I grabbed my smartphone and my selfie stick that, until that point, hadn't left my backpack. I had wondered if I was going to use it at all on this trip. (I had used the stick that came with my Insta360 One X video camera, but not the smartphone selfie stick that I had purchased prior to my Mexico trip.)
I saw that my hostess, Choon-ju (춘 주), had her smartphone in hand, but when she saw me affix my phone to my selfie stick, she reached out her hands to take it. I put the camera in selfie mode and handed it to her as I stepped out of the guest room and proceeded to put my shoes on (shoes stay outside).
춘 주 saw that the camera was set in selfie mode and said "Anni, anni selpie," and handed back my phone to change the camera mode. (She said "No, no selfie"—she used the English word selfie but because there's no F-sound in Korean, that letter is replaced with a P-sound.) I had thought she didn't want to have a picture of the two of us so I changed the mode to the back lens.
As I tied my shoes, she readied herself to take pictures... of me. With my phone. I thought it rather odd, but out of politeness, I didn't argue. As soon as my shoes were tied, she began snapping away.
She then asked me to pose in various ways: with my legs crossed; looking out at her garden; sitting on a bench; reading a magazine (that was entirely written in Hangul); admiring her flowers; standing at the entrance to her house; pretending to walk toward her garden.
We spent at least five minutes shooting pictures, and I figured she had captured at least a dozen frames. I finally told her that I would like to take a photo of the two of us, together, and she agreed. We sat outside the guest room and I snapped the one photo.
I asked for her e-mail address and I promised that I would send her copies. She then asked me if I would like to go for a coffee (the Korean word for coffee—커 피—sounds very much like copy (kupi), so maybe she thought I said "coffee"?
A few doors down from her Airbnb, kitty-corner to the northwest wall to Gyeonggijeon Palace, is a café that I have passed by many times over my stay and which I have been tempted to visit. A sign outside has photographs of mouth-watering desserts (I've been especially tempted by their Oreo cheesecake), but I had always resisted, telling myself that I've only wanted to eat Korean food on this visit.
Too many great meals, too little time.
춘 주 and I walked into the café, Café Mio, and saw that there was only one other customer in the shop; a woman about our age, sipping a coffee and reading something on her phone. It was just after 9, and the shop had only just opened.
춘 주 sat me at a table and asked me what I wanted.I had learned that to argue about who was going to pay for what was pointless, so I asked for a cappuccino. She proceeded to the counter and placed the order.
The woman behind the counter asked me if I wanted cinnamon on my cappuccino (it's the same word in Korean so it was easy for me to understand). "Nae, komapsubnida," I said. Yes, thank you.
춘 주 paid, then turned to me and said "Jeulgyo," enjoy. She didn't take a seat with me, but made for the doors.
"Neodo?" I asked. You too? (In my limited Korean, I couldn't ask if she would join me, but I knew that, with my gesture for her to sit with me, she'd understand.)
"Anni, jeulgyo," she said. She spoke some more, and I could only understand a couple of words, but I got the gist: she needed to attend her garden. She was proud of that garden, and every time I saw her, she was either watering the plants or moving pots around.
My cappuccino arrived in a generous-sized mug. It was piping-hot, so while I waited for it to cool, I looked at the photos that 춘 주 had taken of me.
A dozen was a vast understatement. She had taken nearly 40 pictures of me. I began to cull the photos that were the least flattering, where I was either blinking or were bad compositions.
I remembered back to when I lived in Chŏnju, when I took photos with my Minolta X-700 SLR. I would take the exposed rolls of film to a local print shop and the owner would look at the printed results with me. He told me that most of my photos weren't good because there were no people in the photos. When I did include DW or some of our fellow teachers, students, and ex-pats, the owner of the print shop said that those were the only worthwhile photos.
My Korean friend, Kyung-hee, also echoed the shop owner's comments. Unless there are people in the picture, there was no point in taking the image.
I now had many photos of myself, and had no idea what to do with them.
So, I'm going to share them, here. All of the ones that I didn't cull.
Yup, there's a lot of them. Sorry about that.
I'll send one or two to 춘 주, along with the photo of the two of us. And then, I'll delete the photos of me, save for maybe one or two. I don't need all of these pictures of me.
After all, I'm not model material.
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