"Where Are You Going From?"
Pork Restaurant: Outdoor Bathrooms. Located two blocks from my officetel.
After taking the photo above I passed by a parked car with a man sitting inside. As I passed by the window he said "hello" - in English - and I returned the greeting in Korean. Since he had been able to see me taking the picture I thought it was merely a polite way to mention his presence, but just before I passed the rear windows of his car he added an "excuse me." Returning to the front passenger window resulted in the man asking me, "Where are you going from?"
Now, my Korean probably sounds like that at times, so by no means am I going to get on his case about the confusing grammar. After some back and forth on the subject it came to light that he was curious about my national origins. His guess was that I had come to Korea from Germany. Of the last seven people to have guessed about my citizenship, two thought I was Russian, four have suggested Germany, and one person was unsure whether to guess Denmark or Ukraine. The geographical location of these places is very interesting, since my mother's ancestors were originally from Alsace before immigrating to farmland surrounding Odesa and, after that, the United States. My mother is the first person from her family to grow up speaking English as a first language over Alsatian; I am the first person from her branch of the family to grow up in a mono-lingual English household. I can't remember the last time someone guessed that I'm American.
In other news, I spent yesterday looking for a princess' tomb and instead stumbled across a shaman performing a funeral ceremony at a Buddhist temple. I did finally turn up the tomb -- after two days of searching. My day also involved watching a couple have sex. Before you jump to any hasty conclusions: they were frogs.