P: Getting Excited/Nervous about Korea

Yay Kari and Nick's imminent/pending arrival! Tell them I say a big hello!

So...I am just starting to let myself imagine what Seoul will be like. Through the beauty of Facebook, I've reached out to some friends (Korean-Americans) who've been in Seoul recently. How did I know this? Through Facebook status updates, holla. So I was trying to gleam more info re language programs. Then yesterday, while I was sitting in the BU Student Dental office, my student dentist Bon. hee was telling me about how she was there 3 years ago. "Yeah, basically you have to look very fashionable all the time," she said. "They going to tell you, sal bbeh! sal bbeh!" Which means, literally, let go of your weight. as in, slim down, pronto. She told me that one of her guy friends thinks she's fat. Bear in mind that Bon. hee is roughly the size of my wrist.

Then she said people told her to wear more makeup (apparently Korean women don't leave their houses without a full face of makeup--I'm talking pancake-style). And she was walking around wearing sneakers, and everyone was like, "Why you not get dress up! Get dress up!" because everyone else was walking around wearing heels.

So I sat there in my dentist seat, haunted by flashbacks of my own Korean upbringing. The times my aunts, uncles, newly arrived relatives, would all tell me, sal bbeh! sal bbah-juh! Lose weight! and then the one time I was in Korea in 1994, and my cousin's girlfriend asked me, why aren't you wearing makeup? She herself was done up like a geisha. And I shrank lower in my seat, thinking about how I was going to set myself up for a horribly awkward year, where I would be uncomfortable even in my own skin.

Bon. hee continued, "Everyone in Korea, they all follow the same trend. There is no such thing as alternative culture there. People all look the same, dress the same, everything the same. And if you different, they look at you funny." She said she had no plans to go back, even though she spent the first 16 years of her life there.

So a few hours later, I met with my Korean language partner Bum. Shik, who arrived from Seoul in September. When I relayed this to him, he made a face and said, Aish! That's not how people are anymore. Maybe 20 years ago, Korean people would say things like that, but nowadays young people never say it. They might think it, but they wouldn't say it to your face. He said the old people might still say things like that, but you should just ignore them.

Bum. Shik then told me I have carte blanche to get mad at that person (provided it's a young person and not an old fuddy-duddy), and I can say, "Are you crazy? What's so great about you, that you can say something like that?" So that was really reassuring. Then he said if I get there early/mid August, he would borrow his sister's car and introduce me to his friends. And then we could go to the 38th parallel line that borders South and North Korea (apparently you have to be an American citizen to gain access to this point, or you have to be WITH an American citizen). And there's a tunnel and a train there, and it's supposed to be pretty cool.

Anyway, that made me feel guilty that I wasn't a better enough a friend to him on the US-side, but it's kind of hard to invite someone out to functions who is still getting a grip of the American social mores, without feeling like you'd have to "babysit" them. Which is what I would be feeling like. Which is probably what he would be feeling like, if we meet up in Seoul. So I must start to invite him to more American things before I leave. Although the other day he asked me "Do you have boyfriend" because it was the Korean equivalent of Valentine's Day coming up, and I clammed up and was like, "Um, I used to, um, no...It's complicated!" and then he patted me on the shoulder and said, "We should go to eat brown-sauce Chinese-style noodles" (aka jja jjang myun). And THEN I was all confused, because he probably asked in just a normal Korean way, but then I wasn't sure for sure, and I thought, can't we just be language friends? And I also thought, can't I just be attracted to you? It'd make things so much easier. But that isn't the case.

This morning, as I was filling out this dumb Fulbright paperwork (I'm on the verge of getting rejected from the separate language award), I looked at the dates, and there's a chance my Fulbright might even last a year and a half. In which case I wouldn't come back to America until Dec 2010. Which made me very nervous, because if I'm going to teach or do anything else, then I'd need to be back by Sept. But THEN I thought, how awesome would it be to ride out the year on the Fulbright's dime, and just keep buying myself more time to write? So I called my dad (namely to talk about some other things), and he said, you should put down 1.5 years for now on the form, and afterwards you can decide later.

And THEN my father said something that made me really excited. We started to talk about REAL ESTATE!!! Apparently Korean's rental system works one of 2 ways. You put down a huge deposit, $10K+, and you just pay for utilities, and then you get that money back at the end of the year. The other way is to pay month by month, but this is much more expensive. Abba also said real estate in Seoul is super cheap right now, and it's cheaper to buy than to rent, so we started talking about the possibility of buying a place, if the Fulbright people don't give me housing. And that was so exciting! Even though my savings dropped 20% in light of our crappy economy, the Korean Won (currency) is super cheap in relation to the already weakened dollar. So I'd still have enough $ to consider putting down a down payment for a small little place in a hip neighborhood, and then I can officially have a pied-a-terre. More so than that, I'd just be excited to start a housing hunt with numbers that aren't SUPER INFLATED the way they are in NY. Holla! So I am going to ride out that high, momentarily, before I get back to writing/revising. The faster I hand in my thesis, the sooner I can make it to Korea...