OT: CRex-Part 3

Submitted by CRex on

History:  This was restored in June 2012.  They were pulled down for awhile because some of my girlfriend (now wife's) students were reading these and figured out who she was.  Now that she is no longer teaches here, they return.  If you're reading this post 2012 be sure to go posbang M-Wolverine for having a copy of these for me to restore.  

So you might be asking yourself, why the hell is this guy posting this big
long wall of text? If you are, I advise you read Part
1<http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/ot-awkwardly-met-future-laws>and if you
make it through that, Part
2 <http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/ot-korean-facebook-stalking>, then read the
below. They're long, you've been warned.

If you're just here to see Part 3, it's below. Enjoy my pain.

Sorry for not posting any updates, I’ve been a bit busy. The worst/weirdest
thing over the past few days must have been the “exotic food” talk my
girlfriend got on Thursday, at least for her. She’d gone out to walk the
dogs, mostly an excuse to get outside and escape everyone. I was off at work
and her grandparents were checking out our apartment. Her maternal
grandfather had asked her point blank “Why is there only one bed in here?
You’re not married.” Anyway her mom decided to come along on the walk. As
they’re walking her mom launches into this really tortured metaphor, which
I’ll paraphrase:

“You know honey, it’s normal to be attracted to exotic things. Sometimes
when I want something exotic I’ll get some Japanese food or some Mexican
food because it is different and exotic, but at the end of the day I find
eating a nice Korean meal is more pleasant and easier on the stomach.”

The moral to the story is, date within your own race, it’s easier on the
stomach.

Over the past few days we’ve hit up Saigon Garden, Blue Karaoke (since
everything there is in Korean) and the Taste of Taiwan Night Market over in
the East Hall on Friday. If you didn’t go on Friday, you missed a great
event. Five dollars for dinner, three snack tables, a dessert table and
skill games. I stole the show in the chopsticks challenge. You had to move
metal marbles with your chopsticks and I pretty much destroyed all comers,
including the gf’s father. He got 4 marbles, I got 11. Finished the night
off at Momo Tea playing Go Stop, a traditional Korean card game. Her
grandmother dominated all comers in that.

Things went well, on Thursday it was dinner and karaoke with some Korean
friends, including a married couple that teaches here. They kept the
conversation focused on all the various Korean cultural things that go down
around here. Ranging from the grocery stores to the film and lecture series
that Center for Korean Studies runs. Sadly the Korean Students Association
event for this month is bowling (I assume traditional Korean bowling in
Ypsi, complete with rednecks one lane over drinking Bud Light and watching
NASCAR, just like in Seoul), but the Taste of Taiwan thing made a pretty
good substitute. To be fair, she’s not active in KSA (we neglected to tell
her parents that), so I have no idea what their events are like.

The biggest drama point on Thursday / Friday was the grandfathers. They were
amusing themselves by testing my knowledge of the Korean language. One of
them would ask me a question, using weird syntax and big words and then as I
was figuring out what he said, the other one would ask me something. Then
they’d stare at me like I was an idiot while I trigged to figure what just
got said. I normally had the second speaker to repeat what he said. After
this did this a few times my gf got up in their faces and called them out
for doing it. She went on a little rant about how their poor manners
reflected poorly on her. She even managed to sneak in a little comment about
how my family never tested her knowledge of English and it embarrasses her
that her family has worse manners than mine. I thought things were about to
go nuclear at that point, but her grandparents backed down. They didn’t
apologize, but they toned it down and most importantly they backed down and
didn’t argue with her. In private her father later apologized to me and said
he’d speak to them about it as well.

After doing some Asian culture on Thursday and Friday, we moved over to
embrace some American culture, namely hockey. Saturday during the day was
introducing them to my parents, everyone walking on eggshells a bit type of
thing. Then we sat her family down and called up the DVRed Wings vs Wild
game and started to cover the basic concepts of hockey. We both play and her
parents had seen our six million sticks (give or take a few million)
littering the apartment. They were impressed by the speed of the game and
shocked by the hits. Right after a rather vicious one her mother looks over
at my gf and goes “You play that sport?!!?” We tried to explain there is a
major difference between our caliber of play and the caliber of the Red
Wings, but everyone seemed shocked my gf played and hadn’t been snapped in
half. My mother also didn’t help:

My mom: “I know, really. Everyime I see my son play I’m worried he’s going
to get hurt. You know he’s hurt his knee four times in seven years.”
Me: *glares at my mom, clears throat*
My mom: “He had to wear a brace one time and….”
Me: I’m going to the kitchen for a drink, anyone need a refill? *glares at
mom, my dad elbows her while everyone is looking at me*

*Bemidji State*
Things started to get interesting during the Bemidji State game. Started off
pretty tame, everyone in the living room, with some extra chairs dragged in,
a bunch of snacks ranging from Gimbap to Doritos. Gimbap is basically Korean
sushi, although the contents of it are normally cooked (Gim = dried seaweed,
Bap = steamed white rice, just add some pickled radish, seasoned beef, crab,
etc and you’re in business). Her family was impressed when I actually made
some all by myself.

The bad was the tequila came out. I’m a tequila whore, I have an entire
cupboard of tequilas (I love blue agave tequila the most, but they’re all
good). I actually used to have one cupboard for tequila and one cupboard for
non-tequila liquor. More recently the overflow from the tequila cupboard has
been invading the other liquor cupboard. I should build a little Alamo and
put the vodka and whiskey in it. So we mixed up some margaritas and figured
it might do well enough for everyone to have a mixed drink, just one mind
you, enough to be a bit of a social lubricant.

Well my girlfriend is kind of stressed out right now. I worked a full day on
Thursday and a half day on Friday, so she was alone in the shark tank with
the parents for those time periods and getting badgered. She’s running short
on sleep and just generally a little ball of nerves right now. On her way
into the kitchen to grab some more food, a soda, whatever I guess she was
also taking pulls off the fifth of tequila to calm down. By pulls I mean she
killed about a half a fifth of tequila in one and a half periods of hockey,
plus two margaritas.

Midway through the second period she comes back out from the kitchen, now
seating it tight, she was kind of squished in her mom and sister on one of
the couches before she got up. I had a crappy little Ikea chair all to
myself for most of the game. She walks over and plops down in my lap, puts
her arms around my neck and buries her face in my chest, since she tends to
get rather cuddly when drunk.

Now there is just silence in the room for a moment. Everyone is looking at
us, my parents quickly look away and over at the TV, although you can see my
dad’s expression going “Oh shit.” Lil Sis is raising up her camera phone,
but her mother swats it down. I’m looking at her like “Are you trying to get
me killed?”. She’s my girlfriend, so I can’t exactly shove her out of my lap
and be like “Go sit with your mom”, but her entire family is just staring at
us. Aside from hugging each other when we met after work, this is the most
PDA they’ve seen between us.

Now my girlfriend kind of lifts her head up, gives me a peck on the cheek
and goes “You’re kind of stiff, do you want a back massage later?” She then
grabs my left arm and pulls it around her shoulders, closes her eyes and
starts to drift off. She’s pretty out of it by this point. I figure “Well
it’s not like they can unsee this, full speed ahead.” So I spend the rest of
the Bemidji game with her using me as a pillow. She’s like a little angel
when she sleeps, a little angel that started drooling on my shirt with 8
minutes to go in the third. She slept through a lot of it, something she’d
normally never do during a Michigan sporting event, but like I said she
hasn’t been getting much sleep recently. On Wednesday night we were up to 4
am. I think she actually faked falling asleep because she felt guilty since
I wouldn’t go sleep as long she was up and I had work the next day. Once I
dropped off I think she got up and went out for a run with the dogs at like
5 am. Then came home, crashed and was up to see me out the door at 7 am and
then to hang out with her family.

So after the Bemidji game, her family said their goodnights and got out of
their rather quickly. I think they just had no idea how to act to their
daughter behaving that way, drunk in their presence and rather direct in
contact with me. It’s changed and PDA is more common in urban Korea now, but
with the parent’s and grandparent’s generations, you didn’t even hold the
hand of your wife in public.

*The Dong Punch of Dong Punches*
Since the weather on Sunday was so terrible. We were restricted to indoor
activities, we had a nice long conversation about my dad’s car. Her family
was impressed by it and seemed to take it as a positive sign of my family’s
economic standing. So my dad and her dad talked cars and got to know each
other. We also prepped for the Miami of Ohio game in style. My dad brought
over a big party tray of wings, which were a hit with everyone. I made up
nachos, got a fire going and figured we’d do this in style. My girlfriend
spent the entire game hanging out with me (or on me). At one point she was
sitting my lap and feeding me a wing, while giving her parents a look
basically daring them to say something. When I needed a beer she’d get up
and grab it for me (since she was on my lap she had to move anyway). I’m
thinking “You know, you guys are really welcome to visit whenever you want.
Hell, you guys should come out for all the football games next year.”

Then came the Great Dong Punch of 2010, the one where Angry Michigan Hating
God awoke from his torpor and violated me in ways I did not know I could
still be violated. First overtime, 17:23. We should have been on the phone
buying tickets at that point, but instead Angry Michigan Hating God bent
over the largest alumni base in the world and had his way with us. “Oh I
missed a spot after The Horror? You mean after making you stand through 3-9
and 5-7 in the student section I can still inflict further trauma upon you?
Here, let me take care of that.”

There was some good from this, my gf was worked up by now, we both were
amped up. There was that early fluke in the 3rd, where the Miami shot
bounced off the post and we’d been pumped ever since then. She was in my
lap, we threw our arms around each other, I stood up, we’re both cheering,
we kiss and as I’m looking past her at the TV…

I SEE THE FUCKING REF WAVING IT OFF!!!!!!!!!! *RAAAAAAGEEEEE*

She’s out of my arms now, unloading her multilingual swearing capacity at
the TV, I’m working through my mastery of English obscenities. Her family is
staring at us as if we’ve both gone insane, my mother is also yelling at the
TV. Okay the play is under review, we calm down, they show the replays. Puck
in the net, great, here we come……what the hell, whistle? What kind of shit
is this?

Her dad is getting into this. He’s gotten the basics of hockey, puck in the
net equals a goal. Look you dumbass refs, even the guy who just learned the
rules last night get this. Put the point up and send us to Detroit. But as
we all know, Michigan Hating God wins in the end.

There is a silver lining though. I caught just the tail end of the
conversation about us, it was between her father and his father. They’d gone
outside to smoke and were discussing how passionate her daughter is about
all this, how she never acted like this in Korea. They might not be thrilled
by it, but it sounded like they also understood in some ways she was too
Americanized to just happily throw it all away, move back to Seoul and go
the traditional route. Given the fact she stood up to her grandparents and
some of the things like that, her dad seems to feel this is an actual
relationship, not just her doing a white guy for the hell of it.

I also found out her paternal grandfather thinks I’m not a real man, because
I let her boss me around and a real man wouldn’t take that kind of shit. You
never hear good stuff about yourself when you eavesdrop. Her dad though did
stand up for me a bit and say he didn’t think I had a weak spine, just that
I “spoiled” her. All I can say to that is, she freaking sat in my laptop and
fed me wings for the entire hockey game, she even deboned them for me first..
Who exactly is spoiling who here?
The other good news is my parents have offered to stay in town for awhile,
so while I’m at work they’ll hang out with the gf and her family and give
her a bit of break from any more of those “easier on the stomach” lectures.
Her mother definitely does not approve of me so far.

We’re still setting up stuff for this week, so I don’t know when I’ll have
time to post next, but it’s likely going to be hitting up some of the Asian
things in this area and showing that their daughter isn’t rejecting her
parents’ culture, so much as becoming multicultural and she’ll have plenty
of exposure to Korean culture even if she lives over here. I think she is
planning to crash some Korean Studies classes this week, so if you’re in one
and a family of Koreans walks in, feel free to flirt up the little sister.
When she posts photos of you on Cyworld I’ll let you know how the voting
goes.

In some ways we’ve made some progress, her standing up to her parents, me
showing I’m at least somewhat up on Korean culture and things like that. The
downside is her parents are used to her doing what they say. When she goes
back to Seoul they impose a curfew on her (she is in her late 20s), tell her
which friends she can hang out with and things like that. That’s always been
how things worked in Seoul, she lived with her parents and did what they
said. Over here, she’s starting to dig into her heels. It’s kind of like she
had dual personalities, a standard college student one when in Ann Arbor and
more of a child one where she obeyed her parents when in Seoul. Her parents
are just meeting this other her for the first time in. After Bemidji when I
mentioned that PDA might have been a bit of a shock to her parents, she went
off on how she’ll do whatever she wants with her boyfriend in our apartment,
which likely prompted the sitting in my lap on Sunday. So it’s a good sign
for me, but we’ll see how it plays out when she tells her parents get lost
when they try to her what to do.

This is getting long, like pushing 4 pages in Word, so I'm going to end it
here. I have some background drama about what prompted the parents visit and
some erroneous assumptions they made and I'll get that in Part 4.

MaizeAndBlueWahoo

March 29th, 2010 at 11:19 AM ^

I'm disappointed for my sake that there aren't more hilarious drama stories about three generations of Koreans being just this side of ready to hogtie their daughter and drag her back to Seoul, but it sounds like things are going at least reasonably smoothly for you, which is awesome. Particularly the part about the liking hockey.

M-Wolverine

March 29th, 2010 at 11:47 AM ^

But I'm sure we'd all settle for the YouTube of just what really has happened. You could have your own page, and following. Heck, your GF sis has the camera phone, and seems to be ready to use it at any time (that was funny when she whipped it out), her Facebook page must be hilarious. Though, she's 16, right? I'm not sure I want to flirt with her to be on her Facebook page being rated...because my next on-camera appearance might be "To Catch a Predator". Even if I was college age.

MaizeAndBlueWahoo

March 29th, 2010 at 11:59 AM ^

You guys want the drama, you guys want youtube Videos of me being chased down South U with three generations of Koreans running after me and waving sharp objects.

That would be hilarious, come to think of it.

But it's no fun if you start the drama on purpose. Besides, the only difference between comedy and tragedy is the ending. Therefore I'm rooting for a happy one so the story can remain non-tragic and something that can be retold at family gatherings enough times that the three generations of Koreans with sharp objects becomes part of the tale whether or not it actually happened. Not something that ends up with you in America, her in Korea, both pissed off at various parties in the drama, and not married to one another.

BrayBray1

March 29th, 2010 at 11:42 AM ^

"I also found out her paternal grandfather thinks I’m not a real man, because I let her boss me around and a real man wouldn’t take that kind of shit."

Her Grandfather is a wise, wise man.

M-Wolverine

March 29th, 2010 at 11:43 AM ^

Isn't that what your girlfriend said to her lil sister?

The whole "exotic things" speech was classic. That sounded like it was right out of a movie.

If I had know you all were going to at Taiwan Night, I would have come just to spy on you guys. And I'd have made popcorn.

How you didn't know that tequila=bad, I'll never know. (Though the Alamo line is prime LOL). But it seemed to work out for you. Still, it had to be interesting that in front of everyone she was telling you that you were stiff...and then deboning things for you all night long. Might not happen again if you keep telling the world she's a drooler. I hope she doesn't read this site.

HAIL 2 VICTORS

March 29th, 2010 at 11:45 AM ^

Crex I can very much empathize with the drama...after 21 years in a multicultural marriage myself the drama still remains. You adjust, adapt, desensitize to it but there will forever be some drama. One other thing...when the little sister 16 Y/O asked: "Is it true what they say about white guys having bigger 'equipment'?" You do realize that everything looks bigger in your GF's tiny little asian hands right?

Hemlock Philosopher

March 29th, 2010 at 11:47 AM ^

CRex, I feel for you. I went through some similar things with my Indian in-laws. Things will get better and it will all be worth the stress of all this...

Until then, keep posting. Your MGoDrama is enthralling and your a pretty damned good writer. Perhaps your tale can take us to the opening of fall camp!

Six Zero

March 29th, 2010 at 11:50 AM ^

I feel like I just lived someone else's life for an entire weekend. You pretty much got every waking moment into that thing. At least I/you had a really great time-- fun stuff.