Hello, all! Katy here. J and I are in Busan for the holiday, and as such, having far too much fun to blog. I will post soon, with pictures and stories of our holiday adventures.
Cheers, and Merry Christmas!
-K
Sunday, December 25, 2016
Sunday, December 18, 2016
Jimjilbang
Happy one week till Christmas, all. You've got Katy again this week. This week I visited a Jimjilbang (pronounced "jim-jill-bong"), which is a pretty culturally specific Korean establishment, and I'd like to tell you about it. Unfortunately, given the nature of them, I don't have any pictures to show.
A Jimjilbang is a public bathhouse that typically consists of hot tubs, showers, saunas, and a lounge, though technically the word "jimjilbang" in Korean only refers to the saunas. In Korea, many people visit these bathhouses about once a month or once every other month. They are communal bathing spaces that are segregated by gender in parts, and attended completely disrobed in those spaces. In spaces where both genders intermingle, such as the dry saunas, attendants are issued identical pant and shirt outfits that are one-size-fits-all so that everyone is clad in the exact same outfit when robed at all. Ours happened to be bright orange and the elastic was barely enough to keep the pants up on my small hips. We looked to me like inmates. Another aspect of note is that many people don't just drop by to clean up and leave, most it seemed were there to spend the better part of the day. It is even permitted to stay the night, and so many people will treat the local Jimjilbang as a cheap hotel in a town they are passing through. The cost is only about 20,000 won ($19) to enter, and you can stay as long as you like.
What follows is my experience with the progression of bathing ritual in the Jimjilbang that I attended with two of my Korean friends, and one fellow foreigner. Upon arriving we purchased keys (the 20,000 won fine) which would be used for the lockers to hold our belongings. We removed our shoes immediately before moving on into gender segregated locker rooms. Once inside, most people were wandering around comfortably naked headed to and from various spaces.
The first stop was the squatting showers (which sounds strange, I know). It's worth noting here, in case I haven't already in one of these blogs, that Koreans are very good at squatting, flat footed, nearly all the way onto the floor. You will see people sitting like this waiting for bus stops, or at restaurants where there is floor seating only. This is a flexibility largely lost on most adult westerners who spend most of their seated time in chairs. Now then, back to these squatting showers. There were rows of mirrors sitting on the floor, about 3 feet tall, with sinks and handheld shower hoses coming out of them. At this height, one had to squat, or sit on tiny stools to be at the appropriate height to see in the mirror, or use the length of the shower hose. There you rinsed off before wandering over to the hot tubs, which were more like hot pools given the sizes.
There were four tubs of varying heats and most people worked their way up to the hottest where they soaked for as long as they could without getting overheated or pruny. Once you were good and water-logged, you returned to your shower station (there were dozens all in these little rows) where you used a Korean scrubbing towel (the sandpaper of washcloths) to fiercely scrub at your skin until the dead skin began to roll off in little spaghetti strings. Once you were pink, slightly raw feeling and left with nothing but the youngest skin, you suds up and rinse off. Note that we haven't yet washed our hair. Why? Because now it's sauna time.
So you head into the locker room, put on your orange, canvas uniform, and move into the gender-mixed lounge and saunas. The saunas are similarly arranged by heat, and are all dry. There was even one ice sauna (is it still called a sauna if it is iced?) which was lined with ice blocks and you had to wear slippers and sit on crates in order to not freeze burn your skin. Obviously, I was less of a fan of this room. I spent most of my time in the hottest room, pouring sweat and happy as a clam. Groups of women huddled together inside chatting, while a few individuals meditated. Again, there were mats and crates to keep you from burning your feet. The two hottest saunas were a salt sauna and a sandalwood sauna. It seems as though these things are supposed to be good for your health, though I didn't quite understand the justification. In the cooler salt sauna, there were even bags of salt that people used as pillows while they napped inside, sweating away.
The lounge that was the common space between sauna's offered multiple massage chairs, a large open space, and a flat screen TV which played K-dramas. In the large open space there were mats, like thick yoga mats, and small blocks which people used as pillows. Most people napped, though many talked and sipped on the enormous jugs of cold sweetened rice tea for sale at a convenience store located inside the lounge. There was even a restaurant in this space for those who intended to spend the night. We spent most of our time in this space, wandering from sauna to sauna, and napping in the lounge between trips to cool off. Finally, once we were done sweating and napping, we moved back into the gender segregated spaces, showered again, and this time washed our hair. Feeling the cleanest I have ever felt, and relaxed to the point of clumsiness, we lotioned, re-dressed, and headed out.
All in all I believe we only spent about 5 hours at the jimjilbang, but it was clear that many people were there for the long haul. It is advisable for everyone, Korean and foreign alike, to go with a friend for the sake of scrubbing each other's back, socializing, and reminding each other to hydrate. Though for foreigners, I would say it is almost essential to go with a friend (ideally a Korean) to show you the ropes, and ease some of the awkwardness of being stared at while idling naked. I can speak for my foreign friend, and myself, when I say that it took about two hours before we stopped noticing how intently everyone was staring at our foreign bodies. Not the most comfortable of situations but definitely well worth it in the end.
And that's the story. It may seem strange to spend an entire post talking about bathing, but these public bathhouses in Korea are incredibly common and important cultural establishments. I was honored that my Korean friends felt comfortable enough with me to invite me along, and thrilled at the opportunity to experience something so strange to me.
We've got some big Christmas-y stuff coming up in the next week, so that will undoubtedly be the topic next Sunday.
Cheers!
-K
A Jimjilbang is a public bathhouse that typically consists of hot tubs, showers, saunas, and a lounge, though technically the word "jimjilbang" in Korean only refers to the saunas. In Korea, many people visit these bathhouses about once a month or once every other month. They are communal bathing spaces that are segregated by gender in parts, and attended completely disrobed in those spaces. In spaces where both genders intermingle, such as the dry saunas, attendants are issued identical pant and shirt outfits that are one-size-fits-all so that everyone is clad in the exact same outfit when robed at all. Ours happened to be bright orange and the elastic was barely enough to keep the pants up on my small hips. We looked to me like inmates. Another aspect of note is that many people don't just drop by to clean up and leave, most it seemed were there to spend the better part of the day. It is even permitted to stay the night, and so many people will treat the local Jimjilbang as a cheap hotel in a town they are passing through. The cost is only about 20,000 won ($19) to enter, and you can stay as long as you like.
What follows is my experience with the progression of bathing ritual in the Jimjilbang that I attended with two of my Korean friends, and one fellow foreigner. Upon arriving we purchased keys (the 20,000 won fine) which would be used for the lockers to hold our belongings. We removed our shoes immediately before moving on into gender segregated locker rooms. Once inside, most people were wandering around comfortably naked headed to and from various spaces.
The first stop was the squatting showers (which sounds strange, I know). It's worth noting here, in case I haven't already in one of these blogs, that Koreans are very good at squatting, flat footed, nearly all the way onto the floor. You will see people sitting like this waiting for bus stops, or at restaurants where there is floor seating only. This is a flexibility largely lost on most adult westerners who spend most of their seated time in chairs. Now then, back to these squatting showers. There were rows of mirrors sitting on the floor, about 3 feet tall, with sinks and handheld shower hoses coming out of them. At this height, one had to squat, or sit on tiny stools to be at the appropriate height to see in the mirror, or use the length of the shower hose. There you rinsed off before wandering over to the hot tubs, which were more like hot pools given the sizes.
There were four tubs of varying heats and most people worked their way up to the hottest where they soaked for as long as they could without getting overheated or pruny. Once you were good and water-logged, you returned to your shower station (there were dozens all in these little rows) where you used a Korean scrubbing towel (the sandpaper of washcloths) to fiercely scrub at your skin until the dead skin began to roll off in little spaghetti strings. Once you were pink, slightly raw feeling and left with nothing but the youngest skin, you suds up and rinse off. Note that we haven't yet washed our hair. Why? Because now it's sauna time.
So you head into the locker room, put on your orange, canvas uniform, and move into the gender-mixed lounge and saunas. The saunas are similarly arranged by heat, and are all dry. There was even one ice sauna (is it still called a sauna if it is iced?) which was lined with ice blocks and you had to wear slippers and sit on crates in order to not freeze burn your skin. Obviously, I was less of a fan of this room. I spent most of my time in the hottest room, pouring sweat and happy as a clam. Groups of women huddled together inside chatting, while a few individuals meditated. Again, there were mats and crates to keep you from burning your feet. The two hottest saunas were a salt sauna and a sandalwood sauna. It seems as though these things are supposed to be good for your health, though I didn't quite understand the justification. In the cooler salt sauna, there were even bags of salt that people used as pillows while they napped inside, sweating away.
The lounge that was the common space between sauna's offered multiple massage chairs, a large open space, and a flat screen TV which played K-dramas. In the large open space there were mats, like thick yoga mats, and small blocks which people used as pillows. Most people napped, though many talked and sipped on the enormous jugs of cold sweetened rice tea for sale at a convenience store located inside the lounge. There was even a restaurant in this space for those who intended to spend the night. We spent most of our time in this space, wandering from sauna to sauna, and napping in the lounge between trips to cool off. Finally, once we were done sweating and napping, we moved back into the gender segregated spaces, showered again, and this time washed our hair. Feeling the cleanest I have ever felt, and relaxed to the point of clumsiness, we lotioned, re-dressed, and headed out.
All in all I believe we only spent about 5 hours at the jimjilbang, but it was clear that many people were there for the long haul. It is advisable for everyone, Korean and foreign alike, to go with a friend for the sake of scrubbing each other's back, socializing, and reminding each other to hydrate. Though for foreigners, I would say it is almost essential to go with a friend (ideally a Korean) to show you the ropes, and ease some of the awkwardness of being stared at while idling naked. I can speak for my foreign friend, and myself, when I say that it took about two hours before we stopped noticing how intently everyone was staring at our foreign bodies. Not the most comfortable of situations but definitely well worth it in the end.
And that's the story. It may seem strange to spend an entire post talking about bathing, but these public bathhouses in Korea are incredibly common and important cultural establishments. I was honored that my Korean friends felt comfortable enough with me to invite me along, and thrilled at the opportunity to experience something so strange to me.
We've got some big Christmas-y stuff coming up in the next week, so that will undoubtedly be the topic next Sunday.
Cheers!
-K
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Teacher's Extracurriculars
Hey everyone, it's Jamie this week.
One of the things that makes my working environment interesting is all of the non-work related stuff that the teachers and other school staff get up to together. Based on my conversations with the other foreign teachers, it sounds like it's this way at most schools, too. I may have already mentioned that most Wednesdays we play volleyball. Well, a while back that culminated in an inter-mural tournament with a few of the other schools in the area (we did not make a noteworthy performance.) Like so many other things, this was a complete surprise to me. Earlier in the day I thought to myself, "I wonder if we're going to be playing volleyball today?", and when I went to the gym I saw that it had been set up for spectators.
Four or five schools participated, so most people spent more time watching than playing. In fact, some people came just to watch. Most principals didn't play, but ours is cool so he did. It was kind of interesting watching new people trickling in and seeing how people reacted. When a new principal came, everyone had to stand up until they sat down, even the other principals. Here are the backs of some principals' heads:
The one in orange and stripes is the principal at my main school. Overall the games were fun and lighthearted, but it did seem like people were taking it more seriously than our weekly "practice".
Another week, when I was at my Wednesday school, I got a call from my main school telling me not to come back for volleyball practice like usual. Instead, they would be coming by my travel school to pick me up, since they were all going hiking on a mountain on the same island as my travel school. Like so many things that I would have assumed were optional, this was not presented as a choice. So, I hiked with the teachers from my main school for almost four hours. It was great exercise and the views were amazing, but it was also pretty steep in parts and it lasted a lot longer than I thought it would. I recorded some of the views for posterity:
More recently, I finally got to go on one of these adventures with the teachers from my travel school. Before, the principal had always told my coteacher that since I wasn't technically an employee of their school, I shouldn't be involved in their activities. I have no idea why it was different this time, but I was invited to go fishing for octopus after school. It was cold, but totally a lovely day for it (not that I'd know):
I managed to catch one whole octopus! (And yes, most of them were this size):
It looks limp because, while I totally did actually manage to catch an octopus (a lot of the teachers caught more than 10), I tossed it in the bucket with the rest of them really quickly, and then we fished one back out later because my coteacher wanted to take a picture of me with one.
They brought a kerosene stove on the boat, and some of the teachers cooked the octopus right there while the rest of us fished. We ate it boiled with a tangy and spicy sauce. Sometimes we have cold octopus legs as part of lunch, and they were definitely better hot and fresh, but it was a lot more octopus than I ever would have assumed I would eat in my lifetime, let alone within a few hours. After everyone was done fishing we brought the octopus back to the school, which they tried to make as complicated as they could:
They had a will to live, and they were continuously pushing the lid off the bucked and crawling out. The Korean teachers would calmly grab them and toss them back in, someone would remember to keep their foot on the lid for half a minute, and then they'd go to do something else and the octopus would start escaping again. Once we got back to school, they fired up more kerosene burners and we had a little cookout:
They prepared them all sorts of ways. Most of them were boiled, but some were chopped up raw (and alive) and mixed with some kind of spicy vinegar sauce into a sort of ceviche. Most of the boiled octopus were also eaten straight with a little bit of one of a few sauces, but some of them went into some special dishes people were making, like some kind of soup and what I will flexibly call a salad. I had more than my fill, but they didn't like it whenever I tried to stop eating. Everyone else was eating continuously, and every time I stopped they'd ask if I didn't like it or tell me how expensive octopus is. They were especially fond of the heads, but I couldn't stomach more than one. It was okay at first, just kind of chewy and gummy like the legs, but then I could feel whatever kind of membrane the brain was encased in pop in my mouth before it was filled with a warm goo that was something like pate, but with a stronger flavor, as well as the awareness that I was eating octopus brain. So I didn't have a second.
I don't usually like surprise adventures being thrown at me, which my dad will be able to confirm, but these kinds of things have helped to break up the monotony of the workweek. If I'm dragged along for any other cool adventures with the teachers, I'll be sure to tell you guys about them. Thanks for reading, and I hope you're all well!
One of the things that makes my working environment interesting is all of the non-work related stuff that the teachers and other school staff get up to together. Based on my conversations with the other foreign teachers, it sounds like it's this way at most schools, too. I may have already mentioned that most Wednesdays we play volleyball. Well, a while back that culminated in an inter-mural tournament with a few of the other schools in the area (we did not make a noteworthy performance.) Like so many other things, this was a complete surprise to me. Earlier in the day I thought to myself, "I wonder if we're going to be playing volleyball today?", and when I went to the gym I saw that it had been set up for spectators.
Four or five schools participated, so most people spent more time watching than playing. In fact, some people came just to watch. Most principals didn't play, but ours is cool so he did. It was kind of interesting watching new people trickling in and seeing how people reacted. When a new principal came, everyone had to stand up until they sat down, even the other principals. Here are the backs of some principals' heads:
The one in orange and stripes is the principal at my main school. Overall the games were fun and lighthearted, but it did seem like people were taking it more seriously than our weekly "practice".
Another week, when I was at my Wednesday school, I got a call from my main school telling me not to come back for volleyball practice like usual. Instead, they would be coming by my travel school to pick me up, since they were all going hiking on a mountain on the same island as my travel school. Like so many things that I would have assumed were optional, this was not presented as a choice. So, I hiked with the teachers from my main school for almost four hours. It was great exercise and the views were amazing, but it was also pretty steep in parts and it lasted a lot longer than I thought it would. I recorded some of the views for posterity:
More recently, I finally got to go on one of these adventures with the teachers from my travel school. Before, the principal had always told my coteacher that since I wasn't technically an employee of their school, I shouldn't be involved in their activities. I have no idea why it was different this time, but I was invited to go fishing for octopus after school. It was cold, but totally a lovely day for it (not that I'd know):
I managed to catch one whole octopus! (And yes, most of them were this size):
It looks limp because, while I totally did actually manage to catch an octopus (a lot of the teachers caught more than 10), I tossed it in the bucket with the rest of them really quickly, and then we fished one back out later because my coteacher wanted to take a picture of me with one.
They brought a kerosene stove on the boat, and some of the teachers cooked the octopus right there while the rest of us fished. We ate it boiled with a tangy and spicy sauce. Sometimes we have cold octopus legs as part of lunch, and they were definitely better hot and fresh, but it was a lot more octopus than I ever would have assumed I would eat in my lifetime, let alone within a few hours. After everyone was done fishing we brought the octopus back to the school, which they tried to make as complicated as they could:
They had a will to live, and they were continuously pushing the lid off the bucked and crawling out. The Korean teachers would calmly grab them and toss them back in, someone would remember to keep their foot on the lid for half a minute, and then they'd go to do something else and the octopus would start escaping again. Once we got back to school, they fired up more kerosene burners and we had a little cookout:
They prepared them all sorts of ways. Most of them were boiled, but some were chopped up raw (and alive) and mixed with some kind of spicy vinegar sauce into a sort of ceviche. Most of the boiled octopus were also eaten straight with a little bit of one of a few sauces, but some of them went into some special dishes people were making, like some kind of soup and what I will flexibly call a salad. I had more than my fill, but they didn't like it whenever I tried to stop eating. Everyone else was eating continuously, and every time I stopped they'd ask if I didn't like it or tell me how expensive octopus is. They were especially fond of the heads, but I couldn't stomach more than one. It was okay at first, just kind of chewy and gummy like the legs, but then I could feel whatever kind of membrane the brain was encased in pop in my mouth before it was filled with a warm goo that was something like pate, but with a stronger flavor, as well as the awareness that I was eating octopus brain. So I didn't have a second.
I don't usually like surprise adventures being thrown at me, which my dad will be able to confirm, but these kinds of things have helped to break up the monotony of the workweek. If I'm dragged along for any other cool adventures with the teachers, I'll be sure to tell you guys about them. Thanks for reading, and I hope you're all well!
Sunday, December 4, 2016
HanguGo!
Hi, everyone. Katy here. It's been a beautiful first week of December here in Goheung. Sunny, dry as a bone, and cooooold. When deciding what to write about this week, I looked back at previous posts, not wanting to repeat anything, and noticed that these blogs tend to break down into two types, tutorial-esque or story-esque. The last few have been more like a play by play of our day to day and I wanted to provide something more informative this week (since you will all be visiting us here someday, right?!). So Korean Language it is! In Korean, the name of the language is written 한국어 and would likely be Romanized something like han-gu-go (hence the title). As many of you know, I've been taking lessons, or more accurately, doing language-exchange with some of my Korean friends and it is really starting to pay off. I had a more-or-less successful conversation with my hairdresser today, which is a huge deal. You hardly notice how awkward it is to sit in a chair at scissor point until you can't communicate. As such, the ability to introduce myself, ask for the cut I wanted, and answer her questions about where I was from and what I did, was just about the most exciting thing that has happened all week.
So lets start with the basics. Korean has an alphabet of sorts, as we would be used to in English, with consonants and vowels totaling 24 "letters" or characters. Unlike English however, Korean characters are arranged into blocks that make up one syllable, rather than strung in a line to make a word. So take the name of the Korean language, 한국어, for example. You can see the blocks there, right? There appear to be three sections to the word, and in fact this is a three syllable word. Each block is made up of multiple characters though, as many as four, or as few as two. These letters are either above, below, or beside each other. This word then, 한국어, is made up of the characters ㅎㅏㄴㄱㅜㄱㅇㅓ respectively. So then, as you can see, you read each block by starting with the upper left corner, then upper right, then bottom (also left to right if there are multiple characters on the bottom).
A note on pronunciation. Unless you're Jamie, or you happen to have studied a little linguistics, the multiple "o" and "u" sounds above might seem redundant, and the fact that r and l are somehow the same character may seem strange. For clarification sake, the ㅗ character and ㅛ beside it are pronounced using the same "o" sound you would find in the phrase "oh boy," while the ㅓandㅕcharacters are the "o" sound in "coffee" or "bob." Hear the difference? Similarly, the ㅜand ㅠ characters make a "you" sound, while ㅡ makes a sound much more reminiscent of the noise one might make when the get punched in the gut. It's kind of a grunt of a noise... Unfortunately that's one of the harder characters to explain and with my minimal teaching skills, that's the best I can do. Then there's that strange r/l combo character. What's with that? Unless you've learned any Japanese, it may come as a surprise to you that those two noises are very similar, practically the same. And in fact, in Korean and Japanese, they simply are the same. Sure they make slightly different noises depending on where they are in a word (i.e. whether they are surrounded by vowels or consonants) but mostly the noises are interchangeable. Unfortunately that's all I'm going to be able to say on the subject, since it's just kind of hard to wrap your head around until you're using a language where that's the case. Just for fun, though, try saying out loud the noise "rl." Finally, see that circle on the bottom row? It doesn't have an English letter below it to indicate it's pronunciation, and that is because when it is at the end of a character block it is pronounced "ng" but when it is at the beginning, it is a silent letter, such as in the third character block (syllable) of 한국어.
Other complications of note in the Korean language are the formality levels. If you've learned Spanish at any point, you may know that if you are speaking to an elder, professional, or stranger you would say "you" using "usted" rather than "tu" (which is more informal/familiar). Korean has the same kind of thing in it's conjugations, except that there are more than two of these formality levels. There are usually three-ish, in most cases. There are different endings for words if you are talking to an elder, a stranger, a friend, or a child. An example is saying "hello." I will Romanize them syllable by syllable for convenience sake, after writing the Korean.
So lets start with the basics. Korean has an alphabet of sorts, as we would be used to in English, with consonants and vowels totaling 24 "letters" or characters. Unlike English however, Korean characters are arranged into blocks that make up one syllable, rather than strung in a line to make a word. So take the name of the Korean language, 한국어, for example. You can see the blocks there, right? There appear to be three sections to the word, and in fact this is a three syllable word. Each block is made up of multiple characters though, as many as four, or as few as two. These letters are either above, below, or beside each other. This word then, 한국어, is made up of the characters ㅎㅏㄴㄱㅜㄱㅇㅓ respectively. So then, as you can see, you read each block by starting with the upper left corner, then upper right, then bottom (also left to right if there are multiple characters on the bottom).
A note on pronunciation. Unless you're Jamie, or you happen to have studied a little linguistics, the multiple "o" and "u" sounds above might seem redundant, and the fact that r and l are somehow the same character may seem strange. For clarification sake, the ㅗ character and ㅛ beside it are pronounced using the same "o" sound you would find in the phrase "oh boy," while the ㅓandㅕcharacters are the "o" sound in "coffee" or "bob." Hear the difference? Similarly, the ㅜand ㅠ characters make a "you" sound, while ㅡ makes a sound much more reminiscent of the noise one might make when the get punched in the gut. It's kind of a grunt of a noise... Unfortunately that's one of the harder characters to explain and with my minimal teaching skills, that's the best I can do. Then there's that strange r/l combo character. What's with that? Unless you've learned any Japanese, it may come as a surprise to you that those two noises are very similar, practically the same. And in fact, in Korean and Japanese, they simply are the same. Sure they make slightly different noises depending on where they are in a word (i.e. whether they are surrounded by vowels or consonants) but mostly the noises are interchangeable. Unfortunately that's all I'm going to be able to say on the subject, since it's just kind of hard to wrap your head around until you're using a language where that's the case. Just for fun, though, try saying out loud the noise "rl." Finally, see that circle on the bottom row? It doesn't have an English letter below it to indicate it's pronunciation, and that is because when it is at the end of a character block it is pronounced "ng" but when it is at the beginning, it is a silent letter, such as in the third character block (syllable) of 한국어.
Other complications of note in the Korean language are the formality levels. If you've learned Spanish at any point, you may know that if you are speaking to an elder, professional, or stranger you would say "you" using "usted" rather than "tu" (which is more informal/familiar). Korean has the same kind of thing in it's conjugations, except that there are more than two of these formality levels. There are usually three-ish, in most cases. There are different endings for words if you are talking to an elder, a stranger, a friend, or a child. An example is saying "hello." I will Romanize them syllable by syllable for convenience sake, after writing the Korean.
- Hello (to a child or very close friend): 안녕 ahn-yong
- Hello (to a peer or stranger): 안녕하세요 ahn-yong-ha-say-yo
- Hello (to an elder or professional): 안녕하십니까 ahn-yong-ha-shim-nee-ka
Learning Korean as an American is rather complicated in a way that learning another Germanic or Romance language isn't. The completely different character alphabet, word structure, and sentence form make for a unique challenge. I have been studying, rather informally (see my notebook above), but diligently, for three months now, and I can eavesdrop on conversations and get a theme, but no details. I can have routine conversations with friends who speak slowly for me, and I can piece my own sentences together at a painstakingly slow pace resulting in a barely grammatically correct phrase. Having learned a language from scrap before, I can say this is a whole different world. The progress is real though, and the gratification of each step makes me think I might just be conversational within a year. Below is a sample screenshot from a recent chat with a Korean friend of mine. It's nifty for a few reasons. First, because it's mostly in Korean, and second, check out the little bit of English. It's neat how progressed her English is, that she types things like "Im" but still spells out slang phonetically in the case of "ganna."
While this hardly scratches the surface of the language, I think that's about all it makes sense to include in a post like this. I don't want to bore anyone to death, but I'd love for you all to have the same respect for the beauty, uniqueness, and complexity of the language that I do. I must say, the more I learn, the more I love it. As with any language foreign to your own, it provides a way to say things you simply can't express the same way in English. As a tool of expression, language offers a way to convey how you feel, perceive, and interact with the world, and, each individual language opens up new options in that respect.
Hope everyone has a great week!
-K
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