My stint at this particular branch was to last a week, but I knew that I couldn’t tolerate the childish insults that made a mockery of my appearance for four more days. So the next day, when my first group of children entered the classroom, I was ready. Like clockwork, the laughter and uncomfortable whispering ensued. I slammed a book on my desk.
“I’m fat! Okay?” The students looked confused. I went to the board and drew a small eye, with the angular epicanthic fold, and then another that was bigger, with the entire iris visible and long eyelashes that curled upward.
Under the first eye I wrote “Bad.” Under the second I wrote “Good.”
“Is this true?” I asked them. They looked too scared to move. I softened a little. “It’s okay,” I said. “Tell me—is this true?” Still nothing. I added more to the small eye: “Korean” and another to the big eye: “American.”
“Which one is good? Which one is bad?” I asked. When I put it that way, the students seemed to understand and were remarkably well behaved and respectful for the rest of the class. The next day, the kid who’d called me a pig brought me candy.
Although floating brought new faces, places, and experiences into my daily routine, one thing had not changed: my weight. I’d had the fantasy that moving to a country with a healthier cuisine would melt the pounds off me, but this hadn’t happened. I ate far less in Korea than I did in the States, partly because a lot of Western staples weren’t available at the neighborhood markets in walking distance of our home. If you wanted bread or cheese, you had to go to the E-Mart (the first-rate Korean equivalent of Walmart), and if you wanted Western snacks, a trip to Costco was in order. It was easiest to eat out, especially at the cheap twenty-four-hour restaurants that were squeezed into each block. Mostly, I ate traditional Korean meals like jjigae and bibimbap, always with white rice, kimchi, and an array of other small side dishes for a whopping four dollars. Special treats included the sushi place a few blocks down from our apartment, a Subway obscurely tucked into a nearby neighborhood, and a pizza place a few streets over from the branch where Eric still worked.
Since eating a mostly Korean diet had not caused me to drop any weight, I again took matters into my own hands. I went to the grocery store and bought microwaveable rice bowls (one cup each), yogurt, and lots of veggies to eat raw, and then embarked on a near-starvation diet. Each day, I counted my calories, making sure they never totaled more than 1,000. The 300-calorie cup of rice was my favorite part of the day, and I sometimes inhaled it so fast I’d get painful air bubbles in my chest, like the kind that landed me in the emergency room in college. My plan, though unhealthy, was working. I was losing weight. I wrote an email to my dad:
Today I ate 2 hard-boiled eggs (160/10), a bagel with low fat cheese (240/2), a kiwi ( 46 /.5), a cup of cherry tomatoes (30 /0), and some tuna (170/.5) for a total of 646 calories and 13 grams of fat. I will probably eat something else because I think under 700 calories is probably too low to be healthy.
My father responded:
I am really getting excited about your diet—maybe this is the time you will make some real progress toward your goal.
At the end of four weeks I had lost twenty pounds, and my pants almost fell off my hips each time I bounded up and down the stairs at work. When you weigh almost 300 pounds, losing twenty doesn’t make that much of a visible difference, but Eric could tell. While he was supportive, he campaigned nightly for me to have “just a bite” of the ice cream he was eating, but I steadfastly refused. And I noticed something else in his voice when he commented on my diminishing waistline.
“It’s weird to think about you losing weight,” he told me. “I feel like everyone will see you how I see you now—that you’re perfect.”
“You’re not afraid I’ll leave you, are you?” I teased.
But he answered seriously. “Yes.”
I’d taken the floating position, quit the hapkido classes, and started going out downtown with Daryl and my other friends without him so that we could have a bit of space, but I still felt restless. I started cherishing my time alone, and we avoided each other in our own apartment. I wrote in my journal (which I hid between my folded sweaters):
Lately I feel so nostalgic about the strangest things. I miss dancing and teaching in sweaty leotards for a minimum of three hours daily. I miss driving around in my Jaguar with Tal and blasting Tori. I miss the mountains. Sometimes, I wait for Eric to leave for hapkido and then I blast my music and dance on my hardwood floor and try to remember old ballet combinations. Sometimes it’s such a release that I cry. I’ve been writing a lot. I’ve been thinking a lot. I’ve thought some things that I’m not proud of, but it doesn’t stop my mind from spinning in the wrong direction from time to time. If I knew what I was worth, would I be here?
Having fun with my students (2009).
By “here” I didn’t mean in Korea—I meant in my relationship. I think both of us knew that it wasn’t working out, but neither of us knew how to get out, and maybe we felt more pressure to stay together because we were a million miles away from home.
Eric had scheduled a vacation, alone, to Malaysia, but at the last minute asked me to come along, and I agreed. We fought nearly the entire time we were there. I didn’t follow my diet that week, as it was nearly impossible while stuck on a small island called Langkawi, with only a Thai restaurant in walking distance of our hotel. When we returned to Korea, I’d gained almost ten pounds back. I chastised myself for being so weak. Soon after, we reached the end of our first contract and were sent home for a week of vacation.
Coming back to the States, hugging my family, meeting my best friend Heather’s newborn daughter, driving my car…it was all invigorating and blissful. But, revitalizing as it was, I never thought about not returning to the Land of the Morning Calm, and I even referred to my parents’ house as being in “the States” and to Korea as “home.” Even though I had only a week to enjoy all the comforts of home, my mother convinced me to go to lunch with my old next-door neighbor, whom I’d grown up calling “Granny Helen.” I hadn’t seen her in years, and Mom said she wasn’t in the best of health and really wanted to get together. We went to one of our favorite restaurants, and as she sat down in the booth across from me, I noticed how much older she looked.
“You’ve gotten so fat!” she spat. (I also noticed how much more blunt she’d become.) “You should be shot!”
When Eric and I returned to Daegu, we quickly and unceremoniously broke up, divided up our things (I got to keep Henchi, thank God), and moved into new apartments. The breakup that I had been afraid of for years—the pain, the uncertainty, the fear of never being loved again—was far easier than I thought, and it was as if an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Facing Korea wouldn’t be as easy without a partner to fall back on, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it.
Meanwhile, there was another change happening on the professional front. I’d floated for a teacher at Young Jae (the “genius” school), and the Korean manager took note of my hard work and enthusiasm and offered me a permanent position. I was beyond thrilled to accept this offer, as most of the students at Young Jae were fluent in English and the curriculum was far more engaging than anything I’d taught before.
My Young Jae students were charming and brilliant, both in academics and in life. In a country where I was so often met with ignorance, these children were an overdue delight and my saving grace. It was my students at Young Jae that made me truly fall in love with Korea, because I fell in love with them. All of them were, without a doubt, smarter than I could ever hope to be, and they constantly surprised me with their detailed understanding of nuanced topics. One day, as I was assigning their homework, I decided to scrap the writing prompt.
“Hmm…” I said. “Let’s come up with something better.”
A student piped up, “Teacher, how about differing opinions on transgenders and where they should use the bathroom to feel safe.”
I nearly fell
out of my chair. For growing up in a culture that staunchly believes in fan death (the belief that sleeping in a closed room with a running fan can kill you by sucking the oxygen out of the room—I’m not kidding; all of the fans have self-timers to save you from certain death), my students were forward-thinking as hell, and I felt privileged to be their teacher. They were empathetic, too. Once, when a student sensed I was having a bad day, he gave me his cloth pencil case with cats on it, simply because he knew I liked it.
While I was busy enjoying my new freedom from a long-term relationship, and focusing on a new job, I was surprised to find that Eric settled easily into the role of my friend. We stayed in touch, he hung up framed paintings in my fifth-floor walkup, and I babysat his new cat when he went out of town. It was an unlikely turn of events, but it was a welcome one. We even decided to take a trip to Vietnam with Daryl and his boyfriend, Tyler, just the four of us.
I have major wanderlust, and visiting any new place is a thrilling adventure for me, but unfortunately this vacation wasn’t the kind of relaxing break I was craving. Just walking the streets in Vietnam can make you feel vulnerable; there is the typical exaggerated reaction at seeing a fat foreigner, but coupled with this is persistent barking from street vendors who swear they have “big size!” Of course, they didn’t have a size big enough for me, so I was pumped to hear that tailors in Hoi An (our first vacation stop) were a big draw. The boys got measured for knockoff North Face jackets and three-piece suits. I, on the other hand, just wanted five or so cotton T-shirts in different colors, customized to fit my body perfectly. The seamstresses furrowed their brows when they measured me and guffawed at having to fasten two measuring tapes together to fit my hips. I was too used to this behavior to be anything other than mildly annoyed by it, but when the seamstresses quoted me a price equivalent to that of Daryl’s three-piece suit, I was vexed. I rubbed the thin cotton material of my shirt between my fingers and tried to barter in simple English, but got nowhere.
“So much fabric!” she shot back, shrugging.
I was indignant and refused to buy anything, stalking back down the block to our hotel, seething under the Vietnamese sun. I sat on our first-level patio overlooking the pool and waited for the boys to get back. A girl who had been swimming emerged from the water and walked toward me, taking a seat in the empty chair beside me. I found this odd, considering she was on my private patio, but gave her an awkward smile. Her eyes darted back and forth. Something was so off about her. Saying she made me uneasy would be a gross understatement.
Out of nowhere, she stared at me intensely and said, in a Scottish accent, “You’re so fat. You’re gonna have a heart attack. You’re gonna die.”
“Please leave,” I said. She glared at me and didn’t budge. I went inside my room and locked the door, then reported her behavior to the front desk. The clerk said they’d been having various problems with her throughout her stay, and I couldn’t shake the bizarre vibe she gave off. Later that night, Daryl, Tyler, Eric, and I were swimming when she appeared poolside holding a large rock from the stone arrangements in the grass. She hurled it at my head and it landed in the water in front of me with a loud plunk.
Soon, my parents made the trip to Korea for a visit. For the past couple of years I had been telling them about the harassment I suffered on a daily basis, but when they got there, nothing out of the ordinary seemed to happen. It even occurred to me that they might think I had embellished the stories of people laughing and snorting at me. I took them to the usual spots in my neighborhood, and even invited them to sit in on my classes at Young Jae. After the first day, my mother hugged me close with tears in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered into my ear.
“For what?” I asked.
“For how awful everyone is to you.”
Confused, I asked her what she was talking about. She and my father described the looks and snickers that had been trailing us all day. I hadn’t even noticed anyone looking at me at all. I’d become immune to the things that shocked my parents.
Just behind my apartment building there was a Jeep dealership, and one day my dad found himself striking up a conversation with the owner. Naturally, my dad spoke no Korean and the man spoke little English, but my dad communicated to him that his daughter lived in the apartments behind the dealership and that he was visiting from America. The owner told my dad that he knew me (presumably from seeing me come and go) and gestured wildly with his arms outstretched, evoking an image of my size. “Always eating!” he said to my father, miming shoving food in his face. My dad didn’t tell me that story until months after I’d moved home, but it bothered him to his core.
The day after my parents left to go back to North Carolina, I was walking the half mile to work when a well-dressed man in his thirties swerved dangerously close to me on his bicycle.
“Pig-uh!” He sneered and spit at me. He missed, but I was enraged and ran after him (a futile attempt for me, especially because he was on a bike) and screamed the Korean equivalent of “motherfucker” at him until my voice was hoarse and he had disappeared.
A couple weeks later, on that same street, I was confronted with the worst thing that ever happened to me while I was in Korea.
There was an establishment called Hof ’N’ Joy that served beer and liquor and some appetizer type dishes, and we often went there after work to relax. This particular night, my friends and I shared a long table with some Korean teachers from our branch. I was seated in between my friends Daryl and Ian. Toward the back of the restaurant there was a drunk Korean man sitting with two friends who kept complaining that the flash from pictures we were taking was hurting his eyes. He got into a heated argument with our female Korean friend and eventually the owner told him he had to leave. As he left with his friends, he locked eyes with me, and I didn’t lower my gaze. He muttered something in Korean. I was seated with my back to the door just a few feet away when he suddenly burst back inside and started punching me in the head. Before I could even think, I was on my feet as Daryl and Ian wrestled him to the floor. I’d never been in a physical altercation before, and adrenaline was surging through me. I screamed at him in English and one of the guys told the owner to call the police.
Within moments, the police arrived and the man retreated to his knees in a full and complete bow, repeating “Mianhamnida” (I’m sorry) over and over. I told him to go fuck himself and went to the police station to file a report. The next week, a friend brought me to a bigger police station to give my official statement with a government translator. At work, my manager pulled me aside and revealed that the man had contacted her to apologize. She asked if I would consider dropping the charges against him because he could lose his career and reputation. I told her no, that I wanted to handle this the same way I would if it had happened in the States. She pressed me further, pointing out that he was drunk and stressed-out.
“Then he needs to learn not to assault unsuspecting foreign women,” I told her. Later, I was told that if we went to court, my case would most certainly be dropped, he would suffer no repercussions, and that would be that. But if I agreed to drop the charges, he would pay me 300,000 won, roughly the equivalent of $300. After speaking with several Koreans I trusted, who all echoed the same sentiment, I figured it was better for him to suffer the consequence of having to pay me money rather than nothing at all, so I took his money.
It was the beginning of my third year in Daegu, and I was offered yet another promotion, which I accepted. My new job was in the editing department, where I would work with the foreign and Korean teams developing and editing curriculum. The editing department operated on a different schedule than teaching, from nine in the morning to six at night, instead of four-thirty to ten-thirty P.M. Because of this, I started to lose touch with some of my friends, missing the post-work outings I’d come to enjoy so much. I began a nightly ritual of leaving work, stopping by the corner store to buy six tall boys, and going home to drink alone. I felt lonely and worn dow
n by the constant torment. I spent my nights drunk in my apartment with Henchi, chatting on the computer with my friends Heather and Ashley from home. It was time to evaluate where I was in my life and where I wanted to go. I had a successful career in Korea. I was respected by my students, coworkers, and superiors. I’d traveled to China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Japan, and Indonesia. I’d saved thousands of dollars. Why was I so miserable? As my father wrote to me in an email:
You are not giving yourself the credit you deserve. You have accomplished a lot, but you want to accomplish so much more which is what has got you second-guessing yourself. Look at what is important to you and start working on those things.
As I thought about my passions, three things stuck out to me: dance, psychology (my minor in college), and helping others.
“I wish there was, like…dance therapy,” I told my friend Heather.
With my friend Jeonghui. I weighed 280 pounds (2009).
Heather responded with a link from Google. Apparently, dance therapy was a thing. I immediately filled out applications for the few graduate programs in the country that offered it. She also told me that her husband, Jared, was working out with a local trainer in Greensboro and successfully losing weight. I knew that I wanted to make some big changes in my life and would need a plan in place for whenever I decided to leave Korea, so I jotted down the trainer’s name for safekeeping. Around this time, the Jeep dealership behind my apartment closed down and the building was renovated into a Burger King. For the foreigners in my neighborhood, this was a pretty big deal, as Western food wasn’t the easiest thing to come by. (Several of us had even taken a special trip to Seoul to wait in line for forty minutes when a Taco Bell opened—something, as a fat woman, I never would have done if I didn’t have ten skinny friends who begged me to go along.) Having a Burger King so close by was tempting; late at night, the smell of cheeseburgers and French fries wafted through my open bedroom window, and finally, after it had been open for a week, I gave myself a “fat-girls-are-allowed-to-be-seen-in-fast-food-restaurants” pep talk and sailed through the double doors ready to satisfy my grumbling stomach. Just in front of the counter there were several guys milling about and I asked in English, “Are you in line?” I immediately wondered why I had done that, as I never approached a Korean in English first, but one of the guys responded in perfect English, “No, no. You go ahead.”
I Do It with the Lights On Page 10