Amanda Takes Off...

Baking
I tried baking cinnamon rolls this weekend. Something is terribly wrong with the flour here. Or the butter. Or something. I haven't figured out how to keep doughs from being super runny. Doubling and even tripling the amount of flour doesn't work. So I spread the cinnamon filling over the dough, then folded it in half, sprinkled pearl sugar on it (since I don't have confectioner's sugar for icing) and baked it. It turned out like a cinnamon bun cake. It tastes pretty good.

Speaking of "flour..."

Blooms

Although I lost two leaves in my move, I'm getting a single flower on my plant.

Books

I ran to Kyobo this weekend and picked up Bruce Lee's Tao of Jeet Kune Do as well as Once Upon a Time in Korea, an elementary Korean reader. (If you click that link, you can read more about it and download a 23 page PDF sample of the book.)

It's probably still a little too hard for me, but it has 23 stories in it, each one with a list of vocab at the end in the order they appear in the story. (Each word that's listed has a superscript number with it, so it's really easy to look up the words.) The stories are about 3-4 pages long, pretty big print, with pictures. Probably 300-500 words depending on the story and place in the book. The stories are traditional Korean fairy and folk tale written in simplified language.

I'm looking forward to reading it.

Being

As in being a foreigner.

While I was at Kyobo, some random chick, probably a high school student, approached me and asked if she could interview me.

I don't know if it's Koreans or foreigners who are assigning these "walk up to a foreigner and interview them" assignments, but it's just plain awful. It ticks off a lot of foreigners because it makes them feel like monkeys. And it puts a horrible strain on these Koreans, who have to walk up to a total stranger and ask them questions with a notepad and tape recorder. New kids in my studio don't even want to talk to be until they've been introduced by a third party. Koreans just don't meet people like that. Jeez, talk about going against the Korean grain!

(My studiomates would be lucky to get such an assignment. As far as I know, I'm the only foreigner most of these kids have had consistent contact with in a social setting. I'd do interviews for them in a minute.)

So this chick walked up to me and asked me if I was busy. I thought she was going to try to talk to me about God so I said, "Yes." She looked shocked; I saw she had a tape recorder and notebook and I felt awful. It's not her fault her teacher gave her such a bad assignment.

I said, "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. What?" And suddenly I wasn't busy.

So I did her interview. I am a movie star, you know. Interviews are part of the deal. And meeting new people helps widen my sphere of influence so that I can more easily exercise country peninsular domination one day.

You think I'm kidding...

One of the questions was "what is the biggest problem with Korea?" I wanted to say "teachers assigning thing like this," but considering that the closest Korean word to "sarcasm" is "irony," I decided against it. I could list a whole lot of things wrong with Korea, but I'm a guest here and didn't feel like this poor girl was the one to dump on, so I laughed and said, "bad hogwan bosses!" One of the other questions was "have Koreans ever helped you out?" Boy have they, honey, let me introduce you to Heidi, Master, and my "little brothers..." She asked if I had any hobbies and I said, "Taekwondo." I tried to keep my answers very short and simple, she looked so afraid.

After the interview, she relaxed. I said "Nice to meet you" in Korean and said, "Breathe, breathe. It's OK." Poor girl, she was a nervous wreck. A few minutes later I saw her sitting on the floor, reading some teen English books. I hope that means I was her only/last interview.

What a horrible assignment.

Chinese

As a brief note about Korean, my boss told me where the days come from.

All of the days are a Chinese root + 요일 (day of the week). Written in Hanja they're Chinese root + 曜日.

-Day	Root + 요일	Hanja + 曜日	Meaning
Mon	월	月	moon
Tues	화	火	fire
Wednes	수	水	water
Thurs	목	木	wood
Fri	금	金	gold (metal)
Satur	토	土	earth
Sun	일	日	sun

I find this interesting for a few reasons. First, "Mercury" (the planet) in Korean is "수성" (水星 in Hanja) or "water planet." "Wednesday" in Spanish is "miércoles," after Mercury. Second, I wonder how many languages use the sun and moon for Sunday and Monday, respectively?

And now I'll at least know those Chinese roots to help me learn vocab. Like 수, water, 세수하다 (to wash oneself), 수영[하다] ([to] swim) and 수영장 (swimming pool). (The Hanja for water is also related to taekwondo, but I'll save that for later.)

Circles

Master contacted me this weekend to tell me that class starts again at the normal time on the fifth. WHA HOO! I miss my studio, I miss my boys. Meanwhile, he invited me to something or other through Cyworld. His message was, "윤형이에요 ^^"

Great, "it's a circle/round shape." ^^ Smile! What in the world does that mean?

Blasting

As for taekwondo, thank goodness this is my last week at this studio. We did some poomse work and while the black belts worked on their forms, I worked with Purple Belt again (and Brown Belt joined us for part of it). I found out she's 21. Never, ever would have guessed that.

We practiced Pal Jang facing the room backwards and indeed, it threw us both off. On move 18 we were facing the way we normally do. I was doing the low-cutting block, but my left foot was in front. Purple Belt looked at me and started doing the next move. I shook my head, "No." I was so screwed up that I made us start over. I had to tell her three times which way to turn on move 18. She finally did it (though I don't think she believed me). As soon as we did the following kicks she started nodding, "Oh, oh..."

I am getting better at counting in Korean with long gaps in between.

I like working with Purple Belt, and Brown Belt seems like a nice kid, but I need to get back to my studio. It's time.

Why?

I finally lost it on HR today.

Before doing poomse work, we were doing "fake sports" drills. Jogging across the mats while faking playing tennis, baseball, bowling, etc. When we were bowling, I bowled like Grandpa taught me. I kept using my right hand. Sabumnim said, "왼손!" I smiled and said, "오른손 볼링!" She laughed, but I switched to the left hand. Later we were shooting fake baskets. She caught the look on my face and said, "What?" I said, "I hate basketball," with a laugh. Each time I said something—in Korean or English—HR imitated me in a mean way.

I can take the teasing about my Korean—I mean, I once said my monkey hurt and I told Studious he looked delicious, and I find those things funny—but repeating every English word I said was pointless, especially since he talks constantly. And he wasn't even doing what we were supposed to be doing. He was just standing there, screaming about why he couldn't do anything.

Since he wasn't paying any attention to my frowning looks, I just blasted him. I said, "매일 큰 소리 있어요! 왜?" Everyone started laughing and his jaw dropped, "왜요! 말해요, 이야기해요! 왜?" I scowled and imitated him imitating me, "하지마!"

I didn't even care if my Korean was perfect (it wasn't). I didn't know which "to talk" verb to use, so I used both that I knew. What I was trying to say (and believe was understood) was, "Everyday you have a loud voice! Why? Why! Talking, talking! Why?" I scowled and imitated him imitating me, "Don't do that!" ("Why" is used here the way that we might use "what, huh, how come, repeat that," especially "what?" I even whined my why's the way Koreans do.)

He shut up. Finally.