a stranger with your doorkey

there's a postal service song called "the district sleeps alone tonight," and one line of the song has really stuck with me lately as i think about being here in korea and trying to both fit in to and observe the culture. the line is this: "a stranger with your doorkey, explaining that i'm just visiting." that describes how i feel after a month over here almost perfectly. my natural tendency is to sit back, to be inconspicuous and observe quietly. forget that. the one thing i am not here is inconspicuous. from the way i look to the way i dress to the way i speak, i stand out. this is not a bad thing; i simply forgot what it's like. the last time i was out of the country was almost two years ago, and i went to europe. there, i pretty much fit in unless i opened my mouth. the last time i was so obviously a foreigner was three years ago in latin america, so it's taking time for the understanding to come back. i got really frustrated this past week with being stared at, getting laughed at, etc. just because i am not korean. it made me mad--when i've seen a foreigner in the us, i've tried hard not to do those things. i feel rude treating someone that way just because they are different from me. but here is what i've realized: one, i laugh at them for trying to be western (using random english phrases on t-shirts, for example..."good old fashioned lover boy" is one of the best i've seen so far), so they can laugh at me when i try fit into the korean culture (my chopstick skills and speaking skills probably are just as amusing). two, i am [a] strange[r] to them. the fact that i'll be living here for another eleven months doesn't make me fit in any more in their eyes. i am truly visiting. more than a tourist, yes, but still just visiting. and i wish i could explain that somehow to the people i encounter walking down the street--that i am not here to intrude, not here to change things or offend, merely to learn about who they are and experience their culture firsthand. 

being here in general still has the feel of a short-term trip to me. school seems more like an interruption of my time to travel and explore than it does my job, and i wonder how long it will take for that to shift. i was talking to one of the other foreign teachers the other day about culture shock, and we were saying that we don't feel like there's ever going to be a big moment of it. we've both just kind of settled into life here and it doesn't feel that much different. yeah, kimchi takes some getting used to, and we get stared at on the street. but on a basic level, life hasn't changed much from what we know. i think only once the feeling of this being a trip wears off will there be potential for culture shock to hit. and even then, i can't see it being a huge thing. i don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing...i'm learning a lot, for sure, but the cultural differences are more subtle here (as opposed to the vibrancy of latin american countries or the history-right-in-the-streets of european countries). i don't know quite what i was expecting in terms of that so i don't have any basis from which to work. that makes it hard to know how i will be affected.

all that said, being here has definitely provided opportunities for some awesome experiences. last weekend we happened to be grocery shopping by olympic park as the olympic torch came through! none of us had our cameras, so our being there didn't get properly documented, but it was really great to be there. leaning against a railing with police buses and a parade rolling by on one side of us, hundreds of chinese waving flags running by on the other...it was pretty cool. not something you get to see in harrisonburg for sure. and this weekend the second annual seoul world dj festival was rocking out on the other side of the city! it started saturday afternoon and went until 5:00 am this morning (monday). we caught the last subway train from our area saturday night and made it about three-quarters of the way before the subway closed. a short taxi ride and a 45-minute walk (with some random foreigners we ran into) later, we found hundreds of people, lots of lights and music that had us dancing until the sun came up sunday morning. i've never been to anything like that before, and the tiredness/soreness are totally worth it :)

a brief update on the pension situation (brief because i don't really know much more than i did before):

-sam, our director, has agreed to register us for pension. we'll receive our first paychecks tomorrow, so we'll be able to see then whether he actually registered us or not.

-the school is getting investigated by the pension office, but we haven't heard anything beyond that fact yet. a friend's uncle owns a school in seoul at which we can most likely get a job if necessary, so that's our current back-up plan. 

hopefully you all enjoyed the photos (if you hadn't yet seen them)! it seems like it will work best to post a whole group at once as a single post, so from now on i will be posting each month's photos at the end of that month/beginning of the next. thanks to everyone who's been emailing/commenting/in general communication! i appreciate it and miss you all.

love, 

heather