Walking home in the midday heat, I run into the man at the kimbap nara who so expertly rolls up my tuna-mayo, and whose daughter is my girlfriend's student. I bow hello, stop, and chat in rudimentary Korean. He gestures at the leafy greens poking out of my grocery bag and I pull them out for inspection. What are they? he arches his eyebrows at the unfamiliar produce. Hell, I don't know. My staple spinachey green is out of season and I'm trying new things. His expression suggests I've bought inedible weeds. I shrug and parade my more familiar goods from my bag -- olive oil, carrots, sweet potato -- fumbling the Korean name of each and letting him correct me.

Walking on I meet the old lady from the next building who collects recylables in her wheel barrow. Like many elderly Korean women she's hunched like Quasimodo and wrinkled like a grimace. We're familiar and greet each other warmly. I repeat the grocery show-and-tell. She seems equally interested in what I eat

I still remember when the local grocer, who'd always seemed a bit suspicious of me, learned my profession a while back. Work, what? he asked accusingly of me. Me being a grown man, casually fruit-shopping (a housewife's task!) in the middle of a work day. Computer, at home, I said and watched him have his aha-moment, his demeanor warming instantly. I wasn't some criminal or useless exploiter after all.

It occurred to me what a mystery I must have been to the local observers. Strange non-teacher foreigner, loafing about in his jeans and sneakers... but now I'm no longer so strange, just some dude eating my weird vegetables like everybody else. I've come a long way.