Being pseudo-Korean in Korea

Although I've been back from Korea for more than half a year now, I'll enlighten you all and what it's like to be considered a native in a country you barely know.

Having been born and raised in Canada, I know next to nothing about my Korean heritage. I can understand a little and speak even less. I can read slowly but my writing is horrendous. It's not something I'm proud of, it's just a fact. About 2 years ago, I had a sudden burning desire to fly off to the country my parents came from in order to discover more about it. Nothing would dissuade me, not threats from my mother or father, nor the continual rejections I received from Korean english schools (as I am Asian, it's assumed I can't speak English correctly). I finally landed a rather good job and took off. About 2 minutes into the flight I thought to myself, "What the hell do I think I'm doing?" and had an equally fervent desire to demand that the captain turn the plane around as I'd changed my mind.

Then, 13 hours later, I landed in Incheon International Airport. Having been awake for nearly a day, I was dirty, tired and unaware of my surroundings. I somehow managed to pass through customs causing the first Korean some surprise that I spoke only in English.

From there on, I was a sort of phenomenon in Korea. The girl who looks like us but can't speak!! How can this be? Why didn't she learn as a child? What were her parents thinking? I almost dreaded getting into taxis where I would, in Korean, tell the driver my destination. A common conversation went something like this:

"Please take me to Beomgye Station." (me in Korean)
"What?" Taxi driver's response to my very bad accent.
"Um, please take me to Beomgye Station?" I repeat this starting to feel impending doom.
"Ah! You're a foreigner!!" Taxi driver is pleased with himself for deducing this fact.
"Well, my parents are Korean, but I was born in Canada." (me in Korean again) This is where I make my fatal error.
"Korean! And they didn't teach you to speak? Why not? All Koreans should at least know how to speak their own language!" Taxi driver continues to moralize me while I realize that the impending doom has arrived and wonder why the drive seems 10 times longer than usual. Not having enough language skills to continue a long conversation I usually laughed weakly and shut up whenever this kind of thing happened. I have since learned the wisdom of agreeing with anyone who assumed I was a foreigner.

Looking Korean could have its benefits too though. I was blessed with anonymity. For instance, on the subway, or anywhere in public for that matter, I wasn't stared or goggled at like many of my Canadian/American friends. I wouldn't be approached by random people asking for English lessons. Of course, once I opened my mouth to speak then all eyes riveted to me as if I had suddenly broken out into song.

I paint a bad picture here. There were a lot of times where I was praised for my pathetic Korean speaking skills. Many appreciated the fact that I tried to talk even if I wasn't always successful in communicating my point.

Being Type A

One of the sad things that I've come to realize about myself is the fact that I like to worry about EVERYTHING. It can be the most inconsequential thing, but if it's out of the ordinary then I start to worry. From a blemish on my foot (Oh God, it's cancer!), school assignments (Oh God, what if I failed? It'll bring down my GPA!), to money investments (Oh God, what if I go broke? I'll be on welfare! Nooo!) Life just isn't quite complete without that knot in your stomach, oh the fun of having a Type A personality.

On the receiving end of this non-stop worrying are:
1. My parents (particularly my long suffering mother)
2. Will (lucky for him he is currently in LA)
3. My friends

All have experienced my neurotic tendencies, watching until I either cry or give myself some wicked indigestion. Neither provide for great bonding moments and the parties in question most likely do not look back fondly on the event. My worrying evidently started early since my parents regale me with fantastic tales of "Yuri as a horrible baby" (my words, not theirs). Ie, at the tender age of 1, I would cry and cry and cry until I made myself throw up.

I will now outline the steps that lead to some fun worrying. We will use my foot blemish as an example,
1. Event happens - I notice the blemish and think, "Oh, what's that?"
2. Dwell on event - Hmm, that looks strange and I can't rub it off. What IS this?
3. Begin to enlarge event in head - Okay, this thing is weird. No one else has this. Maybe it's serious.
4. Decide eventual outcome of event - I'm going to die from foot cancer.
5. Share decided eventual outcome with friends/family and ask opinions - Look at this! Do you think I'm going to die of foot cancer???

You can only cry wolf so many times and now I'm usually met with disgusted looks and shakes of the head when I relate things such as I've listed above.

Yee-haw! It's the Calgary Stampede!

It's that time of year when Calgary transforms into a veritable ranch. The business men of downtown disappear and are replaced with jeans, boots, bolo ties, and stetsons. I'm almost surprised that I don't see cows and horses alongside the cars while sitting in traffic. The Calgary Stampede and Exhibition, coined the "Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth", is acknowledged to the be the largest spectacle of its kind. This is where the cowboys come, from all over North America, for the BIG prize money, up to $50 000, in their respective competitions.

As a child growing up in Calgary I went to the Stampede pretty much every year. Back then I anticipated a day of eating junk food (corn dogs and cotton candy are perennial favourites) and rides on the midway. The Stampede grounds are typically filled with people roaming around, carnies calling for you to play their games, and lines winding around the more popular rides. Usually the day is hot and you can enjoy the sunshine (and sticky cotton candy hands) until it sets around 10pm. Calgary is very far north so as a result, we have long summer days and short winter ones.

Going to the Stampede this year, after a 2 year absence, was great! I felt like this time I took much more notice of those people dressed top to toe in cowboy regalia. You can feel the western spirit in the air. The sheer volume of stetsons is amazing! The aroma from the barbeque pits are tantalizing and it seems you just have to have that $4 lemonade the vendor selling (or conversely, that $6 Budweiser). In the distance you can hear the screams of fright and fun coming from the more daredevil rides on the midway.

I also took in the Chuckwagon races for the first time in my Stampede history. Nowhere but the Stampede can watching men control four horses while sitting on a modified chuckwagon be exciting. I especially enjoyed watching the outriders smoothly jump onto their horses. It's good ol' redneck,western entertainment at its best. It's a pity I missed the rodeo and calf-roping competitions (where the cowboy must run down an escaping calf and rope at least three of its legs together). Don't worry, the calf is not harmed in the process, just frightened.

Accompanying the Stampede every year are the various venues for free Stampede breakfasts. This includes, two pancakes, sausage, juice, and some live country music. The lines are long but for the city of impatient Calgarians we're suprisingly willing to wait our turn in order to take part in a good western morning meal. There aren't many places to sit but we make do with what we have.

This western-style revelry goes on for 10 days and when it's finished the booths and rides pack up and move on to their next destination (which I think is the more inferior Klondike Days in Edmonton). Stetsons, bolos and boots are packed up, cowboys go back to being businessmen and the city returns to its normal rather mundane self.

My life so far ..pre and now, post engagement

Hello and welcome to another installment of what I should've titled the Yuri Chronicles. I haven't updated in a sinfully longtime. I've been busy, y'know, sub teaching and obsessing about things I don't really need to obsess about. I find life just isn't all that perfect unless I'm worrying about something. The following post is a self-indulgent bit of writing that probably heralds the coming of that dreaded creature...Bridezilla.

So, a rather major event that happened last month was deciding to make it officially known that Will and I intend to get married. Yes that's right! It included the buying of a sparkly diamond ring that now sits quite happily on my formerly lonely left ring finger.

I'm a very boring bride-to-be. I'm not one who blazed through the door and shrilled out to my mother, "I'm going to get MARRIED!" No, rather I sat in a state of anxiety of how to tell my parents and ended up blurting it out during dinner, right before I sensed my father was about to open his mouth to lecture me about going to Japan. This lecture is something that had taken place on almost a nightly basis when I was still just a 'girlfriend'. Why was I going? What was I going to do there? And so on and so forth. However, upon the unelegantly delivered news, my mother and I watched, open-mouthed, as my father went through a series of emotions (and almost contortions) that ended by him declaring he was going to take out all his coworkers for lunch the next day and the emptying of many glasses of red wine. He no longer lectures me about going to Japan. This sparkly ring has solved many a problem in that department. The space he, and my mother, now give me is actually kind of frightening.

So the moral of this story is: When having a hard time trying to coexist with your boyfriend and your Korean born and raised parents, just put a sparkly diamond on your left ring finger and poof! Watch your former worries fly out the window.

Thanks for reading.

Japan, otherwise known as my nemesis

So, way back in September of 2004, Will asked if I'd want to go to Japan the next year with him. At the time I was in Korea and thought this would be a good idea. We both applied to the JET programme, designed to let foreigners teach English in Japan, and then waited for responses.

In March, they came. For him, acceptance and for me, rejection. I was affronted. How could THEY reject ME? I was a TEACHER gosh darn it! Not to mention I'm just plain GREAT. After much wallowing in self-pity, including many repeated wailings of "Why didn't they want ME?" and putting Will though veritable hell, I finally realized this wasn't a healthy way to be and I'd better find another way to get to this bloody country.

With my spirits about halfway recovered, I applied to another company, similar in its structure to JET. What did I receive? An interview and then another big fat rejection. Now I was starting to wonder what forces were trying to keep me from working in Japan. Did I smell? Did I look amazingly strange to these interviewers? Luckily for me, and Will, I didn't repeat the hysterical drama of the aforementioned JET rejection.

So, I applied to yet ANOTHER school in Japan. This time not related to JET in anyway. I got an interview, went through with it and then waited for a nailbiting week (putting Will, my family and friends through a different yet similar kind of hell of "What if they DON'T want ME?") for, you guessed it! Rejection. At this point I was just plain mad. They didn't realize what they were missing by not hiring a fabulous employee like myself. Didn't they know I was the greatest thing since sliced bread to cross their path? Fools!

After my head size reduced enough to fit in my room, I then applied for a visa at my local consulate that would permit me to work while traveling in Japan. I decided that if they didn't give this to me my name must be on some sort of blacklist. Resulting from some past life where I ravaged the country. I devised evil plans where I would scream and rampage the consulate should I discover my application had been rejected. Fortunately for the consulate, I received the visa and am now ready to be rejected face-to-face in Japan, instead of indirectly through email.