Essay --

After a twelve-hour descent I reached my destination. As I cautiously walked out of my abyss that is the airplane, I instantly get a hit of the cruel humidity of South Korea. The sky still covered in clouds suggested that it would soon cool off but of course it was all just a painted picture as the beads of sweat that started from my neck continued to race down the crevice of my spine and down to my hip. I decided to travel to South Korea alone in order to fully grasp and understand the culture that my family grew up living in. The first thing I noticed was how short everyone was, this lead to an extra kick in my step and an obnoxious protruding self-confident walk. I was being stared at like I was some sort of prized possession either because I was taller than everyone else or that I was a foreigner. Koreans love their foreigners; to a blind eye even though I looked the part of a Korean, they could tell who the foreigners were and they were definitely not fooled. It took some time before a little boy had the courage to confront me and display all the cool English phrases he had learned at ‘hagwan’. Hagwan is school on weekends taught by tutors and is very common that everyone attends these classes. Soon after, I was completely mobbed by Koreans of all ages, and my most memorable conversation I had was with this man in his thirties. The man and I had an endless conversation about soccer, the economy and travel. I remember the first words he said were â€Å"People don’t take trips, trips take people† he later explained that he meant that people need to ignore their final destination as an endpoint, but rather the beginning of a new unexpected trip. After our conversation I pulled out my map and asked him to draw in Dongdaemun. He repli... ...laxing where I’m from but here in Korea there are a couple rules to follow. Again, status plays a role, similar to the handshakes, if an elder offers to pour you a beer, you must hold your glass with both hands and if it is your first drink you should always accept it, as it is polite to. Also you must keep both hands on the bottle when pouring for elders. Elders however are allowed to use one hand as it shows authority. Apparently it is also very rude to pour yourself a drink, as I learned out the hard way, my new friends disciplined me by giving me a couple shots of Soju. Needless to say, that was I all I remembered from that night. You should always leave some alcohol in your glass and keep in mind that this flowing alcohol won’t stop for a while. So blame the alcohol and their rules when you see a group of coworkers stumbling down the streets in broad daylight.