extremes

2/9/10 room, post shower- Today I went with my host mom to her weekly English lesson. This week I was the lesson. I just talked while these five ladies listened intently. The teacher got along with English very well; the others held their own.

At this point I was not surprised when the conversation turned to my skin, hair, and eyes. I finally told them it was very strange for me to have people compliment my appearance. One lady said it was because they were fascinated by it. My host mom piped up saying that for them white skin like mine is so beautiful, mostly because it is really rare. Again she launched into the story of my ethnical heritage. She even laid her hand next to mine saying, “See, your skin is white and mine is yellowish right? That’s why we think yours is so pretty.” She said this as if it were the most logical thing in the world and as though she thought I should be able to understand this oh so natural reaction.

All I could think while I dutifully studied our two hands was how arbitrary a system it was. White? Yellow? Who came up with and assigned these ludicrously simple terms to the hugely complex and varying hues of human skin? So to them “white” is rare and “yellow” is ordinary. I guess it’s true, here in Asia, and on the global scale, Caucasians are the minority.

The ease with which they use the terms is weird for me too. In America, at least in my experience, it is more or less taboo to talk about Asians in terms of being “yellow”. If I used the word “yellow” in the same sentence that was referencing Asiatic people I could be branded racist so fast it would make your head spin. No such limitation here.

It just keeps coming up, this subject. It has come up more times in the past month here than it has in my entire life back home. It’s like a fixation here.

At first I thought it was silly. But who am I to judge? If they want to attach some sort of value to something because it is rare I guess it is their prerogative. I will never feel comfortable with so much attention though.

I guess in America we are all so paranoid about past prejudices and preoccupied with being PC that we limit ourselves and make talking about one’s ancestry uncomfortable. That’s the other extreme, and it is extremes that are not good, in either direction.

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At around lunchtime my host mom and I went to a restaurant with a friend of hers. It was a cool place where you get to cook the food yourself on a grill in front of you. I have no idea what it was called, what we made, but it was yummy. :d It seemed like coleslaw with egg, shrimp, and tentacles in it fried like a patty on the grill. Weird and delicious, just my style.

We went to the friend’s house for coffee and tea afterwards (coffee for them, tea for me) and my host mom talked about my family’s origins again, explaining that I have German blood so I’m light colored and have blue eyes and… I think she is going to tell every person we meet from now on. It’s cool. Her audience is always fascinated by it.

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I studied/worked on stuff (FUN) until dinner. It was curry. I mentioned in a previous entry that after my first encounter with curry I was not crazy about it but that I was willing to give it another shot. My host mom’s curry was way better than the stuff at the Curry House on campus. :d

After dinner we had anko (red bean paste confections) and made matcha (we whisked powdered green tea in hot water until it was all frothy). I LOVE this country. The food and tea alone is enough to make me want to live here forever.

Speaking of tea I will now read Curisoi-tea until I pass out from exhaustion. If I could read more than a few chapters a night before succumbing to sleep I could probably get through this book faster. It’s bloody entertaining though, at any speed. (23:19)