The more I travel, the more I realize how strange the US really is. One of the biggest points of confusion between Americans and people from other countries is the subject of heritage. People who are not familiar with US customs are always extremely confused by it. To them, heritage is a subject of national pride while to Americans it is more of a way to describe the way you look. My surname is German, but no living person in my family speaks German or celebrates the customs. I do not identify with Germany in the slightest. When I say “my dad is German, but was born in the US” this is always met with a resounding “what???”. My German ancestors immigrated to Canada, my grandfather was born in Canada and illegally moved to the US where all 11 of his children were born. It has been quite a long time since anyone in my family lived in Germany, and yet we still say my dad’s side of the family is German. This makes absolutely no sense to people from other countries because to them it is more about nationalism. Even more confusing to other people is how we count nationality in percentages and fractions. “What the hell do you mean when you say you are this% that?” My mom is the ultimate in this category as somewhere along the line a German married a Polish person who married an Irishman who married a Cherokee Indian. This is one thing that is so different in the US as opposed to Korea or other countries – no one cares who you marry. Here, it is rare for a Korean to marry a foreigner, and by older people it is still looked down upon. People don’t seem to appreciate how cute Eurasian babies are. Even in dating, international relationships are not that common. While in general they are not common, you will more frequently see a Korean girl with a foreign boy than the opposite. Korean girls love foreigners – especially tall foreigners. Even guys who would not be considered attractive in the US are with some of the most beautiful Korean girls. It’s very strange. Korean men love meeting foreigners, but for many of them, we are “too beautiful to date”. Now you say: what? They love being introduced to us and introducing us to their friends, but that’s all.

Christina told me about cultural differences between Korean girls and Japanese girls while going to the Renoir exhibit on Saturday, and I thought is was very interesting. In the US we kind of lump all Asian people together as Koreans lump foreigners together here, so I was interested in learning about her perspective as a Korean. I guess a lot of Korean guys like dating Japanese girls because they are less opinionated than Korean girls. They will often agree with you, even if they do not agree, and are kind of like pretty dolls. I would think this would get confusing, but that is probably because I am an opinionated person. Korean women are more feministic and tend to make the man work harder in initiating a relationship. Meanwhile, Chinese women are usually not as well manicured as Japanese and Korean women. Looks are not as important to their culture.

From living with my Chinese roommate, I’ve recognized how different the Chinese language is from Japanese and Korean. When my roommate is speaking to her family or friends, it sounds like a rollercoaster. Her inflection is up and down and up and down – it’s constantly changing. Korean is monotone when compared with both Chinese and Japanese. When speaking English, your voice goes up at the end of a question while in Korean there are certain words to designate that it is a question. This is one of the reasons it is so hard for me to understand when my mentor is asking me a question and he must often say “I am asking” after I do not answer him. Japanese uses lot higher pitches than Chinese or Korean, and if you do not use the high pitches, it can completely change the meaning of what you are saying. For example, saying “it is delicious” without the correct inflection would be interpreted as saying it was horrible. From what I understand, Korean and Japanese share a very similar grammatical structure. What it would take an American to learn in a year, a Korean could learn in 3 months. It would probably be comparable to a native English speaker learning another romance language. Chinese is different as it is a pictorial language, and even though Koreans learn Chinese characters, they usually cannot speak it. Vietnamese is also completely different and most Koreans find their names extremely difficult to pronounce