Saturday, May 30, 2020

South Korea Week!

While I love all the countries we have been exploring, I have to admit, South Korea was a particularly fun week. We didn't get done as much as we planned, but we had a great time.


Crafts
We had grand plans to do several crafts, but ran out of steam. We did manage to make little paper dolls that turned out so cute. Did I take a picture of the final products? Nope. But here's Asher making his.


Culture
Our neighbors are South Korean and were happy to share their knowledge and experiences with us. Their story is actually really interesting. The daughter is the same age as Zahara and they've become fast friends. Her grandparents lived in Argentina for 30 years before moving to the States. They speak only Korean and Spanish. Her dad owns a food market and has been self-quarantining in a rented apartment away from the family since March. What an incredible sacrifice.

These neighbors helped us learn how to write our names in Korean, and also taught us an interesting fact. In Korean, there is no "z" sound. It's the same sound as a "j." That's why Zahara's name is written with a J in English.


They also lent us some of their traditional clothes that they wear to celebrate the lunar new year. The kids loved touching all the rich fabrics and seeing the beautiful embroidery.


We watched this catchy video to learn about South Korea, and now the song is stuck in my head.

Zahara has been taking karate for 1.5 years now. Every class they count to ten or twenty in Korean. It's so adorable hearing all the kids shouting hana, dool, set... Even Asher has picked up on the numbers. We used that knowledge to teach my parents how to count in Korean (or at least tried to).

Of course, no South Korea week is complete without a K-Pop dance party! K-Pop, or Korean pop is a huge phenomenon that has crossed over into the American market--most famously with Psy's 2012 hit Gangnam Style. Crazy fact--that song has been viewed more than 3.6 billion times on YouTube! We had a blast dancing around in our living room after dinner one night.

Food
I know I say this every week, but I really loved the food this week! We had a few favorites and a few new-to-us dishes. I loved them all. The one that surprised me the most was the lotus root dish. I ate these like candy. We made japche noodles (sweet potato noodles); Korean beef bowls (with the yum-yum sauce); sweet and salty lotus roots; gama jorim (potato side dish); steamed red bean buns, and a yummy Korean candy.







Another stamp in our passports. Next week is Italy week!

See our other country weeks here.

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