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There are two videos about Turkish culture that shaped my understanding of Turkish culture, one of which is about a female Turkish writer and another about a Turkish transgender.

In the first female writer’s TED talk, she talked about her life experience. Growing up in a single-family, she is always the outside in her neighborhood, since, at that time, divorce is not common in Turkish and she lived in a small city when she was a child. She was lonely and had no friends. In order to help her, her mother encouraged her to write down her daily life. However, the lease thing she wanted to do it to face her boring everyday life again, and she began to write fictions. She created many characters from different nations and background. After she grew up, she went to Boston and began to write in English. She felt that writing in English provided a brand-new feeling. According to her, writing in English is more rational and discipline, whereas writing in Turkish is more emotional and imaginative. However, there were some critics assaulted her since her characters did not represent the Turkish culture, and they thought that since she grew up in Turkish, it is her responsibility to embody the Turkish culture into her books. Facing such an absurd requirement, she was determined. She said fictions are fictions. Even though she would write a Turkish woman one day, she would not write a pathetic woman who suffers from an unhappy family and social judgment as other people expects. I was deeply touched and motivated by her TED talk, she showed an amazing woman who is brave enough to challenge the cultural stereotype other people imposed upon her and insisted whatever she believed is right.

Another impressed video is a documentary about a Turkish male to female transgender. Growing up, she loves makeup and floral dresses and regarded herself different from other boys. She lived in a remote small village, and residences there are relatively conservative. In the beginning, no one talked to her because she is different from their traditional perception. She spent a lonely time for several years. One day, she could stand other’s discrimination any more, and burst into a bar and shouted at everybody. Since then, people’ attitude began to change and they realized that she had feelings and emotions as well just like everyone else. Also, he was always willing to help others. She helped the chef to cook for busy hours. She helped women to do house cleaning. She even helped men to renovate the houses. Residences there began to accept her as one of them because of her kindness. They invited her to have dinner and danced with her. They even offered her job opportunities to help her make a living.  However, she was still pessimistic about love. She said no one would love a person like her except for trying to steal her money. After watching this video, I was really impressed by her bravery and kindness. Although she received unfair treatment at the beginning, she is still kind to people and willing to help.

I read a scholarly article named “Aesthetics of Korean foods: The symbol of Korean culture”. Food is definitely a symbol for many cultures, and Korean is one of those. An old Korean proverb says “What looks good tastes good.” It means, ancient Koreans carefully considered both the taste and visual appeal when preparing food. This is similar to a lot of other Asian cultures. In China, there is a similar say that means a good meal combines color, taste, and smell. Today I want to simply discuss a few famous Korean dishes mentioned in this article.

First, Bibimbap. This is probably one of the most widely known Korean food in the world. Bibimbap is a very colorful dish with various colorful vegetables and eggs, which

are mixed with the addition of gochujang (red chili paste), making its texture very different from what it was in the beginning. Its taste is very unique because the mixture of the ingredients gives this dish a taste that is of a different dimension altogether, and yet, also the tastes all of its individual ingredients. This dish truly reflects the character of the Korean people---mixing and harmonization. Some people summarize this Korean character of combining many elements and mixing them into one in an expression “Korean culture is of a bundle culture.” Koreans like to carry any contents in a bundle. Also, the paste gochujang that combines all these ingredients together is an

extraordinary food item. It is impossible to imagine bibimbap without gochujang. The beauty of gochujang is that it not only unites different vegetables into one taste, it also actually combines a variety of tastes with one another. In just this dish, we can see how it represents the collectivism and harmonium of Korean culture.

Next, I want to cover the one food that can represent Korean food----Kimchi. To make kimchi, cabbages need to be mixed well with all kinds of vegetables, Korean red pepper, and jeotgal (fish seasonings). When it produces beneficial elements such as Lactobacilli through the process of fermentation, it can then be called kimchi. Kimchi is food that embodies the concepts of mixing, a leading principle of Korean food. Vegetables are mixed with various seasonings and fermented anchovy or shrimp to make kimchi in a totally different form of food. That is why kimchi is called the best vegetable dish ever invented. Remarkably, only Korean red pepper, among hundreds of kinds of red peppers, can be used to make kimchi. Korean kimchi does not require a lot of salt because it uses red pepper powder to control harmful and beneficial growth. Kimchi could not be stored for a long time in ancient times, even though it can be stored for a couple of days. However,  it can be now stored for a long time in kimchi fridges.

In both of these dish/food I cover and many other Korean dishes, we can see that the concept of mixing emerges. It coincides with the major themes of Korean culture: collectivism, community, harmony. So, the food in culture can often reveal what the culture is like. 

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My first cultural artifact based on my target language (Korean) is one of the most popular songs in Korea currently in the Hip Hop/Pop music genre. The title of the song is "it's been a while" by an artist named Loco. When I first listened to this song, I didn't really understand most of the words. There were only a couple of words that I could make out and understand, but it was hard for me to fully comprehend the actual meaning of the lyrics. 

To better understand the lyrics and the meaning of the song, I first slowed down the song on YouTube to half speed in order to clearly hear the words the artist was saying. This helped me clearly hear some words that I didn't hear the first run through. There were words that were said in a different way, much like slang in English. 

The song itself is very interesting when compared to American pop songs. The beat is a lot different, where the bass isn't as boosted or emphasized. There aren't many high hats or strong, overpowering baselines. The treble sounds and melody are more emphasized in the instrumental. There are also elements of English in this song where the artist says a word in English as he speaks in Korean. The line for this part of the song was: 달라진 건 더 이상 쫄지 않아도 돼 모든 price tags (price tags). In the song, Loco actually says price tag in English. He talks about a girl and how she doesn't have to change her personality and compares her to price tags. At first, I thought it was really odd because the "price tags" kind of came out of nowhere and didn't seem to fit the song. But as I listened to it a couple more times, it actually had a good flow with the song and made it that much more interesting. The whole song is about a girl that the artist was close to in the past and hasn't seen in a while. He reminisces about their past together and how she has influenced him to the person he is now. He still misses her and wants her back, and Loco brings up how much he still loves her. 

The meaning of the song is similar to most pop songs in America, where most songs are about love. But compared to American pop music, there are fewer lyrics about sex, drugs, and guns. I also thought the music video was very interesting in the way it was directed and filmed. Every scene is very simple and odd, but there is deeper meaning within the scenes. To practice reading and understanding Korean, I took the lyrics in Korean and printed it. Then I read through each line and attempted to translate each line and word. After I finished, I looked at the English translation to see if I was somewhat correct in interpreting the lyrics. Furthermore, I listened to the song one last time to recognize all the words I read through. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyHgrjEJtfM

The pronunciation rules are really interesting to me since each language has a different rule, but they share some similarities at the same time. Different from many other counties which use the international phonetic alphabet, Chinese use totally different rules, Pinyin.  Basically, you need to remember the pronunciation of every Chinese character. In English, each word is composed of letters, and each letter has its pronunciation. When those English letters are combined together to form words, you could pronounce the words based on some pronunciation rules even though you do not know the meaning of the words. However, it is totally different in Chinese. In Chinese, if you do not know a character, there is no way that you could guess the pronunciation of the character based on some pronunciation rules. This is the reason why even some Chinese do not know how to pronounce some really unusual and difficult characters.

From this viewpoint, Turkish is more like English. In other words, both Turkish and English are phonetic language, which means that they are spoken hey way they are written, and vise verse. To accomplish that, in 1928 Atatürk introduced a phonetic variant of the Latin alphabet. The letters Q, W, and X were removed and 7 new, rather exotic looking characters were introduced: ç, ğ, ş, ö, ü and ı (undotted i). As a result, the Turkish alphabet consists of 29 letters — eight vowels and twenty-one consonants. Thus, the Turkish pronunciation rule is not overall unfamiliar to me, since the pronunciations of Turkish letters are similar to those of English letters. Actually, the pronunciations of Turkish letters are actually even more easy than those of English, since each English letter may have several different pronunciations, depending on the combination. However, every Turkish letter only has one pronunciation, and they pronounce every letter.

The phonetic inventory of Korean is very different from English. Korean has two parts to a basic word--a prefix and suffix. A Korean word has to have both elements and cannot have just one of the characters. There are many sounds in Korean that are not pronounced in the English language. Similar to the letter "V" to Koreans, there are many characters in the Korean language that does not exist in the English language. ㄲ, ㄸ, ㅃ, ㅆ, ㅉ, ㅊ (kk) (tt) (pp) (ss/t) (jj) (ch). All of these characters in Korean are sounds that the English language does not have. It is important to understand that pronouncing new sounds will be very hard and will take a lot of time to master. Since your mouth is not used to moving in a certain way, it will take muscle memory to learn to pronounce the characters correctly. In order to acquire the ability to discriminate differentiated segments in Korean listening, I will have to listen to native Koreans speak. This will allow me to become accustom to the sounds and voices in the Korean language. In order to pronounce the characters correctly, I will keep using new mouth movements to practice speaking the different characters I am not used to. My student tutor will be able to help me correct my pronunciation and become more familiar with the characters in Korean that are not in the English language. 

Last week, we watched a video about the story of a Turkish man, who has seen himself as a woman since he was little and loved making up and wearing feminine clothes. He lived in a relatively under-developed village and people living in the village are pretty conservative. So for a very long time, every one tried to stay away from him as far as possible and he lived alone, because people considered him as a big weirdo or even a psycho and his parents died when he was around 26. However, he never gave up himself and began to let people accept him by helping all the village people no matter when no matter how as long as he can be helpful. From that time. People began to talk to him and find out he is a really outstanding person, because he is very ebullient and kind person with a soft and sensible heart. Then, many people, including old grandpas, considered him as an important part of the village, or even a member of their family. They invited him to have breakfast every day and they found he is such a perfect person. Afterwards, he got the chance to do a surgery which can turn him into a “real woman” physically, but he refused to do so because he believed it is not necessary anymore and everyone has already accepted him as a woman. He believed those who did not like him before would still not like him even after he did the surgery, which I agreed a lot because some people just would not change their minds in lots of reasons. I was pretty shocked at the beginning when I saw this video, because I’ve been in an environment for a long time that every individual is respected and accepted no matter how different you might be from other people. The public would even stand out and speak for those people who did not earn enough respect because of the difference. I never imagined the situations in some places can be that worse. However, I began to understand the circumstance after further thinking, because in China, LGBT group still cannot be accepted by most of people in China especially people in my parent’s age or older. When browsing some online social medias, you can still see some people would say bad words to this group of people. But with the society making progress, lots of people began to accept and respect the individual difference, because we can see that Chinese people in our age has a really open mind toward LGBT group and we even argue with our parents about whether we should respect the difference. Lots of people, like those village people in the video, were growing up in an environment that they were taught to behave similarly and were not allowed to do things that seemed “abnormal”, so they cannot easily change their perspective or values since they has lived in this environment for half of their lives and they felt “safe” in it. Also, they did not have chances to know a person well since they refused to get any tough with people who look different from the very beginning. However, if they got to know these people, they would find that they did not have any difference at all and they could be really great people. And the glad thing is more and more people in this world began to have respect to this group of people and central cities in Turkey actually really respect the transgender people. The situation in the video only happened in small villages or remote places.

On the first day of class with Professor Kim, she asked everyone their names, and told us how they would be pronounced within the Korean sound system. My name, Sreya, would be 스레야 in Korean which is different from how it is meant to be pronounced. A difference that is easy to spot is that Sreya has 2 syllables and 스레야 has three syllables. The other differences are tough to explain because I don’t know the phonetic alphabet. I also tried really hard to find a way to write how 스레야 is pronounced in English but it’s tough to find the right English transcription for the pronunciation of 스. This itself shows that the Korean sound system has sounds that the English sounds system doesn’t and vice versa. Another example for this would be how the japanese word ラーメン [Rāmen] is pronounced as [ˈrämən] in English (ramen) and as [lamyeon] in Korean (라면). 

Another thing that’s different about the Korean sound system is how two sounds can sound very similar but the difference in aspiration is really important otherwise you’d be saying a different word; for example, 게 means crab and 개 means dog. Luckily for me, Hindi and Telugu have sounds which are very similar to Korean sounds; for example, 에 and 애 in Korean are like ఎ and ఏ in Telugu, and 다 and 따 in Korean are like द  and ध in Hindi. The sounds that I find difficult to pronounce are the ones which involve ㄹ or ㅡ because these sounds are new to me. I think that listening to Korean dialogue (possibly in Kdramas) more and trying to repeat them would really help with getting me used to hearing and speaking words which involve these sounds.

One of the most mentioned food in Korean TV shows, radios, and dramas is ramen. It is easy and fast to cook good ramen. There are five biggest ramen brands in Korean that everyone knows about, and their brands are Shin ramen, Ansung Tang Myun, Neoguri ramen, Samyang ramen, and Jin ramen. In a Korean TV show named “New Journey to the West,” one of the MCs identified the brands just by looking at the cooked ramen pots and smelling them, not even tasting. It shows how much Koreans love ramen and how popular and developed ramen is in Korea. When I traveled to Korea last winter, there are at least ten different brands of ramen in a small convenience store. Most of the restaurants I went in have different kinds of ramen for us to choose from.

(Picture from google by typing in "Korean ramen brands")

What differentiates Korean ramen from that of other countries is the things they put into the pot. First of all, Korean ramen packages always have a special seasoning pack in them. A majority of Korean ramen has a slightly spicy flavor in their seasoning pack. One of the reasons behind the spicy flavor is the geographical location of Korea. In the fall, Korea has a lot of typhoons or rain storms that cool down the weather. During the wintertime, the temperature goes pretty low in Korea, and it snows. Because of the weather, people tend to stay indoors. The spicy flavor will warm up people’s bodies and feel less cold indoors. Moreover, many Koreans love the refreshing feeling in the food, especially if the food is served hot. This is also the reason why they love to have kimchi, a Korean traditional food that is made of fermented vegetables, as their side dishes for almost every meal. The spicy flavor in ramen brings up a refreshing feeling and makes people more addicted to the food.

One of the famous and popular Korean chiefs is named 백종원 (Paik Jong-won). He is on many TV shows right now, where he teaches his audience how to make good food on their own with simple ingredients and steps. On his YouTube channel called “백종원의 요리비책” (Chief Paik’s Cuisine),  in 7 out of 64 videos, the chief talks about how to make ramen taste better in a kitchen. He uses a lot of vegetables or additional spicy sauce to make the broth deeper and thus brings the ramen a better flavor. A lot more videos on this channel talk about how to cook noodles and such. In one of his videos, he put kimchi slices and Gochujang (a Korean red chili sauce) into the ramen to make it taste refreshing. In another video, Paik shows how he mixes two kinds of ramen from two brands and make the dish better with vegetables such as onions. It’s been three months since he started the channel, and now he has 2.84 million followers. Half of his ramen videos reached one million watches, and one of them got 2.4 million watches.

Reference:

Clip of the MC guessing ramyun taste: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI4Fb0qmJ90

Posts about Kimchi flavor(I used google translation): https://kin.naver.com/qna/detail.nhn?d1id=8&dirId=8020112&docId=329044218&qb=6rmA7LmYIOunmw==&enc=utf8&section=kin&rank=1&search_sort=0&spq=1

 “백종원의 요리비책” (Chief Paik’s Cuisine): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyn-K7rZLXjGl7VXGweIlcA

Chief Paik's 2M-view Ramyun video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YISYMu2Txp4

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While I would love to write about Nasi Goreng or Kari (hopefully in my next post), I have been studying Malaysian politics lately and feel obliged to address the 1MDB scandal and the groundbreaking 2018 elections in the country. Though not entirely contemporary since this happened over a year ago, my first artifact, seen below, is a good encapsulation of how the Malaysian public mobilized and voiced their discontent with the corruption their country was facing following this scandal. Its importance should not be underscored. 

(Photo Credit: Strait Times https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/signs-malaysians-are-shrugging-off-1mdb-saga)

The above sign, which reads "Save Malaysia, Catch the Thief," is referring to the Malaysian financier and current international fugitive Jho Low. He is alleged to have taken, with members of the government's consent or active participation and with the help of Goldman Sachs, upwards of $3.5 billion USD from the Malaysian taxpayers in a front that was housed under the Ministry of Finance. When news of this monumentous scandal and breach of trust broke out and developments in the story that included Prime Minister Najib Razak's alleged involvement and profit were made, the Malaysian public took to the streets in protest and, through the general elections in 2018, overturned the ruling party (UMNO) for the first time in the country's history. The elections not only signified the ability of the Malaysian voter base to overturn a corrupt regime democratically, but also resulted in this turnover in political power to the country's previous 4th Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who, in addition to being 93 years old at the time, left the UMNO and ran under an opposition coalition. The return to the country's longest serving prime minister (1981-2003), while resurrecting a contentious legacy, displayed how formative and impactful he was in the creation of modern Malaysia. 

While the above protester is unnamed, the significance is that largely symbolic: the effectiveness of the Malaysian populace voicing discontent and taking to the streets in a democratic way. Malaysia is a true multiethnic society in many senses, and the aforementioned demonstrations penetrated people from all different cultural backgrounds and walks of life in the country. This scandal not only impacted the Malaysian economy and put the taxpayers' money into the pocket of a few corrupt officials, but it also embarrassed many Malaysians on the world stage. Regardless of who exactly was culpable, keeping the ruling regime in office posed too unlikely of a risk to Malaysia's future. Mahathir has signaled his intention to only serve as prime minister for another year or so, after at least some attempts have been made to clean up the political mess that he and his party inherited. Trials both in Malaysia and by the United States Department of Justice are currently underway, with Najib Razak claiming no responsibility and Jho Low hiding in a currently unknown location avoiding trial. Anyone attempting to understand contemporary Malaysian affairs should familiarize themselves with the details of this scandal, and this cultural artifact is an effective way of witnessing the protests and their reach in the aftermath of the scandal's unearthing.

그림의 떡이다

길러 준 개 주인 문다

누워 떡 먹기

하나를 보면 열을 안다

This week’s cultural post was a collection of idioms that are frequently used in Korea. These idioms usually have an equivalent idiom across different cultures and languages as well. I found these to be interesting because I have always heard them when I was growing up in Korea. I also chose this list of idioms since many of these idioms have an American equivalent and should be recognizable for most Americans as well. The first idiom on my list is “그림의 떡이다”. This is pronounced as “geulim ui tteog ida” and the literal translation just means “rice cake in a picture”. However, the actual metaphorical meaning of the idiom refers to something that is desirable, but you cannot have it. The “rice cake” in the picture is referring to what is desired but since it is in a picture, it is not attainable. The American equivalent of this idiom would be something like “a pie in the sky”, since it also refers to something that is desired, but it is not attainable because it is in the sky. The next idiom on my list is “길러준 개 주인 문다”. This idiom is pronounced, “gilleojun gae ju in munda”. The idiom literally means a “dog biting the owner”. The true meaning of the idiom refers to someone who antagonizes the person he or she is indebted to. The American equivalent of this idiom is also something similar which is close to “bite the hand that feeds you”, which also refers to the act of forgetting who you are indebted to. Another idiom on my list is, “누워서 떡 먹기” and is pronounced, “nuwoseo tteog meoggi”. In literal translation, this idiom means, “eating rice cakes while laying down,”. Because one can assume that eating rice cakes laying down is an easy task, you can assume that this idiom refers to a task so easy that it is similar to eating while laying around. The American equivalent of this idiom would be “a piece of cake” and is used very frequently. The last idiom I learned about was, “하나를 보면 열을 안다” and is pronounced, “hana leul bomyeon yeol eul anda”. This literally means you learn ten things from observing one. This one is pretty easy one to decipher since it is fairly literal. This idiom refers to someone who is very perceptive or intelligent since he or she can see one thing and learn ten more things from it. For this idiom, I could not think of an American equivalent idiom since it was literal enough for most people to know what they are talking about. While the majority of the idioms I picked had a popular American equivalent, it was interesting to find one that seemed unique to Koreans. Another cultural aspect I noticed was the frequent usage of a rice cake to represent something that is desired. Since rice is a staple food in East Asian cultures, it made sense that they would use rice cake in the idioms. In the American idioms however, rice cakes were replaced with things like pie or cake. It was interesting to observe cultural differences even in idioms despite having similar meanings.

I have mentioned some of the phonetic inventory of Bahasa Melayu in previous posts, but it is helpful to go over it again. Malay has a host of loan-words from (British) English and Arabic (as well as from other languages like Mandarin and Hindi), meaning some sounds are quite familiar while others are not. Orthography-wise, there are some distinctions, e.g.  /ʃ/ (voiceless palato-alveolar fricative) written 'sy' instead of English's 'sh', /tʃ/ (voiceless postalveolar affricate) written as 'c' instead of 'ch', and /ð/ (voiced dental fricative) written 'z' instead of "th" as in "father." Apart from these, the sounds that are distinct from American English or less common in it are listed below:

- voiceless velar fricative of /x/: e.g. the Malay word "akhar" (often found in Arabic loanwords)

- voiced velar fricative of /ɣ/: e.g. the word "loghat"(also often found in Arabic loanwords, and pronounced differently in several different dialects)

- velar nasal of /ŋ/:  e.g. the word "ngarai" (found in English in the word "sing", but otherwise somewhat unusual)

- glottal stop of /ʔ/: e.g. "tidak" (seldom found in English, apart from "uh-oh")

- alveolar trill of /r/: e.g. "dari" (found in Scottish English and several Romance languages)

For my study of Malay, it is most important for me to be comfortable with these distinctions and practice the non-English sounds as much as possible. From my study of Mandarin, I know it can be difficult for me to master sounds not found in English and I admittedly still make some mistakes, however if I know from the start that these sounds exist and do my best to address them on my own and with Melissa, I think I can avoid this mistake. Orthography of other phones is simply an adjustment I'll have to make, such as remembering that 'c' in Malay has a 'ch' sound. Ideally, I would like to work with my language partner and make recordings of these difficult sounds for myself to listen to and go over. The more I practice and the more I hear a native speaker using these sounds, the easer it will be for me to master them. 

            When we talked about korean restaurants in the class, we all shared our favorite Korean food. I actually knew a lot of Korean food’s name, so I introduced some unique hansik(Korean food) to my group members.

            First one is my favorite food, 육개장, which means spicy beef soup. It is a spicy-soup like Korean dish made from shredded beef with scallions and other ingredients, including bean sprouts, garlic and sweet potato noodles, which are simmered together for a long time. It is believed to be healthful and is popular due to its hot and spicy nature. It is actually a variety of thick soup, which was formerly served in Korean royal court cuisine. However, in the contemporary society, people usually can find it in every Korean restaurant. It becomes an indispensable dish in every Korean family.

            I also introduced a really unique food from Korea which is called 게장(Gejang). It is a variety of salted fermented seafood in Korean cuisine, which is made by marinating fresh raw crabs either in soy sauce or in a sauce based on chili pepper powder. The term consists of the two words; ge, meaning "a crab", and jang which means "condiment" in Korean. I watched one Youtube video about how to make Gejang. The lady washed the crabs first and dried them in order to bring out the natural flavor. And then she placed them in the jars with the crabs’ jelly facing up. Because that was where the roe and intestines were, and people would not want them to spill down. And then, the soy sauce was boiled and cooled repeatedly with medicinal herbs and vegetables to enrich the flavor. Hot soy sauce was able to cook the crab. In light of this, it must be cold before use. After cooling down, the soy sauce was poured over the crabs completely submerging them. The last step was adding onions, pepper and garlic to the jars. In the past, people often would wait for 5 days. But the crabs would be too fermented in this way. Instead, after waiting for two days, the crabs would taste really good and would be perfect side dish for rice.

            Then, we talked about where the best place to find delicious food is. It is Korean fish market which is called Noryangjin. Although it is fish market, people can find all different types of street food there, including rice cake and other common street food. You can also find special street food here and you are able to try them by spending little money. For example, live octopus.

            We watched one video about Korean people eating live octopus. Korean eat it with 고추장 which means chili sauce. It looked kind of scary to me because the octopus was still moving. But my group member said it tasted really delicious. So I am really looking forward to try it in Korean seafood market.

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Link to the K-pop song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vecSVX1QYbQ

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Korean Thanksgiving, or Chuseok, was Friday, September 13. I celebrated Chuseok on September 14, the first day of my hagwon class at the Lord Jesus Korean Church. I learned how to make tteok, which is a Korean rice cake. The type of tteok that we made was one that I have been eating ever since I was a child. It is called songpyeon, and it is finely ground rice made into dough and filled with sesame seeds, chestnuts, red beans, et cetera. It was fascinating to be able to make a childhood food from scratch. (Seriously, people made the dough beforehand completely from scratch!) First, we took the balls of dough and rolled them in our hands to soften them. We used the flour to coat the dough and make it less sticky. Next, we formed them into circles and put some of the filling inside. I believe the filling that we used was sesame seeds and brown sugar. Then, we folded the dough with the filling inside and shaped it into a ball. Finally, we pinched the top of the ball to form a decorative line. As we were making the tteok, we had several failures and successes; there was definitely a learning curve to making good-looking tteok. Apparently, if someone can make a particularly well-shaped tteok, they will have a beautiful daughter. Not only did I learn how to make tteok, but I found out about a fun idea related to it!

Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay for all of the festivities, but making the tteok was fun. If we had stayed longer, we would have actually been able to eat our tteok (it needed to be steamed), seen dancing, and, of course, eaten delicious food. The girls in the picture are wearing hanboks, which are traditional Korean attire. They are worn for formal occasions such as festivals, celebrations, and ceremonies.

I did some research on Chuseok and found some interesting things about it. Chuseok is one day, but it is celebrated for three days, including the day before and after. It is a time to be with family. Some people worship and pay respects to the spirits of their ancestors, and most families make songpyeon together. The purpose of Chuseok is to celebrate the harvest season. Another thing that I learned is that other countries also celebrate the harvest season with festivals. China’s Mid-Autumn Festival, Argentina’s Vendima (the National Grape Harvest Festival), and American Thanksgiving are examples of other countries’ holidays that celebrate the harvest season. They vary in regards to tradition, food, and festivities, but are all a time to come together and enjoy.

Something else that I remembered while reading about Chuseok is that the date is determined by the lunar calendar, which means that it on slightly different dates each year. Koreans consider autumn to be the best season of the year due to weather conditions that are ideal for the harvesting season. They celebrate the bountiful harvest and hope that next year’s season will be better than the last.

In the future, I hope to celebrate Chuseok with my family and in Korea!

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Israeli tv is known for it's production quality, realism, and violence, all of which tend to appeal to the younger generation of Americans who grew up with violent and realistic movies and video games. The most popular Israeli show worldwide is Fauda, which in Arabic means "chaos" but more commonly refers to a violent riot. The show is split perspective between an Israeli secret service/FBI adjacent counterterrorism unit and a couple "shahid" (martyrs or terrorists depending on who you are) who fight for a military wing of Hamas, the quasi-official government of Gaza. One of the main themes of the show is how far should government agencies be willing to go to quash extremism and terrorism? As Hamas kills more and more Israeli civilians, should shabach (the FBI guys) be allowed to kidnap and kill wives and fathers of the Hamas operatives? Because the show frames the conflict with both sides practicing violent and evil tactics, it is popular with both Israeli viewers who appreciate the honest and non-propagandist story, and Palestinian/other Arab viewers who feel they are portrayed as people rather than faceless monsters. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is complex, and needs a complex show to adequately deal with the subject matter. 

Because the show is produced by Netflix, it comes with high quality subtitles in pretty much any language you could choose which makes it easy to understand and translate words or phrases that you are interested in. Also, because it is such a ubiquitous show among Israelis (and a point of national pride), they are quite willing to discuss the show and help to understand what the characters are talking about in any certain scene. It hits especially close to home for many Israelis because they personally have been affected by both sides of the conflict in very concrete ways, unlike in America where although we have been at war for almost decades now serving in the army is rare and it can sometimes feel extremely far away. Some interesting things I have learned about the show: the main character (pictured below), who is something like a plainclothes FBI agent who conducts assassinations and kidnappings for Israel actually had this job in his youth. That was likely during the time of the second Intifada in the early 2000's, when there was a surge in Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilian targets. So the actor who plays this character likely carried out very similar missions and fights to what is portrayed in the show. The show is directed by him as well. The show is mainly filmed in Israeli-Arab areas where there is peace rather than the west bank or Gaza where fighting continues today.

One of the things I found interesting concerning language used much words relating to war or violence have been adopted into Hebrew slang. Here are four slangy ways to say  "good:"

Esh - fire

Satzah - bomb

Til - rocket, as in the rockets that are regularly fired at Israeli cities

Pagaz - shell, as in artillery shell

Since almost all youths serve in the army, it makes sense that so many army-centric words would make their way into common parlance.

The two big sounds in hebrew that don't exist in american english are ch and r. This ch is probably the most recognizable sound in hebrew, if you ever hear someone speaking and they say this sound often they are likely speaking hebrew, or arabic to a lesser extent. Even if you don't know anything about Hebrew you probably know words that are meant to be said with this sound. Hannukah, an important jewish holiday that every american has likely at least heard of can also be written Channukah since the first sound is the hebrew ch. The sound itself is like an H that is choked in the back of the throat. It isn't very pretty, but it is important and sounds scary if you need to yell at someone. My language partner reminded me that  a big mistake that foreigners make when pronouncing this letter is focusing too hard in it. Since americans usually have little difficulty with the rest of the word, we often overpronounce the ch since we are thinking of getting that one part right. The more native pronunciation is relaxed and not so exaggerated. Here are some words I know that use ch:

nachon - right as in yes you are right

achi - bro

ochev - eat

ma shlom cha - whats up

The other difficult sound is an r. Because the american r is very unique, we often have a difficult time learning other languages version of the letter. Hebrew's is deep in the throat, untrilled (unlike arabic) and similar to the french r as far as I can tell. Not every r is pronounced this way however  - so far it seems like r at the beginning of a word is more similar to ours, as in "raba." One funny story I heard about this letter from an Israeli soldier : she spent about three years in America growing up and therefore had a pretty American r while speaking English. She told me that she could never fall in love with anybody who pronounced r the Hebrew way because she found it so extremely ugly. A word with this r sound:

perot - fruit

That's actually all i know so far because this sound is much less common than ch. Also I don't like pronouncing it so maybe I skip some of the words with it in it.