Return Of The Creepy Neighbor

That’s right – he came back! Two nights ago, I was in my kitchen, skyping with my friend and suddenly I heard “excuse me” from right outside my bedroom window again. Since it was light inside and dark outside, I couldn’t see anything but his creepy silouette and he was right up against my window. As soon as he’d gotten my attention in English, he switched to Korean and began to yell at me. I obviously had no idea what he was saying and he had just scared the crap out of me by showing up there, but I tried to understand what he was telling me.  Obviously I couldn’t, so as he tried to convey one message to me, I tried to convey an “I don’t understand a damn word you’re saying” message back to him. I looked at him with a confused look on my face. I shrugged my shoulders. I stuttered as I answered him. I told him in English, “I don’t understand Korean.” I looked at him apologetically. I asked my friend on skype (while he was still talking) what she thought he might be saying and she looked at me like I was crazy…so then I sent him the same look. He didn’t respond like a normal person to any of my messages. He just kept yelling at me so I decided to switch tactics.

I thought it might be a good idea to pretend that I suddenly understood what he was saying since it worked so well the first time. I pretended to have a moment of clarity and I said “Ohhhhh, okay!” as I nodded my head and smiled. It worked! He went away! I don’t know if he was satisfied or not because, remember, I couldn’t see him. He left though and that was good enough for me. I’m not sure what went through his mind at that particular moment. Did he really think that I went from not understanding a word of Korean to suddenly being able to understand the whole language? Maybe he thought that I’d suddenly turned into a Korean. Or perhaps he realized that I was never going to understand him and that I just wanted him to go away. Who knows?

Anyway, today I told my boss and she sent a coworker to talk to my landlord to talk to my neighbor. Yes, that’s the difficulty that comes with a language barrier. But it worked! I found out that I am, in fact, too loud for my neighbor. This shouldn’t come as a shock to me since my last neighbor wrote an entire letter to the building manager complaining about the noise level of our apartment. Still, I thought I was being much quieter here because I’m by myself… Apparently that’s not the case. There’s a happy ending to this story, though! My neighbor and I now have a deal: I will try to be quieter and he will not knock on my freaking bedroom window at night and yell at me in languages I don’t understand. Yay!

Missions (Mostly) Accomplished

I realized today that I’ve recently accomplished two goals:

1. A friend and I were discussing whether or not we liked flying and I remembered a day from when I was nine years old. I was on my way to Arizona to visit my grandma and I was so excited to be flying in an airplane. I remember hoping to myself that one day I would travel so much that I’d get completely sick of flying like all the businessmen around me seemed to be. I can’t say I’m totally there but after so many flights with Ryan Air last year and after paying for my flights over the past five years, I’m pretty damn close. Anyway, I feel like it’s a forgotten mission accomplished and I’m excited about it!
2. Then at lunch, I noticed that my chopsticks skills have improved tenfold since I’ve been here. We went out to eat the first day I was here and I ended up switching to a spoon shortly after the meal had started. Today, however, I realized that I don’t even think about using them anymore! Immediately after I said it out loud though, my overjoyed little fingers slipped and I accidentally flung a pickled radish into the air; it ricocheted off of me and landed on the floor but I promise it was just a fluke. Life’s funny and it just couldn’t let me get away with being so proud of myself.

Day 25!

I just realized that today is my 25th day in Seoul and I haven't been blogging as much as I've meant to. Long story short: I could not be happier. I absolutely love it here. I'm making new friends every time I go somewhere and having an awesome time learning about this country. I love my job, my students, my coworkers and having my own apartment. The Latin dance here is amazing! I wake up every day more excited to be here than I was the day before and I am often too excited to go to sleep at night. I feel so lucky to get to be doing this (and I can't believe they're paying me for it!!).

Below are some things I've been meaning to blog about but haven't had the time for:

Koreans Are Very Helpful

I’ve been super busy exploring Seoul every day with my new friend, Jacqui, from Canada. We mastered the subway system right away (because it’s easy) and we rarely get lost when walking around (that’s, obviously, thanks to Jacqui because I can barely find my way to the end of the tiny street I grew up on). We did get lost trying to walk home (from very far away) around 1:00 a.m. the other night and there was no one around to ask for help for a long time. Finally, we saw three girls biking and I decided to “ask them for directions,” even though we obviously don’t speak the same language. But surprise! Even though almost NO ONE around here speaks English, the girl we happened to ask is an English teacher. Even though we told them not to, they got off their bikes and walked the rest of the way with us, stopping every once in a while to check their iphones and make sure we were going the right way.

Koreans Are Healthy (for the most part)
1. The food here is AMAZING. You can go out to eat and get a very healthy and filling dinner for less than $5.00 and everything is delicious. My friend and I already have a favorite place where the owner knows us and our “usuals.” I would feel fat about that, except that what I order is vegetables and really healthy rice. (Side note: The food she makes is so good that I even like the kimchi she serves with it which is really saying something for me ‘cause I typically hate that stuff.) Tonight when we went there for dinner, she taught me how to pronounce the name of my favorite dish (which is called yangpunibibimbap, by the way).

2. When I want to take a jog, I go to a park near my apartment that has a large track around the perimeter and I am never the only one there. There are always tons of Koreans….walking the track. I dodge the businessmen who stay healthy by lapping the track at snail-speed while smoking cigarettes on their lunch breaks and the women who mini-step in their high heels around the track, carrying umbrellas in order to stay out of the sun. They all must wonder why the hell some white chick is running on the track...and IN THE SUNLIGHT!! They probably think I’m the weirdest creature on this planet...but whatever. It's nice that we can all...umm...work out? together.

My Experiment:

I spend quite a bit of time walking through the streets here and the majority of people completely ignore me but there are a few who stare as well. Neither type of person really bothers me, but I’ve always loved the friendliness of places like Mexico where everyone says ‘good morning’ or ‘good evening’ or whatever to everyone they see as they pass each other in the streets. I’m used to at least acknowledging the fact that other people exist when I see them so I do the whole eye contact combined with that close-mouthed half-smile thing and sometimes I even throw in a slight head nod to be polite. When I first got here, I realized that when I did that people either looked at me like I was crazy or looked away very quickly and awkwardly. I started conducting an experiment and smiling at literally everyone I passed just to see how many people acknowledged me and how they would react. It’s been an ongoing experiment since then and, while I have no concrete numbers, it's really entertaining to me. I’m going to continue it and I’m sure I’ll come up with some sort of final theory in a few months.

아무도 그것을 말하는없는 경우에도 모든 이름은 영어로되어 있습니다

One of the first things I noticed here was that the names of the majority of the businesses and restaurants here are in English. However…no one around here, including the people who work inside these buildings, seem to speak or understand more than three words of English. As far as I can tell, it makes about as much sense as it would if I titled all of the sections of this blog in Korean for you English speakers. (By the way…the above title means “The names of everything are in English even though no one speaks it,” according to Google Translate.)

Traffic Lights Don’t Matter

Just the same as in pretty much every other foreign country I’ve been to, traffic lights here are pretty meaningless. I learned the night that I got to Korea that you will almost die every time you cross a street unless you wait at least five seconds after the light turns red for the people running the lights. But it goes beyond that. Not only do tiny, fast cars go speeding through intersections a few seconds after the light turns red, but I often see even the city buses driving under the red lights when it is as far away from their turn as it possibly could be…and they act like it’s completely normal.

The Kids Are Adorable

Yes Erin, it's true. But it's not just the little babies. Today my friend and I went to visit a palace, where I had my first taste of real Asian architecture and it was incredible. We got a free tour by the smartest little 12-year-old I've ever met in my life. He volunteers 5 hours of his time every other week on Sundays to give tours of the Deoksugung Palace, in order to teach foreigners about his country. Are you kidding me? I never would've thought to do something like that...especially when I was 12. He was so professional and adorable and he was able to answer every single question we had. He spoke perfect English because he went to Canada to study English for three months...I didn't ask when but I can only assume it was around the time he hit double digits. I can only hope that one day I am as smart and awesome as that kid (although, unfortunately, I know that dream will never become a reality for me).

In the picture above I'm with my friend Jacqui from Canada and our adorable little tour guide! :)

The Past Few Days Have Been Interesting...

Last Saturday night, I dragged my friend to a salsa class and she enjoyed it but didn’t want to stay out the rest of the night so I ended up staying out by myself. At first it was really awkward…I’m pretty sure I was the only person sitting at a table by myself and all I had to do was drink my bottled water. Every couple of songs, someone asked me to dance, but there weren’t very many people there. Then, however, they started playing bachata (my absolute favorite for anyone who isn’t familiar with my obsession) and the guy I was dancing with and I realized we’d both learned bachata in the Bay Area, where he’s from and where I spent the past year. Then he introduced me to all of his friends, who were English teachers from all over the place. They’re living a few hours south of Seoul and were here visiting for the weekend. I ended up hanging out with them and they invited me to go with them to another salsa club. Obviously I went and had a ton of fun. :) One of the girls met someone there who started dancing with us so, when my new friends left at 2:00 a.m., I still had someone to hang out with. I stayed with him until the club closed at 3:30 and then we hung out in Quizno’s for two hours and talked while we waited for the metro to open to go home. My feet hurt but that was by far the best night I’ve had in Seoul!

Today was a blast but it started off in the weirdest way. Another friend that I met in Italy is here teaching English too and we hadn’t seen each other yet so we decided to meet at an amusement park (we were off work today because it was Korea’s Thanksgiving). I was getting ready to go and I heard a rattling of either my door or my window. At first I thought someone was coming in, but I didn’t know who the hell it could be. I had given my friend, Jacqui, a spare set of keys to my house and I thought maybe it could be her because she was going to the amusement park with me today. But seriously…we were meeting elsewhere and she’s not rude enough to come walking into my house without talking to me first. So I went back to brushing my teeth. The noise continued so I finally turned down my music and started walking to the door to see what it was. Then I heard a man say one of the few words in Korean that I recognize which means “over here.” I looked into my bedroom and, through my window, I saw an older Korean dude standing there. He seemed somewhat concerned about something so I was trying to understand what he was telling me. However, besides the fact that I don’t understand Korean, I had just woken up, had my pants unbuttoned, had a mouthful of toothpaste and had just had the shit scared out of me. After a couple minutes of me trying to figure out what he was talking about and where he was pointing, I pretended I understood so he would go away and he did. I still have no idea what the hell he wanted (the only thing I can think of is that maybe he wanted my music turned down but that couldn’t have been it because it wasn’t even on anymore...and it wasn't very loud to begin with). Anyway, from now on, I’m keeping my window closed when I get ready in the mornings!

Work, Work, Work?

            Work is fun so far! There’s only one exception: I’ve been warned by a lot of people at my school that, if I’m not mean in the beginning, I’ll get walked all over because kids don’t respect foreign teachers as much as they do Korean teachers. So I’ve been pretending that I care way more than I actually do about small misbehaviors and I’ve been scaring the crap out of little kids left and right. Combining mini-lectures that begin with things like “You do NOT come into my classroom acting like that!” and my death-glare that I have almost perfected is enough to scare the 똥 out of any little kid that crosses my path. I definitely wouldn’t say I enjoy acting like that, but at the same time it’s kind of amusing to me that I am capable of intimidating people since I never knew I could before. On the first day, one little kid said “yes, sir” to me in the meekest little voice I’d ever heard. Poor thing.

Besides being mean out of obligation, though, I think I’m really going to enjoy teaching here. I’ve only worked three days so far, but I’m having a lot of fun with my kids. I spent my last class of today explaining to the kids how I used to fake sick in high school to get out of it. Of course…leave it to an American to teach Korean kids how to slack off. But whatever…I taught them how to fake sick in English so they were definitely learning. Plus, I think these kids work way too hard so they deserve the break if they can pull it off. Anyway, it’s going to be a good year and I'm excited!