Learning to Share

First the umbrella.

Then my shoes.

Now my pen.

Somebody (mistakingly?) took my brand new umbrella from a restaurant one day a few months back and I was stuck walking home in the rain without an umbrella.

Then, a few weeks ago, I arrived to school one morning and opened my personal shoe cupboard at the front doors of the school, only to find it empty. My indoor slippers had been removed from my cupboard. Since then I haven't brought myself to buy new $5 slippers and have instead been wearing guest slippers.

Now, today, I leave my desk for an hour at lunch to go to the bank to wire money back home (exchange rates are in my favor right now!), only to return to find my pen missing from my desk. My pen that I bought for myself and that I have become quite attached to, as I often do to a good, solid pen.

Trivial these things may be, but it's the principal behind my complaints that I'm getting at here. I realize that Korea is a collective culture where everybody shares everything from food on the plate to a tiny tangerine to picking up up the WHOLE tab after a meal (never do Koreans split the tab, it's always only one person who pays for everything and next time the next person will pay).

Truthfully, I enjoy this aspect of the culture in many ways and wish Western societies would take a few hints. I am trying my best to get myself in a what's-mine-is-yours mentality with just about everything in my life here. I think we could all learn to share just a little more, especially those of us who come from cultures where individualism is so highly emphasized.

BUT, when people just TAKE things that don't belong to them--let's say, umbrellas when it's raining outside, shoes that a person needs to wear while in school, pens on a person's personal desk--I can't help but get mildly frustrated for a short while (hence the current venting).

At the end of the day, though, and by the end of my year here, I know these things will have been long forgotten. My new umbrella, slippers and pen will be but minute details of my story of having lived in Korea, masked by many larger, more significant experiences. And, I can only hope to come back home feeling at least slightly more inclined to share a bit more with those around me.

Yet, I can't help but end with a related story:

A month or two ago I camped overnight in Jirisan National Park with a few guy friends. When I say camped, though, I don't mean in tents. Here it is quite common to stay in shelters, which are set up for serious (or not so serious) hikers in the mountains who wish to stay overnight without the ruggedness of sleeping out of doors. I have only stayed in one shelter thus far, but I imagine most of similar. There is a large two-story heated sleeping room, the upper level for women and lower level for men. I paid about US$7 to sleep here, in addition to $2 for two blankets. I was assigned a number and (although I didn't) was intended to sleep in that numbered spot. There are tables out in front of the shelter for hikers and overnight campers to use for meals or a little R&R. Then, attached to the side of the shelter is a cooking room, so to speak. This one was covered, but not heated, and had one long metal table around hip-height that people can stand around at which to cook and eat.

That was all irrelevant to the story. But now you know about mountain shelters in Korea. On with my story:

So, that Saturday evening my two friends and I had joined two other groups of about five people each at the long metal table. Each respective group was on either end, so we took our stance in the middle. Aside from myself, there was only one other female, the rest were men ranging in age from about mid-30s to mid-50s. Both groups were cooking up pork on a flat-iron grill, along with vegetables and garlic cloves and the works, as they do often here in Korea. And of course, there was kimchi and other side dishes. And soju. Korean's don't seem to go hiking or camping--let alone out to a restaurant for a meal--without it.

My friends and I started setting up to cook our evening meal. Before we knew it, we had hot sizzling pork, garlic cloves and kimchi coming our way (people here are certainly some of the most generous there are around). Then came the shots of soju. The soju just kept coming, and coming... and coming. It didn't stop. Between the little English the Koreans spoke and what little Korean one of my friends spoke--and the soju--we spent all evening eating and talking (or, interacting on non-verbal levels) with one another. People were getting more and more drunk and suddenly there was an arm-wrestling match happening between my friend and the man who was by far the most drunk in the room. It was quite the elaborate show that the man put on, squatting down in proper arm-wrestling stance, then standing up straight and insisting that they take another shot of soju before re-positioning himself in arm-wrestling position. Then, it was to take the jacket off. Then the shirt. Then to gather money from us innocent bystanders as a bet on who would win. Finally, they went for it.

I'm not sure how it happened, but very soon thereafter I found myself in an arm-wrestling match with a different man, but not without first taking what they call a "love shot." A small bowl (literally) was filled with soju for me and the man and I linked arms like a bride and groom at their wedding as we downed way too much soju in one gulp. Then some of the men started calling me "Captain"--although I'm not sure why. Then my other friend was also invited to an arm-wrestling match with another guy. There was not lack of laughs that evening.

Somewhere in between all the pork and soju and arm-wrestling, I was given some candy and chocolate from a handful of the men in the room for a little holiday called White Day, where I guess women are given candy by men (I'll have to look into the details of White Day). So, I had set all my candy on the table in front of me in a neat little pile. Then, right before the festivities ended (and after we'd been shushed already by the shelter's manager because it was just about quiet time), I suddenly noticed that half my candy was missing. I turned to my friend Paul, a little on the tipsy side, and said to him (probably louder than I thought due to the extreme amounts of soju consumed that evening) "Somebody stole my candy! Somebody STOLE my candy!"

Not more than 20 seconds later, we noticed the eldest looking man in the room (but not the beligerant arm-wrestling maniac) sneak his hand over to my pile of candy, pick up one of the remaining two pieces and start playing with it. He'd toss it up in the air, rattle it in his hand, put it down, pick it up. As Paul and I were making our best attempts at covertly watching this man actively steal my candy we were having a good laugh about it.

I only looked away for a second, I swear. The remaining bits of candy were gone. My entire chocolate bar and several other candies, that were given to me as a GIFT, went into somebody else's belly that night and there wasn't a thing I could do about it. Elders have the utmost respect here and nobody messes with them, so to call the man out on stealing an innocent foreigner's candy would have been rude and inappropriate so I had no choice but to let it be and go without dessert that night.

So basically, I should have told you to skip to the end so you could read that my beloved chocolate was stolen from right underneath me by a middle-aged drunk Korean man, adding to my growing list of things taken from me while living in Korea.

Good thing I'm learning how to share.