When I first learned of this assignment I was unsure of what to expect. I was worried about how a complete stranger and I were going to fill an hour talking to each other. It also did not help my expectations when the subject line and sender line of my original email from Jeanny Lee was in Korean and some of the sentences in our text conversations were choppy Nevertheless, we set up our first meeting on September 21 at Einstein’s Bagel Company. She met me there and we began our introductions.
Her name is Jeanny Lee and she is from South Korea. She moved here over the summer with her daughter, who is a seventh grader, and they live with her brother that is a professor here at TCU. Her English was surprisingly good since she went to college in Chicago over ten years ago and got a degree there. She was there via a student visa and talked about how much she enjoyed herself there, which is why she completed way more hours than were required of her to graduate. Nevertheless, after graduating she returned to Korea where she started a business. She returned to the United States over the summer for her daughter who wanted to go to school here.
After going through our introductions, we began talking about how Texas is different than our hometowns. We both laughed at the fact that public schools in Texas force the students to take Texas history when no other states force students to take a similar class. She said that the history class was hard for her daughter since she had no previous education with the topic and some of the vocabulary is harder to translate to Korean. We also talked about our opinion of Fort Worth. I said that I liked the city since it has both the small college town feel near school, but it also has the big city feel in downtown Fort Worth. On the other hand, she said that she was expecting a bigger city like Chicago and the city where she lived in Korea. She seemed to like the feel of a big city because she also mentioned how she liked New York City when she visited it over the summer.
After comparing the cities, we began talking about how we missed the different foods that we had in our hometowns. She was intrigued by some of the foods that we have back home in New Orleans, especially alligator, crawfish sausage, gumbo, and jambalaya. She also introduced me to a new food, Kimchi, which is a part of most Korean meals. Kimchi is a type of dish that consists of vegetables, such as cabbage among others, and other peppers and seasoning. There are many different types of Kimchi and Jeanny said that she still makes it for her family here. It is also convenient for her to make since she can make some that lasts the month with the refrigerator and freezer. She mentioned an older Korean practice in which a family buries Kimchi underground in order to preserve it from spoiling in the heat. Jeanny said that a typical Korean meal usually consists of Kimchi, rice, and maybe another side. I was surprised to find out that meat is not a typical part of a meal. She said that in Korea meat in a meal was more for special occasions, which dramatically differs from here where most people probably have meat twice a day. This was just one difference between our cultures that I noticed throughout the conversation
Before I knew it, an hour had passed and it was time for me to head to my class. Overall I thought the meeting went well and looking back I found that our conversation was very interesting. I looked forward to our future meetings and the chance to learn more about her culture. I was glad I was able to participate in the program because of the unique opportunity it had given me.
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