Dinner with Pastor’s family and tutoring

Because of Rebecca H.’s visit on Sunday, H.W. and I decided to postpone my tutoring lesson until Monday evening when I’d be at her father’s house anyway because her mother had invited me over for dinner. Rebecca cautioned me about this. It could be that the mother is trying to set me up with her daughter, but we both agreed that’d be a little weird by Korean standards. For one thing, she’s older than me and more degreed than me, usually a no-no in the Korean dating culture. For another thing, she’s taller than me. This is mostly a no-no even in American culture, though there are always exceptions to the height “rule”, and I’ve had to make them with every girl I’ve dated save two.

However, given that all of the extended family has lived in America for about 30 years and given that H.W. wants to study 18th Century Western Music at a grad school in the states, I think it’s wise to keep my guard up.

Dinner was largely uneventful. It was shared between the Pastor, an elder, H.W. and I. (The mother stayed in the kitchen for some—undoubtedly Confucian holdover-like—reason.) I spoke a tiny bit of Korean. Even they spoke very little in any language. Monday is usually the pastor’s day off, and he was quite tired from Sunday’s services.

After the dinner we all shared some coffee and H.W. and I went into the “pastor’s study to study” (H.W.’s words). I actually learned a few phrases that turned out to be quite useful in my upcoming visit to Seoul, such as “I came by ____insert mode of transportation____,” and “Transfer to ____destination____.”