Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mercury]

ACtually it was really strange, the girls were always hanging around in groups, and some were really fine. They would go to these international meetings, and most ended up getting a boyfriend from that group, Japanese, Taiwanese, etc.... The guys all played pool together, smoking, and they would just sit in their dorm rooms and look at porn all day. A few would visit houses of ill repute, and I would hear them always wanting to make a girlfriend. It is really weird, because most of them were just ignored. They were invisible around campus. They were really never accepted and I think they wanted to be. I had one friend from Taiwan, he chose not to hang around the other Asian students. His English really improved. One day he came up with the idea that we should go and kill this big dog he had seen. Our University housing had a bbq pit, and he wanted to cook it, no joke. He fell in love with a Korean girl and she totally dumped him for some rich Japanese guy named TAKEE. In the cafeteria most of them would come in, eat real fast, and then leave. I feel totally different because wherever I go there is always someone who makes an effort to talk to me. On the bus, subway, no joke, almost everyday I will have some short conversation that begins 'where you from?" and then I usually get a name card or invited somewhere, and I guess if I was lonely I would really feel at home here. This country is made for lonely people. All night galbi houses, p.c rooms, night clubs, bars, nobody could ever feel alone here, all they would have to do is go to a local soju tent, buy a beer, and soon have a handful of guys pouring him or her soju.

[agraham]

When I think about the foreign students at my highschool.. They lived in thier own world. I just remember noticing thier kneesocks and the way the girls walked around the halls holding hands or whatever.
I don't remember considering how tough it might be for them living in a foreign country, being isolated. I guess I just didn't have that experience.
I wish I could go back in time and make an effort.

[Tiger Beer]

I was a foreigner in a graduate program in Spain.

ALL of my friends were also foreigners in the same program! There were some Spanish in the program too, but funny how didn't find them as interesting because they were the status quo.

Other people would try to 'get into' our foreign community.. because we were kind of a eclectic bunch.. but as soon as you saw someone else in the program, you would drop that conversation with that non-group person to talk to someone within the group.

In short, when you are in an international program, you really get into the people within the program, more than trying to fit into the society at large and all the stuff that they are dealing with - which isn't as interesting as your own international bubble.

[Gollum]

My best friend was a brilliant girl from Panama on a full-ride fullbright scholarship... really liked her soooo much. I was head-over-heels for her, but I had convinced myself that i had absolutely ZERO chance with such a beautiful girl, so I was afraid to scare her off. Pathetic. Zero balls whatsoever to "go for it." Now she's married and last I knew, works for the World Bank. Now that I remember it, she was giving me signals in all directions, but I just wouldn't wake up to the fact.... thought she was waaaaay too good for me.

I hung out with a lot of the international crowd when I was with her. It was fun and interesting.

The only Korean I met and hung out with was some girl in my final semester. Only for two weeks -- she was heading home. All I remember about her was that she said her family owned an amusement park near the Han River. Also, she was very emotionless... friendly, but without emotion. I guess her family must have been rich to send her to school at my University way back in 1994. Have no memory at all of what her name was, but wish I knew now. I borrowed her video camera for two days. That's all I remember.