Food

Food plays a vital, if underappreciated role in a our lives. We all know it’s importance, but so often a meal is reduced to finding something that is quick and easy to prepare as we rush on to our next meeting – eating is reduced to a minor activity in our day, something akin to putting petrol in your car: vital but not something we choose to dwell on.

Living in Korea, food has taken on a new significance in my life. Meals are no longer merely a matter of shoving something in my mouth as I move onto something more interesting or more important. My mind returns to the topic of food each and everyday, and it has been the topic of many conversations. Exchanging anecdotes about food and eating, in between much laughter, has been vital to the bonding of us few English speakers in Sang Ju. We are a fairly disparate group, and talking about food – establishing common likes and common dislikes has proved a bonding point. Not only do we use conversations about food to establish a common bond but we assert our independent identities through disagreeing about what is delicious, what is tolerable and what is simply disgusting. Not only have discussions about food been vital to the establishing new friendships, but these discussions themselves have invariably taken place over meals – and the sharing of rare and precious ‘western’ treats.

When I think of my meals with James, Barbara, and Brad the social occasions operate on many levels – Barbara demonstrates her suave and sophisticated taste, and how at least part of her identity is rooted in proudly French culinary traditions, through the meals that she prepares. But by sharing her cherished treats she also communicates at a far more basic level – she seems to say “I like you, therefore I share my food with you.” Something about this fascinates me. As our means of communication evolve and become outdated some of the simplest means of communication continue to convey meaning in a way that our modern methods of communication battle to match.

Food fascinates me, and I hope that as I am exposed to culinary traditions over this year that meals will continue to stimulate more than just my taste buds.

Learning Korean

Looking back over what is now almost two weeks in Korea I can say that I have learned very little Korean. I find it difficult to remember how long it was before I started making meaningful progress in learning German, but I suspect that it will take a lot longer to befmore I begin making progress in learning Korean.

At present I am trying to get grips with the script and learn at least a word a day. Things are slowly improving – I can now identify my town’s name, some basic vowels, the dictionary is slowly becoming more easy to use, I know some basic words and even some very basic phrases.

Despite these improvements I am learning far more slowly than I would like, and even once I have managed to translate a word my pronunciation is invariably incorrect – sometimes to the point of being unintelligible. An added complication is that words, depending on their context, can take on a number of different and unrelated meanings.

Another problem is that I’m at school until five each day, without much of a lunch break, and when I get home I am exhausted. As a result I rarely sit down and make an effort to learn new words during the evenings.

We tend to underestimate how much being in a foreign environment takes out of us. During my first months in Germany I experienced the same sense of exhaustion at the end of each day – and consequently spent a lot of time sleeping. I remember the ribbing I took from my friends when I returned to SA, and how much their teasing irritated me. Over enough time I came to wonder whether I did indeed waste opportunities by sleeping to much. Being here however reminds me how tough the initial months in Germany were.

I also remember the frustration I felt at my SA mates teasing once I returned home. Not because they were teasing me – but rather because their teasing conveyed a total lack of understanding of my experience. None of them had ever faced a similar situation, and I don’t think that any have since.

Learning Korean is going to take a long time but once my life settles into a routine I hope to start making meaningful progress.

My first email home

Hello everyone

Greetings from South Korea. As I am sure you will have gathered from our snippets of news so far we arrived without much hassle and have begun to settle in nicely. Jessica's school is relatively close while my own is on the other side of town.

My school is about a ten minute ride from our apartment. I don’t intend riding for long though – soon I will purchase a scooter.

The ride to school takes me through the centre of town after which I ride along what is mostly a dry river on my one side and yellow rice fields on the other. It also takes me past sewers that have manholes with slits in them – not so yummy. It is hard to estimate how large Sangju is at this stage in comparison to Grahamstown, but it is definitely smaller. My guess at this point is that it is less than half the size with a far larger population. Once again I am uncertain but I recall hearing that the population is about 120 000. Three stories is pretty much standard here and it is rare to come across single story buildings. Our own apartment is ‘open plan’ – one single room (with a separate bathroom) - and small by South African standards, but it is well lit and we like it. Now for the bombshell: it is smaller than Simon’s bed room. It was not furnished when we arrived, and we slept the first night on the floor, but this has meant we have had some say over what has gone into it. Our contracts stipulate that the schools pay for the furniture which they have done.

Despite the cramped conditions in town, people still hang onto vegetable patches which I cannot understand – the land must be extremely valuable and yet they choose to grow cabbages. I assume this has something to do with the fact that the Korean culture places heavy emphasis on the quality of food – all of which must be fresh. Every street, outside of the residential areas, has several restaurants which often have live fish in tanks outside them. Even our local supermarket, which is about a three minute walk, has live sole. More exciting foods and fish are readily available at the market downtown – live eels, crab, trout, sole, sea bass, sea squirts, and a variety of other fish are all on sale. Scates and larger fish are also placed on the side walk.

Red meat here is expensive and will be a rare treat, mince in the local supermarket is selling at about R40 for 300 grams. We have heard of a supermarket that caters to Western tastes in at fairly reasonable prices, but it is located in Daegu and will be difficult to get to. Fortunately for us the Koreans love fatty meat, and as result lean steaks are less expensive than they would otherwise be.

First impressions of my school are that it is nice. The staff have certainly done their level best to make me feel welcome, sometimes I find communication difficult and my SA accent does not help.

I have been told a number of times that I need to motivate the students. Although the students have English classes four times a week, I only get round to seeing each class once every two weeks. My aim is to make the classes interesting and hopefully stimulate interest which will then lead to learning outside of the classroom setting.

Jess and I bumped into our first other English speakers this weekend. We arranged to meet at the closest point that we all knew on Saturday evening and then walked across to their house for dinner. It turns out they live across a small alley from us. I have mixed feelings about this, while I am happy to have met other English speakers I am not sure I want to know the people whose lounge I look down on.

I’ve been working hard and have not really had the time to look into the shenanigans of the South African politicians, nevertheless I was disappointed to find out that I cannot access the M&G for some reason.

I knew that Korea has its own script before leaving SA but mis-appreciated how little the roman alphabet is used. The only dictionaries we have been able to find so far use Korean script, so we have an extra hurdle in our paths – we have to learn an entirely new script before we can start making real progress in learning Korean. I don’t mind learning, but progress is going to be slow – not much goes in when one arrives home from a full day at school. Still I absolutely have to learn Korean.

Tomorrow is a new day, full of new experiences and further misunderstandings; but with some luck it will also include some new understandings.

Keep well. Send my love to SA. Eat lots of bread, cheese and everything else that is hard to come by here.

Julian

[The pics in the post were the last pics that Jess and I took in SA - notice how we are dressed for the middle of winter while the people in the background are in short sleaves :) ]

Third Rock From the Sun

The title of my blog is taken from a popular 1990s sitcom that I enjoyed as a teenager and continue to enjoy. What does it have to do with South Korea? Well Third Rock from the Sun was all about the shenanigans and adventures of a group of aliens sent to live among and document the lives of earthlings. I can relate to the show - I'm an alien stranded on some distant planet and somehow I must navigate my way through each day. My blog is my account of my adventures in the weird and wonderful world of South Korea and the broader continent of Asia. Pictures and posts to follow.