Sunday, June 6, 2010

You haven't REALLY lived in Seoul until strangers yell at you on the street

Like I mentioned before the Spring never happened and we are already rapidly plunging into Summer and its heat and humidity. The sudden weather change has left me in a dilemma of what to wear. I've been happily wearing dresses with tights, but now with the high temps and humidity ratios, tights are not a pleasant option but neither is getting stared at for not wearing them.
The other day I bought a couple of dresses at one of the underground malls, these places are awesome in the sense that I can buy three dresses and a cardigan for $35, but less than ideal when there are no dressing rooms. I've gotten pretty accurate at holding the dress up to myself and judging the length appropriateness but not always. One of the dresses was... a little short when I tried it on at home...but it was at an inappr-pro debateable length. It's not THAT short... errrr?
This morning I woke up to a coffeeless house and I couldn't quite think straight as I retried my outfit. I studied the dress in the mirror... maybe if I wear the cardigan with it! Tights? No tights? No tights got me down one flight of stairs until I felt like I was walking around without pants on and I ran back up to my studio.
I took the train to work and I was walking through the station feeling uncomfortably aware of myself, why was she looking at me? Is it because of the dress length (*Note to people back home: the average dress length in Korea is super super short compared to back home) Then a crazy ranting man that was waving an empty soda bottle in the air started directing his indiscriminate shouting at me, in Korean so I didn't know what he was saying. A;; I heard was "happa" or what I had thought was "heffer".
I asked one of the Korean tutors at work, "what does heffer, or haffa mean in Korea?"
Korean tutor, "not haffa, happa. it means "you're easy".."
Well I guess that answers the question about my dress being inappropriate.