Coming to a new country can be a bit disorienting. I arrived in Taejon, Korea 7 days ago. I came unprepared, I can’t speak the language, and I know only the few people I will be working with, all of whom are Korean and speak no English. The other teachers are out of town. I arrived about 10 days early to give myself some time to adjust and to get settled. Since there is no work yet, I have the whole day to spend as I like which is a good and a bad thing. It’s good because I can do what I like, and its bad because I don’t know anyone yet and it’s a little lonely sometimes.
I got a job teaching at a government run science university called KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology). It’s kind of like the MIT of Korea. Everyone I meet here seems to be either a researcher, a post-doctural student, or a professor. It is a large campus and actually you don’t really need to leave it, everything you need is here. For the first 3 or 4 days I barely ventured off the campus. It is wise to set small goals in the beginning and not to try to do too much. Today my goal was to cook some of the rice I had bought and go to a movie. I find it interesting to go to movies in different countries, they are always different. Sometimes there are commercials, sometimes people walk around selling stuff, sometimes people talk and sometimes they don’t. So that was my goal.
I rode my new bike along the river downtown. On campus no one really took much of a notice of me. There are many foreigners here, mostly doing advanced scientific research of one kind or another. In fact I feel rather invisible here. The people on campus are not big on eye contact, smiling, or saying hello. Probably they’re too busy thinking about some formula or theory or something like that. The few times I had to ask for help, the people answered me in very good English. These are the brainy ones, who have often studied higher science in English. I guess I was feeling a little starved for some attention. But once I got out of the campus area it was very different. For one thing there were a lot of beautiful women walking around everywhere. Kaist women are known more for their brains than their beauty. After being cut off from human contact for 4 or 5 days, seeing all of those beautiful women was a little overwhelming.
Some people stared at me and the few people I did ask for help or directions couldn’t speak to me at all. Not that I expect them to speak English, I’m no ugly American, mind you, however I do know for a fact that everyone has studied English for at least 6 years. You would think that after 6 years they could manage to understand, "Where is the movie theater?"
I finally found a movie theater. It was in one of the fancy department stores called the Galleria.. Actually it is more like a small city because it also contains game rooms, restaurants, an auditorium and many floors of high quality stuff. It looks like a large hotel complex. There on the outside of the structure in big letters it said "6-plex movie house." I felt satisfied that I was about to accomplish one of my goals for the day. I looked at the movies showing and there was only one that I was vaguely interested in, "the Terminal" with Tom Hanks. The others were action movies like "I Robot" and "The Bourne Conspiracy". I went up the 8th floor to buy a ticket for my movie. To my surprise though there were only 5 movie screens and the one that was missing was mine. Just my bad luck. A clear case of false advertising. Dejected, I considered my options. I could try to find another movie theater (not likely) , I could see one of the other movies ( I didn’t want to), or I could just forget about the movies for today and check out the store. I decided to investigate the store. I stepped on the escalator just behind two women one of whom had a one year old baby. The baby stared at me. "Hello Baby" I cooed. The women spun around surprised and saw me and laughed like I had just said the funniest thing they’d ever heard. The baby looked terrified. As we arrived at the bottom of the escalator to my surprise there were two very young saleswomen to greet us. They gave us a very low bow and said something I assume was a welcome. These two women were flanked by an entire battalion of other clerks, mostly women also. They all had on uniforms and looked a lot like airline stewardesses. In front of every rack of clothes or aisle of merchandise there was someone stationed. They were often only 2 feet apart from one another. On the 7th floor there were perhaps 80 sales people and as the women and the baby continued on down to the next floor, I was the only customer. They watched me as I walked along through the gauntlet. I would have liked to look at some of the merchandise, but I knew if I did they would come up to me and try to help me. I really didn’t want any help. I didn’t want to buy anything. So I ambled around, trying to walk in the middle between the rows as much as possible so neither of the clerks would know whose territory I was in. I did this for awhile until I saw something that I was actually was interested in, rice cookers. I had thought about rice cookers but the price had seemed so high at the other store that I had gone to. I steered myself in that direction. Instantly 2 sales people pounced on me, a woman and a man. I told them I couldn’t speak Korean yet but they didn’t seem to understand. I looked at the price and it was surprisingly reasonable. For 49,000 won (about 44 dollars) you couldn’t really go wrong. I tried to communicate with the salespersons. They were nice and pretty soon we were all laughing. The saleswoman ran away and came back with a pocket electronic dictionary to help us figure out what I wanted to say. Come to think of it that was another thing I wouldn’t mind having. I guess this was my department. I wondered if the rice cooker would keep the rice warm after it cooked it. Surprisingly with the help of the dictionary, sign language, and common sense leaps of logic, we were able to understand. Yes they told me, and you can eat the rice for up to 2 days (after that I guess you get deathly ill). I looked up, all 40 or so visible sales people were staring blank-faced like mannequins at me. I think I know how fish in the aquarium must feel now. We played with the dictionary for awhile, there were no other customers, until they understood that I actually wanted to buy the cooker. That was a big step for me, frugal person that I am, but something got into me and suddenly I was paying 45 bucks for a cheap rice cooker. I looked around at my audience, they were still staring but they also seemed surprised that this strange foreigner was actually buying something. We spent a while wrapping the cooker because I had to carry it home on my bike. Then I took a look at the electronic dictionaries. Much to my surprise, in the counter next to the dictionaries, they had electric razors, another thing I had thought of buying since mine got broken on the trip over. It seemed like I was the only man in Korea with a beard. That being the case, I needed an easy way to keep it neat. This really was my floor. I did a 360 and looked at everyone and kind of smiled and waved at them. Nothing……. Except …..one woman who returned my look. Amazing. I smiled at her. Amazingly she smiled back at me and as she did she gave me "the look." You know "the look." The one where the eyes sparkle. It means, I’m interested in you. After walking around the streets of Daegan for hours, passing beautiful woman after beautiful woman, with no recognition at all from them, it was such a nice feeling to have someone notice me. I wondered if I could make contact with the friendly saleswoman. I grabbed my bags and started towards the escalator. I turned around and she was still there, she gave me a little wave. I had to do something. I walked around a little more , pretending to be looking at more possible purchases. Next to the rice cookers was a small music department. I looked to see if they had any reeds for my saxophone. As I did, I heard some beautiful piano music. There was a clerk there whose job it was to play music all day so that you could see how wonderful it could be. I walked up to him and pointing to my saxophone and asked "jazz?" He stopped playing and shook his head. Then he stood up and gave me the 90-degree bow. All those eyes followed my every move. So I walked over to the shoe department. I might need to buy some shoes at some point. The saleswoman was able to understand my attempts to communicate and indicated that yes they did have shoes that might fit my size 10 ½ shoes. This was comforting to know as in Japan it was impossible to find any shoes above size 10 and I had to resort to extreme measures to find shoes. Then I ambled over to the TV department. There were a number of different programs on the new HDTV screens, mostly sports. There was a baseball game on and I wondered if it was an Olympic game or a Korean high school game, which is very important here also. I tried to ask my friend, the salesman, which it was, but he completely misunderstood. For some reason he thought that I wanted to watch the Olympics on this particular TV, a rather strange leap of logic since the Olympics was on about 20 other TVs. Yet that was his conclusion. So he started running around, trying to get permission to change this particular TV to the Olympics. Meanwhile I kept sneaking peaks over my shoulder to see if my saleswoman was around. As I did, I met the eyes of all the clerks watching me like an amoebae under a microscope. Ah, there she was, still there. I watched the Olympics for awhile, all the while wondering if I was making a fool out of myself. But I was feeling so lonely. I just needed someone who would show some interest in me. Then I decided to go for it. They already thought I was weird. I discretely wrote my email address on a small piece of paper. Email address firmly in hand, I walked up to her and extended my hand and said in loud voice, "Goodbye." Everyone leaned forward, watching intently. As she shook my hand, I pressed my email address into her hand. She look surprised but not unpleasantly so. She took up the paper and held it up rather high so that she could read it and said in a loud voice "Frankii?". I tried to gesture that she should put the paper down by moving my head up and down and slightly to the side, kind of pointing with my face, but she then starting reading each letter of my email out loud to make sure that she had it right. "dee...effee..eeleee...eeeeeuu....veeuh."I felt myself shrink down into the floor and into a puddle. I didn’t dare look up at the salesclerks. I just thanked her and gave her a big smile. I walked away and felt the collective weight of their eyes on me. I walked across the long room to the escalator and got on. As I approached the 6th floor I saw the two salespeople standing at the bottom ready to bow to esteemed customers. I was ready to acknowledge their bow with a regal nod of my head. However, as I neared them, they just looked at me and didn’t bow. They just stood there. I was crushed. What? I don’t merit a bow. I went down to the next floor on the escalator and as I approached the also non- bowing salespeople I slightly raised the bag with my purchases in it to show them that I was indeed an esteemed customer and then did my best to ignore them. I didn’t accomplish either of my rather modest goals for the day, but well, what can you expect, it’s only my first week here. I'll do better next week. pictures of the Galleria