I think I just joined a Korean cult.
Two girls on the street asked me to fill out a survey with religion questions and the last one was "which question interests you most?" so I put down the one about the "heavenly Mother," which I had never heard of before. So they showed me some Bible verses and somehow I wound up being dragged down the street and a few blocks away into a parking garage type place to the seventh floor church office where they took me to a tiny room where we all sat barefoot and watched a movie about how Korea is Jerusalem the parable and the "Heavenly Mother" and the the Church of God is awesome and that people from all over the world just want to journey to Korea to meet the Mother. All the women wear veils in the Church... The girls were so nice and excited and said how they wanted to take me home to my apartment so they'd know where I lived...I said I needed to go to a PC bang to contact my earthly mother, which they totally got.
I mean, I don't regret it or anything, but woah. Those girls were trying sooo hard! And they kept complimenting me, and standing reeeeally close, and touching my hand and arm, and they'd SQUEEEEE!!!! whenever I agreed to do anything. They'd be like "OH MY GOSH? REALLY!? YOU'LL TAKE OUR SURVEY!? EEEEEEEE!!" and like jump up and down a little bit.
I just kind of thought "what the hell," it's not like I have anywhere to go or anyone to see or anything to do right now besides watch a dvd and get drunk alone in my apartment like I was planning. Now I see why lonely people join cults, haha.
Actually, I kind of have been making friends! I tracked down the one teacher on my floor and we walked to school together and I bought her an aloe drink so friends foreverrrr! Another teacher invited me to eat chicken with her and some other teachers Saturday night. Awesome. Maybe I'll just drink and eat kimchi while they eat chicken?? I have no Friday night plans. Maybe I'll go to Seoul by myself? Or try to find someone on Couchsurfer? Or try to tag along with some other teacher? It's hard because no one's really asking me to do things and I don't want to INVITE MYSELF. I might anyway. I mean, three different teachers have been to my apartment and I've been to none of theirs, wtf! They all say, "oh you'll definitely come by later!" but when!???? And they all have boyfriends/fiances/husbands. There are only two other single people out of 15 teachers and they're both Korean, so I don't know if they want to hang with me. But I think there are a few future friends - it's just everyone works so late I don't even know if they go out after. The Korean teachers work until midnight!
Tomorrow I get drug/HIV/TB-tested and then actually TEACH a class or two! I'm scared but ready after roughly 12 hours of watching people teach elementary English. I almost fell asleep during reading class, haha. But it's interesting for me to see which techniques keep people (me) interested and which totally die.
3 comments:
Claire! glad to read that you're schmoozing and getting ready for the teaching swing. don't be worried about going around by yourself--just do it and kick it live.
also glad that you got out of the cult office (surrious!).
and aren't aloe drinks just heavenly?
Dude, I think they were just excited that a person did their survey- you were probably the only one all day! Are super-religious people standing on the corners with Bibles/surveys common in Korea?
mika - yes! yes! aloe! and yeah, i do feel free to explore by myself a lot during the day, but nights seem a little different...
tessa - i think the surveys ARE common. i told my boss and she was like "you just have to be an asshole with them, they're really persistent." but i kind of liked them! they had gumption! perhaps misguided gumption, but gumption nonetheless! and it was pretty interesting! they talked about how GOD's likeness is both woman and man, that there is a heavenly Mother. and that was interesting to learn about, even if it turned out to be less feministy than i originally thought.
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