Some Stuff About Russia

Russia and Korea have a history of relations that I don't entirely understand. Last year, I met a dude on a bus who told me that he was just coming back from (or going to) teaching Korean language and history to ethnically Korean Russians. Apparently the Japanese put some Koreans there at some point. This dude also built helicopters. It was a neat conversation.

Here's one thing I didn't even realize until this year (I have an aversion to maps?)....Russia is really effing close to South Korea.

See? (The circle with the marker in it is Busan, where I live)

Busan is a a port city (the 5th largest in the world, Wikipedia just told me) and has the largest Russian population in the country.

So far, this has meant mainly 3 things:
1. knowing that there's a Russian town near the train station (I want to go to a Russian restaurant, but apparently, not all of them are restaurants...just like not all Korean coffee shops are coffee shops)

2. having a Russian school in the building where I work and sometimes seeing people who look like me but are not speaking English

3. being asked if I'm Russian a few times by skeazy men when I had blond hair. Generally, if a man in Korea asks a woman if she's Russian, he's really asking if she's a hooker.

So, now for the neat thing that happened prompting me to type all this up (besides the fact that I have essays to correct and only one class to teach and that means internetting all over the damn place)....

I was getting in the elevator at work and there was this one boy, probably about 13. He was looking stressed,  running in and out of the open elevator and he turned to me and said "white," putting his hands up to indicate that he wanted me to hold the elevator. I thought it was a bit funny because most Koreans know the word "wait" and a boy his age definitely should have known that word. So he gets in the elevator finally and we start to go up and he is freaking the hell out about something. I look at him and say "are you ok?" in Korean. And he says in English, "I am not a Korean man. I am from Russia," and points at the sign for the Russian school on the 10th floor. I sputtered out "cool! well, have a good day. I hope that you're ok," before getting off at the 6th floor. It was neat!

The end!

p.s. Here's Korean Noah:

This kid....oy.