Naked People Don't Need Sheep... Friday, February 22

"I'm thinking about taking up drinking", I told Snickers as I rolled back into bed.

It was way too early for him to comprehend what I meant and he just assumed it had to do with my coffee meeting today.  I recently joined a new coffee social club and, despite having gone to bed at the crazy hour of six in the morning, I managed to show up at today's meet-up.  It was a crash and burn attempt on my behalf of being social.

"Nakedness or go out? That's easy.  I want to stay naked", I noted.

"Naked yes. Naked is good", he mumbled. 

"Perhaps I should just be a sheep" I added.

"Sheep yes.  Sheep is good... sweaters, hats, blankets."  He clearly didn't know what I was talking about and though I was just throwing out random ramblings, there was an underlying point to my nonsense. 

I'm still convinced that if you don't drink, shoot pool or date than meeting new people in Korea becomes like a close to impossible happening, especially among the foreign crowd.  I was never a big drinker and I completely gave it up when I turned professional with my boxing.  And pool, it's a game that's instantly attached to overly smokey pool halls, filled with beer-drinking dudes so that's a huge turn-off for me. And as for dating, well, I'm married so that covers that.  

  

I don't drink, I don't shoot pool and I don't date... so I stay home on the weekends when others hit the streets and meet up with friends.  They hit the pool hall and I hit the pool, the swimming pool that is.  I've got a hookup with a local fitness center worker who occasionally sneaks me in after hours.  

I still remain the one girl uninvited to Friday night events.  It's true.

I don't get invited to many social events actually, especially dinner parties.  Many people become very self-conscious when I show up for a dinner event, as if I'm going to call them out on what their eating.  I used to think that I make them uncomfortable but then I was corrected by a friend.  "You don't make them uncomfortable", she said, "it's them that make their own self uncomfortable -- having to eat beside their guilty conscious."  I don't know to what percentage I agree with this but I do agree that it's not me personally that makes them uncomfortable.  Regardless, I'm always flooded with people's excuses to bad habits, as if giving me their song and dance justifies things.  Everyone has an excuse, I know that, and I have an excuse too but they don't think about that.  Everyone has an excuse and my excuse is I'm sick of their excuses. 

So in relation to what I was rambling about this morning with wanting to take up drinking and become a sheep, for the longest time I used to think that life in Korea would be so much easier if I just followed the "in" crowd.  After being in Korea for many years now, I can honestly say that being "cool" in Korea among the foreigners is pretty much the same as being cool in high school -- it means absolutely nothing.  The foreign crowd changes every year with the conclusion of another school semester/year.  

I'm definitely not a "cool" girl but I think being fit and healthy is pretty hot.

Anyways, with Snickers out of the house and me home alone, I started pondering all this.  It was a Friday night and I was home alone.  I could make out the giggles and voices of various girls I train as they exited the bar right below me and I wondered why I hadn't been invited.  

A little after 2am a friend left a message on my Facebook wall, telling me that she was downstairs at Banana Bar.  Ten minutes later I showed up there to say hi.  Nothing is stranger than feeling like a foreigner to the foreigners at a foreign bar, seriously.  I stood at the far end of the bar like I was some kind of scared underager or a first-timer to the bar scene.  One-by-one, as people started to take notice of me standing there, I was approached by people who knew me either because of Flipside Fitness or my boxing.  And, oddly enough, it turns out more strangers know about where I live (because of it's strange location -- right above the bar) than my name, how strange is that?!  

I'm always amused at just how many hugs I seem to cash in on when I run into foreigners.  I had foreigners I didn't even know coming up, introducing themselves and then spontaneously hugging me.  I think I'm good for a good year's worth of hugging now... hahaha.  

Despite initially rolling my eyes at the thought of venturing into the bar to say hi to a friend, I left feeling really great.  I have my mixed feelings about the foreign crowd here in Cheonan, I'm rather hard on them, but the foreigners I've been meeting at random things like tonight have really been leaving an impression on me and the impression has been refreshingly and unexpectedly very positive.  Being recognized as "that boxing girl" or "that Flipside woman" is definitely an amusing label when someone I don't know yells it at me from across the bar but it's cool.  Tonight's quick glimpse into the foreign scene here really left me feeling all that more eager to get our boxing club up and running.  There's just so many foreigners here and so many of them really need something like what it is we're trying to build -- a community-building boxing club.  

I yearn for the days when "that boxing coach" or "Coach Amy" will be what they'll be yelling.