Street Vendors and Restaurants

I cannot count the eating establishments in my immediate neighborhood. From street vendors to fancy restaurants there must be hundreds of places within a mile in any direction. Hundreds - I exaggerate not!

And yet - I don't frequent them that often. Usually I am by myself to eat. I feel conspicuous going into a restaurant alone, so I usually don't, especially if it's a Korean place (I do occasionally go to Western places.) But when I have company I love going to these restaurants. If any of you come to visit, we'll go!

It's easy to order because there are usually pictures of the food posted in front. And many of these places are cheap! One thousand won (the Korean currency) is worth about 85 cents, so a 4,500 won meal is just a

little under $4.00. Many delicious and ample meals can be had for 5,000-10,000 won. Lots of side dishes usually go with the main dish - many times at the end of a meal uneaten food goes back to the kitchen.

So here is a sampling of just a few of the places along a main thoroughfare in my immediate neighborhood. (On the little back streets restaurants are even more crowded together and more numerous.)

Language Learning Behavior That Drives Teachers Crazy

All those language learning behaviors that drive teachers crazy? I do them all!

For example:

• I nod and smile when someone is talking to me in Korean - even when in actuality I don't understand a word they're saying. How many times have I done that! I'll meet someone in the apartment elevator, say; we'll greet, and the person will start talking to me. I smile, nod, say "ne, ne" (that's "yes, yes") and at the end say goodbye. I wonder what I'm saying "ne" to?? Sometimes this is easier - it gives the illusion that we've just had a nice conversation in Korean, which is better than the sometimes endless and hopeless exchange of "What?" "I don't understand" "Please repeat" etc.

• I don't yet have a Korean "um" or "yeah" or other filler phrase I can comfortably use between thoughts when I speak. So what do I do? At home, Spanish speakers will sometimes repeat the word "pero" in between thoughts, even when their English level is high enough not to need any other Spanish; some students seem to preface every sentence with the word "because" - even when there is no cause relationship; it too seems to function as a filler, annoying as it sounds to the listener. I find myself saying "and so" in between sentences. How annoying that must sound - sticking "and so" between each Korean phrase. But even when I notice it, I can hardly stop doing it - it just slips out. The mind - or the tongue - really seems to need to put something there. (I also sometimes fill with "y" - the Spanish word for "and" - a typical phenomenon where you start filling in gaps with words from a different foreign language you've studied. It's gotten me in trouble since "y" is also the pronunciation of the name "Lee" in Korean and happened to be my Korean teacher's name. Someone asked me why I was talking about my teacher.)

• And I incessantly translate. There was an older Russian woman at SJCC who used to come into the ESL lab for help. She absolutely had to analyze every sentence she read or wrote and translate it into Russian. It's the only way she could understand. I wanted to shake her, to tell her to tolerate some ambiguity and try to get her mind functioning in English. Relax, and let the English sounds and structures penetrate. And here I am, finding that I cannot tolerate ambiguity either, and I can't just relax and let the Korean penetrate - it doesn't go in! I hear the sounds, I know I've heard them before, but often they don't mean anything until I think through the translation.* And my Korean texts are filled with the English translations of words I've written above the Korean words. I tell my students not to do that - to gloss the words at the bottom or on a separate page - but they want the translations there and so do I.**

• I have little patience with proofreading. I've mentioned this in the posting on error correction. Proofreading in Korean is nothing like proofreading in English. When I look at a page of Korean text that I've written, it still just looks pretty much like squiggles to me. I'm still at the stage where I have to sound out most words - like a first grader learning to read (Can't you hear the parents? "Just sound it out!"). As with translation, I have to think through the spelling of every word.*** I understand the effect of misspelled words, but going through a text word by word is so tedious and does not seem very rewarding in terms of learning. So sometimes - I skip that part!****

*In our classes at Yonsei we have a test on about 100 new vocabulary words every week. and I've always done well on those tests, but I use mnemonic tricks, associations, mental pictures etc. to remember the words. Of course, we use the words in conversations and exercises, but that's not how I remember them. So I do well in reading comprehension and writing and vocabulary tests because I have to time to think and translate and remember my tricks, but very poorly in listening and speaking because it goes too fast and I haven't really internalized the learning yet. (Learning vs. Acquisition! Oh, so true!)

**Does this slow down learning? I think it does. But in class I have to be ready to answer a question about a text at a moment's notice. What if I forget a word and can't answer the question? I will be embarrassed in front of all my classmates! I will be on the spot, sweating and squirming, trying desperately to come up with some kind of answer. So - I use translation and any other trick, like predicting what exercises we might be asked to perform orally and copying the answers into my textbook ahead of time. I've been known to read a previously copied answer without knowing what it meant!

***An example: compare these two words: "지하절" and "지하철." The first is an incorrect spelling of the word for "subway" and the second is the correct spelling. I have to force myself to remember which "ㅈ" has the little line above it and which doesn't. "ㅈ" and "ㅊ" do represent different sounds, but I can't yet distinguish them in rapid speech, so pronunciation doesn't help. To a Korean, spelling "subway" the first way immediately sets off their mental red pencil - just as someone spelling "friend" as "freind" sets off mine.

****So I love keeping my learning log, which I write in Korean but just for myself - so I write as I would speak, without worrying about correctness, and it's very enjoyable. I wonder - which way is the more efficient for learning?

PS I think I've got some good language learning behavior too! Stay tuned.

Food at Home Part 1

I do eat. For most of my meals, I cook and eat at home. Today I will take you on a short excursion to my local grocery store, kitchen and dining table.

The store

I actually have many places where I can shop for groceries. There are little convenience stores everywhere; this one is actually on the ground floor of my apartment building:

But my main store is located on the bottom 2 floors of a department store half a block up my street. I walk up, go into the back entrance, and down the escalator:

Down on the bottom floor there are the vegetables, meats, fish, and other "fresh" food: here's a sampling:

The upstairs has canned and boxed foods, breads and snacks, drinks, dairy products, cleaning products, etc - not as exotic as downstairs.

Each time I go shopping I just buy one bagful of groceries - as much as I can carry home comfortably. So I shop every couple of days. Here is a typical single bag's worth of groceries brought home from the downstairs section:

Food at Home Part 2

The Kitchen

And here is where I cook. This is it - 2 burners. No oven. No microwave. (That's a washing machine, not an oven, underneath the stove!)

So every meal is pretty much a variation of the same thing. Some kind of base (rice, noodles, potatoes, spaghetti, beans, Korean dumplings etc) and some kind of stir-fried or boiled topping made with vegetables, meats and whatever ingredients I feel like throwing in. Accompanied by something - fruit, a salad, a store-bought side, crackers, bread and peanut butter, etc.

The Dining Table

Actually, I usually just eat at my desk (!), but here is a typical home-cooked meal (not quite like the rather large restaurant meal shown in previous post) laid out on the dining table:

Looks pretty much like what I'd eat at home!

A long-handled spoon and long, thin metal chopsticks are the standard Korean utensil set. Adult forks are nowhere to be found. Another blog, another day, will have to be devoted to... Korean chopsticks!

Also coming (I hope) ... local restaurants and street vendors.

Language Study and Age

In my sabbatical proposal, I said I would explore the experience of the older language learner - so I thought I'd better put something in here about that.

It is different being an older learner. The biggest difference: it's harder to meet peers my age. For young people, there are parties and gatherings and lots of chances to meet Koreans and people from other countries, but I don't fit into that now. So for language practice I mostly rely on my weekly encounters with young Korean students and my conversations with shopkeepers, people who work at the apartment building etc. It's not as much fun, and not nearly as constant as having that daily interaction and practice with social peers.

In my sabbatical proposal I anticipated some other differences:

I have spoken to many older learners and observed them in class. I have learned that these students may have accomplished a great deal in their lives but they may feel that due to age, they cannot remember as well or make the same progress as their younger classmates; they may tend to stay in the background so as not to expose their weakness to the younger students; they may feel lost because they cannot make the emotional adjustment to the new culture and language as younger students can; they may feel they have lost the honor and prestige that should come with age; they may feel that they have been left behind. I expect to have similar feelings and experiences..."

I have had some similar feelings, to be sure. As far as memory - it's hard to tell. It's definitely harder to memorize vocabulary now than it was when I learned French and Spanish in my teens and twenties, but then it's one thing to learn that, say, the French word for "to begin" is "commencer" and something quite different to learn that the Korean word is something like "shi jaek ha da." Every new word is just sounds that have to be memorized. And I clearly can't memorize as well as my younger Japanese and Chinese classmates, but lots of Korean words have Chinese or Japanese roots, which helps them out. Yes, I struggle with memory, but is it due to age???

As far as staying in the background, feeling bad about lost prestige, etc. in the classroom - I'm glad to say not so much. In the classroom I feel pretty much like any other student, I think. None of us can maintain the positions we have in our own environments, and we all feel self-conscious about our fledgling efforts. Equally!

And I AM learning and making progress, even if it's slow. Conclusion: we older learners should not give up! (Duh - of course, I had already made that conclusion before I started this project - just wanted to prove it, for myself and my students back home.) And I'm sure the mental activities I'm doing - memorizing, practicing new language patterns, opening my ears to new sounds, etc. are really good for my aging brain. How did Kato Lomb learn a new language at age 86? Probably because she had kept her brain nimble through years of learning new languages - always striving to learn something new.

It was fun to read this passage in Shakespeare's Richard II, in the scene where Thomas Mowbray is banished from England for life. Does he lament the loss of family and friends, his lands, his wealth, his position, English food, English music, customs, activities.... no! He only complains of missing - his native English language:

"The language I have learnt these forty years,

My native English, now I must forgo,

And now my tongue's use is to me no more

Than an unstringed viol or a harp,

Or like a cunning instrument cased up,

Or being open, put into his hands

That knows no touch to tune the harmony.

Within my mouth you have enjailed my tongue,

Doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips,

And dull unfeeling barren ignorance

Is made my jailer to attend on me.

And then this aged 40-year old (!) dismisses his chance to remedy the loss:

I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,

Too far in years to be a pupil now;

What is thy sentence then but speechless death

Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?

Well, it IS hard to be a pupil at an older age - to have to "obey" a young teacher, to perform at her command, to make my mouth move in uncomfortable ways whenever she decides it's time to do so... the loss of command, of control, of competence, of confidence.... being reduced to self-conscious giggles and apologies and fretful nervousness. Many times I long to be back in the teacher's role and forget this uncomfortable learning. But... it's better than "speechless death!"

The First Term is Done!

I survived the first 10 weeks of Korean study - and passed the final exam! So did almost all my classmates (a good rate, as the average fail rate, I learned, is 30% - sounds like SJCC! I guess the method worked on us - at least as far as it satisfied Yonsei's requirements.)

Here we are celebrating:

We're actually in the outdoor area of the restaurant, now wrapped tightly with plastic walls for the winter - nice and cozy, but very smokey!

Now I have a couple weeks to rest up, try to catch up with this blog (!), hang out around Seoul, travel a little around Korea, and get ready to meet my family in Japan for Christmas.