Reactions of a returning American

Well, I'm finally safe at home on Long Island. It's been a great couple of days, but there's been a lot of adjusting and a lot of things that take some re-getting used to. Here are some of the things that have stood out to me, a long time resident of the Seoul metro area.

• The trees here are so tall - Korea was pretty much deforested at one point and so the trees in many areas especially in Gyeonggi province were planted deliberately in the last forty years. The trees here in Rocky Point are old growth and they must be six stories tall at least, dwarfing even most of the trees that I saw even in the rural areas of Korea that I've seen.


• The commercials - Nonstop commercials for the Army and prescription drugs, plus over the counter unproven hogwash pills available at Walgreens. Who am I to criticize Oriental medicine and its believers when the same thing goes on in America under a different name? Plus once the sun goes down basic cable has some of the most shocking commericals imaginable. Ben Stiller's got a new movie out and there's a scene in the commercial of him and his wife having rough sex. What the hell? And a full infomercial for Girls Gone Wild? Unnecessary.
• So much personal space. I certainly can't complain about that.
• So much of the food is so much saltier than I remember.
• All the foods I missed - Cantaloupe, artichoke, cold cuts and Levy's Jewish Rye, Dutch Country Potato Bread and mom's breaded chicken cutlets with spaghetti and Hershey's Ice Cream.
• My family have got every DVD ever - Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica, The Wire, Arrested Development all on DVD, plus practically every movie I haven't seen in the last four and a half years.
• A Wii with no controllers - My family've got Wii but my brother in Boston's got both controllers. Thanks Rich.
• My accent is back - I think the second I got out of the arrivals gate my Long Island accent came back somehow strawnger than it's ever been.

I am leaving Korea in a week

And I can honestly say that I will miss it much more than I ever missed America. Why?
I suppose the reason is that I have America inside me. If I had to I could probably make America over again, but Korea will forever be an outside influence on me, no matter how much I've internalized.
Perfect example, I just wrote 'nomatter' as a single word, apparently my subconscious brain's translation from one Korean word (아무리) to English.
There are so many things to worry about. I lost 180 pounds in Korea. Will returning to America put me back on my diet for death? Will I forget massive amounts of my hard-won Korean? Will I lose touch with the culture? Will I forget all the important lessons about people that I learned here?
And then there are the regrets. There are those who've spent their time in Korea mining its history for wisdom. There are those who've spent it having fun, blissfully unaware of the world going on around them. There are those who've spent their time in Korea viciously poking holes in the hypocrisy, the illogic, the foolishness that one finds here. I have spent my small time here trying to really understand the world as modern Koreans see it. I effectively walled myself off from the non-Korean world. In 2006 I spoke face-to-face with non-Koreans less than 10 times. The Japanese colonial period, the Yangbans and the early Christian missionaries are as far from me as they are to the average Korean man on the street, but it is a rare trend or buzzword that I have not heard about.
I believe in secular humanism, a world without a god in which people have been created in the forge of evolution for no particular purpose and culture is a mere element of our extended phenotype. To the extent that I believe the past effects the present, I don't think things systematically forgotten or dumbed down to a nub have any bearing on the present and thus I am not a huge fan of history as a window on the present. When I view the Koreans of today I see them as products of their environment, and that environment a product of history, a crucial distinction. When I came here I wanted to feel what Koreans feel and know what Koreans know, unhampered by half-baked connections to the past. Korea is often a country of pure emotion,and to approach it on any other level seemed and still seems foolish to me. To try to use facts in a way in which they are not used in Korea seems silly and almost (gulp) imperialistic. Now is a time for me to look back and think seriously about whether I have made the right decision, whether I have seen what I wanted to see and taken away what I wanted to take away.
I have managed in my time here to stretch my mind more than I ever thought possible. I have come to understand mindsets that I once ridiculed and among those I have even found those that I accept. Through it all I have not lost my own perspective, not become like putty that can take any form and has none to call its own. I have been able to call a spade a spade and to see when I was wrong.
Coming to Korea was the best thing that ever happened to me. Anyone that knew me will tell you so, and yet when I came here I had no idea that it would wind up this way. How much of this is Korea and how much of this is the natural process of an arrested adolescent becoming a man? This is impossible to answer and perhaps doesn't deserve one. Had I gone to China would I now be extolling the great reformative effect of Chinese culture on me? Impossible to say.
What I can say with some certainty is that I have learned far more in Korea than I ever set out to or even knew to set out to. I learned to suffer fools, and as much as that would enrage the high school, OK Computer-listening boy I once was, that is a valuable skill. I learned both the power of being on the outside and exempt from society's rules and the power that comes from being an insider and being bound to those rules. I learned how to function in a society I never thought I would have more than a fleeting relationship and I learned respect for people whose lives are as different from those I grew up around as possible.
So did I make the right choice? Should I have been visiting historical sites, dabbling in some University arts scene or hunting girls in Itaewon? Would I have better spent my time snowboarding, studying Joseon-period documents or lecturing every Korean that I met about what's wrong with their country? Or might I have been better off just cocooning myself off from the country altogether, meeting my foreigner friends every night of the week and otherwise behaving like a jolly colonial git?
I honestly don't know, although I have a strong suspicion that I have made the right decision. Every kind of expat in Korea that I have described is a real person and I would love to hear what they think, but with this blog's readership I don't see that happening.
Korea is a complicated place. It is so easy to peg it as any one thing that it is not, and to paint roll it with any label that you want. It's like Ireland. It's like Italy. It's like Cold War-era Germany, it's an agrarian blah blah but the people all blahed, It's the best example of American nation building, it's whatever your heart desires.
But it's not any of those things. I won't even attempt to say what it is. That's a fool's errand, and since coming to Korea one of the things I've learned is not to answer every question that's put to me.

Culture Shock Redux (part 2)

Yesterday Miyoung and I went to our friends Idan and Namheng's wedding. It was similar in substance to our own.


Afterwards we went to Itaewon, the foreigner enclave in Seoul where much of the US Army spends its downtime as well as a number of people from Africa, South Asia, and every other conceivable place. Now I get into Itaewon about two or three times a year, and for the most part I live in a 100% Korean world, where even the people I deal with on a day to day basis don't speak English. Most of the Americans in Itaewon live in a world where they are as sheltered from actual Korean culture as much as possible. They are more likely to see a Korean in a traditional palace uniform on one of their outings than they are to see a typical Korean in his or her own natural environment.
Anyway we get to Itaewon at abou 12:30 and it's sunny and hot with not too many people around. Miyoung and I go to Starbucks and hang out there for a while. I feel some sort of strange vibe around us. Perhaps, I think, I am giving off a weird feeling because it's so odd for me to see so many foreigners. I don't give it too much thought and we leave to go shopping. We hit the Columbia store and Miyoung buys me youthful looking pants that I am slowly growing accustomed to. back on the street I catch one or two guys looking at me funny but it doesn't really register. I assume it's because I am clearly not in the military.
Anyway we walk to the geographical end of Itaewon and cross the street to loop back in the other direction. Miyoung and I are walking fast and pass a short black guy and a short tattooed black woman walking together. I hear the guy say as we pass "That guy was checking me out. You know that guy?" and I assume he means I'm sizing him up or giving him the stink eye or something. I wonder to myself why that guy thought I would want to fight him on the street.
Miyoung and I get to the subway station and go down. As we walk onto the platform we walk past a seated couple, this time a white guy and a tattooed white girl. The guy turns to the girl and says "Check out that guy's shirt!" and suddenly it dawns on me: I'm wearing a pink shirt. A pink polo shirt in Korea is an extremely common thing to see. I actually own two pink shirts. I hadn't thought a thing of it all day, and I had been walking around catching looks from people who I now realize thought I was gay.
After we got on the train I explained to Miyoung why I could never wear my pink shirts in America, but she didn't quite get it. "Why would they think you're gay?" she asked. I explained that it's not that they'd think I was gay, it's that it's just not done in the US, unless I'm mistaken or something big has changed in the last few years. Somehow I had let this get away from me, and so yesterday I made the mental note: de-Koreanize my wardrobe before I return to America.

Culture Shock Redux (part one)

Coming to Korea was an experienced marked by plenty of culture shock, mostly of the "Oh, how interesting" and "Pardon me, I shan't make the same gaffe twice" variety. I hadn't counted on returning to America after almost five years being fraught with moments of culture shock, but an exchange I had with my mom today made me realize that it is an inevitability.

Mom: Have you set a date for your flight?
Me: We haven't bought the tickets but we're looking at August 16th.
Mom: Oh, you know I think Uncle Pat said [their childhood
friend] Carl's [second] wedding is on the 16th.
Me: Oh, well make sure of the date, if it is the 16th we'll come a day
earlier.
Mom: . . .
Me: I'm sure Miyoung would like to see an American wedding.
Mom: Well, I'm not even sure if I'm invited, you know Uncle Pat
was always closer with him than I was.
Me: Well, whatever, give them a call and tell them we're coming.
Mom: . . . I think they'll probably want to keep it small, you know, second
wedding and all.

I was not getting at all that the wedding was invitation only. My poor mom did her best not to insult me by telling me that we wouldn't be welcome at what was sure to be a small private event, but I am so stuck in the Korean 'come uninvited with money, grab a meal ticket, skip out in the middle of the ceremony to eat and then leave as fast as possible' thing that I had completely forgotten that that's not the way we do things back home. This, I'm afraid, is sure to be only the first of many culture shocks for me, as Koreanized as I'm afraid to admit I've become.