Tutoring: English and Korean

The college where Nick works and our family lives (Handong Global University) provides a Korean tutor for interested foreign faculty and their families. I indicated my interest in May, when I moved here to join Nick and Elisabeth, but was told that it was too near the end of the semester to get a tutor (4 weeks to go).  Well, how about over the summer break? No tutoring is available in the summer. Oh. So I signed up at the earliest possible date in the fall semester, checking off my preference for a female tutor (less awkward, I thought) and checking my preference for an upperclassman (more confident and experienced with English, I insightfully reflected).  I waited, happy to finally learn some Korean.

But...my application apparently got lost.  After subsequent inquiries by the honorable Professor Lantinga (note: that is not me. Quite an identity shift this whole move has been.), I finally received an e-mailed tutor assignment in early October.  The e-mail instructed that the tutor, whom we shall call Lee, would contact me within a day.  After a week, I finally called Lee's provided cell number, and a man answered in Korean.  A man.  Oh.  Ok.  I explained who I was.  He spoke very little English and I had great trouble understanding what little he could say; remember that our "f" sound translates as a "p" in Korean and all our "z" sounds (like in cheese or dogs) translates as a "j" in Korean. After a great deal of difficulty, we finally agreed to meet at the campus coffee shop the next day.

However, Typhoon Wipha was doing its thing and I did not wish to go out in the gusty downpour to meet my new (man) tutor. I called; we painstakingly arranged for another day and time.

I took Sam with me, hoping we could both learn basic how-to-manage-in-public Korean.  That was a mistake.  Lee is unusually tall for a Korean (perhaps 6'2"), but he was dwarfed by Sam (who is 6' 6", 240ish pounds, and has a mighty beard).  It was quickly apparent that Lee was shy, overwhelmed by Sam, and even more nervous about tutoring than I was.  Plus, it was very hard to hear each other over the coffee shop sounds of grinders, blenders, and music, so I mostly resorted to smiles and nods.  He was a sophomore (not an upperclassman) from Seoul; not a strong student, he hadn't scored high enough on the college entrance exams to apply for the "big three" universities in Korea.  He had completed his 2 years of mandatory military service; he is 24 years old.

Now to the tutoring.  He thought I was taking a Korean class and he would just help me with homework. Um, no.  He thought I would therefore have a Korean workbook and he would help me with that. Nope.  Lee asked about my hobbies, desperate for a more specific topic.  Photography?  No - he knew nothing about that.  Gardening?  No. Collecting shells at the beach?  No.  Look: I just want to learn how to navigate in the market: how much is this? where is that? and can I take your picture?   I asked him about his preparation for tutoring: did he receive any training?  No.  Was he studying English at Handong?  No.  Why was he interested in tutoring?  Handong requires students to do 2 credits of service and one option is tutoring.  Oh.

It was going to be a long, long semester.

We have continued to meet every Wednesday for an hour or so.  Lee is like many Koreans in that he has studied English in school, so he can read it fairly well but the speaking/listening part is much more difficult. On the other hand, I can read Korean (ok, I can mostly sound out Korean letters), but I'm very slow and make lots of mistakes.  I can speak some Korean words (hello, thank you), but many Korean words sound identical to me; for example, I can't hear the difference between, say, myeong and myeon.  Which is kind of important, since one means "people" and one means "noodles."  To top off this crazy situation, my tutor has sloppy handwriting, so even when he writes words out for me in Korean, I can't read them.  To sum up: Communication is very difficult.  He wants to do well. And I am a pretty lazy student - I want the very basics rather than grammatical lessons on the 5 ways to say "please help me" depending on the other person's status relative to mine and the type of help I want (lifting, directions, etc.).  We had one lesson just on the verb "to go" - and of course, how you say it depends on lots of things, like whether you're going into the military, looking for your "gone" watch, or talking about dead people).  The last one is fascinating because of the influence of Buddhism on the language - to say someone is dead is to say "He is gone (but continues to live through his/her work and may return someday)."  My favorite sentence of that lesson?  "This fish has spoiled."  Only in Korean, you're actually saying "This fish taste is gone."  :)

After a few weeks of torturous tutoring, I devised a new strategy (Very Illegal according to his tutoring contract, but I was not terribly impressed with the Office of Tutoring so far and not afraid to make them grouchy).  Lee would go with me to accomplish some task that my Korean can't handle. So, we walked around campus one day and he translated traffic signs (e.g.,Car Park Place), the bus schedule, and the dry cleaner's sign.  I wanted to find out if the dry-cleaner repairs shoes (no: they clean shoes and repair clothes but don't repair shoes).

While waiting for Lee one day at the campus picnic tables, four ajeemas (oops: it's actually pronounced "ah-joo-mas") asked me to join them for coffee (ko-pee). Completely out of character for me, I agreed. Two of them knew a little English and giggled constantly as they urged me to share their pumpkin/granola concoction, coffee, apples and persimmon slices.  Lee didn't even see me at first, as we all stared and giggled at him (my "too-tah"). Then he shyly agreed to join us, struggling to talk to them in Korean and translate for me in English while using chopsticks to pull apart the sticky orange goo.  After making great fun of him for calling them ah-joo-mas instead of using a more formal term, they sent him away to teach me Korean.

Last week we went to E-Mart (a baby-super-walmart) to exchange the lightbulbs I'd bought with a lamp last week.  Apparently, just knowing the right wattage isn't enough here - you also need to know the bulb's base width in millimeters and the lamp I bought apparently has a rare small size. I loved that Lee was pretty assertive with the 4 ajeemas at the Refund Counter who clustered around - "you sold the lamp you should sell the right bulb - go look for it again."  And, finally, we got the right bulb, which I had to pay for in cash. To do the refund of the wrong bulbs, they couldn't just credit my debit card or give me cash; they needed to re-run my entire original receipt but without the lightbulbs; then in a week or so the bank will delete the first receipt.  Lee didn't really understand it even in Korean, let alone translating it into English. So I finally just agreed and signed in all the right places.  I sure hope that works out.  By the way: signing your name in Korea is NOT the same as signing in the US, where you assume you should handwrite your first and last names.  No.  Here, you make a mark - and if you take too long they shut off the screen and print the receipt anyway.  I've taken to drawing a smiley face and rarely get past 1 eye and a mouth.  Sometimes the cashier will just reach across the counter and make a line on the screen, saving you the trouble.  It cracks me up.

This week Lee and I went with Sam to the local animal shelter. Sam has long wanted to volunteer there to play with the big dogs, but we (a) couldn't find the darn place (pets are a new concept in a country whose older generations still eat dogs, so the shelter is a ways out of the city; also, maps are hard to find and harder to read), then we (b) found it but couldn't figure out how to get past the gate or read the darn signs.

So I talked Lee into calling the place to find out their hours and away we went with Sam.  Lee mentioned to Sam that he'd seem him throwing "so PAST!" with "old man" last week.  Lee was clearly impressed but it took us a few minutes to figure out that he was talking about seeing Sam's game of catch with Nick (his dad).  "Old man" in Korea is a sign of respect - we forgot that for a moment.

Once at the shelter, the owner was happy to talk with Lee all about the dogs ("this one - loves old woman but bites old man!") and the shelter.  Sam was formally introduced and invited to come walk the dogs for free; to clean the dogs he would need to apply.  Weird.  The dogs are caged in 5 barns by size and gender: puppies, small males, small females, big males, big females.  Another barn is for the cats, who are free to come and go through a swinging door.  I fell in love with one free-ranging cat (no go as a pet: Nick and Elisabeth are allergic) and a puppy (clearly a runt); Sam fell in love with some big dogs that reminded him of Ralph (who is living happily with Nick's family).  For today's tutoring session I ended up learning the Korean for dog ("kay") and cat ("go-yahng-ee"), Sam was happy, and Lee... got to pet some dogs and hear some stories.

In the end, I'm not learning much Korean this way. But I suspect that Lee is learning quite a bit about Americans.  And if I'm not teaching in a classroom, at least I can amuse the natives.  :)