My Foreign Mom. "Every morning when the bus would come to pick us up while it was still dark out, I could see her slight backlit frame outlined in our blinds as she watched us drive away. A senior on the bus once asked if my mom knew that we could all totally see her. I told that kid to go fuck himself and to quit looking at my mom. To this day, I still can’t watch her watch us leave."
posted by Phire
on Apr 25, 2013 -
25 comments
The
Global Language Online Support System (or GLOSS), produced by the Defense Language Institute in sunny Monterey, CA, offers over
six thousand free lessons in 38 languages from Albanian to Uzbek, with particular emphasis on Chinese, Persian, Russian, Korean, and various types of Arabic. The lessons include both reading and listening components and are refreshingly based on real local materials (news articles, radio segments, etc.) rather than generic templates.
[more inside]
posted by theodolite
on Oct 11, 2012 -
23 comments
PSY (Park Jae Sang) is a Korean singer, previously graduating from Boston University and Berklee College of Music. His latest,
Gangnam Style, parodies K-pop videos and features several singers from that genre, plus Korean tv stars. Gangnam itself is a
wealthy region of Seoul. The
lyrics are perhaps standard for pop songs, while reactions to the video
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] show that a visually engaging video and a catchy tune are often fun the world over, irrespective of the language.
posted by Wordshore
on Jul 24, 2012 -
44 comments
On Tiger Moms: "What the controversy surrounding Chua demonstrates, however inadvertently, is that parenting techniques are always grounded in basic assumptions about the way things are and what matters to us. And they are always guided by some answer to the most fundamental of ethical questions—how to live?"
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns
on May 7, 2012 -
52 comments
In the 1960's, 70's and 80's, urban decay and high crime rates caused retail chain supermarkets to
flee New York City.
(google books link) Korean immigrants filled the gap with corner grocery stores. For nearly two decades they were ubiquitous -- symbols of the group's ongoing quest to achieve the American Dream. But 30 years later,
Where Did The Korean Greengrocers Go? [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jan 18, 2011 -
19 comments
Reasons
not to buy a
Vagina Washing Rod:
1. Badly translated Korean catalogue entry. ("Purity, an essential device for cleanliness of women daily!")
2. "No, Mom! It's for hygeine! Really!"
3. Look, just take a second, and think about
what it does. Now think about
where it goes. Still interested?
posted by tweebiscuit
on May 16, 2001 -
20 comments
