Today, we spent the entire day at the EXPO for our Global Citizenship project. To my surprise, the day turned out to be one of the highlights of my Italian experience thus far.
*For your information, the EXPO this year was held in Milan, and the theme was food and sustainability. So, some countries had their own pavilions, whereas others formed clusters that shared a common theme.
In the Azerbaijan pavilion, we had to evacuate the building due to a false fire alarm. In the US pavilion, my group met an SYA Italy alumna and even started a flash mop. In the Bangladesh pavilion, we spent too-many-Euros on too-fluorescent-yellow curry while being squished by too-many-people wanting the same menu. In the EAT-ALY (what a clever name), we strangely felt at home when we saw the name of the region Lazio and a picture of the macchina from our city Viterbo. In the coffee cluster, we compared the aromas of coffee beans from different continents. In the chocolate cluster, we stared at the chocolate fountains for hours. In the Korean pavilion, we danced to K-Pop songs and ate the faomus bulgogi (also known as Korean BBQ).
But my favorite pavilion was that of North Korea. Don't get me wrong - the pavilion itself was tiny and packed with people. It almost felt like a shop full of propoganda, from the seemingly patriotic lyrics of the song playing on the karaoke machine to the small but visible red pins of Kim Jong-Un on the representatives' traditional Korean clothes. But I decided to ask (in Korean, of course) one of the ladies there how North Korea viewed South Korea. She admitted that she did not necessarily agree with the South Korean politics, and yet, she pointed out that speaking from a person-to-person perspective, she is not appalled by the fact that I am a South Korean. After all, we share the same history. We share the same language. We share the same ethnicity. We share the same culture. We share the same food.
We share the inherent Korean-ness.
This interaction was not only unique but also touching. I definitely was glad to meet someone who shares so much with me in a foreign country, and I hope she did as well.