Category Archives: korean

first exhibition, knitted joomchi: hands of korea

Posted on March 29, 2011 | Comments Off

i was honored when the talented artist and curator jiyoung chung asked me to be part of the joomchi exhibition that is part of the hands of korea exhibitions. i spent part of the summer of 2010 making joomchi yarn, and knitting with it. it’s pretty stiff at first (as you can see from this behind-the-scenes photo), but becomes more supple.

the korean-american joomchi exhibit, originally shown at heyri artist village in october-november 2010, was also shown at cheongju craft museum from jan 20 to feb 27.

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Posted in exhibiting and curating, knitting, textiles, korean

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he remains, respectfully… KOREAN AMERICAN

Posted on March 22, 2011 | Comments Off

béla’s six-month update has been posted on iamkoreanamerican.com.

now with US citizenship! get him while he’s hot!

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Posted in korean

this year’s girl

Posted on March 5, 2011 | Comments Off

three years ago today, we saw and held our baby for the first time! our fat, tea-colored, froglike, flatulent baby.

since this anniversary is different than a birthday, we have a special way of commemorating it with a special kind of photograph. here is this year’s.

claudia got a series of cute postcards for her bedroom wall as a gift… they were from an etsy seller, who had found the incomplete set of these large alphabet cards — probably used to hang in classrooms in the late sixties, early seventies — and i guess used an oversized scanner to then reproduce them. they are fantastic. i am using the “soul sister” as my facebook profile photo now.

…and, she and béla each got new korean handdrums. (as there has been, quite by accident, but unbroken yet, a history of each of the kids getting percussion instruments as gotcha gifts.)

claudia is a big three year-old girl now and she’s driving us insane. ever hear the term “threenager”? we have, now. and we are on board with it.

she’s also drawing wonderful faces.

she’s a spectacular girl. yesterday morning as she got ready for breakfast, we heard her singing, “MY NAME IS CLAUDIA AMIRAH, AND I’M A DANCER!”

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Posted in african-american, family, korean

easy to learn korean words and phrases that don’t teach anyone anything

Posted on February 13, 2011 | Comments Off

today’s korea times ran its language flashcard feature using adoption-related terms.


note that the “tips” tell us that for over a decade, most korean babies relinquished for adoption are cared for in private homes. yet, the sentence taught in the “flashcards”? “He lived in the orphanage until he was adopted.” the flashcards do not provide the korean word or term for “foster family”.

i’m not thrilled either with “the child was adopted from korea”. (even more specifically, the sentence given here is “THAT child was adopted from korea”.) we don’t call our children “the child” when referring to them in the third person. (well, i sometimes refer to “the boy” and “the girl”, but only intimately.) but “our” child would be nice… particularly in a culture that refers to it’s OWN family members, in the third person, to OUTSIDE parties, as “our”. (“our wife”, “our mother” — to people who are not the husband or child of this particular mother.)

for an language feature that isn’t particularly helpful, this one does say a lot.

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Posted in 한국어 공부, korean

oh. so. my son’s not the only korean djembe player out there?

Posted on January 7, 2011 | Comments Off

(this is a pretty old picture, and he had a cold.)

but yes, when claudia got a djembe last year for her gotcha day gift (every gotcha day we’ve had in our house has been celebrated with a new percussion instrument), béla took it over. he’s always loved them, in all sizes.

last week, when listening to our beloved GTB fresh FM out of chuncheon, we heard a little song (you could really only call it a “little” song, it’s just little — not short, but little) that we’d have bet money was called “americano”, and which featured the line “bagel 주세요”. (빼고주세요 is the actual line, which is “please take it out/off.” it is funnier to think they are asking for a bagel. ) a perfect song for the kids, but we did not know how we’d find it again…

then, today, it turned up on one of my facebook feeds.

for my two — coffee house regulars, korean speakers, bagel eaters — it is a perfect theme song.

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Posted in african-american, 한국어 공부, korean

gifts

Posted on December 25, 2010 | Comments Off

we thought it would be good if the kids chose gifts for one another this year. they “gave” each other gifts last year, but they were not all that cognizant of it (béla had painted a lovely large ceramic barrette for claude which i am sure she will continue to use in her locs for years to come, and claude gave b. “the going to bed book” by sandra boynton, which was one of his very favorites for a long while).

this year we asked them to think about what they would get for one another. we asked b. what he thought claude would like as a gift. “pop tarts,” he said.

“NO, i no want pop tarts!” she yelled back.

further investigation led us to the knowledge that she wanted “a beautiful pen”. armed thus, daddy and b. went shopping while claudia was at a birthday party. not only did they find a beautiful pen, but some other art supplies they both agreed claudia would enjoy.

when she had been asked what she would want to give béla, claudia had initially insisted that it would be “a necklace”.

“no, i not want a necklace,” béla said. “socks.”

but, béla had already asked santa for socks. multiple santas. (from a distance.) and so, we told claudia, she needed to think some more.

for a few days she insisted that she was going to get him “an ice cube” or “an icicle”. (i am of the mind that the word she was searching for is “lollipop”. it wouldn’t have been a bad idea, really.)

but, we went off on our own in target, and she chose: socks with aliens on them, from the dollar bin; a nice new orange polo (very insistent about the orange one); and a box of strawberry kwik.

santa did not disappoint either. there’s no way we can go into it all, but the tiana doll — and the tiana-sized hanbok — were very popular.

daddy got a 붕어빵 iron!

mommy got foundry type…

looking forward to an afternoon with memie and ow tow and either korean food or vietnamese for dinner.

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Posted in african-american, family, holidays, korean

the radiant children

Posted on December 15, 2010 | Comments Off

i was watching the radiant child, a documentary about jean-michel basquiat, yesterday. claudia came down from her nap, tromping dazedly through the room, and she sat next to me.

“skeletons!” she said. and, “be-bop!”

she heard basquiat say that be-bop was his favorite kind of music. we talked about his brown skin and his locs.

basquiat is the only really big artist whose work i would ever wish to own in original. i think it would be incredibly alive. the only time i ever saw any was at the brandywine museum in ’06, a warhol/wyeth/basquiat show. there i saw this warhol portrait of basquiat and loved the urine oxidation technique used in the painting.

i was somewhat mortified to see at this exhibit that a number of the pieces came from the private collection of the olsen twins.

i think of my childhood and all the afternoons spent in linda smith’s bedroom playing the 45 of blondie’s “rapture” over and over, and watching the video. and there he was, there, too, little did i know it. (debbie harry, truly one of the most beautiful women ever to live, has been knocked from status as my favorite adoptee ever, only by my own son and daughter.)

basquiat’s influence on claudia’s drawing style was immediate.

this is actually the character “kimin” from a favorite book — behind the mask — which is about a little korean boy who wears his 할아버지의 탙 and mask-dancing costume for halloween.

poor poor jean-michel basquiat. a tragedy and such a generic one — hardly what he deserved to be. i think of him often. he has a place with us.

plush safe he think is one of the best basquiat websites i’ve seen.

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Posted in african-american, korean

more holidays, our way

Posted on December 12, 2010 | Comments Off

wishing to forgo, as always, being just another cookie-giver (not that we don’t like cookies), our gift to teachers and caregivers this season is… kimchi.


those who can handle it are receiving sixteen-ounce jars; people who MIGHT wish we had just stuck with cookies are receiving eight-ouncers. at the kids’ preschool, we also sent along adorable sets of multicolored tartan plaid chopsticks.

the first comment on the kimchi came in from rachelle, one of our favorite neighborhood baristas (and korean adoptee):

“more more more please!!!i wanted to say in person but i cant wait to just say that this is the best kimchi ive ever eaten. i may not be a korean cuisine expert but i am an expert at being particular. it is so so so so so good!i snack on it as is, on pizza, with avocado slices, in instant miso soup. i cant get enough.
thank you so much…and maybe can i get a gander at that recipe of yours? or buy another batch?”

also, in this past week, we have met our goal of finding an african american-themed tree ornament. it was something we were missing. we figured ten thousand villages was a good store to start with, and we got a little djembe ornament, which both kids like a lot, but i was really looking for a person — a brown person, preferably, of course, a girl.

and preferably not an angel, which was all ten thousand villages had. we don’t believe in angels, and although we get excited about a LOT of things we don’t “believe” in (krampus?), angels are just… unappealing.

we went to macy’s, where i had remembered seeing an entirely african american-themed tree in the trim-a-tree shop more than one year running. this year, there was not an entire tree. there was, however, a black ballerina.

claudia had never heard the word “ballerina” before, as far as i know, but it did not take long for it to become deeply ensconced in her lexicon.

as i paid for the ornament, i remarked to the cashier that we had had a challenge finding african american-themed ornaments. hearing this prompted claude to ask loudly, “CAN I HOLD MY AFRICAN? WHERE’S MY AFRICAN?” as we left the shoppe and entered the dickens village.

at home later that afternoon i found claudia in a vaguely familiar pose. if i could only place it…

oh yeah.

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Posted in african-american, holidays, korean

putting the han in hanukkah

Posted on December 8, 2010 | Comments Off

on the first night of hanukkah, i brought the menorah out of the basement and showed it to the kids. “it’s hanukkah!” i told them.

a week or so before this, i had told them that hanukkah was coming. “veronica?” claudia asked. no, i said, hanukkah. it’s not christmas, but presents are involved. they got that much. now, they saw me taking out candles.

“생일 축하 hanukkah,” sang claudia. which is about the best joke ever, but you have to know how to sing “happy birthday” in korean to get it. (the first line of “happy birthday” in korean is, phonetically, “seng il chukkah hamnidah“. the word hanukkah fits in there perfectly, and both our kids are still at the point where any flame, however large — including a pizza oven at a restaurant — is cause to sing “happy birthday”.)

after a few nights of hanukkah, the kids were getting in the groove of it. candles got lit, then daddy, of all people, sang a song (which claudia was soon imitating — it began barooooooh and went on rather freestyle from there), and they got a small gift. and then, often, got to open “the box of candy”, i.e. the charlie brown chocolate advent calendar.

by the fourth night, claudia actually wanted to know what we were “doing for mandookah” that evening. (for those who do not know, mandoo is the korean word for “dumpling”.)

i suppose we did nothing to dissuade the children from believing that hanukkah is a korean holiday. we had kimchi with our latkes, as well as dak gochu jang bokeum (a spicy chicken dish that is our signature potluck item for the past five years or so), as we did last year — it all goes great with aunt lisa’s mom’s jello salad recipe (which has a lot of nuts, pineapple, and sour cream/cream cheese in it).

the gift for night six of hanukkah was temporary tattoos of hwa-tu cards.

and the gift for the eighth night was korean stickers, featuring iconic images such as tal, a changgo, fans, and children in hanbok.

maybe claude figured that since she gets a whole week for kwanzaa, we needed a week’s worth of korean holiday, too.

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Posted in holidays, korean

rosetta stone, with claudia

Posted on November 13, 2010 | Comments Off

this was a new experiment. i re-set level 1 on rosetta stone korean, and sat down with claudia for a few exchanges. she was interested, but it was a new format and new vocabulary and we took a break after maybe four or five short exercises. she doesn’t use a mouse or track pad yet of course, so she just pointed to things.

a few minutes later, i found her on the floor in the playroom, talking to herself and saying the word “juice”, but pronouncing it more like the korean loan-word “jyoo-suh”. then she pointed to the floor and said, “no, no, no” in a leading, encouraging, tone, while pointing to these three objects:

at which point it was clear to me that she had just constructed a three-dimensional rosetta stone multiple choice screen, and was saying “no” to options the way i had been saying “no…” to her as she pointed to incorrect images and encouraged her to try again.

welcome to the almost-three-year-old brain. i’d give you a map if i had one, but the place grows faster than anyone could track it.

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Posted in family, 한국어 공부