Haven't posted myself for a while, eh? Guess I've been too busy with the kung fu.
Anyway. As you may have guessed, Nana and I have been making our first furtive forays into the Korean language, and so far we like what we see. That is, the alphabet (hangeul) is really cool, and some of the idioms are downright hilarious. For example:
Water-eating hippo: This guy is a little open-topped plastic box filled with some kind of salt designed to keep your stuff dry and mold-free during the monsoon (which is now--more on that later). He in no way resembles a hippo. At all.
Room tiger: This is the alarm setting on our doorbell, which is about 10x smarter than we are. (Being outsmarted by technology has been a common theme so far.) Unfortunately, the room does not, in fact, growl at unwanted visitors, let alone release a hungry tiger into the hallway, though if it did we'd have the option of witnessing the carnage on our doorbell's little video screen. Instead, the room tiger just shrieks. Loudly. And summons the super, I think.
Ironing steam dragon: This is one of the settings on the dryer (which refuses to bend to our will). The term is singularly unhelpful in indicating what in the heck the setting is for. My best guess is that it's a "damp dry" setting . . . but as far as I can tell, every setting is "damp dry" (except for river, which seems to be "sopping wet dry," which totally shouldn't even be a kind of dry . . .).
Now if only there were some way to set the room tiger against the ironing steam dragon in a fight to the death.
UPDATE: I totally forgot something! It's not quite as goofy as those posted above, but in the interests of encyclopedic pedantry, I feel like I should include the . . .
Pig's nose: The Korean term for the adapter that connects American plugs to Korean electrical outlets (which are of the circular, two-prong kind). Apparently, the female American plug looks like a pig's nose, and I suppose it sort of does. Though I don't quite know what they make of that third hole . . . a piercing maybe?
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