Korean driving. The lady that gave me a ride in the morning on Tuesday was a bit late so she ran several red lights, including one where there was other traffic stopped so she went over into the left turn lane around everyone and through the intersection at fairly high speed. She seemed to think putting on her caution blinkers made this ok. Mind you, her two kids were in the car as well not wearing their seatbelts. later there was more traffic stopped at a light but no way around on the left so she turned right, did a u turn and then turned right back onto the road after the intersection. My next door neighbor saw a pedestrian killed a few months ago in Jeonju when the bus he was riding in ran a red straight through the crosswalk.
Ambulances. Today I saw an ambulance with its siren and lights on stuck in traffic. It is Korean law to pull to the side of the road, just as it is in the US. But, everyone acted as if it were not there at all. Someone could be dying inside the ambulance and all the other drivers could think about is whether they would make it through the intersection on the next cycle.
In Jeonju, I can't walk down the street or ride a bus without people talking about "foreigners." Usually it's just comments on my height, or just saying, "look it's a foreigner," but other times they are nitpicking the way I do things. I opened the window an inch on the bus the other day and immediately the ladies sitting next to me started talking about how foreigners open the window too often because they get hot too easily. The stupid thing is there were already two other people, Koreans, with their windows open. Yet, somehow my opening the window was reinforcing their stereotype of foreigners.
On Tuesday, some of my students, as usual, were not studying but were running around hitting each other. So, I asked them, "why do Korean kids hit each other so much?" The response I anticipated was, "oh teacher, it's just a game." But what they said was this, "Kids in the US fight all the time and they hate blacks and asians." I said it is not the case, but they didn't want to hear it.
Today I was walking home and two junior high girls laughed out loud talking about my wearing a Nike jacket over my shirt and necktie. Seriously? You are going to nitpick me over THAT?
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Oh, man! Got up in the middle of the night and, before going back to bed, I checked mail...... read this posting with increasing horror and then read it to Bill. Once we got past the " does he HAVE to keep riding with that idiot" stage, Bill commented that speaking the language around people who don't KNOW you speak the language, is a lot like being able to hear other people's thoughts.....that it is often an advantage NOT to be able to do so.....
I've been thinking about our Asian and Black friends and feeling glad that our family is where it is in race relations........ but I keep coming back to a motherly question:
DO YOU HAVE TO KEEP RIDING WITH THAT IDIOT?????
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