A photo of everyone sitting on the floor (Korean style) and dining together. It was a candid photo, so almost everyone is chewing away, oblivious to my paparazzi-activity. Thursday evening our ITF Taekwon-Do dojang here in Seoul had a farewell and year-end function. It happened to also coincide with Thanks Giving.
We gathered at the home of a medical doctor and his wife who started with Taekwon-Do a while ago. The hostess prepared a lovely Korean dinner for us and we had a great time eating and socializing in English, Korean and some other languages. It was quite a cultural extravaganza – attending the dinner were five nationalities: Korean, British, Brazilian, Swedish and South African. Even odder was the way we communicated. It turns out that one of the other guests lived in the Netherlands for three years and so the two of us started speaking Dutch to each other. Well actually, he was speaking broken Dutch and I was speaking Afrikaans with a Dutch accent; but we had a grand time communicating in a third language, a European one, and that in an Oriental country, of all places!
The farewell was for the Brazilian family and Swedish lady who will be leaving Korea sometime in December.
It was a splendid evening, but I got home rather late and to bed even later than usual. As a result, today felt very long and I feel quite pooped at the moment. I might even get to fall asleep earlier tonight!
The photo in this post is not a Creative Commons-image.
I am glad you had a good time. I heard that Dutch and Afrikaans are mutually intelligible languages. I wish I were raised bilingual. I know a little Spanish and Korean, that it.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds wonderful, the Doctor is living my dream.( to establish a multicultural Teakwando traning centre) Its my wish to create a center that will cater for all nationalities.
ReplyDeleteTime allow I would like to meet him.
I know thats where your heart is to follow in his footsteps.
Lets go for it!!! whilst we still have LIFE and LOVE.
Lindi, I didn't know you feel so passionate about Taekwon-Do and that you had a dream to open a multicultural Taekwon-Do training centre. When did that happen?! Honestly, my heart is not going in that direction.
ReplyDeleteI do hope to open a Korean Martial Art Gym one day where different Korean styles are practised, but it need not be explicitly multicultural. I already have a dojang in South Africa, and even though it is small I am really proud of it and love my students.
There is a lot in the store house, I am passionate about so many things in life. Probably they might come as a shock as the time progresses.
ReplyDeleteMy daily prayer goes like - Father, please help me to appreciate every day of life that You give me, and make every day count. Show me Your priorities for my life- things that matter most to You - and help me to align my priorities with Yours.
Dynamics of life has taugth me to align all my passions with Gods.
My previous response was on those lines.
I see a potential within you as well, great success starts as a small thing(small dojang)take courage !!!!!