Okay, I take back what I said on
December 15, 2002.
Korean girls aren't fucked up. At least, not all of them.
Eun Jung called me up last night, and asked me if I wanted to go out with her. I said okay, jumped in a taxi and met her near her apartment in Pung Deok Dong. We went to our usual spot, a little bar part of a chain called "Tu-da-ri." We drank a couple of beers there, then she wanted to go to another bar near my house, called Elvis, where I took her on Saturday.
A bit of background, for those who didn't read my December 15 day log: I've been seeing this girl for some time now. I considered it dating, and she seemed to be showing me signs of interest. Saturday night, I got kind of drunk and told her that I'd fallen for her, and asked her how she felt about me. She said (this whole conversation is happening in Korean, by the way, and my Korean is not so great, so this is just my understanding of what she said): "Aren't you going to go back to Canada?" I told her that I might go back to Canada when I finished my contract, and I might not. I said that right now, I don't have much reason to go back, nor to I have much reason to stay. I said that if I found a reason to stay longer, I would probably stay, and that having a girlfriend here would be reason enough. She said she didn't want me making any decisions like that on her account, and that we should just be friends. At least, I think that's what she said. She then gave me some sort of long speech that I pretended to understand, but really couldn't follow at all.
Fast forward back to last night. We're at Elvis. She asks me if I'm really going to stay in Korea. I say that I'd like to, but I really don't know what my plans for the future are. Then the conversation moves on to something else. Eventually, we've both finished our beers, but don't want any more. She doesn't seem to want to leave quite yet, so we sit around. Finally, there's a lull in the conversation and she tells me she wants to know how I really feel about her. "Chin-gu?" ("Friends?"), "A-ni-myeon i-sang?" ("If not, more?"). I told her "more." She pointed at a heart that someone had carved into the surface of the bar, and looked at my questioningly. I nodded. I asked her how she felt about me. This time, I think she said that we could probably be more than friends (she drew a picture with the word for friend and an arrow going from there to the word "yeon-in," which I looked up when I got home, and my dictionary says means "lover, sweetheart"), but we should take it slow and see how it goes.
So, rather than leading me on, as I thought she had been doing, I think she's just scared, which is totally understandable. I really like her, but have some reservations about getting into a relationship myself, mainly due to the fact that she's Catholic and I'm agnostic, and she seems very innocent. The reason she said she just wanted to be friends on Saturday night was probably that I was drunk, so she wasn't sure if she could take seriously anything I said about possibly staying in Korea.
Meanwhile, I'm going to be getting on a plane tomorrow to go back to Canada for Christmas vacation. It's coming at a good time... I think both of us need a chance to sort out our feelings a bit.