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Archive for the 'Steve’s House' Category

Stephanie goes to Korea

This has been an interesting week. Last week we sent Michael home. He was ready to go. As soon as he got home he was headed for a week long field trip to 제주도. We Skyped with his mother before he left. She missed him a lot but it looks like she had to wait another week before she got to see him.

We, on the otherhand, just sent our oldest daughter to Korea. She will be there for the next seven weeks. She is doing a “service project” for school credit here where she will be volunteer teaching at an elemetary school, helping out with English instruction. Her first day will be tomorrow.

She is feeling a bit overwhelmed with the lack of English interaction already. Not understanding anything that is said around you can be headache inducing, especially combined with jet-lag. Typical for her though, she has commented at how fashionable everyone is, especially their shoes!

Hopefully, I will be able to post updates about her stay in Korea on a weekly basis. I am sure that her Korean will improve. It will have to. I should have a full update next week!

Going Home

Our exchange student, Michael, goes home this week. We spent this weekend in Yosemite. For an 11 year-old I was surprised at how impressed he was with the sights. The typical response we have gotten from children and adults alike has been something along the lines of, “that is nice and all but we have rocks and trees in Korea too…”

Yosemite Falls

We asked him what he enjoyed or found different about his time in the United States and here are some of his thoughts:

He was surprised that younger children needed a babysitter, that they couldn’t stay at home alone for extended amounts of time. In Korea this is no big deal.

He was also surprised that we don’t have any 학원 here to speak of whereas in Korea everyone takes some kind of after school class. The schools here are broken up into separate, single story buildings, whereas in Korea, his school is one multi-story building. He liked his teacher here and made some good friends.

While he was here he enjoyed several holidays: President’s day, Valentine’s day, St. Patrick’s day, Mother’s day, Easter. Easter was his favorite. He also liked “pajama day” at school (but I don’t think he wore his pajamas to school).

Generally, he liked American food but there were some things that he didn’t like. He didn’t like artichokes or pears. He said that we (as a society) eat too much meat. He doesn’t like tri-tip; it’s too rich. He really liked clam chowder and stew.

My daughter got a guinea pig for Christmas. At first Michael was scared of it but now he really likes it. He says that he wants one when he goes home. We have noticed, especially with the Korean orchestra last summer, that Korean children are very apprehensive around pets. Most of them warmed up to them though. Michael was no different in that regard.

On Friday there was a rattle snake (방울뱀) sitting next to my back door when I got home from work. I readily dispatched it with a shovel. Michael thought that was really cool. I just reinforced the spring-time rule of not going outside without shoes on…

Rattle snake

Unfortunately, you can’t see the tail. It had two ‘buttons’.

So, that is Michael’s impression of his time in the United States. I think he had a fairly well rounded experience. For only being here for four months his English speaking ability has improved a lot, mostly because he was forced to interact in English. Now let’s interact in Korean!

Stranger in a Strange Land

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

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

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

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

Disneyland…

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

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

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

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

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

Pier 39, Robot Man, Smoking…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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