You think you know

I had no school this past Monday and Tuesday, plus my parents were in town, so we took a nice long weekend on a far-flung island in the south sea. I had a lot to be excited about. Obviously my parents visit meant a lot to me, and I felt enormous pride in my role as a tour guide around this bizarre, albeit wondrous country. I had also never been to the southern islands. Any map of Korea will show you that pretty much the entire southern coast is lined with islands of various sizes, and living in a city gives you basically no clue as to how they are. While I couldn't have known what to expect, I had a sinking fear that the southern coast's supposed beauty was a guide book fiction, and that the trappings of modern Korea - love motels, barbecue joints, dingy hofs, family marts - had swept away any remaining bucolic wonder.

The southern sea is, in fact, very very beautiful. Of course you'll see the hofs and such here and there, but somehow tastefulness has held out in large extent. I needed the surprise, and my parents - who were fresh off a stay in Maui - needed to see that Korea could crank up the splendor after all. I had bitterly warned them that the whole country was too city-centered to breed any sort of worthwhile tourist attraction in its rural areas. This may be true in land, but is certainly not the case where we were. My shock was palpable, and absolutely necessary. My curiosity in Korea has been reinvigorated.

Our weekend provided me with tons of stories for my city crew, but one stands out as the most informative. My folks and I took down a great bottle of red wine in full view of an ocean sunset on our last night. It was cliche and lovely and all that bullshit, yea yea. Anyway, these two Korean boys - I assume they are brothers - burst through the deck doors and began chasing each other around our table. None of us really minded, and I saw it as a good chance for my parents to see that Korean kids are not always the hardened, worker drones they can sometimes be. Not long after their appearance, a Korean man who was clearly their father emerged and summoned them back in to join the family at dinner. I didn't expect much from him in the way of communication, just perhaps an awkward smile with a subtle, apologetic bow. Not the case. In crystal clear, unaccented English the man says, "Hey I'm really sorry for these kids. I hope they weren't a problem. I'm bringing them in right now." And all of a sudden we're on any other hotel patio in America's mid Atlantic region. We were taken aback and he knew it. It was an undeniably surreal moment.

But I learned something very valuable. My friends and I - really, me in particular - must make a much better effort to censor ourselves in public places. It's no secret that many of us have grown comfortable with the idea that nobody around here can follow our English at its natural cadence. Sure, many people you meet in Korea will probably know a manageable amount of English. But will they inevitably ask you to slow down if you speak at your comfortable converstation speed? Yes, absolutely. I always believed - though I was always loathe to admit it - that this gave me a degree of carte blanche in public conversation. That is a habit I will now break because of my experience with that man. In a crowded Ulsan bus I would have had no way of telling that he was any different from all the other middle aged dudes who know 10 English sentences. And god knows what I might have said in front of him. I will not let false assumptions about others' English ability allow me to further anyone's negative stereotypes about foreigners. My bus rides just became a lot more boring.