<< Week 1: Leaving Vancouver | Main | Week 1: Culture Shock >>

I've already rushed through my initial impressions, typing wildly earlier this week in an effort to get something, anything down before my anxious mind wipes it all away. Things are already a bit hazy but I can still elaborate. This might take a while.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Okay. At the airport, after my family melted away and I was left by myself with a wallet stuffed with Korean cash (won), reality struck with deadly force. I was the only Westerner in the entire Gate waiting area and it definitely felt a bit disconcerting. I studied my Korean phrasebook intently, hoping that I might somehow be able to converse with the yellow sea of people around me. Unsurprisingly, I did not magically turn into a linguistic god. In fact, I could barely remember how to count to four after 30 minutes of vigorous repetition. My memory - it is shit.

On the plane, most of the Koreans studiously ignored me except when I accidentally stepped on their tiny toes getting to my seat. I was lucky enough be sitting beside a young Korean high-schoolish kid who had been studying in Canada for the last few years and spoke very understandable English. I interrogated him fiercely during the 12 hour flight and found out the following:

>>Using Chinese in Korean culture is similar to using Latin in English culture: an indication of academic prowess (or pretention, I suppose).

>>Korean pop stars all have long hair because young Korean students have traditionally been forced to wear their hair short. Therefore, long hair = rebellion and nonconformance.

>>The Korean mafia often initiates young bullies, as young as seventh grade, who proceed to terrorize the rest of their school with impunity.

>>English test scores are incredibly important for young Koreans with hopes of going to a good university (read: EVERY young Korean). An extremely slim margin of test results separate the good schools from the mediocre schools from the hopeless, piece-of-shit schools. Learning English is understandably a massive stress-fest.

>>Much of Korean entertainment is a hilarious amalgamation of American style: rocker, rapper, cowboy, Top40 Backstreet Boys pop-star and so forth. One of the funniest things I've ever seen was a music video in which a trio of sassy Korean males rapped in English and sang softly in Korean, while a fellow driving a fancy car down a light-spotted tunnel wept passionately onto his steering wheel. Perhaps his girlfriend broke up with him, or maybe he did poorly on his university entrance exam - I couldn't really tell. It's just as likely that he lost a game of Starcraft. Regardless, I laughed hysterically, to the obvious consternation of the elderly woman beside me.

PS: The kid didn't have to tell me that final point. I figured it out all on my own!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Anyways, I got my first real taste of cultural misunderstanding within several minutes of arriving at the airport. I was supposed to call an enigmatic character named "Billy-teacher" once I arrived so he could pick me up at the other end of the line. However, none of the Korean coins I had acquired thus far would fit into a pay phone slot, no matter how angrily I pushed. So I did what any self-respecting Canadian would do: I asked a nearby family if they could make change out of my too-fat coin with a picture of a sagely asian figure on it. Of course, they had no fucking idea what I was talking about despite the fact that I gestured enthusastically at the coin and at them and at the phone, and eventually an ugly little girl with an ice cream cone told me to go away... I think. So I went away and got on a bus.

Luckily, every single bloody person in this country carries a cell phone so I was able to wrangle a call out of the guy sitting across from me. His phone was so complicated and suped-up that it looked like it might possibly launch nuclear missiles out of a remote silo on the Pacific rim. So, naturally, I had to get this strange man to place the call for me like I was some weeping lost infant trying to phone his mommy at home.

All went well and Billy-teacher, who I had placed as an Aussie because of his accent on the phone, was there to meet me in Sanbon. He was actually a well-dressed Korean guy with a British accent. Hmmmm. Anyways, within seconds of dumping my stuff into my apartment, Billy and all the other English teachers at the school rounded me up for dinner and drinks. They are lovely people.

I struggled a bit with chopsticks and the newness of everything and jet-lag and not having slept in 22 hours, but the food was good and the beer was good (although I still think Soju tastes like rubbing alcohol or at the very least, a shot of straight vodka). We hit a number of different places, the last of which ended in me singing very poor kareoke at a norae-bang and us making friends with a group of Korean 20-somethings eager to test out their modest English. One of them in particular took a liking to me and we spent the night exchanging hand-slaps and fist bonks because we were both turbo-drunk and unable to communicate whatsoever. He eventually passed out, his head in his hands, and we all stumbled home at about 4 AM. I gladly collapsed into my unfamiliar bed.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

One final, important thing to mention: when I heard that Sanbon was a suburb, I had pictured something like Mississauga: a central shopping district and rows upon rows of houses with white picket fences and basketball hoops in each driveway. Okay, well, Sanbon is NOT that kind of suburb.

Picture rows upon rows of tall, forbidding grey skyscrapers, apartment buildings all. Picture many blocks of neon downtown core, festooned with all manner of gaudy sign above gaudy sign above gaudy sign. Everything blinks, everything moves. The brightness is blinding.

Back in Waterloo, if you want to go somewhere, it's simple - just find the building and go in. Here in Korea, the first floor of a building might house several eateries and a convenience store. The second floor has several PC-bangs (internet cafes) or video-bangs (Playstation orgy central) and another bar. The third floor is a restaurant and a sauna and another bar, and the fourth floor is - you guessed it - another bar. Every building houses business upon business upon business, and there's still shit here that I haven't even heard about, let alone checked out.

Once again, I must stress that this place is a kind of Madness, a Madness that I am down with. When I first woke up in the early afternoon after the night of my arrival, hung-over, I looked out the window in confusion. The mountains and the strange Korean signs and the marching parades of people far below all screamed, "You're here. You're in Korea and it's real."

For a brief instant I remembered the cultural struggles of the day before and wondered how I could possibly stand a chance here, out on my own. But then the sun peeked out from behind Residential Building 642, out on the horizon, and I knew that possibility was there. Possibility is here. It's doable.

Posted by Chris at 03:17 AM >> Commentations (3)