Stupid Americans

I felt that this deserved its own entry because it's hard to formulate my thoughts on this topic.  I don't know who I'm angrier with.  Allow me to explain.

Last week, I spent W-F at a 3-day orientation for public school teachers in my province (which I desperately needed).  Out of about 1,000 teachers, I'd say 75% were male, which was the first thing that jumped out at me.  Second thing was that over 50% were American, with the rest split between the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa (oh yeah, and like one dude from Ireland).  Now, I've traveled quite a bit, and one thing you can usually count on is that the vast majority of foreigners you meet while traveling tend to be friendly, tolerant, open-minded people who are interested in the culture they are visiting.  If you aren't of this mindset, you probably aren't traveling in the first place.  Not so in Korea!!  I guess it's a combination of the high demand for teachers and the relatively high salary that they pay native English speakers to teach, but there was a significant number of straight-up douchebags at this orientation.  As well as a few utter weirdos and crazies (there was one lady who I swear would be one of the crazy babblers living on the streets if she were back in SF).  I just kept asking myself, why are these people even here?  Why live in another country if all you want to do is complain, get wasted, and try to bang Korean girls?  Are you freaking kidding me??




But then.  On Saturday night, when Jen and I met Anne at the English-practice party she invited me to, I ran headfirst into the prejudice that I keep hearing that Koreans have against foreigners, which I had heretofore only heard about.  This one Korean asshole basically rolled his eyes at me and told me I would never be a good teacher and that all I care about is getting drunk and stealing his women.  Jen and I spent nearly 30 minutes trapped in a conversation with this tool, trying to defend our own personalities before realizing that he's just a dick and will hate any white (or black) person, no matter who they are or what they say.  And then, on Sunday night, when I wouldn't say "yes" to Christine's numerous invitations to her church (I forgot that in Korea, "maybe" really means "no") she told me that I will enjoy Korea for another month or so and then I will spend every weekend getting drunk and trying to sleep with Korean bimbos (her word).  I spent the rest of dinner trying to explain that not every American is like that, and in fact many of us are very excited to be living in Korea and to experience the culture and not spend every minute with other foreigners.  Rather than listen to my reasoning or my explanation that the Korean government requires apostilles and all sorts of documentation to prove that our criminal background checks and college degrees are legitimate, she simply said that all Koreans know that most of us fake our diplomas to come over here and we all enjoy taking drugs and screwing Korean bimbos.  It was so insulting, I wanted to smack her the next time she reminded me that "English service is every Sunday!"

Now, I understand that a lot of times when Koreans are being "rude," it's actually just a cultural difference and not intentional rudeness... perception of manners and appropriate conversation topics is totally, entirely different here.  But they really got me riled up, especially the dude on Saturday.  No matter what I say about every individual being different and that you can't judge everyone off the actions of a couple bad apples, some people here will always see us as these horrible, corrupting influences on their children who have no desire to teach or learn about Korean culture.  Meanwhile, even though there are plenty of awesome people who come here to teach, there's no denying that some of those douchebags do exist.  I saw them with my own eyes at orientation.  But to say that it's even a plurality of people would be a gross overstatement.

So in the end, I don't know who I'm angrier at, the stupid Americans who manage to get visas to come here and make the rest of us look bad, or the ignorant Koreans who are convinced that all Americans are those stupid Americans.  All I know is, after two nights in a row of that crap, I am hesitant to hang out with any other Korean people for a while.  I just seem to end up getting insulted and told I'm a terrible person while they buy me dinner and drinks.  Boo.

I'm also tired of getting laughed at on the subway for god knows what reason.  What is up with that?