Welcome to Foley in Korean Blog #20. What I love most about this country is the absurd situations I find myself in. Why do I have such strange luck? Well, being a tall, goofy, and abundantly handsome white guy, I believe I have a target on my head in this land. But, perhaps venturing out to Seoul the other day to take the GRE's was the first time I understood the immensity of this target. I was stopped by a woman on the street who owned a hostel. After a brief exchange of Korean and English, I understood what she wanted. She was asking me to join her modeling company.
Now, I know most of you are sitting there saying "Finally!" but people, it's not as easy as it looks. Keeping up this rugged masculinity is a careful and delicate process. And I had to truly bring my "A" game the next day. Why, you ask?.With the help of my friend (and now agent) Krista, I had to spend the morning taking head shots in my bathroom, showing off my man pretty.
Ladies, contain yourselves.
But while this was surely a long time coming, so many questions remain: Is the confused young man above going to be the future face of Korea underwear billboards? Will Dan Foley enter the world of Korean soap operas as the "token white guy?" Will fame expand my already stadium sized ego? And of course, was this lady credible, or just some drunken grandma who likes white people a little too much? Only time will tell.
But my journeys don't end there, no, no no no. Last Sunday, with my visual artist friend Don Kyu and foreigners friends Jason and Krista, I ventured off to the South of South Korea, to the F-1 Racing Town of Young-am. There we boozed it with the Mayor for town's annual birthday party. It took place in an indoor stadium, with music, dancing, and prizes, and rice. A good portion of the town's population had gathered there that day, leading me to believe the average age of the people of Young-am is somewhere around 136-years-old. But trying to understand them was the real treat.
You know how, in America, we have so many regional accents? Like the zest New Orleans tongue, the grizzled Boston accent, the lazy Southern drawl, and of course, the ear-splitting Long Island/Jersey butchering of the English language (eg. "I'd like to eat some saaaawwwwsidge" [sausage]). Well, Korea's got the same thing going on. People from Gwang-ju sound different than people from Busan who sound different from people of Jeju who sound different than people from Seoul (the Seoul accent is what I like to call "News Reporter Accent" or, just the standard Korean). No problem, right? Wrong.
See, it's more complicated out here, and it still doesn't make perfect sense to me. Yes, I get it, regions develop different accents, just like in America or Britain. But in Korea, there are two things I find unsettling. The first is that no one can understand each other. While at the Young-am birthday party, one of the residents came up to me (most likely to show me his battle scars from World War I) and I couldn't understand a damn word he was saying. At first, I thought it was just my elementary Korean language skills, so I turned to Don Kyu and asked him to translate. He told me he would have, but he didn't know what the hell the guy was saying either. Not as in, he wasn't paying attention, he literally had no idea.
Now, this is strange to me, because, as much as I want to put everyone on the Jersey Shore through a wood chipper when they speak, I can still understand them. But that's not the case here. Which leads me to the second unsettling point. Korea is half the size of New England, or roughly 38.5 times smaller than the United States. And yet, the regional dialects between two place fifty miles away are so diverse they are almost unintelligible. Truly baffling stuff.
But while in the area, we got to visit the coast, eat some cheeseburgers, and most importantly visit a Buddhist Temple. There, in another incredible moment of "is this real?" I sat with my friends, the Mayor and his wife, as a charismatic Buddhist Monk shared his rare forty-year-old tea with us.
Weird, wild, excellent stuff. Also, with the interweaving of English and Korean I was able to establish that the monk had visited Boston. He was under the impression everyone in Boston was involved with the mafia. I didn't bother to correct him.
But my life out here isn't all sexy modeling adventures with monks. I also teach. And I hate to be that super corny "kids say the darndest things" but really, they say some funny-ass stuff. Like the other day, I asked my student, John,"If you could be any animal, what animal would he be?"
He responded. "A Polar Bear!"
When I asked why, he said. "Because they're strong, they have white fur, and they drink Coca Cola."
Flawless victory.
Or take my rowdy middle school class.They were recently bombarded with the unholy bale of Korean Middle School Midterm Tests. Some of these middle school students studied more for these tests than I've ever studied for all of my finals put together. What does this translate to? Beautiful spring weekends locked inside their rooms, alternating between studying and crying, and periodically emerging for a piece of kimchi.
So, I figured I'd go easy on them and not give them homework for a couple of weeks until their tests were finished. It was great for them, but it meant I had to think of other, educational ways to fill a fifty minute class. After much deliberation, I just decided to hit them with a bunch of riddles and "would you rather" questions for the entirety of class period. This was pretty hit or miss, but one would you rather question nearly stumped the class. I gave them the old: "Would you rather marry a smoking hot man/woman who was totally manipulative and selfish, or someone who was the epitome of benevolence, but physically, a total dog?"
It's uncanny how people universally struggle with this question. The class went back and forth, weighing the pros and cons, until my student, John, (different student, same name) threw down the gauntlet
"I would take the kind woman," he said.
I asked why. He responded "If she is that caring, then I will love her. And if I love her, she will be beautiful to me."
He totally kicked that question's ass. And ladies, he'll be legal to date in like three years. Just saying.
But all my students aren't clever romantics. Sometimes, they're a super uphill battle. Like my boss's son, Subok. Methinks I've mentioned him before:
Cute, yes. But that's just his front. I spend half an hour every day reading stories with him. Sometimes he's down to read like a fiend. Usually, though, this is not the case. Quickly, reading class succumbs to a battle of wits with a four-year-old who pretends to be tired or sick to get out of reading (keep in mind, minutes before he'll be running down the hallways screaming something about Thomas the Tank Engine). But, usually the promise of popcorn at the end of class keeps him going.
I mention him because of his new hobby: peeing on everything. Why does he have this hobby? The little dude just hates waiting to urinate. How prolific is his pissing? Let me put it this way. If he has to go, no matter where he is, he'll go.He'll just whip off his pants and bleed the lizard into the most geographically convenient object, whether that be a flowering plant, his toy box, or his favorite student's leg (that was a truly epic Number 1). And, I got to hand it to him, I'm a little jealous. You only get away with that stuff when you're really young or really old, so I say, keep on peeing, you crazy diamond.
The last thing I want to mention is on the subject of names. Shakespeare said "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Koreans have taken that to heart, because changing names here is not a difficult task. I told you my boss's son is named "Subok" but evidently before that, he was something else, and now, he's going by "Shimu (not to be confused with the killer whale." Why did he change his name? The only reason I can come up with is that Subok sounds a lot like the Korean word for watermelon, and no one wants to be called watermelon.
But what is truly amazing is the frequency in which some of my students and faculty get bored with their English name and decide to switch it. I had a girl who changed her name three times in one week, from "Jenny" to "Emily" to "the Artist Formally Known as Emily."
But not all names are so whimsical. My main man Alex Kim, in return for naming him, has given me a Korean name. He even made me a "Korean Birth Certificate" which is one of the most moving things anyone has ever done for me. And you can read it yourself. From now on, I will be known as:
Truly one of the greatest honors I have received.
But enough about me. To all you mothers out there (especially mine), Happy Mother's Day. And to all of you Buddhists, Happy Buddha's Birthday. My friends and family, I miss and love you all.
-김단희 (Kim Dan Hui)
