Amanda Takes Off...

Relationships in Korea confuse the living daylights out of me. If you want a very long background to this story, go ahead and Read More, but here's the short post version.

I absolutely love Ghost. He's my favorite kid in class, in part because he teaches me words like "crazy" and "devil." He's 12 (Korean age) and I have a crush on him in the way I think a much-older sister would have a crush on a much-younger brother. Of course, my brother is only 2 years and 10 days younger than me and we mostly hated each other until we were adults, so this crush theory is all conjecture. I think Ghost will grow up to be a very nice young man* and I just hope he doesn't marry a shrew.

So tonight, during break, I started talking to Ghost. I said, "OK, opa, OK?" ("Opa" is "older brother.") He looked confused, I said it again and he nodded. I said, "남동생? 내 남동생...소방대원. OK?" ("Little brother? My little brother...firefighter. OK?") He nodded and said, "Yes, yes, namdongsang."

I said, "OK," pointed at him and said, "Ghost namdongsang. OK? Korean? OK?" He grinned and nodded and I said, "Ghost-namdongsang" in that whine that Koreans use to indicate that I was trying to call him my little brother.

He started nodding and smiling and said, "OK, OK." Some of the other kids who were watching then started off about who was crazy and who wasn't in the room and Master asked what was going on because I kept saying, "little brother" and we were getting loud. Ghost told him and Master started laughing and grinning too. It didn't seem to be that face-saving Korean laughing thing, and using familial names for non-family is seen as being a term of endearment, so I guess (hope) that what I did was OK.

Master then proceeded to use Ghost as his human kicking/kneeing/punching/blocking bag when he was teaching me more of my form.

Master did another one of his "link seventeen Korean words together and this is what it's called in tae kwon do" speeches and said, "Tae kwon do, easy. See?"

I said, "Hanguko, hard. See?" and stumbled through a string of words, wishing I'd had some wine before class to loosen my tongue.

(If you want to know how hard Korean can really be...read on.)

* Having taught kids about his age for the last four years, I know the different types of males at this age, at least in America...

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