Day 1

The first day of school was Monday. After years of “teaching” (more like babysitting), it felt strange to be on the “learning” side of things. Sure, you never stop learning and blah blah blah, but this is actual formalized learning. Like, classrooms and books and teachers and tests.

I woke up, ate breakfast, watched TV and went over to campus for my orientation. That’s when it hit me: I was painfully out of place.

I’m different. I know that. South Korea has a relatively homogeneous population (98% Korean), so there’s no way I was fooling myself about that. But being a student, I stand out in other ways. As soon as I set foot on campus, it was skirts and dress shirts as far as you could see. Then there’s me in my jeans and t-shirt, with enough rings for makeshift knuckles, should a sudden brawl break out. Get on the bus and all you hear is Korean and Chinese as people are greeting their friends and roommates.  Walk up to my building and meet the others in my program.....

(I love anime. I will reference it and lots of my other nerd-quirk-habits quite often)

Basically, in Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge,  there's a girl, Nakahara Sunako. She lives with incredibly good looking men who she calls "the Radiant Ones". Radiant Ones because their beauty/perfection is too much for her to look at. 

But anyways, as Sunako would say “The radiant ones! My eyes! Noooooo!!!”

No. I’m being serious. It was like walking into a freaking magazine page. Perfectly dressed well-coiffed madness. I’m not terribly conscious about my style (because I have none, and I’ve accepted that), but hot damn every single person in my program looks like they roll out of bed and shower in fabulous.

And then they brought in pizza and all was right with the world. True story: I’m a fat kid. If I had any shame, I’d be embarrassed about the amount I eat, but I don’t, so I’m not.  Five pieces of pizza later, “being different” and “good looking people” can go die, because food.

We went out for coffee afterwards and it was more than a little awkward. There aren’t many of us (fewer than 13), but it’s a mostly Korean group. Yes, I can speak Korean. No, I don’t want to. As blunt as I am, I do feel a bit shy when surrounded by aesthetic perfection and a foreign language. But they’re kind people.