Not much to report today, except that I studied quite diligently last night (four hours or so after getting home from work). If only I could manage to be so conscientious every night! Well, we all know what happens when it's all work and no play -- you wind up in a lonely mountaintop hotel in the middle of winter chasing Shelley Duval with an axe... I really liked that particular Stephen King book, actually, and have not gotten around to seeing the movie yet. All in due time, my young Padawan learner.
Okay, quit it with the quote-y-ness. What is up with me today?
I made plans to study this weekend with a Japanese woman in my class, Haruway. She's a 29-year-old kindergarten teacher who would have liked to have gone to college but whose family couldn't afford to send her, as she is one of seven sisters (she's the second). She said she had two dreams - one, to become a kindergarten teacher, and two, to learn lots of different languages. She looks like she's 24 or 25 -- I swear, I canNOT tell anyone's age here. It's just impossible!
You can glean a lot of what I'd consider personal information quite properly here. How old are you, how many siblings do you have, what do your parents do and where do they live, how old are they, why do they live apart, are you married yet, do you have a baby? All quite normal and standard. Much of it is so that you can figure out what kind of relationship you have - married people, even if young, should be accorded more respect, as well as anyone older than you. The Korean language has different word endings that correspond to how much respect you should have for the other person. So the age thing is quite important. It's not just language either - if someone is your un-ni (what a girl calls her older sister) or noo-na (what a boy calls his older sister), they're supposed to take care of you - show you around, buy you meals, that kind of thing.
At my hasook jeep, Yuki and Hesok both call me un-ni, which I've discovered I'm rather uncomfortable with. I don't want to take care of anyone! I'm a little bit more comfortable with calling someone else un-uni, but I lapse into friend-level talk all the time with Aya, and I haven't spoken to Maiko or Haruway in the slightly elevated way either. I'm definitely uncomfortable with calling an older male friend oh-pa (what a girl calls an older brother). And I find that it's hard to coax the Korean word for father into conversations with my dad. As time goes on, will I become more at ease with the hierarchies here? Your guess is as good as mine.
Yeah, probably not.