Is "Please Teach Me English" Korean For "Will You Marry Me?"

I have a vague memory of recently writing that nothing surprises me anymore. That culture shock has worn off and that I've accepted that this is my reality for the next seven months. It seems I spoke too soon. Mere days after writing that I was unphased by the open markets and the casual ways in which hygiene and cleanliness are treated, I was once again shocked. I am for one reason or another, very sensitive to smells. Anyone who has walked down St Catherine St with me in the summer should know that I fight hard to suppress the nausea in my stomach when confronted with garbagy-smells (wow- I said garbagy. That's a Koreanism if I ever saw one. Someone save me, my English in suffering!!). Knowing this about myself, I take the long way to the subway in the morning to bypass the fishy smells of boiled eels and snail larvae. 8:30am is simply too early for my poor stomach to deal with these smells. But of course, running late and faced with the choice of booking it through the market or being late for work, I did it. I cut through the market. And it shan't happen again. I held my breath as I saw the boiled eels first on the right, leaving time for a quick exhale/inhale before I was confronted with the next boiled eel shop on the left. Exhale/inhale. One more to go and I'd be safe. I made it- not a wiff of the pungent aroma reached my nose and I was pleased. Maybe I could cut through the market after all. It may be well worth the extra two minutes of sleep. But not ten seconds later I let my guard down, raised my eyes and saw a pig's head in front of me. Recently detached from its body, or so it appeared. And as sick as I felt, I broke into a run and raced my nausea for the exit. Turns out my mind quickly erased the image and I'm left only with the tale, which suits me just fine.

On a less disgusting note (or possibly more so, if you're Korean), the topic of gender roles emerges once again. This is the point, it seems where most Koreans feel that at some point in the conversation, you may utter the word sex, so they quickly change the subject. Or attempt to. As I sat with my friend Glen and our Korean friend Sunghee at a bar last week-end, we fell onto this very topic. Sunghee is not your typical Korean girl. She taught herself English and fled to Australia for a year where she perfected her second language and examined the cultural differences that distinguish East and West. And it seems she came back with some highly subversive ideas. Smoking is, as I've mentioned previously, completely unnaceptable for Korean women. And in a true show of rebellion, Sunghee took up smoking, making her only the third Korean woman I've seen smoking in public. She is twenty-nine years old, intelligent, and beautiful, but has never had a boyfriend. Why? Because she smokes. As we discussed her bravery in blazing new ground for Korean women, and insisting that marriage should not be an expectation, nor should it be a sign that your education is complete and your career life has come to an end. We looked around the bar in which we are known to drink, realizing that we were the only table of mixed men and women. The other tables were surrounded by men, and there were no women amongst them. In Korea, school children attend girls or boys only schools from elementary school straight on through to high school, and sometimes even in University. For those who attend mixed Universities- can you imagine the shock of reaching the age of 20, and for the first time in your life having a man sitting next to you in class? Of having to do a group project with a man, never having had a friendship with one? I suspect that University is one of few places in Korean society where the two genders mix in any way. Given that the goal of most women is to marry a man with a career that will allow her to be a housewife, I don't imagine there are too many women in upper management at Samsung. Not to say that there aren't any. I'm sure there are women like Sunghee who make the choice to put themselves first and not settle for the first man who proposes. But what sort of choice can you make for a husband if you've never had a male friend? I suspect my life would be in a pretty bad state if I'd married my first boyfriend. If I'd married my first love, even (pause for laughter from IMAX crowd). At the age of nineteen, when I first 'fell' - it lasted four months. And I still believe that it was legitimate love- my feelings were strong, but it just was not meant to be. I wasn't ready, not to mention the fact that had it worked, I would have sold myself short. Moving in together just expedited the break-up process. But even at that, I had had boyfriends before Rob, and still I fell for someone who was not right for me. All traces of my time with Rob have fallen from my material life. It took time, but finally they're gone. I quit smoking, a bad habit taken up on the night of our break up. I paid off my Visa, maxed out nearly six years ago by our ridiculous relationship. Fred tossed out his old hoody (he's convinced for the second time, somehow it found its way back to my closet), and his expensive sweater that I used to line the cat carrier with when I moved to Montreal, in hopes that Tigger would bitterly pee all over it (which he didn't). The IMAX, where we met, now closed. The Night Gallery, where we drank- closed. Our cafe, Van Gogh's - also closed. The only part still to be resolved is the mysterious dissapearance of my glasses from our apartment, and the 300$ that is still owed to me. I'm not holding my breath. And the one thing of that relationship that continues to last is the rediscovery of my friendship with Thelma, as we bonded over our break-ups with Rob and his best friend, Syd. But without those stories, what would I have learned? I never would have had to deal with an ex 'dropping by' for a glass of water at 5am. My sleep would not have been disturbed at 4am so Rob could get his kneepads (so he could go rollerblading, obviously). The saga of the missing mail key would never have happened, and I may just have thought that break-ups were always roses and sunshine. After Rob, each relationship that followed was a better fit than the last, and then I met Fred (closing in on four years). What if I had married my first ever boyfriend? I suspect that I may be trying hard to find excuses to leave the house, like so many Korean women do. Unhappy in marriage, they register for English classes and complain to Glen about their husbands. And that's what married Korean women do.

In any case, we look around and see all these men in the bar. Koreans are suckers for love and romance. But is it all a rouse? How can you possibly begin to love if you don't know what to look for? Men and women cannot be friends, it's unheard of. Even showing my older kids photos from home got some laughs, as they pointed to boys in my pictures asking who they were, and eyeing me suspiciously when I said friend. They felt that I'd tripped up when they pointed to Fred and I said boyfriend. As more and more people pack the bar, our table fills up and we're now sharing it with several Korean men. And I can feel them staring at me- and I know what's coming. Glen gets up from the table and is gone less than two minutes, but they've been waiting for a chance. Like vultures fighting for the last piece of meat. Bad analogy? Maybe, but not far from the truth. In Korean terms, these men are over the hill. They should've been married, but they weren't- leaving me to think that they were trying their luck with blond girls hoping cultural differences would work in their favor. Four times in the next two hours I was asked to teach English to this drunken Korean man, or that. And over and over refused, leaving with a small pile of email addresses and tentative promises to hang out. And you can feel the desperation in these men- over the hill by Korean standards- they should well have been married, but none of them were. So they lived with their parents and hoped to meet someone forgiving of their age. Why was Glen not approached to teach them English? Because Glen is not a blond, and probably can't pull off heels... not that I can. Before leaving, I was approached one more time (Glen having deserted me at the table for a mere five minutes), by the owner of the bar. A Japanese woman, fluent in Korean and English who knows us pretty well from our weekly trips to her bar. She had waited patiently for Glen to get up from the table and raced over to ask me if I would teach English to her friend that ran the restaurant next door. When I told her I was interested in making Korean friends, but had a boyfriend, she stuttered and told me to forget about it. Although as we went to pay our tab, she slid me his email address and said, "Well, if you change your mind...".

The innocence is both refreshing and disturbing. As Sunghee questioned my reasons for leaving Canada when I had a boyfriend at home, I can see she's envious. At 27 (Korean years), I should be concerned with 'locking him in'. But I tried to explain that in Canada, we just don't think that way. That people can happily live together year after year, and it's perfectly acceptable to marry at 40. Or 80. Or never. To their way of life, Canadian thinking is subversive. I strongly believe that TV shows are monitored carefully to ensure that there are more shows that encourage love and marriage than there are 'living in sin' shows. I'm sick to death of the Bachelor, the Bachelorette, a Wedding Story and the whole lot. Seoul boasts the world's largest wedding district, and I think TV shows are carefully chosen to drive people there in droves. The three Canadian teachers that worked at my school last year all went home and immediately got married. Is it something in the water? At this point, my kids are convinced not only that Canada is a place to which their teachers and fellow students flee - but that it's a massive wedding factory, fed by former school teachers in Korea.