Doing the Right Thing
There were several times while living in South Korea for a year that I struggled with doing the right thing. For the most part, ‘doing the right thing’ was an everyday adventure. It was an opportunity to learn the customs and habits of the people and culture around me. At school lunch during my first few months, for example, I would watch my co-workers eat before I took a single bite. I wanted to make sure I ate everything correctly — this seems a bit crazy, but there are particular ways to eat certain Korean foods. I like to think this method was wildly sneaky and successful and that my co-workers were hugely impressed with my eating skills.
I also learned about and grew to really like overnight stays in some of Korea’s finest jjimjibangs, or Korean-style spas. Jjimjibangs are public bathhouses where yes, you strip down to the nude (in gendered areas) and enjoy the hot-water baths, cold-water baths, saunas, massages, body scrubs, and more. Open 24 hours, it’s a great cheap alternative to a hotel or hostel for an overnight stay, costing around 12,000 KRW, which is less than 12.00 USD. Leaving your shoes behind in the shoe lockers, you get a pair of pajamas, two tea towels, and at the fancier jjimjibangs, a wristband locker key that also acts as a credit card inside the facility.
My first jjimjibang experience was on my twenty-fifth birthday. Once inside the spa, stripping down to my birthday suit felt normal. After spotting several naked ladies casually walking down the halls and after soaking in the first couple of baths with a bunch of friends I had known for three months, being naked just felt right. It was very liberating and enjoyable; the feeling was somewhere between bath time with my sister when we were kids and skinny-dipping in a lake with friends.
Over my year in Korea, I came to love the jjimjibang routine. There is very little in life that is better than waking up, stripping naked and lying in an herb bath before showering and getting dressed. My newest happy place is remembering the time I sat outside, in the middle of winter, in a pomegranate hot bath, snowflakes falling onto my face. Jjimjibangs are about giving time and care to your body and mind. They are a place to relax with family, old friends and new friends. I miss the jjimjibang atmosphere, which was so comfortable with itself.
Yet doing the right thing is more than pushing comfort zones with new foods and bathing experiences. It is about human interaction and compassion bouncing up against social protocol; it is about conflict. Doing the right thing can become complicated when there are new social rules to follow as well as a language barrier. It can take a little more effort and risk when I am the minority living amongst a huge majority.
Not everyone in Korea wanted to talk to me or help me once they found out I spoke only English. Not everyone spoke English, and people sometimes reacted with scared or annoyed looks when I would approach them. The “right thing” easily got muddled with trying to find the appropriate reaction and gesture. I wanted to be sensitive to others’ feelings, which is harder when we are not speaking the same language. In turn, I literally became paralyzed with fear, trying to figure out what I should do instead of acting how I normally would.
In Seoul, there is the Express Bus Terminal. It connects to the Seoul Metro and is home to hundreds of shops, restaurants and amenities, in addition to the hundreds of buses that roll through each day. The Express Bus Terminal was part of my journey to Seoul and back home. It took me a good few months to figure out how to buy the right ticket, how the boarding system worked, and that I could reserve a seat in advance using my hand (smart) phone. It was marvelous while it was stressful. I never was stranded at the terminal overnight, but there were a few close calls. I learned as I went.
The boarding system ensured that during the busy hours, every seat on every bus was full. If a ticket holder is late or perhaps got onto an earlier bus, the seats are filled by stand by ticket holders of later buses or people with cash. First come, first serve, a line would form in front of the bus stop. It is a very quick turnover to get the bus going as close to the scheduled time, and there are always raised voices and weird exceptions where someone would be pulled to the front of the stand by line.
It was one of those later nights at the Express Bus Terminal. I had spent the day hanging out with friends and was in a really good mood. I had my iPod in, jamming out to my music, waiting in the stand by line and hoping to get home a half an hour earlier. Then I looked up and was delighted to see two of my elementary-aged students in front of me. I pulled my ear buds out and greeted them with a big, “Oh, hi!”
They nervously said “hello” back and shifted their feet uncomfortably as I asked them, “How are you?” It was a seeing your teacher outside of school and hey it’s late and I don’t want to think about speaking English right now sort of interaction. But I showed them pictures of the bunny I had seen in a Seoul park earlier that day, thinking they would like that (Korea is seriously lacking wildlife), and bowed when who I assumed was their mother returned from I am guessing the bathroom. Her mouth could not quite smile back at me and I put my ear buds back in, not wanting to overwhelm them much more.
When the bus pulled in, the people with the tickets for that bus emerged. Finally, it was time to fill the seats, and the stand by line started moving. The ticket guy started talking to my students’ mother and they ended up not boarding the bus. I boarded and was walking down the aisle of the bus, towards an empty seat, when it occurred to me: there probably were not three seats open.
I really wanted to run out and offer my ticket, but I was scared and paralyzed by the hypothetical confusion me running back off the bus would present. I was not sure if they would even have enough tickets had I offered mine or if that was even the issue. I repeated to myself that it was not my fault, that my ticket would not have made a difference, as the bus pulled out of the terminal and I saw my students and their mother out my window, still standing outside. But I had a feeling my ticket could have given them the three they needed to get home.
In Korea, the familiar and my established routine was sometimes all I could handle. Talking to new people and bringing up situational conversations with strangers outside my routine was physically impossible on a lot of days. I literally could not will my body to move or speak at times. All I could hear was that little demon voice telling me how uncomfortable and confused I was making people. All I could do was what my survival instincts decided. My survival instincts that night at the Express Bus Terminal just had me sit down and complete the routine I had worked so hard to figure out. Flight instead of fight.
I still feel horrible. I wish I had offered my ticket to my students’ mother, but the fear of working through the language barrier and “bothering” people took the excuse. Excuses had started turning me into this passive person who assumed someone else, someone Korean, would take care of difficult social situations like that. I spoke to one of my friends about what happened, and I sort of got mad at her for not being more sympathetic and telling me what an incredible person I am. I wanted to feel better about myself and also like I had made a respectable decision. It is so funny, the need to disassociate oneself from mistakes, become defensive and blame something or someone else.
Pushing through the exhaustion and social fear became consciously important after that night and after talking with friends about what happened. It was a small incident in which no one was hurt, and my two students were at school on Monday, running and shouting and full of energy and mischief as always. But the incident also knocked me back to the notion that I want to be a functioning part of society, not only a visitor or foreigner, as well as a good Samaritan. It reminded me of similar situations in my past that had left me feeling ashamed and wishing I had acted more kindly or knowingly.
My time in Korea blankly pointed at the things that had become a little more time consuming and were a little more difficult but that were important to me as a person. The absence of control over professional and personal aspects of my life, the awkward and confusing social situations and the feelings like those at the Express Bus Terminal all piled onto the good experiences, adding to the ideas I have about how I want to live my life. As an adult, it seems to me like that is what ‘doing the right thing’ is really about. Living right by yourself with others in mind and without expectations of payment or recognition.
I want the shame and guilt I feel about my Express Bus Terminal mistake to uncover some great, unknown truth about life. I want it to mean something on its own or in written word, but it does not. It was a crappy thing I did or did not do that night. Good intentions can be meaningless in certain situations. You can let people down with the best intentions. Doing the right thing is not about getting it right every single time, but it is about evolving and growing.
