Intercultural Life

Category: Relationships (Page 3 of 22)

Relationships with Koreans- friendships and romance

How we make our marriage work

We get a lot of messages where people need advice and we do out best to answer them. We decided it was time to make a video talking about how we make our marriage work and what things we do to make a happy life together. The video was actually over 30 mins long but of course cut down, so there was many more things we had to say!

We wrote down what we wanted to say, but I ended up doing more of the talking because Hugh isn’t as comfortable in English for a more scripted video BUT if you get him in person he will talk your ear off!

 

Which Meaning?

Pumpkin Comic

Hugh says: Pumpkin (hobak in Korean), the pumpkin flower is beautiful but pumpkins in Korea have a lot of wrinkles and creases so it doesn’t look pretty. So we say apples and watermelon are pretty. There is even a saying when someone is putting on a lot of makeup to try and look good, “Do you think you can look pretty just by paining black lines on you?” (Like a watermelon).

Even though I know pumpkin means something different in English, and Nichola will use the English word, my automatic reaction is to not like it. So I just tease her saying I mean both meanings when I say “pumpkin”.

Washing Machine

Washing Machine

One of our biggest disagreements is about taking the plastic of new appliances. I always want to do it right away but Hugh NEVER wants to remove the plastic. It drives me crazy because the plastic looks messy, but it drives him crazy because he wants to keep the plastic on as long as possible to keep it “new”. I took one line of plastic off the new TV, but wasn’t allowed to take off anymore. When we got the new washing machine I took the chance to take the plastic off right away, much to Hugh’s horror.

This Side

This Side

I’ve read that when someone returns to their home, where their parents still live, they tend to act more like their teenage self and revert back to that type of behaviour. That definitely plays a part in how Hugh can act at home. He will argue with this parents, be stubborn and annoying, and torment his sister. He directs some of that sisterly torment at me too, and it’s seriously like dealing with a 16 year old sometimes. That’s not to say he is always like this, because usually he is a mature, level-headed, compassionate man, but he has his teenage times.. luckily we aren’t living here long term and will be moving to Seoul.

Hugh had already seen my sulky and moody teenage times at home in Australia so he was fully aware of that before he married me. But because we moved to Korea after 2 years of marriage, this was more of a surprise for me. In international relationships you always have that change in a partner when moving to another country. Many women married to Korean men find that after moving to Korea long term, that their carefree husband has turned into a stressed workaholic because of Korean work culture. There needs to be understanding on both sides. That’s why marriage is about deciding every day to love someone, even when they can be at their most annoying.

And I bet Hugh gets his revenge on me in a ‘My Australian Wife’ comic!

INTERCULTURAL MARRIED LIFE: AUSTRALIAN/KOREAN COUPLES

We ask questions to Australian/Korean married couples! How did you meet? What aspects of your partner’s culture have you adopted? Best and worst things about international/intercultural relationships? Advice or other couples?

Big thank you to everyone who helped us make this video!

Check out Rachel and Nick’s YouTube channel, The Drunken Bear here.

Check out Sophie’s blog on raising a bilingual child here.

There is a reason why we don’t do these videos regularly: they sure are a pain to edit! But we had been wanting to do something like this for a long time. This video is just Australian/Korean couples, but we may in the future do another video with a bigger mix of people. We wanted to focus on the culture rather than race aspects, as too often people focus on race and what people look like. But culture is what we should be talking about. How do you navigate and international and intercultural marriage? It’s an ongoing exploration and discussion.

(A video with Korean subs will be coming).

Meet People

Meet People

Hugh does a lot of socializing and a lot of it is business related or important networking. Sometimes I have to show my face because people hear about me but have never met me. I’m elusive! Even when it’s an English speaking environment I’m going to avoid or bail early. I spend so much time hiding away that Hugh thinks he needs to remind me how to dress nicely. Introvert life. I’m happy to go out and have one on one conversations with interesting people, but big group situations are tiring and Korean socializing easily goes until the early hours of the morning.

Hugh is not elusive at all. Whenever he is in Seoul you’ll see him somewhere in Hongdae. He has a love/hate relationship with the Hongdae area. He loves many places there but hates the crowds of university students.

Our Most Annoying Habits

We sure had a lot to talk about! This was a lot of fun to film. We actually filmed it before we were in Australia for 6 weeks and almost couldn’t find the footage again, but I’m glad we did. After filming this we were like, “Oh I just remembered something else annoying you do!”

In some ways we are really similar but in other ways we are complete opposites. Seriously, who wants to unpack their suitcase at 1am???

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