The Korean writing system and alphabet is called Hangul. I learned to read it when I arrived in Korea because I discovered that with my accent I was pretty much unintelligible when I tried to pronounce Korean words that were written with English characters.
A few weeks back Vickey and I went exploring a seredipitously discovered a museum where we could paint our names in Hangul. The museum was under a statue of a famous king. We actually thought it was going to be his tomb or something, and only went in because we were freezing cold. As with many places in Korea it turned out to be like the Tardis - much bigger on the inside than appears possible from the outside. The outside was about 5m x 5m. The inside was huge!!! Basically what we could see on the outside was simply a stairwell going down to a very large museum.
This is Vickey painting her name - behind her is a selection of other foreigners names and country of origins. We each painted two - one for us to take and one to leave at the museum.
My name in Hangul. When we got there I wrote on a slip of paper how I wanted to write my name in Korean. The lady who was in charge very politely and firmly told me it was wrong and made me write it this way. I didn't have the heart to tell her that while this way may follow the rules of Korean writing it doesn't sound anything like my name!
A Kiwi that I couldn't resist painting, it's been soooooo long since I painted anything. (We had another meeting of our art group today - my flower is developing nicely!!!!!)
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