hokshi, hangukmal chal hayo?

Hello Family,

I’m sorry that I haven’t written sooner to let you all know that I did indeed pass level 3!! It was close, but my teachers were merciful, and I managed to drag myself through with trembling legs, burning lungs, and a powerful headache. I wrote in my little, green journal, ‘Well, I did pass. My head is splitting, but that’s okay. It’s okay, too, that I’m likely to pass out from fatigue, and feel like I’m getting another cold. I have nothing to do which demands health or comfort or energy. For three months I’m perfectly free to be as tired and headachy and sick as I jolly well please, with absolutely no extenuating stress. What a light and airy feeling this is!’

Taking advantage of my freedom, I decided to spend a few days at a retreat, in the eastern part of Korea, called the Jesus Abbey. There one may find a few thatched, stone buildings, snuggled up in the mountains, away from the rest of the Country and it’s noises and lights and smells. My object in seeking such seclusion, was to spend some much needed time in reflection, quietness, and prayer. On the verge of a great deal of change, I felt the definite need to reassess my focus and direction, as well as to re-communicate to God my desire to love Him well. So, with this in mind, three days ago I purchased a ticket for a four and a half hour train ride to Taebaek.

Upon arriving in Kangneung, I glanced about me, looking for a road whereby I might carry out Mr. Torrey’s instructions to ‘walk down hill for about ½ block, then turn right.’ I discovered to my amusement and chagrin, but not necessarily to my surprise, that the train station had stopped at the top of said hill, from which point three roads ribboned out, each more down hill than its neighbor.

I’ve been too often confronted by similar situations to be dismayed, so holding my bag close, I looked about for some sort of public city map. These large, posted maps can be found at the entrance of any subway station in Seoul, and often are posted randomly along major streets. I depend on them to get my bearings, when in an unfamiliar district, something like the needle of a compass depends upon the North Pole. I supposed that, in such a public location as a train station one must be displayed. I was wrong, but no matter. Far to the left I spotted a little, round building with a conical roof. Large orange letters adorned the front of it: ‘여행 안내소’ The words were familiar, but I was tired, and while I registered enough to suspicion that the place might be of some use to me, my mind wouldn’t tell me in what way, specifically. I gazed, in a puzzled way, for some moments more, and then my eyes took in even larger English words directly below the Korean, ‘Tourist Information’. It testifies to my obsession with Korean that my eyes automatically registered the Korean before even noticing the English.

I stepped over to the little, half-moon window and inquired, ‘Yaesuwon-ae eotteohkae gayo? How do I get to the Jesus Abbey?’

She pulled out a pamphlet, circled a set of numbers which were swimming in a sea of Korean words, pointed in a generally unspecific direction, and rattled off a string of Korean, the only part of which I comprehended being, ‘and then go left’ sandwiched somewhere in the middle.

I nodded and looked intelligent, and when she had finished, surprised her by asking her to repeat herself. She did so, voluntarily translating the ‘go left’ part into English for me. Since the directions that I had taken earlier said nothing about going left, but rather had ‘go right’ written twice (for emphasis, I suppose), I decided not to worry my head over that particular part of either set of directions, but just to walk in the down hill direction apparently indicated, and trust to fate, or to my finer instincts, to direct me to where I ought to be. As it chanced, fate deserted me after about two minutes, and my finer instincts directed me to hale a cab.

I know that taking such short cuts won’t help me with my Korean, and perhaps I ought to have gone back to the information desk to commence a dissection of the agent’s instructions. But as long as there remain taxis to tempt me, I’m afraid that ‘travel Korean’ may never become my strong suit.

But, aside even from the convenience of that particular method of transportation, taxi talk is by far my favorite. I learned how to ‘talk taxi’ before I knew the alphabet, for all intents and purposes, and that only took me 24 hours to commit to memory. All one needs to know are the name of his destination, and the words for ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘straight’ and ‘stop’. ‘No’ is also helpful, but not absolutely necessary. That particular word is employed in the following manner:

After giving the name of one’s destination and ‘left’ or ‘right’ed his way down a couple of streets, the driver will usually drown his hapless passenger under a flood of words, a mile long and several miles deep. There’s no call for the passenger to comprehend any of it, really, because nine times out of ten, the driver is simply commenting on the passenger’s Korean fluency, to which ‘anyo! no!’ is a culturally, and honestly, appropriate reply. The tenth time, it will turn out that the driver was asking the passenger if he studies Korean, to which a ‘no’ (for the average foreigner) applies in any case. ‘No’ is always a safe reply to either comment, and generally puts a damper on further conversation.

Of course, once I was able to carry on a more in-depth conversation that what could be maintained with ‘left’, ‘right’ and ‘no’, I began to encourage an expansion of topic. Drivers are willing, and usually pleased, to accommodate. So when told what a good grasp I have on the word ‘straight’, I startle even the most sincere by replying with unerring pronunciation and in present perfect progressive tense, ‘Oh no! I’ve been studying Korean for about nine months, but it’s a really difficult language, so I still don’t speak it very well.’

After a moment of deliciously startled silence, a grand smile dawns on our sociable driver’s face, and he repeats his first observation with a great deal more conviction, and then proceeds to ask where and for how long I’ve been studying, following up with such questions as, ‘What’s your major?’ ‘How old are you?’ ‘Are you married?... No?... Then do you have a boy friend?... Why not?’ etc.

All such questions are not only culturally acceptable, but also personally so, because they’re easy to tackle. Before the conversation has a chance to get out of my ball park, we’ve arrived at my destination, and can wish each other a merry farewell, feeling each toward the other a mutual sense of peace and good will.

However, at this point I reach an impasse. In spite of my flexible maneuvering of verb tenses and adverbs and prepositional phrases, I’m confounded, to my chagrin, when it comes to wishing our driver farewell. ‘Stay in peace’ or ‘Go in peace’? The driver is remaining in the taxi, however he (in his vehicle) is preparing to depart, so which to employ?

I used to agonize over the conundrum long before arriving at our destination, until one day it occurred to me that the driver’s confidence in my fluency is so firmly root and grounded, and the two greetings similar enough in sound, that he probably would never notice which I used, if I dwelt fondly on the similarities and rushed over that one syllable upon which the contrast is based. And if he did happen to notice, it would most likely result in his adopting my mistake and the written word, and adjusting his own vocabulary accordingly. It’s not uncommon for a foreigner with no more than a passing command of the language to be told, ‘You speak Korean better than we do!’ And it’s spoken with such simple sincerity that sometimes I wonder if they actually believe it...

I arrived at the Abby in the late afternoon, and had just enough time to settle comfortably in before the dinner bell rang. I didn’t see much, that evening, of the mountains that hug the Abby, but what I did see reminded me strikingly of my Oregon mountains, so that I felt instantly at home.

The next day it rained, so I spent much of it indoors in the ‘tea room’. I was sipping my morning coffee there, and writing some of my thoughts, when a young couple came over and sat at my small table with me. In Korea it’s nothing for perfect strangers to share a table in a public place, but one generally keeps to himself in such a case. So I was surprised to hear myself being addressed. Even more surprising was that the man’s opening comment was in Korean. I think that’s a first for me. When ever I’ve been addressed, it’s always been in English, butchered or otherwise, if only to ask if I, by any chance, speak Korean. In this case the question was the same, but in it’s own language, ‘hokshi, hangkmal chal hayo?’

‘No,’ I replied, adding that rider with which I ordinarily impress the cab drivers.

This, of course, led to further questions, which I was able to answer with perfect ease, even throwing in a few questions of my own, from time to time.

If I may do so without boasting (and yet, may I not boast? I have indeed worked hard for that privilege!), those subjects with which I am familiar, in Korean, I have studied and studied again with such ferocity, that I’m able to converse on them with a respectable degree of fluency, ease, and clear pronunciation (this latter I have received countless compliments on, and I believe that the compliments given were not hollow ones, because, while a Korean may insist that the foreigner speaks the language better than he does himself, he seems not to notice the discrepancy when immediately following that with ‘and your pronunciation needs a lot of practice.’). My ability to handle the lesser topics is quite deceptive, leading people to suppose that I have a much better grasp on the entire language than I really do have. I’ve even pulled the wool over my own eyes, before, which always leads me into trouble.

Unlike my taxi experiences, when sitting together in a coffee room there is no definite end to the conversation in sight, so it shortly moves from ‘How much money do you make?’ to ‘What are your long term goals for studying Korean?’ to ‘How do Americans generally feel about the cultural atmosphere in Korea?’ I can tackle these questions, when given my space, but by the time I’ve properly skinned and gutted the subject, and disposed of the entrails, everyone’s minds have been disabused of the notion that I can do any more than wield the pronunciation, and my linguistic status has dropped from ‘better than a Korean’ to ‘just like a Korean’ with the thoughtful rider that ‘you should practice a lot.’

‘I know,’ I reply, back in swim-able depths, ‘I want to speak more Korean, but when I hang out with my Korean friends, they always want to practice their English on me, so I really get very little Korean practice outside of the classroom.’

And so my new friends are sympathetic and invite me to practice on them, which I do until they inevitably turn the conversation, ‘Yes, and I want to learn English, too.’

But back to the ‘tea room’ wherein I began this monologue.

Just as our friend’s opening comment was out of the ordinary, being in Korean, so also was the flow of conversation that followed. He asked nothing beyond ‘when did you come here?’ and I even had to voluntarily supply my one name. Apparently the fact that I live in Korea was enough to convince him that I was a fluent bi-linguist, and, being the sociable fellow that he was, within ten minutes I realized that I was destined to hear the in-depth history of his short life.

It was an amusing recital. I know this, because he smiled often while recounting it. I watched his face and hands carefully, taking my cues from him. When he smiled I chuckled. When he laughed I split my sides. When he frowned I shed tears. This, coupled with appropriately applied ‘yeah’s and ‘mhmm’s, convinced him that I thoroughly understood and sympathized with the matter at hand.

In all reality, I picked up only one word out of 50, to begin with. When my head began to stop spinning, I was able to pay closer attention, and picked out one word in ten. Enough to grasp the topic of conversation, at least, and at that point my comments evolved from ‘uhuh’ to ‘I understand’ or ‘yeah, I think so, too.’ After this fashion we rushed headlong through some great conversational pieces, for nearly an hour and a half, and though it often seemed as though I was drowning, and a couple of times I even choked and had to be resuscitated, I managed to survive credibly.

Those one or two near death experiences occurred whenever our friend interrupted his narrative with a question. My heart would be absolutely still for a moment, and then return with a plunge calculated to ram itself through my chest wall. ‘Yes?’ with raising inflection. The rough equivalent of, ‘Can you be more specific?’

And so the question would be thoroughly repeated and explained, until I was able to grasp it well enough to answer.

If entirely lost, I would pick one word at random from his explanation and say, for example, ‘Cheolyeon? I don’t think I know that word.’ Which set him off upon the happy embarkment of a detailed explanation, effectively steering us away from the dangerous topic at hand.

In all, I suppose I grasped about 25% of what was toward, and remember none of it. I do need more practice, and sigh to think of how far I’ve yet to go.

So much for boasting.

As I glance back over all that I’ve just written, it occurs to me that I’ve talked an awful lot, without really saying anything. It think that one of the things that was very apparent to me, in contrast to English-speaking Seoul, was the amount of Korean I was expected to use, and my own incompetence. It wasn’t a bad experience, but it was a thought provoking one. So two of those many experiences were what naturally made their way from my mind to my fingertips.

And I was able to accomplish what I had gone there for. I don’t have any of the answers to life. In fact, if any thing, I have more questions than ever. But, while talking with God about them, the questions have taken on definition, form, continuity and definite relation. Like a tumble-dryer: My thoughts were spinning around before, but now the spinning has stopped. The clothes are still there in all their variety (except, maybe, a missing sock or two), but now the chaos has been reduced to something sort-able and fold-able.

...Ummm, okay. So maybe that wasn’t the most coherent parallel, after all. But this email is getting too long, so I’ll leave it as is, and trust to your generous imaginations to supply the discrepancy.

I love you all, and sincerely look forward to seeing you soon,

Elisabeth