Meeting the family: blood types, burglar alarms and bearing gifts

Staying with a Korean family during our first year with Fulbright is a mandatory and important part of the grant as we get to learn another aspect of the culture. Since my family in the U.S. has hosted over 70 students during the past 10+ years, one of the reasons I chose South Korea was so I could experience the other side of a home stay.

This year in Korea I will be spending in an apartment with a Military family (Hwacheon is a small town but is pretty much doubled in size due to the Military base there).   I have two host sisters: Ha-eun (6^th grade) and Ha-yong (2^nd grade). My Host dad has three black belts in Taekwondo and my Host Mom has two. They are a Christian family. They have the most adorable Yorkie puppy named Gami. Welcome, my Korean Family.

Due to the language barrier, since my family speaks very little English and I speak even considerably less Korean, it has been hard to get to know each other. We rely mostly on charades, motions, and the God-send app, Google Translate. Within the first hours, I successfully made some embarrassing blunders as well as some good memories.

Trying to find the light switch to the bathroom, I quickly pressed the first button I saw. This was extremely unfortunate since it was the burglar alarm instead of the light switch. All around me, sirens started going off and my host mom spent five minutes trying to turn it off. Talk about the longest five minutes in my life. I just covered my head in shame as my little host sister comforted me “it’s okay, it’s okay.” Ah, what a classic mix-up!

During my first dinner at my home stay, I attempted to make some sort of conversation as is typical of me. I had noticed that their coffee mugs have cutesy little animal characters dancing around with little blood type symbols (I’m tempted to bring back one as a souvenir as I can’t say I can find them in the States). I had noticed similar designs on paraphernalia such as notebooks and stationary and was wondering why it was so popular. Using old faithful Google Translate to ask, my Host Mom told me that “O” was her blood type and that Koreans thought it was cute. I translated back to her, saying that Americans think it is a funny idea. Looking at me somewhat shocked, she said the word I had used for “funny” was apparently not a good word. Props to successfully insulting my Host Mother’s blood type during the first 24 hours!

Korean culture is a very gift giving one, so Fulbright has told us to bring gifts to the family pretty much right off the bat. Out of all the West Virginia trinkets of candles, postcards, calendars, key chains and such, I’m glad that they liked the playing cards. They REALLY liked the playing cards. I must say I have bonded with the children more over playing and teaching card games than any other strategy. I must also add that my Korean vocabulary is quickly augmenting with important words like “rock, paper, scissors ”and “win/lose.” Being a child at heart, I’m okay with that!