This weekend, in Tongyeong, there were two grand openings of electronic stores or something like that. They sell stereos, TVs, blenders, cell phones, you know, that kind of stuff. But a grand opening of a store, is a big event here, similar to the states, they have huge sales and balloons and things of that celebratory sort. There were even two miniature stages, about 5 feet off the ground where two, beautiful, scantily clad young women dance to bad electronic/pop music, all day long, in front of both stores. I thought this was a conservative culture? I guess the fact that they were very close to completely covered on the top, made up for the very short skirts and knee high boots. The grand openings were, conveniently, across the street from each other. The stages were accompanied by two big speakers on either side, on both sides of the street. It was very loud, busy and overwhelming.
My grocery store is next to this commotion. I had to get bottled water (the sink water is not safe to drink) and so I brought my half cart. My neighbor gave it to me and it is a basket that has wheels and a handle. You drag it with you to the grocery store when you have a lot of stuff, or something that is heavy. It is not very big but does its job well. This was my first time using it. It was Saturday afternoon. It was sunny. The streets were full of people. Similar to the states, on the weekends, everyone goes out shopping. I did my usual scramble around the store. I finally figured out that they do sell mustard here, thank goodness; my ham sandwiches have been very boring!
I check out. I go out into the street with my full cart. I have 6 large bottles of water, mango juice, jelly, peanut butter, hangers, rice cakes (which are actually chewy here) and bananas. I carefully maneuver past one of the grand openings. I roll over cords without unplugging them (which I was nervous about). I maneuver past the break dancing lion and around the stages and I was relieved I just had to pull up to the curb and wait for the crosswalk light to turn green and my cart hits a pot hole. It spills.
Now, I get stared at, everyday, all day long. I cannot begin to even explain to any of you what that is like. It gets annoying, really fast. America is the melting pot; we all look very different than each other. Here, everyone is Korean. These days, I am even surprised now when I see a westerner and I get excited and I even stare!! We are rare and we all stick out like a fly in a rice bowl! It is cool in a sense that little kids are saying hello to you all the time. There are moments when I feel completely isolated by language and then a group of random students from any school will come up to me and know my name… even though I have never met them. It still makes me smile.
I wasn’t smiling when my cart spilled. I mean, here I am in the middle of all of this chaos and my cart spills? I mean my Jelly rolled out into the street!! Like, what the heck? And the other side of the street was filled with people waiting to cross the street too and everyone was watching me, ok, some of them were probably watching the dancing girls, but either way. I was so embarrassed! I had no one to even laugh about it with. I had to laugh at it all by myself. By the time I got my Jelly, I turned around, my cart had already been placed right side up and a handful of people were replacing the items safely into my basket. I thanked them and we all laughed together at my clumsiness. Apparently that translates.
When the crosswalk light turned green, a group of random students crosses the street with their chorus of Hello’s, how are you’s, nice to meet you’s and one kid even said, “You clumsy girl”! Hell, at that point I didn’t care, at least he said it in English right?
