Wednesday, May 15, 2013

What's a cultural shock?


Beondegi. It's an insect. Once I ate sashimis and there were beondegi, side to the main food. To me it's another kind of cultural shock!


There is something that surprised me during this trip in South Korea. The people. I got surprised by the differencies between french people and korean people.
The first day I arrived Korea, when I went out of the subway, a little middle-aged man looked at us, Moryeon, Sarah and me, and said with a big smile "예쁘다 !" (you're pretty*). The next day, I realized lots of 아줌마, old ladies, said that too. They easily came to us and said things like "oh you're pretty ! where are you from? Russia? USA?" and of course we said "no, we are french" and every time, they were very surprised by the fact that we were french. It made them talking to us even more. (I realized soon enough that korean people do like France a lot. Talking to them, I also realized we don't talk to the same France. They have a vision of perfection about my country, that is far away from the truth, but I'll write about it later). Anyway, my point is all those nice persons were middle-aged people, or old people. 
In France, I never saw one single old man or old lady talk in the street to a foreigner, tell that he/she's pretty and be interested in the country he/she was from. But I saw young people, my age, do that kind of things.
So my point is exactly : where the hell were young people?
During my first times in Korea, my korean skills were terrible, a disaster. Some times, on the first days, it happened to us to lose ourselves, or to ask for some informations like "hey, do you know a nice restaurant, bar around here?". We asked in english, self-afraid of our korean speaking.
I'll tell now a story who particulary surprised/upset me when it happened. It was something like three days after we arrived. We wanted to go outside and have a drink with the french guys. We were walking on the main street of Yeokgok, when Megan, who is the nicest girl I ever met and that kind of girls that no one can dislike, tried to talk to three korean guys who were standing near to us. First, you have to know that Megan is half-korean, and her korean skills are good. That time, she decided that she would ask the question in korean to those guys. So we went toward them, and when they realized that we were going to talk to them, they almost ran away ! Well, two of them really did at least. The third one, more polite, just stepped back a little but he listened to her. I don't remember what happened exactly then, but I know that he didn't even try to reply to her in korean but english. That day I understood that to some korean persons, foreigners = not talking korean but english. 
It annoyed me at that time, really. Thinking about it now... It just makes me laugh so hard ! Remembering their panicked eyes while we were walking toward them and finally running away like cats in front of dogs!
However, and even if I was going to live similar situations later, it happened that we met soon true korean friends. But that will be the topic of a next article !

Seo Eri.

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