Ding Dong, Yummy and Pissing Racehorses

Scattered Notes

If I've learned anything in the past two weeks it's that girls named Yummy and Ding Dong should not be allowed to sit next to each other. Nor, come to that, should fifteen other people be locked in a room with those two for four hours a day.

I mention this because my Korean language classes started up again a few weeks ago at Seoul National University. In addition to Ding Dong and Yummy - who make preschoolers seem like a paragon of maturity - I also study with an Uzbeki fellow who wears a cologne that smells like buck urine. "Elk Musk," I believe it's called. A few days ago, after he'd been especially liberal in dousing himself with it, he leaned over to me and asked,

"Does this classroom smell funny to you?"

It's certainly a pocket of humanity, this class of mine. There are people from ten countries,* three continents, a range of ages and four genders. For the most part, everyone gets along - or pretends to - but the course has not been completely lacking in nationalist attachments.

For our first project of this summer term, we had to give a short presentation on our home countries. Giving hers, a Tawainese student made a casual reference to her country's geographic location "across the water from China." The Chinese students in the class, recognizing something that didn't quite jive with their prescribed worldview, immediately shot a few furtive glances at one another. After class, there was carnage in the hallway.**

None of us - as speakers of Korean - have reached anything approaching fluency, though, so that keeps the bloodshed to a minimum. At this point, our want of basic grammar and vocabulary have prevented most arguments, instead giving us a common purpose and goal. Here, incidentally, are a couple phrases that we all, regardless of ethnic background, found useful this past week:

그 남자는 경주마처름 오줌을 싸요. ***

하인을 부르세요. ****

No matter your race, religion or creed, there comes a time when you need to conjure images of a urinating racehorse, or, better still, to ring for your servant and have him conjure them for you.





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* Mongolia, USA, China, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Canada, Denmark, Japan, and Britain.

** Mongolia, USA, China, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Canada, Denmark, Japan, and Britain.

*** That man is pissing like a racehorse.

**** Please ring for the servant.