Please Check Your Ego At The Door

That should have been the sign outside Seoul Women's University when I arrived. When traveling to another country, one is bound to do some things that are...well...a little embarrassing. Unintentionally stupid, but nevertheless embarrassing. So, to entertain you while I work on some blogs about our 3-day trip, here is a list of embarrassing moments from the last week and a half.

At the dinner table:
At first, I was really bad with chopsticks. (Ok, who am I kidding? I'm still really bad with chopsticks) But the first few days involved more moving my mouth to the chopsticks than vice versa. I also spilled water on a table and dropped several pieces of silverware on myself, the floor, and other people. Oops.

In the rain:
For people at school who know me, I love running around in the rain. Splashing, soaking up the water, becoming "one with the puddle" (for my roommate and others who know what I mean)...it's pretty awesome. But Seoul's rainy season just started on Friday...and when we complain about Grove City being rainy, we have no idea what we're talking about. So today I dressed in a white skirt and light blue top, a good choice for a hot day...so I thought. Then it started to pour buckets. As I love puddles, I didn't exactly avoid them...and might have stepped in a few intentionally. Perhaps a poor life choice when wearing flip-flops that were extremely...floppy. On the way to the lecture, I felt my back getting damp. Oh well, it was just some rain blowing in. It'll dry. On the way back, I tramped in more puddles, and felt a giant wave hit my back. Oooo. "What happened to you? Did you fall down?" everyone asked. What's the big deal? It's just water I thought. Then I got back to the dorm. The whole back of me was covered with mud. I spent the next 40 minutes doing laundry. So much for blending in.

While walking:
You'd think this would be a fairly basic activity in any country, but apparently going out of the U.S. affects it. I tripped up the steps and over a curb. I've banged my shins on what seems like every single piece of furniture in the dorm, from the corner of my bed to the bottom of the shower door. And to top it off, I was skyping with my boyfriend and complaining at length about my recent bout of clumsiness. I got up to move the laptop and promptly banged into the armchair near me. Yes, it was extremely entertaining. No, he didn't come out and say so.

At a Buddhist temple:
Ok, this was probably the worst. And it actually wasn't the least bit funny at the time, at least for me. We toured a temple on our 3-day trip which contained many different buildings with various statues of Buddha. The first one we looked at had a monk praying, and seemed to be a larger and more important one. A sign on it said "no pictures." Of course, I didn't take any pictures. A little later in the tour, we came to a much smaller shrine that didn't seem to have any signs on it. Oh good, I thought, now I can get a picture. I pulled out my camera and snapped a quick shot, when I caught a Buddhist lady in the corner of the shrine giving me a very blank, slightly irritated look. "Laura!" hissed one of my friends,"No pictures!" She pointed to a sign further along the wall. The worst part about it was that the lady didn't speak any English, so I couldn't really apologize...

So I'm learning to leave my ego behind when I get out of bed in the morning. It probably wasn't worth the suitcase space, anyway. And I've been thinking about how many interesting experiences and opportunities we miss in life because we're afraid of making fools out of ourselves. We all struggle with that to some extent, I believe. But this shouldn't stop us from trying new things or, more importantly, doing what God calls us to do.
And besides that, it's not entirely unhealthy to embarrass ourselves sometimes. It's a miracle tonic for keeping human beings humble. I know. I've been taking a daily dose. :-)