Threads

Coming from Virginia I never met a Korean. My University in SoCal was probably 40% Korean, yet I don't remember ever thinking of them as being culturally distinct. Then I spent a semester abroad in Sheffield, England. One of the first people I met was another exchange student from U.C. Berkeley-Hyok Cho Chong. Hyok was the first Korean I experienced as different, but not because he was particularly Korean or because he held particularly Korean ideas. He wasn't and he didn't. But he had the foreign sounding name that sounded like I was hocking up a loogie when I tried to pronounce it. According to him, he understood Korean but could only speak with an elementary vocabulary. His parents on the other hand couldn't speak English with proficiency. Their mutual lack of language fluency created a barrier to the development of their relationship. In high school, Hyok had gone to a church in the Bay area with a friend of mine from college. Hyok hadn't like him.

Three years later, I'm teaching English with the YBM Language Institute in Taegu, Korea. I arrived on a Wednesday, having missed the week long orientation due to visa trouble, and started teaching at 6:30am that next Monday. All my students learned quite quickly to raise their hands to ask me to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n and to "repeat please". I learned to slow down and to repeat. Somehow I made it through my time there, but I never got comfortable teaching. I was too disorganized, yet too perfectionistic to make it work for me. But I left with a love for Korean food and a love for the Korean people.

Back in LA I find the best hair stylist I've ever had and she's Korean. I'm talking to her in a Beverly Hills adjacent salon and find out that she went to a high school church youth group with a friend of mine from college who grew up in Hacienda Heights. I'm looking for the restaurant that cooks cabbage/chicken/rice logs in a huge round pan at your table. It's the one craving I've yet to satiate since my return from Korea.

I mention to a Korean woman at church that I watch Korean shows on Channel LA18 even when they don't have subtitles. She introduces me to a delightful drama/comedy called My Lovely Sam Soon. I watch the show in a weekend and thanks to websites like www.mysoju.com I'm hooked on Korean dramas (and Japanese and Chinese).

It's now fourteen years after my first introduction to Koreans and I'm hooked on Korean dramas and Korean food and Korean culture. I'll be taking Korean language classes at the LA Korean Cultural Center so I can order food and understand the dramas and because I love the intonation and inflection of the language that is so different than English.

For the last few days I've been reading through my journals starting with the year 1992. I noticed that certain ideas and experiences keep recurring like the Korean one. The Korea thread surprised me that it went back as far as it did. But most disheartening is the thread that tells me I'm still wrestling the same demons that appeared in childhood. However, that's for a different post.

What threads run through your life?