Intrepid Girl Reporter

Last night I ended up in a club. “Ended up” is, of course, the only phrase that can accurately explain my presence in a club, given my tendencies to a) hate crowds of people, b) get really gross and sweaty, and c) dance like Elaine Benes. The night, however, turned out to be almost exactly the kind of night I love: I ate dinner with some Korean and Program friends, came back, got some things done (it turned out that the camp instructor with whose class I’m working had actually already DONE my lesson plan, last week. Oops), went to a hof (pub/bar) with some of the girls here, ran into a few other Program peeps, and decided to stay with them. We watched the rest of the soccer game that was on and ended up at this hip-hop club, a club that was decorated with weird graffiti and chunks of chain-link fence in an attempt to look “street.” What it looked like, actually, was that there were a a bunch of Americans there (us) and some fifteen-year-old Korean girls, one of whom was wearing a dress that said “More dash than cash.” I want it really badly. My friend David tried to teach us this sort of b-boy dance move. Naturally, I looked like I was trying to do the hora. Shortly after we departed, the police arrived.

So here are some more details about life here: We’re teaching at an English-immersion camp run by The Program. It’s the only camp of its kind in the country in that the learning is not textbook-based (which doesn’t feel that novel to me, but I think that’s a result of my American conditioning), so it’s really neat, although it’s apparently also really expensive for the students. Last week I worked with a big group to teach a movie-making class (during which some girls came up to my friend Andy, who’s 6′8″, and exclaimed, “You are very tall! How many centimeters?”), and then I taught a lesson with Brian, one of my fellow Kentuckians, on adjectives through music review. The lesson was actually a thinly veiled ruse to allow us to listen to music and watch a clip of Almost Famous. Here are some of the students’ comments on the music we chose:

• on “Sweet Child of Mine”: “His voice is very strange and unique…This song makes us feel excited.”
• on “Wagon Wheel”: “His voice is very Kentucky-ful…We think he is a farmer or maybe a cowboy.”
• on “What Goes Around”: “This song is too long. But he is very sexy.”
• on “All You Need is Love”: “Listening to this song feels like Christmas.”

Two interesting points are raised by the above anecdote.

1: Kentuck

I have mentioned in passing before that, having come to Korea, my goal was naturally to make friends with people I could have driven an hour to see at home, which is why two of my favorite people here are from my lovely home state. They’re not, of course, from Lexington or Louisville or anything like that – one is from Owen County, and one is from Owensboro (which is in Daviess County, naturally). The point being that they are what I like to describe as RIL Kentucky, that is, they are not any of those city imposters, unlike myself. One of them even went to Transy. Why didn’t I just bring a few Centre alums along for the ride?

For serious (yes), though, I have managed to get past the fact that I crossed the international dateline to talk about tobacco and the Kentucky State Fair. We’ve all been assigned to Jeju-do. Brian (Transy) theorizes that they want to keep all the country accents as far from the mainland as possible. Interestingly, I’ve sort of bonded with the Iowans present, all of whom have a similar complex regarding how people treat their state (badly).

2. Treatment by Koreans

Not all small children have stared at me, and those who have have mostly been really young, young enough that I can assume that they stare at everyone, Korean or not. The taller among us, however, keep having people ask to take pictures of them. I think I’m helped by the fact that, even though I’m pretty obviously American, my coloring allows me to slip by mostly unnoticed. I was out with Glypie (the other Kentuckian) and our RA Gwi Ohk a few nights ago, though, and this female street vendor kept telling me that I was “very beautiful. Very high nose! Not Korean nose!” Which was sweet and all, but a little weird, since nose height isn’t something I spend a lot of time thinking about.

Conversely, the way we treat Koreans is also sometimes questionable at best. There’s a guy here who is going to Jeju with me who is, basically, Glenn Quagmire. Last night at dinner he was sitting at this table next to us with some of the Korean girls with whom I’d gone shopping, and we would pause our conversation at various intervals to observe him spitting game. Fortunately, his poor facility with ladies appeared to be acceptable due to his targets’ sometimes weak grasp of the English language, which made lines like the following okay:

• “So, do you really want to be accountants?”
• “These traditional mats are very comfortable. Do you have chairs in your house?”
• “Are you planning to stay in Korea, or are you hoping to move somewhere else? …Like the US? Let me tell you about where I’m from. It’s called Scranton, Pennsylvania.”

We are loath to imagine what his host family is going to believe about Scranton.

Yesterday Gwi Ohk asked me if I knew “KFC grandpa.” Which I think explains more about my position here than any of my pontifications ever could.