Kyeongju II
More photos:
A bit more narrative:
there were lots of kids around the whole day from the tour busses that we saw unloading and apparently quite a few others as well.
the kids were fairly interested in me. i've dealt with similar phenomena in India (a lot) and Japan (briefly on a two-day trip to Nikko). in Japan, it was little kids running up to point and laugh and then run away. in India one might be mobbed by kids wanting to shake hands. in Korea, it's a more restrained version of the latter. namely, kids shouting "hi!" and then you say "hi" and another shouts "hi!" etc. ad infinitum, it seems, but what's remarkable is how it never seemed like more than one would shout "hi!" at any given time. sometimes it would be "hello!" and sometimes it would be something longer. "welcome to Korea!" a few times, and one little girl said (roughly) "hi!" "hi" "where are you... what is ... fine, thanks ..." and then finally arrived at a phrase she could remember all of at which point she ran back maybe 10 feet on the path (because by this time we had passed each other) to shout "My name is An-Nyeong" (Probably not the actual name. Possibly not an actual name.) and then run away.
Another thing that took a little getting used to in India was how teenage boys will tell you how good looking you are. Well, it turns out you get a bit of that here as well. Actually this one kid was commenting to that effect in Korean, and SH translated it for me. Then like 5 minutes later amidst the cacaphony of a courtyard full of elementary school kids chattering in Korean this faraway disembodied voice calls out "you are so handsome." Kind of un-nerving, actually. The English, amid the ambient Korean, felt a lot like an auditory hallucination. And it's the kind of thing an auditory hallucination would say. The whole situation is a bit hard to know how to respond to anyway, since I know I'm not that pretty, and I figure it has more to do with people having race issues that one wishes they did not have.
A bit more narrative:
there were lots of kids around the whole day from the tour busses that we saw unloading and apparently quite a few others as well.
the kids were fairly interested in me. i've dealt with similar phenomena in India (a lot) and Japan (briefly on a two-day trip to Nikko). in Japan, it was little kids running up to point and laugh and then run away. in India one might be mobbed by kids wanting to shake hands. in Korea, it's a more restrained version of the latter. namely, kids shouting "hi!" and then you say "hi" and another shouts "hi!" etc. ad infinitum, it seems, but what's remarkable is how it never seemed like more than one would shout "hi!" at any given time. sometimes it would be "hello!" and sometimes it would be something longer. "welcome to Korea!" a few times, and one little girl said (roughly) "hi!" "hi" "where are you... what is ... fine, thanks ..." and then finally arrived at a phrase she could remember all of at which point she ran back maybe 10 feet on the path (because by this time we had passed each other) to shout "My name is An-Nyeong" (Probably not the actual name. Possibly not an actual name.) and then run away.
Another thing that took a little getting used to in India was how teenage boys will tell you how good looking you are. Well, it turns out you get a bit of that here as well. Actually this one kid was commenting to that effect in Korean, and SH translated it for me. Then like 5 minutes later amidst the cacaphony of a courtyard full of elementary school kids chattering in Korean this faraway disembodied voice calls out "you are so handsome." Kind of un-nerving, actually. The English, amid the ambient Korean, felt a lot like an auditory hallucination. And it's the kind of thing an auditory hallucination would say. The whole situation is a bit hard to know how to respond to anyway, since I know I'm not that pretty, and I figure it has more to do with people having race issues that one wishes they did not have.
posted by GB at 6:01 PM
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