My Korean Husband

Intercultural Life

Month: February 2020

Bilingual Two-Year-Old Reality

2020/02/24 / / 0 Comments

People have some preconceived notions about kids and speaking…

Parents, whether parents of monolingual or bilingual children, always get asked “Does he/she talk yet?” And usually when the child is still young, parents have to say “Well, he can say this word, or this word and he babbles a lot”. Unfortunately there are a lot of people that don’t understand the slow process of acquiring language and think it happens overnight. I was even asked in a YouTube comment, “Does he speak in coherent sentences yet?” Well what do you consider a coherent sentence to be for a toddler?!

This can be frustrating for parents of monolingual kids, but there are even more questions about bilingual kids learning to speak.

I deliberately left the Korean untranslated in the comic to give the real feeling of interacting with a bilingual toddler. But he’s just saying things like “Mummy”, “Let’s go”, “Strawberry”, “Crocodile” and “Don’t want/ Don’t like”.

Even though there is a lot of research showing all the benefits of being bilingual, there are still a lot of misconceptions out there. People think bilingual children’s language skills are “delayed” but really they are just sorting out two different languages. Also a monolingual adult is only recognizing the words from their own language. This has caused situations where monolingual speakers can judge the number of words a child can speak and claim it’s less than the average child’s. But really, bilingual kids have the same amount of words as average, they are spread over both languages.

Only someone who speaks both languages can accurately judge if the number of words they can say is in a normal range.

Of course our son is still learning to speak and around us he knows we can understand both languages. Though I think very soon he’ll realise the limits of my Korean! He understand both languages pretty equally but his babbling sentences seem to have more Korean structure at this point. But he has been saying “No!” in English a lot more now!

Storage and Small Apartment

2020/02/17 / / 0 Comments

One big cultural difference I still struggle with in Korea is the bulk buying of everything! Even when you are just buying from the supermarket, things can be in huge packs. At the markets you have to buy a bunch of the same fruit or vegetables all at once too. No just picking out a few! This makes it hard for people living alone, but also for those in a small apartment. But so many people live in small apartments! It’s such a normal thing in Korea, and people give gifts which will be a big box of fruit that is impossible to finish.

I wouldn’t mind so much if we had the space, because there are savings to be had when buying in bulk, but we don’t have the space. I am constantly looking for ways to store massive amounts of toilet paper or paper towels or even skin lotion! A friend of Hugh’s at a skincare company sent him some. Not just a few samples, a big box of hundreds of the exact same lotion! Why?! We have been slowly giving them away, but I also had to find space for them.

It’s one of those cultural differences where we just have to agree to disagree. The savings made from buying in bulk, and also the convenience of not having to order again for a while, is more important to Hugh. But for me, having an ordered space without boxes full of stuff taking up room is more important to me. Hopefully this tension will ease once we are in a bigger space and it’s more manageable.

To see the small space we live in, check out our apartment tour video on our YouTube channel.

When people criticize parents…

2020/02/17 / / 0 Comments

I remember back in those early days of having a little baby. You quickly realise people are not shy to give you an opinion about whatever you are doing with your baby! I remember feeling anxious to even go outside with our son because someone would have something to say.

You don’t even need to leave home to be criticized though. Plenty of people have lots to say to parents online too! I notice how much celebrities get criticized no matter what, there will be something someone will complain about in any photo they post. We assume most of the people who do this don’t have kids themselves. Or if it is another parent leaving mean comments, it’s someone who totally lacks self awareness.

We like to joke about mean comments so we took an opportunity to get into the heads of those types of people and troll ourselves. We looked through our own Instagram feed and tried to find reasons to criticize our own parenting skill.

Honestly, it was exhausting being that negative. If you want to find something to criticize, you will surely find it. But it doesn’t really make your life any better.

Seoul Apartment Tour

2020/02/17 / / 0 Comments

Living in Seoul

Although we have lived in Seoul for years, we have never done a proper apartment tour before.

It took years to work how best to use our small space. Since living here we’ve changed what room was the bedroom so we could have a bigger living room space. We moved in with almost all the furniture being given to us, so we just had to make do, instead of buying furniture that fit the space well. Even just a few years ago, options were limited for furniture in Korea too. Now it’s not just the IKEA option, there are many furniture companies designing reasonably priced furniture for small spaces.

Slowly we’ve been switching furniture and changing the space. Finally I felt I could do a video and also give people ideas on how to make the most of a small space. On sites like Buzzfeed they have lists of products that help in small spaces and I always check those lists. Often you don’t even know what awesome products there are that can help you manage a small apartment.

We do love this apartment, but it will be time to move on soon. We want to move into a bigger apartment, but still in the same area. I think if we didn’t have a two-year-old we could continue to live here, but we need more space. We also want more space for guests too and I want to be able to paint in a bigger space.

Seoul can be an expensive place to live, but our neighbourhood is amazing and we got lucky with our lower rent price. Our apartment has lots of natural light and has character. I hope showing our place gives others some ideas on how to live in a small apartment.

If you are moving to Seoul or Korea, be aware that the names for things can be different to what you may expect in English. For example, our place is technically a “villa” not an apartment. Apartments in the Korean sense are the very big buildings and have certain requirements.

Raising a bilingual child

2020/02/05 / / 0 Comments

Raising our son to speak both English and Korean

Our son is bilingual and is learning in a simultaneous way. In this video we talk about how we do this and Yul also naturally gives some examples of how he understands both of us.

There will be many more videos on this subject later as he gets older.

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