Last week I wrote about the Korean experiences I had during my first week here in NYC. It’s been another week, and I’ve had many more experiences that I can share! Here we go..

First, I went to the larger Korea Town area in Flushing Queens last Saturday for a few hours. It was just me and my trusty map (in Korean, no less) and the 7 train.. As soon as I stepped out of the subway station it was like I had gone to Korea instead. All of the signs were in Korean, everyone was speaking Korean; It was much more “Korean” than the area in Manhattan.

There were quite a few amazing shops that I found – a few bookstores, The Face Shop (it’s the Korean version of The Body Shop, basically), and a little novelty store called Magic Castle. For the most part, however, I found that most of the store owners were very uneasy when I went into their shops, some of them even following me around or basically telling me to leave. One store in particular was the worst, one lady was following me around and when I tried to buy something the girl at the counter was very blatantly rude to me. After that encounter, I was very discouraged and just got on the train back to Manhattan..

Now, I’m definitely not saying all of the shops or people in Flushing were like this. This was the first time I had ever experienced anything like this from Korean people. I thought perhaps I had done something wrong, or perhaps there was some sort of etiquette that I wasn’t aware of..

In my search for revelation on the subject, Keith offered me some insight. He told me that many Korean immigrants in Queens had to really fight to succeed in order to establish a community in that area. So, there may still be people who have the mindset that they need to be “on guard” towards Americans or other immigrants. So basically, what I experienced was not really a “Korean” thing, but a “people holding on to their survival mindset” thing.

This makes sense. I think it really explains the experience that I had: it explains why it was generally older people who seemed to have a problem with me but people my age were generally very friendly. It also explains why I haven’t had this experience in Korean shops in Manhattan. So, thanks Keith! (And I hope you don’t mind me quoting you..)

And there have been many experiences since then, including: Onnuri Korean Church, eating 샤브샤브 for the first time, attempting to buy Brian concert tickets (from fly to the sky), and making some Korean friends…. But it is just too much for one post! However, I did write about making 김치찌개 in the forum if you want to read about that.. I’ll be back next week with more stories.

Has anyone else ever had an experience like I did this week? Do you have any other insight about what might have happened?