Amanda Takes Off...

I paid 50,000 won on my T-card. The clerk looked at me and held up five fingers, saying nothing. I said, in Korean, "Yes, it's 50,000 won."

"Oh! You speak Korean so well!"

Later, I was trying to buy some filled buns from the market. I asked the woman, very nicely, how much they were. She dropped to the lowest form and sort of sneered at me while answering, "One thousand won."

I looked at her and said, "Excuse me, why are you speaking banmal to me?" in banmal. She froze.

I bought my buns elsewhere.

I've gone from being annoyed that Koreans assume I can speak Korean to being annoyed that they assume I can't even handle the most basic transactions.

Tonight's taekwondo class was a test, technically. It didn't look like a test. Crybaby and I worked on poomse and the boys worked on sparring while everyone got criticized. Master's Son sat on my lap to watch sparring, and Master's Daughter sat on Crybaby's lap.

A good class though, I was drenched by the end of it.

Before our test was the really big test. There were 13 or 14 people in my class, but on test days there's a bigger test at 5 or so. I got to the studio early and sat down, and approximately 50 pairs of eyes (possibly more!) stared at me and the students started poking each other to make sure everyone saw me. The few students in there who knew me (Amanda Eonni being one) sort of stood up taller. They smiled and waved at me and whispered knowingly to the kids around them, "Her name is Amanda! She's il dan!"

As they were being dismissed one ten-year old (Korean age) yellow belt came up to me, "Ajumma..." I gasped and said in Korean, "I'm not an ajumma!" This is the first time anyone in the studio has ever called me anything other than "Amanda" or "Amanda Big Sister" or "Waygookin."

He scurried off and Master laughed. I went over to him, knelt down, and said in Korean, "My name is Amanda. What's your name?"

He told me his name and he and his friends asked my belt rank and my age. Then Yellow Belt said, "한국 사람이에요?" Are you Korean?

"No," I smiled, "I am American."

We chatted a bit more and other kids swarmed and I was a movie star, once again.

On the way home five middle school boys saw me at the subway station. I was coming down the single-width escalator and they were huddled at the bottom, sorting themselves out. "Ohh! Oh," they said, jostling each other, "a foreigner!"

By this time I'd reached the bottom. I stared at them, expectantly.

"Oh! Unh! Hi! Hi!"

"Hi. 하지만 한국어를 말할 수있어요." But [I/we] can speak in Korean.

They immediately switched to Korean to make their small talk with me. Good thing they didn't ask anything I couldn't answer, since I said we could speak in Korean!