Last night I finally went back to TKD to collect my yellow belt. I figured I had the battle wounds...I deserved that belt! I think the Grandmaster thought I was being a weenie until he took a close look at my foot and recoiled in horror. He is convinced I need to go to the doc ASAP. Well, I heard yesterday that sports medicine doesn't really exist in Korea, so acupuncture is the fallback cureall. I am not so into that. I think I will stick with ice for the time being. If I feel needle crazy, Bianca has already offered to poke my foot with her sewing needles.
Yesterday we also had a workshop on "Making a Good First Impression." The OCs really stressed me out, even though I think they intended to reassure us in giving us specific behavior guidelines. I think one of my big problems will be forgetting to insa (greet) people all the time. I am so used to just brushing by people, especially those who outrank me, that it will be weird to make a point to seek them out every day simply to bow. It makes sense, I guess, but I am afraid I will forget. I am hoping I will be forgiven given my foreigner status, but then again, when you are completely immersed in a culture, you tend to forget that standards of proper behavior are culture-specific because they seem so obvious. I know we experienced that with our exchange students at home. I suspect they really were rude, though...Europe is not that different, after all.
So anyway, that's one thing to worry about. In addition, evidently I am expected to take a lot of care with my appearance because how nice you look reflects your level of respect for those you meet in a given day. It's not that I am into looking grungy and gross, but I NEVER wear makeup anymore and I didn't anticipate being forced into silly superficiality here in Korea. We'll see how that goes. I also have to do my hair every morning and ALWAYS wear nylons or socks. I can already see that dressing for work is going to be one giant daily pain.
They also informed us that piercings beyond the standard two in the earlobe would probably not fly. I am really sad. I was under the impression from their responses to this very question before we arrived that there would be no need to remove piercings, and now they're telling me to take everything out! I think I'm going to keep them, though, at least for the time being. I mean, that would mean losing three very expensive piercings!
This morning we all had to give speeches in Korean--eek! I am not a good speaker in English as it is, and this inability definitely transcended languages. It was pretty terrible, but now it's all over! We finished by writing farewell messages to each other in Korean on little cards our teachers made us and listening to ridiculous Korean songs. One was called "Patbingsu" and describes how to make and enjoy patbingsu, set to a candy-coated background beat. I guess it was a really popular song a few years ago, but we all thought it was a kid's song at first!
We took our homeroom teacher out to a farewell lunch today. It was actually a really fabulous and cheap lunch. She even helped me order a vegetarian item, so now I have another dish to select from when I eat out! It was a souplike noodle and vegetable dish somewhat like an egg drop soup. It was not spicy, but so hot temperature wise that I even started sweating! I am not a big fan of eating hot food on hot days, but evidently it is better to do so here to avoid food poisoning because higher temperatures create more favorable conditions for bacterial multiplication. Going back outside was a painful affair, though!
In the afternoon, we had a guest speaker visit us to talk about health in Korea. He is an American doctor who now lives in Seoul and is affiliated with Fulbright. He would definitely be my first choice if I become seriously ill. The talk was somewhat frustrating, though, because many other ETAs have the obnoxious habit of asking silly and even stupid questions. Maybe it's a product of college education in the U.S., where you're supposed to ask questions and participate? I don't know, but I hate it. In the end, we discussed STDs for about 15-20 minutes and I learned more than I ever planned to about that subject. It was so irritating--I mean, I for one do not plan to contract anything while in Korea, of all places!!!! I wonder what these other ETAs are going to be doing in their spare time....
Last night, we went out with our teachers to a norebang. It was pretty fun, but some silly ETAs started ordering chicken and other expensive items so it came out to about 7 dollars per person, which is much more expensive than other evenings we've had out. I only had a few beers and french fries, too! The singing was surprisingly good, however, and I enjoyed listening to them singing some of the songs. One guy on the program was really getting into it and listening to him serendade our sonsangnims (teachers) with such hits as Foreigner's "I want to know what love is" and Usher's "Yeah" (in which he did a fair impersonation of Lil Jon) was a hoot!
When I was walking home later with some friends, we met these two Korean girls who basically fell in love with me. They must have told me I was beautiful at least 30 times. In fact, I don't know if they even said much else, except to say that I look like Drew Barrymore. (Indeed, I must resemble her somewhat--in the last couple years, I cannot even count how many people have told me that I look a lot like her when I smile.) I have to say that I really enjoyed the attention and was really flattered. For the most part, I feel invisible in this country and it's a weird sensation because I KNOW people stare, but they do it so discretely that I never see it. It's disconcerting to know this and yet be in a situation where everyone is trying to act normally and politely. I'd actually rather that they openly stare, like they did in South Africa, just so it's not so awkward!