Friends at the Corner Store

I’ve always enjoyed meeting new people; the more the better. I’m not saying I don’t get into moods where I want to turn my cell phone off and hide – because I definitely do. But generally, I think people are insanely interesting and I’m always curious to find out what makes us all tick. I don’t know why, but I can’t really relax until I’ve made someone laugh after first meeting them. Or at least crack a smile. I think it’s because sharing a laugh together denotes we’ve found common ground; laughter means the same thing in every language.
 
My willingness to talk to pretty much anything that moves has proven to be an asset in Korea. Evidently, waving at strangers is more common than I thought, and talking to another white person simply because you share the same skin color is perfectly acceptable. Since arriving in Busan, I’ve heard that my neighborhood, due to the eight or nine English schools located within a three block radius, has an incredibly high concentration of foreigners – most of which live in my apartment building. And the best way to meet everyone? Drinking on the corner.

In Korea, much like when I lived in France, you can drink alcohol anywhere. On the street, in a taxi, on the beach – the possibilities are endless. Unlike France, or anywhere I’ve been for that matter, most of the stores, restaurants and bars are not at street level. Every ten-story building that you see is home to ten or more businesses, each displaying their business name on the exterior of their designated floor. Which I think is why the neon signs are so popular; if people have to be enticed from eight stories below to come to your restaurant or internet café, your sign better be huge. And blinking.

The stores that you do find on the ground floors? Mostly cell phone shops, shoe stores and convenient stores. One of these convenient stores, the GS25, has a decided monopoly in my neighborhood – there is one on the ground floor of my building, another one at the end of the block, one across the street from that, and two more one block in either direction. I’m not complaining, because they’ve taken “convenient” to a whole new level, stocking everything from Drain-O to underwear to beer. Furthermore, most of them have tables and chairs set up on the sidewalk, where on any given night you can find white people congregating after work, happy to share a cheap beer and stories from their day of teaching. So far I’ve met a fair amount of people in my neighborhood in those plastic chairs, and as the store never seems to close, have found myself on the street corner until later than I ever imagined I’d be hanging out at the local 7-11. 
 
Everyone has their reason for coming to Korea, and I’ve heard most of them. To pay student loans, to jump start a teaching career, to continue a teaching career, to travel, to learn a new language, to take a year off from the nine to fives. I’m always interested in hearing what people did before they moved across the world, and what their plans are post-Korea. The only thing is, keeping in step with the wanderlust theme, I’ve found many people can't really articulate what they're planning to do after this experience.
  

Except for Pete, who I met last night. If I feel tall among Koreans, Pete must feel like Shrek. From my vantage point, he was probably twelve and a half feet tall, give or take. Originally from Michigan, Pete said he had moved around a lot in the last couple of years. Arizona, California, Texas.

    Me: Oh, because of your job?
    Pete: Yeah. It was a lot of travel.
    Me: What did you say you did again?
    Pete: I was a cage fighter.

He said it like he was saying “I was an accountant,” just another job. You know. Cage fighting. It’s not that I doubted that he could be a cage fighter – when I thought about it, he looked like all he was missing was a cage to fight in. I  just would never look at someone and think “Yeah. Definitely a cage fighter.” My shock must have been all over my face, because his girlfriend promptly leaned in and whispered, “Don’t worry. He’s a gentle giant.” Well, I wasn’t worried before she said that, but now I was envisioning him picking up the table and smashing it over someone’s head who had unwittingly provoked the devil in him.

Turns out, Pete could not have been nicer. He patiently explained to my horrified face the ins and outs of cage fighting, and I got a couple of laughs out of him by referencing Fight Club. See? I can bond with a bad ass.

    Me: So how do you get out of the cage?
    Pete: Well, you can either tap out…   
    Me: Or?
    Pete: Pass out.
    Me: Oh my god.

Apparently, he had been doing a lot of amateur fighting at home, and had just broken through to his first professional fight this June. Unfortunately, this was around the same time he ran out of money, so he decided to come to Korea to bulk up his savings in order to return and really focus on building his career.

In the meantime, he’s joined a league in Busan, which I immediately thought had to be illegal. The man is four heads taller than me – there’s no way the fights would be fair. But his first match was last week and his opponent broke Pete’s nose. Apparently they’re small but mighty. And his next fight is coming up, which I’m invited to go watch. I never thought I’d end up at a Korean cage-fighting match, but then again, I never thought I would befriend a cage fighter at the corner store.