English Problems and Two Good Friends

Last week Friday I had my last English tutoring session with HY. Over the course of the seven weeks I had been tutoring HY and Jin-hee, both made a significant amount of progress and were very good students. I was very proud of them for their efforts. In this last session with HY, however, I was the one having difficulties with English! Obviously, since it is an English tutoring session, I always taught in English. However, after living for two and a half months in Korea, my English had not only become worse, but I also now preferred speaking in Korean. As I was helping HY during our last session, I found myself subconsciously speaking and teaching in Korean. There were things that had now become easier for me to say in Korean than in English. I found that it was harder to think of what I wanted to say in English than it was in Korean. And for these reasons, I didn't want to speak English anymore during our last English tutoring session! What was I to do! I reluctantly resorted back to English in order to make it a worthwhile English session for HY. But it just goes to show what two months living in a foreign country can do to your speech.

Although HY and Jin-hee were both my English students over the course of the summer, I thought of them more as friends. They were extremely gracious hosts and really took good care of me while I was in Korea. I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time with them outside of our tutor sessions as well. During my last week in Korea, HY took me to her old traditional Korean drum club at the university she used to go to. We met up with two of her friends from the club, who patiently taught me the traditional art of Korean drum playing. It was really cool to see HY and her friends reunited and playing together the same music they played back in college. They may have said that they were a little rusty after not playing the drums for many years, but from what I could tell it was as if they had never missed a beat.

The style of play that we did was called Samul nori, and was a lot more difficult than I had expected it to be. Coming from a Western musical background, I am used to very structured musical patterns. However, when performing Samul nori, the rhythms we played were organized very differently, and it was a lot harder for me to keep the beat (if there even was a beat that I could find). I tried all three of the different instruments the girls brought (buk/bass drum, janggu/an hourglass-shaped drum, and jing/gong), but played the buk most of the time, as it was the easiest to learn. My teachers were so patient with me, as it often took me a while to get the rhythms down and strike the drum with the correct form (after watching the video of us playing, I realized how much worse I actually was at this). I had seen this type of traditional music performed in other places, such as at Andong and Walker Hill, and I gained a greater appreciation for the art after seeing how difficult it actually is to play. Playing the drums was a very spiritual experience, and made me see music in a whole different light.

Jin-hee, my other Korean friend, took me to Hanok Village during my second to last weekend in Korea. This was a traditional Korean village preserved today in the middle of Seoul. There, we got to walk in and out of old Korean houses and play traditional games. There was a swing that a lot of little kids were doing that I wanted to try. So I got in line with everyone else and waited my turn. But when I got to the front, at first the attendant said that I couldn't go because only women were allowed to ride the swing back in the old days. But since I was a foreigner, he cut me some slack and I was able to ride it.

After visiting Hanok Village, Jin-hee and I made our way up Namsan mountain to the N'Seoul Tower. From this tower, there is an incredible view of Seoul, and we were lucky that it was a very clear day that day. After taking in the sights from the tower, we decided to climb down the mountain rather than taking the cable car. We definitely had worked up a sweat that day walking through Hanok Village and scaling Namsan, and so it was nice and refreshing (시원하다!) to finish our day eating bulgogi in a cool, air-conditioned restaurant.

Both HY and Jin-hee helped to make my stay in Korea a memorable one. Not only were they diligent students, but they were also incredible hosts and good friends. I learned a lot from them, and was grateful for the time I spent with them.