so i'm sort of lying in my profile. i'm not really living in chuncheon city, south korea right now. i am still in columbia, mo in the heart of the midwest. but i will be in korea a week from tomorrow, specifically, in the skiing capitol of korea. i'm trying to wrap my brain around this--not just the fact that i will probably attempt to ski, which is a hilarious mental picture--but it's hard to believe i'll be living in a country where english is not the language (and my whole life as i know it will change), especially when everything else seems the same as it has for the past year and half that i've been back in columbia. only when i'm drunk and sentimental does it hit me that there are probably a handful of people that i've had regular interaction with that i might never see again. that's bizarre. and when i'm not drunk it really doesn't mean that much to me. i'll meet new people to "replace" (that word seems really harsh right now) the ones i'm leaving behind, i suppose. I dunno.
a couple of weeks ago i was tutoring my korean friend at shakespeare's (tutoring has been reduced, as of late, to talking over pitchers of blvd. wheat and pizza. and i get paid for that). after my friend left, i sat in a booth reading a book and drinking a beer by myself, which to me doesn't seem strange. but it also seems like it should be obvious that i'm reading (granted, reading at a bar) and don't really want to be bothered. anyhoo, some d bag looking dude with no neck sits down in the booth with me and decides he wants to talk about literature with me. there are only a handful of people i actually want to talk to about this sort of thing, because it's a fine line between being put on the spot whilst being quizzed/judged and actually intelligently discussing things you like without fear of judgement or trying to sound way cool. jules and i don't even really talk about "literature" and she's my best friend in the whole world, who also happens to love reading and literature and has basically the same background in those areas as me. we both know better than to get stuck in pretentious conversation, because ultimately you feel like there’s some sort of competition going on. So, despite the fact that i felt exposed and uncomfortable, i asked the d bag about some of his favorite authors and books and whatnot. besides pronouncing several things incorrectly, he waxed metaphysical at every turn of the conversation. Ex: he asked me where i went to school for my english degree, so i pointed in the direction of mizzou. his response "all i see here are bricks and mortar." but he said it sort of quietly like it was sposed to have some sort of provocative impact. And any sort of adjective I might use, he would interject with “well, what is ________?” yeah man, you’re right. It’s like, what are words even? i dunno. i guess the point is that i would have felt like an asshole if i asked him to leave my booth, but he didn’t have the same reciprocal trigger to let him know he's actually the one being the asshole by violating my personal space and being all weird. so he left and I felt really stupid. The whole story seems pretty insignificant when written down, but I remember precisely how awkward I felt sitting in that booth for those 15 minutes or so. And I guess I just want to have a record of that for posterity.
Today I went to a 4th grade reading class with my friend myung-ja. There are only 6 students in there—2 of whom are Korean, which is why I go in the first place. Anyhoo, we just sort of sit there while mary jo teaches. But it’s funny because it’s one of those classes in a trailer, and because they’re little people, everything else seems smaller to scale. I’m a full-grown adult sitting in this little person chair and am just sort of hunched over the whole time, attempting (and admittedly failing) to blend in. a couple of the students had already arrived, but mary jo had to go fetch the others, so me and myung-ja sat and talked to reggie and tung. They had been reading a Beverly cleary book, the mouse and the motorcyle, so they told us all about it. So we started talking about animals and pets. Tung told me he had fish and that his fish had had babies, and reggie turned to him and said “fish can have babies?” so I explained that fish lay eggs and he didn’t believe it. it’s funny to think there was even a time when I didn’t know these things that are now so obvious. Reggie also seemed shocked when he learned that humans and mice were both mammals (by this point, the rest of the class had shown up). So then mary jo read a book about the characteristics of mammals. Another little kid next to me named oscar leaned over to me and asked “if I cut or lose my hair, will I still be a mammal?” I confirmed that he would be, whether he lost his hair or not. He seemed relieved.
I guess this about does it for my first real post. Oh yeah, when I was driving to shakes today, I was stopped at a light with this big suv next to me. And I look in, and it’s this family feverishly rolling newspapers and shoving them into the little yellow bags. The woman driving had a big stack of papers on the steering wheel that she would separate and then hand to the daughter next to her, one by one. The daughter then rolled it and passed it over her head to her brother in the back seat who stuffed it into the bag. It was very bizarre to see such a quick-paced mini assembly line in the car right next to me. But then the light changed.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)