Korean translation, 년[neon,nyawn]: year



Korean translation, 년[neon,nyawn]: year




To whoever is looking at this blog, know that while although one of the functions of this blog is to inform others of my time here, I also use this blog as a way to document what I am doing in Korea for myself. I do this so that come a year, two years, ten, twenty from now, I can look back and remember some of the the amazing people I met, the places I went and the meaningful experiences I had.

Why am I in Seoul, anyways?

Why am I in Seoul, anyways? I'm studying language in Seoul for the year through the National Security Language Initiative for Youth operated by the U.S. State Department. While in Seoul, I attend a local Korean high school as a regular Korean student and have intensive language classes three times a week at an international institute in Seoul. My school is a digital media vocational school. Both in school and in many other settings, I am often the only American they have met and almost always the only Jew. As such, I have an important role, not only as an American or a Jew, but as The American and The Jew. Because of this, I have been prone to some alarming, but insightful questions. Like when it was drizzling outside, weather that does not necessarily warrant carrying an umbrella, but being asked by my host brother, "Do all Jews not use umbrellas?" I am constantly being put in new situations. I make mistakes sometimes. Like when I clearly asked for "not spicy," however later realized, tears in my eyes, that the woman's shocked expression when I ordered "meh-un tteokbokki" was not from my Korean ordering skills, but was because I had probably been the first foreigner to specifically ask for the spiciest food on the menu. These year as the non-umbrella-carrying-spicy-food-eating-American-Jew living in Seoul has been exhausting and exhilarating, but a year of experiences I will bring with me for the rest of my life. .

New Years

A New Year.

We celebrated the new year with cake. And TV. We watched the equivalent of the Time's Square ball drop (banging the gong near City Hall). I couldn't fall asleep and neither could Jun, so we ended up just talking for a while. I brought up how cold it was outside and we thought about what new years was like in different places. In America or Japan. But then we started talking about North Korea. What is New Year's like there? Neither of us knew well enough to propose an answer. But we both came to a conclusion on the cold weather. Were we actually cold? In talking about Pukhan (North Korea), we told each other that we were not cold. That we did not know coldness or hunger or pain.

On that note we went to sleep. With such an appreciation for the food in our stomachs, the warm floor (ondol) and relative ease of life.

The sun had not yet risen in the year 2014 as we got into the car around six in the morning on January first. We were on our way to Baebongsan, BaePong Mountain, to welcome the first sun of the new year.  At the foot of the mountain, we ate tteokkuk, rice cake soup, a soup that although is eaten throughout the year, is always eaten on New Year's day. We received our balloons for good luck, which we would watch fly into the sky when the sun first peaked over the mountaintop.

Although crowded, we arrived at the top of the mountain and waited. And waited. And waited in the cold. Omma let go of her balloon by accident before the sun came up. At long last the sun peaked over the mountain peak and the sky filled with balloons.

I let go of my balloon and watch it sail up into the sky and get lost in the others wishes for all the best in the new year.

I go headstrong into the two thousand and fourteen year with vigor, purpose and enthusiasm.