Monday, December 13, 2010

Foreigner Admits New Wife May Be “Really Dumb”

“I came here five years ago as an English teacher”, says Craig, 28, “but I got worried about the constant visa renewals and started thinking about marrying one of my girlfriends.” It seemed like a perfect solution, one which would enable the young American, who entered Korea on an E-2 visa, to keep teaching private lessons, but this time on a legal basis as a F-2 holding foreign spouse. But then the Korean dream began to sour. “I met a lot of girls out at clubs and they were always a lot of fun, so when I met Kim (24) and things became a little more serious, I thought maybe she’s the one. But after we married I began to think she might not be that bright.”

Craig admits he was initially thrown off by Kim’s English ability, which was “a little poor but still functional, in a cute sort of way”. He believed that his future wife, having mastered the basics of a foreign language, which had eluded him personally after four years, must have “a reasonable amount of intelligence.” But after the wedding, as his wife’s English slowly improved to average and Craig began attending Korean lessons, he began to realize that his wife’s vocabulary consisted mainly of soap opera and shopping references. “She wore very short skirts while dancing” he laments, “but in retrospect my assumption that her mind was as attractive as her body was wrong.” Kim, who’s expecting their first child next month, plans to spend her life as a homemaker, while Craig worries that the the most philosophical conversation he’s ever likely to share with his spouse in future is over whether green or red handbags go better with her eyes.

These days, Craig regrets the marriage, but admits that it makes job-hunting easier and, he says “she’s still kind of cute, so for the next few years, at least I’ll be able to show her off to my other foreigner friends who don’t speak Korean, because they won’t realize how really dumb she is either.”

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Woman Admits New Foreign Husband May Be “Really Dumb”