How to Buy Groceries and Reluctantly Enter into Someone's Home...

Several weeks ago, Kelly and I were approached by an extremely petite and extremely vivacious middle-aged Korean woman while wandering through the book section of a massive Wal-Martesque store called HomePlus. The woman, whose English name is Diane, prattled on for a good ten minutes about varying topics before transitioning to her primary motivation for striking up a conversation with us: she teaches an English storytelling class to munchkins and wanted some help with her English skills. At the time, neither of us had phones, but we took her number anyways out of politeness, although we really didn’t intend to call her. Then a few weeks later, still without a phone, Kelly ran into her again at the neighborhood grocery store, where she spent another ten minutes chatting animatedly and inquiring (rather desperately) about the possibility of a language exchange. She wouldn’t let Kelly leave the grocery store before buying her a large tub of strawberries. A few days later, I ran into her again while walking to the grocery store and I assured her that one of us would call her when we finally got phones. Fearing what would happen if we had yet another awkward run-in, Kelly called her a few days later. And this is how I wound up spending four hours on Super Bowl Sunday (i.e. Super Bowl Monday) in the home of an excessively generous and gregarious woman who happens to make me feel physically and mentally exhausted.

On the morning of Monday, February 8, I was in no mood to get out of my bed. I was running on empty from an eventful but physically taxing weekend of extreme wine, extreme skiing, and an extreme lack of REM sleep. Furthermore, the score of the Super Bowl was 16-17 in the third quarter, and this fact made it difficult for me to pry myself from my computer. Besides, it was raining, and even though it annoys me when people use the weather to justify their self-imposed laziness, I am, more often than not, guilty of this very offence. So when Kelly knocked on my door at 10:56 to go participate in a language exchange for an indeterminate length of time, I was in no mood for human interaction in any language, and I grumbled and moped about this fact the entire way to Diane’s apartment (much to Kelly’s annoyance, I’m sure).

When we knocked on the door, we heard a loud, cheerful, and completely indistinguishable shout come from within, and before long Diane opened the door and greeted us with her characteristic exuberance. We were promptly shuffled to the couch, where a large platter of organic strawberries was placed before us. Diane then went to the kitchen and returned with two large tangerine/orange hybrids which are evidently only grown on Jeju island, just south of the Korean peninsula. When the oranges were peeled, she went out to her balcony and returned with a box of apples that were roughly the size of bowling balls (that is only a slight exaggeration). They were ginseng apples that apparently came from a friend who has her own orchard. Fortunately for Kelly and I, they didn’t taste even vaguely of ginseng, a root which we have not yet acquired a taste for. While Diane sat cross-legged on the floor peeling apples, Kelly and I sat on the couch devouring the “fruits” of her labor. Ordinarily I would have felt extremely guilty about sitting on a comfortable couch while a 45-year-old woman sits on the floor, but in Korea, people traditionally sit on the floor when eating, regardless of age. In fact, an overwhelming majority of the restaurants I go to involve removing my shoes and sitting on the floor in front of a table that stands about a foot off the ground (but let’s leave that topic for a future blog post). When Diane finished peeling the bowling balls, she went to the kitchen and returned with tea service. She handed us each a cup of balloonflower root oriental herb tea that had been aged 21 years and was sweetened with honey…it was rather delicious in spite of the fact that a “balloonflower” sounds like something a clown would make at a seven-year-old child’s birthday party. Diane gave us each two packets of the tea to take home with us.



About midway through the peeling of the second apple, Diane’s middle school aged daughter returned home from school. It was only about noon, so I’m not sure why the girl was home so early, but I suspect it has something to do with middle school graduation (which some of my students have been excitedly talking about), and/or national exams. The girl was cute, smiley, polite, and a little shy (at least in comparison to her outgoing mother). Despite her relative quietness, she saddled up next to us and joined us in our fruit feast. I tried to put myself in her shoes. I tried to imagine how I would react if, at any point in middle school, I would have come home and found my mother sitting on the floor and chatting in a foreign language with two Koreans half her age who were seated on the couch. However, even my occasionally vivid imagination found this scenario too bizarre and improbable to fathom.

Anyways, upon the conclusion of the fruit and tea production which lasted well over an hour, once our voracious appetite for fresh produce and Diane’s voracious appetite for English conversation had been simultaneously satiated, we were whisked away into another room to begin our Korean lesson. We started with the basics of the basics: the alphabet. Kelly and I both had previously learned the Korean alphabet in hangul, but it was nice to get more practice and work on the pronunciation of vowels (as there are an abundance of them in the Korean language). My new favorite word is “baram bida,” which literally translates to “wind blow.” In Korean slang, however, a baram bida is a person who commits infidelities against his/her lover, commonly referred to in English as a “cheater.” I like the idea of using the wind as an analogy for adultery. When Diane was explaining the meaning of baram bida to us, she used none other than Bill Clinton as a prime example of a “wind blower.” Poor Bill will apparently never live down the legacy of his fifteen-year-old sex scandal, not even in Korea. Anyways, I think that one of the most interesting things about the Korean language is the difference in sentence structure between English and Korean. In English, we use a subject-verb-object sentence structure (i.e. I like that bag). However, in Korean they use a subject-object-verb sentence structure (i.e. I that bag like). This helps to at least partially explain why a lot of my beginner students struggle with forming simple sentences.


My Korean notes...

After our crash course in Korean, Diane and her daughter took us out for lunch at a galbi restaurant (because she evidently didn’t feed us enough already). Galbi is essentially flavorful pieces of beef that are grilled at the table and served alongside numerous side dishes. On our way to the restaurant, we stopped into a small shop that specializes in making a specific type of Korean sweet made with red bean paste because Diane wanted to buy some for us to sample (even though it sounds neither appetizing nor sweet, it was actually quite tasty). After leaving the restaurant and parting ways with Diane, she insisted that we borrow her extra umbrellas until we see her again because she didn’t want us to walk home in the rain (which was really only a light mist).

At the conclusion of the fourth hour of our “exchange,” I found myself feeling a nagging sense of guilt. I frankly just don't get it. Even though this isn’t a paid position, I couldn’t help but feel like Diane was getting the short end of the stick. What was supposed to be a language exchange ended up being a free for all in which Kelly and I were the ones who reaped all of the benefits. We essentially just walked into a stranger’s home, got fed for four consecutive hours, had a tutorial of the Korean language, and left with considerably more than we came with. What did we provide Diane with? Dishes to wash, a lesson to prepare, and a lunch tab to pay. I’d like to say that we provided her with some stimulating conversation, but the truth is that Diane did a majority of the talking. I’m still trying to understand what our role is in this supposed exchange. I can’t comprehend what caused Diane to so actively seek out our assistance when she seemingly doesn’t need it. I’m beginning to think she’s just bored. She is a housewife whose husband and children are out of the house all day, and she has an extremely high proficiency in the English language but no one with whom to converse. It seems as though she just wants someone to talk to in English...or perhaps she just wants someone to talk to in general...And I guess that’s where Kelly and I come in. We’re not really teachers or even assistants…we’re just conversation partners…and perhaps one day, we will become unlikely friends…