I Wish This Were a Joke…
Ice cream is not an acceptable way to say “sorry for attempting to sexually assault you last night.”
On Saturday night I went out in Cheongju with two friends from Pittsburgh and two Korean friends. One of them, as it turns out, was not much of a friend at all.
Early in the evening me and one of the Koreans got separated from my Pittsburgh friends through a series of misadventures involving our other friend, who got too drunk and needed help.
I’ve known this guy for a month. That’s not a very long time, but I had considered him a friend for that time. I considered him a friend that night, too, right up until he decided to end the evening by trying to sexually assault me.
It didn’t work. I was very lucky. I got away, I left, and I took a taxi back to the school where I live. I followed up by reporting him to everyone I could think of. He followed up by showing up the next day with ice cream trying to apologize and blaming his behavior on alcohol.
Understand this, Korean ‘friend.’ I do not care if you are sorry, because I am not going to forgive you. You tried to hurt me, you scared me, and now I do not trust you. I do not care if you were drunk. In fact that may be worse, because that means everyone you know might be at risk from your behavior when you’re drinking instead of just me.
I do not care if you are sorry because now I have to doubt all of my friends for the rest of my time here.
So that certainly put a damper on my weekend and I’m going to be very, very careful about the people I surround myself with for the rest of this trip. I’m very lucky that I got out of that situation okay and I don’t plan on allowing it to happen again.
Anyway, here’s one more story - a good one - because I really am okay.
Last weekend I was in Seoul with two friends. I was feeling homesick, so we decided to look for some American food. The big choices for American food were KFC and Burger King. I’m not a huge fan of burgers, so KFC it was. We stopped at a tourist information booth to ask for directions, but the woman didn’t speak much English and had trouble understanding us. She wound up calling a friend for help, who could only say “Do you want to go to Kentucky Fried Chicken?” Because she couldn’t speak English she just looked it up on google maps and printed a map for us.
So there we are: lost downtown in this huge city, unable to speak the language well enough to even ask for directions, and asking for help by showing people this map printout directing us to the nearest fast food restaurant.
I have never been more obviously American in my entire life.
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