Korean Cosmetics: Fear of Aging and Residual Culture Shock/Cosméticos coreanos: medo de envelhecer e choque cultural

I am quickly running out of patience for this country and everyone in it. Joel and I got into a spat on Monday over the issue, actually. Lately, I have taken to snapping at people who shove past me, cut me in line, or generally lack courtesy or respect for social order. These types of things are very common here; Koreans don't give a second thought to be being shoved past or cut in front of, since the shortages after the Korean war have left a very strong "take everything you can" philosophy in the national psyche. I thought I had grown accustomed to it, but apparently I have reached the end of my fuse. Anyway, Joel brought up the fact that I have been short with strangers and generally very agitated, so we got into an argument which ended in me dissolving into tears and wailing about how I just wanted to finish our contracts so we could go home.

Culture shock is a funny thing. When we first arrived, we watched a video on it as part of our "training," in which the presenter explained that some models show people having recurring episodes of it, rather than just going through it once at the beginning. After my first major bout, I have mostly done fine (and my Korean proficiency has definitely helped), but everyone once in a while I will still be foiled and come home extremely frustrated. Case in point: on Monday morning I tried (and failed) to get packing boxes from the post office, after the attendant talked my ear off in Konglish about different shipping rates for about ten minutes. I eventually chose two boxes and tried to buy them - only to be foiled because I tried to pay with my debit card, and they would only accept cash.

I never realized how much I would come to miss home, especially my mother. I have never had trouble with that in the past, but I have never been away from home for this long - by the time I finally land in Houston, it will have been two years since I have seen her. When I called her on Skype for her birthday, she and I talked at length about how much she missed me; she jokingly told me that she was glad that Joel would be arriving two weeks after me, so she wouldn't have to kick him out of my bed. Living here has actually given me a lot of perspective on what she went through when moving from Brazil to America, and the fact that she always intended her move to be permanent.

On the flip side, I am so not looking forward to the re-entry shock. Perhaps it is better for Joel to be away from me during that time.

I suppose, though, that I will experience culture shock in one form or another until I readjust to life back home. Case in point number two: today, a Korean woman at my yoga studio with practically no English ability tried to chat me up - while we were in the shower.
Nice Naked Lady: Where are you from? Koreans unfailingly begin these types of conversations by just plunging in - there is rarely any kind of greeting.
Naked Me: Texas. America.
NNL: You, ah, you, m-m-marry?
Me: Yes. At this point, I switch to Korean and show her my wedding ring. I have been married for five years.
NNL: Oh?! You...no baby?
Me: No.
NNL: Me too marry. Nampyeon (husband) is doctor.
Me: Ah. At this point I am scrubbing myself frantically, trying to finish as quickly as possible.
NNL: English teacher?
Me: Yes.
NNL: Ah - sorry. I am...no English.
Me: It's okay. Shower finished! I grab my stuff, bow slightly, and high-tail it outta there.
I have mastered the art of being comfortable while naked around other people - heck, I can go to the jjimjilbang with no issue - but it gets a little weird for me when strangers try to talk to you while you are both naked.

On the way back from the studio, I stopped into a cosmetics shop to pick up a replacement for my facial moisturizer. I have been trying to navigate the labrynthine market of skincare products for post-university-age women, and I am still not convinced that any product that claims to firm skin, rejuvenate skin tone, or "reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles" actually does what it says it does. However, since I have noticed the aforementioned beginning to appear on my face (and yes, Babushka, they are in fact on my face), I have begun to wade hesitantly into the fray.

When we came here, I brought two or three bottles of Oil of Olay, but that ran out before we finished our first year. I managed to get another bottle from a friend who is stationed in Osan, and then another very generous high school friend from back home sent me another bottle, but eventually all my stores ran out. Korea is well-known regionally for excellent-quality skin care products, though, so I figured that I couldn't go wrong picking up something Korean. So, after my awkward naked Konglish conversation, I walked into Aritaum and told the sales rep that I was looking for a frangrance-free face cream. "Anti-age?" she asked, and I nodded as I began to wonder if my age was somehow showing. She brought me over to the Iope section and let me sample a delightful gold bottle that read Super Vital Cream Bio Intensive (Bioscience Formula). It was nice and light, with only a slight fragrance, so I reached into my backpack for my wallet and asked for the price. "Sip-man won," she cheerfully informed me. W100,000 - or just under $100.

I balked, and then began to wonder if I was being reasonable. Sure, I can pick up a bottle of Oil of Olay for about $20 or $30 back home, but is it enough? Is there perhaps something to all of the women who spend hundreds of dollars on Lancôme or Estée Lauder or Clinique to battle age, that constant specter that haunts women? I reasoned that although it was overpriced, I wasn't going to keep putting hand lotion on my face, so I decided to use my birthday money from my mother-in-law and just go for it. I was pleasantly surprised to see the sales rep include a sampler set of five products from the same line and ten samples of other products with my 50 ml bottle of Super Vital Cream Bio Intensive. I walked back to the apartment feeling (more) like I got my money's worth. And then I got home and opened the boxes.

Do all five of these go on my face at the same time?

The product I actually purchased.

Free samples to make me feel worse about myself. Yay!

Joel sat with me and the laptop as I sorted through everything. What is the difference between cream and eye cream? Why do I need a softener, and does it come before or after the serum? Emulsion was a term I had only heard in chemistry class. I suppressed my rising panic as I picked up each item and tried to make sense of the Korean on the small packages. Joel's approach seemed more simple. "I think it goes on your face."
"Yes, but in what order?"
"Does it matter? Just put it on your face!"
"But the order might be important! Look it up."
Together we Googled the product line. "It says here the softener goes first, then the emulsion, then the serum, then the cream," he read. "So basically just follow the order they are in the box."
"What about the eye cream?"
"That probably goes on your eyes." I sighed as I fingered the miniature bags. "It's simple. Just put it on your face!"

We laughed as we got ready for work, but since then I have become more contemplative. As my birthday approached last week, one of my coworkers and I were joking that as we have gotten into our later twenties, we have noticed (painfully) that things catch up with us a lot faster physically. I can't stuff my face with cake without consequences anymore; in a few days it will be noticeably present on my waistline. If I lapse in working out regularly, I notice the difference. I tire more easily and can no longer function well on very little sleep. Illness is a lot harsher and takes longer to kick. Yes, I am aware that I am only 28, but my hyper-perceptive self-image has seized on these things as time creeps forward. I am now at the point where I seriously asking myself such ridiculous questions as whether or not I need to drop $100 on a skincare regimen to stay beautiful.

At least we finally got some real snow tonight.

Friends and Fireworks in Busan/Amigos e fogos de artifício em Busan

I know that my time between posts here is getting longer and longer. I can't quite put my finger on why. Part of me suspects that it is the increasingly busy nature of our lives as our date of departure looms closer - we are trying to cram more and more into less time, and we are really prioritizing time spent with friends that we may or may not cross paths with after we leave. I also have to admit that part of it is the steady wear-down of working 18 consecutive months with no real vacation. I adore the children we work with, but 18 months working in hagwon has cured me of the desire to ever come back and do it again. I will acknowledge that it is for some people, but it is not for me. I have a career that I now very much want to get back to.

On the bright side, a group of eleven of us took a trip to Busan at the end of October to see the city's annual fireworks festival. It was a fantastic trip - we had a really awesome time with our travel companions, and the show itself was the most breathtaking that I have personally ever witnessed. We decided to get a group together and rent out a ten-person private dorm in a hostel in the Haeundae area. Thanks to Facebook, we quickly rounded up enough people, booked the hostel, and headed out on Friday evening after work - first the EPIK teachers, then the couple who teaches kinder, and finally the hagwon teachers.

THE CAST

EPIK:
J-Ram
J-M
Straight L (as in straight-haired)
Curly L
Mal

KINDER:
Irish Cream
Tall J

HAGWON:
Me
Joel
The Nymph
Shae-Shae

The hagwon crew doesn't normally get off of work until 10 p.m., so we bought tickets for the 10:30 bus out of town a few days beforehand. Shae-Shae and The Nymph, who work at a different school, had bought our tickets for us, so we agreed to meet up with them at the bus terminal. Joel and I got lucky and got a cab right after work, and the driver correctly assessed that we were in a hurry and hauled major ass to the bus terminal. Alas, not so for Shae-Shae and The Nymph. Joel and I sat biting our nails for the next 20 minutes after arriving, waiting nervously as the other passengers got onto the bus and the driver prepared to leave. Just as I was mustering up the courage to use my broken Korean to explain our predicament to the driver (and assure him that our friends really were right outside, the pair came running up to the gate. We all piled onto the bus, relieved, and started the journey.

The bus ride was mostly uneventful, other than a middle-aged Korean woman tapping me on the leg twice and shushing me. It's a little bit obnoxious to be shushed on the bus, but apparently we were spared the worst of it: the EPIK ladies, who were all chatting at the back of the bus, were silenced by a Korean man who stood up halfway through the ride and yelled across the bus, "Hey! Shut up! Shut up! Okay?!"

Lovely.

At any rate, we rolled into town, found ourselves at the farthest-outside-of-town bus terminal in the history of the world, paid a small fortune for a cab to take us into town, and met up with the rest of the peeps. We checked into the hostel, where the EPIK ladies and The Nymph retired to bed. Meanwhile, the guys, Irish Cream, Shae-Shae and I decided to hang out for a while and have a few drinks on the beach. While we were there, we met a group of friends led by a pair of French students studying abroad (which, naturally, meant that I had to put my rusty French skills on display - go figure). We hung out for a while, with the more sensible of us watching the less sensible of us chase each other around with firecrackers in a game cleverly dubbed "Harry Potter." After a few more hours of hanging out, Irish Cream and I headed off to bed, and the others eventually followed.

The next morning after breakfast, I headed to the Busan aquarium with The Nymph, Straight L, Curly L, J-Ram, and Shae-Shae. I had never been to an aquarium before, so I was like a kid in a magical wonderland of Nemos, Dories, and jellyfish. We even got to see the penguin-feeding show! (To be honest, it wasn't much, but I was embarrassingly excited.) After we finished up there, we met up with Joel, Irish Cream, and Tall J to get kebabs for lunch. Mal and J-M had already reserved a spot for us on the beach around 2:30, so we headed over to the beach to meet them just before 4.

Sitting on the beach started out fun. Most of us chatted while Joel and Tall J played Hold 'Em for each others' change. We were lucky to have gotten such good seats, or so we thought - until, as the afternoon wore on, we realized how many people we had to step over to get to any semblance of a bathroom. Because the fireworks show didn't start until 8 p.m., it became progressively more difficult to get off the beach for anything, be that buying snacks or drinks, using a restroom, or hunting for a convenience store that would change my phone battery (which meant that I couldn't take any pictures with my phone). We typically went to the bathrooms in pairs or threes, mostly for protection, because people got angry when you stepped over them - whether it was something as innocuous as stepping on a mat with shoes or as careless as kicking sand into some poor bastard's ramen (which Joel may or may not have been guilty of). I personally stopped drinking anything whatsoever about three hours before the show, but it was inevitable to have to get up at least once more to properly enjoy the fireworks. Some of our cohort was a little intimidated at the prospect of stepping over the masses, but if I have learned one thing after living here for eighteen months, it's this:

Anyway, after one more wee (as my English friends so adorably call it), I settled in to watch the show. And oh, what a show it was.

The fireworks were, for me at least, beyond description. From what we could tell, the purpose of the show is meant to celebrate the rise of the city of Busan from the ashes of the Korean war into a prosperous port city with its own unique identity. The show was about 50 minutes long. Make no mistake: this wasn't just some pretty lights in the sky. The fireworks were synced to music. They were colossal, and colorful, and some of them even made shapes or spelled out letters. There were fireworks falling from the bridge and fireworks on the water. There were several remote-controlled birds that flew over the beach and released fireworks as phoenixes. There was even a group of five acrobats who jumped down a skyscraper behind us in neon-lit suits! Here is someone's (admittedly poor-quality) video of parts of the show:

I think I probably had my mouth open the entire time, just out of sheer wonder. A few tears may have even been shed - and not just by me. One of our party took a few pictures.

All pictures taken by, and property of, the lovely and talented Nerina Van Der Westhuizen.

After the show, the group split up for dinner and agreed to meet back up later. Since nakji (aka still-moving octopus) has been on my bucket list since I set foot in this country, Tall J, Joel, and I headed straight for a restaurant outside our hostel that advertised it and sat down for the most adventurous meal of our lives. Just as we were about to brave the squirming tentacles, the French guys ran into us eating outside and watched, mouths agape, as we ate them. It was epic. Later on, we met up with most of the others and spent a night out on the town.

On Sunday morning, I went with Straight L, Curly L, and The Nymph for a walk along the coast. We walked along the beach and then followed a short trail to a strange building that looked like a UFO but turned out to be a meeting hall for a major political Asian summit a few years ago. Go figure. Afterwards, we made our way back to public transportation. After mustering up all of my Korean skills to talk to the guy at the information desk, only to find that you could not buy bus tickets online in Busan (go figure), Straight and Curly L agreed to head to the terminal to buy bus tickets for us, since Shae-Shae and The Nymph wanted to check out the Shinsegae (which is the world's largest department store) and I wanted to go to Spa Land. Luckily for me, there were no buses available until about four hours later, so I was able to get scrubbed within an inch of my life by an adjuma and appreciate all of the themed rooms at the largest public bathhouse in Asia. Curly L told me that the subway ride from the Shinsegae to the bus terminal was about half an hour, so I figured that I would have plenty of time to take the subway and even grab dinner if I gave myself 45 minutes.

My mistake.

Our bus was scheduled to leave at 7 p.m., and The Nymph had my tickets. Fine. I got on the subway and zoned out for a while, then looked at my phone when I was about seven stops away. I felt the color leave my face when I saw that it was 6:42. Okay, I thought, if it's two minutes per stop, then I will have about four minutes to make it to my gate, and the bus terminal isn't that big. I felt the time slip as I watched the stops go by. Finally my stop arrived and I bolted through the subway, flew up the stairs, and reached the street...only to realize that I didn't know which building the terminal was in. I scared the bejeezus out of some poor shoe vendor by demanding to know where the terminal was, which I then raced toward, steeling myself for the possibility of jumping in front of my bus to make it stop. I reached the doors and, with some relief, saw that the bus was still at the platform.

"Jessica!" Straight L called out to me as she saw me through the crowd. I pushed my way to where she and Curly L stood in line. "Where is The Nymph?" Panic returned as I realized she had my ticket.
"She's not here?"
"No! We don't know where they are."
The bus was delayed, so we quickly brainstormed solutions as I wondered if I spoke enough Korean to explain what happened and beg them to reprint my ticket. Then we saw The Nymph and Shae-Shae running through the crowd. I called out to them, and they came over. The Nymph was so relieved that she dissolved into tears for a few minutes. Laughing, we boarded the bus and headed home.

All in all, a pretty epic trip.