The cultural divide

Men are from Mars; women are from Venus.

On numerous occasions I've been a little weirded out or uncomfortable when my older, male teaching colleagues would ask me to join them in dinner after work or suggest I come with them on the weekend for a tour of the city. Now, at home, these situations scream DATE, but here, it's no more than a suggestion between two friends... Or is it? I still get the heebie-geebies on occasion and I don't know how to react. I usually just say, "Yeah, sure, another time," and pretend then continue life as if the conversation never took place. And then, there are times like today when a cute guy (about my age) asks me to dinner and I don't know what to say because I can't speak Korean and I don't understand his intentions! Everyone in the teacher's office was laughing, saying things to him in Korean while he blushed and I kinda hid behind my desk. What do you do??

Homo-erotic moments:

Some of you know that Asians in general find it perfectly acceptable to hold hands with people of the same sex or even sometimes touch each other's legs. It's really a sign of friendship and love. Korean boys in particular are really affectionate towards each other. In one of my classes, I came upon a group of boys where one was rubbing the other's leg and they were writing out a conversation script where the participants were named Sexy Boy, Beautiful Boy, and Crazy Boy. I consider myself used to such actions, but when I saw this and read their scripts, even I was caught off guard. The boys are always telling each other that their handsome or good looking, which is cool, but I think it goes too far sometimes. Perhaps single-sex education is doing them a dis-service. As a teacher for both an all girls and all boys school, I have decided it is my added duty to introduce a few boys to some girls. (In case you are wondering, South Koreans pretty much deny that homosexuality even exists. There is no chance these boys are gay, and if some of them were, they probably would be the least touchy out of fear of suspicion--to be gay is be ousted from society.)

Where are your table manners?

After dropping a couple California rolls on the floor and dumping their contents all down the front of my shirt, I realized that western manners have no place in the land of chopsticks. I was out at a restaurant and had been trying to take smaller bites of my food rather than shove the whole thing in my mouth like some sort of glutton, however, I just made a mess. Western manners just don't work here. Because food is so hard to hold with chopsticks, Koreans just shove everything in their mouths. It only takes one bite to get the job done. In addition, it's a sign of respect to the cook if you slurp your soup and burp after a meal--do this and everyone will know you enjoyed yourself. You would never see that at an American restaurant! lol.

You say goodbye and I'll say hello--hello, hello!

Koreans don't say goodbye when their done talking to you. In fact, they just say, "eh, eh" and hang up the phone. If you're eating lunch with a Korean and they finish first, they'll just get up and leave. They'll probably let you finish talking if you're in the middle of something, but as soon as you're done, they're out the door. The same goes with thank you's. There's no concept of "you're welcome." I think there is an official phrase, but no one uses it.

Another brick in the wall...

Teachers here beat students when they get out of line. They all carry paddles or bamboo batons for whopping the boys into shape. Today, in the teacher's office, I witnessed one teacher slapping a kid behind the knee with his baton as the boy crumpled to the floor, his face writhing. I'm glad to say that this only happens at the boys school, and even though it seems pretty cruel, the boy on the floor got up and kind of chuckled about it. At the girls school, the teachers all carry these batons but no one uses them, instead they punish students by giving them cleaning duties. However, I would rather take a beating than clean out the squatty potties... yuck!! Those bathrooms reek!!

Honor the dead!

In Korea, there's a national ancestor's day where everyone goes out and cleans the graves of their ancestors. Isn't that nice? How many graves do you think go unvisited each year in America? A couple hundred million at least. Seeing Koreans take care and honor the dead is kind of inspiring... And then again, many worship their ancestors too... I'm not so keen on that part...