CALLIGRAPHY AND GOING TO HELL

On a whim, Cindy, a few new friends and I went to a temple to learn calligraphy. (There’s this organization that plans culture-rich activities for foreign teachers, and this was one of them.) Most temples have a large sculpture of Buddha somewhere within its walls – but not this one. Instead, it housed the largest painting (ever) of Buddha. There’s a strikingly similar painting in Thailand, apparently, and no one is quite sure how the two paintings that were created so far apart look so similar.

The calligraphy lesson proved to be difficult. I was the sort of child who had a really tough time staying within the lines when colouring anything, and this was painfully obvious when I started the painting. We had a copy of what the painting was supposed to look like, and where the colours were supposed to go. Right from the start I painted an area with the wrong colour. This brought about a few laughs from the teachers and the fellow calligraphy-learners around me. After a few trial and errors, and a few pointers from the professionals, I was able to complete it. (Actually, this was taking longer than the organisers intended it to take, and so when everyone was on the tour of the temple, they secretly helped out and painted a fair chunk of our piece.)

The character that was in the centre of the painting is called “ohm,” which means the universe or cosmos. It’s an Indian word, and a lot of the Buddhist chants start with “ohm,” because they are praying to the universe. “Ohm…something something.”

At this temple I finally learned why Koreans use metal chopsticks (this was a burning question of mine). Back in the day the metal chopsticks acted like a poison warning; they would change colour at the potential adulterant in the King’s or other high ranking official’s food. This is similar to the cheers custom; when one was clinking the glass of a friend, a bit of the liquid was supposed to move from one drink to the next, so if you were poisoning someone, you would get the poison as well. As an aside, metal chopsticks can be annoying to use, because they are more flat then the ones I am used to using.

On the way home from the temple on the subway, these two really cute Koreans sitting across from me started obviously talking about me. The one would take the other’s finger and point it at me while saying something in secret. Eventually one of them mustered up the courage to talk to me, and all he wanted to do is call me handsome. This is a very common occurrence – and not because of my wicked good looks. Koreans view white people as the pinnacle of beauty. Thus a lot of the white men in Korean will be called handsome at the drop of a hat by anyone – old ladies, young guys and girls, etc. Though this takes away a lot of the meaning from being called handsome, it’s still nice, because, hey, it’s better than being called a fag by some random douchebag back home.

I started having impure thoughts about the one cute Korean boy on the subway. He was wearing really tight clothing, and that kind of clothing helps for, y’know, fantasies. He looked a little young, but from my experience here, the boys who look young are usually 23 or so. When I asked him his age, he told me he was 17. Hell’s a fine place – or so I’m told.

Flash forward a month:

I made two Korean friends named Kay and Nicole on the beach. There was a bit of confusion with age, because he told me he was 25 (he looked no more than 20), but he was born in ’84. It turns out that as soon as you’re born in Korea, you’re one year old. So whatever age a Korean tells you, subtract one and you get the actual age. Whenever a Korean asks me how old I am, I usually bump my age up by a year, which kind of sucks because it seems like I got older with out doing anything. After Kay and Nicole explained this Korean age to me, my mind immediately thought of the ‘17’ year old on the bus. He’s actually 16. Oh, my god. I’m definitely going to hell, and those impure thoughts are really damming now.

Kay and Nicole also told me about their versions of anniversaries. Instead of, like, one-month and six-month and one-year and etc anniversaries, they celebrate 100-day and 300-day anniversaries. That must really get annoying, because there’s some calculation that goes into finding that special day. On the 100- and 300-day anniversary, couples usually dress in the same clothes, be it shirts, sweaters, whatever. It seems like this ridiculous tradition is localized in Busan, as the amount of couple outfits are almost zilch in Seoul. The ‘couples’ look is kind of silly, and I really want to meet the guy or girl who came up with this idea. I mean, the couples are wearing the same shirts and same pants. I would die if someone saw me with my significant other in public wearing the exact same clothes. Anyways, it’s become kind of a thing to punch one another if you notice a couple outfit, just like the punch-buggy back home.

On my birthday, Nicole and Kay surprised me with a birthday cake and a present. I was totally taken off guard, because I had just met them maybe a week before my birthday, and wasn’t expecting anything from them. They sang me the Korean version of Happy Birthday, and gave me a book to learn Korean, which is slowly collecting dust. :(