Spanglish no more, Spangkorean anyone?

In today's Wall Street Journal there was an article about the phenomenon of Koreans learning Spanish to better communicate with their employees. And the Spanish workers learning Korean before English since Korean is the second language they hear and speak next to their native Spanish. For us Koreatown devotees, this is not news. I have always marveled at having my Korean groceries bagged by a Latino bagger, who could speak more Korean than I--a slight exaggeration since I can speak as much Korean as a kid in Kindergarten. This cultural intersection is so wholly LA. Nowhere else can you have the concentrations of immigrants that form these pockets of communities where new boundaries, new rules, and possibly a new language--Spangkorean, are created. Buenos dias, ajuhshee! This cultural intersection goes beyond language, and into food, the next universal unifier. There are as many Latinos, who live and work in Koreatown, who eat as much kimchee as a Korean. And on the food shelves of the Korean grocery markets, Korean items like kim sit alongside tortillas, tofu next to Mexican cheese. It is the new world order. Yet, this world of East meeting West, namely the Southwest, is another hidden secret of life in this city. I'm sure until this article came out, very few people, particularly those who have never ventured farther east of LaBrea or east of Van Ness, would have known that this new cultural fusion was occurring blocks from their manicured lawns and gated homes. Yet, this is the LA that is the LA of the future. I predict that this new fusion will result in some savvy chef opening a restaurant of Korean and haute Mexican--kimchee served with chicken in a mole sauce.

These intersections, crashes of two binary forces is what I find fascinating about Los Angeles. This is the heart of the city. It is not in the Entertainment Industry, despite its attempts to appear as if it is the bloodline of the city. It is the unnoticed lives of people, getting up each day to manifest their dream of what it means to live in America, but more importantly, Los Angeles.

Our house is ready for the movers to arrive early Monday morning. All of my pictures have been sorted, organized into photo albums--our memories of life here tucked behind cellophane covers. The strange hollow echo of empty spaces have not set in yet, but I assume this will happen all too quickly as furniture gets carted out of our Rose Cottage and on to the back of a truck.

Excitement and anticipation is settling into my chest, alleviating the empty space of so many good-byes and so many last times. This push and pull of the past and the future is the main emotion now. After today's post, I am going to spend the remainder of my time in LA, documenting my LA with pictures of places that I associate with this city. It will be my pictorial farewell of those favorite restaurants in an ugly strip mall that serve the best shabu shabu or kalbi, those places that rarely get written up in the food section of the Times. Again, when I think about how I'm going to spend the rest of my time here...food is all I think about.