tea diaries ~~~~~ groooooovy

Of Korean Dinner Parties

So my host mother arrived home at around quarter of 7 tonight as I was cleaning up a little dinner that I had made myself a few minutes earlier. "Pap mogassoyo?" (did you eat?) she asked me. It was obvious that yes, I had. Apparently tonight she was taking me to a dinner party! Luckily, I was hungry again by the time we rolled out. :)

This dinner party was apparently for some of the workers at the Convention Center where my host mom is a baker - they were here for a while and now they're going back to Seoul. We arrived and sat down, immediately to be offered shots of soju. Soju, for those of you who don't know, is an alcohol maybe half the proof of vodka, stomachable without a chaser, but nasty enough to deserve a shot glass instead of a frosty mug. It's also the official drink of Korea and the Korean social scene. It's customary here for men to offer each other glasses of soju, which should be drunk and then passed back empty and refilled for the original person to enjoy (this creates a sort of social bond) and when one's shot glass is emptied it is the obligation of the surrounding friends to refill it. I've been at a dinner party with my host mother's work buddies before, and I've done the soju touring. Tonight was not a night for drinking, so I gave a polite "no thanks" - and after some protest by the guys that was that.

It's never fun to be the one guy at a party pretending to be real interested in the potted plants, but that's how I feel a lot here in Korea. I think it's the same for all the ETAs. I get used to just sort of absorbing the atmosphere, picking out familiar words in the conversations and trying to get what people are saying - who's friends with whom, who's mad, who's jealous, all that. But sometimes I feel this sort of obligation to participate, something self-imposed but a vestige from my days as a painfully shy kid always pushing myself or being pushed by other people to interact just a little outside my degree of comfort. THE way to participate is by drinking, sharing the wordless eyebrow raises and winks and "one-shot!" and other such bottoms-up cheering that transcends the language barrier. I'm not drinking, so I'm out of the loop, as men around me pass glasses and top each other off and clamour to catch up those people who've just arrive. They mill around me, moving around between the tables, in a manner unfamiliar to Westerners confined to chairs, they squeeze in next to each other on the floor, bending over the low tables to grab some galbi (barbequed meat), wrap it with garlic and soybean paste and veggies to stuff it into each others mouths, or to reach for one of the multiplying bottles of soju on the table. The alcoholic becomes a vehicle, a conveyance and a reason to move - men in business stand up from a cross-legged position and get their balance, grinning with a glass of soju in hand and creep around to the opposite table, finding a place on the floor next to their boss and off a deferential drink, or a buddy and offer one of many drinks of the evening, or to a new guy as a gesture of welcome.

But I am not conveyed. I sit, bound by my water to one spot, opposite my host mother. We're the only ones who didn't move all night. I'm sitting here next to a Korean man with whom I have neither age nor language nor occupation in common, plotting and scheming for ways to interject myself into the conversation. A little "ahem ... chonen Henry imnida" (My name is Henry) oughtta do the trick. If I don't just give it a shot, then I'll walk away here knowing I missed an opportunity to interact. And that will be totally my fault. So I turn to the guy and wait for an appropriate pause ... and I stop. And I realize that the Fulbright rhetoric here has beaten our "cultural ambassador" role into our heads so much that it's become a little unnatural. It's like I'm in the classroom, making this effort because if I don't, I'll get graded down. And I realize that in this situation such an interjection isn't appropriate. I'm not being rude just sitting here, in fact it would be quite socially odd if I made such an effort.

This one's a doozy. So why am I sitting here? Introspection gripped my mind in that embarrassing way you never ever want it to in the midst of a gathering such as this. In the States a refusal to drink, though it might be a little bit of a party-pooper move, is a lot more respected given the widespread acceptance of alcoholism as a disease. In Korea there is no AA. Many men might be considered alcoholics by our standards but given the drinking culture here that level of abuse is within acceptable ranges and doesn't translate to abbhorent behavior (which might indicate a need for treatment) though I'm sure it manifests similarly in health problems. I'm filled with need to DO something, to learn something, to come away with something from this experience. With a constant supply of new experiences in a foreign country, you get used to treating every event as a sort of eye-opening experience, a minor revelation that might get you just one step closer to who you are and what you're looking for out of life. The worst thing would be to admit that though you're halfway across the world in the middle of a lively Korean dinner party, you're really just the awkward foreigner that everyone's afraid to talk to because they don't want to reveal just how little English they actually remember from school. I'm waiting for the Korean man next to me who ignored my hello at the beginning of the meal turn to me and say in perfect English, "Sorry man, couldn't get out of that conversation. You remind me of this guy I met in Istanbul a few years ago..." and change my life. It doesn't happen, and I realize that I'm trying to force something like that to happen. I shouldn't be painfully shy, but I shouldn't be unnatural. I sit back and smile into the mirror and let it all wash over me.

A little while later, it DOES happen naturally. In walks a fidgety 40-something man with a hint of red in his spiky hair wearing what looks like the unholy child of a leather biker's jacket and a bathrobe. He sits next to me and across from my host mom at the end of the table and nervously taps his phone. I realize he feels just as out of place here as I do. I give him my winning "My name is Henry" line and we strike up as much of a conversation that our language barrier can handle. He smiles, because although I'm halfway around the world in another country, it's perfectly natural.

As the night goes on, I have stunted exchanges with the original group of men, little smiles and nods - I get a big grin from one man whose face I've watched deepen its shade of red throughout the night, and one man who looks 26 but is of course 38 (that must have been a fertile year, almost EVERY Korean I meet is 38) who speaks English about as well as my students invites me to go and do archery with him! I guess I don't have to know Korean to be absolutely abyssmal at that. ;)

By that time some more people had filtered in, including a young man who was - I kid you not - the SPITTING IMAGE of my friend Adam Ortiz from Wheaton. It was ... amazing. This Korean Adam came in with a baseball hat and glasses and Adam's perky perpetual grin ... a tshirt over a collared shirt and a sweater. I almost asked him how his new movie was coming along. Even weirder - as I (probably blatantly) stared at him down the table, he turned to me and gave me this "hey, yeah look at us we're sitting at a Korean restaurant table, how weird is that?" look. It was all in the eyes. As he walked around on his soju tour for some reason all the men would pinch his cheek - Leather Bathrobe especially. I was trying to figure out how to get a picture with him without looking completely crazy - no dice.

My host brother, who also came, had retreated to sleep in the car maybe an hour ago. After my mother and Leather Bathrobe have a special "secret discussion" whispered at one corner of the table, we got up to leave. I was stuffed and satisfied. I had finally given up my expectations, and just let things flow. Flow they did.


As a side note: my mobile phone not only has a small blue picture of a snowman available for insertion in a text message, but also special symbols for both rads per second AND rads per second squared. score.