They call me Wae-guk

I grew up taking my shoes off inside the house. My parents appreciated this in order to save our wood floors and I always enjoyed feeling cozy in a pair of socks or dancing between the kitchen and back yard barefoot. As I grew older and visited other people’s homes it seemed very natural to take my shoes off both to assure the host that I would respect the cleanliness of their home during my stay and to show that I would be staying a while and not running out the door the second dinner was over. Taking my shoes off seems like a natural and appropriate gesture both in the United States and here in Korea. With that said, my in door slippers were either accidentally worn home by someone besides myself or stolen this week and this has spurred me to look at this custom of de-robing one’s feet a little differently.

When I was told before we left for Korea that we would be expected to take our shoes off, I was under the misconception that Koreans walked around barefoot. This is certainly not the case, and in several circumstances this would have been a better option. On our  first day of school Matt and I were each handed a pair of yellow indoor sandals. Matt’s of course were about four sizes too small for him and so he has resorted to wearing only socks in his classroom. My slippers must have been previously worn by Big Bird and worked as a sort of homing device where anyone could here me scooting down the hallway from at least a floor up. Matt and I thought the slippers were for the office only and soon found out that we were expected to wear these flipper like foot accessories ALL DAY LONG. The point is simple: protect the floors and follow tradition, but the fact that we wear our slippers to walk across the muddy walkway that leads us to the cafeteria and soccer field seems a bit conflicted. I of course had to find a smaller pair of slippers to accommodate my unusually small feet and Matt has resorted to a pair he picked up in the lost and found and are only about three inches shy of accommodating his toes.

Matt making the switch

The shoes off custom runs deeper than originally thought. Places to kick off your heels include: Home, school, restaurants, coffee shops, dressing rooms, and the occasional doctor’s office. Koreans have a very special relationship with their floor, it is a major source of heat with their Ondol invention and is used to eat off of, relax on and often sleep on. Western cultures who tread along this space with shoes on are seen as disrespectful to this custom of preserving the cleanliness of the Korean gathering place.

There is a bit of room for creativity when choosing your work slippers. Some of the shorter teachers in my school daunt a pair of cork wedges often decorated with metallic sequins and standing a good four inches off the floor. Others go for comfort and have ordered Birkenstocks  to spend the day in. I have opted for a pair of somewhat inconspicuous slippers with just enough of a fleshy red to make me feel like I have individualized the custom. Matt is stuck with whatever he can get his hands on in any foot wear situation. On the few occasions we have gone out in search of something to cover his size 13 foot, a crowd of shoppers and workers have been known to gather around in disbelief of the giant inside their store. Sometimes Matt and I play the “What would you pack” game  where we come up with a list of things that we would have packed differently if we had only known. The top of Matt’s list is always his dog and a few more pairs of shoes. Luckily having my feet bound in point shoes served me well and my feet have no problem fitting into the shoes here. So just as this custom has been added to the growing list of internalized Korean habits, this week my  red slippers have gone missing from my cubby and the attack can only feel personal. Who would have taken my slippers? If they had perhaps been replaced with a sequined pair I could have smiled at the irony  but all that remains are moth balls and a dusty outline of where they were left on Friday afternoon.

The banner really says it all

We spend about half our time here adapting to new ways of doing things, and for the most part I think we are doing quite well. The Korean culture has survived over 5,000 years despite many attempts by neighboring countries to destroy it, and because of this I feel that its points are valid. Why wouldn’t we make every effort to adapt to this culture that we are calling home for a year or two? It’s easy enough for the first few months to throw in the Korean phrases we know into conversation, to use chopsticks with precision and grace, to sample the Korean cuisine and visit the tombs of ancestors that are no where near our own. But after nearly four months of living here we have the new challenge of internalizing these customs and choosing now weather to reject them or make them our own.

For instance, Western and Eastern gestures are  vastly different and in order to avoid offending anyone we have started doing things like beckoning someone with our palm facing down instead of up. We no longer place the food on our plate in random order because everything has its correct place. I caught myself bowing to Matt as he came in the front door last night and it hit me that the “Vacation” period of our trip is officially over.

It’s exciting really to be this far removed from familiarity. Matt and I have both experienced cultures outside the United States but never this far East, and there is really a whole different set of rules here. One of which apparently includes borrowing someone else’s indoor slippers. So I will go shopping tonight for another pair and we will try again tomorrow to camouflage ourselves into the fabric of the Korean culture. Neither of us will ever be six inches shorter, be able to combine letters to make the perfect d/t sound with our tongue or be able to take down an eight year old with a black belt, but while out in the bustle of the holiday season this weekend, not once were either of us pointed at only to hear “Wae-guk” (foreigner) whispered from a Korean child. This can only mean that our actions have become naturally Korean enough for the time being.

Always sincere, Matt and Emily