Dear Korean Textbook,
I'm a Korean-American from Fresno who's spending a year teaching English in Haenam county. I like to eat Korean food, but in Jeollanam-do there's not much variety besides kimbap and kimchi. Do you have any recommendations to break up the monotony? Thanks!
Hungry in Haenam.
Dear Hungry in Haenam,
I often hear my friends say they don't like kimchi. But that's unbelievable. Remember, kimchi is our traditional food. And it's a key to maintaining good health. If we Koreans don't like to eat kimchi, who will? No one will. Then kimchi will die away. Would you be pleased with that? It's time we stopped throwing away our traditional pride. So, let's say to ourselves "There's nothing I like more than kimchi," and eat kimchi every day. Thank you.
9 comments:
I call b.s. on this. No Korean would be caught dead living in Fresno.
Dear Korean textbook,
I'm a Korean studying abroad in Australia for 1 year. The other day I met a black person. He was a little strange, but didn't have a spear or a shield and his lips weren't even that big. Did I miss something?
signed,
Confusing in Kunsan
Aaron, that reminds me of something one of my friends at my university here in Hawaii emailed me when she went to California to begin her one-year "exchange program":
sorry for being late.I got to sanfransisco two days ago and the school just started today,
so I have been quite busy.
I live in the dorm the same as the arrangement of previous dorm where I lived last semester.
So there is two room and 3 roommates except me.
All of them are black, so I was little upset at the first because I was considered this area is dangerouse place, right?
Hey man, don't knock Fresno. I lived there for 2 years of my life, and it's a decent place. Surprising number of Koreans there.
I lived there for 2 years of my life, and it's a decent place.
If you'd stayed there, The Korean, your defense of that glorified food-processing highway exit would carry more weight.
This is how I compare the presence of a Korean community in a place. Using Irvine as a standard, I compare the number of hits to "church" in the area. Fresno yields 1210, while Irvine yields ten times that number. Given that Fresno has two to five times the population, depending on how widely you count "Fresno," I'd say that Koreans are few and far between out there in the 빅 밸리.
Today's WORD VERIFICATION is "budge," which is an actual real word! I think Blogspot is broken.
This one hot and tall Korean American girl came from Fresno. She was in LA because she went to UCLA.
Not like the spoiled, shitty girls who are LA natives. Genuine and sweet as hell. Growing up with a bunch of cows has it's advantages for character development.
She got tired of the LA scene and moved back to Fresno...
Edward wrote:
This one hot and tall Korean American girl came from Fresno. She was in LA because she went to UCLA.
Not like the spoiled, shitty girls who are LA natives. Genuine and sweet as hell. Growing up with a bunch of cows has it's advantages for character development.
She got tired of the LA scene and moved back to Fresno...
That definitely sounds like a Fresno thing. The nicest Caucasian girl I knew at UCI was from Fresno. Sweet and kind as anything, but quite naïve, I thought. She didn't care much for the OC or L.A. scene either. The beach was overrated, she thought.
Most "rural" folks at UCI — there is affirmative action programs for them, by the way — from smaller places like El Centro, Susanville, Redding, Merced, etc., that I knew tended to fall in that category.
Of course, this was before America's great meth epidemic, so who knows how it's changed (my ex in Korea went to Korea to escape the meth wave in her town, seriously).
Anyway, I'm just playing about Fresno. The city is a great place if for no other reason than it's the gateway to Yosemite National Park, one of those most beautiful places anywhere.
And who knows, after I become Dr Kushibo, I may end up teaching at UC Merced (whose chancellor is a Korean-American, by the way), an hour up the 99 from Fresno (and socioculturally much the same as Fresno). In that case, I'll possibly be focusing some of my attention on health issues among the San Joaquin Valley's Korean-American community.
I've learned a lot since I've posted this. Actually when I wrote it Fresno was the first place in California that popped into my head, so there you go.
I've learned a lot since I've posted this. Actually when I wrote it Fresno was the first place in California that popped into my head, so there you go.
Fair enough, Brian. I suppose that's how the creators of the US version of "The Office" picked Scranton in you neck of the words.
Here's a fun fact about Fresno (which I think is still true): Fresno is the largest city in American not on an Interstate highway.
Post a Comment