Cultural immersion, failed attempt at

Last month, I had a class that was mostly comprised of young thirty-something chicks, who are desperate to marry since they are becoming, as they say in Korean, "old virgins" ("old maids"). This is only to say that we talked about relationships a ton, so the subject of blind dating - quite common in Korea - came up several times. One student - remember the one with the Pooh-fetish from a few weeks back? - insisted that I give this custom a try and she had a friend in mind: "She's English ees better than mine." I, very cautiously and half-jokingly consented, but hoped that it would never come up again. I'm, as a rule, skeptical of the judgments of people who lust for animated bears.

Then the student called me about it three times the next week. Then I tried to put it off: "Hmm, birthday weekend. Then I'm going to China the weekend after that. Then I work on Saturday the next weekend." "You can have your meeting on the Sunday?" "Yeah, that might work." Then I hoped she'd forget about it. Lo, when on Saturday, the night before, I get a call. And then two more after that... After I finally picked up, former student gave me the number again - I'd pretended to have lost it - and I called to arrange my first blind date ever. I'd vowed to find a way to call it off, but only if her English is not at a very decent conversational level. After speaking at an 8th grade level - at most - all day, having remedial conversations on my day off is kinda like teaching on my day off: "So, are you busy tomorrow, because..." "No, I don’t have any obligations." [fuck]

Koreans have quite lovely heads of hair, the best I've ever seen, collectively. Thirty-year-old Koreans are usually quite attractive, . Though Christianity is the major religion in this country, it's still less than half of the population. I thought I would play the odds and, at the very worst, have a decent chat with a (probably) attractive, (hopefully) non-Christian chick with a full head of hair. I was wrong on all accounts.

We met at a designated time at a certain subway stop. I approached someone who was clearly also on the lookout for a strange whitey: What I meant to say in Korean was "Do I have a blind date with you?" However, what actually came out was "Do I have a ‘speed violation’ with you?" "Speed violation" is Korean for a pregnancy out of wedlock, so I accidentally asked, in very broken Korean, "Are you knocked up by me?" or something to that effect. Then, since I had a good four inches in height on this chick, it took about 4.5 seconds to notice that she had gaping bald spots on her crown, as if a family of crows took out chunks of her shiny black hair to build a nest.

Then it took this chick maybe five minutes to make her first criticism. Apparently, I’d been a little too terse for her tastes, with a bombardment of "whatever," "it’s all cool," "no worries," and "sure" to questions/statements like "where do you want to go?," "do you like the drinking," and "I work for a pharmaceutical company." "Can you answer me with longer sentences? Everything you say is very short." "Oh, I’m sorry. What should I say? ‘My, that sounds like an interesting profession. Is it fulfilling in every way that you’d hoped? [Was there a chemical leak that resulted in your unfortunate state of she-baldness?]’"

Then it took another couple minutes for her to pronounce: "I have a bet with [Pooh-chick, the matchmaker]. She says that we will be, how do you say, separated in different ways before two hours. I say that we will be longer than five hours." "FIVE HOU--... Five hours is a long time. [forced yawn] I’m not positive that I’ll be able to stay awake..."

A few more vignettes. Before the meal, she excuses herself and has a quick 30 second prayer. Korean-Jebus is whiter than white, those sycophantic peninsula-dwellers, so I wondered if she talks to Him in Korean or English. I made her cry at one point, when I uttered "I trust you," as I put a mouthful of charred-whole fish into my gob: "Are these bones safe to eat or should I pick them out?" "Maybe the bones are very small and this fish is cooked well, so I think that you can be able to eat it with the bones." "Ok, I trust you." [long pause] "Nobody has ever said that to me before. ‘I trust you.’ That is a very good thing to say to some person. ‘I trust you.’" Then her eyes welled up with tears, which she neither tried to conceal nor play off.

We went to a sashimi restaurant. Though she offered to pay and makes a shitload more money than me, she proposed another bet. She’d watched this episode of Friends earlier in the day, where the characters gets together and tries to name all fifty states. She asked if I could, and I was pretty cocksure: "In five minutes." I named 49 in a frenetic whirl of penscratching, embarrassingly unable to come up with bordering state to my last US home, Pennsylvania: "Don’t feel bad. Ross is a very smart person. He forgot about one state, too. He had a really good SAT score and is a professor of... some kind of thing. So maybe you are a kind of genius." That was a $90 venture. We didn’t make it to the full five hours. I haven’t been answering my phone - two calls that night, one more the next day.

The matchmaker rang me today, sounding like a car salesperson: "You are very talkative and have a good appearance. And you make funny conversation for her. Maybe I think she has a good feeling about you." "Uh..."

My high school class voted me "least likely to abuse superlatives," so I cautiously say that this is the weirdest first date I’ve ever had. And the second weirdest last date I’ve ever had.