are those really..... americans???

america, as we all know, is very much a melting pot for different races and cultures. we have no certain skin color or trait that denotes our being american other than our homeplace. in korea, the people are much more homogeneous. they all have dark hair and eyes, are typically petite, etc. needless to say, we stand out. we have a few blond haired, blue eyed people, and even a couple red-ish haired ones too. we have two boys who are over 6' 5", and we are definitely not as small as our korean counterparts (what can i say- we're from mississippi!). however, i didn't expect to be as uncommon as it seems that we are. wherever we go, people literally stare at us. at first, we didn't pay much attention. but then, it kept happening. people will break their necks in order to look at us. you can see them occassionally pointing and whispering too. we take no offense to this and realize it is only because they do not see many americans, despite this area being a large metropolis. this infatuation was never more evident than yesterday, as we were visiting an ancient palace in seoul. a group of chinese children were no more than 10 feet away from us, staring of course. suddenly, we looked at them and they were snapping photos and panning video cameras in our direction. taken aback by this attention, we began waving and acknowledging them. they didn't let up until they got the shots they wanted. i believe they were a bit embarrassed that we saw them do this, but nonetheless, they didn't immediately stop. our tour guide said that the chinese were more timid, but that korean children can be so bold as to come up and hug us or even ask for our autograph. at another visit yesterday, we had the opportunity to try on traditional korean dress. i assume that it is odd that there are ten white people in a room wearing korean clothing, but nothing too out of the ordinary. i must have the minority opinion. the ten of us and our teacher gathered in a group to take a photo, yet were soon surrounded by people (certainly made up of more than our korean friends) flashing cameras at us. upon realizing what a spectacle we were, we began laughing incessantly. we finally broke up, but there continued to be fascination with our group. no less than three different women, one after another, raced up to our blond haired, blue eyed teacher to have her picture made with him. we, as did he, again thought this was hilarious. while we think it nothing to see a person unlike us on the street, a different story is told in korea. i guess i can now only imagine where photos of me are going to end up in the world.