Blogger Notes

The comment on my last post and discussions with a couple other girls in my neighborhood really got me thinking about dating in Korea. "Should I even bother?" is quite the question of the hour!

Those who've followed me for a while know that I'm open to entering a serious relationship and getting married. In fact, that's pretty much what I'm looking for. I don't mind having friends of the opposite gender--as long as they're drama-free--but the likelyhood of that being the case among my peers gets slimmer and slimmer as I continue to age. If they were drama-free they'd be married. lol!

While I'm on the topic of married men, I was recounting k-dating horror #1 (Minwoo, aka Project Pat) to a couple of friends when one reels out the, "Let me tell you what happened to us last weekend..."

[Before we go there, this would be an appropriate time to point out that Project Pat actually had the balls to text me the next day. Instead of, "When can we get together so I can give you back your money?" this fool texts, "did you have a good time at the club?" The hell I did! I almost had to borrow money from my homegirl for the cover charge! I really need to let it go. I do...]

My girls headed down to a techno place called Jane's Groove. It caters to the English-speaking crowd in Hongdae. They're having a good time, dancing however one dances to techno, when they meet this Korean dude and his friend. Dude went to undergrad overseas. His English was good and he seemed friendly. No problem.

Some point as the night progressed and additional intoxicating beverages were consumed, everyone stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. Friend 1 admired dude's scooter--very nice, very vintage. Dude proceeds to say how his girlfriend...well, wife, has one that matches it. WTH?! He and his homeboy were chatting my girls up ALL night! Whatevs right? No harm. No foul.

Well, they're pretty much over dude but he's all, "Come on, let's go get some coffee," a fairly reasonable late night/wee-hours-of-the-morning request. With a, "If you're paying," thrown out, off they went.

And things went downhill. Sometime in the next few minutes, "Do you girls wanna go to a hotel?" was said out loud, in public. Whaaaa??? The conversation wasn't even going in that direction...until then! Yes, my girl did check him about his wife and his drunk tail was all confused like, How did you know? ROFL!!! Then he pulls a desperate, "You could just come back and chill with us." (Acutally, it might have been the wingman that threw that one in. Either way...) My girls are like, WTF? Seriously?! Dude was mad bold and tried to defend himself with, "It's Korea. You know how it is." Lawd! Lawd, y'all! People like him are KILLING it for the decent ones. Killing it. Beatin' it dead in the street with a 2x4 on a cold winter's day in front of a hospital and no one's calling for help.

Dudes like that make Future Ex-Boyfriend seem like an angel! Then there's the one cutie at my school who majored in English and is, of course, married. It hurts my feelings. I seriously hear Shy Guy everytime I see him. *sigh* It will be alright though cause it has to. How does this relate to one-armed ladies? Not very well other than both things have been on my mind...

Considering the size and population of Seoul, there should be a lot more homeless beggar-type people out and about than there are. I don't know where they're all hiding out but occasionally they make an appearance and it's a jarringly third-world like experience. As most of my readers know, first-world beggars are quite a problem. For the love of God, they have entitlement issues. Like, "Hello, I live in a freaking first world country, OF COURSE you should give me a dollar!" Anyone else ever been cussed out by a homeless guy? Raise your hand. Heck, that vibe caught up with me all the way in Baja Mexico. It's royally annoying.

Anyhoo, my first encounter with a beggar in Seoul was a man laying on the stairs of a subway with his head covered. I thought maybe he had passed out or something until I noticed his hands were out and cupped together. He had a few coins in them and that clued me in. More than half the time I've seen people begging, they were either blind, or missing limbs. So...when an old Korean lady came walking through the teacher's room the other day, I had no idea who she was. I had seen her come in and didn't pay much attention. At some point though, I was one of the few teachers left in the office. The little old lady comes up to me and speaks in her soft, polite-sounding voice. She told me her name then propped her little black duffle bag on my desk/chair and started pulling out socks. My brain went into overdrive!

Whenever people talk to me in Korean as if I should be understanding them it makes me panic because I'm the sort of person who really tries to make appropriate listening faces. This is virtually impossible when you don't know what the heck is going on! I probably ended up wearing my panic face. I hate it when that happens unintentionally. Seriously. It's embarrasing.

So there I am wearing my panic face when one of the grumpy male teachers (probably seeing the panic face and not wanting to offend "the foreigner") tells the ajumma I don't speak Korean but that doesn't stop her. She keeps doing her little presentation in the super polite voice while he bristles past in a huff. At this point I'm extra freaked out because I understood what he said, he seemed kind of rude which I didn't like, and socks keep coming out of that duffle bag like she borrowed it from Mary Poppins. Geez, I don't need any socks! I'm thinking as they keep pouring out of the bag then I'm like, well I kinda do...but I don't know what I want. And those 'flesh' ones are definitely not my color. *Auugggh!!!* And with that, I waved her away.

And in that moment, I noticed her arm---the one she wasn't using---the shaped sleeve of her blazer that was unnaturally round, hanging straight and...was empty. She slipped the socks back into the bag, bowed her head politely and off she went. In that moment, I felt like a big jerk. Heck, I still do.

I was unnecessarily annoyed and missed an opportunity to make someone's day.

AND...I'm blaming it all on the boys!!! If I hadn't been so preoccupied with the shallow, selfishness of others, I might have been in a more pleasant and readily giving mood. ; )

So back to the question...Should I even bother?

Of course!

I don't really need another pair of cheap socks but it would have given an old lady a moment of dignity and heck, maybe lunch for the day. She would've gotten a smile about the black foreigner girl who bought socks even though she couldn't speak Korean.

As for boys, I refuse to believe that this country is full of jerks. I have no problem however, believing that online sites are populated with them or that dance clubs are or even, that half of the guys who speak English here use it as a calling card for free booty. The same is true of American guys and I haven't quite given up on them yet.

I think of a French-Canadian girl out here and her cute Christian Korean husband and know that anything's possible even though tons of things are not likely!

And on that positive note, I leave you with the song that stopped me in my tracks at eMart. I was about to bust a slow dance by. my. self. After extensive googling, I found it: Good Love by Dynamic Duo with Kim Bumsoo rocking the vocals. I hope these lyrics are, shall we say, appropriate cause some of the babies heard me playing this in the classroom...

So, back to relationships out here in the Wild Wild East...

Being the adventurous girl that I am, I had signed up for a Korean penpal/dating site to test the waters shortly before I got here. That being the case, I decided I would meet up with a couple of the fellas this weekend. Personally, I wouldn't really consider this sort of thing "dates" because I'm psychologically unable to comprehend dating, but I digress. We met.

Sooo, on Saturday, I met up with a dude we'll call Minwoo. His real name was far less cool than that, but moving on...

Basically, I was meeting dude for a little "getting-to-know-you" dinner then going out to a club with friends. Dude is like, "Sure, let's meet up with your friends" BUT didn't have any cash. [Cultural note: In Korea, ATMs are only open until 11pm or so and the subways typically stop running at midnight...except on the weekend (!) when they stop even earlier.]

So, dude paid for dinner with a credit card and when we missed the last subway, he was like, "Do you have any cash?" *hold up! wait a minute!!!* Whaaa?! If I knew how to get where I was going myself I woulda considered leaving his ass behind and told him to call Tyrone. lol.

Then, on the way to the area we're supposed to meet everyone, he starts commenting about how many foreigners are there. He wanted to know exactly who was gonna be there and I assured him one of the girls was bringing her Korean friend and that a few people speak Korean...all this to get to the point where we're finally (1 hour later?) walking to the club and he looks like he's gonna pass out.

Soooo, being the considerate person that I am, I'm like, "Don't feel like you have to come. I understand." [His English isn't that great.] I'm trying to convince him it's all good either way. Finally, he's like, "Ok. Maybe next time," and it's all good. As I was returning the jacket he lent me, he's like, "Um, can I borrow $10?" NO LIE. *What the sam hizell?!?* Yes, this fool just asked if he could get some money to ride home AND, I gave it to him. At this point, I was just like, "whatever." The awkwardness was nauseously palpable.

In retrospect, I have a feeling he was thinking it was gonna end Sex in the City style. *Damn it Hollywood!!! And Snoop Dogg!!!* Basically, dude asked me to ride across freaking town to his subway stop. As I recall, initially when we were deciding when to meet, he had suggested 9 p.m. I didn't think too much of it because there's more folks out in my neighborhood at 9 then there are a 8 in the morning...but I mean, really? Seriously? If you're thinking of making a night of it, wouldn't you BRING SOME MONEY?!?! The primary reason I agreed to meet him in Sadang is because I thought his job was over there--and he had to work on Saturday--not for a whack booty call. *auuurrrghh*

There was definitely some random flirtatiousness which didn't cross the line or anything so it took me a while to process what went down and now I'm like BOOOO to online 'penpals' because the second situation was more disturbing...

Basically, there's very little I can do to describe the guy I met with on Sunday except to say that he was perfectly well-mannered, helped me with my Korean (study date, lol!), and drove an imported convertible. Did I mention he's a doctor? Totally positive traits yet, I had this weird feeling after we parted ways--a weird, very bad foreboding feeling. The last time I had this feeling I ended up dating a guy who refused to comprehend the meaning of "break up". He too had started off well-mannered and wasn't even as polished (or smart) as this guy...

Now, if I was the sort for random, sexual relationships, the second guy would definitely be on my radar. In fact, trying to explain how I felt about the situation to a fellow teacher here proved ridiculously useless. I feel like I've received a warning in my spirit, as we Pentecostals like to say, and I'm gonna go with it. I'm already plotting how to squirm out of meeting with this guy again even though he really seemed like a good teacher. (He's able to explain Korean concepts to me in English and he even knows a little Mandarin. *sigh*) At the same time, I'm reminded of a friend of mine who dated a guy long-distance for around a year, later found out he had two kids and years later, found out he was married. I'm definitely not up for that level of adventure during my stay.

Here's to smarter decisions and better people coming my way!

[Oh yes, as for the coworker that was in my mouth, he finally seems like he's over it. Which is a grand relief. That said, the other teacher in my hall nicknamed him "Future Ex-Boyfriend" which I thought was quite fitting for a situation you KNOW would never go anywhere!]

Korea – Week 3

This week started off with a stunted attempt to go to church. I wanted to visit Yeoido Full Gospel Church an Assemblies of God congregation with the world’s largest membership. For no good reason, the church doesn’t have exact directions on their English website. I guess, like, you know, they’re the biggest so of course everybody knows where it is, right? Right. Cut to act three, even if they do know, they can’t explain it in English if you get off the wrong subway stop! I spent a few hours at Yeoido community park watching people enjoy the summer afternoon. Further attempts to resume next week…

My first week of a real teaching schedule was quite an adventure. I had my lesson plans for the 1^st and 2^nd grades (US 10th/11th) worked out pretty well so those classes went pretty smoothly. However, Monday was my first teachers’ class. Basically, most of the non-English teachers haven’t had to use English since college and they thought it would be fabulous if I led a conversation class for them…except they weren’t really ready for conversation. In an American classroom, you typically jump in and ask people to challenge themselves from day one. Until recently (and still only 50% of the time) that wasn’t the case in Korea. My “fun” lesson plan fell flat. I’ll have something boring for them next week. ; )

I only had three days of teaching the girls this week because of special activities on Thursday and Friday. I think in general, most of us in the West buy into Asian countries’ PR campaign about how well mannered and studious the kids are. This would be a good time to point out that I’ve never seen so many kids going god-knows-where all times of the night on public transport on a weeknight (except NYCity.) I had the misfortune of teaching one of my classes without my co-teacher and quickly discovered that students have no qualms about brushing their hair, chatting and texting during lessons! I’m still deciding if I’m more impressed at their gall or offended that my lesson wasn't keeping their attention…

Wednesday night, Liz and I met another teacher living in our building. He’s a (tall) Mexican kid from Chicago who in four days of living here already figured how to get rid of his trash! While this may be an issue of common sense in the States, Korea has an elaborate trash disposal system a step down from Japan’s, in which food, recyclables (categorized by type) and general trash have to be placed separately. This, in addition to purchasing approved trash bags!

Thursday was my school’s anniversary. For some reason in Korea, that’s a cause for celebration. The girls were off the hook for a day. Students from different programs came up with activity areas. Student art and sculptures were on display. Some classes sold snacks. I spent some “free-speaking” time with the English Club. Some art design students offered nail painting with detailed designs. Japanese class students had a Japanese area. The hospitality industry girls were acting as waitresses and mixing cocktails. Yup, cocktails. Our school is serious about the hospitality! We have a mock hotel reception area, bedroom, ballroom and cocktail bar. (See Exhibit A.)

All in all, it was a pretty wild day at school. The only American comparison I could think of is an afterprom party. I decided to go ahead and leave at 415 or so. From what I understand, I missed the dance team, cheerleaders and teachers’ performances! Maybe next year. lol!

Friday was physical fitness day. Anybody else remember those horrid Presidential Fitness Tests we had back in the day? Same concept except they only have to run 50 meters! Once again, I had no classes. I spent most of the day hanging out with one of my co-teachers and occasionally timing the girls as they did push-ups. Since it was the day before Chuseok, the most major Korean holiday all year, we had a half day.

My super cool thirty-something coworkers treated me to lunch at T.G.I. Friday’s (again!) Thank God I love that place…then off to the movies to see Mama Mia. I was beginning to get a sore throat but I still felt ok.

On Saturday, I traversed down to check out a palace and be touristy. It was…touristy. Basically, there were very old buildings. And a conservatory built in the 1800’s or so. The most interesting thing to me was observing how the modern city of Seoul has built up around the palace site. Directly across the street is a large private hospital. Around the corner are several convenience stores. The contrast was notable.

Other than that, I spent Saturday warding off a flu/cold combination and wishing I was out having fun! I’m (95%) better now but “I was sick” was pretty much my resounding refrain for “What did you do over the holiday?”

And on that note, I’ll wrap it up. ; ) More to come!

Love and hugs,

-taryn