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During these two weeks, I have been able to practice Korean on multiple occasions. On Saturday morning I went to Park Joon’s(Korean Salon) again to get a haircut because my hair was getting a bit messy. I was able to use Korean to tell the hairdresser to give me a low fade and just trim my top hair. After the haircut, my Korean friend and I went to Grand Market which is right next door, and ate Korean food. I had Korean bibimbop and my friend has a mix of black bean paste noodles and Korean Spicy Sea Food noodles. I spent Saturday afternoon an evening with my friends from VCU. We ate Korean food together. We ate some Korean BBQ Galbi, Some spicy grilled pork, and some Korean bean paste soup. We also played Korean games together. After eating, we decided to watch some Korean comedy shows. I was surprised I could understand the jokes and the funny scenes with my limited vocabulary. 

I was able to practice Korean with my language multiple times throughout the week. Somyung and I focused on talking in Korean because that is what I am primarily concerned about. We talked about our favorite Korean foods. She told me that her favorite food was naengmyeon (Korean Cold Noodles). She says that naenmyeon has a very pleasing specific flavor and she craves it because she has not eaten it in a while. I proceeded to ask her whether she is able to get it in Maryland, where she lives. She told me that her mom usually cooks the Korean food that she eats. I asked her if she thinks that her mom is a good cook and she said yes. Then I told her my favorite Korean foods which are JJangmeon and Korean Fried Chicken. I could eat that pretty much every day. She then asked whether I was going to stay on campus during Thanksgiving break. I told her no and told her that when I called my mother earlier, she told me that she misses me too much! Somyung told me that she has to stay on campus during the break because she won’t have a place to study adequately at home. She said that there are also too many distractions at home like her younger siblings. I completely understand her situation because I lived and still live in a small apartment for most of my life. 

I also got the chance to talk to my brother over facetime in Korean. He seems to be doing well and he told me that he found a church he could go to that is only ten minutes away from his campus. We also talked about his plans for transferring to another school. He wants to transfer to either Cleveland State University in Ohio or Virginia Commonwealth University. I advised him to email the admissions to if he could obtain an application waiver because the application was seventy dollars. He told me he will, and I helped him form a draft of the email.

For the past two weeks, Jenna and I have continued to work on my writing and reading in Korean. Different from reading articles and writing summaries on it, we started working towards practicing for the specific types of questions the COM2 exam will have. She broke down what the COM2 exam will contain: A speaking or self-introduction section, listening and speaking portion, a reading comprehension portion, and a writing portion at the end (free handwriting). She told me we should focus on one part at a time for the next several sessions to really pinpoint and prepare for the exam. So, this past week, we started with the self-introduction part of the exam. Although we practiced self-introductions the past semester and a little at the beginning of this semester, Jenna gave me a couple of minutes to talk about myself and things to say and not to say. One big thing that I made a mistake on was introducing myself and my name. I used informal language and Jenna showed me what I should say instead to make it more formal and respectful. Furthermore, she gave me tips on what other things I should talk about in my self-introduction since it must be at least 5 minutes long. So, for homework, she told me to jot down, in English, what things I should say in my self-introduction. Yesterday I came up with a couple of subjects to talk about in my self-introduction including who I live with, my dog, where I live, where I go to school, what my major is, what year I am in, what are some of my hobbies, and what I wish to be when I grow up. There are a couple of words that I am not sure on how to pronounce in Korean so I will ask Jenna next week. Furthermore, Jenna and I planned on mastering self-introductions the next session and then continuing on to the next part of the COM2 exam: the listening portion. I predict that it will not be too difficult for me to learn because I am fairly confident in my ability to speak and listen in Korean. I hope to finish the second section of listening on the COM2 exam by the end of the next bi-weekly journal entry.

I think the effectiveness of my strategies of learning Korean has been working efficiently and has proved to become helpful. I can see my improvement in reading, writing, and listening. In the future, I hope to build on what I have learned, continuing to read, write, and listen in Korean to further my proficiency in Korean. I also think that I have become a lot prouder of being Korean. Before I started this SDLC course, I was embarrassed to speak and write Korean at such a low level. But now I feel like I am gaining more confidence and pride in learning and knowing Korean. I will continue to listen to music in Korean and practice writing sentences, but I will also attempt to find new strategies to help me learn Korean. My short term and long-term goals still remain the same as the last bi-weekly journal entry: Writing full and compound sentences and preparing to take the COM2 Exam.

For this week, we finished another episode of "Reply 1994" during our group meeting. For the individual meeting, we went over some basic greetings and sentences that we would use very frequently.

Saying hello

During these past two weeks, Reba and I have had many great sessions together! We are continuing with using Zoom so I can record and refer back to the signs. We continued to work on vocabulary and just had random conversations so I could get more practice.

I have been learning the signs for who, what, when, where, and how so that I can start asking questions. Reba usually asks me multiple questions using these signs, so I get the practice of recognizing them. This past week I have been practicing signing opposite words. When Reba signs “right”, I have to remember and sign back “wrong”. We have been doing this for a couple of sessions, so I am pretty good at responding quickly, but I will sometimes only understand one of the words and forget its opposite. This is where the perks of Zoom come in because all I have to do to review the material is to just replay the recording. When learning a new language, repetition is key. Even though we repeat the same words and its opposites each class, some of the signs are still difficult to remember, but I do improve each time!

After learning more vocabulary and trying to teach my friends a couple of signs, I realized that there are many unrelated signs that are so similar to each other. It makes sense that the sign for mom and dad or for sister and brother are similar, but the signs for “deaf” and “home” are also quite similar but are not related.

I also learned new feeling words, which were so helpful! Every time Reba and I meet, we ask each other, “How are you?”, but my vocabulary was limited to good, fine, and okay. Now I am able to express my emotions in various ways such as frustrated, angry, or embarrassed (although I hope I don’t have to use those).

The highlight of the two weeks was this past Thursday near the end of our session when Reba and I shared funny stories from when we were younger. Her stories were so engaging and even though I couldn’t understand each detail, I had so much fun watching her share it. When it was my turn, I was a bit anxious because I only knew general vocabulary. I shared my go to story about falling through the ceiling of my church and my attempt to make carrot juice. I did my best with the signs, but if there was a word I didn’t know, I would fingerspell my way through and Reba would show me the sign for that word. Through those short, 3-minute stories, I was able to practice and learn valuable conversational signs.

When I rewatched this recording, I noticed that I tend to look away from the computer when I fingerspell. Although I do this unintentionally to think about the sign for the letters, I know that I have to work on keeping my eyes on the screen so that I do not miss anything if Reba tells me something. I also want to practice fingerspelling more often during the week so that the letters come more naturally to me.

Week 4 Reflection

            At this point, we are really starting to settle into a routine. The format and schedule that we laid out in the beginning is panning out perfectly and I am very happy with the way things are going. My goals of improving in Speaking and Listening are really developing, but perhaps I could do more in terms of Writing and Reading. While I practice it weekly for the same amount of time that we have our discussions, I feel like it is maybe less intensive and there is less immediate pressure on me while doing it so I do not feel the improvement as much. I do not mean that pressure and situations that are typically more higher stress situations for language learners are necessary or the only way to really learn a language, but in my experience they certainly help. For example, direct language immersion in the region where the target language is spoken is generally one of the fastest ways to learn a language for a variety of reasons, one of them being surrounded by it and regularly finding oneself in more high-pressure situations than a classroom in order to order food and survive there.

            We have finalized our syllabus and are starting in on the first chapters of the book. One of the concepts that I struggled with and that we needed to spend the most time on was the difference between the verbs ser, estar and ficar. Ser and estar exist in Spanish and thankfully the difference between them is the same in Portuguese as it is in Spanish: ser is used for more permanent, unchangeable, characteristic concepts and estar is used for changeable states and aspects. However, ficar was an entirely new word and concept as there is not really an equivalent in English or Spanish. It was similar to estar but with very nuanced differences, in my opinion. It can be used to describe locations, or sometime temporary states usually in the past tense. For example, you could say :the restaurant é [ser] on Main Street”, “Jorge está [estar] sitting in the restaurant”, and “Jorge ficava [ficar] in the restaurant a long time before the waiter noticed him”. So here ficar has a more similar meaning to “stay” than “was/be” (even though they would both work), but you could also say “she vai ficar mad that you canceled the show”, meaning she will get so mad or be so mad, which is closer to “be” than “stay” even though it almost has the connotation of both.

            I tripped up on those in a lot of exercised that we did and I felt like it changed meanings and rules every time, but eventually I got a good enough grasp of it to get the general concept, use it a couple times in our conversation the following week, and leave the larger grasping of the concept of it in every situation that exists for something that will come with practice and better overall knowledge of the language. 

For the past weeks, I have been focusing on learning Vietnamese grammar, especially classifiers. I found that similar other languages like English, Japanese, and Chinese most of the classifiers indicate the shape of objects e.g. "strand" as a classifier usually indicates an object that is thin and flexible such as hair or fur. According to Giang Pham and Kathryn Kohnert from the University of Minnesota, “Vietnamese has been reported to have as few as three words that arguably could be considered ['classifiers' to as many as 200].” For the sakes of learning one thing at a time, I have decided to focus on “unit classifiers” which are words or affixes that accompanies a noun to indicate the unit of said noun.

A few words I have picked up in the past week that can be considered “unit classifiers” are:

• cái                                                                   used for inanimate objects                                            
• chiếc                                                               used similar to cái                                                             
• con                                                                  used for animals and children
• người                                                              used for people
• bài                                                                   used for compositions
• câu                                                                  used for sentential constructs
• cây                                                                  used for stick-like objects
• chuyện                                                            used for a general topic
• lá                                                                     used for smaller sheets of paper
• tòa                                                                   used for buildings
• quả/trái                                                             used for round objects
• quyển/cuốn                                                       used for books
• tờ / trang                                                           used for objects made of paper
• việc                                                                   used for an event or a process

I have used most these words before in countless conversations but there are some that I know but do not ever use such as: lá, tòa, quả, quyển, tờ, and việc. An explanation for this is likely regional dialect and education. I was taught to use the southern dialect, so I suspect certain classifiers are simply more common in the southern dialect and therefore more comfortable for me to use. For things like books, I have always used cuốn rather than quyển, and for papers, I have always used trang rather than tờ, et cetera. The Vietnamese classifier system is said to closely resemble the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese classifier system in that the noun can often be omitted if the subject had previously been established.

Additionally, something that I found extremely interesting is cái – often used as a universal classifier similar to the Japaneseつand the Chinese 个 – is almost never translated when used because there is not really an English equivalent. I think that cái can be roughly translated to “it” which is not a classifier, but the word is general enough to carry the same weight as cái in terms of a definition. For example:

Con cần mua bút                                I (child) need to buy pens

Máy cái                                                 how many (of it)

2 cái                                                       2 (of it)

But of course, this excessive usage of “it” or “of it” would make any conversations or sentences sound unnatural and since there is no other English equivalent (unless one wants to continuously uses the noun) cái is usually dropped when translated.

 Another thing that I’ve learned in the past week is that there is a difference between “classifiers” and “measure nouns”. On the surface, they are very similar but they have different characteristics.

These readings helped me to contextualize the history of Indonesia and the role of language in this development. I knew that Bahasa Indonesian was only recently established as a nationally unifying language, but I did not know how this particular language became the official one and how other cultures helped shape this history. I also did not realize how many people speak Bahasa Indonesian: this language is actually often ranked as the sixth most commonly spoken language in the world. Beyond Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesian is spoken in Singapore, Brunei, and Malaysia, among other places. These readings helped me to contextualize the history of Indonesia and the role of language in this development. I knew that Bahasa Indonesian was only recently established as a nationally unifying language, but I did not know how this particular language became the official one and how other cultures helped shape this history. I also did not realize how many people speak Bahasa Indonesian: this language is actually often ranked as the sixth most commonly spoken language in the world. Beyond Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesian is spoken in Singapore, Brunei, and Malaysia, among other places. Indonesia is part of the Austronesian language family, which includes the Pacific, Southeast Asia, and some parts of Australia. The language has overlap with languages spoken in the Philippines, Hawaii, and Madagascar, among other places. I enjoyed looking at a chart that compared numbers 1-10 in different Austronesian languages - there is a lot of similarities in the languages. Indonesian comes directly from Malay, which began in Sumatra as an official court language and continued to serve as a common language for business exchanges. Today, Bahasa Indonesian is the Lingua Franca, or official language students study in schools and use for formal business encounters and navigation of daily life. It became the official language in 1928 through the Young People’s vow. This unifying means of communication strengthened the Indonesian collective identity and led to independence. At home, though, most Indonesians speak a local dialect. There are more than 700 local languages across the archipelago of Indonesia Bahasa Indonesian is still not the first language for many people - Javanese, Balinese, and Sudanese among others continue to be more widely practiced. 
Indonesia was colonized by the dutch, but unlike many other colonized countries, Bahasa Indonesian did not absorb much influence from the Dutch language. Religious groups did participate in the development of the language: Malay, or now Bahasa Indonesian, was the language used by missionaries, and Muslims helped switch the script used for the language from Jawi to Arabic. My Indonesian instructor has told us that many Indonesian names have Arabic influences because a large percentage of the population practices Islam.  Given that Indonesian is a lingua franca, it is designed to be pretty easy to learn - simplified grammatical constructions. Throughout the archipelago, there are many dialects and variations. For example, the way people use verbs that begin with ber- varies. Knowing the history of Bahasa Indonesia clarifies that if I am in a rural placement as an ETA, the primary language of my host community is not Bahasa Indonesia. To participate fully in their culture, the part below the iceberg, I will want to learn the local language. Fortunately, knowing Bahasa Indonesian will allow me to navigate daily life across the archipelago. Languages change over time based on who is using them. When people stop using the language, they inevitably die because people do not pass them on to the next generation. Politics and history also play big roles, as seen by the influence of colonization in many places. Indonesia is a unique case where it did not absorb the dutch language. Increases in technology and increased contact with speakers of different languages, so that languages begin to merge and common vocabulary becomes necessary for everyday exchanges. 
I think that geography, the why of where, can be an extremely valuable discipline for linguists to track, predict, and extrapolate changes in languages. For example, there are many ways to create maps that would help track migration and population and interactions between different cultures. Physical proximity seems like it would be a key indicator that a language has the potential to change. Language is always changing, though national languages may make such evolution hard to perceive. I think linguists can learn a lot about how language is being used informally through social media. In this informal, realtime, virtual space, linguists can study how people actually are engaging with language as forms of communication and notice trending slang words. 

One aspect of Korean culture that is not traditional but is still an essential part of modern Korea is the idea of electronic sports or esports. The competitive gaming scene in Korea is a multi-billion dollar industry where individuals or teams represent their sponsors in video games. This may seem like a strange concept to foreigners and especially older folk who have only seen physical sports in their lifetime but electronic sports have taken over the Korean culture for many reasons. 

One possible reason is that the newer generation has grown up in a time of relative peace and luxury. Technology has accelerated and people are always searching for something new. Video games became a fundamental part of many of these younger generations’ lives. This is highlighted by the existence of PC Bangs or gaming centers where people can pay a fee to use computers to play video games. These PC Bangs often double as restaurants and studying locations that students would visit after school. This is reminiscent of the arcades that were popular in North America in the previous decades, just significantly more advanced. This abundance of time and convenience inevitably led to great competition among the youth and one video game exacerbated that, Starcraft.

The Starcraft game franchise brought in millions of players across the world and its popularity was at its peak in Korea in the early 2000s. Starcraft is a real time strategy game or RTS for short, where players build a base and units to fight against each other. This game dominated the esports scene in Korea like nothing else and made esports a legitimate industry worth investing in. Many Starcraft tournaments were televised and thus drew in more people into the community with prize rewards in the millions. With the availability of computers through PC Bangs, video games became even more popular and the best of the player base became professional esports players much like professional athletes. Once this path became a possibility, the esports scene only grew and more people strived to become the very best like no one ever was. Once major corporations got involved in team sponsorships and prize money, esports became a mainstream part of Korean entertainment. Many esports players essentially became celebrities because of how quickly esports became the norm. 

Although Starcraft dominated the Esports scene in Korea and made competitive video games a culture phenomena in the Korean Peninsula and abroad, eventually more games offered a similar competitive drive and monetary reward for professional esports players. The next titan of a video game was LoL, League of Legends, one of the most popular video games ever created. Video games may seem like an insignificant part of entertainment that are only for children but recent years have demonstrated how large of an industry it is. Esports is a link between Korea and other countries because some of the best esports players in the world are Korean. Although Electronic sports is not limited to Korea, esports is without a doubt an essential artifact of Korean culture. 

The task that I worked on this week was to review the batchim rules that I had learned last week. This also included diving into pronunciation and a bit of sentence structure. Somyung and I also reviewed some particles that I had watched videos on. This mainly focused on subject and object markers in a sentence. These are 은/는 and 이/가 respectively. These particles are essential to marking where the subject and object in a sentence are and most sentences will not make sense without them. We briefly discussed the other particles but they will come up when necessary. 

The other topic that we touched on were verbs and the appropriate tenses that are associated with them. We looked into present tenses and learned that many Korean grammar rules aim to make speech as fluid as possible. Thus, rules are often based on if the word or words end with a consonant or vowel and giving bachims where appropriate. In present tense verbs, this was crux so that was not too difficult. The rules for past tense were much more complicated than this. There was a mechanical style to updating a verb to be past tense that involved removing 다, which signified a verb, and adding 었/았 depending on some conditions. There seem to be several rules that I have to learn through consistent usage and practice here. After adding these new characters, 다/어요, were added back to the end to conclude the transformation. After this, there are certain words that can be omitted. I have not yet learned the extent to which simplification is done but it is a part of Korean language to shorten things for convenience thus far. 

We also jumped into the topic of facial features and body parts in general. We created a diagram of a human in an online whiteboard and named each part incrementally. This is very useful and fun since I did the drawing and writing of body parts. However, this does seem quite difficult to memorize. 

One part of my practice plan that was quite helpful was using youtube videos to learn difficult grammar. The set of videos to learn Korean on youtube is quite extensive, which I appreciate and my language partner already had quite a few sources that could help me learn in depth some difficult topics. For example, I learned the significance and usage of some particles from watching channels like Korean Unnie and Talk to Me In Korean.  I will continue using youtube to learn more about Korean grammar and also use it as a tool to immerse myself in Korean culture. Another aspect of entertainment that has been quite useful in learning Korean is Korean variety shows. One thing that I learned recently was how some English words and Korean words sound the same in a song even to native korean speakers. This technique was discussed in depth in the show How Do You Play regarding the song Maria. The word Maria is pronounced the same as the korean word for mean, 말이야. This type of word-play is very common in Korean entertainment.

The Korean language is a part of the Altaic family. The Altaic family of languages originates from northern Asia and encompasses other languages such as Mongol, Turkish, Finnish, Hungarian, and Tungusic. Some words in Korean are written using a combination of borrowed Chinese words which demonstrates the dominance that Chinese culture had during these last few thousand years. This is a common occurrence in most languages in Asia; nearly all of these areas were heavily influenced by the Chinese language. However, unlike Chinese, Korean dialects are not completely unintelligible to each other. There are differences in pronunciation and stress but do not alter too much. In the case of Chinese dialects, each is completely different from another dialect. This can be tied to the size of China and the size of the Korean Peninsula. In this case, size does matter to the history of Korean language since it exemplifies how development was fairly centralized in comparison to China. Additionally, Chinese and Korean come from different language families anyway. 

These considerations are significant in that they reveal how the flow of language progresses over time and it was quite different than what I had initially thought. Thus certain cultural factors can be accounted for as a legacy of linguistic history. I am not too familiar with the other Altaic family languages so I can not make a definitive comparison between Korean culture and the other Altaic languages. I can however take into account the history significance of Chinese culture on Korean culture. I am not sure what pragmatic questions of usage would be necessary for Korean or what contemporary realization entails but I would be interested in what native Koreans feel about the connection with their language family. It could be that there is no real connection that natives feel about this linguistic history.

It is interesting how the article discussed using a computer to determine the location of a certain language. Initially, an archeological discovery was made that fueled a theory regarding the origin of Indo-European languages. That theory turned out to be accurate beside the results of the computer calculations but there is still some dispute regarding the research done. To extrapolate from this example, the linguists of the future may use machine learning to break down all of a language’s history. I have studied a bit of machine learning and artificial intelligence and have learned that human error from misrepresentation of statistical data. In the case of determining a language family’s origin, I do agree that there is room for error based on how the parameters were initially set up. 

This also dips into the discussion of how languages change over time. Some parameters discussed where the present geographical location of languages were. Thus a conclusion we can draw from this is that languages drift and take on the culture of the locations that they pass through. This is significant because every language is an amalgamation of the areas that I passed through and is continually transformed by other languages and cultures.

Howdy, Howdy, Howdy! I hope all my fellow readers have had an amazing two weeks. These past two weeks, we started examining the difference in signs in terms of directional verbs. In this, I mean Reba, and I started discussing the differences in the signs of, for example, “receive”. If I were to receive something from someone, the sign for such a gesture is different that if I were to give something to someone else in which they received something. Just to be clear, clear, and receive are different signs. However, when referring to receive, depending on who is the receiver will change the sign. The change in the sign is subtle though. At first glance, one might even say the sign is the same, but once Reba slowed down the sign, it became much clearer. The receiver of the received item will dictate where the sign starts either motioning away or towards the body. Another example of such directional verbs is the sign for “invitation”. Reba and I had a 10 minutes discussion in which I was trying to understand the difference between the sign of “I was invited to a Christmas party by you” and “I invited you to a Christmas party”. The difference in the verb “invite” once again is modified based on the starting and ending point of the sign. Although I do understand that ASL is a complex language and different from that of English, I am continuously baffled at the subtle complexities of the language. Much of my past learning has been pure terminology strengthening and expansions. However, as I begin to progress towards the development and creation of phrases and sentences, it becomes ever more evident the complexities of the language. I find myself, when signing, speaking English, and then translating into ASL. This is a bad habit on multiple accounts as 1) English and ASL are not the same. In fact, ASL originates from French sign language which originates from French. Thus, my grammar and sentence structure have somewhat deviated from the proper terminology. 2) ASL lacks small transition words such as “a”, “the”, “as” and etc. When I think of my thoughts in English and translate them to ASL, in addition to having to remember the sentence structure as well as the correct sign, I also have to eliminate my usage of said transition words. 3) All of this thinking when I am signing interferes with my ability to express my signs in my face. Due to the fact that ASL does not have vocal tones, expression, meaning, and intensity are greatly indicated by the speed and expressiveness of one’s signs as well as their facial expressions. As I work hard and think about the language, I know my “thinking face” often inhabits my expression, altering my expression and meaning. Of course, when learning a new language, there will be difficulties. Regardless, I do hope to improve and fall out of these bad habits soon. I know it may take time, as well as a greater amount of emersion.

Vietnam is already world-renowned for its cuisine, particularly street food, so it is not surprising that Vietnamese drinks are also very popular and have a culture of their own, albeit not as globally recognized as other cultural aspects. In addition to street food stands, Vietnamese markets and roadsides are also home to a variety of street side drinks carts, roadside bars, and makeshift cafes.

One cannot talk about Vietnamese's food and drink culture without mentioning Cà Phê Sữa Đá [Vietnamese Iced Milk Coffee]. Vietnam is the world's second-largest coffee producer. Initially brought into the country in the 19th century, coffee not only quickly became a daily staple but also a cash crop. Today, Vietnam produces more than 1.73 million tons of coffee a year. While Vietnam is the world's second largest exporter of coffee, bit primarily invests in the production of Robusta coffee.  Robusta coffee beans has about twice the amount of caffeine of regular coffee beans and strong taste as well as higher acidity. Authentic Vietnamese coffee is almost always drip coffee and is brewed using a Phin, which is a small cup with a filter chamber and lid to catch dripping coffee. It is then mixed with ice and condensed milk to counter the bitter and acidic taste of the brewed coffee. The drink is enjoyed throughout the day, despite its high caffeinated and sugar content, and can be found all over the country.

Another way to enjoy the bitter Robusta coffee is Cà Phê Trứng [Vietnamese Egg Coffee]. Cà Phê Trứng is made using sugar, milk, coffee, and of course, an egg. Milk and sugar are whipped with egg yolks and heated. Then coffee is poured onto the egg mixture to create a coating layer of foam. This type of coffee is primarily found in Hà Nội as it is not very popular among the southern Vietnamese population.

In addition to being one of the top producers of coffee beans, Vietnam also a producer of fresh fruits, primarily tropical fruits such as coconuts and oranges. As a result, fresh fruit juice is a staple in the Vietnamese daily life. Unlike the packaged juice in the west, however, the fruit juice sold on the roadside are made to order in that the fruit is cut and juice as needed rather than being prepackaged. A traditionally popular fresh drink, however, is nước mía (sugar cane juice) – a type of reed/grass. The stem of the reed is put through a compressor to extract the ‘sugary nectar’. The nectar is then mixed with the juice of a calamansi to make a sweet and tangy drink.

Finally, trà sữa trân châu or just trà sữa (boba tea) is a personal favorite. Although it did not originate from Vietnam, trà sữa is gaining popularity in the recent years among the younger population. The drink is a mixture of tea and fruit or milk, topped with tapioca balls (boba) or a variety of flavored jellies. The drink can be found all over the country, but most chains are primarily found in southern cities like Hồ Chí Minh cities near active night life areas and schools.

Chuseok, also known as Korean Thanksgiving or the harvest festival, is an important holiday celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar on the full moon. It is common that Koreans return to their ancestral hometowns to eat traditional foods with family. In fact, train and plane tickets are usually sold out three months in advance. Although it’s true that food is often associated with Chuseok, the significance of Chuseok actually is to remember and spend time with family. It’s not uncommon that families visit their ancestor’s graves and perform different rituals to honor their memory. It’s similar to American thanksgiving in the aspect of sharing meals with family members. However, Korean Thanksgiving emphasizes more of the ancestors that are not alive while American Thanksgiving is focused on living family members. 

I remember celebrating Korean Thanksgiving when I live in Korea. I remember the taste of the soft sweet rice cake, Songpyeon. I remember helping my mom and grandmother make them while trying my best to contain my drooling. There was also Hangwa which is a Korean cookie. Hangwa is a desert food that is usually decorated with many different colors, textures, and patterns. Hang is generally made with rice flour, honey, fruit, and roots. I used to think that Hangwa was food for old people because it was considered a desert but was not that sweet. My favorite Korean Chuseok food is probably Japchae. Japchae is stir-fried glass noodles mixed with often with beef many vegetables such as onions, spinach mushrooms. The best combo is to have rice and kimchi with Japchae.

I also remember some of the games we used to play with my family. My favorite game we played together was Dak Sa Um, Chicken Fight. It’s a game where both players bring one of their ankles up above the knee and attempt to knock down the other person’s knee while standing on one leg. It definitely would get intense and physical, but it was loads of fun even though due to my size I did not win too many games. My family has not celebrated Chuseok in a while. We do however celebrate American Thanksgiving. Yet, I definitely do miss celebrating Chuseok. 

Following the traditions of your culture, the traditions that your ancestor had also participated in, gives you a distinct sense of fulfillment in ways that you feel like you are getting to know yourself better. I think that is something I have noticed during Thanksgiving. My family celebrates it because that’s what American families do. Yet, I have no individual attachment towards the American holiday because my ancestors and I cannot relate to it. Nevertheless, I’m glad that we still celebrate some sort of thanksgiving because it’s a time where we as a family come together and appreciate each other. I believe that most holidays are significant because of the gathering of family. It’s a time where you pause the mundane things of life to remember your roots and loved ones. Likewise, Chuseok is no different.

I am very excited by the progress I am making in Indonesian. The switch to meeting synchronously three times a week and having independent assignments twice a week has been especially helpful. 

We had our first monthly assignment, part one was to write about why we were studying Indonesian (at least ten lines typed). Farida, my language teacher, then gave us feedback to make sure we were using proper grammar. Once we had these ideas written down, we had to make a video of ourselves talking through the prompt, but the catch was that we do so without reading a script. I had to practice reading through my written version many times, and then I adjusted what I was saying to use vocabulary that felt more natural to me. For example, rather than talk through my original reason for wanting to learn about religious diversity based on my studies, I instead phrased it as wanting to go to diverse places of worship. This sentence construction flowed more naturally so it felt like I was communicating rather than speaking from memorization. 

Last week, we talked about occupations (I can now tell everyone that I’m an artist who loves to paint) and places to visit in Indonesia. The landscapes we saw were beautiful, and they make me want to visit! This past week, we learned about animals. While at this moment, I don’t have much need to talk about elephants, lions, and monkeys right now, but the vocabulary was still helpful and allowed us to practice using colors. I think I’m getting a pretty good handle on verbs. I can easily say what I want to do but could expand my adjective and noun vocabulary. My goal this weekend is to work on transferring all this new vocabulary into my vocabulary notebook. When I need to find a word, I’ve been just using the Mango language translator. I think it may be helpful to push myself to use my dictionary so that I am looking at my handwriting, which may aid with memory retention and making sure to review the vocabulary we have covered in past classes to build on. For our daily vocabulary reports, I have noticed that I can use them correctly in a sentence, but I have not been effective in committing these words to my long term memory. This week, my goal is to take these vocabulary memorizations seriously and try some different strategies on testing myself to make sure I remember the words. I have had a hard time remembering numbers greater than ten. Learning how to count big numbers correctly is very important for navigating daily life in Indonesia so that I can buy food at the market. Even for small purchases, the denominations are much bigger than in the United States.  A pound of rice may cost 7,000 rupiahs! The other students and I did a role play of being in the market, and it was very tricky to tell the customer how much her items cost. I know that striving to say and hear these numbers accurately will help me in Indonesia so I will do some extra practice during the upcoming weeks!

In my geography class a couple of weeks ago, we were exploring the Environmental Justice Atlas. This map includes case studies of environmental justice issues from all over the world, including many in Indonesia. For this cultural post, I will be focusing on the Wawonii islanders of Sulawesi and how they are responding to unwanted nickel mining permits. Here is a link to the study, which is called "Islanders Resisting Nickel Mining Permits." https://ejatlas.org/conflict/islanders-resisting-nickel-mining-permits-wawonii-southeast-sulawesi-indonesia

The report soberingly acknowledges that despite many years of hard work from the local people fighting these corporate investors, environmental injustice persists. Destructive nickel extraction continues to threaten the community’s traditional fishing practice: nickel contaminates the water, and biodiversity challenged as mining changed the landscape. It does not help that the governing body, known as the Konawe Kepulauan (Konkep) Regency, actively supports the international actors. To these government leaders, the success of the nickel exports over the wellbeing of people. The locals, partnered with the student-, environmental-, and faith-based organizations, have been engaging in many forms of activism, ranging from protests to art-based initiatives. Unfortunately, this vigor has been met with police militarization and state-sanctioned violence. Despite the messiness of this situation and enormous obstacles, the local islanders are facing, I grateful that this study emphasized the autonomy of the local community. I felt like I was able to empathize with the work these people were doing together as they worked to preserve their traditional way of life and ancestral land. 

This issue becomes complex when we realize that the nickel extracted in Wawonii is used for electric car batteries, which we consider an ideal green standard in the United States. This example of local Indonesian culture forces me to think about the interdependency of scales. Even though Wawonii is halfway across the world, my consumer preferences and purchases affect their livelihood. And is this digital age, I can get involved in environmental issues in Indonesia. The bottom of the study includes many links to videos, articles, and even Twitter campaigns. 

The Environmental Justice Atlas provides an authentic artifact that goes beyond celebrating the rich artistic traditions and food culture of Indonesia to grapple with the real problems that members of this country are facing. From this study, I learned how Indigenous Indonesians are committed to protecting their ancestral land to honor past generations and those to come. This is but one example of a courageous community that is willing to work together to preserve their traditional way of life. And yet, I also see that the western countries have influenced the governing structure, i.e., the institution of the police. I was struck by how the images resonate with those we have seen in the United States from Black Lives Matter protests. From my Race and Crime sociology class, I know that the police came out of the slave codes as a way of maintaining order and that such institutions did not always exist in Indonesia. It was painful to see native people are suppressed as violent, disorderly criminals for big corporations to get what they want. 

The topic I am interested in exploring is how Indigenous Indonesian communities relate to the land and how these relationships illuminate ways to work for environmental justice and confront climate change. I will begin my research using the environmental justice atlas, a resource my geography sustainability course.  The following two examples exemplify how this proposed topic relates to linguistics.

During our class discussion of culture and language a couple of classes weeks ago, the Sapir-Wharf hypothesis caught my attention. This experiment illuminated how our language shapes our worldview and the way we engage with the world. As evidence, the study had some subjects identify which of the ten squares was different. To English speakers, it was incredibly difficult to see differences between these color samples, which all appeared to be green. But to those of this other particular culture, which has several different words for green, the difference was immediately apparent. However, when shown a blue square amidst a bunch of green ones, these people could not identify it as different because they only have one word that encapsulates blues and greens. As an artist, I found this study incredibly fascinating. I have been painting at the river a lot this semester and doing my best to capture the nuance in colors that I see. I noticed that the ROYGBIV categorization of colors limits my ability to identify unnamable grays and browns of nature. It seems like I have to actively work to get outside of my usual color vocabulary if I want to accurately paint what I see 

I heard another example of how language shapes the way we perceive the world when I attended a keynote speech by the indigenous scientist and writer Robin Kimmerer. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer greeted the audience in her native tongue, which is endangered. She noted how her teachers ask her to use it whenever possible to keep it alive. At the end of the talk, an audience member who was an interdisciplinary artist interested in endangered languages asked about the importance of learning indigenous languages. Kimmerer affirmed that her native tongue promotes a reciprocal relationship that acknowledges the personhood of nature. For example, English positions humans as superior to everyone else with gendered pronouns while everything else is an objective "it." In Kimmerer’s native tongue, plants are spoken of as brothers and sisters. In Bahasa Indonesian, there are no articles whatsoever, so people and animals are on the same level. I am curious, though, about gendered nouns in indigenous Indonesian languages. 

In my Indonesian class, we have talked about different occupations, such as farming, so I know some relevant words for my topic. We have also discussed different places to eat, but have not gone over how Indonesians, especially those living in rural locations, produce food. I will talk with my language instructor about having a culture class about Indonesian land practices. Alternatively, I can plan to ask her about how Indonesians relate to the land and environmental justice issues during a one-on-one tutoring session. Overall, I am excited to learn how language shapes local Indonesians' sustainability worldviews. 

The movie Cidade de Deus is one of the most famous Brazilian movies, nominated for four Oscars. It is a breathtaking story of life in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil between the years of the late 1960’s and early 1980’s. It is based on a novel of the same name written in 1997, and the move was released in 2002.  

The film is committed to showing an authentic vision of grisly life in the favelas and seems to do so with much success. Only one actor in the entire film had previous acting experience, and the rest were recruited from the actual favelas and given a short training before they started filming.     

Favelas, for a bit of background historical knowledge, are settlements that emerged in the late 1800’s as soldiers had come to Rio to fight but had absolutely nowhere to live so they built their own houses that grew to become entire communities on Providência hill, between the city center and the sea. The government gave these soldiers the right to do live there in this way, but as soon as many former African slaves moved in, the areas quickly became overcrowded, dirty, and suffered outbreaks of disease. These communities were largely abandoned by the government, meaning they had no governmental justice system, sanitation, electricity, water, etc. and were associated with intense squalor, crime, and poverty. At the same time, many wealthy white Europeans were moving in (at this time, Rio was the capital of Brazil) and wanted to live near the coast in the center of the city, close to where the favelas are, and the government began their first wave of attempts to vacate the favelas and relocate the people to make room for gentrification. Later on, another wave of people joined as Brazil saw a massive wave of urbanization in the early 1940’s and 1950’s. Leading up to then, many of the cities were succeeding in gentrifying: becoming wealthier, pushing out the lower classes, and as the wealth began to concentrate in the hands of the relatively few elite in urban areas and the majority of the population had become poor and rural, soon many people had to commute into the city to work where all the money was - often traveling several towns over. (Interestingly, this is the meaning behind the song “Trem das Onze/11 o’clock Train” by Adoniran Barbosa comes from, a song we listened to in Portuguese for Spanish Speakers with Professor Abreu, referring to the commuter lifestyle of many at the time.) With this second influx came another wave of attempts to remove the inhabitants out of the favelas during the reign of a militaristic government in the 1970’s.

One of these government housing relocation sites was the famous Cidade de Deus, which exists in real life (also interesting- Former President Obama visited the favela of Cidade de Deus in 2011). However, after relocating them, the government for the most part ceased investing in these government housing locations and they fell back into the same state of favela from which they had been removed. At this time, the drug trade was growing internationally and cocaine became a major element of the crime in the favelas, among accompanying arms trade and gang violence, which are the main elements of the movie.

For my second cultural post, I decided to watch a documentary about Korean foods and street vendors. I searched on YouTube “Korean Food Documentary” and found one particular documentary that interested me. The link attached below, and the documentary was around 40 minutes long. It was aired on the Discovery channel in English, but there are many parts in the documentary that includes Korean native speakers as well as Korean subtitles throughout the whole documentary. I was able to learn about the Korean food culture as well as learn to understand and improve upon Korean speaking and reading. The subtitles were very difficult to read fast at the beginning of the documentary, but by the end of it, I was able to pick up on it pretty quickly. It was really cool to see familiar Korean words in the subtitles and I was able to identify what they were saying in some of the sentences. A couple of times throughout the documentary, they interviewed street vendors as well as customers who buy food in Korea. It was really interesting to hear the different accents and tones of the different native Korean speakers, and I was able to understand most of what they were trying to say. Looking at the foods from the documentary, there were a lot of foods that I recognized and have eaten before from Korean restaurants or from dinner with my family at home. The documentary dove into the history of Korean food culture and how each kind of food became popular in Korea. I learned a lot about the history of commonly popular street foods such as Hoppang. Overall, I was very fascinated after I finished the documentary because of all the new information I learned about my country’s food culture. The biggest difference between Korean food culture and American food culture is the way the food is presented. Korean food comes with an entrée as well as many different side dishes called “bonchon.” Different from American food where it is mostly one main entrée and only a couple of side dishes, Korean meals usually come with at least 5 different sides or bonchon. A great way to think about the layout of Korean means is like Thanksgiving dinner. For Thanksgiving, we tend to create many side dishes to accompany the main turkey and ham. Similar to this, Korean meals have rice and meat as the entrees and side dishes like soup, kimchi, tofu, etc. to accompany their main meal. Many of the Korean side dishes are made from vegetables and that is what makes Korean food so healthy. A lot of the bonchons are fermented over many weeks to create a unique flavor. This is very common for side dishes like Kimchi. Overall, I am pleased with what I have come out with from this documentary. I learned and improved on Korean reading by reading the subtitles in Korean. I have improved on my listening in Korean from the different interviews of Korean natives in the documentary. And lastly, I have learned about the core culture of Korean food and how history plays a big role in the food.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpQ94EkzG6c&ab_channel=miky1209

In the recent years, I have been paying more attention to how public schools support students who need more accommodations. Since one of my family members has low vision, I learned that finding reliable technology and resources to have similar school experiences as the other students can be difficult. We have moved from different states in the past years, but we were fortunate to be able to attend the schools that had access to resources such as magnification systems and large print materials each time. Knowing about the accommodations schools are required to provide for students with low vision and for those who are blind got me interested in researching how the school system supports those students who are hard of hearing or for those who are deaf.

Although there are certain schools for the deaf and for the blind, over 75% of deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) students attend the mainstreamed public schools in the United States. There are many pros and cons for each system, but the decision should be made with the child as the top priority. Although mainstream schools can better prepare students for the hearing world, there won’t be many DHH students and deafness can be seen as a disability. Deaf schools accept and embrace Deaf culture, but people may have trouble finding a school close to them.

Unlike most mainstream school students who attend the full day with their designated school teacher, DHH students have slightly different schedules. They receive assistance from a teacher of deaf or hard of hearing (TODHH) for about 50% of the school day, a portion of their day attending the routine general education class, and the remainder of their day receiving instructions from the TODHH. DHH students can also have professional sign and oral interpreters to help them communicate with the people around them depending on how the school is funded. For this system to succeed, the students must be academically and socially be integrated in school. This would mean that they must participate in class activities, have access to the learning materials, and be accepted by their peers.

We know that appropriate support such as classroom sound field or FM systems can be provided by the schools so that the students are able to understand the speaker better, but this will only apply to those who are hard of hearing and not for those students who are completely deaf. The academic integration has also been found to be more successful. DHH students academically perform better when they spend more time in a general classroom setting compared to those in a self-contained room. Still, it has also been found that it was more difficult for these students to communicate during group discussions compared to communicating with the teacher.

Even though we know a lot about the mainstream school structure for DHH students, there are still many unknowns such has the specific instructions of the TODHH and if it is actually effective and beneficial to be taught by a TODHH. Furthermore, though students can receive assistance during school, they can find it more challenging to participate in extracurricular activities and therefore can miss out on social integration. I believe that many schools do try their best to accommodate all their students in school, but I think there should be more resources so that these students can also fully experience the social aspect of school.

Sources:

https://hearmeoutcc.com/mainstream-school-vs-deaf-school/

http://www.raisingandeducatingdeafchildren.org/2014/01/01/deaf-and-hard-of-hearing-students-in-the-mainstream/

After watching the "Reply" TV series, I find that the Korean drinking culture to be very interesting and after researching about it, I discover that there are some drinking etiquettes that are pretty similar to that in the Chinese drinking culture from what I know.

1. Senior should do the honour of pouring the first glass

Seniority is respected in Korea and this does not only apply to age, but also to the hierarchy within a company. When you’re out with your friends or colleagues, the most senior person in terms of age or position should be the one pouring the first glass of drink.

Keep in mind that afterwards, the youngest of the group will have to take over and refill the empty glasses. 

2. Pour drinks with both hands

As a show of respect, Koreans generally use one hand to hold the bottle and place the other on their elbow or chest when pouring drinks. If you do find that the bottle is too big to be held with one hand, you can just use both hands. 

3. Receive the drinks with two hands

It’s only polite to reciprocate what you’ve received, be it amongst your friends or co-workers. When receiving drinks from someone older, hold your cup with both hands. However, if you’re the most senior person in the group, you can raise your glass with just one hand.

But Korean drinking rules become less strict when you’re out drinking with close friends, and it’s perfectly fine to use one hand when pouring or receiving drinks. 

Not sure if you and your drinking partner are close enough to bend the rules? Just use both hands – it’s better to be safe than sorry.