A foxtail

"What did you do on Chuseok(Korean Thanks Giving)?" I asked to my junior not long ago. She answered to me "I spent three or four times going back and forth on a ferry to Staten Island." "I felt like my head was burning and my heart was breaking.

When I first came to the United States, I attended a school near New York, where there was no Korean. I couldn't make friends because of poor English. I didn't have a car. The only thing to see was a lot of foxtails that grew wild in the fields. I felt like the foxtail was something close to a human being. Rubbing it against my cheek comforted me.

If I walked for about 20 minutes from school, there was a man who looked like a Korean in the bank. Whenever I missed a Korean, I would walk there and peek into the person working inside the window.

Loneliness was a disease. Someone said that there is a Korean a few blocks away. I ran and knocked at the door. An Oriental man woke up from his sleep came out. He was a Singaporean. Americans can't distinguish Singaporeans and Korean, either!

Someone else said that if go somewhere by train, there are many people who look like me. Flushing is the place I've been looking for. I stood all day smiling at the passers-by at the Main Street intersection. People dodged my laughing eyes with quick steps.

When I came back home and opened the door, as if I felt like I lie down in a coffin, but I was just happy that I could spend the whole day in Flushing.

At that time I thought I could marry anyone if the man is healthy and can speak Korean. The man's appearance and ability did not matter. I only wanted to be two, not alone.

I called my junior. “I know a man. Would you like to meet him?” “What kind of person?” “He's an American man.” There's no response. "Why? Don't you want to meet him?" "I don't want to speak English and I can't live without Korean food."

If I had spoken any English in the past, I would have liked an American man. The junior still seems to be tolerable. "OK. If I have a Korean man, I'll contact you."

These days, there are many young Koreans who live alone in the U.S. It is rich in substance, and the Korean wave has flooded in, so it is not as lonely as it used to be. Rather, they tried to find a mate in the old days when there were no young Korean men and women. If a young woman came from Korea, single men ran to the airport. Now I think it seems like old stories.