SEOUL - OCTOBER 20, 2000

Today, I wanted to begin by talking about living situation. I live in what is called a "Ha-Sook" in Korean. Its essentially a Boarding House. But, with this particular Ha-Sook, I have a private entrance, much like a studio apartment. The drawbacks are I have to go down the hall to shower and to use the facilities. The Ha-Sook has one main draw, it also contains two meals - dinner and breakfast - every day. Well, I'm going to go more into specifics later, but the Ha-Sook is owned by a Korean family. Husaband, wife, eight-year-old daughter, and two-year-old son.

Also, I wanted to discuss my job situation. I went to some local "Howgan"s (Language Institutes) to see about part-time teaching. I am mainly interested in teaching adults at this moment, so I went to one of the larger ones in the area. The receptionists had a fury of energy to see a foreign face, trying to accomodate my needs at communication without knowing me knowing Korean and them knowing English, despite the fact that we were at a huge English Institute. Eventually, I was led back into a smokey back room with a chain smoking older Korean man. Next to him was a shady foreigner with hair everywhere and a rock t-shirt with holey jeans. Both were smoking profusely and gave me this kind of 'what-do-you-want' look? In a round-about way, I found out all the details I needed. One, equivalent to $15 an hour per class. Two all of the foreigners lived upstairs on the top floor of the Institute. I asked the foreigner sitting in the back lounge where he slept, and he motioned to a closet space next to the teacher's lounge. Basically, a foreign ghetto, sucked into teaching for low pay. Lots of this everywhere. It reminded me of why so many people hate Korea. It brought me back to Pusan when I came around there after a four month absense from Korea and was looking for teaching work. I was led to a recruiter with pretty girls running around the office, smoke everywhere, and at that day the owners were taking SoJu (similar to Vodka) shots with all of the potential 'teachers'. The result of both experiences, is I will try to avoid language institutes and employers, and just do everything on my own. I have no idea how those teachers live in those conditions.

Also, to talk about my Korean language classes. I have just about finished the second week. We had a new classmate join us today from Portugual. I tried to surprise him with a few words of Portuguese, but he really wasn't taken back by it. He speaks alot better English. This week I was actually a little overwhelmed with my Korean classes. There has been so many completely new phrases and words that were introduced. 99% of our class is entirely in Korean as well, so I feel like I often miss out on the translation and with what is going on. We also have three different teachers over a four hour period, and while it overlaps a little bit, in many ways, they also seem to be teaching completely different things. Today, after class, I bought eleven packs or Note Cards or Flash Cards so I can write down and test myself on phrases and vocabulary. I tried this same approach recently with ripped up paper, and it seemed to help immensily. Otherwise, it just seems like the volume of new words and phrases it much too overwhelming. The good thing is I am learning things, but its overwhelming because at the same time I don't know anything either.

Oh, and I had my first negative experience since I've been back in Korea. I was walking down the street and heard some guy yelling in Korean, "migook saram ka-pow ka-pow" over and over. Translated it means "American person" and I didn't know what the 'ka-pow' was all about until afterwards. I knew he was coming at me, as he seemed to be running through the crowds yelling it at the top of his lungs. Eventually, reluctantly, when he was next to me shouting it at the back of my head, I turned around to look him in his eyes, and he glared back at me, and yelled at me again, "Migook Saram ka-pow" and motioned a gun motion pointing to my head, 'ka-pow ka-pow', was apparently the sound the gun makes. I guess he was chasing me down through the crowd to just make me aware of the fact that all Americans should die, or that I should die?

To a credit to the Korean people though, is about an hour after that "American person should die" incident (this happened yesterday), I was walking around, and stopped to look around myself to take a mental picture of exactly where I was. A woman came up to me quickly and offered her assistance "where are you trying to find? can i help you?" Again, the majority of time in South Korea, you are overwhelmed with friendliness. For every one negative experience, I have had a thousand acts of friendliness and generosity bestowed upon me.

(Oh, I should mention one other thing though. Often times, Koreans call any foreigner an American, regardless of their nationality. There is one particular story that was published in Pusan's Expat Paper that I remember. It was a satirical piece of what a small town paper might publish.

Oh, also this week I had my first picture taken of me since my return to South Korea. I use to get this all the time in Pusan, and almost constantly whenever I went to any tourist site where people had their cameras (for example, on my visit to Cheju Island - which is Korea's Hawaii - a place for honeymoons and an island paradise). In fact, I was watching a Korean TV sitcom this week, and there was a one-minute moment set with music about the romantic happenings between two people falling in love. In this love segment they were playing romantic music and the Korean couple was walking through the streets of Seoul. They saw a young American couple who were tourists in the city, and immediately pulled out their camera, handed it to a passerby, and all four embraced arm-in-arm for a photograph, and then it continued onwards into their other romantic falling-in-love moments. It was an odd scene for me, because I use to have to pose for photographs from time to time in the past as well. This picture wasn't quite of the same category, since I was talking to him for awhile beforehand. Actually its a little flattery,a nd I should enjoy it, because Seoul is so cosmopolitan and international, that things like are pretty rare, whereas in more provincial Pusan, they were a little more common.

Oh, also with my living situation, I am sleeping Korean style. What is Korean style? Well, basically, Korean floors are heated, and its common to roll out a mattress and sleep on the floor. With the warm floors, its actually a very nice feeling, much better than a bed. Of course, the floor can be hard, but the floors have a heavy linolium combined with your mattress which has alot of padding, so its not too bad. The good thing is that once you wake up, you just roll up the mattress (its thin), and you have lots of floor space once again.

This week has just begun to get cold in Seoul. Its not cold enough to have the heat on all of the time, but the Ha-Sook owner seems to turn it up really high for an hour or so, and then turns it off completely again. Anyhow, a few times this week, in the middle of the night, (I'm imaging that he must have been cold, turned up the heat everywhere in the building, then went back to bed. Upon realizing it was too hot, he jumped up and turned it off). Mainly I say that because several times this week while I was sleeping I woke up in a really hot sweat. Twice I woke up sweating with really strange dreams.

Oh, I just wanted to add one more thing regarding the meals at my Ha-Sook. The husband and wife asked me what foods I liked, and I told them that I love Korean food alot, and am quite happy with that. They told me that if there is anything that I really wanted, I could show his wife how to cook it and she'd make it for me. It was really difficult for me to explain to them that I really like Korean food alot!! They were convinced I'm on some American fast-food diet, and so I expained to them that 75% of my meals in USA were of some Asian variety anyways, so I'm very happy to eat only Korean food. The next day she made some very delicious Chinese food - mushrooms, tofu and rice. I really enjoyed that. Generally though, I am very happy with eating Korean food every meal. In fact, they have no idea how much I missed Korean food during the last three years when I was away from it. Nowhere in the world do they make Korean food even remotely similar to how they make it here. Only in Manhattan did I find decent Bulgogi, but it came with the price of nearly $20 a portion, if you want it to be anything like it is here in Korea.

I should describe Bulgogi. Its a sweet meat, made out of beef, which you wrap in a lettuce leaf. You also enclose rice and a hot red sauce, with another vegetable - kind of looks like grass stems with the red spicy sauce. You place all of the ingredients in a lettuce leaf which you wrap into a ball-shape, and pop into your mouth. Its one of the most delicious foods I've ever had. I've ordered it here and there outside of Korea, and its really lousy everywhere else. But the way they prepare it here in Korea (where it costs about $6-8 a portion) and those few Korean restaurants in Manhattan (which charged nearly $20 a portion), I have yet to find it with the same incredible taste in any other Korean restaurant outside of Korea.

Bulgogi is the best, but there are tons of other foods. Maybe another time, I will try to describe and explain the very large variety of street foods. But this paragraph will be dedicated to the Korean foods I eat at the breakfast and dinner table twice a day. These foods are probably the most basic to the Korean diet, are mainly vegetables, fish, seaweed, seafood, fruits, and various forms of kimchee served with a bowl of rice. They serve it with anywhere between eight to twelve different dishes spread out on the table. Each person has a bowl of rice, and with your chopsticks, maybe you pick some mayonaised sliced apples one time, next time you might reach for the seaweed paper and place some rice into it and wrap it up, the next time you reach for some of the fish, afterwards you may reach with your chopsticks for spinach or whatever. Every once in awhile you take a sip of your soup, which is generally either leafy, vegetable, or tofu-like. Soup, rice and kimchee are served with every meal, along with a multitude of various other foods spread out and all community oriented. Its really delicious food. The foods change from meal to meal as well, but half of them remain for several days, until completely finished. I don't feel I can get tired of it either, because of the large variety of Korean foods available. Plus, I have my favorite, and if one day I'm tired of popping the little fishes into my mouth, I'll just gouge myself on the squid or whatever they have. I can also take just as little or as much as I want, and the variety is fairly large each meal, so I walk away with a very full stomach everytime.

Oh, also I was in the bookstore, and ran into a guy at Goldman Sachs from the Seoul office. He was there during my interview. Apparently, they are still interested in me. Their real needs are with PowerPoint, but if I am interested they will train me in Hong Kong for one week. Its a really tempting offer. I emailed them back to tell them that I'm really busy with Korean lessons (4/hrs a day) plus the studying time outside of class, plus teaching English as well. I'm really not teaching English right now, but plan to soon, as its very lucrative. Basically I would be really happy if it was part-time, but I think they would like full-time. I also told them in the email that maybe in the Spring Time, when I'm not actively studying Korean so much, I may be available, if they still have a need and are interested. If I were in a slightly different situation (not acticely studying Korean), I would be extremely happy with the opportunity.

Also, I should mention, I don't have a phone yet. Its real hard to get one as a foreigner. You need to find a sponsor who will be held responsible for you if you suddenly leave the country without paying the phone bill. Its understandable, but almost impossible to find potential work without a phone. I do have my email, but its not the most convenient, and I've missed out a couple potential teaching opportunities because I couldn't be contacted.

Oh, and a final note. The Ha-Sook owner has a small child of about two-years-old. He is just learning to speak Korean, and so am I. Its interesting because he will be saying something really simple like "open the door" and I'll ask, "what does that mean?" to his dad. Actually I'm learning alot of Korean from him accidently. He points to stuff all of the time and says the name in Korean. Also, his Dad (as all Koreans) want their children to grow up speaking up English. So sometimes the kid says things in English too. Tonight after dinner, I told them " good night" in Korean, and the little boy told me "good night" back in English.

Read Next Journal Entry: 10/25/2000

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The Party's Over

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Rolf Potts

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