Home Sweet ... America?

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So as I said I arrived in America yesterday and have been having a little bit of culture shock here. Wait a second, where am I? I thought I was supposed to be in Seoul. Well, complicated comes to complicated and it turns out that when you live on a base you really do live in the middle of that other country. They don't joke around when they say it's American land in the middle of another country. I went to a high school talent show with Chris last night because he had to do a report on it for the newspaper. There was not a single Korean anywhere to be seen nor was there anything that even remotely looked like anything Korean. American food, architecture, people, and English. For the intermission they were selling things ... in American money. Everything here is just about as expensive as it is at home and the currency works such that 1000 won is about one US dollar so I'm back into working with American currency. This is a very strange concept for me - I've been working in everything Chinese for quite a while now. In fact my tendency is to still say thank you to people in Chinese. I haven't seen very many Americans in a while and have been in a place where I am one of the largest people (proportionally) out of a huge crowd. I also have seen one (count him one) black person in the 5 months I've been in China. For whatever reason there are TONS of black people in the army. In fact it seems that there are many more black people than any other group of people. Even at the talent show there were some R&B songs, punk songs, and some hip hop. I really had landed myself back in America. On the base we went to a nice dinner place last night which looked exactly like a place I've been to in Sri Lanka (kind of odd). But apparently they have a food court with everything American here. it's very strange to feel completely surrounded by everything American and still know that you're in another country (that's not America). I don't speak a word of Korean but my tendency is to still want to speak to the Koreans in Chinese. China has a pretty big impression on Korea - there are still signs in Chinese every now and again and the Korean language looks like it took some of the Chinese radicals (parts of characters) and created a language with it. Koreans themselves look fairly similar to Chinese although there are slight differences that I notice (besides the language and culture). Anyways, I've gotta go have some sort of American brunch and meet some people. I'll write more about the Korean America and hopefully sometime I'll get to see some of Korea while I'm here.

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Comments

[Rosie]

Cultura
Hola Jupe Me gusto mucho leer tu adventura en Corea. Yo vivi 6 anos en Corea. El primer ano fue muy duro, no me gusto. Tome una decision grande y era de cambiar las amistades que tenia eran muy negativa. Cuando hice el cambio todo era mucho mejor. Siempre haz lo que siente tu corazon y lo que te hace feliz. Si escribir tus adventura te alegra, sigue haciendolo. Otras personas quisieran hacer lo mismo pero no tienen el corazon de adventurarse. Disfrute tu vida y si haces error no te de pena. Si tus amistades te quieren de verdad te consuelan y te aceptan con todos tus defectos. Llorar no significa debilidad sino que eres un ser humano con sentimientos. Todos tenemos sentimientos pero no lo demostramos en publico. Viene de la forma que fuimos criadosa en nuestro hogar. Que lindo que puedes hablar 3 idiomas y ayudas a a otras personas para entenderlo. Que Dios te lumine siempre, Te recomiendo vayas a este restaurante en Seoul. Telefono 998-8512 si te gusta lo picante , no es un plato turistico. DAK KALBI Bueno, Bonito, Barato