much better than commercial tofu that I'd have to say "it was a different critter." MiHwa bought a kilogram to take home, it was so good. It was made with water from a mountain spring,- no chlorine or other additives to warp the pure flavour. It was like eating fresh, well-drained cottage cheese rather than the stuff that's sat in a plastic tub for who knows how long in the supermarket.

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Sunday, August 25

13:15 -- I'm working on a lesson plan for Tuesday's meeting with Chung Hwan. The basic text is the bilingual dictionary. We'll start out with defining "basic," learning to ask questions about names of objects, and discussing time (past, present and future).

English tends to pile all the qualifiers in front of the basic name or category. I sometimes am frustrated with copious, flowery adjectives. "Tell me what you are describing!"

Corean starts with the most important object and then qualifies it. Consequently they can get even more descriptive, because you have a "hat rack" to hang it from. For example, Koreans write addresses from general to specific: State, city, borough/ward, ward section, group of buildings, specific building, apartment number, person {or in Hangul: Gi, shi, dong, ga, kyeoi, apatu, # ho, and name of person}. It's perfectly logical from the perspective of an efficient mail-sorter.

English lets you easily tell a story with a surprising end, such as a detective story or a joke with a punch line. You have to be more clever to get away with that in Corean.

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Wednesday, August 28

[Lugging the notebook with me as I travel]

12:10 -- Left the house with the laundry churning, and only had a two-minute wait at Anam Station, heading for Itaewon. I sure hope Jim will be there. I tried to call him about 11:10 a.m., but no answer.

Yesterday's meeting with Chung Hwan was fun for me; hope he had fun, too. We divided it, like Gaul, into three parts: 1. Introducing the basic-related, questioning, and time-related words; 2. Making rhyming words with the magnetic letters; {5 min. break} 3. Conversation about his trip to the States. All in all, it was the easiest six man-won I ever made and the fastest-moving two hours. It was pouring rain out and, when he arrived, hr was soaked to the knees. It may have seemed a bit primitive to him, my living situation. We sat on folded bedding and used cookie sheets on which to work the magnetic letters. The blankets probably felt good around his cold legs, though.

13:30 -- Arrived at Itaewon at 12:30, got a cup of coffee (2,000 won) from a sidewalk vendor and sat in the sun. No sign of Jim. I went to a "cheap diner" off the strip for "yooboo oo-tong," fried tofu soup, 3,000 won for a big meal! That's the difference between a tourist trap and a place for the locals. The dish had two kinds of fried tofu (deep-fried and grilled) in a soup stock with oo-tong (noodles), green onions and a green vegetable that looked like chrysanthemum leaves. I ate all my kim chi and a third of the pickled daikon, too.

15:30 -- Pays to be honest! I told Dr. Eric what was going on and he is helping me to find private students. He posted a Korean-language advertisement for me on Yahoo.co.kr and will field phone calls for me! He also made me a poster to copy and put up around Korea U. Jim never showed up, so I don't have my orthopaedic shoe inserts, and I'm down to 2 man-won. I don't know what's with Jim. Sometimes, it's impossible to contact him. If I ever get some spare cash, I'm going to buy him a cell-phone!

20:50 -- {In Hannam-dong, just a quick note before meditation.] The copy center made me 30 posters and nearly a gross of little paper slips to put in pockets on the posters for "chun oh bagwon," about $1.25. I'm going to doll them up with orange and yellow highlighter pens and put 'em up around Anam. It will be good to have students who don't have to travel too far.

Min called just as I was heading to meditation. She wanted to know how the first meeting went. I said I think he was a bit overwhelmed by the material we covered. Frankly, I wanted to give him a number of tools he could use, in case he never came back. It was a "skim over the high spots" of what we will develop in more depth.

Good night for now. Thanks for stopping by.

Happy Trails!

~ Sil in Corea

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