Last week we picked up two Korean children to stay with us for a couple of months. They are brother and sister and so far they are fairly shy with speaking English even though their understanding seems to be pretty good. San Francisco is about three hours from our house so we decided to do a little touring prior on our way home. We went to the Golden Gate bridge where it was a windy 62 degrees and then we stopped off at Stanford University before heading home to a warm 106.

My wife’s nephew caught a ride here on the same flight last minute so we have a full house. He is in his early twenties and just out of his 군대 service. He is here to (drum roll please) learn English and tour a bit before getting back to real life in Korea. He has ambitions of getting a government job and English experience seems to be a real plus on the resume. It seems like everyone wants to get a government job in Korea. Of course, we are all on the other side of the coin trying to learn Korean. I don’t think there are too many government jobs in the States that require Korean language experience though.

My oldest, having now lived in Korea for a short time is doing good with her understanding. My number two, Luke, is not having such an easy time of it, however. Here are some of his thoughts on the matter now that he is sharing a room with his cousin:

Living with Koreans is kind of hard because it is hard to understand them. I want to learn how to speak Korean but I just don’t want to take the time to learn it. My cousin who is staying with us doesn’t speak much English and he is sleeping in my room so that makes it hard to really communicate with him. The other two kids are better at speaking English but I don’t think they are learning anything because they are speaking Korean too much to each other and to my mom. I think I am going to try to learn some Korean during my older cousin’s stay.