Monkey in The Middle... Friday, September 3

Can’t say I particularly like Korea’s weather lately because it’s been a mix of hardcore rain downpour and hot blazing sun. Today it was the hot blazing sun that starred down at me when I ran. Wednesday’s insane downpour took out many of the trees and bushes around the Dankook lake, leaving numerous obstacles on my running path. I had counted a dozen broken trees on my run, six of which blocked the path and forced me to either jump off the path momentary or somewhat crawl through them. Thankfully, by the afternoon today all those destroyed trees had been taken care of and I was able to run to my heart’s content broken-tree-free.

I do my best thinking when I’m out pounding the pavement with my Adidas sneakers and out for a run.

Today I met up with Cherry Pie in the morning for a coffee and chat, so my mind wondered back to our conversation while I was out on my run. Today marked her last day in Cheonan. Today is moving day for her and her husband.

We had talked about friendships, which made me think back of my last night in Canada. Snickers and I had headed into Toronto to do the whole CN Tower visit and then we headed out for dinner, just the two of us. The plan was to then head out to a lounge and meet up with my friends Madi and Graeme. Madi ended up working late so did Graeme, so we ended up just heading over to their house where we ran into two other friends of mine, Nick and Maria (Madi’s son and his girlfriend). All we did was basically sit around on in their family room chatting the time away but we had so much laughs as we shared various stories and memories with each other. At one point in all the chatting and all the giggling I sat back to really absorb the situation and that’s when it hit me. I just don’t have a close knit group of friends in Korea that I can just sit back and chat the hours away with like.

I don’t really fit in with the foreigners here because after five and a half years I have Koreanized, and those who have been here for a long time know what I’m talking about here. I sleep on a traditional Korean floor mat, eat on a table that stands about the height of my shin, and am married to a Korean man who’s nothing like a typical Western man. I prefer Korean food to Western food, Korean music to Western music, Korean fashion to Western fashion, Korean TV shows to Western TV shows, and I even prefer a lot of Korean manners over that of Western manners. Moreover, besides the numerous other reasons why I’m Koreanized, besides the English that I teach at tutoring in the morning I rarely speak pure English. It’s always Korean or Konglish that I speak throughout my day and I prefer it this way.

I’m a member of the Cheonan Eating Out Dinner Club but have only made it out to two of the actual dinner get-togethers for the very fact that I feel I just don’t fit in. The group mostly consists of foreigners who are all here teaching English. Many of them know each other and are quite close friends but then there’s me. I’m the professional boxer whom many people know of but only as the professional boxer and not on any kind of friendship level. Cherry Pie always has a good laugh at this point. She’s met so many foreigners here who know of me and drop my name randomly into conversations but I have ever met many of them.

And then there’s the Koreans. I don’t quite fit in with the Koreans because I will never be the girly-girl like so many Korean girls are, nor do I care to hang out with such girls. I’ve always been attracted to strong people. Strong is beautiful and so I can easily respect a strong-minded person who’s independent and takes charge of the situation and their life. I’m not down with the Korean princess label that many, not all, Korean girls are quick to take on because I think this makes them weak. Cherry Pie, for example, is nothing close of being a Korean princess and that’s why I like her so much.

I find Korean women to be particularly feminine and girly, and that’s all good but that’s not me at all. I don’t particularly like shopping, I rarely get my nails done, and putting my make-up on means only doing it in the morning and not pulling out a mirror at the restaurant table. Fun for me often involves sports. Whether it’s actual training at the boxing club, weight training, reading fitness magazines at a coffee shop, managing my friend’s bodybuilding homepage, watching K1 or Strongest Man Competitions on TV, or going out to play some kind of pick-up game with friends, sports are a sure way to capture my interest but it’s an interest I find not too many Korean girls share. I don’t doubt that they’re out there but coming across them seems to be like looking for a needle in a hay stack.

Moreover, Snickers and I by no means fit the stereotypical Korean gender roles or ideal norm of a married couple. I’m the breadwinner in this relationship and I’m damn proud to wear that label. Snickers isn’t less of a man because of it but, trust me when I say, he gets a lot of slack… A LOT OF SLACK… from family, friends, and you name it because of it. “This is Korea” they tell me, “and this is the Korean way.” I’ve always believed that just because something is different doesn’t make it wrong but in saying this, it doesn’t mean I have to agree with it or follow it.

So where does that leave me?! It leaves me in the middle.

Friends back in Canada seem to have this misconception that I live this interesting and exciting life here in Korea. Sure, my life is interesting and exciting in the fact that no day is the same and I learn something new every day here, being in a foreign country, but in terms of social life, it’s actually rather quiet. I don't have a typical job where I'd have ample of opportunity to meet people like I did when I worked at Dankook, my hobbies don't consist of drinking, hanging out at bars, or clubbing, so there goes all my invites to hang with any foreigners I do know, and I'm no longer single, so hanging out with only my guy friends isn't really acceptable behaviour as a "Korean man's wife".

I'm the damn monkey in the middle but I'm a nice monkey, so if you see me say hi. I don't bite... ok, well that's not totally correct.

So today ended on a sad note, knowing that Cherry Pie has left Cheonan and has left my little world here all that quieter.

QUESTION OF THE DAY...
What's your advice?

QUOTE OF THE DAY...
Never give advice unless asked.
-- German Proverb