You got me confused...

I had a very strange encounter with a Korean woman the other day.

I was sitting outside the Family Mart (convenience store) at a table having a beer and reading a book. I usually do this most days on my way home from work. It is quite common to drink outside of stores here and they even have patio furniture set up for their customers.

A girl comes out of the store and starts cleaning off the tables around me but she isn't a worker. She's quite cute and she comes over to my table and asks me why I'm in Korea. I get this question a lot. We talk for a few minutes and every is quite normal. It's 5:45 and she tells me she has to work at 6:00.

Then she informs me that she is 27 years old, used to work at Lotte World, and is a Christian, yet she is smoking. Here in Korea it is very rare to see a girl smoke in public (seriously, I've seen less than 10 girls smoking in public since I got here) and unlike back home, being a Christian means that you don't smoke or drink and they're kinda serious about it.

Next she tells me that her mom wants her to get married next year so I ask her if she has a boyfriend. She says yes and tells me he's a Christian too.

Then she asks me for a sip of my beer catching me very off guard and I say sure. She takes a mouthful and makes sure her lips don't touch the can. Very courteous indeed.

Up to this point I'm finding this girl very hard to read and quite funny. It was the next thing she said that was really, really odd.

She says "My boyfriend is Christian and won't have sex. I love him. He loves me. But no sex?? I can't understand this. Makes no sense."

I start to laugh after she says this because she was so blunt and this ain't something a person wouldn't usually blurt out to a total stranger. So I tell her maybe she shouldn't be a Christian and she says "Yeah maybe."

Then she talks about her boyfriend some more telling me he works with computers doing after service (whatever that is). She shows me his business card and then writes her email and phone number on it and gives it to me.

She had this toy butterfly attacked to her purse and she takes it off, shows it to me, and tells me it's a gift and I can have it. She says when it unfolds its shaped like a heart.

6:00 comes and she heads off to work at some restaurant in my neighborhood.

I'm sitting here now tryna decide if I should call her up and potentially ruin her marriage and her mother's hope of getting her daughter outta her house.

I've never had a mixed message like this in my entire life.

But then again, maybe this is totally normal in Korea. I've been told that girls often attempt to "upgrade" their boyfriends.