This thing was HUGE. I asked what it was, and the guy said cow insides. You can feed many people with this.

Found the alley of restaurants again.  It took forever, as the market is huge and this is really just an alley.  We kept passing larger restaurants that were in the arcade, but they lacked the coziness and cultural interest of the alley.  We even passed a couple of restaurants specializing in dog.  I was asked if I wanted to try it, and I declined.  My exchange partner told me that you sometimes it can give you bad indigestion.  Which is interesting, because Mi-Young said it was very healthy, and books have indicated that Koreans feel it adds to male virility.

We also passed a lot of seafood restaurants, and I should have stopped there.  Remember those tube things I filmed?  And then there were those short white lumpy tube things with an orafice on each end.  I asked what they were, and he looked them up and we determined they were sea cucumbers – oh – wait – no – those are the bumpy ones.  “But what are THOSE?” I asked, pointing to the smooth white ones.  He laughed and said, “naked sea cucumbers.  They’re very good!  Do you want to try some?”  I declined.  Maybe when my kids come visit, Sara’s adventurous spirit will sweep me along and we’ll eat our way across Korea.  But for now, I think I am happy to be grossed out and avoid some things…

Anyway, back to the restaurant alley.  These are the tiniest little restaurants, each one about 8 ft. wide and 10 ft. tall – only they have lofts which are at about the 6 ft. mark, so the seating can be maxed out.

I asked my language exchange partner to pick the best one of the restaurants, and he asked me if I liked beef insides and I told him no. So he kind of laughed, because THE ENTIRE ALLEY of restaurants all only served intestines. Desperately hungry by now, I told him okay, okay, I’ll try it. At least the wok full of vegetables to be stir-fried with the intestines looked yummy.

It came. The Sundae was cut up in rounds, and I ate only a couple, because they are so rich tasting. And then I tried a piece of NaeJang, and the exchange guy asked me what I thought (he’d already told me he doesn’t like it) and I told him it was like chewing on rubber shoes…
But the rest of the dish was very yummy, so we both ate picking out the NaeJang.

A wallet dropped out of the sky, and I pointed it out to the exchange guy, who had to yell, “Yo gi oh” to the people above us. Then an arm shot down and he put the wallet in the girl’s hands. Smoke drifted past us occasionally as well.

The exchange guy tells me the people above are swearing very loudly. And that it is very unusual because children don’t often smoke in front of their parents, or swear in front of them either. The parents must be those people eating next to us.

So it seems that the market has become the center of coarse, low-class people. Even though the majority here are adjumma and adjoshi, these are the working class poor. And so it makes sense that most of the dishes we encounter are made of by-products. As is the case everywhere in the world, like Peruvian beef hearts, etc., etc. The rich can feast on imported fruits, eat sashimi and dress in the finest western goods; but the poor must live as they always have. What will they do when this is gone?

We also passed another congested area of small shops where adjummas were seated playing cards. “Gambling,” my exchange partner told me. He told me the adjummas play for very little money but play all day, because they have nothing to do. He said this area was very safe by day, but not to be trusted at night. We also passed many tiny shops with adjumma seamstresses. “Very rare,” he said. These little shops no longer exist anywhere, and the only places you can get basic service done to your clothing is at the cleaners.

Over and over again, my exchange partner would laugh and comment how he hadn’t seen any of this stuff since he was a kid. He also said that he knew what much of it was, but didn’t expect me to ask so many detailed questions, and that he was unable to explain in English what most of the things were.

He had a much better attitude than the last exchange partner about meeting at the market, but I think that he, too, could not really recognize or appreciate that this was the repository of living Korean culture. Nor was he sad that it would soon be gone. Neither did he just OFFER any information, and I had to pull it out of him with a million questions.

One time I asked him about the rubber shoes, and if I could get some. He told me those were everywhere in the 60’s and 70’s. And afterward, he would point to some shop and tell me – you should go there since you like stuff from the 70’s…

Damn it all to hell.  I had some rubber shoes when I was a child.  What happened to them?  I am going to look them up so you can see what they look like.

You know, it’s funny (well – not so funny) moving to Korea and blending in for the first time in my entire life. It’s also funny (well – not so funny) going to native (foreign) teacher orientation and suddenly not blending in again.

No matter how much you try to have your race and ethnicity NOT be a topic of conversation, it always comes up.   You’d think a person would get used to this, but a person never does really.  And, it’s especially irksome because we who have this done to us all the time make a point never to do this to anyone else.  For example, I don’t go up to a Caucasian and ask them what country they are/were from.  I don’t go up to a new immigrant and ask them that either – it’s just rude.  Instead, you talk about where you grew up and, if the conversation flows, where they grew up will reveal itself.  But westerners are just artless, efficient, demanding, and pragmatic with their conversation.  And I am a westerner, so I must eat my personal offense, accept it, and respond accordingly.

For those of us who are adopted, these conversations can turn into mine field.  Do you want to deal with people’s (often misinformed) opinions about what you’ve lived personally?  Do you want to turn a social moment into an education session?  Do you want to be a kill joy and depress the vibe?  Do you want to turn the evening into a debate?  No, no, no, no, and no.  But the race and ethnicity thing nails me every time.  I am forced to give some explanation of what I am and why.

Some people are easier to deal with than others, of course.  Some are just wide-eyed and curious.  Some impose their straight-forward ethic upon you and shoot point blank.  Others are more polite and try to weave it into the conversation.  Others will gingerly ask if it’s okay to ask.  All of which are okay, but instantly when you tell them you are adopted, the conversation takes on a new gravity.  You might as well talk about abortion…

Anyway, this is my life / my whole life, and I’m pretty much used to revealing, “No, I am Korean.  No, I can’t speak Korean.  Why?  Sigh. Because I’m adopted. And then the avalanche begins.  Breathe.  And then I just patiently answer.   But at this orientation I had to do it more than I’m used to.  Because on top of that, I (miss circumstantial minority amongst the ethnic minorities) would be standing in the middle of Hyundai Learning Center, in the English Village, surrounded by Native English Speakers (read:  majority white) who are surrounded by / engulfed by people who look like me.  And, being the fixer type that I am, I wearily welcome the opportunity to educate others about what it’s like to be an alien wherever I go, no matter what I do. (because of international transracial adoption)  I gladly step up to the plate for these interviews and talk, talk, talk, hoping that my contribution will somehow, one person at a time, turn back the tidal wave of wreckless adopting taking place in the west.

Last day of orientation, I join a table of Canadian teachers in the middle of a discussion. The discussion turns to adoption (independent of me) when one of the girls talks about her volunteer work at an orphanage.  The rest of the group wants to know about the orphanage, and I hear the girl tell them all those things I already know about orphanages – that none of the children were there because their parents had died – that some of them even had their parents come visit them – that the children were either abandoned or effectively abandoned due to lack of social services, economics, or family and cultural violations.

I sit there and listen, as there was nothing I could add.  Then this other really lovely girl comments how she just can’t imagine how horrible it must be to be one of those children, children who were not even real orphans, children who were given up because they weren’t wanted.  I could jump in and say, “Yes.  Yes that is a horrible feeling.”  But I don’t. I just sit there, unable to speak. The one girl there who knows I am adopted mouths to me, “Are you okay?”  I nod yes, but really don’t know.  I really don’t know how to process empathy like this.  I’m glad it is not empathy for me personally from these strangers, because then I would cry.  I suddenly don’t have the strength to open my mouth and tell them that at least at the orphanage, the children have each other, their culture and some identity intact.  Instead of being dragged across the ocean against our will, without a choice.  But I have free will now.  It’s my choice to return here.  To go through this painful adjustment.

I leave the orientation feeling slightly kicked in the stomach, thinking about abandonment again.  When I return to school the next day, I am faced with an email from G.O.A.L. who are trying to coordinate a taping of me for YTN t.v., as another appeal to my missing probably fucked-up family.

So I revisited some adoption activist things I was eating daily before I left Korea, and I came across a post from Sunny Jo, the Korean adoptee who was abducted as a child and sent for adoption to Sweden, and who returned to Korea and found her birth family.  Her last post referenced transracial abduction, which some find to be a belligerant way to refer to cross ethnic adoption.  And I agreee, it IS belligerant.  But maybe that’s what we need.  More in your face and less being patient, polite, and grateful for this life we’ve been handed that was forced on us.

Read this refreshingly non-apologetic and startlingly unveiled truth by one of my feminist asian adoptee heroines, Kim So Yung.  Her website, transracial abductees (google it) really changed the way I think about adoption.  In a good way, in an empowering way.

(once there, click on the Preview PDF and not the title link)

Surveying the many attitudes and opinions of the native English teachers (i.e., foreigners) this weekend, I began to ask myself, “what kind of person leaves their country and culture to live and work (not just vacation) in another country and culture, why do they do that, and why are they teaching English?

Now, maybe my powers of observation are off the mark, but there seemed to be both a generational divide as well as a gender divide:   the older generation of English teachers seemed to be mostly men, and the older generation of teachers seemed to harbor the most resentment towards Korea, (and yet they stay for the opportunities) while also taking their jobs the most seriously. (and often without humor)  The younger men seemed to fall into two categories:  the alpha male type or the last in line for team sports line-up.  Some here to enjoy their foreign celebrity to the fullest, and the others hoping to enjoy any celebrity for the first time.  It just seemed that extreme to me, but again, maybe I’m sizing it up wrong.  The women, (most under 30) seemed to fall in between these extremes, and just seemed more adventurous and open-minded.  It also dawned on me, watching the paired team-taught lessons, that the majority of these people spent some portion of their lives at summer camp as counselors, so maybe there’s a correlation there.

For those not here merely to fill their gap year with a way of reducing their financial aid, living in a foreign country can be like a retreat:  retreat from all those psychic things which, after whatever many+ years can build up and weigh you down.  Only replacing that detritus with a fresh new culture, though exhilarating at first, can quickly play itself out.  It is the retreat that doesn’t end.  Devoid of your staple comforts.  In a strange place where you are abnormal yet must search to find normalcy.  The same you is still there, even if it’s in a new place.  The old pressures are gone, but they have been replaced with different ones.  And you can try to reinvent yourself, but the truth is, you can’t retreat from yourself.

The younger ones seem to be constantly checking their pulse.  Am I alive?  Must test my body until it is exhausted.  Yes.  Still alive.  They seem to be too busy hurtling themselves, full throttle, at life to spend a moment actually appreciating that they are.  Or what they are feeling.

However, the older ones seem to be constantly checking their temperature.  Am I dying?  What’s my temperature today?  How am I feeling?  This hour?  This second?  This neurotic checking prevents them from living.

And then there are those of us in the middle – committing some of both of the above.

Culture shock sends all of us foreigners into checking mode.  What is happening?  What do I do about it?  Constantly, we are asking ourselves these questions.  It reminds me of a guy I worked with who had PTSD, whose constant state of near panic was mostly self-induced by similar questions.  And even our solutions can turn into more checking:  blogging can turn into temperature checking, socializing can turn into comparison temperature checking, etc., etc.

There is another type as well – and that is the refugee.  The ones who can’t find a place anywhere where they fit in.

This week at the orientation I met this neurotic refugee  who was telling me – before I got here, I felt like this;  then I felt like that;  then I felt like this;  now I feel like this;  I’m so upset because a second ago I felt like that, but now I feel like this, but I want to feel like  (etc., etc., etc.)

All I could think was:  Lord, please don’t let me turn into this…

I don’t want to hurtle myself at Korea.  Neither do I want the shit kicked out of me by Korea.  I just want things – friends / love – to come naturally – and though I know it is the same socially inept girl here that was in America, please let me not be so preoccupied with my silly things like – What’s MY NAME / Is my family still alive / etc –  that I miss them this time.