It was my second "lazy Korean Friday"*, when I met this outstanding person. She opened the door at the school just right before I reached a handle from outside. Average height with dark short hair and friendly smile. She was our teacher for that day's lesson.
As professional habit, automatically, my brain started to study everything, every small detail and feature of her manners, appearance, style of speech. As a teacher myself and minoring in psychology I could tell that she spent pretty long time in Ukraine and, maybe, in the Soviet Union, because by the way she talked I could say that some words were in use here around 20-30 years ago and it could be caught only at Soviet time system of education.
...She was explaining Korean grammar rules and new vocabulary to us and she was always referring to Koreans as "they" and to Ukrainians as "we" and identifying herself with "us"(Ukrainians), which I found interesting, because it's rare to see a person who obviously identify herself with another culture rather than her own. So, by that time, I was already so curious about her personal background that I did commitment to myself: "I'll ask her after the lesson".
And what did she tell us was one of the most interesting stories I've ever heard from foreigners here in Ukraine...
Her parents lived on the territory of USSR at 40th and when World War II started they couldn't come back to Korea, so they stayed in USSR. She went to Russian school and she always responded in Russian even if her parents talked between themselves or were talking to her in Korean. She knew Korean alphabet Hangul and she was able to understand some part of spoken language. Her father was director of the school back in Korea, so she grew up surrounded by ideas of education.
In 90th she was living in Kyiv, Ukraine and had two kids. She lost her job, because factories were closing all around the country these years after USSR collapsed and disappeared as a country.
One day she was going to one Korean young lady who was going to marry the Chinese guy. This lady told that her mother-in-law-to-be is going to visit them soon so she needs to do the laundry of ALL the cloth in the house (with no washing machine these days). And our Korean lady was paid to do it. So she was going to her "client" when she met two Koreans on her way, who were missionaries. They offered her a job as an interpreter, because they needed a new one for their upcoming event.
After being an interpreter she gathered some money and bought tickets for herself and her kids and they went to Moskow to visit a mission's office. She took some Korean classes there in the mission while she was working as an interpreter for for Korean priests.
Then, few years she was a director of a high school founded by the mission and after all this experience she ended up teaching Korean at the mission's office in Kyiv now.
I was impressed that her age (and she's about 60-70) she's so energetic, inspiring and keen on learning new things. I wish all old people to be like this and enjoy their life time.
*Lazy Korean Friday - It's how do I call my Korean lessons on Fridays. Why lazy? Because I study Korean only one a week as a distraction from my routine studies.
As professional habit, automatically, my brain started to study everything, every small detail and feature of her manners, appearance, style of speech. As a teacher myself and minoring in psychology I could tell that she spent pretty long time in Ukraine and, maybe, in the Soviet Union, because by the way she talked I could say that some words were in use here around 20-30 years ago and it could be caught only at Soviet time system of education.
...She was explaining Korean grammar rules and new vocabulary to us and she was always referring to Koreans as "they" and to Ukrainians as "we" and identifying herself with "us"(Ukrainians), which I found interesting, because it's rare to see a person who obviously identify herself with another culture rather than her own. So, by that time, I was already so curious about her personal background that I did commitment to myself: "I'll ask her after the lesson".
And what did she tell us was one of the most interesting stories I've ever heard from foreigners here in Ukraine...
Her parents lived on the territory of USSR at 40th and when World War II started they couldn't come back to Korea, so they stayed in USSR. She went to Russian school and she always responded in Russian even if her parents talked between themselves or were talking to her in Korean. She knew Korean alphabet Hangul and she was able to understand some part of spoken language. Her father was director of the school back in Korea, so she grew up surrounded by ideas of education.
In 90th she was living in Kyiv, Ukraine and had two kids. She lost her job, because factories were closing all around the country these years after USSR collapsed and disappeared as a country.
One day she was going to one Korean young lady who was going to marry the Chinese guy. This lady told that her mother-in-law-to-be is going to visit them soon so she needs to do the laundry of ALL the cloth in the house (with no washing machine these days). And our Korean lady was paid to do it. So she was going to her "client" when she met two Koreans on her way, who were missionaries. They offered her a job as an interpreter, because they needed a new one for their upcoming event.
After being an interpreter she gathered some money and bought tickets for herself and her kids and they went to Moskow to visit a mission's office. She took some Korean classes there in the mission while she was working as an interpreter for for Korean priests.
Then, few years she was a director of a high school founded by the mission and after all this experience she ended up teaching Korean at the mission's office in Kyiv now.
I was impressed that her age (and she's about 60-70) she's so energetic, inspiring and keen on learning new things. I wish all old people to be like this and enjoy their life time.
*Lazy Korean Friday - It's how do I call my Korean lessons on Fridays. Why lazy? Because I study Korean only one a week as a distraction from my routine studies.
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