Shinhye and Yosep brought me a surprise today, and I love surprises. They brought me a box of the popular South Korean snack “homerun balls.” This was both exciting and frightening. I mean, of course it was really thoughtful of them to bring me some Korean food. I am very happy that they want to share their culture with me. But at the same time, they were asking me to try foreign nastiness. These “homerun balls” were basically like tiny Twinkies balls. I don’t typically eat such over-processed foods and it was extremely daunting. Another problem: they were banana flavored. I hate bananas. I’m aware of how weird that it, but its true, I do not like bananas or banana flavored foods. Of course, in order to be polite, I ate a few. They were strange. And banana. Shinhye would not be satisfied until I ate almost half of them and I couldn’t say no. I spent the rest of the day burping banana. Gross.
Once I got passed the force-feeding, things got strangely interesting. I suppose I didn’t teach them well enough about manners last week because Yosep came to me with a list of questions about money. “What is the most expensive thing you own?” “What is the last thing you bought?” “How much money do you spend every month?” “How much money do you want to make at work?” The questions were very personal and I couldn’t help but hesitate and blush a little. My parents taught me to avoid discussing money and especially talking about how much money I spend! I was totally caught off guard and I didn’t even know how to react. I knew they didn’t have bad intentions but I was uncomfortable answering the questions nonetheless. It didn’t help when I answered that the most expensive thing I owned was my car and they proceeded to ask me how much THAT cost too. The worst of it all is that I think it legitimately changed their opinion of me. For the first time, I saw Yosep and Shinhye both get slightly snobby and say “Oh, you are rich.” WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THAT?!?! “Oh yeah, I’m loaded” (I’m not actually and that is totally subjective anyways). I just said that my parents are the only reason I have anything. I was afraid they would change from “Oh, you are rich” to “Oh, you are spoiled.” Money is such a touchy subject, so I escorted us to a new one: fashion.
Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Givenchy, Chanel, Gucci, Alexander McQueen, and more. We googled pictures of dresses, shoes, and handbags and drooled over them. This was much more up my alley than being audited. Yosep and Shinhye have switched tradition male/female roles when it comes to fashion. Yosep is a fashion design major and wants to build a fashion empire so he really knew what he was talking about. Shinhye on the other hand, was quite clueless. She didn’t know the names of any major designers and didn’t seem to care. Yosep completely called out TCU students from all dressing alike. Nike shorts, t-shirts, Sperry’s, “Easter shorts,” and polos are what the majority of TCU students wear. Yosep and Shinhye find it shocking. In Korea, people “dress nice” for classes. I tried to not take offense to that. I told them that we are all about comfortability. I mean, have you ever tried on Sperry’s? They are like wearing clouds on your feet! I was pleased that the took this as a legitimate reason for wearing these clothes.
Hopefully next week won’t be filled with as much potential for offense as this week was and no more Korean Twinkies balls.
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