The photos are from Saturday’s RAS tour to Icheon, Gyeonggi-do, the home to many of Korea’s best traditional ceramic artists. I’m still learning to use the new camera, so my pictures don’t begin to do the work justice. The level of artistry is just amazing.
Icheon has been the center of Korean ceramics for several hundred years, as the area is apparently the site of abundant good materials for making clay. You can learn a bit more about the history of Korean ceramics here.
It was so interesting to see so many professional artists, many of them second- and third-generation craftsmen, in a country where so much emphasis seems to be placed on going to a top university and then on to a career as a doctor, lawyer, or businessman. Yet, Korea has very strong artistic cultural traditions, seen in the preservation of several intricate traditional arts, crafts, and traditional music.
August 15th, 1945 is the day Korea official gained its independence from Japan at the end of WWII, the same day Japan surrendered to the U.S.. The South Korean government was created 3 years later on the same date in 1948.
I like to think of today as the day that saw the beginning of a very strong alliance and relationship between Korea and the United States that continues to this day, 63 years later.
This picture is of a South Korean flag flying just outside our apartment window. We are flying the exact same flag (with same flagpole !), but it’s difficult to get a clean, “face-on” shot of our flag from our own window.
These photos were taken this evening at 사월에 보리밥, a restaurant chain in Seoul famous for traditional, family-style Korean dining.
The dinner was especially important since it was our first time as a family seeing Alice and Hyeong-Eun since they got engaged - congrats you guys ! - and one of our last times to see Jennifer, K.C. and their boys Aiden and Max before they move to Shanghai.
As for the restaurant and its food, the name literally means “April-time Barley Rice”. Barley rice is one of the big dishes here, though we usually order a variety of food. All of these dishes are tasty and relatively mild in terms of spiciness, strong odors, strong tastes, and controversy (no dog meat stew, for instance).
I suppose the “April-time” is supposed to invoke images of Spring, freshness, and enjoying life. Despite the heavy rains, the description did justice to our evening. We had a great time with our friends and hope to them again sooner rather than later.
Somewhat against my better judgment I’ve agreed to start tutoring a young neighbor in English conversation. Mostly I’m reluctant because I have no training as a teacher and, unlike many hagwon owners, do not consider simple fluency to be sufficient qualification for teaching a young child a new language.
I’m not doing this because I need the income so much as a response to a kind of subtle pressure I’ve felt since we moved here. This isn’t the first request I’ve gotten from friends or acquaintances or neighbors to help teach someone the language. No one seems to be buying my excuse that I’m just not qualified. (Edit your English manuscript? Sure. Teach your kindergartener? I don’t think so.)
I don’t want to get a reputation as being standoffish and stingy with my English-language ability, though. And, since our neighbors and the shop owners in our ‘hood have been more than friendly and helpful, I thought I’d try this as a way of being more neighborly. Given the state of my Korean speaking and cooking skills, English is really about the only thing of value I could bring to the table.
(Also, the summer is bringing about something of a downturn in the number of writing assignments, and instead of embarking on, say, my planned brilliant photo essay of Jongno, I was starting to spend way too much time on Twitter.)
According to his mom, my young 학생 (student) is in second grade and has been studying the language, both at school and at a hagwon, since kindergarten. He can read and write it but is having trouble with pronunciation and comprehending spoken English. He’s still studying at an after-school program three days a week, and I get him for the other two.
We’ll have his textbook, but I’d appreciate any tips from the more skilled and veteran English teachers or those of you familiar with topics of interest to 8-year-old boys. I’m sorta out of my element here.
