Wooden Beads

I have a long strand of wooden beads that I often like to wear in the U.S.
I wore them for the first time in Korea yesterday.  Within the first 3 minutes I was in school, I had three people grab them and say "Buddha? Buddha?" and then they would pretend to hit a gong.  This happened all day, in every class.
So, it looks like I won't be wearing my wooden beads anymore.  My wooden Buddhist prayer beads...

Hangul: The Great Script

Hangul, (han translates to great, while gul translates to script) is the official alphabet of Korea.  It is hailed by many linguistics as being the most scientific system of writing.  One University of Michigan professor went so far as to say Hangul is “the best alphabet in the world.” 

So what makes this writing system so great?

In 1443, King Sejong the Great, with the help of scholars, invented this script.  Korea had its own spoken language, but to put their spoken words into written words, they used Chinese script.

King Sejong the Great can be seen on the 10,000 Won note.   His face is a symbol of pride for the people of Korea, just like the faces of Abraham Lincoln or George Washington are used every day as a reminder of the great triumphs of our own country.

In 1446, the creation of Hangul was complete and was published in an article titled “The Proper Sounds for the Education of the People.”

Many aristocrats in the Korean society were very against the creation and spreading of Hangul.  Some would call Hangul “Achimegeul”, or “writing you can learn within a morning.”  They’d say “A wise man can acquaint himself with them before the morning is over; a stupid man can learn them in the space of ten days.”

Why would this be a negative thing?

Before Hangul, majority of Koreans were effectively illiterate.  Using the Chinese script was a difficult task and the only people that had the extra time and money to study this form of language were rich, elite, and usually men.  They were otherwise known as the yangban.  A nation full of common people able to read newspapers, transmit thoughts over time in forms of letters, and record events as they happened is considered to be a very threatening thing to the people who hold the ultimate power.

Eerie, isn’t it?

The actual form of Hangul was intended to be very easy for the average person to learn.  The strokes of many consonants actually mimic the mouth as they produce the sound.  For example: the sound for “k” is represented by ㄱ.

You can see that if you image this : ㄱ: as your tongue, when making the sound “k”, the back of your tongue touches the roof of your mouth, also at the back. 

Here’s another example: the sound “n” is represented by this character: ㄴ.

Again, if “ㄴ” represents the tongue, you can see that when you make the sound “n”, the tip of your tongue touches the roof of your mouth, right behind the teeth.  The back of the tongue is down, allowing for air to flow through.

And one more example because this is so much fun:  the sound “m” is represented by this character: ㅁ

When you make the sound “m”, your lips come together and close, forming kind of a box inside your mouth, just like this: ㅁ.

Pretty awesome, right?

Thus, Hangul deserves its title as a very scientific language and its claims for being easy for all people to learn.

As if there couldn’t be anything more cool than this very literal representation of sounds, the vowels were developed based on one of the foundations of Confucianism.  The vowels are formed using different combinations of three symbols: ㆍ ㅡ ㅣ.  According to Confucius, the universe is made up of three basic components.   There is heaven (ㆍ), Earth (ㅡ) and Man (ㅣ).  Shabang.  Beautiful.

And to think that I doubted that I would ever use what I learned in my college Linguistics course…

I’ve started my Korean language class and boy, does it feel great to be back in a classroom.  We were introduced to the language with an opening lecture by a highly acclaimed South Korean linguist.  He’s retired and now spends his time volunteering for this and that.  He concluded the lecture by saying he normally opens the floor for questions, but said he wouldn’t be able to hear them anyway, so thank you for your time, goodbye. 

In all of my anthropology classes, my professors always said that learning the language is an imperative first step to learning about the culture and gaining trust and good rapport among the people.  I don’t know how much I’ll really learn in a year, but I think the importance lies in the honest attempt of it.  I’m a visitor in this country, and although I’m here to speak English, literally, I want to show my respect and try to learn as much as I can.  Also, there’s this little part of my brain that lights up when I study a language, that I don’t feel anytime else.  I really like that feeling.  Brain aerobics.

Number 9…Number 9…Number 9…Number 9

I’ve conquered bus number 9.  Which means a whole new world has been opened to me.  I’ve been winding through the cobbled maze of streets that make up downtown and have been moving as part of a fast paced mob made up of incredibly fashionable people with their black leggings and smart sweaters, their cell phones in hand with cute trinkets trailing off of them.  We occasionally move to the side to let the man in the expensive car through.  It seems he hasn’t been tipped off to the fact that the road has been overrun by people and reclaimed as pedestrian walk ways.  I look up at 8 story buildings, surrounding my left, right, behind, in front with bright neon flashing lights in characters that I can only barely decipher, loud music blaring from every store, so a new 4 second song is introduced with every 6 steps I take.  Gems of stores are hidden in shady looking alley ways (turn left at the Lacoste store…the only store in town with real cheese, if you’re willing to pay for it…) and to know what every floor to every building housed would be an unfathomable feat.  People are selling all sorts of things on the sides: dancing stuffed animals, octopus, shoes, shoes, lots of shoes.
And I have my so very helpful and friendly co-workers to thank, showing me the workings of the number 9 red bus.  “Don’t worry, just push your way on.”  I’m lucky to get a seat, luckier to get on at all.  Fortunately for me, the number 9 bus has a sign at the front that shows the next stop in English.  Unfortunately for me, the number 9 bus seems to be the busiest bus of all, so I’m hard pressed to ever see the sign at the front, blocked by the mass of people in the aisle ways.  My ears are keen to my neighborhood name, “Shinga”, though.  And when I hear a hint of shinga over the loud speakers, I perk up and am ready to bolt when I need to.
Public transportation is so humbling.

Home Sweet New Home

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10 days.
And it’s too soon to make any broad discoveries about culture, history, world view, thoughts, ideas.
But, I realize that I am here.  And I’ll be here for some time.  So my mind has tricked itself into some eerie calmness, which I feel is going to pass soon, once I know the full effect of what I’ve done to myself.  Why come to South Korea?  I had so much at home.  I was surrounded by people that I love, who love me too.  I was doing things I’ve always wanted to do.  I collected myself while moving forward.  But yet, I left it all.  I suppose I’m still trying to figure it out.  Knowing that there is a whole world out there, full of things I don’t know about and things that I can learn about, is the force that drives me to do the things I do, I guess I would say if I had to put it in words.  And reading that sentence again seems to over simplify things.  But maybe it really is that simple?  I just err towards team complicated, maybe to justify a lack of explanation.
But, I regress.  What I don’t want to do here is ramble on about myself.  No sir.  I want to grab this opportunity and position myself as a type of cultural liaison, if you will.  Looking at myself before I started thinking about coming here and talking to people before I left, I realized people generally don’t know a whole lot about this country. (“Bet you can’t find a hamburger there, aren’t cows sacred in South Korea?”)  So, I hereby declare that I will do what I can to portray a fair and accurate picture of South Korea, in personality, in history, in culture, or whatever may come my way.
To start, for those that didn’t see the first time:

Voila!  Lesson Number 1!
I’m stationed in Gwangju.  The rest is self-explanatory for intentional reasons.
For introductory reasons, I’ll show you around a bit first.  I live in a loft style apartment above an abandoned school called Little America.  It’s not entirely abandoned, just moved down the road about 15 minutes of a walk worth.  So I’m up four flights of empty classrooms.  I don’t have a camera right now, it turns out, so I took some pictures with my laptop.

My bedroom corner!  With the mighty goddess Durga, protecting me, as always.

My closet corner!  With Neon Space Cow to keep me company.  (I love you Erin.)

My office corner!  The weather is quite nice in Gwangju right now and every part of my being is eagerly and impatiently yearning for new growth around me.  I just got gardening supplies today to start my herbs that I brought with me from home.  I will have to do home cooking for my neighbors with herbs they haven’t tasted in a while.  The spray bottle I bought today says “It makes extra moisture.  It makes natural moisture.”  :)

My kitchen corner!
This apartment is only everything that I need.  This efficient use of space makes me feel like a more deliberate person.  And I like that.
What else is there?  There is so much else.  But, for now, I’ll leave this as is.  Yes, this is a good thing, I think.