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September 19, 2005
Chuseok
I realize that, despite my concerted efforts to be consistently late to class and never study, I am actually learning this language. Compare: I just had an incredibly stupid-sounding, elementary conversation about where my family is (London), how old I am (21) and how I studied in Japan in college and know Japanese (which I meant to make the other participants know that I'm not a total idiot, i.e., at least I know Japanese, but I think might have had an opposite effect). Whereas three months ago I could barely say hello.
The people at this cafe and in my hasuk have put up with me so wonderfully. I really have to bring holidays into their lives in the same way they bring theirs into mine. To wit: this last weekend was Chuseok (Korean thanksgiving) and I was pretty much the only tenant left in the building (everyone else had gone home to be with family, and I can only assume the two other foreigners have been here long enough to have somewhere to go). But the hasuk ajuma family gathered at the hasuk, which meant I got to see the two other daughters, their husbands and their kids.
This family is eerily similar to my Japanese host family-- three daughters, one my age and two others moved away and with kids. The only difference is that there's a dad and that, unthinkable as it is, Harumi is a pussycat compared with this mom.
The highlight for me was naturally the family member with whom there was no language barrier-- the three-year-old. We played peek-a-boo around corners and this jump up and down game that was instantly invented when I imitated him and made him laugh, and the pick-him-up-and-show-him-the-top-of-the-doorframe game. It made putting up with his crying in the middle of the night a miniscule price to pay for the kind of pure human connection I haven't had in a while.
The little kid's thirteen-year-old cousin interrogated me about American Chuseok (which I said was on Nov. 26-- I'm learning the language, but I don't yet know how to say third Thursday-- is it even the third Thursday?). I told him we ate turkey, and he didn't know what that is, so I made a thorough fool of myself strutting around making gobbling noises, which communicated to him precisely nothing, because, of course, he didn't know what a turkey was. So I just told him it was "chicken but not chicken" and left it at that.
The food was fantastic, as well it should be, since all the female family members were sitting around making it (I'm not kidding) all day for two days. I couldn't walk into the kitchen for most of the weekend because it was covered by cooking women. This is one of those things that foreigners find very amusing and Korean cultural expats (the ones who have moved away in all but spirit, like those I work with) find abhorrent. See this vivid description of Chuseok "dipped in boiling resentment" and this more newsy look at the crappiness of the holiday.
I had songpyeon, the little rice cakes, too, thanks to the ajuma at the Starlite (who I learned from her daughter, who is beautiful and interesting and likes Cowboy Bebop and computer games and hates pop music-- and is leaving for London tomorrow, where was I? Oh right, I found out from her that her mom is actually half-Japanese but her mother died when she was young and so she was raised Korean-- I didn't call this category streamofconsciousness for nothing), who gave me a dish of them for free, and, true to the spirit of the Filipino church ladies I remember loving as a kid, insisted I take a bag home too.
Well, I think I emptied the brain out pretty well there. Happy Chuseok, everyone!
Posted by b-applegate at September 19, 2005 10:21 AM
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