Culture Shot: Making Friends.

This post is hopefully going to be the first of many "Culture Shots" which I will use to detail things which have left me reeling. This week's shot focuses on making friends.

Making friends here, as a foreigner, has been possibly one of the easiest experiences I've had with making friends. Mostly because my first time meeting and speaking to another foreigner here was basically the exact same as the first day in school: "Hey dude, I have no friends. Wanna be friends?". The only differences being of course that when I was 3 and a half I didn't actually know the word "dude" and the fact that this time I uttered the phrase in a supermarket next to some watermelons. But overall the result was the same: I made a friend. Done and dusted.

"I'm only friends with you because we're both 8"..."and cartoons".
KicksterAsh

However, my native counter-parts may not have it so easy. Here in Korea being friends is either a whole lot harder or somewhat simpler depending on how one looks at it. I have been informed by my co-workers who are all Korean natives that the word "friend" in Korean is more or less the same as the word for "peer" or someone who is the same age. I had noticed this in some of my classes when I told students to look at their friend's work and they would repeatedly insist "But he's not my friend, I older!!"

This didn't surprise me. Oftentimes I was the one playing the "I'm older than he is" to avoid dealing with bratty relatives (no, not you, but all the others!) and being confused with being their "friend" how much street cred could I keep being friends with someone one full year younger than me? But then when I grew up it stopped being a big deal. This is not the same for the average Korean to whom image and social standing mean quite a lot.

Therefore, by and large, Koreans are not friends with people older or younger than themselves unless there are mitigating circumstances such as one of the pair to become friends is a foreigner. This is, I am told, due to the fact that westerners are just exempt from certain social graces. And thank god for that! My mind was literally blown when my co-workers marveled at the fact that some of my friends are even five years older than me, even more so that I have friends even older than that. Now I know this is often not the case and people usually hang around in similar age-groups back home but it is not unheard of to have friends from work or college who happen to have that bit more life experience. Over here, that would probably not happen and if it did there would still be honorifics and specifics and all manner of other "-ifics" which impede the development of a real friendship. To me this seems somewhat horrific.

This has been your first Culture Shot. Thanks for reading!

The Grand Tour

In my haste to post last time it seems I forgot to include any explanation as to why I have decided to call my "studio" (pronounced "bedsit") 'The Love House'. It is not, as some might assume, that I intend to make this a love shack, baby, love shack but rather it is in reference to the roller-blind over my window. 

This somewhat inexplicable addition to the studio was instantly my favourite part of the whole place as it adds the touch of oddity toward which I am quite partial.

The fact that the "Beautiful Life" excerpt it almost entirely irrelevant and somewhat morose, insofar as it encourages you to revel in the misfortunes of others, and yet has somehow been included on this cutesy design. This is not even the best example of misused or misplaced text I've seen. I'm sure many English teachers here have taken a moment to read the notebooks of their students which are plastered in unusual and out-of-place quotes and in a lot of instances misquotes. I'm sure I'll snap a pic of a journal or two in the coming days for you guys.

To the left you can see the office which has everything one could need in an office: an ergonomic swivel chair, a writing desk (please notice the journal, it was placed especially for the photoshoot), and a wall of bookcases, which in this instance is just one bookcase which masquerades as a wall between my bedroom and the office. 

Here we have the sitting/dining room which adjoins the office. The Bronx hardwood flooring is underlaid with gas heating to keep the tooshie toasty while entertaining or eating. Joking aside, this truly is the space where Koreans would entertain guests. This is traditional as the Western idea of sofas and couches never really gained traction over here. This seems utterly bizarre to a proud Irishman like myself who has perfected the art of lounging on any form of sofa be it upholstered, leather or even a futon!

Moving on we have the kitchen, or more accurately, kitchenette. This is the only aspect which has disappointed as there are a number of key features of a true kitchen missing. These absences include a kettle, a toaster, a grill and/or oven. However, given how often I eat in this is perhaps mostly a non-issue. Bar the kettle. Kettles are essential. This is a lesson I hope to sneak into many many classes throughout my time here. 

The kitchen does however, come with this magnificent piece of confounding equipment which provided endless hours of random button-pushing, beeping and eventually somewhat alarming washing noises before signalling the end of my first load of washing on my first weekend here. Later, I asked my coworkers to translate the Hangul into English for somewhat easier use in the future. Thus you see my pink post-it held up by sticky-plasters like a cheat sheet of laundry. However there are many settings which are labelled in unusual phrasing such as "baby clothes", "blankets", and  strangest of all one of the spin settings is labelled "dry like river" the intent of which is anyone's guess. On the one hand I can see it meaning drying the clothes as if they've been in a river or will produce a river worth of water, however, on the other hand I could see it meaning leaving the clothes as if they've been in the river. Someday when I'm bored and it's hot enough I'll try it out and solve this age-old mystery. I'll keep you posted.

And that folks is where I spend those hours when I am not in the norebang or the academy, however few and far between they may be!