Feel the Bowel Clenching Terror - And Do It Anyway!

I have that doohickey on my Facebook account that shows me my memories from days of yore and it has been working overtime recently to remind me that for the past several years, August has been a pretty eventful month for me - all quirky holidays, new jobs and fantastic festivals.

Which has prompted me to share one of my more significant memories:

Picture it! Ulsan, August, 2014.  The pavement is simmering gently in the blistering heat and the cicadas are so loud that I have to constantly remind myself that they are not, in fact, machines.
It's ten o'clock in the morning and every surface in my apartment is covered in baked goods in various stages of preparation, cooling and packaging. I had even McGyvered the laundry racks into a pretty ingenious cooling station. I was quite proud of that stroke of inspiration!
It's the scene of an incredibly tiny cottage industry at peak production.

And there was I, standing in the middle of the floor, positively frozen with terror.
This is not a catchy euphemism.
I was panicking so hard that I physically could not move. My feet were frozen to the floor.  In two hours time, I was due to travel across town to set up my stall at the inaugural 'Acoustic Lady Land' music festival.
The night before, on my nightly dog walk with Doc Doolittle, I had been quite optimistic. Pleased with the amount of stock I was able to prepare. Nervous but excited about the adventure ahead.

But crossing the floor of my apartment at 10am, I was hit by such a wave of doubt and insecurity:
"I don't have enough stock. I'm going to run out ridiculously early and be a complete laughing stock!"
"I don't speak enough Korean!  I won't be able to do the transactions with Korean customers! What if a scary Ahjumma starts asking me questions about the ingredients!!"
"It will be such a failure, that Dan will be disgusted that he even offered me a stall!"
"I wish to God that I had a car. I could pretend that I crashed it, and skip the whole festival."

"How," I asked myself, "did I get myself into this mess?"

Rewind to my return to Korean in the summer of 2013 - as far back as the previous February, I had been mulling over the idea of starting my own bakery business.  When I came back to Korea, I specifically took on a part-time job, so that I could really give my idea a proper chance.


I had a fistful of recipes, a killer name, thanks to the lovely Amanda Bell and thanks to Jen Lee, the world's most adorable logo!  (See for yourself!)
And so in October 2013, I was ready to launch the grand experiment.

Then, with the most serendipitous timing, the redoubtable Harry Bush launched The Ulsan Foreigner Market in November, and suddenly O'GradyLady Bakery had a regular monthly market stall where I could meet my customers in person!
Apart from the deep and thrilling satisfaction of watching them enjoy the goods, it was an invaluable resource for testing new products, as I provided samples of everything I sold.

Things were going swimmingly. I was having a ball at the Ulsan Foreigner Market and both my product line and my customer base were growing steadily.

So, I had taken a risk, a very little one, with low stakes and so far, so good.

Then, in July, a chance encounter while volunteering at the Ulsan Whale Festival brought me an opportunity to go waaaay outside of my comfort zone.  It was while I was serving beer at the Ulsan International Volunteer Center tent that I ran into Dan. Dan is one of Ulsan's most senior ex-pats, practically a Village Elder for us foreigners,  and I had met him when Ms.Amused and I had volunteered with T-Hope, a charity he had set up. We caught up with each other, and when he heard about my business and my regular spot at the Ulsan market, he offered me a stall at the Korean music festival. I was ecstatic! Positively giddy with excitement.  And barring a little sleep induced grouchiness as I baked up a storm, excited was pretty much how I stayed until Saturday morning.

Finally, after several minutes of frozen freaking out, I managed to talk myself down and begin to function again. Was I back to excited? Hell no!
I was still utterly convinced that the entire day would be an unmitigated disaster and that there was no possible way that I would be going back for round two on Sunday.

But.  And this was the clincher - I believed that keeping my promise and showing up was more important than avoiding the immanent and inevitable embarrassment. I decided that I would rather be known as the girl who failed, than the girl who flaked out.

Goodness, but I was a regular beacon of positivity!

So, this event that I was approaching like it was my own execution - how did it turn out?
One of the most amazing and satisfying weekends of my life!

For starters, I got to see my name up in lights! (kinda)

 Doesn't it look pretty! I nearly burst with pride to see that.

Now, remember my panicked rambling that morning -

1) I won't be able to serve Korean customers - completely forgetting that I had ALREADY been doing that since October!

2) I'll run out of stock - completely discounting my genius plan to bring one of my ovens with me (yes, I did say 'one'. I had three.) and bake cookies fresh throughout the day.  This had three purposes:
i) I wanted the scent of freshly baked cookies wafting over the park and luring in customers.
ii) It ensured that I wouldn't run out of stock AND
iii) My mother had taught me that Rule #1 of working behind a counter is, "Always look busy."

My dearest Korean bro, SangJin, came to the Festival and brought some of his friends to my stall. One of them declared my Chocolate Chip Cookies to be, "the best I have had in my whole life!"

There is one personal highlight of the weekend, the credit for which goes ENTIRELY to Doc Doolittle, my Brownies.

About three weeks before the festival, Doc suggested that I should sell Brownies. I dismissed the idea, saying that I already had plenty of other goods and I wasn't going to start experimenting with a new recipe this late in the day.  Doc kept suggesting, relentlessly! And I kept refusing, snappishly!

Then, the day before the festival, I was in the Bakery Supply Store and lo and behold - brownie pans on half price sale.  I listened to what the universe was clearly shouting at me and went home and researched some recipes.

The result?  I sold some to an American customer, who wandered over to a music stage 30 yards away before taking a bite. I still treasure the memory of his shocked shout of "Oh my God this is good!!"

And the from the darling Dan, who is also a gourmet chef, 

"How long have you been making these?"

"Since yesterday."

"Fuck me!!"

heh heh

These delicious babies went on to become my signature product and best seller over the rest of my time in Korea.

What a change four hours can make!  At 10am I was nailed to the floor, flailing in panic.  By 2pm I was set up and selling, in English AND Korean, and getting fantastic feedback. That evening, I finally had some breathing space and I picked up a festival brochure.  I had been so busy the last two months, planning for O'GradyLady Bakery that I had not checked out the music line up.
Reading through the programme I got the best surprise!  On Sunday evening, one of my favourite Korean bands, Urban Zakapa, was going to play.

Listening to them live while sitting under the summer stars, what a perfect ending to an extraordinary weekend, what a memory to treasure forever.

And the whole experience was a powerful lesson in not allowing yourself to be held back by fear, or, to paraphrase a famous book title:
"Feel the bowel clenching terror and do it anyway!"

A lesson I am trying to keep in mind, now that I am back in Ireland, facing new challenges and searching for new adventures.

"You Might As Well Face It, You're Addicted To .......Language Learning?!"

Last Friday I was ambushed by a stomach bug and spent most of the weekend in bed.  I was feeling too lethargic to do any reading or writing, so I was browsing around online, looking for some mental candy floss. On a whim, I chose a currently airing Taiwanese drama, called 'Refresh Man'.  It's been a few years since I watched any movies or dramas from Taiwan, but I remembered them as being light, sweet and wonderfully innocent.  Just the tonic for a girl who's feeling wretched.

Oh boy, did I land on a good 'un!  I marathoned the first eight episodes but sadly, now I'm all caught up and will have to wait for each weekly installment like everyone else. Le sigh.  In the meantime, I have the ending credits theme song firmly lodged in my brain.  Which is fine, because it's a gorgeous song........but it's also a Chinese song. And I don't speak Chinese.

The language I am actually trying to learn is Korean, and having mumbled Chinese running through my brain does not help. Though, I have noticed over the last few days that when I'm not paying attention, my subconscious plays the song and shoehorns random Korean phrases into it.
So there's that.

In a desperate bid to get the song out of my system, I decided to try and transcribe the lyrics, learn the damn thing, and try to move on.  Which led to this conversation last night:

Me:    Jeez! This romanised Chinese........almost every vowel has a flipping squiggle over it!

Ms.Amused:  Are you learning Chinese?!

Me:  (defensively) No!  It's just one song!

Ms.Amused: (laughs) It's just one song! I can quit anytime I like!

***********

Heh. She has a point. The evidence against me is pretty damning. I rarely go on holiday without swallowing the phrase book first, my weekly Korean class is at 1am (because my teacher is in Korea) and I think it's totally worth it, and just a few days ago, I went into the Google Play Store to looking for a particular app for my mum and ended up downloading three Korean language learning apps for myself instead!

So yeah, Ms. Amused is probably right. It's only a matter of time before I properly tackle Chinese.
Especially if I keep watching these adorable Taiwanese dramas! ;)

And here is the song that started this whole train of thought, 'Think of You First', from 'Refresh Man':

Fear Factor

Fear. It's a curious beast. 
An action which may seem mundane and positively ho hum to one person will give the next person a serious case of the heebie jeebies.

Take my friend Martha* for example.  Martha is intelligent, vivacious and awesomely confindent.
When she finishes her time in Korea she will return home to set up TWO new businesses.
And yet, this powerful, independent go-getter would rather gnaw off her own foot than speak in public.

For myself, speaking in public is no problem at all. At school, on stage, in church, anywhere at all - I'll start declaming at the drop of a hat.
(if that hat could have small denominations dropped into it, well, so much the better!)
On the other hand, ask me to approach a stranger on the street to ask for directions in a foreign language, and you'll find me in the corner with Martha.....gnawing on my own foot.

For years I dreamed of moving to France, particularly to the south east, the Langue D'Oc region. 
It is a country where I speak the language (functionally), where I know the food and the history, the legends and the customs. It is a simple two hour flight from home - and yet, I kept back pedalling and postponing, telling myself, "Next year in Carcassone!"
I was afraid that my french wasn't good enough, that I wouldn't, simply couldn't, make it on my own.
"What?! Stand in front of a classroom and teach english?! And demand payment for these paltry services?! Are you mad??" 
"Rent an apartment and pay bills in another country!" That is something that grown ups can do.
I am not a grown up!  My fraud would be discovered in no time.

So I dickered about the British Isles for a few years instead, doing nonsense jobs that I wasn't particularly interested in, because I was too scared to risk following my dream and failing.

Time passed, plans fell apart, and this contrary pilgrim who is too scared to move to France, where does she end up?

Korea!!

A country where I didn't read the alphabet, much less speak the language. 
I didn't know the food or the history, the legends or the customs. And this patch of ground is a two DAY flight from home. 
In fact, so vast was my ignorance of this country that I can tell you precisely what I knew about it before coming here.
Four things.
That's it.
I knew four things about a country the size of the United Kingdom and with a history spanning thousands of years.  (hangs head in shame)
"And which four gems were these?" I hear you ask. Which four nuggets of wisdom had I garnerd on my way?

1. Korea is a country divided by war into North and South.
2. Korea hosted the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
3. Korean high school students place very high in mathematics in international league tables. (Honestly, the flotsam and jetsom that sticks in your head from talk radio!)
4. My Dad's Korean student told him that the Koreans were the Irish of Asia - but didn't explain why.  (Then I got here and discovered, oh boy! Was she ever on the money!)

How on earth I found the courage to do this, when I spent years bottling out of the easier option, is a mystery I am still trying to unravel.
Though I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact that when I my original plans fell apart and I found myself applying for jobs absolutely everywhere in the world, I was simply too worn down to be scared.

When I tell people how I ended up in Korea, and that I could never have guessed in a million years how I would fall head over heels in love with the place, I often finish by remarking how much I relish that life can surprise me like this.

Perhaps though, what I really mean is that I love that I can surprise myself.

For here I am, on the other side of the world.

Without fear.

Flourishing.


* names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Reasons to learn Korean # 46 - Preventing 'The Look'

Last week I was fighting a valiant rearguard action against yet another cold, so I popped into a nearby pharmacy for lunch to stock up on Theraflu, the Korean equivalent of Lemsip.
When I asked for it however, the pharmacist apologised but said that they were out of stock and wouldn't have it for a day or so.
It was at this point that 'The Look' crossed his face.

'The Look' says - oh how clearly it declares: "I can't say this in your language! How the hell do I mime this!"
It is a facial expression with which I am initimately familiar, because during my average week there may be several occasions where I am either recieving 'The Look', or making it myself.

And bless Mr.Pharmacist for even trying to figure out a mime. Quite a few people, myself included, would have contented themselves with the simple, yet efficient, "Theraflu. No." and made this gesture:


So when I replied in Korean, "Oh, that's alright, give me Tylenol instead please.", the look of relief which dawned across his face was a joy to behold.  He complimented me on my Korean, whereupon I did what any self-respecting Irish (and indeed, Korean) person does when they get a compliment - the old 'Demurral Two Step'.
"Oh no, it isn't good. I'm only slowly learning it." etc, etc back pedal, back pedal.


The funny thing is, I'm not being falsely modest here. I really DON'T speak that much Korean and I AM learning it quite slowly.
That being said, there are whole phrases which I use all the time and therefore they trip effortlessly off the tongue.
Ironically, one of those phrases is "Oh no, I only speak a little Korean. I'm just learning it slowly."
It's a fair mouthful and I have to own up to a childish glee whenever I trot it out and see them processing the fact that I've just "I don't speak Korean.", in flawless Korean! heh heh.

So I skipped out of the pharmacy that day clutching my Tylenol and a warm glow of satisfaction that for once I had been able to disarm 'The Look'.

I could get used to this feeling.

Not the copious and arduous amounts of study it requires though.  Sigh.

Worthless Witterings

When last I posted, I was gearing up to spending Lunar New Year with my friend and her extended family.  I had been warned that only two members of the clan spoke english and so had been preparing accordingly.
I started meeting a language exchange partner, initially once a week and then amping it up to twice a week in January.
I even learned a Trot song in case we had a session!
(More on the weirdness of Trot music in a later post.)

I practised whole chunks of imaginary conversations, trying to squirrel away snippets of dialogue for every possible scenario.
It was like being back in school and cramming for my final French Orals! (whole body shudder)
Despite all the prep and study, the k dramas and k pop, I was still feeling deeply inadequate for the task ahead.

This was largely because at some level I am still comparing my language aquisition in Korea to what it would have been had I moved anywhere in Western Europe.
This is a ridiculously unfair comparison, like asking someone who has spent ten years playing drums why they can't master the piano in eighteen months.
Yet it's a comparison I still have to consciously shake off.

Happily, while I was comparing myself to a mythical might~have~been, my host family were busy comparing ME to the only other foreigner to have spent time with them.
Sunny's brother had done his military service with the 'US Forces in Korea' and had brought one of his American friends home for the holiday a few years ago.
On Saturday afternoon during a lull in the cookathon, Sunny and I were in the sitting room when she suddenly burst out laughing. She told me she had just overheard her uncle exclaim in the kitchen, "Well this foreigner is much better than the last one. Her Korean is great, she can take a joke and she even uses chopsticks! That other one just sat there, blinking."

I did feel sorry for the Unknown Soldier, it must have been a very strange two days for him, but I must admit that what I primarily felt was relief.
I was a hit!
All my worrying was for nothing.

Which begs the question: Will I learn from this experience and worry less before trying new things?


Nah.


Probably not.

Atta girl!!

Today, due to random flucuations in the Space/Time Continuum, I ate my lunch at the same time as the school bus drivers for the first time in well over a year.

I was sitting by Mr. Park, the Director's husband and I had asked him to write in hangeul the name of my new favourite dish: dried radish leaves refried in dwenjang sauce.

 
시레기 조림   (Shiraegi joreom) This stuff is my new crack heroin.

I had returned to mindlessly stuffing my face with this nectar of the Gods, happily letting the bus driver's thick saturi (dialect) waft over my head, when the words 'waygookin' (foreigner) and 'Ireland-uh' snagged my attention.
It seems they had noticed my appetite and started to ask Mr.Park about me:

"Where is she from?"
"Ireland. The one beside the UK."  (Not to be confused with the 'other' Ireland, which is further north, has a volcano and is known to the rest of us as 'Iceland'.)
"She seems to be eating Korean food well."
To this, Mr. Park beamed and announced in the tones of a proud parent:
"Oh yes! She eats Korean food well every day! She is almost a Korean!"

I felt like a five year old in a sandbox whose mum is announcing to all the other mums, "Well MY daughter eats ALL her vegetables!"

And all the while I ate my Shiraegi joreom and tried to look like I didn't understand.

Panic Stations!!

I have 25 Korean words to learn before 1pm tomorrow afternoon, so naturally, I'm writing a blog post instead!

A month ago my darling, wonderful, incomparable Co Teacher asked if I would like to stay with her extended family for 설날, (Sol nal ) Lunar New Year in early February.
I was practically jumping up and down with delight at the invitation. Getting invited so share 추석 (Cheuseok) or 설날 with a family is a big, big deal and I was chuffed to bits that Co T would invite me.

Here's the thing, out of the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, only two of them speak english. 
So I had to get my 'game face' on and kick my Korean studying into high gear.
I've been coasting for the last year at comfortable beginner level. I can operate just fine in shops, restaurants and taxis - but ask me to formulate a sentence in casual conversation and you'll get to watch me do a first rate impression of a rabbit caught in the headlights!

For that reason, Lunar New Year is a wonderful focus for me.  It's a specific date to aim for, close enough to cause me palpitations, but far enough away that I stand a chance of achieving some real improvement.
Phase One of 'Operation Lunar New Year' started, also a month ago, on Tuesday evenings after work, my Co T and our Dept. Head and I go to a restaurant for dinner and exchange our diaries.  The two Koreans have written theirs in english and mine is in korean. We correct each others work and then slip into easy conversation. Each week my colleagues push me to speak more and more in korean.

And two weeks ago I met up with a friend of a friend of a friend (true story) for a language exchage.
Jeon Soon (her nickname) is a university student and we get on like a house on fire!  Luckily for me, she is training to be an elementary school teacher, so I think she'll keep me on the straight and narrow!
We meet at 1pm on Saturday afternoons. We speak english for the first hour so that Jeon Soon can practice, then we switch to korean for the second hour.  Like a proper student, I get homework, hence my need to learn 25 words for tomorrow.

I've also been tip toeing outside of my comfort zone with both friends and new aquaintences, speaking more korean than is necessary.  When it comes to meeting new people, I'm seriously considering writing up a flash card that says, "In english, I am funny and intelligent!" cos I sure ain't no sparkling wit in korean right now!!

   My new constant companion.

Welcome to Bizarro World....or....I am Kate's Subconscious

I was stopped in my tracks the other morning, en route to work, by the realisation that I have been watching too many Taiwanese dramas lately.
Now what on earth, you are asking yourselves, could have prompted such a pavement epiphany at 9.50am on a cold December morning?

That's a very reasonable question. Hark to my tale Dear Readers, as I guide you through the weird and wonderful landscape of my subconscious.
 
              *********************

So there I am, tripping merrily along to work, so bundled up against the cold that I might as well just put on a full burqa and have done with it!  I'm listening to my latest batch of K-Pop songs when it finally dawns on my that I have accidentally downloaded the wrong version of EXOK's new single, 'History'.  Why? Because they're singing in Chinese!!!
And I had listened to this song three or four times already without noticing!

This startled the hell out of me, because on a normal day, Chinese and Korean sound as different to me as German and Italian.  They sound screamingly different to me and I just could not swallow the fact that this song had slipped by me, not once but several times.

In the midst of this crisis of competence I started scrabbling around for explanations and justifications.
There had to be reasons. There. Had. To. Be.
And good ones at that. The alternative is that I'm as thick as two short planks and I refuse to buy that pamphlet thankyouverymuch!

In the end I came up with two causes:
1) Familiarity and 2) The Power of Expectation

1) Familiarity.
As I said, usually Chinese and Korean seem about as similar to me as Belgian Jazz and Early Renaissance Madrigals, but lately I have been following a Taiwanese drama. So I have been listening to about an hour of Chinese every day.  Therefore Chinese had lost the jarring, suprise factor. I had become used to hearing it, and almost as importantly, used to tuning it out and focusing on the subtitles.  My brain had become accustomed to registering Chinese and then ignoring it.

2) The Power of Expectation.

The song in question is by a Korean boy band. I had listened to it and watched the video on YouTube, the original Korean version (shucks, I didn't even know there WAS a Chinese version!)
So I expected the song to be in Korean.  As it 's a new release, sung quite fast and I haven't tracked down a translation yet, I also didn't expect to understand it.  So I didn't pay close attention to it.  It was catchy white noise with a good beat.

Aaaahh. Mystery solved. I spent the afternoon content in the knowledge that I am not, just  yet, an idiot.


And then on the walk home from work, that very same day, my subconscious threw me another curveball!

I was coming home for the day, after work and then dinner with friends. I had arranged to meet another friend but had been stood up, so I stomped home in the cold, muttering imprecations that would do Foul 'Ole Ron proud.  I was comfortably mid rant when I realised that while the majority of my brain was concocting witty put downs, another part of my brain was quietly and with no fuss translating the K-Pop song which was on my iPod at the time.

How, how HOW is it possible for my subconscious to be so spaced out and so clued in all on the same day??!?!?!?!

Mystery is suddenly unsolved.

And d'you know the real kicker? 

Chinese song and translated song are consecutive tracks on my playlist!    Pwuah!

Language Learning - the pleasures and the pratfalls.

Do you remember that scene from 'The Matrix' where Neo is 'plugged in' to a training programme for about half an hour and then wakes up to proclaim, "I know Kung Fu!"
Oh how often I have longed for something like that.......for Kung Fu and Korean!

Since, sadly, there is as yet no way of learning a language without time or effort, at least I have the infinite advantage of total immersion.
And if ever there was a danger of losing motivation - though the prospect of watching K Dramas without subtitles is plenty motivation for me! - there are the little victories and the little embarrasments every single day to spur me on.
The victories encourage me and the embarrasments make me bloody determined not to make THAT mistake again!

Allow me to present you with a few examples for your delectation:

• The taxi driver who was so delighted with my Korean directions that he rounded down the fare.
• The taxi ride where my pronunciation of 'department store' made a grown man giggle.

• Introducing myself in Korean at Tae Kwon Do and getting a round of applause.
• Bidding farewell to twenty students from another dojang (tae kwon do school) and using the Korean phrase for "Thank you for your hard work" (it's catchier in Korean) only to discover the next day that what I had actually said was "I'm sorry."  Over.  And over.  And over.

•  Ordering a coffee in Korean and rendering the server speechless.  Literally.  She just stood there blinking until a kind colleague led her away and filled the order herself!
• Ordering in another coffee shop entirely in Korean, without need of repitition or clarification.......and getting what I ordered!!
• On leaving a restaurant, using the phrase, "I have eaten well", and eliciting a surprised "Oooh!"

• Dodging a linguistic bullet by asking my Korean teacher about the word 'jaebal'.  It's listed in some Korean phrase books for 'please' but in seven months I had never once heard it used in conversation, only in the more ballad like of pop songs - turns out it's not so much 'please', more like 'I beg of you', or 'I beseech you'.  So some poor sod of an unsuspecting tourist is brandishing their phrase book and declaiming in the middle of a SevenEleven - "A pack of chewing gum, I beseech you!"
• Getting the joke when my six year old student, Alice, begs me to speak Korean, and uses 'Jaebal' to do it!

• Trying to tell one of my students that their rabbit pencil case is really cute......when they pick themselves off the floor and remember how to breathe rather than laugh, they tell me I have just said the rabbit has no ears!

Episodes like that make my homework almost palatable!
Though on second thoughts, never mind the dramas, I'll settle for understanding my washing machine!