Today's movements: For whatever reason, I didn’t get out of the house as early as planned. I got up early (7am) planning to leave by 9am, but things happened, I got carried away, and the next thing I knew it was 10am. To shorten the trip to Ewha, then, I decided to go ahead and take that subway instead of the bus. The air was stuffy and most of the ride was hot. I hate taking the train. As I was getting off, I thought for a few seconds that I’d lost my subway ticket and envisioned myself jumping the turnstiles, hopefully in the absence of any kind of subway cop.

I had open-ended time on the way home, so I took the bus. First number 12 to Christine’s, which was crowded. I had to sit way in the back. I regretted my seat choice almost immediately, as Bus 12 is one of those rare buses where there is only one hole through which people can pass; it’s also a chwasok bus, meaning that it has two seats on each side separated by a skinny aisle all the way to the back. It’s like charter buses in the States. As more and more people piled on, the aisle became cramped full of passengers hanging on to overhead bars. About a mile from the stop near Christine’s house, I slipped past the guy sitting next to me and started making my way up the aisle, pushing and clinging wherever necessary and possible. I made it to the door just in time. (Those bus driver’s don’t wait, you know.)

After Christine’s I caught 83-1. I stood initially. I thought about how sometimes it’s fun to stand on 83-1 when it travels around the base of Nam mountain. If you’re on the right side - the side facing the mountain - it’s possible to use one or both hands to hang onto the small handle on the top corner of the seats, using it like the handle on the rope pulling you when you water-ski. I let the pull of the curve lift my body, extend my arms fully and lift my toes from the floor of the bus so that my weight pivots on my heels. Then, as the bus sways around the mountain, dipping in and out of its contours, I pretend I am water-skiing and just let my body flow with the pull. If the bus keeps up its end of the bargain, by moving fluidly and not slamming on the brakes or accelerating suddenly, it’s a smooth little rush. The bus never honors the promise: I have to quickly grab for that other bar just above the window; when that fails, which is rare, it can be a humiliating tumble toward the front of the bus when the brakes grab a hold hard. You know how in movies the main characters always slip or fall down something, frantically grappling for anything and then at the last second their finger will grasp some tiny thing protruding, or maybe the last rung of some handy ladder? It’s like that, except in real life I spin past bodies and seats reaching for handles, purses, anything, but I’m moving too fast and the momentum is stronger than I. When my finger catches that handle, my nail breaks off and I continue hurtling until, predictably, the chunk heel of a Fluevog loafer plants squarely onto the toe of some business guy’s sad, thin leather slip-ons. I am stopped.

The rest of the ride I just looked at faces. Tired ones, old ones; faces caked with make-up.

At Ewha, Mala took some time to tell me about Sikhs It started when I reiterated how much I liked reading an article about the politics of hair in Nepal. I said I like thinking about hair and its significance in culture, as identifiers of associations, class, etc. It seems like so many cultures used to leave hair long, never cutting it. Since industrialization, that has changed. I suppose it’s not practical - not cost-effective - to have long hair tangling in the machinery. That’s when she brought up Sikhism. Their hair is central to their identity and it represents the unrestrained, which they then restrain by wearing a turban. She talked about how Indira Ghandhi was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguards, which inspired massacres of Sikhs in New Delhi in 1984. Many Sikhs cut off their hair to conceal their association, to save their lives. She talked also about the reputation Sikhs have of being warriors; how they have Five K’s of Sikhism, one of which is their hair, another is a bracelet on the wrist to restrain their hand, another their sheathed sword, and yet another their underwear. In Hindi, the words for each start with a "K" sound, hence the Five K’s. Mala couldn’t remember the last one. She said that they kept themselves restrained, but that when they went to war, they removed the restraints like the turban and sheath to free the wildness. One of the K’s is the underwear, which is to restrain the penis. I asked her if they went to war without underwear too.

I like listening to Mala talk about India. It’s so much a more efficient learning tool than reading. It would take months and months to learn what she told me in one half hour. And India is such a large chunk of land containing many cultures and climates; there’s just so much to learn. I’m going to try to remember to tell her how much I enjoy it.

Well, I was supposed to stop in at Christine’s for a swim in the pool in the basement of her apartment building. When I arrived, she offered me some tabouli. I was like, Wow!, where did you find this? She said she bought a pre-mix package off of a couple who was moving back to the States. Apparently, they had bought it in the States originally and brought it back with them. This is a perfect example of the way things are for us furriners over here. Someone’s moving and we all swoop in like vultures, even for their food. I ate some tabouli and it tasted good. She had Kool-Aid too, so I sipped on a glass of that.

The doorbell rang and it was her Thai neighbor coming by for some reason. I guess she just wanted to chat. Joy. A few minutes later, A Nigerian friend of Christine’s rang the doorbell: She had come by to chat too. It’s been awhile since I’ve been in a social situation with other foreigners. I go to Ewha where I see plenty of foreigners at the women’s center or in class, but the setting is different: It’s not chatty or really too informal. We talk a lot about stuff going on in the center or in the academic scene. Rarely do we agree to meet for a lunch, and never for a "luncheon". I guess, sitting on Christine’s couch, I thought it might be kind of cool to sit around chatting with a few women, but by the end, I couldn't have cared less.

The Thai woman talked almost incessantly, and many of her perceptions were erroneous. The woman from Nigeria, Inka, was direct and had no problem setting the Thai woman straight. It was interesting listening to them go back and forth. Christine and I mostly just sat and listened. Inka left after an hour or so. It was just the three of us then, but the Thai woman did all of the talking and soon I just felt tired of it all. Finally, I just said I was going to head home. I guess that was the cue the Thai woman needed because she took off quickly, finally leaving me and Christine some time to catch up alone.

I don’t have a social network like that in Korea. I don’t really want one because most women in groups like that are bored and have nothing better to do than go to lunch and gossip about each other. It can be brutal. It seems to frustrate Christine and she finds herself in the uncomfortable position of defending her lifestyle. She lives in a building where many other foreigners live so, by proximity, they all associate with one another. Leaving there for the bus, I felt fortunate - for once - to live in isolation from other foreigners who could drop by on a whim, or who can gossip about me. I seem to have more control over whom I socialize with. Even though I’m very lonely here, and I want to have a good network of strong friendships, I like having the power to choose them and I would rather be isolated than be surrounded by people whose personalities and social habits wear me down.

When we first moved here I thought there would be this great sense of community among all the foreigners, this sort of camaraderie from the fact that we are all outsiders uniting us. I was disappointed to learn that that isn’t the case; rather, it’s simply that the pool of potential friends is smaller and the chances of finding one cool person among all the weirdos that much more improbable.

I didn’t swim. Lost the oomph while absorbing someone else’s hyper-vocality.