Intrepid Girl Reporter

MASSIVE BLOG POST!

I’m going to touch on all of the topics previously mentioned, but first I would like to elaborate on my visit to the Korean bathhouse. Korean bathhouses are AMAZING. Or, to be more accurate, the bathhouse I went to was amazing. Everyone’s naked, so I couldn’t take any pictures, but there are all sorts of scented pools and the whole place smells like cinnamon and cedar and chocolate and tea. Lots of old women and babies bathe there. The whole thing is about $6 USD, but you can pay extra (as I did) for an exfoliation and a massage, in which a half-naked Korean woman essentially beats you with this exfoliant that is maybe apricot kernels or possibly shards of industrial plastic. My friend Stacey has a bruise that looks like she got some sort of whipping. The women tend to slap you liberally, but my skin is baby soft. Just something to keep in mind.

Now, to address the topics previously mentioned:

– monsoon season

May have begun, may have ended, depending on who you ask. (There’s no consistent correlation between South Korean answers and American answers, either.) It rains a lot but not every day. I have an umbrella and rain jacket, but if I did not, the “stationery stores” (more like Claire’s, but much cuter) sell umbrellas for a dollar or two. The stationery stores are also full of office supply porn, and I want every pen they have. I will take pictures when I figure out how to do so discreetly.

– Program Camp!  (not to be confused with Camp Program)

I am, of course, part of a fine, honorable, scholarly institution. One where we do arts and crafts and physical activity. I start tae kwon do next week. Believe it or not. I also had a class last week on hanji, which is a decorative paper art. We even did it in the cafeteria. Other similarities to summer camp: it is hot ALL THE TIME and I’m always really gross looking, and the showers are terrible and don’t have hooks and smell sort of like ramen. Or ramyun, as they say here. Camp Program, on the other hand, is the camp where we’re teaching for the next few weeks. Not the same thing.

– hangul

It’s insane. I’ve never learned a non-Romance language before, not that my forays into Romance language learning ever went all that well in the first place. There are a few people here who are fluent in Korean, largely because they are actually Korean, and I’m so jealous. I don’t even remember what it was like learning to read, so I feel like a three year old pretty much always. See: Me Talk Pretty One Day. I keep waiting for my Helen Keller moment.

– drunken ex-presidents

We got put into these informal language groups at KEY Club, and I’m with this girl who insists on me calling her Sunny (see: politics of naming, below) and who doesn’t speak ever, and the former president of KEY club, a guy who goes by Lee. The seniority rule is really interesting here: regardless of who is the president of the club now, for instance, the guy who did it before is always above them. So during the meetings the actual president, who is already kind of short, will be speaking and the ex-prez will come up behind him and literally lean on his shoulders, just in case we had forgotten exactly who is in charge. We also went out for papbingsu, which is this sort of elaborate red bean-fruit-ice cream sundae, and he told us that his main hobby was drinking, and the best dishes that he cooked were foods that went well with drinking. Meanwhile, Sunny emailed me later and told me that she was hoping to feel very close to me.

– the politics of naming

I got into a really interesting discussion with one of the girls here about whether or not offering American names to students is okay. Personally, I’m on the fence; yes, names are often selected in foreign language classes in America, but we are also in a position of power relative to South Korea that’s not exactly comparable to America’s relationship with France. At the same time, though, it seems that denying students who actively seek American names the opportunity to have them shows the exercise of a similar power. Basically: Who am I to tell anyone what they can or can’t name themselves?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot more lately in that being an outsider Asian here has really caused me to consider my identity. I had a fantastic conversation with my friend Leah, who’s a Korean adoptee, last night about what it’s like to feel tied and not tied to a given culture at the same time. (Note: This conversation took place over pitchers of Hite beer, shortly before I tried to teach a Korean college student the lyrics to “99 Problems.”) I’ve always felt sort of uncomfortable identifying as hapa, in that it always seemed as though I was trying to stick out, since white kids didn’t go around bragging about their ancestors from Germany or Slovakia or wherever. There are several other half-Asians here, though, in addition to a number of adoptees, and many of them identify as hapa as well, which makes me more comfortable considering race as a serious part of who I am or am not. The point of this ramble (I was planning on being an excellent blog writer, v. literary, but since I always write when I’m busy or half-asleep, I sound like a moron most of the time) is that these questions of identity have made me realize the symbolism present in my own name. My last name has no blood connection to me; my father’s stepfather adopted all my grandmother’s kids, which is why their last name is not Viet. This is a handy fact to know, considering that I’ve never really felt a connection to my last name (or liked the way it necessitated a glottal stop between it and my first name). And yet – I feel as if, were I to take a Vietnamese family name as my last name, it would be an implicit rejection of my whiteness and my mother’s culture, even though she has no real connection to the name either. So I understand how difficult and complicated these ideas can be.

– noraebang

Karaoke, essentially. Koreans seem to be able to do this any night of the week.

– noraebang 2

Koreans party so much harder than Americans. Really. They stay out later, drink more, spend more days out of the week sitting in bars singing karaoke and sitting in bars inhaling chicken and beer. (Really good chicken, mediocre beer.) They put frats to shame.

– my birthday

Pictures coming soon, but I received pocky and cookies and cheesecake and a pencil holder. I love these people.

Maybe soon I can get into the habit of writing regularly and not so badly. Until then, however, this will have to do.