The Bad Rep.

Iteawon is the foreigner bar district in Seoul. I shouldnt have been surprised but I have not seen that many Americans since I have left. One would think that I would be happy to be among my own country men, but I was more embarrassed. Americans have kinda a bad reputation in South Korea. We are too loud, too drunk, and we start alot of fights. I think most Americans are not as culturally sensitive as many other peoples. We have been brought up to believe that America is the best country and as a result believe we should Americanize everywhere we go. This came to a head on Saturday night when we were coming home from a night out. We rode home with these girls so we could split a taxi ride. The taxi driver drove us to the wrong part of town (because we cant speak Korean) so our taxi ride was an expensive 30,000W. The girls refused to pay saying, "this taxi driver took us there on purpose to jack up the price." Right... The ironic thing about the taxi ride was that a few days earlier this group had been refused service by a taxi because they were foreigners. The whole car was complaining about how its discrimination to refuse service based on race. Maybe if Americans were honorable and paid their fares there would be no discrimination.