Some Humbling Things

For a week now, I've been sick in the stuffed up, sore throat, runny nose kind of way. I've been drinking water and orange juice. I've been avoiding dairy. I've been pretty good. But it's also been cold and rainy and on Sunday I realized that my emotional and mental sanity was going to depend on whether or not I could breath through my nose within the next hour.

My Canadian co-worker Chris advised me to get some kind of spray to unblock my nose. I moseyed on over to my local pharmacy, entered and told the pharmacist, using my best (and still shameful) Korean to tell him that I was sick here and here (pointing to my nose and my throat). I then said, "I want this," in Korean.

At this point, I brought my hand up under my nostril, extended two knuckles and moved them up and down under my nose, making a sound like a tiny little train (chu...chu....) as I did it to indicate a spraying sound to accompany the motion of my knuckles. I did this a couple of times, sort of enjoying my own charade skills, making the spraying sound shriller and more animated with repetition and my motions more pronounced.

When I'd finished, the man looked me over skeptically for a while before asking, "Nasal spray?"

I sighed and admitted, that yes, nasal spray was what I was in the market for. That was pretty embarrassing.

On Sunday, I went to Tongosa, an expansive temple site between the cities of Busan and Ulsan. It was breath taking. Absolutely the best time to visit temples on heavily forested mountain sides is during fall.

The forest had managed to pull off the most coordinated, complimentary and stunning display of colors I have ever seen. It was like the trees had sat down together and each decided to be a different shade of orange, yellow, red, brown and green in order to precisely and intricately capture the mood. It pretty almost to the point of excess, like a post card in a way that kept me pinching myself and exclaiming out loud.

I was invited on this trip by David, who lived formerly in Ulsan but is now doing his second year in Korea in Saechang, a smaller town some twenty minutes away. Also in attendance were Katie, Laurie and Alicia, three ladies who live and work in the same area as David and who I know through David. Matt, who also used to live in Ulsan but now works at a university in Busan, was also there and brought with him his very new and somewhat overly made up Korean girlfriend.

It was kind of a tense afternoon. The three women had met Matt a weekend or so previously and all seemed to have taken some kind of shine to him. Upon Matt's arrival, the three women all visibly brightened and perked, only to immediately shrunk back down again, palpably disappointed that he'd brought a lady friend.

They reminded me of times I've thought I saw someone I knew. One of those times when I've gotten up smiling and excited and started to wave or walk towards them, only to realize it isn't them and that I need to act like I wasn't all that interested in the first place, and was just itching my neck or something.

This was kind of funny for me. I was myself glad to see Matt attached to someone because he reminds me of a lot of things I am currently focused on forgetting. I didn't especially want to spend my day interacting with him.

Laurie, who is at least ten years older than I am, actually got up the gander to ask pointedly and bitchily, "So how did you guys meet? I mean, how long have you known each other?" She did this exactly the way women do when they want to know something that is absolutely none of their business for the purpose of assessing something that is probably even less of their business.

Both Alicia and Katie perked up a little again and leaned eagerly in to hear the answer. The Korean girlfriend didn't possess the English to understand or answer the question and so Matt chivalrously answered for her, admitting that they'd met around Halloween. I saw each lady stiffen slightly, aware that Matt had met them right around the same time. They were wondering, narrowed eyed wondering, what was so special about this Korean girl, why Matt had picked her over them.

It seems relevant to mention that a lot of Western men who come to Korea do so in the hopes of securing a Korea girlfriend. It's a pretty readily fetish-ized notion. People over here say, and this is racist and dreadful, that Western men pursuing Korean women have "yellow fever." And a lot of the men honestly do.

Western women take serious issue with this, on the one hand, understandably but also somewhat obnoxiously. I hear many female complaints about the difficulties of dating, meeting anyone or having a relationship in Korea, unless you came here in a relationship.

Western women like to say that Western men go after Korean women because Korean women are easier easier.

But from what I understand, that isn't the case. Korean women do not put out easily and tend to have serious princess complexes. It may be emotionally easier, given that there are usually substantial language and cultural barriers that can keep the relationship from getting too serious. But in terms of any kind of sex....Western men are generally better off pursuing Western women.

For the majority of the trip, the three white women snubbed the Korean girl and flirted messily with Matt. So she kind of hung out with me. We shared ice cream (or more honestly, Matt bought her an ice cream and I ate it) and she took refuge under my umbrella when it started raining.

I also watched a baby girl whose mother had put too many shiny clips in her hair and too much thought into her outfit. The baby had been fitted with shoes that chirped at every step, like two chew toys attached to her feet. She was wearing little white tights and dressy shoes and an amazingly well-coordinated outfit for someone who was just learning to walk.

The baby kept toddling off and then falling immediately upon her bottom, whereupon her mother would descend upon the baby like the plague, pick her up and dust her off and set her on her feet again in one motion, all in an effort to preserve the outfit.

Immediately, the girl would take another two steps and then fall on her bottom, causing the woman to repeat the process over and again. The mother was strangely resilient about it. She was not at all impatient or annoyed, but had somewhere down the line not learnt the lesson that little girls tend to fall on their bottoms and should therefore not wear their fullest finery when it is muddy and rainy outside.

I am going to go volunteer at an orphanage in Busan next Saturday. This will be my first time interacting with Korean kids where I don't have to wear a glove. The thought of this panicked me a little; children seeing my hand again. That hasn't been allowed in months.

That I would actually consider this, let alone panic about it, shows me that Korea has altered something about me and my confidence. I want that part of me back. And I'm going to get it.