Learning little by little

Today I went out to lunch with 8 Koreans and 3 other westerners. We had this delicious, but spicy soup which is cooked at the table. It had huge chunks of pork still attached to the bone along with all sorts of vegetables and potatoes. Then we had to add this dough stuff that needed to be pulled into smaller pieces and ramen noodles (which were given to us still in the package that you'd find at the store). The different kinds of kim chi were in big pieces that we had to cut with scissors ourselves. When we were finished eatting the chunks in the soup the spicy broth was taken and rice and different veggies and seaweed were added and put back on the burner to make some delicious fried rice. The meal was fantastic.

Then I went to the washroom and got soaked by the bidae because I didnt know which button was for the flush. I didn't know what to do, so I just took off. The floor was soaked. I was so embarassed that I didn't mention it....

I've been meeting more and more Koreans lately. They're so friendly and helpful. They love trying to explain some things about Korean culture to me. My korean name is Kim, Yu-Joung (Kim is the last name, but it goes first). I knew that Kim means seaweed because one of my favourite foods here is called cham chi kim bap (it means tuna-seaweed-rice) Its basically like a california roll, but it has pickled stuff, ham, egg and some other things that i'm not sure of. Today I learned that Kim also means gold. Many korean words come from Chinese characters, so there are often many different meanings for the same spelling of words. Its only contextual that you can understand which one they're talking about. So Kim is the most common last name and it means seaweed or gold. ha. I think since I get to choose my name, I should also get to choose the meaning of my name. It will be seaweed.

I also learned that when Koreans get married the woman keeps her family name but she is a part of her husband's family now and not attached to her family anymore. On holidays she must spend the time with the husbands family, not her own. If her mother is sick and her mother-in-law is sick at the same time she must stay with the mother-in-law. If they divorce the woman has no family since she's been seperated from her parents and she is no longer a part of the new family. When the parents get old they live with the oldest son. (I'm not sure what happens if they don't have a son) My friends were saying that its common for women to not date a guy simply for the reason that he is the eldest boy. She was laughing when she told me that, but I'm sure that it must be somewhat true.