Accost much?--Thursday, March 15

Lately it seems the theme of my life is continuous harassment. Most of the time, it’s harmless—my kids yelling hello at me all the time and jumping around the room, little old ladies smiling and jabbering at me in a still-very-foreign tongue—but there have been times, especially lately, when it feels at least annoying and sometimes even dangerous. Take, for example, last weekend, when that random middle-aged man stopped me to have a repetitive and somewhat incomprehensible conversation on a cold and windy street corner. A bit annoying in and of itself, and then he has to throw that cheek kiss in there. And then just this week, I saw some middle school students (I think) leaving school on my way to taekwondo. At this time of day, the streets of Hongsan are overrun with uniforms, with students outnumbering the rest 5:1, at least. Anyway, these boys always think it’s hysterical to yell random weird things at me on dares, I think. This time they were yelling, “Mekin! Mekin!” which sounds vaguely like American, but not really. I’ve noticed that my students take great pleasure in mutilating English at times, most notably in drawing out the word “hi” into the two Korean syllables in which it’s written in hangul (ha-ee), and I can only guess that’s what these students were doing. It was obnoxious and irritating. I was very thankful at that moment I don’t have to deal with middle school students with the obvious exception of my host sister, who is annoying enough as it is. She’s on a recent diet kick, I think, in which she basically refuses to eat anything. Get a grip, you’re fourteen, and odds are, you’re filling up on crummy street food anyway. Just eat some of Mom’s home cookin’ instead! And then also this week, there was the strange woman who tried to abduct me from TKD. I was very glad she didn’t show up today. To cap of this week of eccentricities and accostment, I was taking a walk today when these old men approached me and rather forcefully took me by the arm. I think they were harmless and that they were quite possibly just drunk, but it was a bit frightening, actually. Two of them were really just bystanders; the one man actually DRAGGED me over to a chair and then proceeded to grope my knees while leering in my face and shouting incomprehensible Korean. From what I could gather, he asked me approximately one million times where I was from and where I was going, both of which I provided answers to no avail. My Korean study is not paying off—I can understand more, but either people can’t understand me or they assume I don’t know what I’m talking about. I barely got out of that situation alive and unfortunately, it was on a main road I use for all my walks! I don’t know why all these people are suddenly approaching me…it’s not like I am looking particularly friendly or even pretty lately. I am wiped out and irritable and it shows. Oh man, I want my vacation back!