Year of the Dog's Weblog

I was drinking some chai tea and studying Korean serious for the first time. A Korean girl sat down one seat over from me. She was studying English. Then all of a sudden she asks, “Are you studying Korean?” I told her she was correct and then she told me she was studying English. She offered to help me with any problems I have. I told her I don’t know how to pronounce the words, because I haven’t had a chance to listen to the CD as of yet. She went over the words I was practicing writing and told me how to say a few of them. Then I explained to her that tea is a non-count noun so you don’t need an s. Somewhere during our conversation her friend came in.

Her friend is fluent in English and asks the questions that she wanted to ask. Where are you from? How old are you? How long are you staying? The same questions everyone asks every foreigner at some point. There was a pause in the conversation and I saw a nun come in to order coffee. I remarked on how many Christians there are in Korea. That was a mistake I won’t soon make again. Never bring up religion in Korea unless you want to get a sermon.

The girl who first approached me told me that they too where Christians and then she started grilling me on my believes. She wanted to know if I went to church every Sunday. I told her no, I don’t go every Sunday and I haven’t been since I moved to Japan. This is when things started to head in a weird direction. She told me I wasn’t a real Christian if I don’t go to church every Sunday. I tried to explain to her that where I live there aren’t many church services in English. There is a baptist church nearby, but I’m not interested in hearing the fire and brim stone sermon every Sunday. I tried to tell her I’m non-denominational, but I don’t think she understood. Her friend tried to translate that bit, but the girl kept coming at me. She wanted me to go to Church in Korea. She tried to get me to go to her church. It was too far for me she said, but then she decided she needed to pray for me. She prayed a pray in Korean and that was the end of that. She stopped talking to me and went on talking with her friend.

I knew they were talking about me at first because I heard a few words of Englisha and a phrase or two and I pieced things together. Then they went back to whatever girls talk about. The whole time I could see the girl’s friend wanting to pull her friend off of me. I could see it in her eyes. There she goes again, scaring off guys by getting too religious on them. I could feel for her, I’ve seen people get religious on people with the only affect being making them hate Christians for being too overbearing.

I can also understand uber-religious girl’s zeal, but not her critisism. Some people think you get into heaven by doing chores: Blasting off scriptures in the subway station, judging other people for differences in doctorine, giving out religious tracts at random.  That’s not for me.

I don’t know how many people have tried to save my soul, only for me to tell them that I am already a believer. All I have left to say is, if you come to Korea, be prepared to be interogated about your beliefs and hear a few sermons in broken English.

This was only my 4th day in Seoul.