My life, it’s such a mess right now. But surprisingly I am not worried or freaked out, I am just going to let the mess happen. I have SO much in school, this week is no joke, have to read loads, have reports to write, have an exam on Sunday (I have not started studying for), it’s like I am drowning, but I just have to plan it right and then I should be fine, will I be fine?
My friend Shelbi got a question about Korea and how foreigners are treated there. She brought up a few good and bad points, one of the bad points being that it’s very common that older Korean men approach you and ask if you are Russian. This may not seem like something offensive but in Korea Russian is a code word for prostitute. I don’t know how it is in Korea today but back in the days most prostitutes in Korea used to be from Russia so this is where it comes from. During my time in Korea I never got approached by a anyone asking this, I knew about it because my friends told me, but it never happened while I lived there, but then, this summer, it happened. I was on the subway with my friends Maria and Heidi. The train was rather empty, we were sitting on one side and on the other there was four Korean guys around 25. Suddenly this older Korean man stepped on the train. For a few stations he just looked at us then after a while he stepped closer and made eye contact with Heidi who was sitting at the end. He casually started talking to first her then to all of us. Asking the normal questions, but leaving out the question about where we are from. Then after a while chatting he asked us: So where are you from? Russia? This awkward silence sets in, because we had JUST talked about this earlier in the day, then we all try and not laugh at the poor man but we politely say that we are not Russian and tell him where we are from. At this point we were all dying on the inside. I gazed over at the four guys sitting across from us, they had all also caught on to what the man asked us and they have also understood that we know what it means. This leads to that I can’t hold it and let out this small spastic laugh, which leads to that we all start laughing. We have no where to look because everyone is laughing, we, the guys, it’s a mess and in the middle of this is this poor old man, who slowly backed away from us looking totally horrified and I have never seen anyone leave a train faster than him. Once the doors closed we were all laughing so hard tears were flowing down and the four guys were laughing just as much. I know I should be offended because someone just called me and my friends whores but I don’t know any better than to laugh about it. This is still one of my favourite stories from this summer and I think Maria and Heidi feel the same way. Well this and the adorable high school boys who did rock paper scissor over who had to talk to us and then said in the cutest engrish ever: Welcome to Korea!! Do you like kimchi?
