Photo Journal 1

Can you spot me in this picture?  It shouldn't be too difficult.  People in the crowd didn't have too much trouble doing it.  This picture is one that Sara took of me in a park in Ttukseom Resort, Seoul, somewhere along the Han River that runs through and splits the city.  Anyway, it was a terribly hot and sunny day, so everyone was covering up in order to avoid tans (pale skin is attractive here).  I wore my long-sleeved over shirt in order to avoid sunburn and sunglasses so that I could stand to open my eyes in the sunlight.  The former made me fit in, because everyone was avoiding the sun, but I felt like the latter made me stand out.  Almost no one else wore sunglasses.  Looking on from behind tinted lenses, I finally felt like an outsider.

It isn't that people treat me poorly or shut me out, but rather that they have an understanding, an in that I don't have.  In fact, they looked at me with interest.  When I introduced myself that day as an American, and as a student at KAIST, they were impressed.  I get a lot of complements on my eyes, which are blue (very unusual and desirable in Korea), and on my height (which is unusual for a girl in the US, but even more so in Korea).  So if anything, the way people treat me differently is with favor.

It's strange to have things flipped around so much, where the values placed on things are so different.  In Korea, the status hierarchy is based on age seniority, not wealth.  Beauty is perhaps even more preferential in Korea than in the USA; plastic surgery is common among idols, especially one that is meant to give women the crease in the eyelid that is so common in westerners.  I find myself getting special treatment for being American, a KAIST student, and for having a lot of beauty traits here.  I can't lie- I like it, but it feels strange to be praised all of a sudden for things about me that had been so ordinary in my community at home.  It seems too good to be true when I'm given status without having worked for and earned it in a sense.

I'm enjoying standing out (in a good way) for a change, but it also means that I know I'll never be a true member of the crowd.