Into the sunset

My life in South Korea is done, and my sister's wedding is fast approaching in South Africa. My last few days at English Village are a whirlwind of final dinners and goodbyes, and relief that I'm going to miss the latest directive from the "management": African accents are to be replaced in the future with American ones. My American accent is so poor I'm embarrassed to even try in front of my friends for fear of angering them with the imitation. And anyway, which of the thousands of US accents would I choose? Oh, mad Korea.

In my last week, it snows. Yes, in mid-March, it snows. Poor Korea lucked out on the weather front...


Also in my last week, Shabu Lady discovers that I'm leaving and suddenly realises that she loves me! She really does! (Or maybe she's just thankful that she no longer needs to put me on my own table at big Shabu dinners...)

So. Korea. I won't miss people peering into my shopping bags, picking things out so as to have a better look at my groceries. Or the nightmare of having to deal with social and administrative hierarchy. Or the staring on the subway as I stand swaying in my foreign skin. The smell of silkworm pupae sizzling on the street. Having to explain for the hundredth time to an offended Korean just why I don't like the wonderfood that is Kimchi. The food and the wholesale worship of meat, no matter where it comes from. My tiny box they call an apartment. Sharing space with a million other people. Being met at the door of a shop by an assistant shaking her head at me and shouting "No big size! No for you!"

I'm going to miss shabu shabu and the local Indian restaurant, where curry comes with a side of pickles, and the friends that I've made from, truly, all corners of the English-speaking world - at least I now have a place to stay in a thousand different cities. The elderly lady in the shop who holds my hand when she babbles in Korean as if that will help me understand - and her wide smile. Couples' shirts! Someone going 3 blocks out of their way to show me where I need to go. Living two doors down from a cousin, and 4 doors away from my closest friend. Shopping in Seoul!

Korea has been an amazing ride; I can't see myself back here again, but then I have many friends at EV who said exactly the same thing right before they started looking into visas for another year. It's the first place I've ever truly experienced culture shock and that's a good thing. Without culture shock, the world is just one endless high street of McDonalds and Starbucks. In Seoul, the first Starbucks was met with such fierce animosity that it was the first Starbucks ever to translate its sign into another alphabet, Hangeul, as a compromise (it reads Seu-ta-bug-seu Ko-bi, and I love it!)


The other day I found myself thinking of the way that I get upset when people aren't nice to me on my travels; I write in my diary that "people in [insert town name] aren't as friendly as in [other town name]" and feel sad that I haven't had as good a time as I might have. But travel involves meeting people who are going about their lives, having a good day, having a bad day, trying to come to terms with the influx of people from other places, tourists who spend the equivalent of a month's local wages on a room for the night and then demand smiles all the time. The shock of having to adapt to Korea has left me smiling: if Korea, who looks to America as an adoring child looks up to a heroic baseball player, can still be so different to the McDonaldised West, then perhaps there's hope for the rest of the world.

Foreigner Fascination Syndrome

This evening we went out for shabu shabu again :) Yummy! Waiting for our taxi from English Village, my weekend boss, Mr Kim, happened to walk past us on his way home and was quickly shanghaied into giving us a lift to the restaurant. He's such a great character - he knows me well now, and I walk into the cafe to a cry of "Emily Teacher! Pretzel?" (I'm putting on Michelin tyres by the day...) Anyway, it was three girls and one lad in Mr Kim's luxury SUV, and just before the restaurant, he pulled into a parking lot and gestured out the window, saying to our male colleague "Stamina! For you!" - we realised we were outside a dog restaurant! Laughing we asked if that was how he managed, but Mr Kim just snorted at us, laughing, and pulled off again :)

I shared with Wallis this time, a sometime vegetarian, so managed to get a non-meat pot. This is Wallis, Leigh and Cait waiting for the veggies to cook.

It was delicious as usual, but oh-so-hot! Wallis and I were saying how the heat is different from Mexican or Indian heat - and how we'd both love a steaming naan bread to go with our soup! In Korea, the heat comes from red pepper paste (I think I've mentioned before that it's the reason behind Korea's status as the highest rate of stomach cancer in the world!) Here you can see the red pepper paste residue on the edge of the pot!

Divine! The noodles are so so fresh, it's a completely different meal to the usual dried pasta.

We'd been sitting there a while when a young family came and settled at the table next to us. They had two little girls, about 6 and 3 years old - gorgeous in the usual Korean way, big black eyes and lush hair :) They immediately noticed us (well, there were about 20 of us!) and the younger of the girls, unable to use chopsticks yet and therefore only wandering up to her mum now and then for a bite of her meat, latched on to one of my colleagues - completely unable to take her eyes off him. She'd watch for a little, then run screaming with laughter to her mum! Reuben's a natural with kids and started making faces at her, and soon she was sticking her tongue out at all of us - from the safe distance of a couple of metres and within clutching distance of her parents... Later another toddler arrived and was similarly transfixed, but this one quickly lost courage and retreated to the safety of her dad's arms!

It's fun and slightly odd to be in a job where all the men are great with kids, and love to play!