We’re Spammin’
Quick update to keep you posted.
I’ve been taking Korean lessons with one of the teachers at school, Ms. Park. She is one of the English teachers and is enormously patient with me, forcing me to correct each incorrect vowel and consonant that I, with my lame and slow tongue, have trouble pronouncing. It is enormously difficult for my brain to assign sounds to little lines with sticks poking out of them, and it’s even more impossible to understand how those sounds could possibly have a greater meaning. How does a horizontal line with a miniature perpendicular cross that pokes either up or down prove the difference between something sounding like an “oo” and an “ouu”? And what do they mean?
Anyways, despite my obvious inability to understand, my teacher likes to tell me I am, “Genius! Really… very smart,” and let me know that I’m doing well. I’m really not sure that’s very true, but she wants to keep teaching me, so I’ll keep going.
(I get the same reaction if I repeat a Korean word… anywhere. If I walk outside and say, “Chup-da,” all the teachers go, “Woo-ah” and are so proud of me. I just remember because chupda, or cold, sounds like a Chupa pop, and Chupa pops are pretty much the coolest things ever. Awesome free bonus points for me.)
The honest report is that my language acquisition pace is plodding, at best. But I’m trying!
Recent winner of the gold- star- for- what- would- make- American- children- cry- if- you- served- it- to- them- at- school- lunch:
Typical School Lunch, radial from left to right: Kimchi veg, Fish, Turnip Kimchi, Spam Soup, Rice
Kimchi vegetables, a variety that I thought were green beans but only just learned are the stem of a (?) sweet potato (?) plant, kind of cool; Entire Fish Delicacy, in which you use your chopsticks to tear apart the top layer of fried- skin and eat the white, salty fleshy part and try to avoid the bones and the oogly boogly glazed over win-the-staring-contest-every-time eyes, Kimchi of the turnip variety (my favorite), Rice with Beans (the beans an unusual but delicious addition) and Spam and Cabbage Soup (common, soup like this every day, but not always with spam).
I arrived at lunch this day and couldn’t stop chuckling; all through the meal I just imagined what children across America would do were this meal served to them. My ponderings included temper tantrums, tears, screams, shocked disbelief, bigger tears at learning this was actually lunch, and on and on.
Interesting fact: Spam became a part of the Korean diet after the widespread famine and poverty in the country following WWII and the Korean War. Along with the American military presence in Korea, there was Spam.
I mistakenly told one of the teachers that Spam comes from Minnesota, after which she asked me: “Why don’t you eat it?” I had no real answer for her. *
It’s really not uncommon to see Spam in meals. Once at dinner we just had sliced up pieces of Spam, fried in a sort of eggy substance, and I didn’t eat that either: one of the teachers asked me, “Don’t you like pork?” and I told her, only sometimes. Though it hasn’t happened to me yet, I’ve heard that oftentimes people will give Spam as a gift…. I (can’t) wait. As in, I can definitely wait.
Dakgalbi buds: two of my foreigner teacher friends, Ryan to the left and Matt to the right, with the remains of our dakgalbi meal. Meals are communal in Korea: you go to a restaurant, sit on the floor with the food in the middle and eat your fill.
Booby Love: the last picture and meal before I spent an evening and early morning puking my guts out. I might have to wait awhile before eating dakgalbi again. Hooray for the unexpected! Boo for realizing how much rice you communally ate earlier that night as you're forcing it all back out. Also, that white guy in the background is my tall bald foreign teacher friend named Brian. Coincidentally enough, if you've been following my blog, those three people pictured are the three that joined me in our YangPeyong in-testicle food adventure. Yuck.
I’m satisfied with the random assortment of gifts that have been secretly placed and sit waiting at my desk when I arrive at work. From the top of my mind, they are as follows: a personalized towel with the date, a day of no particular significance at all. A gift box of three 500ml bottles of Canola and Grapeseed oil. A box of pineapple chocolates from the class trip to Jeju-do Island. Handfuls of weird corn and octopus- flavored chips and bugles. Random small pieces of candy. An apple. Spontaneous invitations to have a dixie cup of (sugar) coffee. A chocolate- marshmallow moon pie. Occasionally a little bottle of super- sugary Vitamin C drink. Occasional offer to have a bite of raw sweet potato a student is nibbling on. Once an offer to have a sip of the Coca Cola a student was drinking. Occasional rice cake. Occasional piece of gum. Lots of little sticky notes of doodles and characters (adorable) and confessions of love: “I love you! Amanda! but I like boys (haha!)” and etc.
Well, that’s it for now. Until next time!
Love.
*A concerned reader has recently brought to my attention the fact that additions and adaptations of previously posted blog posts are crudely against blog etiquette. And I quote, “I mean, how am I supposed to finish reading the interweb if it keeps changing on me? I’m not even sure I have time in my life to read it *once*”. Well stated, concerned reader. Your concerns have been deemed reasonable and it is our hope that you will find them to have been suitably accounted for.
Accordingly, due to my recent induction into POEM, aka Professional Organization of English Majors, I must apologize for the ignorance of my actions and subsequently must reject the addition of the obvious, “Spam is gross,” in order to assume the previous and unaltered state of equanimity and impassivity in attitude toward Spam.
With warm regards and grateful consideration, this disclaimer has been posted by the publisher of this blog. Adieu.