西洋오랑캐

This past week I had to do something very difficult. My wife and I began the process of obtaining a visa so she could immigrate to the land of Big Macs, Starbucks, and Oprah.

For those of you who have never immigrated or brought anyone to America following the letter of the law, have no idea how much work it is.
The first step involved me filling out a bunch of papers that had the same information again and again. Time consuming? Yes. Overly difficult? Aside from attempting to write out akwardly arranged Korean address in an American format (and Roman letters) no, it wasn’t difficult at all.

The next stemp was the tricky one. I had to schedule an appointment to hand in my reams of paper (which in my understanding were only kind of a pre-application). Now the only way one can schedule such an appointment is to send them an email…send an email to an email address ending in dhs.gov (dhs = Department of Homeland Security). This is the US government, not Real Player or some random message board, so I therefore had to use the real email address. Sorry Mr. Harder, no aliases this time.

Additionally I think that I tend to be a tad sarcastic when I sit down and start typing, which is definately not something I wanted to be when dealing with my good friends at DHS. So, I seriously sat and stared at my monitor for like ten minutes before I was able to to write:

Dear Madam or Sir,

I am an American citizen married to a Korean national. I would to like to schedule an appointment in order to file form I-130 and begin the visa process for my wife. If it is possible, I would like to schedule this appointment sometime next week. I thank you for your time.

-Wyatt Dunn

Nothing rude. Nothing that might be taken as a threat. No water. Just a totally boring email.

The next day there was a response in my mailbox informing me that my appointment had been scheduled at the US Embassy for Monday, August 14th at 9:30 am. Talk about prompt…and accomodating.

So on the morning of the 14th, Jinhui and I trekked to the embassy in Seoul. God I hate riding the red (in reality orange) bus at rush hour! But for the wife, I’m willing to suffer through it. And in reality, the bus ride was the most difficult part of the day. We arrived a little after 9:00, and after a short wait, our papers were being processed.

But before that, I just want to holler about how miserable a lot of Americans look and act. Most of the Koreans there just looked nervous, but the majority of the Americans accompanying them looked so pissed off. Yes, beaucracy is a pain in the ass, but pouting and / or yelling at your wife isn’t going to make it easier. And also to the dude that got pissed off for getting to the counter and not having the right papers filled out: don’t get pissed off at other people and start swearing and making a scene…next time read the damn instructions they give you when you schedule an appointment, or read them online.

Anyhow, aside from having a family registry deemed too old (a problem solved with a quick trip to the district office…and a PC Bang so a translation could be typed up) out first step towards leaving Korea seems to have been successful. The people took all our paperwork, and our money and told us that they would email Jinhui with further instructions in 4 to 6 weeks. Hooray!!!

I currently get paid an insane sum of money to work at a 학원 one day a week. It’s a pretty low key affair. I go into a classroom for thirty minutes stints of speaking English at the children. For the most part they are fairly well behaved, but on occassion there are some jerks that need to be told that they are jerks. This is the tale of one such jerk. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

In one of the classes I teach there is this one pre-teen girl who just rubs me the wrong way. She doesn’t do her work. She’s rude. She never attempts to speak English during class. And her voice is annoying as hell. Basically she’s a pain in the ass.

So on a certain day of a certain month of a certain year (that year being 2006), I was at the 학원 attempting to impart knowledge of the English language upon this particular class with the annoying pre-teen girl. During the class I had to stop what I was doing and tell her to stop speaking and put away her comic book twice in the first 3 minutes of class. She still was being disruptive, so it was time to give her the boot.

Now on this particular day she happened to be wearing a scouting uniform of some sorts. Girl Scouts? Nope. The mysterious Space Scouts that existed in Goyang-shi that I never knew what they actually did? No. She was wearing a Cub Scout uniform.

Here’s a little known Wyatt Dunn factoid: I too was in Cub Scouts for a couple of years. I don’t remember much from my days as a scout. I have a vague recollection of constantly doing leather work in some kid’s basement, and a scout leader bellowing “Shit!” while attempting to capture a frog while on a camping trip, and also that I would have rather stayed home and played Dragon Warrior than go to Cub Scouts most nights. The only other thing I recall, and this is with 100% certainty, was Cub Scouts seemed to have a “No Girls Allowed” policy.

Anyhow I seriously digressed there. Back to a classroom in South Korea circa 2006 as opposed to Greg Rosenthal’s basement circa 1988. I turned to this annoying girl and proclaimed, “Listen Boy Scout, I’m not a hippie and this isn’t ‘Do what you feel time!’ It’s English class and I’m your teacher, so sit down and be quiet, or just go home.”

Now you’d think I declared war on this girl for she stood up, and like that Four Non-Blondes song screamed at the top of her lungs…only it wasn’t “What’s going on!” that was bellowed, it was, “FUCK YOU!” I left the classroom and came back with the biggest guns I had at my disposal: the 실잘님. The 실장님 is all about me for some reason and has my back in most cases, so he took the girl out of the room and she did not return for the remainder of class. At the end of class she was brought before me and handed me the most awesome apology note ever:

I tried my damnedest not to laugh out loud at the note, even so my response kind of came out like, “Ppppthh…Oh ok….he he…just don’t do it again…HAHAHA!!! Yo lookit this note! MWAHAHAHA!!!”

Last night…or more correctly this morning, Jinhui and I trekked over to our local movie theater and checked out the latest Korean blockbuster, 괴물 (which for some reason is known as “The Host” in English). I knew very little about the film before checking it out, aside from the fact that there was a monster in it and the dude from 살인의 추억 was in it and had blonde hair.

Anyhow the film began, and in the first scene of the film we see the reason for the titular monster’s existance. Some cold-hearted bastard of a USFK scientist is telling his Korean lackey to dump a bunch of chemicals down the drain in the sink. The lackey’s protests that the chemicals will go into the Han River go unheard and we later see the lackey dumping bottle after bottle down the drain and a slow pan of a ton more empty bottles.

“Oh no, is this film going to be totally anti-American?” I thought to myself.

But it wasn’t. I mean the fact that aside from the monster being the result of the American Forces, the film focused very little on the Americans. Additionally when the monster first attacked there was a scene in which the only person to attack the monster or attempt to save people (aside from the main character) was a white guy…which is pretty safe to assume was playing an American in the film. All in all, it’s quite possible that the original Godzilla (which this film should at least tip it’s hat too) had more anti-Americanism than this film. More than bad political elogies, the movie focused more on fairly disfunctional family coming together against an incredible obstacle.

Anyhow I thought the film was pretty outstanding. Unlike a lot of other giant monster movies that have a lot of boring build-up, this film had instant giant monster gratification. Within the first ten minutes of the film, the monster was killing crap. That’s what I’m talking about! When I see a giant monster movie (Godzilla, 불가사리, ect.) I want to see a monster wrecking everything. I don’t want to see “scientists” sitting around talking about how they can stop the monster. Here we had very little of that nonsense.

From a technical stand point the film was very well made. Casting was on point. Far too often do shows and movies not only here, but in America as well, cast way too good looking twenty year olds to play middle school or high school students. This film finally got it right in casting a dumpy, middle school aged girl to play…a middle aged girl.

And for a last bit, computer animation in Korean films has gotten much better in the short time I’ve lived in the country. Save for the very last scene featuring the monster, the animation is top notch (a far cry from the computer animated airplanes in Welcome to Domakgol).

In conclusion if you like giant monsters, the Han River, and moltov cocktails, check out 괴물!!