The Comeback Kid once posted a saying on her Facebook page, it read something like "How someone acts is their karma, how you react is yours" and I couldn't help but remind myself of it when I was poorly introduced this morning.
I was turning on the front computer at Hulk's when K-Gere walked in with some other man, whom I assumed was a friend or some kind of associate. Instantly I stood up, brushed myself off and said hi to them both.
"This is Amy," K-Gere noted to the other man, "She used to work as a Dankook University professor".
I used to work as a Dankook University professor, that's all you got?! As if that's my biggest accomplishment in my life, like I should be proud of it, like the fact that I built a boxing club literally out of a pile of crap meant nothing -- THAT'S more crap than the crap I shoveled!!!
Instantly I thought about a million and one slapstick responses to that comment but decided to not kill my karma points and just throw a relatively harmless response out. "I once was 12 too for a year" was my answer. Hey, I thought it was funny and I thought it kind of got my point out, my point being the nonscense of the label used to introduce me.
I worked at Dankook University once, it's true. I worked there for three years and I would have continued too if it weren't for the fact that they threatened to deport me and sent immigration to my house on a late Saturday evening. Me boxing was an issue to them and me boxing professionally was against my visa regulations because I get paid to fight. But I'm the kind of person that if you tell me not to do something I'll do it anyways just to prove I can and I'll go extreme with it. Dankook told me that if I had another fight I'd be deported, meaning I'd have a 24hr notice before I'm pushed out. So you know what I did? I DID have another fight but I had it in Japan. Yup, I did what they told me not to. I represented Korea in Japan and there was nothing Dankook or immigration could do because it was out of the country and thus out of their reach. I then finished my contract, refused to resign for another year and then spent that following year just living off the royalties of my boxing. I wanted nothing more than to just do my boxing so that's exactly what I did, I just boxed.
Needless to say, I didn't leave Dankook on good terms and though I'm definitely over it, I surely don't want to give them credit by being introduced in connection to them. I was rather insulted actually and not just because of how and why I left Dankook but because that's not what I am associated with or have been for OVER four years now.
I am Coach Amy, manager and co-owner of Hulk's Boxing and leader of Flipside Fitness here in Korea. Learn it, accept it, R-E-S-P-E-C-T it!
This is how I started my day off, with the shadiest of shady introductions. I refused to let it get me down because I know no matter what I do to prove myself to others, first of all I shouldn't have to prove anything, they'll always think whatever they want.
I'm so over trying to be something I'm not; I've got nothing to prove, nothing to hide and no one really to impress besides myself. I will say this though, I am definitely all about boosting up the confidence and empowering the women in my life, especially the foreign females here in Korea. It's not easy being a female here in Korea especially a foreign female who doesn't fit the ideal of what it means to be a female. I've spent over nine years now in Korea and you'd think they would have given up on trying to make me fit a certain mold but they haven't -- they're more stubborn than I am. Me marrying a Korean man only amplified the pressure in more ways than I can count on my stumpy little Polish fingers.
It's funny because though I coach many female foreign woman, I often feel more of an older sister to them than a coach. I can definitely relate with them with regards to the stresses of living in Korea as a foreign woman but I consider them so much more blessed than I was when I first came here. When I first came to Korea, now over nine years ago, Cheonan was not very foreign-friendly. I could go a full week, possibly two or three, without seeing a foreigner and now the foreign population has just exploded. There's an estimated 9,000 foreigners now living in Cheonan. For the most part, they're either ESL teachers or factory workers from East Asia but most of them are ESL teachers. The foreign population has more than tripled since I first landed here. The younger generation of Koreans are definitely more open-minded towards foreigners and foreign culture and this has been the biggest improvement I've seen. More businesses have bilingual Korean workers and English signs nowadays and Korea has taken on a lot adopted a lot more pieces of Western culture. New Korea is definitely more Westernized than the Korea I first met but Old Korea still very much runs the country and the proof is in the mentality of many Koreans. There is still very much an age-related, male-dominated hierarchy present in Korea -- the older rule the younger and the men rule the women -- so though the younger generation is evolving and becoming more Westernized, open-minded and independent, they still are restricted and controlled by the older. And that's exactly what I experienced today when my father-in-law introduced me and Snickers held back from correcting him -- he knew I was cringing over the introduction but being young he felt he couldn't say anything.
"Oh, I'm not Korean," I told Snickers, "and I have no problem saying anything."
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