"Cross-Country Snow" by Ernest Hemingway

Vocabulary needed to understand “ski lingo”:

•  Funicular – cable railway: a railway up the side of a mountain pulled by a moving cable and having counterbalancing ascending and descending cars
• Undulation – wave: an undulating curve
• Khud – A ravine; a steep cleft in a hillside
• Telemark – a turn made in skiing; the outside ski is placed ahead and turned gradually inwards
• Christy – a skiing trick that involves lifting one’s leg off of the ground and leaning over to the side while doing a curve
• Why does George call him “Mike” (what does that mean)?
• Decies - ?

This story is set in Switzerland I think. For one Nick and George are in the inn the girl is speaking German (European area?) and there are Swiss men that come in to drink while they are there. Also there are the Swiss Alps for skiing and finally George is talking about catching a train (common in Europe) to get back to school and Nick is talking about returning to the “States”. Perhaps this is a wrong assumption but that’s what I seemed to have understood. 

In this story Nick and George are obviously having male-bonding time by enjoying skiing and drinking together. They try and do tricks and go as fast as they can while skiing showing some friendly competition. I have been skiing many times since I was little and when with friends we would always try doing similar things (both tricks and falling hard when we tried to push ourselves). It is different in this case though because they are alone in a remote area and they are skiing in the middle of a storm which creates a lonely feeling. I might just get this feeling though from the fact that at the end we discover that Nick is not which Marjorie (are we supposed to make a connection with this to “Three-Day Blow”) and he has in fact impregnated another woman named Helen. This is interesting because he never mentions marriage and he seems rather unhappy in the relationship. He may have scorned the waitress since he may be frustrated with the fact that he is in a similar situation with Helen and may blame her for it. I can’t be sure of this though because his marriage to Helen is not clearly stated.

Nick is trying to escape his responsibilities by skiing with George, discussing leaving with George to just ski together all the time, and by trying to drink too much wine. In the end though George has responsibilities of his own that he does not want to escape from (like school) so Nick is left resigned to return home to the States since he has nothing better to do. He is at least looking forward to him and George skiing home together. I thought it was interesting that they did not promise to go skiing again. If the connect with “Three-Day Blow” is correct then maybe he doesn’t want to make a promise because then he will only be disappointed when it doesn’t happen (just like how he thought that he could possibly get back with Marjorie but it in fact did not happen that way). I can understand that feeling because it’s better to be pleasantly surprised than to experience disappointment from building up something that in fact may never happen. 

I read this while in the quiet section of the library after listening to mellow music. I have come to not expect too many happy readings from this class but rather complex feelings and approached the reading as such. I hate the cold but I enjoy skiing so I can understand their joy in the sport but I think the cold is just a lonely and frustrating environment so I overall have mixed feelings (similar to how Nick is feeling?).

ESL Service Learning Project - Coffee

So last week after the failed cookie attempt I was determined to show Myungseon that I wasn’t a complete failure at making cookies. The weekend before we met again I bought the rest of the ingredients and went for round two of the cookie making attempt. The cookies actually turned out better than I had ever made them before! I guess keeping the dough in the refrigerator for a couple days helps make the dough puff up while they are baking (no more thin crackers!). I had plenty to give away to other students in my dorm while still having enough for our next meeting. 

Myungseon had wanted to take me out for coffee last week since she thought it would go good with the cookies but we ended up not having enough time after the baking fiasco. This time ended up being much better since now we had much better cookies to go with our coffee. She treated me to a caramel latte and she got a regular cappuccino. We sat in the bookstore and enjoyed out treats.

             
This last weekend Myungseon had gone with her husband to New Orleans so she told me about her trip. They had gone and seen her sister-in-law who was there for a conference and had gone on several tours. One tour was of the part of the city that had been severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina. She said that it looked like not much work had been done yet except that they had built a dam that she didn’t think was tall enough to protect the area. One thing she said that I thought that was interesting was that some people were actually moving into the area and buying houses there (most likely because they are so cheap). Since it’s getting close to Halloween there were several Halloween Tours going on and Myungseon and her husband ended up signing up for one. She said that it was not as fun as she thought it would because the tour was two hours long and you had to stand the whole time and the tour guide just told stories (nothing scary happened). They also toured the Garden District which she thought was very beautiful. Overall I think she had a great trip.

            
 Myungseon I so interested in traveling and she especially likes travelling in the U.S. She likes to see everything so she prefers to drive to all the places they visit. One time she drove with her husband to Sedona, New Mexico. They went to see the vortexes there which are supposed to have a “healing” affect on people who live by them. She thought Sedona was very beautiful but we joked about how the “healing” part was just a big scam.

             
This week in her class she has a presentation to give about Korean food which we both agreed was a pretty awesome topic. It only has to be five minutes and last time she accidently talked for ten minutes so this time she will focus on staying within the time limit. Her English is good though so she should have no trouble at all giving her presentation. Overall in her class Myungseon is just focusing mostly on her reading and writing. To practice she has decided to start reading the Twilight Series! I have read the series before so it will be interesting what conversations we will have about the books once she starts reading them. She told me that vampires were more of a “Western ghost”. A common Korean ghost is a woman wearing a long white funeral gown (Koreans wear white at weddings) with long dark hair hanging in her face and blood coming from her mouth. I think I’ll stick with vampires…

Next week we’re going to get sushi at Piranha’s for lunch! (Fact from Myungseon: even though sushi is traditionally Japanese food, almost 90% of sushi owners in the area are Korean!)

More to come…

ESL Service Learning Project - Cookies

The ESL student that I was assigned to for our Service Learning Project is Myungseon Lee. She is a woman in her 30s that is from South Korea. She is in the Level 4 ESL class (most advanced class available) so her English is exceptionally good. She is a social butterfly and loves talking to other students in her class and almost always introduces me to a new student every time we meet up after the class.

Over these last couple weeks that we have been meeting I have been trying to do different activities as a conversation started and to just open her up to more American culture and hopefully in turn gain more insight about the Korean culture. Last week I thought it would be a good idea for us to get together and make cookies to show her an American tradition so I went to the store the night before and picked up eggs and butter to be prepared (I was almost sure I had everything else I needed back in my room since I had make a batch just the week before). The next day we met at the Rec at 1pm like usual and went over to my dorm, Milton Daniel, since there is an oven in the basement there. We started mixing the appropriate ingredients when I realized I didn’t have any vanilla, enough oats, or any chocolate chips (so much for being prepared!). Myungseon was such a good sport about it though so we just tried making a small batch to see how they would turn out. We filled up a tray and started baking them.

While we were waiting for them to bake I started asking Myungseon more about her life in Korea. She told me that she had worked as a software engineer for an American company and had worked incredibly hard for ten years. She then married her husband who she had met from work and they had moved to America to live in Michigan near her husband’s family. His job had then transferred him to the DFW area. Since Myungseon had worked so hard while in Korea she decided to take a break from work while they were in America. After the urging of her husband to improve her English though she enrolled in the ESL classes here at TCU. I asked her if she planned on going to work again or what she wanted to do once she finished the class. She said that she did plan on working again but nothing as hard as her work before. She mostly plans on travelling though. That led into a discussion about all the places we wanted to go which is of course a practically unending discussion…

By this time I noticed that the timer hadn’t gone off yet so I went over to check the oven and realized that I hadn’t set it (seriously?!). The cookies were thin burned crackers. Myungseon insisted we tried again though so we started a new batch. She had told me before we had started that she had once tried making oatmeal raisin cookies for her husband (because those are her husband’s favorites) and she had just simply “failed”. Apparently I wasn’t that good at making cookies either!  The second batch didn’t get burned but they were still pretty thin and not especially tasty. Myungseon ended up taking all the cookies home (including the burned ones) to give to her husband (since he is a “meat and potato” kind of guy – “he will eat anything and does not even taste it”). I saved the rest of the batter so that I could buy the rest of the ingredients and try and make them again so that we could have real cookies next time on our coffee outing.

More to come…