Intercultural Life
I made this comic quite a while ago but it was never posted because it was supposed to go in the book (for the Korean market). Since we are now changing the format of the book a lot (one of the reasons why it’s taking so long) I can post it on here.
Traditional weddings are rarely done these days in Korea unfortunately, but I’m glad we had one. We were carried in ‘gamas’ by our friends, which gave Hugh’s friends the chance to complain about how heavy he is!
This video shows the farm getting ready for strawberry season (November to May). While other produce is dying off as the weather gets cooler, the strawberry plants are getting ready to produce super sweet strawberries.
Strawberries in Korea are very sweet but my parents-in-law’s strawberries are particularly sweet because they put a lot of effort into making sure they are extra sweet. Some other farms choose quantity over quality so their strawberries are not as sweet: be careful! The strawberries from our farm end up in department stores in Gangnam, but of course the middle man takes a big cut. The strawberries go to market first before department stores. It would be great if there was a way to sell directly and get a bigger profit but it’s not really that possible, because strawberries expire quickly and it’s a whole other business, on top of working on the farm, to do that. We may be selling some directly to some cafes and restaurants who order a lot, but the majority go to be auctioned off and then sent to department stores. The boxes usually have my father-in-law’s name on them too. Sancheong (our region) strawberries are now known to be the best in Korea, sometimes cafes have signs boasting that they have desserts with Sancheong strawberries.
We had just come back from Seoul when he said this. I was so disappointed that there wasn’t little piggys on the farm. But it’s funny because I start to make mistakes too. After being in Korea for so long, in English I do have problems with some sounds that should be natural for me but are difficult for Koreans. I find it harder to differentiate between B and V now. F and P is still okay for me, but for Hugh, even speaking English every day, it still trips him up.
It feels like it’s been so long since we’ve filmed with this background! We were in Seoul for so long, and we also left our tripod in Seoul so we didn’t film anything inside until we’d picked it up again. We talk about my health, the Webtoon, Hugh vlogging and we open some packages.
This comic is part of our collaboration with HelloTalk. If you talk to me on the HelloTalk app there is a chance that Hugh might reply to you instead of me because he steals my phone!
I’ve been using the app for a while now and had a lot of casual, short conversations with lots of people but now I’ve made some friends that I feel closer to and more comfortable with. I saw that a few people expected to make long term language partners right away and were disappointed when they didn’t, but it’s like making friends in real life. You meet a lot of people all the time and narrow down what is appealing to you and what you want and also whether you click well with someone. The few people I regularly talk and try to use Korean with are similar to my age with similar interests.
We got such great feedback on our HelloTalk video. Thank you guys! It’s great to hear your stories about making language exchange partners and how it has benefited your language learning.
In this vlog we experience some scary taxi driver road rage and then eat lots of food at a Korean first birthday.
If I’d taken a second to look closer I would have recognised what it was, but I wasn’t paying very much attention. Chuseok, which is one of the big holidays in Korea, is coming soon, so places like E-mart have these types of things prominently displayed.
An important part of the Chuseok holiday is going to where ancestor burial mounds are and paying respects and tidying up the graves. There is a ceremony with some food and drink, so this type of set makes it easier and nicer. It’s plastic and portable and easy enough to lug up a hill or mountain. While we have the proper set for the ceremony done in the morning inside the home, I’ve only seen paper cups used up where the burial mounds are. Obviously someone has realised there is a market for a portable set that is easy to carry.
When we post photos online of the food set up in the morning on holidays like this, people are always curious… what happens to all the food?! We eat it! That’s one of the interesting things about this tradition. The food is put out symbolically for the ancestors (about four generations back) but then we eat it all over the holiday. It’s important to remember family members who have passed on. I find it quite moving, especially when we pay respects to Hugh’s grandfather who loved him dearly but died when Hugh was still young.
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