CHARLES KONG SOO

charles.kong­soo@guardian.co.tt

Veron­i­ca Jooah Sealy, 12, from San­ta Cruz, will be help­ing her mum, who is from South Ko­rea, to bake a cake and cook some Ko­re­an dish­es for Christ­mas.

Speak­ing to the Kids Guardian, Veron­i­ca said "I al­ways en­joy bak­ing with my mum, so I’m look­ing for­ward to it. I’m most ex­cit­ed to make Ko­re­an dumplings. We will be mak­ing Japchae (sweet pota­to noo­dles), Kim­bap (Ko­re­an sushi rolls), Tiramisu and Ko­re­an-style dumplings.

"My favourite food to make is dumplings. I en­joy mak­ing it be­cause it makes me feel like a pro­fes­sion­al chef. It’s even more fun when you make it with friends and fam­i­ly!"

While Veron­i­ca has Ko­re­an and Trinidad her­itage, un­for­tu­nate­ly, she can­not make any Trinida­di­an dish­es yet, be­cause her mum does not know any Tri­ni recipes be­sides mak­ing mac­a­roni pie, and she hopes to change this soon.

Veron­i­ca got in­to cook­ing af­ter work­ing in the kitchen with her mum and watch­ing her cook. She start­ed work­ing in the kitchen by her­self when she was ten, and she is still im­prov­ing.

Veron­i­ca beamed that her role mod­el in cook­ing is her mum and her friend, Aun­ty Deb­o­rah Mar­shall who cooks the best Tri­ni food she ever tast­ed. She es­pe­cial­ly en­joys it when she cooks her favourite dish; dumplings and salt­fish.

Her mum is al­so her men­tor.

When­ev­er she is strug­gling in the kitchen or with any­thing in gen­er­al, her mum al­ways tries her best to help her as a par­ent and teacher, and she es­pe­cial­ly loves her for that.

Veron­i­ca en­joys swim­ming and lis­ten­ing to K-pop and col­lect­ing items such as stick­ers, bells and beads.

She ex­plained that the ac­tiv­i­ties that she does are re­al­ly fun and ther­a­peu­tic for her. If she is hav­ing a bad day or she needs a dis­trac­tion, she can al­ways lis­ten to some K-pop and she will in­stant­ly feel bet­ter.

Her mum is a pro­fes­sion­al pi­anist while she is a young vi­o­lin­ist.

Veron­i­ca said they usu­al­ly vis­it dif­fer­ent church­es for the Christ­mas sea­son and play spe­cial songs. This year her mum will play for two church­es.

She said it was tir­ing but fun, and it al­so gives her valu­able ex­pe­ri­ence.

They usu­al­ly play hymns re­lat­ed to Christ’s birth or clas­si­cal pieces that the au­di­ence may en­joy. Veron­i­ca's favourite songs she played were O Holy Night and Ave Maria.

The Bish­op Anstey High School Port-of-Spain Form One stu­dent felt that she did not have enough time to ad­just to her new school yet. There­fore, she still has not set­tled on a favourite sub­ject but is good at most of her sub­jects.

What does she want to be when she grows up?

Al­though she is not ex­act­ly sure what she wants to be as an adult, she is sure that what­ev­er she does, it will have some­thing to do with mu­sic be­cause she loves mu­sic, and she can play the vi­o­lin and sing.

Veron­i­ca said that she has a lot of food that she likes, but the one she likes the most is dumplings and salt­fish.

Her favourite dessert is Ko­re­an ice flakes, which sounds weird at first, she said, but which tastes re­al­ly good.

Veron­i­ca's favourite movie of all time is none oth­er than Ju­man­ji. She shared that she likes to trav­el, and trav­elled to quite a lot of coun­tries since she was one year old. Some of the coun­tries she vis­it­ed were Ko­rea, Cana­da, Amer­i­ca and Ice­land.

Be­cause of COVID-19, Veron­i­ca and her mom could not trav­el for two years, but they are plan­ning to trav­el to Ko­rea in 2023.

Eu­n­mi Choi, Veron­i­ca's moth­er, said that her daugh­ter gets full en­cour­age­ment from her in her ac­tiv­i­ties and in­ter­ests. She added that she will do her best to sup­port her as she con­tin­ues her jour­ney as a stu­dent and mu­si­cian.

She de­scribed Veron­i­ca as a bright child who re­ceived three out­stand­ing awards when she grad­u­at­ed from her pri­ma­ry school, and as a Form One stu­dent, she re­ceived As at the end of the term.

Choi said her daugh­ter was a re­served per­son who is dis­ci­plined and brave when she per­forms in pub­lic. Veron­i­ca, she said, is mu­si­cal­ly in­clined like her, she is tal­ent­ed in mu­sic and is al­so a mem­ber of Bish­op Anstey’s Choir.

Choi said she even fea­tured in some mu­sic videos such as John Thomas and the SDA Union project.

Com­ment­ing on Christ­mas, Choi said Ko­re­ans grand­ly cel­e­brate Christ­mas. Ko­re­an fam­i­lies get to­geth­er and ex­change gifts and have din­ner to­geth­er, sim­i­lar to Trinida­di­ans, she added.