Kimchi, not for me

Melissa is sitting here beside me as I type this. We were talking about the open house earlier and she asked if I had blogged yet. At the time I had not, but I did admit that after the most horrible parts, I was sitting on the church pew, mentally shaking my head at myself and thinking of the most appropriate adjectives to use to describe the whole experience.

I changed out of my pants at the last minute and into a skirt (with pants underneath) and put on my New Balance shoes...thinking - well, thinking that they were the only closed-toed shoes I own here, and mistakenly thought we'd be at the school and I'd be wearing the school-slippers. Then I put on my huge ugly (but warm) fleece, thinking I'd have time to change into my light pink jacket. Well...the open house was at the church beside the school (therefore I was wearing the New Balance shoes) and got there just at 10:10 (which means I didn't have time to get my light pink jacket). So there I was, skirt (with pants, but that was SO not the worst part), these clunky huge, rather hideous at this point (they've taken quite a beating) shoes, and a fleece that makes me look like one of those people so fat they have to be lifted out of their houses with a crane. It just went from bad to worse - we thought we were only going to have to stand up in our respective pews and bow, but we actually had to walk up in front of everyone. And the Korean Kindergarten teachers got to walk up in a big continuous line, but we (lucky native-English speaking dogs) walked up one at a time. I nearly tripped (but recovered), was overly aware of the fact that I had on the equivalent of clown shoes and looked like I was the size of a house. Add insult to injury: as I was walking up, Jason (the native-speaker that is my boss in some way) was smiling at me, glanced down at my shoes, changed his smile to a smirk, and shook his head at me. Then Melissa walked up, and stood on the other side of Jason rather than beside me - for the very good reason of not wanting to block the teachers behind her - but it irrationally made me feel more like a big fat loser. Then I missed our cue to bow (not sure if we even had one...the entire service was in Korean, except for when Ms. Lee called our names for us to walk up there), so I bowed late (and poorly - it's a skill that's not easy to acquire). Then I wasn't paying good enough attention and had to be tapped by one of the Kindergarten teachers to tell me to follow Mr. Moon back to our seats. And Korea is quite an appearances-driven culture - I'd say more so than the States. Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that they are a the-right-image-driven culture. So all of this is far more humiliating and worthy of inducing something akin to self-hatred than it may sound.

After we sat down, and I finished internally cussing myself out, I just repeated the verse in 1 Corinthians about how God chose the foolish things in this world to shame the wise. I don't think it was meant like this, but I've come to terms with the reality that smooth, suave, graceful, and eloquent are all traits I lack - but God's grace has turned me around and cleaned me up substantially - which does relate to the point I'm trying to make, but I fear I'm doing a poor job of explaining it. Whatever.