SC200601302 EunJi Bahk
A friend that I admire
All of my friends are admirable for sure, but because of part of my Korean upbringing, some friends from different countries often give me different ideas and it usually admires me. I have been extremely busy for the last two weeks with several kinds. First of all my final exams are all done, which is nice even though the summer session started as soon as I finished handing in all final papers. Secondly I have been jumping around this city, Seoul with my 12 Swedish friends staying here for some projects and most of them haven't been here before, so they want me to spend time as a "tour guide" with them as much as I can.
One of the 12 people, Patrik is my closest friend since he was a transfer student of KAIST and always told me he is not so much like Korea as love Korea. I barely meet him either as he went back to Stockholm last year, so this has been amazingly nice.
When you have someone who visit your city, you are really inclined to do some touristic adventures that you might not have done before. The first week however, we didn't have so much fun as I had seven exams when they came. On Saturday we went to some tour sites such as Namsan Tower, Cheongwadae, Gyengbokgung and even Sejong city in Daejun and Songdo city in Incheon for their project. But the everyday schedules were always end up with a lot of bottle of beer as we usually went to some Korean barbecue restaurant and had a long conversation.
Since he had been here for quite a long time, we had a good talk about differences of culture between Sweden and Korea. When I face a new culture or cultural differences, I am firstly focused on thinking how much strange it is. Unlike me, Patrik said instead of being confused or offended he thinks how well he know his own Swedish culture and how much one takes for granted. Swedish people often think about their own culture as very little distinctive characteristic and traditions but the truth is they are just not used to talk about those topics according to him.
For example, people can be bad at speaking their mind in Korea. In Sweden, when people disagree on something, the normal way to solve it is to talk about it and either come to a similar conclusion or agree on disagreeing. People just stop talking, however, if they don't agree to the extent they do in Korea. I think it's worse to be ignored than to have a discussion or even arguing. I know, it is really frustrating. I am even still a bit reluctant to speak my mind. What I mean by that is whatever the conclusion of the fight might be it is better to know and move on than going around and wondering, unable to focus on other important things. Of course some Swedish people are really bad at handling conflicts too, but Patrik and I reached a conclusion that we shouldn't accept is without question as it is with saying "It's like that, it is just way it is".
Facing the critics of my own culture and discuss it through the stranger's point of view is just aching from time to time. I randomly have a chance to talk about North Korea and their "provocative action" with Americans but most of their way of looking it is not well-balanced, because they have never get the opportunity to understand the situations in this country. Patrik is always paying attention to all those differences and respect it and so am I. More precisely, everytime I talk with him , I feel like I have become more open minded person. And this is how he admires me.
I like that she chose her friend for this topic. Admiring someone can be a hard or serious topic, but it seems to be an interesting and easy writing! The main point is that she admires her friend becuase her Swedish friend has respects and a broad understading about different cultures and different oppinions. I like these paragraphs are well connected each other too! However, I think there can be more description since this writing was supposed to be descriptive. So! I think she can add some words explaning how her friend looked, how the places looked, or how she felt about her conversation with her friend.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great piece of writing because it is easy for the reader to fall into the author's shoes and imagine showing friends around Korea. Unlike the title, I think this isn't about a single friend but about many of the author's foreign friends. At first I thought it was a paragraph on her friend Patrik, but by the end of the paragraph I'm not quite sure. It does seem to focus on his views but it doesn't talk much about one person but many ideas in general. I think it might be clearer to the reader if the author could establish a stronger topic sentence. For instance, the author could make the paragraph easier to understand by writing down exactly what she admires about Patrik before going into details that can easily put the writing off course. Other than that I found various sentences I found interesting.
ReplyDelete"Unlike me, Patrik said instead of being confused or offended he thinks how well he know his own Swedish culture and how much one takes for granted." - This is such an interesting point of view that I've never come across myself. The author, with a good example like in this sentence, can help the reader understand what she likes about having a foreign friend with a completely different opinion on similar matters. I also enjoyed the description, "end up with a lot of bottle of beer" because I can also picture this in my head and puts some humour into the writing. One thing that definitely needs change is the paragraphing because sometimes a new paragraphs starts where it seems better without an indent.