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2nd Anniversary List

I made a list like this a year ago, so I thought it would be fun to make another list and see how it compares down the road.  I got this idea off of another blog called "Rip City to Seoul." You can find a link on my side bar. It's a cool blog by a guy from Portland who moved to Seoul.

What I Love About Korea:
Korean food and eating like a king for very little money
Korean attention to healthy and healing foods and medicinal foods
Koreans making time to truly enjoy their meals and making traditional food a priority
Korean kindness and generosity which is plentiful here
Ease and affordability of transportation and hotels
The logic of Hangeul
The Korean kids (students) --love 'em --they are wonderful
Korean respect and love for teachers within society
The weather -- 4 beautiful seasons -- I even like monsoon season!
K-pop and Korean style
Korean manners

What I Hate About Korea:

The frustration of trying to really learn Hangeul

Korean driving --OMG--don't even get me started...

The isolation of feeling different as a foreigner

Not understanding the nuances of emotions here and how they are expressed

Not being able to improve my own vocabulary in my native language 

Speaking Konglish 

Things I Never Expected to Seem Normal:

Using squatting female urinals 

Seeing people eat live octopus...been there done that..haha

Eating octopus and so many other sea creatures

People parking wherever they damn well please downtown

My taxi driver watching t.v. and falling asleep at the same time

My taxi driver driving like a 16 year old girl in a drivers' ed class

Shrugging my shoulders and smiling while thinking: "I have no idea what you just said."

Bowing to anything and everything that moves

Toddlers bowing to me and saying "anneyonghasayo."

Seeing community gardens everywhere there's free space to garden

Taking the bus and subway

Eating kimchi almost everyday

Eating very spicy food frequently

No toilet paper in the restrooms

Just Venting...

I hate negative blogs.  I especially don't like the ones crafted by foreigners who complain constantly and look down at another culture simply because they're westerners.  This rant if definitely NOT that...at least that's not my intention.  Since this is a "diary" rather than a blog that's trying to attract a fan base, I think I've been a bit too guarded with my feelings.  I prefer to show the positive things about living in Korea.  This is because there are A LOT of positive things. However, there are also negative things that I tend to hide.  Showing any kind of weakness has been something I have been desperately trying to avoid since becoming an ex-pat in a very exotic location.  I guess it's just simply that I want people to like me and I want to do my best.  It's simple, but it's a lot of pressure. No matter how I look at it, I'm an outsider.  I am different.  Sometimes it's hard to take.  I don't have close girlfriends that I can really vent to.  When I do make a friend, they usually end up leaving because no one really stays here for more than a year or two.  I also desperately miss my sister because she has always been someone that I can talk to without judgement.  I can be completely myself in front of her, and I miss that so much. Of course there is email and Skype, but I don't regularly Skype with family back home. My life can be extremely lonely.  It's hard to explain just how lonely it can be. 

I've also been dealing with frustrations regarding the language. I'm hovering at this very low level, but at the same time I don't give myself enough credit for how much I DO know, even if it's got big holes in it.  I finally understand what it's like to be a baby who can't speak.  They say when babies learn a language, it just starts out as noise.  You can't imagine HOW frustrating and annoying meaningless "noise" can be when you're hearing it hour after hour day in and day out, and you can't understand more than 5% of it.  I'd like to be able to understand 20% at least and then continue to improve. I don't care about speaking that much.  My main frustration is not knowing what people are talking about. Are they angry, are they sad, are they making fun of me??  At first I didn't care, but since I've reached my 2nd anniversary in Korea, I've been feeling this intense annoyance at my inability to clearly understand the language.

I'm also very tired of being stared at.  Yes, I'm a foreigner, yes I'm tall, yes I'm big and yes I've got boobs. Sometimes it's just so sickening and exhausting to be looked up and down by almost every single person who sees me. It's hard for me to just go about my daily life sometimes.  Granted, the attention is not bad, it's just that when you're in the mood to just go about your business, it can become exhausting.

Another frustration of mine has been the education system here regarding foreigners.  The government hires foreign teachers which is great, but they have no system in place to train or support them.  Because of this, it's a sort of crap shoot as to what the result of this system will be.  You have teachers here who do their best because it's the right thing to do and you have others who are just looking for a way to get some traveling in. Unfortunately, the "bad" teachers make the good ones look bad, too.  I'm not trying to be judgmental, but it's a huge problem. Even for me, a person who has teaching credentials, I feel very lonely and not supported in the workplace. It's definitely not the fault of my Korean co-teachers. They are extremely busy and don't have time.  The school should be implementing some kind of new teacher support if they truly want their teachers to grow and blossom in their profession.  Either that, or perhaps only hire certified teachers?  I'm not sure, but I think that the current system is a bit bumbling and leaves Korean teachers frustrated and foreigners frustrated, also.

Random Funny Things About Being a Foreigner

I forgot to add this to my previous post. I invited Syd over from the elementary school to check out our last event of the day--the races. It's pretty exciting to see the kids running their relays around the dirt track.  The high school students often take a break from studying to lean out the windows and watch. Since our three schools (elementary, middle and high) are all grouped together, it feels pretty festive to see everyone out and about. First of all (as usual) if I'm with a guy they ask "teacher, teacher who is he?"  "Boyfriend, husband??"  I try to explain that he is my "chingu oui nam dong sang" which means my friend's younger brother."  If you say "friend" they only think boyfriend.  Unlike American culture, it's just not that common for two people of the opposite sex to hang out.  That's been hard for me to get used to.  It's part of the conservative culture of this area, I think.  It happened to me with every other male foreign teacher I've been seen with in the past.  Even the Korean English teachers who are in charge of showing around the new male foreign teachers get annoyed about the reactions of the students when they are seen with their colleagues around town.

Sir, you are surrounded. Drop your weapons.

Adding to these awkward cultural differences is just simply that kids don't see foreigners around here all that often. In bigger cities, we're a dime a dozen but this is rural Korea.  The kids like to stare unabashedly.  I was worried earlier in the day about bringing Oscar to the Sports Day because he would attract too much attention and be distracting. I could have brought Oscar and they still would have headed straight to look at the exotic new animal in the zoo--the new foreigner--and he's tall so they just gathered around him in a circle staring and gawking!  Syd looked a little uncomfortable and I was trying to get the kids to practice their English a little to break the ice. They were really shy! The kids just kept gathering around Syd in a big circle and then finally a tall outgoing girl bounded over and started peppering Syd with questions. Hilarious!