Sunday, May 29, 2011

You are very pretty....

You have big eyes and a bridged nose.  I get that a lot.  I don't know if I should take it as an insult or be a little worried about what their perception of beauty is.  I edge more on the latter.  I don't think Koreans realize how beautiful they are if they stop with their incessant need to look like a "Westerner".  I guess, we as foreigners are no different, I hear the term "exotic" brought up when talking about Korean women and their looks and why the guys are attracted to them.

In any case, this is really not the point of this post.  It seems that whenever Diane and I do something, its either an adventure of some sort, or the funniest things will happen.
Case in point.  Getting a taxi to the subway station, we got a cab driver (and we always seem to get awesome drivers) that was super excited to be driving us "waygookins" around.  We opened the door to an exuberant "Anyeong haseyo.  Bangap sumnida" and when I brought up my students talking about soju, mekchu and macgeolli his ears perked up and he went into his excited mode and started telling us that soju gives him a headache and how much he hates it; about his love for dongdongju, and when I said I liked it he gave me the lowdown on what food goes well with it (to which I have no recollection of it now).  But he was the cutest, most excited man I've met and I couldn't stop laughing the entire ride.

Tonight we went out for dinner.  Exhausted from coming home from Seoul, we checked out one of our favourite restaurants that just got renovated.  Unfortunately, the meat's not the same and it changed ownership but the woman that attended us was amazing.  I believe that sometimes us expatriots get the Foreigner Experience.  They put our meat on the grill, they turn it, cut it and place it on our plates for us, essentially, doing everything for us.  This woman was amazed that I knew the little Korean I knew.  She told Diane that I use chopsticks better than a Korean (which is a total lie) and I ate better than a Korean (because I love my garlic!) and she was impressed with my Korean.  She then later told Diane that even though she is Korean, I spoke better than her (again, total lie, with my vocabulary of maybe 25 Korean words).  She then said I was pretty.  Maybe just because, but her reasoning was pointing to her eyes and her nose, as if to say I have the face they can never have.  And in Korean she told Diane that they can only have plastic surgery to have these "beautiful" features.  It is a little disheartening hearing it.  I wish Koreans didn't have to look to the media to believe what is beautiful.  If only they knew that the Western world finds them gorgeous the way they are- they don't need wide eyes or a bigger nose to be so.  She was though, the nicest woman.  She was damn attentive to what I needed.  Replacing our lettuce tray and my onion tray without me even asking.  It was amazing, and I would gladly let her adopt me as her daughter if only I could speak more Korean.  I just hope she didn't inflate my ego because she was just amazed that a Foreigner knew how to speak any Korean or know how to use chopsticks at all!
And to end our dinner we received an American $2 bill.  I don't know why they're giving them away.  It is real.  Its nice to know that the first time I've ever had an American $2 bill was in Korea. 

10 comments:

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    -Rosie

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