Some of the action lately has taken place in 인찬의 아파트. It’s a nice little place. Not as nice as Shawn’s 오피스텔, but still nice.
민우 had a nice 오피스텔, too, until his mother and his wife found out about it. I’m still not sure if he voluntarily gave it up, or if they cut him off. But no more 오피스텔.
I was always fascinated by living space when I lived in Korea, probably a combination of not enough of it and bad design. Not all of my own living space was bad...functionally, there was rarely anything wrong with it, but some places needed more help than others.
Living space #1
My first apartment was a three-bedroom affair on the top floor of the language institute in which I taught. Due to a temporary excess of teachers, I shared a room with two other teachers for the first two months. Each of the other two rooms had two teachers each. Seven women--one bathroom--one overworked housekeeper. From a design perspective, it was a good space.
Living space #2
After two months, I was transferred to another institute in 서울. This time it was a three-bedroom 빌라. I shared this space with 2-3 women, but my room was always my own. My window overlooked the small utility space that housed the washing machine. Also a good space.
Living space #3
When I returned to Korea, I moved into the apartment next door to my first living space. This apartment was a mirror image of the first. Again, we had a lot of teachers, and for six months I shared a room with another teacher. The chief attraction of this room was that I had an unobstructed view of 남산타워 (now--or perhaps even then--being called 서울타워). I gave up the view for a room of my own and a new view of someone’s 은행나무. I like 은행나무. I want a couple of them in my yard.
Eventually, there were just four of us in that three-bedroom apartment. We had pink wallpaper because when it was time to re-wallpaper, there weren’t any good choices. I would have tweaked the kitchen a bit if I could have...the refreigerator was in the living area because there wasn’t enough space in the kitchen.
Living space #4
Marriage (to Mr. 강미 #1) brought a new living space in a three-story apartment building built by the institute immediately behind the main building. We lived in a one-bedroom ground floor apartment that I spent a lot of time redesigning in my head. Since it was too late for actual change (the bathroom awkwardly jutted out into the living room), I settled for designing storage units built by the carpenter shop...extra kitchen cabinets, a floor-to-ceiling shoe cabinet, and a desk and bookshelf unit for two in the bedroom. By the time we moved, it was a cozy space, but I never could reconcile with that bathroom.
Living space #5
Mr. 강미 #1 changed employers (I did not), and we moved to a high-rise apartment complex in 인천. We had a fourth-floor one-bedroom apartment. It wasn’t terrible, but it could have benefited if it had been opened up a bit. When we moved in, the washing machine was in the space clearly meant for the refrigerator, and we had to take it apart to move it into the tiny utility room next to the kitchen. I added some built-in shelves to the utility for pantry space. I liked the veranda that stretched the full length of the apartment.
On the whole, I had some good living spaces in Korea. Some I knew had worse, and some better. But Shawn, I really like your 오피스텔. I live in a house, yet I imagine what I could do with a space like that.
Posted by kangmi on July 15, 2004 at 8:00 PM0 comments
모기
47회 of 아름다운 유혹 finds 재혁 and 세희 fighting off mosquitos in the 민박 in which they are staying because they missed the ferry. The mosquitos brought back memories of my first few days in Korea, in which we had nothing as fancy as mosquito netting to protect us. We had mosquito coils.
I doubt mosquito coils work any better than any other alleged mosquito repellent, but I didn’t know any better then. Besides, if you’re desperate, you’ll try anything. So we slept on the floor with a mosquito coil burning nearby...and in all these years it never occurred to me that a burning mosquito coil on the floor near people and bedclothing on the floor constituted a fire hazard.
My two roommates and I survived that danger and left a few manually-killed mosquitos behind when we returned to 서울, whereupon I made certain that there were screens in every room I ever lived in.
Posted by kangmi on June 18, 2004 at 2:00 PM0 comments
If you’re looking for a way to waste some time, you could do better than I did earlier today. Antti over at Hunjangûi karûch’im wrote about the new address system in Seoul. If you’re not familiar with the old system, it could be hard to appreciate the need for a new one. The old one appeared to randomly assign numbers to residences and businesses. I never had any problem sending or receiving mail, but I would never use a street address to find my destination or to give directions to someone.
Anyway, Antti linked to the Seoul Metropolitan Government site (available in both Korean and English), and I zoomed in on one of my old neighborhoods, which left me awash in nostalgia.
I identified the entrance to an alley in which a 할머니 often sat selling cones of those little boiled snails (can’t remember the name) with an odor so strong I can smell them all the way over here in my office. 경희대학교 was up the street and around the corner to the right from the 할머니. My favorite feature of 경희대 was an unfinished (in 1988 and still in 1995) Gothic cathedral. Back in 1988 it was possible to walk all the way up the stairs onto the roof. The view was especially beautiful at night, but the daylight brought a couple of 아저씨s who may have been mystified by the sight of a couple of foreigners up there but were in no mood to let us stay.
By far my favorite place in the area was a small coffee shop called 암스테르담. Cross the street, take a left at KFC (instead of turning right at Burger King to go to up toward 경희대), go around the curve and up a flight of stairs to the second floor. It’s unlikely that it’s still there, the way that places like that come and go in 서울. It was shabby and dark, but the coffee was good and the iced Vienna coffee was even better. I spent many evening hours there, studying and reading and writing and looking out the window. I took friends there, too, but I remember it mostly as a warm, solitary place. Should I ever return for a visit, I would make a quick dash to see if it’s still there. And if it is, it’s worth a whole evening of my time.
Posted by kangmi on May 24, 2004 at 2:30 PM2 comments
Korean dramas and education programs sometimes use music in different ways. I’m certain that there must be some perfectly good Korean pop song or other Korean music to use, but I often hear American and other music instead.
Today, the skit in lesson 215 of 한국어로 말합시다 used what I think is an Enya song (not sure because it’s been a while since I listened to any new Enya).
Still, I was immediately reminded of a few minutes back in 교보문고. An acquaintance and I stopped to watch an Enya video on a large screen television. I don’t remember the song, but I remember thinking (perhaps feeling) that the video made me want to write a story.
After the video ended, she turned to me and said “That video made me want to write a story.”
In an instant, we moved from acquaintances to friends. The only story written is the one we’re still writing. We’re the kind of friends that, in spite of time and distance, pick up without hesitation where we left off the last time we talked.
Posted by kangmi on May 3, 2004 at 5:32 PM0 comments
Put the words ”Korean” and “drums” together in the same sentence, and I’ll ask “Where and when?” Last night I attended a Korean program, part of an arts festival at a local university. Although I have little natural rhythm of my own, I’ve always been a big fan of Korean percussion. There’s an irresistible fiery passion to it that always leaves me wanting more.
However, to get to the drum part of the program, I had to sit through a succession of local Korean talent, ranging from a children’s choir, cellists, a vocalist, to a couple of flutists. The music and the performances were good, but I was antsy for the highlight.
I was disappointed in the drum performance. They were pretty good, but not as good as I had hoped. They used a backup track—of drums!—for part of their performance…I would have preferred to hear it all live.
None of the printed program used 한글…all of the Korean words were romanized. The title of one of the flute solos intrigued me. Romanized as Gagopa and translated as Feeling Homesick, at this point I assume that the word indicates a hunger for home. But none of the dictionaries I’ve consulted can tell me anything.
One of the flutists looked familiar to me, and I could only assume that I had known her when I lived in Korea. Turns out I was right…she’s the wife of the assistant director of the second language institute at which I taught. Her husband is about to finish his doctorate at the previously-mentioned university. Since their son is finishing his junior year in high school, she may stay on with the children for another year while her husband returns to the job waiting for him back in Korea. It’s understandably a difficult decision for the family.
When I told her that I was studying Korean, she kindly offered to help. I’m planning to take her up on her offer…I really need a live person with whom to speak Korean.
Posted by kangmi on February 24, 2004 at 9:45 AM0 comments
That’s a good question, and thank you for asking.
Back in the 80s, I took a year off from college to teach English in Korea. I was so enamored of Korea that after I graduated from college, I returned, but this time I wasn’t interested in teaching English. I ended up working as a recruiter for the language institute system for which I worked and happily spent another three and a half years working in Korea.
During my second “tour of duty”, I studied Korean both formally and informally but never spoke it well. Here I will allow myself one moment of self-recrimination (and I promise I will never have another one like this here): Every day that I study Korean, I learn something that would have been useful while I was living there, and I give myself a little mental kick. Then I move on.
I’d like to return to Korea to live, but the timing is not now (and may never be) right. So I content myself with my language study, some culture and history, and a Korea-related project or two on the side.
Posted by kangmi on February 23, 2004 at 2:48 PM0 comments
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강미 | learning korean