"Hangul mal mulah-yo"

Chris: Before my last entry there was a four-month gap between posts. This was probably due, in part, to the fact that my little discoveries have become littler and littler. I increasingly feel at home here. But my Dad keeps asking me to write, so....

/

(The movie "Meet the Spartans" is on the TV in the background. Holy shit! Aggressively unfunny. I'm so astonished by its awfulness that I just can't change the channel.)

/

Months ago my boss gave me a Korean name, just for a laugh really. I wanted to be called Min Gyu. I don't know why, I just like the name. Instead he gave me Gil Su. The "G" sounds a bit like the "k" sound, and the "l" is very subtle. So it kinda sounds like how my students say my English name, ie. "Chris-su" or "Chris-uh".

I'm not about to adopt this my Korean name for real any time soon but lately I do feel as though I'm blending in a little here. My Korean-style gestures have become so automatic that I do them amongst my fellow foreigners. When handing something to them I touch my right arm with my left hand. My Korean is still terrible but if the conversation is familiar and basic I can often get by. I even find myself automatically using Korean exclamations such as "assah!" and "aish!"

My Korean would improve exponentially if I put in a real effort, but being a lazy sod is not the only reason I don't know more of the language. I don't mind wandering around not knowing what is going on around me. In fact, I often prefer it that way. Things seem more wondrous and magical this way. For example, when I see my elderly landlady talking with her friend on the sidewalk whilst drying chillies or seaweed or some mysterious vegetable/herb that I can't place, I can imagine them debating the tenets of Confucianism or swapping vivid war-time stories full of pathos. I don't want to know that they're really comparing ailments or bitching about the music volume from the round-eye tenant.