My life involves a lot of adjustment, not the least of which is cultural shift, being married to a Korean guy. Having been with Asian families pretty much all my life, I can say with some authority that there are not enough sites that address white women marrying into Asian families. It’s always the other way around — a white guy with an Asian girl. There are lots of them in my Korean class. I’m the only one in the reverse role. And if you’re a white GUY with an Asian girl, your experience is SOooooo different.
You get to play provider of Mercedes Benzes.
I get to be the provider of baby sons (50/50 chance!) if I’m young enough (NOT) or …. welll….. maybe just food otherwise.
You get to be the big awkward white thing in the center of the family photos.
I get to be the big awkward white thing at the far right end of the family photos. Your advantage: You get left in. I can be trimmed off if need be.
When you go to a family gathering the first comment you get will be about sports or work.
Mine will be “Have you lost weight?” which of course means, honey, you’re too big.
But there are women who know how to work this Asian setup to its advantage, and they are GRANDMAS. The matriarchs. Yes!~ That’s what I need. Someone to teach me the secrets of cleverness and guilt-mongering, culinary wizardry and how to hold purse-strings. It can’t be in my own family, since they’re not here. I need a shrewd, savvy granny to show me how to be the neck that turns the head.
To Haimonees, Ah-Mas, A-Pos and Oba-sans everywhere. It’s the effort that counts.
How many White Girls and Asians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
1 white girl to stand and expect the Asian guy to screw it in.
1 Asian guy to stand and expect the white girl to screw it in.
1 Asian grandmother to look in the kitchen closet, find nothing, go down to the corner supply store, buy a lightbulb, then spend 15 minutes or more haggling with the shopowner over a proper price for a wooden ladder, be horrified at the price, pretend to walk away in disgust, pretend to ask the shopkeeper next door for his price on a wooden ladder, start to agree to the purchase, be dragged back by the first shopowner, hear the price on an aluminum ladder or a plastic stepstool, spend 15 more minutes asking various details about each, compare those details with the wooden ladder again, finally settle on a plastic stepstool, ring it up, disdainfully pretend to have still paid too much while counting change, spend 10 minutes meeting and greeting a friend she hasn’t seen for the last two weeks due to the friends’ illness, go back up the street, lug the stepstool back up the four flights of stairs, place the ladder, climb up, squint with her failing vision, and drop the light bulb.
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I need a Haimonee now. One who can teach me the spectrum of spices, kim-chee making, bone soup, and various other disciplines. Post is open, because mine’s in Korea and my husband is culinarily challenged. I’ve tried American cuisine, no luck. Please apply via Friendster mail. We’re starving out here and I need some leverage.
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