It happened over the weekend-- Saturday, I think-- as I was schlepping over to the office. A group of kids was bouncing along behind me when one of them screamed, "Waeguginida! Waeguginidaaa!!" In other words: "It's a foreigner! It's a foreignerrrrrrr!!"
Oh, how I wished I had a shuriken or two right at that moment. I've gone nearly three years in this fairly quiet Smoo neighborhood without having to hear that nonsense. I seriously did think about turning around, commanding the kid to come over, then grabbing him by the earlobe and telling him he'd better be nice from now on or I'd kill him (jugyeobeorigettda, 죽여버리겠다) the next time I saw him. I thought better of it mainly because I knew the kid would run and tell his parents about the scary foreigner. Unfortunately, that thought led to the slightly more evil thought that I'd just have to grab the kid by the hair, not the earlobe, so as not to leave any marks. Oh, I'm bad.
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Jeeze - that happens to me almost every day. Either that, or I've got kids I don't know screaming my name at me. Everyone seems to knows my name. You live in Bliss Land!
ReplyDeleteout here in the lowly provinces that is AT LEAST an every day occurance if not several times a day...it depends on how often i go to a public place rather than just from my car to the office. What's even worse is when you hear the people at the counter at the bank arguing over who is going to take the foreigner (English Use Anxiety)
ReplyDeleteThis happened to me daily, and it never bothered me. They're just kids. Kids are as malleable as silly putty. I'd just cross my eyes and make faces, make them laugh, and let their first impressions be good ones.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's their bigot parents that pissed me off.
Around Songtan and Anjeong-ri it isn't so much of a problem because we're everywhere but when we leave the familiar on the weekends turning gasloine into sweet sweet V-twin engine music that only Harley Davidson provides brings a LOT of attention. Especially in the podunk backwater peasant farming towns.
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