Culture

First of all - Aunt Nellie, I was looking back through the blog and noticed a post by you I had missed earlier... sorry! Actually yes, I have met a few parents, but it's been pretty coincidental. Everyone knows who I am, so sometimes random people will approach me. The mother of one of my fourth grade boys came up to me at the bus stop because apparently she works at the restaurant that's right next to my stop. She was really nice - she gave me a little fried dough thing shaped like a fish with red beans in it.

Also - Uncle Tom, I hear you were not happy with my lack of posting. I will try to update more often!

I hope everyone had a great time at the pumpkin party!

So a note on red beans. I don't know if I've gone into detail about this, but Koreans LOVE red beans. They are under the impression that red beans = dessert food. I cannot tell you how many times I've gotten some kind of pastry full of what appeared to be chocolate only to bite into it and discover mashed up red beans! It's actually pretty good, but you can imagine my disappointment when I'm expecting chocolate and I get... beans. What a letdown.

I really enjoyed my teachers' training on Monday. Learning more things about Korean and Korea has definitely helped improve my teaching the teachers. For example, I inserted a little cultural tip on Monday. The book we're working with had a sample dialogue on how to get someone's attention (i.e. "Theresa?"), and I got to thinking about the differences in America and Korea when it comes to politely asking for someone's attention. In Korea, if you're sitting at a restaurant, you have to beckon the server over... no one will just wait on you if you "look ready" to order. How do you do this? 여기여! Yeogi-yo!! Essentially, this means "here!" Kind of rude in English, isn't it? I don't think you'd get great service if you just shout "here!" at a waiter/waitress in America. I have a hard time even calling out Yeogi-yo! in Korea because it just feels so wrong.

So I talked to the teachers about what's okay when you want someone's attention in English. If you know them, saying their name as a question works ("Theresa?"). I told them that yeogi-yo is actually kind of impolite, and they were so surprised! I explained that "Excuse me?" is the best way to get anyone's attention if they're someone you don't know. Koreans also really don't apologize for bumping into people, so I demonstrated how to use "Excuse me." as an apology.

There's also a major difference in nonverbal attention-getting. When you want someone to walk over to you, in America you extend your hand out palm up and curl your fingers at them repeatedly. This is really rude in Korea! That hand gesture is reserved for beckoning dogs. Instead, Koreans extend their hand palm DOWN and sort of flap their wrist/fingers toward themselves. I explained to the teachers that in America the first way is normal and if they attempted the Korean way, people probably wouldn't know what they wanted. This wrist/finger flap thingy works for taxis, too. Don't stand in the street and stick out your arm a la New York - this is a gauche foreigner move that I'm guilty of. Stick out your arm and do the flapping thing. Again, I demonstrated for the teachers and encouraged them to be very assertive when flagging taxis in America.

I think they really enjoyed the culture stuff. I know the vocab/dialogues, etc we work on are useful, but I'm trying to think of what I would want to know if I was just a tourist in a new country - these are the basic things that you might not know. In Korea I can get away with doing culturally inappropriate things because I'm obviously foreign so I get a little more slack, but Koreans in America wouldn't get the same consideration because it's not as obvious that they're foreign.