Ke Ri Se Pi Ke Ri Me...

...also known as Kripsy Kreme doughnuts to someone who can't speak Korean. The heading is written the way it is, to give people reading this some sort of idea of what 'Romanised' Korean sounds (or reads) like. I'm not sure how recent this phenomenon is, but once one learns to read Hangul (the Korean alphabet), one starts to see how many things are actually written in English, in Korean. Another great example of this is 'Starbucks' coffee, which when written in Korean reads as follows: Se Tar Buck Se. What does the reading of Korean have to do with Krispy Kreme and Starbucks? Well, as of recently it has a lot to do with it.

Claudia and myself have found ourselves lucky enough to have a genuine Korean (not one of the fake kind) teach us the Korean language. One of my co-teachers (Sunny) has been gracious enough to offer us her services as a Korean to teach us. In return, we teach her, or rather help her improve her English. Any closer to why I started out with Krispy Kreme? No? Well here goes.

We meet Sunny twice a week, once to teach her English, and once for her to teach us Korean. And guess where we meet? Yup, Krispy Kreme it is! Now I don't want to bore you with pictures of our textbooks, so I will instead irrigate the inside of your mouth with images of some of the products they have on offer at KK!

Krispy Kreme claims on their website that they indulge all 5 senses. I can tell you one thing. They most definitely stimulate the nasal passages. You will struggle to walk into too many restaurants with a greater smell the Krispy Kreme. It truly does smell amazing.

Thus far, Claudia and myself have been strong enough to restrain ourselves from eating these amazing looking creations, but we are not sure how much longer we can hold back. As the months go on, and we find ourselves getting better at speaking Korean, we might trot on over to the counter and order ourselves half a dozen of Krispy Kreme's finest Dou Nut Se. Who knows!

We're moving ahead full steam with our Korean lessons, and are starting to show some very definite improvements, slowly starting to make out things that people are saying to us, and actually being able to build some of our own, very basic, sentences! Another friend of our, Rob, is pretty much fluent in Korean, and he is now also giving us Korean lessons. With this two sided bombardment were bound to make some headway, or so we hope!

Hopefully in a couple of months time, we'll be able to do a full post in Korean. As for now, we will keep on meeting up at the heavenly smelling Krispy Kreme doughnut store for a good dose of Korean, and an even greater dose of nasal stimulation!

Post by Oliver