Hanji - The Korean Medicine Cabinet Part 11

Last week in hanji class I finished cutting out all the Chinese characters and glued them to the drawers of the medicine cabinet. That turned out to be harder than I thought. I couldn't tell which order they went in or if they were righside up or upside down. My hanji teacher had to lay them out for me so I didn't glue them on wrong.

Friday ended up being a day of visitors at the hanji shop.  First, a U.S. family came in with their son who was a soldier at Osan which isn't too far from Suwon.  The mom was looking for some gifts and I helped her out explaining what hanji was and that everything in the shop was handmade by my teacher.  She ended up buying three beautiful hanji boxes.  My hanji teacher was really glad that I was there to help out.

I had also invited Mr. Choi to come and see one of the reasons I hadn't been in yoga for the past month or so.  He came bearing this beautiful bouquet of flowers.  He was shocked and in awe of my medicine cabinet.  The girls talked to him quite a bit and he ended up staying for an hour talking to me and watching me finish up for the day.  I then took him over to the Craft Artist Exhibition to see all the other crafts I have been doing.  We had a great time and I told him I should be able to come back to yoga next week.  He also told me that his wife told him to buy me flowers.  She is the sweetest little thing.

We waited at the bus stop together and when my bus came, it was packed with passengers.  I carefully made my way to the back of the bus and hung on for dear life, trying not to smoosh my flowers.  All of the sudden, a Korean women sitting in front of where I was standing reached out and took the flowers to hold for me.  I told her thank you in Korea.  Then bus driver was really heavy on the gas and the brakes so it was a rough ride.

Eventually the seat next to her opened up and I was able to sit next to her.  She gave me back my flowers and then dug in her purse and pulled out two tomatoes and told me that they were delicious in Korean and if I would like some.  I told her "yes" in Korean.  I didn't have a plastic bag so she emptied one she had and placed the tomatoes in the bag handing it to me. 

I placed the tomatoes inside my bag and rested my flowers along with my hands on my bag.  She grabbed my hands and lifted them up saying that I would hurt the tomatoes so I rode the rest of the way to my bus stop with my hands and bouquet about four inches above my lap.  She really was sweet to take care of me like she did. 

Here is a video Rocketman shot of me demoing how to cut out patterns from hanji paper.  It is not edited because we don't know how to do that yet and we didn't realize until now that the closeups are really blurry.  We will use a different video camera next time we try this.  But at least you get an idea of what I am doing: