Wednesday, July 26th
5:20 p.m.

Considering the total denial of the existence of homosexuality and other "abnormal" sexual tendencies [in Korea], the sight of a drag queen with a pet monkey in the middle of Shinchon this afternoon really gave me a shock. I've discovered that I can read a little Korean now - enough to find bibimbap on a menu anyway. Apparently 80% of the businesses in Shinchon are controlled by the Korean Mafia. Whenever you see music or electronics being sold on the street, that's the Mafia as well. And when you see the severe cripples who are missing all sorts of limbs and dragging themselves around Seoul playing mournful music - they're crippled because of the Mafia, and any money that they're given also goes to [the Mafia].

Shinchon is very youth-oriented because of all the universities in the area. Whenever a new store opens or someone is trying to sell cell phones ("hand phones") on the street anywhere in Seoul, they bring in the dancing girls: young Korean females wearing shiny, skimpy outfits who dance around all day and call to passers-by on microphones. No joke. Minimum wage is less than $1.20 an hour in Korea, but you'll still see girls buying $100 dresses that I would not even look at - and I make seven times as much as they do. . . .

It HAS occurred to me why Korean females are so focussed on their appearances, though: Most of them don't work after they get married, so looking good is their route to success. It's probably even more important than doing their homework. Crazy.

[And if YOU don't wear lots of make-up every day as well, they'll ask you if that's because you're lazy.]

. . . So when Korean shopkeepers try to charge you ridiculous prices, they're not trying to rip you off, just to make a living. They're actually very honorable. Twice I've bought jewelry that has broken shortly after the sale, and every time it's been promptly fixed for free. Koreans don't really give foreigners a hard time either - except for people of Korean ethnicity who can't speak the language well or at all. . . .

Koreans habitually walk in the middle of the street. Police cars and other emergency vehicles have their lights on all the time - talk about abuse of power - so you never actually know if there's an emergency. Korean guys have no qualms about wearing headbands in their hair. . . .

Last night my friend and fellow only child Clara and I decided to stay out all night, so we put on make-up and left right before curfew in the direction of Shinchon. First we went to a restaurant so that I could get some food, and there we shared a carafe of lemon soju. We grabbed a couple of popsicles from a convenience store and headed to "Louis Armstrong," a "jazz" bar, where I had been once before. . . . I had a hot chocolate for some strange reason, and Clara ordered a martini that turned out to be too strong for her to drink. The crunchy onion-flavored ring-shaped snack came with the drinks, and they did put on jazz music when we asked. . . . The waiter remembered me and gave us a free drink that was absolutely delicious - something with cranberry juice. . . . He even remembered my name because it was the name that I gave to the drink that I'd ordered, a recent invention of mine: vodka with equal parts orange juice, cranberry juice, and 7-UP and a splash of sour mix. I think it would be more fit to bear my name if it had tequila in it though. The free drink at Louis was just the first score of the night, though.

Next we took a taxi to the neighborhood Kangnam, a well-known hang-out spot. There we went to Danco, an upscale dance club famous for "booking," a kind of legal prostitution, as I've heard it described. In booking, a man points out a woman that he likes, and she is dragged to his table, where he buys her drinks and tries to get some. Places like this one are pricy because instead of a cover charge they have a minimum drink order. It's common for a man to spend $100 in one night in this country. Anyway not only did Clara and I NOT have to buy any drinks, but our waiter gave us a couple of ciders for free. We danced and enjoyed all the cute waiters?attention and left with just as much money as we came in with. That was the big score.

Lastly we went to a little cafe, where Clara had an iced cappucino and I a vanilla shake. We took the subway home at 5:30 a.m. - it took about 45 minutes, which Clara spent asleep on my shoulder - each having spent only about $20 for the entire night. So am I proud of myself or what? :)

. . . Today I met with a man named Victor who's going to introduce me to his family Saturday afternoon so that I can have a "real" Korean experience. The whole thing actually seems kind of sketchy to me right now, but having dinner with a Korean family was a goal of mine when I first came here. He works with computers or something. [I met him through one of the RAs.]

. . . An average day for me goes a little something like this:
- 9:30 a.m. Wake up
- 10:20 a.m. - 1:50 p.m. In class
- Read e-mail in the computer lab in the Social Science Building
- Walk around Edae or Shinchon, sometimes shopping and usually getting some food
- Hang out with friends
- Homework and playing on my laptop in my dorm room
- Bed

My classes are easy. For Korean Aesthetics all we have to do is attend and write four very short response papers. The midterm was to recite a poem by heart and the final will be twenty true/false questions. The professor is a rich and famous performer of some kind, so he brings dozens of roses to class every day for the students to take home with them. After the midterm yesterday he took the entire class of one hundred-some students out for dinner at a nice restaurant in Insadong, a traditional, artsy part of Seoul where you can buy EXPENSIVE antiques and imitations. (That's where Ann and I stayed a couple of weeks ago.) What's more, one of our textbooks for the course is called, _Symbolism & Simplicity: Korean art from the collection of Won-Kyung Cho_. OK, Won-Kyung Cho IS the professor! He even translated half the poems in our other textbook himself. It's pretty cool.

[I recited a sijo-style poem by a woman named Hwang Jin-i (c.1506-1544) for the midterm. (Jin-i is actually her first name, but the last name usually comes first in Korea.) She was a kisaeng - a highly educated, talented woman, whose job is to entertain men.

Mountains are steadfast but mountain streams
Go by, go by,
And yesterdays are like the rushing streams,
They fly, they fly,
And the great heroes, famous for a day,
They die, they die.

Translated by Peter Lee.

Click Here to read more Korean poems in translation.]

The other course, "Women in Korea," is a little more rigorous because we have to write a couple of papers. But all we do in class is review the main points of the assigned articles for that day. Not exactly challenging. Still, I'm really glad that I have my laptop. Campus computer labs are only open 9a.m.-5p.m. Monday through Friday, for most of which time we're all in class, which makes finding the time to work on papers rather difficult. On the other hand, there are always "PC-bongs," the all-night Internet cafes that are positively everywhere and only actually cost about $1.15 an hour. [And they do sell food - everything from candy bars and cans of soda and other beverages to instant ramen noodles, which I'd actually never had before I decided to come to Korea.] You have to walk all the way to town to get to a PC-bong, though. ("Bong" means room, by the way, in case you haven't figured that out yet.)

19 days and counting. . .


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