Run-in with Racism?

My Mexican suitemate, Dyanna, and I had just finished our meal at the cafeteria in the Chinese dorm. We walked over to the window to bring our dishes back, deposited the chops sticks in the first receptacle, the food scraps in the next, and then neatly stacked our trays and bowls and tried to balance them on the messy pile of trays and bowls already in the window. The annoyed-looking worker walked over to help us stack them so they wouldn't fall, and in the process uncovered a tray that had not been cleaned. In irate Korean she yelled at us and waved the dirty chop sticks attempting to get it through our thick skulls that we were supposed to put the chop sticks somewhere else. A look of disbelieving scorn crept into my face, as Dyanna, looking like a deer-in-the-headlights, took the dirty chop sticks and deposited them in the proper container.

Really? Wasn't it obvious that I was holding two trays - mine and Dyanna's? Do you really think that one of us would have emptied our tray correctly and the other wouldn't have? Or do you just assume that we are lazy because we are foreigners? Possibly.

I will never know, and really, it doesn't matter.

It's things like this that matter...

Walking back up the hill from the Seoguram Grotto when a little girl, probably barely able to say hello in Korean, saw me, pointed while her face lit up and she exclaimed, "Oah! HI!"

Made my day.