Background History and a Bit of 초서게임 Challenge!

Ok, a bit of background first! My love of all things Korean started when my Dad shared his experience travelling to Seoul & Busan back in the late 70s.  He loved the food (spice makes him sweat, but he enjoyed eating anyway), he loved the culture; but, the only thing he didn't like was the sharing food part.  Yeah...he wasn't a big fan of that. LOL! But he did love the kimchi!  He even made it at home! When it comes to cooking, my dad's a genius.  He would taste a food and literally recreate it at home.  If he didn't get it right, he'd try and try and try, over and over and over again.  To the point of driving us all insane, but then he'd get it right.  With. No. Recipe. Book!  

Anyway, I was fascinated by his (what I considered) grand adventure and desperately wanted to know more.  I might have mentioned this in another post, that I considered my mom's cookbooks my picture books.  I travelled via reading recipes and drooling over food pictures.  Even cookbooks without pictures.  If the author was engaging enough, like Ann Hodgman was for me, I could plow through a cookbook without pictures and just imagine what the food might look and taste like.

Of course, as a kid in the 90's, Japan was the more well-known and more 'popular' culture to be in to. So trying to find anything related to Korea, or South Korea to be more accurate, was nearly impossible.  There were so few books and literally no cookbooks that I could personally find.  Imagine my frustration as a 10 year old, plowing through the kids and cookbook sections in the library and literally coming up with nothing....zilch....center of a big fat donut.  The only thing I could find were history books about the Korean War.  I was so desperate, I must have phoned several different Indigo and Chapters' bookstores to be met with the same answer, "It's not popular enough, so we don't sell it.  It's almost never requested for, it will be a long wait." I just gave up.  The Hallyu Wave was in Asia and most definitely not here in the West.

I revisited my curiosity of South Korea around 2008, 3 years after high school, when I stumbled on the Japanese manga, "Hana Yori Dango" and looked it up on YouTube.  I was really busy then and didn't have time to keep going to the library to borrow books, plus I was frustrated that everyone else seemed to be very into the series as well so I could never find the ones I hadn't read yet.  After finishing the anime, I saw that South Korea was filming their own version and I absolutely fell in love with it.  The music, the clothes, the food, entranced me; and thanks to that series, I became a huge fan of SS501 and Shinee.  Obsession rekindled, I managed to find a pocket-sized travel book and taught myself to read and write in Korean.  Didn't know how to put words together, but I could read and write.  Then a college assignment introduced me to Maangchi - for those of you who don't know her...you gotta check out her YouTube cooking videos and recipe books out.  Yes!  Food!  Finally!  Devoted H-Mart and Hannam customer, right here! Yep...I have their points cards and am subscribed to their online flyers too.

Long story short - graduated college, started working at the library, took 4 levels of Korean at Langara College (even repeated a few levels just to get better at it) and I'm still not so great at it.  I read and write okay...I can order food at the restaurant and understand really basic conversation.  But I am bad at producing sentences fluently and don't have a great vocabulary. 

So one of my friends mentioned that she is playing a popular game with her nephew and it's called, "초서게임". 

For example:  ㅇ ㅅ - 욕심, 요술, 이송

Perfect! Stretch my brain a little bit more and see how much vocab I've got or can get!

ㅅ ㄱ - 사과 (apologize/apple), 선 깃 (a stand-up collar), 성국 (biblical drama), 송기 (pine endodermis)

I think I'll end my post here...I've written quite a long piece already.  Save some for the next time!