Aruminum Poil

Date: 1/7/11

For one of the winter camp days I needed Aluminum Foil.  We were making Rain Sticks and would put a curled strip of aluminum foil in the paper towel roll in order for the rice to make the "rain" sound.  So, Sarah and I met for dinner and then headed over to Lotte Mart, not really prepared for the adventure that would happen.

I'm now 10 or 11 weeks in Korea, so I've had a couple rough days, but I bounce back fairly quickly (case in point with the first day of winter camp).  But it am still always being thrown off by Korea.  I think I have one thing down and I go looking for something and am always smacked in the face by the Korean surprise.  Mostly, we waegooks (foreigners) just shake our heads and go, "Oh Korea..."

But some things have the ability to seriously wig us out.  My personal demon?  The grocery store.  It seems like something really stupid to be scared of the grocery store, but it's a culture shock thing.   At times it can be so completely overwhelming that you cannot make yourself go the grocery store when you have an empty refrigerator.  (I am lucky because I can just go to a Kimbap shop and have some ramen or bibimbap when I have an empty fridge, but Sarah's not so lucky on her side of town).  I don't know if I can accurately describe the culture shock--but I'll try.

Sarah and I head into Lotte Mart, looking for some aluminum foil.  Lotte Mart is a sensory overload on a normal day, but we went during after work hours and it is just a rush of people.   They have this happy, annoying jingle playing the background, interrupted every 30 seconds by some cheery Korean woman telling you the specials (I think).  All the signs are bright, flashing, and jumbo-sized--some even sing to (no joke).  So, instead of a discreet sign telling you that this item is on sale (with some sort of red arrow, like at home), you have a bright yellow arrow, sometimes with red blinking lights, that is motion sensor-ed so that when you walk past another jingle starts up and draws your attention to the item.  I literally avoid the color paper aisle because of the motion-sensor advertisement.  Not only is it this creepily happy jingle, but also has a TV that flashes different colors and makes me fearful that I'll go into an epileptic fit.

Oh, and all those signs that tell you about sales, yeah, there all in Korean.  Every sign is in a language you can't read.  Except, if you turn the orange juice bottles around, you can see "Minute Maid: Orange Juice"--which I have gone to look at--just to look at because it is soothing to look at English.

Then there are the smells.  Lotte doesn't smell bad--but it has a lot of scents.  Strange, I know, but it is just another sensory that is attacked during your excursion.  The fish section smells SO strongly of fish--it can be gag worthy.

Lotte Mart is also some sort of time void.  You feel like you're in Vegas where you enter a casino and six hours later you get spat out and wonder how it got dark.

Anyway, so you are being overwhelmed and then you are trying to find one item.  I was just looking for aluminum foil.  The whole trip was just for aluminum foil

We started out in the cooking aisle.  No luck.

Then the try both aisles on either side (one is cereal and the other goes into shampoos)... Nope.

Then the aisle across from the cooking aisle--nope, that's seaweed.  (Yes, a whole aisle devoted to the different types of seaweed).

Then we start wandering up and down the rows, just looking.  We're around the spaghetti section when I finally just give up and approach a poor Korean employee.  I'm actually pretty good at talking to the Korean employees, and I actually do like having the conversations because they are just so much fun.  But if you're having one of those days, it can seem like the last thing you want to do.

That is, if they haven't started hounding you.  The Korean idea of Service is to follow you around the store, usually in a pack of 2 or 3, making sure to help you out--which they can't because they can't speak English so you can't ask them for help.  When this happens to me, I usually put my iPod on and start to listen to music.  It usually works as a really good signal to say, "Back off!"

Anyway, so I approach this poor unsuspecting Korean woman and tap her on the shoulder.  She looks over at me and gets this deer-in-the-headlights/oh-shit-waegook-talking-to-me look on her face.  I smile, encouragingly and say, "Help, please?"

She nods...which I'm not sure if that's a sign she understands or if it's a "I'm listening" thing.

"Aluminum foil, chuse-yo."  Aluminum foil, please.

Eye brows draw tightly together.  Confusion.

"Ah-loo-min-um foo-il." Big smile.

Blank face.

"Aluminum foil?"

Nothing...

At this point I'm feeling like a total lost cause.  Seriously...how do you describe aluminum foil?    "You eat." Motion eating with chopsticks. "Finish-ee."  Stop motion.  "left over food." This is where I lose her again.  Left over food?  Not easy to sign this one.

I grumble a well deserved "urg..."  and she smiled, embarrassingly, and calls someone on her radio.  This results in a new employee coming over and smiling encouragingly at me.  So I try again, "Aluminum foil."

And I watch the eye brows gather.

Seriously, they called over a person who doesn't speak any more English than the first one!  I try a couple more times, thinking about how I need aluminum foil in order to make the rain sticks work and am starting to curse the blasted rain sticks.

Then the first store employee whips out her cell phone and tells me with a finger to "wait please."  I nod, wondering what she's doing.  Rapid fire Korean.  And then, she hands the phone to me with a nod and smile.

"Hello...?"  I murmur.

"Ah!  Hello!  I ... high school student.  I ... little English."  Says the man/boy on the other side of the phone.

This is why I love Korea.  Even though I am extremely frustrated and on total sensory overload, the kindness of the people is what is so beautiful.  They seriously could have just shrugged their shoulders and say, "What a stupid waegook."  But instead, they went out of their way, calling on their own cell phones, to find a person who can speak a little English.  I do not understand how people can ever say that Koreans (as a whole) are not nice people, because frankly, the kindness this country has shown me is astounding.  This is just one example.

"Hello!"

"What...you want?"

"Aluminum foil.  Chuse-yo."

"Again, please..."

"Aluminum foil."

"Ah!  A-Ru-minum Poil.  Ne! Ne.  Ok!"

I hand the phone back to the store clerk, hoping that they actually understood me, and after a few exchanges in Korean, the store clerk grabs my wrist and leads me.  To find the aRuminum Poil, we go up the escalator, across the store, and over to an aisle that contains plates and tupperware.  And there is the beautiful, much sought after aluminum foil--in a blue box with white and red strips and with the words, in English, saying "ALUMINUM FOIL."  This location makes sense, in a Korean concept of logic--but only in this aisle does it make sense.  The next aisle over?  The car section with foot mats and such.

But as someone in Orientation said, "Logic is a Western concept.  It was birthed in Roman, and it has stayed in the West.  Korea is not in the West.  So Koreans should not and will not have Western concepts.  Do not expect something to make sense, or be logical, in Korea."

I thank the lady profusely.  I bow in half.  I say "Gahmsamneeda" like 17 times.

But in the back of my head, I keep thinking: Okay, so Koreans literally cannot distinguish between L and R and F and P sounds--so why did she not understand Aluminum Foil and Aruminum Poil?  But then I shrug and chalk it up to an "Oh Korea Moment."

And that is why some weekends I literally do not want to leave my apartment.  It takes a lot of "putting on your big-girl panties" to go out there every day and just do the normal little things.  Buying groceries. Clothes shopping.  Going to the post office (it took me over three months before I actually made myself go to the post office to mail my Day 1 post cards home to my family...).  It is stressful.  It is humiliating. It is scary.

But then you wake up the next morning, and things feel a little better than the day before.  (That, or you are really hungry and literally need to leave the apartment or just not eat for the day).  You laugh over yesterday while walking to school, smile at a co-teacher, and then proceed to make those blasted rain sticks, totally unaware of the stress and effort that went into getting the materials.  And then, the students start a sword fight--not even using the rain sticks to make the rain sound while the rice trinkles over the aruminum poil.