Meghan은 간다, Meghan ya no esta aqui

Kitty

This weekend was the Lunar New Year weekend. The tradition is to spend it with family. I began to ask my students what they do for the weekend, and Leila proceeded to ask me "Teacher, you go see cousins?" I looked at her with a strange look on my face. Leila is probably about 5th grade age, and here she was, asking if I was going to go see Korean cousins. I replied "Leila, do I look like I have Korean cousins?" and she said "no". I thought the conversation was over, but then she said "You go fly home?" I started laughing and said, "No, Leila. I will not fly home." Then I told my class that in America really only Chinese or Korean people celebrate Lunar New Year, and my family does not. They seemed to understand that. I just thought it was so funny that Leila thought I might fly all the way to America just for the weekend.

Stephanie and I had no plans, but had a very great invitation. We take our Korean lessons on Sunday before church, and one of our teachers, Kitty, invited us to her house for dinner! We gladly accepted the offer, and I am so glad we did. Before going to her house I didn't know much about her, but we walked away understanding that Kitty is a very, very special lady. Another lady, (her English name is Esther), from church came along, too, so there were four of us.

When we got to Kitty's house we discovered, through conversation that she was an artist, and when looking around the house, we realized that. Art everywhere, along with many sewn and handmade items. Esther told us that Kitty teaches art to a group of women from the church. While Kitty started making dinner Stephanie and I sat down with a book, and soon Kitty said "oh! you must look at my book." Stephanie and I looked at each other, like "what?" and sure enough, Kitty came back into the room with a very large, professionally made book of all of her artwork! We began to read the introduction and found that we were not just sitting in an published artist's home, but Choung Za Kim, the first professor at Seoul National University who not only was the first woman professor, but also the first American educated art professor there. The introduction went on to tell that she was the first to bring and introduce the American styles to the Korean art world, and to insist on refining the labels of certain techniques. Wow!

Well, of course, I wanted to know more about her life, and there was some in the book, and some that I asked her after dinner. She was born and raised in Japan. Her father (her parents both Korean) studied there and liked living there. So, her first language is Japanese. They came back and lived in North Korea. Her family was from the North. At that time the communists were attacking and invading and took many of her family's belongings since they were Japanese items. They lived through bombings and fires, and she told about one fire in Japan that happened.

She eventually came to the Southern part of Korea and wanted to study, but could not because she didn't know Korean. She learned it by going to church and singing hymns. She began work as a typist (had to teach herself how to type) for the American forces during the Korean war, where the high-ups in the Army arranged it so that she and the other 12 young Korean workers would receive scholarships to study in America. Of all places, Kitty ended up in Oklahoma. I asked her if it was very strange or weird to go into that different culture, and she said the only thing that puzzled her was that in that time (early 50s) there was still white and colored spots everywhere and she had no idea which section to be in. She said on the first train she saw, she said to herself "well, I am not white", so she sat in the colored side until a train employee came and told her to move.

She studied art in Oklahoma, came back to Seoul, and taught at Seoul National U. for 30 years, all the while creating her own art, having it displayed numerous places, and becoming a very well known and respected artist. Wow! She is a very, very neat lady who shared a lot with us last night and I am so glad we had the chance to talk and visit with her. She has a wonderful testimony of God's faithfulness to her family through war and personal trials.

So! We had a good time at her house last night. She said it did not feel like a holiday unless she cooked, so we had a meat/vegtable stew, cold noodles with vegetables, little cakes, mandu and rice cake soup, kimchi, rice puffies, apple, etc. She wouldn't stop feeding us!

Here is a spread of the table:

The small bowl of kimchi. She said North Koreans make it less spicier.

Upon entering any Korean home, you take off your shoes. Kitty gave us slippers to wear.


This is Kitty!

Kitty insisted on taking a picture of us as well.

The vegetable stew, and the mandu/duk soup.

posted by Meghan @ 5:08 PM