I met some really nice Koreans this week. Over the weekend I went to the Waegook Cook and I met two Korean women who I talked with for over 3 hours, they were very helpful and taught me a lot about Korean culture and language. That same night I also talked with another group of 4 Koreans, two couples, they also were very friendly and helped me to better understand their culture and they wanted to know about American culture too. It seems that most Koreans I meet will go out of their way to help you and love to discuss Korean ideology and they want to know about American Ideology as well. However, the best example of Korean kindness I have seen so far happened to me at the ATM. I put my card in and instead of getting the usual menu that has a prompt for English I just got a screen entirely in Korean and I could not get my card back. I still have no idea what the screen said but I asked the lady next to me if she spoke English(she didn't)but when she saw my screen she stopped what she was doing and called the bank and had them send a tech guy their to retrieve my card. She waited with me for 15 minutes for him to arrive. Then she explained what had happened and then waited another 10 minutes why he got my card back for me. Then she got her money out said goodbye and was on her way like it wasn't even an inconvenience for her. I was blown away by how helpful she was.
I also have to tell a story about teaching this week. One of my youngest students a girl about 9 or 10 years old came to class with a baby hen in her backpack. At first I didn't know what was going on, all the kids were very excited and I kept hearing a chirping noise but I just figured it was coming from outside. Then I realized it was coming from the classroom and I put it all together. The students kept saying "Pia Pia" which means baby hen in Korean, but I had no idea what it meant at the time. The girl had bought it on the street for 50 cents before class, I had no idea what to do so I grabbed a Korean teacher and she seemed un-phased by it. She took the bird to the office but it in a box and told the girl to get it after class. Then she went back to teaching like it was a regular occurrence. I can only assume that this has happened before because none of the Koreans seem to think twice about it. All of the Western Teachers were very surprised by the reaction of the usually strict
Korean teachers. We were also surprised that they sell animals on the street to children like this.When in Rome...
Lastly I bought a motor scooter this week, its 100cc and seats 2. It's red and has 3000 miles. It cost me $700 and another $100 for insurance for the year. Scooters are very popular in my town with western teachers and Koreans. It has been a lot of fun driving it around. I have already taken it to the top of our mountain road on Gumo San and to all my favorite local hot spots. Its nice to be more mobile.
