Financially, I've been living on a salary of $135 a month. Half of that goes to food. I grew up eating anything I wanted, anytime I wanted. On the airplane, I eat everything on my tray. I mean everything. I don't even like butter but I use all of it. I almost eat the cream too. I feel like I should save the salt and pepper and plastic ziplock wrapper. It feels weird to appreciate airplane food so much. My family is happy to see me, and then shocked. They are horrified at how skinny I am. "You look terrible! What have you been eating over there?" We go to the US Army base and my dad throws down $20 for a bunch of burritos. The cheapest combo at the Chinese restaurant is $4.69 plus tax. My sisters get Subway. The food costs so much money! I'm shocked. I can't believe how much money fast food costs. Everyone picks at their food. Hunger takes over, and I eat everything on my plate. I remember eating this type of food, almost everyday. It feels so familiar, but also foreign.
We go shopping, and I can't get myself to buy anything. Even candy or a drink. At the optometrist, my family urges me to get a pair of glasses. But I already have a pair! Yeah but they're scratched and an old prescription. I imagine what I can do with $70 back in Laos, and I can't do it. People get upset at me for not buying anything, thinking everything is so expensive.
My friends are buying scarves and they're on sale for $15. So cheap, they say. I go to a wedding and there's so much extravagant food: sushi and pastries and spaghetti and stir-fry. I can't believe how much food is being made, overeaten, and thrown away. The food is so rich that I can't eat very much of it. The desserts are so calorie-packed, so powerful. I feel like I'm eating a whole day's worth of nutrition in one meal. By this time, I learn to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself. Nobody wants to hear how I feel about coming back home. It will only make them feel guilty. Who wants to have me around, if I evoke in them is guilty feelings?
I flashback to my first few weeks in Southeast Asia. When I showed off my brand-new set of $6 Chinese headphones I'd bought. "So cheap!" I marveled to my friend, a Hmong sharecropper with 6 kids. "Cheap? How much?" I told him: "50,000 kip." "50,000 kip? For that? Oh my. That's so much money!" I was hurt by his shock. Like a stab of a knife. It made me feel so rich. And I've always thought I was upper middle class. My dad is an Army doctor - he's not even in private practice. I decided I wouldn't ever tell these people how much my stuff cost, ever again. Now, I'm back home and I suddenly realize how much I've changed. I've started to see the world through a poor person's eyes. I've become a Southeast Asian living in Korea, a poor man living in extravagance. What if my friends back home saw me, eating at this fancy buffet and throwing away this delicious steak? I just ate ramen with my sharecropper friend. He ate it with such gusto. I'd brought it from home, because I knew he didn't have any food and had foraged some spongy stalk of a wild plant in the woods. He told me, when I eat this plant, I get hungry again in 2 hours.
We're eating at a $45 per-person 9-course meal at "The Korea House." My uncle is a retired army general and he also owns a lot of land in Seoul. He's asked about what Southeast Asians eat, and I'm telling them about my sharecropper friend. How his family eats mostly rice, and some smashed peppers and garlic. Because soy sauce is too expensive. It suddenly gets quiet.
I can sense their discomfort, as they pick at their food. The food tasted great until Chris opened his big old mouth. It's difficult to hear, I know. They're experiencing what I went through...and it hurts. But then, I tell them about how much those people love Korea. They watch Korean dramas on TV. They listen to Korean pop, and follow the singers and actors. They love kimchi, and Shin ramen. My friends are so jealous that I'm able to visit. They tell me to bring back some snow. Korea's doing a lot of development work there. There are several Korean schools there. My family's smiling, proudly. I tell them about how much Southeast Asia has taught me. About how to be content with what I have. How to budget. How to ride a motorbike. How to depend on God, and not just my parents. My mom shares about how much my time there, has changed her. How she always had bailed me out financially so I could avoid pain. But that through this experience, she was forced to realize her own weaknesses. That as countercultural as it is, that she needed to let me suffer, to face my own consequences. My uncle speaks up: I'm proud of Chris. There aren't too many like him. Why, my own kids are waiting for a handout from me. These are things that we Koreans need to teach our kids.
It's a week later in Korea now. I've gotten adjusted to the cold. I've gained more than 10 lbs. I'm in a glowing shopping mall, filled with shiny electronics and the smell of new books. I'm able to buy things now. Like typical Korean relatives, my extended family's give me money, especially after hearing about how low my stipend is there. They're not rich themselves. But they want to help me. I use some of that money to buy gifts for my friends back in Asia. As I browse in room-temperature comfort among the neatly arranged rows of kitchenware, I remember the marketplace back "home." The smells of live animals, the mud and grime sloshing in between your sandaled toes, the random chicken poop smeared on your shirt by a passer-by, the racket of salesmen announcing their prices, the ubiquitous folk music blaring in the speakers, the sound of laughter and joking and bartering and arguing. Me, the foreigner who can kinda speak their language, and doesn't mind lugging around a backpack full of vegetables and fruits, to spend an hour with them in their world.
In 7 months, I'll re-enter the "real world," gain my weight back, eat fast food, shop at malls, and forget all my Southeast Asian culture and language. In 10 years, it'll just be a faded photograph, fond memories, stories to tell my kids and randomly insert in sermons. But I hope some part of it doesn't die inside of me. I hope that in struggling to make sense of those 2 worlds, that I was able to learn something that I won't lose. That somehow, these 2 worlds won't just remain distant, misunderstood stereotypes...but that they will collide and challenge each other. Realize how much they need the other. Because we serve a King who made himself a beggar. He had everything and made himself nothing. To feed the poor, and develop a hunger for the Bread and Water of life. To make the rich feel poor, and to make the strong feel weak. To make us all cultureshocked to sin + homesick for heaven.
