The End of an Era

No, I'm not talking about peace on a divided peninsula. It's much more trivial than that. No, I don't mean Madonna's career. It's not that trivial. On Sunday evening (For most of you that's still the wee hours of Sunday's dawn) I will be moving. The story? It may be long, but it's worth the telling.

When it boils down to the truth of why, there is one big reason. The prego. In America, a child is expected to leave the nest at matriculation or shortly after. In Korea, however, a son or daughter won't leave the home until the day they marry. My host sister, June, got married last March at an age waffling around 28. For her twenty-eight years of life she has lived with her mother, and now this 7 or 8 month pregnant horrormoned (that's my little pun. I thought about the whole subway ride.) woman wants to spend these last weeks of pregnancy with her mother. Unfortunately, the only reason I was able to stay with these people was the spare room that their dearly beloved daughter had just recently left behind.

I knew something was up when June came by the house after dinner. June never comes by the house if it's not to teach piano lessons (on weekend mornings), to eat dinner with her parents, or to translate important things to me. It wasn't a weekend morning, and dinner was over, so logic would lead us to believe that it must be the latter. June and I make small talk for a few minutes while Umma sits on the floor, then the bombshell gets dropped. "We would like you to find another home."

Not the worst news anyone has ever received (think about how America must have felt when they learned Survivor would be coming back for a second season), but for a 20 year old kid in a country on the other side of the world, getting the boot is no laughing matter. I was told to "take my time in finding a new home, but please leave as soon as possible." Whatever that means. That's as ambiguous as "more or less."

I first began looking at different homestays. Since the university was incapable of finding one in the first place, I had to pull the same "ask friends if they have relatives who want a hairy American" act. The end result was only a few homes that were two subway transfers, a bus ride, and then a taxi fare away. I started to look at other options.

Just today I bought a room at a 하숙집, or HaSookJip. It's basically a boarding house and bed-and-breakfast's love child. You have your own room and do your laundry, there's a community bathroom, etcetera, but there's an Ahjooma (Kind of a landlady) who makes breakfast for everyone and sometimes dinner. I'll have Korean and foreign neighbors, a mostly stable internet connection, a five minute walk to my classes, and only a $60 per month rent increase from my current home stay.

There are many reasons why I am glad for the move. For one, the distance is going to be a life saver. No more 3 hours a day thrown away to subway time. No more $10 minimum a week on subway fares. No more not being social because I have to get on the subway before it closes. In addition, this homestay was starting to become a linguistic headache. YongHee and I can communicate most anything we want to put time into, but that kid is never home. Since school started, between opera practice and choir conducting, there isn't a day of the week that he's home before 11 pm. Appa and I can communicate well enough. The guy has traveled and worked in more than fifteen countries, none of which with English as a first language, so even though he doesn't know English at all he understand nonverbal communication, speaking slowly, and emphasizing key words. He's good for me because he understands how to communicate when we don't speak the same language. Unfortunately he is no longer a regular in the household on account of his slave job. He leaves the house every day at 7:30 am and gets home around 10 pm. With June married and out of the house, this leaves only me and Umma 85% of the time. The woman is so frustrating. She won't slow down or use simple grammar/vocabulary to save my life. When she speaks it just barrages me and I sit there staring, not comprehending a single word. Imagine the difficulty of talking about what time I will be home, when I need to eat breakfast by, paying my cell phone bill, having friends visit, or rules in the kitchen when our communication is less than one way. I can half express myself to her in Korean, but then I don't get any comprehensible feedback. How you gonna act? Despite the fact that I never understand her, she insists on nagging about weird things or trying to start conversations when there's no one around to help us. This I can't take any longer.

I have been on the hunt for new housing for more than two weeks now. As I anticipated, the ever passive-aggressive Koreans began showing more and more signs that they wanted me to leave. Food started getting more scarce. My toothpaste and other toiletries were moved out of the cabinet. I came back from my Pusan trip to find everything taken out of my closet and laying on my suitcase. Can they be any more evasive of conflict!?! Two days ago June was back again. After dinner. We made small talk for a few minutes. Then she asks, "Can you be out by this weekend?" Yeah, I guess, but I don't have a place yet. I'll try...

Well the load off my mind is that I'm now set up to move and the tension is dissipated in the homestay. The community at the new HaSook is really warm, so I'm looking forward to the next stage of my stay in Korea.