We talked about our childhoods today, and James offered that he did the tradional Korean game with fire, where they make big circles. The way he was explaining it, I said, ew that sounds dangerous for kids, I wouldn't let my kid do that. And James said, "NO! Korean tradition!" like it's the best thing that ever happened. Juri, the girl across the table said, "No, I never done that.", James shot back, "She is not Korean."
Here's a picture of this tradition, looks pretty. The story is, that people in rural areas did this, and Juri is a Seoul city girl. Another student said that when he was a kid he did this and once he saw his friend's jacket set on fire, and sometimes they would accidentlly light a pile of rice that had been painstakingly harvested,"oops! ...and run away!" he said. The actually use big iron rods for this and then throw them in "the sea". I know that not everyone lives next to the sea, so maybe just some body of water.
When the students insisted this is a rural tradition, James argued, "No! All over Korea, people do this." OK James. We all know you're a farm boy, and there's nothing wrong with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment