I started re-reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy after seeing the second Hobbit movie a few weeks ago. Now, I acknowledge that the opinions of my friends are fiercely divided over the movie. A lot of Tolkien devotees were truly upset at what he has done with the movies; some enjoyed it as a cinematic experience; some thought it was just okay; and some (one) thought it was "an improvement" on the book. I will not name said individual, primarily to save him from being tarred and feathered, as he is undoubtedly the only person on God's green earth who thinks that way, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I suppose. I personally enjoyed the movie, as far as movies go, but I still maintain that Peter Jackson could have made one or two perfectly enjoyable movies by just sticking to the source material (even if he had to pull from the Unfinished Tales) and not inventing an orc-chase and a love triangle with a she-elf played by Evangeline Lilly. (Then again, I never complain about seeing Evangeline Lilly onscreen.) I did think the movie was a bit too long, but it was worth sitting through just to see the scene with Bilbo and Smaug...just like the last one was worth sitting through to see Gollum.
Second only to the dragon, my favorite part of the movie was this song, which played as the credits rolled:
I really loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy movies, but I could barely remember the books by the time I saw them. After seeing the most recent Hobbit movie, I realized that it had been almost twenty years since I had read the book, so I decided to go back to Tolkien's masterpieces and reacquaint myself with them. The Hobbit is a relatively short book, and it is light and easy (since it was originally devised as a children's tale), so I devoured it in about four hours two Sundays ago. The Lord of the Rings is much denser, and so takes longer to read, but I have greatly enjoyed it. I have finished The Fellowship of the Ring over the last three or four days, and I am about a third of the way through The Two Towers. I had intended to wait until we finished our contracts and read them during our long vacation, but soon enough I ran out of patience. (I seem to be in short supply of it these days, anyway.) Moving through the epic trilogy, I was impressed with how faithful Peter Jackson was to the books in the first three movies, both in content and in tone. The Hobbit movies are much different - much more drawn out, and darker, than the book by far. Whether that is better, worse, or immaterial is, I suppose, for the beholder to decide.
What surprised me even more - and unexpectedly - is how nostalgic the experience of reading the books has been. I first picked up The Hobbit when I was nine years old and an avid bookworm. I tended to move through books very quickly and was looking for more of a challenge, so I started it at my father's suggestion. It was relatively slow-going for my nine-year-old self, but I was in awe of Bilbo's courage and resourcefulness, Gandalf's wisdom, Thorin's dogged determination, and the rich imagery of Tolkien's Middle-Earth. Seeing my delight, Papa eagerly recommended the subsequent trilogy. Being even richer than its simple prequel, I moved through it slowly, relishing the detailed descriptions of the Shire and Lothlurien and Rohan and Minas Tirith, and falling in love with the characters as they fought and found love for each other. I would sometimes mark my place and leave the books unfinished for weeks at a time, opening them again to escape a difficult school life or when I missed my father. Books like that stay with you, but I never realized how much until I set out on the journey once more.
Mentally re-tracing my childhood steps down the road to the Lonely Mountain, and then to Mordor, has taken me through landscapes of nostalgia I was not quite prepared for. The books themselves are woven with it, both in the imagery and the characters and the things they yearn for. Suddenly I was nine years old again, discovering a new depth of literature, hungrily devouring the books I knew my father loved. It brought me back to the days of my parents' divorce as I struggled to understand them both as separate entities, undoubtedly while they rediscovered themselves.
Over the years I have found that I relate more easily to my mother. Perhaps because I spent more time with her growing up, or because I am more like her in my emotional volatility, I have found it more natural to look at the world through her eyes. Still, there are parts of me that come from my father: my introverted nature, my love of books, my obsession with making sure all decisions are carefully considered and well-planned, and my deep desire to be professionally and intellectually respected. Emotionally, I am much like my mother, but intellectually I think I am more my father's reflection.
Coming to Korea, and being a stranger here, has really allowed me to relate to both of my parents - my father when he lived in Brasil with the Peace Corps, and my mother when she moved back to the states with him. I am so grateful for the chance to get to know them better as people through shared experience, to see them smile in acknowledgment as I share my stories on Skype and to gain new perspectives on the old stories they have told me. I am almost sure that my father's road was more difficult, and surely a lonelier one, as a Vietnam vet living in the poor Brazilian countryside, surrounded by people who could not speak his language, did not grasp his culture, and could never hope to wrap their minds around where he came from or what he'd been through.
Perhaps my experience here has been much more like mother's, simply because I am a woman and also because I came with someone I love. But the gardens of the Shire, the Misty Mountains, the valleys of Rivendell and the woods of Lothlurien are my father's country. Walking the paths of Middle-Earth I hear only his voice, and I remember my delight as a little girl walking with him on that common ground, mutual wonder for a story well-told.
Monday, December 23, 2013
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Korean Cosmetics: Fear of Aging and Residual Culture Shock/Cosméticos coreanos: medo de envelhecer e choque cultural
I am quickly running out of patience for this country and everyone in it. Joel and I got into a spat on Monday over the issue, actually. Lately, I have taken to snapping at people who shove past me, cut me in line, or generally lack courtesy or respect for social order. These types of things are very common here; Koreans don't give a second thought to be being shoved past or cut in front of, since the shortages after the Korean war have left a very strong "take everything you can" philosophy in the national psyche. I thought I had grown accustomed to it, but apparently I have reached the end of my fuse. Anyway, Joel brought up the fact that I have been short with strangers and generally very agitated, so we got into an argument which ended in me dissolving into tears and wailing about how I just wanted to finish our contracts so we could go home.
Culture shock is a funny thing. When we first arrived, we watched a video on it as part of our "training," in which the presenter explained that some models show people having recurring episodes of it, rather than just going through it once at the beginning. After my first major bout, I have mostly done fine (and my Korean proficiency has definitely helped), but everyone once in a while I will still be foiled and come home extremely frustrated. Case in point: on Monday morning I tried (and failed) to get packing boxes from the post office, after the attendant talked my ear off in Konglish about different shipping rates for about ten minutes. I eventually chose two boxes and tried to buy them - only to be foiled because I tried to pay with my debit card, and they would only accept cash.
I never realized how much I would come to miss home, especially my mother. I have never had trouble with that in the past, but I have never been away from home for this long - by the time I finally land in Houston, it will have been two years since I have seen her. When I called her on Skype for her birthday, she and I talked at length about how much she missed me; she jokingly told me that she was glad that Joel would be arriving two weeks after me, so she wouldn't have to kick him out of my bed. Living here has actually given me a lot of perspective on what she went through when moving from Brazil to America, and the fact that she always intended her move to be permanent.
On the flip side, I am so not looking forward to the re-entry shock. Perhaps it is better for Joel to be away from me during that time.
I suppose, though, that I will experience culture shock in one form or another until I readjust to life back home. Case in point number two: today, a Korean woman at my yoga studio with practically no English ability tried to chat me up - while we were in the shower.
Nice Naked Lady: Where are you from? Koreans unfailingly begin these types of conversations by just plunging in - there is rarely any kind of greeting.
Naked Me: Texas. America.
NNL: You, ah, you, m-m-marry?
Me: Yes. At this point, I switch to Korean and show her my wedding ring. I have been married for five years.
NNL: Oh?! You...no baby?
Me: No.
NNL: Me too marry. Nampyeon (husband) is doctor.
Me: Ah. At this point I am scrubbing myself frantically, trying to finish as quickly as possible.
NNL: English teacher?
Me: Yes.
NNL: Ah - sorry. I am...no English.
Me: It's okay. Shower finished! I grab my stuff, bow slightly, and high-tail it outta there.
I have mastered the art of being comfortable while naked around other people - heck, I can go to the jjimjilbang with no issue - but it gets a little weird for me when strangers try to talk to you while you are both naked.
On the way back from the studio, I stopped into a cosmetics shop to pick up a replacement for my facial moisturizer. I have been trying to navigate the labrynthine market of skincare products for post-university-age women, and I am still not convinced that any product that claims to firm skin, rejuvenate skin tone, or "reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles" actually does what it says it does. However, since I have noticed the aforementioned beginning to appear on my face (and yes, Babushka, they are in fact on my face), I have begun to wade hesitantly into the fray.
When we came here, I brought two or three bottles of Oil of Olay, but that ran out before we finished our first year. I managed to get another bottle from a friend who is stationed in Osan, and then another very generous high school friend from back home sent me another bottle, but eventually all my stores ran out. Korea is well-known regionally for excellent-quality skin care products, though, so I figured that I couldn't go wrong picking up something Korean. So, after my awkward naked Konglish conversation, I walked into Aritaum and told the sales rep that I was looking for a frangrance-free face cream. "Anti-age?" she asked, and I nodded as I began to wonder if my age was somehow showing. She brought me over to the Iope section and let me sample a delightful gold bottle that read Super Vital Cream Bio Intensive (Bioscience Formula). It was nice and light, with only a slight fragrance, so I reached into my backpack for my wallet and asked for the price. "Sip-man won," she cheerfully informed me. W100,000 - or just under $100.
I balked, and then began to wonder if I was being reasonable. Sure, I can pick up a bottle of Oil of Olay for about $20 or $30 back home, but is it enough? Is there perhaps something to all of the women who spend hundreds of dollars on Lancôme or Estée Lauder or Clinique to battle age, that constant specter that haunts women? I reasoned that although it was overpriced, I wasn't going to keep putting hand lotion on my face, so I decided to use my birthday money from my mother-in-law and just go for it. I was pleasantly surprised to see the sales rep include a sampler set of five products from the same line and ten samples of other products with my 50 ml bottle of Super Vital Cream Bio Intensive. I walked back to the apartment feeling (more) like I got my money's worth. And then I got home and opened the boxes.
Joel sat with me and the laptop as I sorted through everything. What is the difference between cream and eye cream? Why do I need a softener, and does it come before or after the serum? Emulsion was a term I had only heard in chemistry class. I suppressed my rising panic as I picked up each item and tried to make sense of the Korean on the small packages. Joel's approach seemed more simple. "I think it goes on your face."
"Yes, but in what order?"
"Does it matter? Just put it on your face!"
"But the order might be important! Look it up."
Together we Googled the product line. "It says here the softener goes first, then the emulsion, then the serum, then the cream," he read. "So basically just follow the order they are in the box."
"What about the eye cream?"
"That probably goes on your eyes." I sighed as I fingered the miniature bags. "It's simple. Just put it on your face!"
We laughed as we got ready for work, but since then I have become more contemplative. As my birthday approached last week, one of my coworkers and I were joking that as we have gotten into our later twenties, we have noticed (painfully) that things catch up with us a lot faster physically. I can't stuff my face with cake without consequences anymore; in a few days it will be noticeably present on my waistline. If I lapse in working out regularly, I notice the difference. I tire more easily and can no longer function well on very little sleep. Illness is a lot harsher and takes longer to kick. Yes, I am aware that I am only 28, but my hyper-perceptive self-image has seized on these things as time creeps forward. I am now at the point where I seriously asking myself such ridiculous questions as whether or not I need to drop $100 on a skincare regimen to stay beautiful.
At least we finally got some real snow tonight.
Culture shock is a funny thing. When we first arrived, we watched a video on it as part of our "training," in which the presenter explained that some models show people having recurring episodes of it, rather than just going through it once at the beginning. After my first major bout, I have mostly done fine (and my Korean proficiency has definitely helped), but everyone once in a while I will still be foiled and come home extremely frustrated. Case in point: on Monday morning I tried (and failed) to get packing boxes from the post office, after the attendant talked my ear off in Konglish about different shipping rates for about ten minutes. I eventually chose two boxes and tried to buy them - only to be foiled because I tried to pay with my debit card, and they would only accept cash.
I never realized how much I would come to miss home, especially my mother. I have never had trouble with that in the past, but I have never been away from home for this long - by the time I finally land in Houston, it will have been two years since I have seen her. When I called her on Skype for her birthday, she and I talked at length about how much she missed me; she jokingly told me that she was glad that Joel would be arriving two weeks after me, so she wouldn't have to kick him out of my bed. Living here has actually given me a lot of perspective on what she went through when moving from Brazil to America, and the fact that she always intended her move to be permanent.
On the flip side, I am so not looking forward to the re-entry shock. Perhaps it is better for Joel to be away from me during that time.
I suppose, though, that I will experience culture shock in one form or another until I readjust to life back home. Case in point number two: today, a Korean woman at my yoga studio with practically no English ability tried to chat me up - while we were in the shower.
Nice Naked Lady: Where are you from? Koreans unfailingly begin these types of conversations by just plunging in - there is rarely any kind of greeting.
Naked Me: Texas. America.
NNL: You, ah, you, m-m-marry?
Me: Yes. At this point, I switch to Korean and show her my wedding ring. I have been married for five years.
NNL: Oh?! You...no baby?
Me: No.
NNL: Me too marry. Nampyeon (husband) is doctor.
Me: Ah. At this point I am scrubbing myself frantically, trying to finish as quickly as possible.
NNL: English teacher?
Me: Yes.
NNL: Ah - sorry. I am...no English.
Me: It's okay. Shower finished! I grab my stuff, bow slightly, and high-tail it outta there.
I have mastered the art of being comfortable while naked around other people - heck, I can go to the jjimjilbang with no issue - but it gets a little weird for me when strangers try to talk to you while you are both naked.
On the way back from the studio, I stopped into a cosmetics shop to pick up a replacement for my facial moisturizer. I have been trying to navigate the labrynthine market of skincare products for post-university-age women, and I am still not convinced that any product that claims to firm skin, rejuvenate skin tone, or "reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles" actually does what it says it does. However, since I have noticed the aforementioned beginning to appear on my face (and yes, Babushka, they are in fact on my face), I have begun to wade hesitantly into the fray.
When we came here, I brought two or three bottles of Oil of Olay, but that ran out before we finished our first year. I managed to get another bottle from a friend who is stationed in Osan, and then another very generous high school friend from back home sent me another bottle, but eventually all my stores ran out. Korea is well-known regionally for excellent-quality skin care products, though, so I figured that I couldn't go wrong picking up something Korean. So, after my awkward naked Konglish conversation, I walked into Aritaum and told the sales rep that I was looking for a frangrance-free face cream. "Anti-age?" she asked, and I nodded as I began to wonder if my age was somehow showing. She brought me over to the Iope section and let me sample a delightful gold bottle that read Super Vital Cream Bio Intensive (Bioscience Formula). It was nice and light, with only a slight fragrance, so I reached into my backpack for my wallet and asked for the price. "Sip-man won," she cheerfully informed me. W100,000 - or just under $100.
I balked, and then began to wonder if I was being reasonable. Sure, I can pick up a bottle of Oil of Olay for about $20 or $30 back home, but is it enough? Is there perhaps something to all of the women who spend hundreds of dollars on Lancôme or Estée Lauder or Clinique to battle age, that constant specter that haunts women? I reasoned that although it was overpriced, I wasn't going to keep putting hand lotion on my face, so I decided to use my birthday money from my mother-in-law and just go for it. I was pleasantly surprised to see the sales rep include a sampler set of five products from the same line and ten samples of other products with my 50 ml bottle of Super Vital Cream Bio Intensive. I walked back to the apartment feeling (more) like I got my money's worth. And then I got home and opened the boxes.
 |
| Do all five of these go on my face at the same time? |
 |
| The product I actually purchased. |
 |
| Free samples to make me feel worse about myself. Yay! |
"Yes, but in what order?"
"Does it matter? Just put it on your face!"
"But the order might be important! Look it up."
Together we Googled the product line. "It says here the softener goes first, then the emulsion, then the serum, then the cream," he read. "So basically just follow the order they are in the box."
"What about the eye cream?"
"That probably goes on your eyes." I sighed as I fingered the miniature bags. "It's simple. Just put it on your face!"
We laughed as we got ready for work, but since then I have become more contemplative. As my birthday approached last week, one of my coworkers and I were joking that as we have gotten into our later twenties, we have noticed (painfully) that things catch up with us a lot faster physically. I can't stuff my face with cake without consequences anymore; in a few days it will be noticeably present on my waistline. If I lapse in working out regularly, I notice the difference. I tire more easily and can no longer function well on very little sleep. Illness is a lot harsher and takes longer to kick. Yes, I am aware that I am only 28, but my hyper-perceptive self-image has seized on these things as time creeps forward. I am now at the point where I seriously asking myself such ridiculous questions as whether or not I need to drop $100 on a skincare regimen to stay beautiful.
At least we finally got some real snow tonight.
Monday, November 18, 2013
Friends and Fireworks in Busan/Amigos e fogos de artifício em Busan
I know that my time between posts here is getting longer and longer. I can't quite put my finger on why. Part of me suspects that it is the increasingly busy nature of our lives as our date of departure looms closer - we are trying to cram more and more into less time, and we are really prioritizing time spent with friends that we may or may not cross paths with after we leave. I also have to admit that part of it is the steady wear-down of working 18 consecutive months with no real vacation. I adore the children we work with, but 18 months working in hagwon has cured me of the desire to ever come back and do it again. I will acknowledge that it is for some people, but it is not for me. I have a career that I now very much want to get back to.
On the bright side, a group of eleven of us took a trip to Busan at the end of October to see the city's annual fireworks festival. It was a fantastic trip - we had a really awesome time with our travel companions, and the show itself was the most breathtaking that I have personally ever witnessed. We decided to get a group together and rent out a ten-person private dorm in a hostel in the Haeundae area. Thanks to Facebook, we quickly rounded up enough people, booked the hostel, and headed out on Friday evening after work - first the EPIK teachers, then the couple who teaches kinder, and finally the hagwon teachers.
THE CAST
EPIK:
J-Ram
J-M
Straight L (as in straight-haired)
Curly L
Mal
KINDER:
Irish Cream
Tall J
HAGWON:
Me
Joel
The Nymph
Shae-Shae
The hagwon crew doesn't normally get off of work until 10 p.m., so we bought tickets for the 10:30 bus out of town a few days beforehand. Shae-Shae and The Nymph, who work at a different school, had bought our tickets for us, so we agreed to meet up with them at the bus terminal. Joel and I got lucky and got a cab right after work, and the driver correctly assessed that we were in a hurry and hauled major ass to the bus terminal. Alas, not so for Shae-Shae and The Nymph. Joel and I sat biting our nails for the next 20 minutes after arriving, waiting nervously as the other passengers got onto the bus and the driver prepared to leave. Just as I was mustering up the courage to use my broken Korean to explain our predicament to the driver (and assure him that our friends really were right outside, the pair came running up to the gate. We all piled onto the bus, relieved, and started the journey.
The bus ride was mostly uneventful, other than a middle-aged Korean woman tapping me on the leg twice and shushing me. It's a little bit obnoxious to be shushed on the bus, but apparently we were spared the worst of it: the EPIK ladies, who were all chatting at the back of the bus, were silenced by a Korean man who stood up halfway through the ride and yelled across the bus, "Hey! Shut up! Shut up! Okay?!"
Lovely.
At any rate, we rolled into town, found ourselves at the farthest-outside-of-town bus terminal in the history of the world, paid a small fortune for a cab to take us into town, and met up with the rest of the peeps. We checked into the hostel, where the EPIK ladies and The Nymph retired to bed. Meanwhile, the guys, Irish Cream, Shae-Shae and I decided to hang out for a while and have a few drinks on the beach. While we were there, we met a group of friends led by a pair of French students studying abroad (which, naturally, meant that I had to put my rusty French skills on display - go figure). We hung out for a while, with the more sensible of us watching the less sensible of us chase each other around with firecrackers in a game cleverly dubbed "Harry Potter." After a few more hours of hanging out, Irish Cream and I headed off to bed, and the others eventually followed.
The next morning after breakfast, I headed to the Busan aquarium with The Nymph, Straight L, Curly L, J-Ram, and Shae-Shae. I had never been to an aquarium before, so I was like a kid in a magical wonderland of Nemos, Dories, and jellyfish. We even got to see the penguin-feeding show! (To be honest, it wasn't much, but I was embarrassingly excited.) After we finished up there, we met up with Joel, Irish Cream, and Tall J to get kebabs for lunch. Mal and J-M had already reserved a spot for us on the beach around 2:30, so we headed over to the beach to meet them just before 4.
Sitting on the beach started out fun. Most of us chatted while Joel and Tall J played Hold 'Em for each others' change. We were lucky to have gotten such good seats, or so we thought - until, as the afternoon wore on, we realized how many people we had to step over to get to any semblance of a bathroom. Because the fireworks show didn't start until 8 p.m., it became progressively more difficult to get off the beach for anything, be that buying snacks or drinks, using a restroom, or hunting for a convenience store that would change my phone battery (which meant that I couldn't take any pictures with my phone). We typically went to the bathrooms in pairs or threes, mostly for protection, because people got angry when you stepped over them - whether it was something as innocuous as stepping on a mat with shoes or as careless as kicking sand into some poor bastard's ramen (which Joel may or may not have been guilty of). I personally stopped drinking anything whatsoever about three hours before the show, but it was inevitable to have to get up at least once more to properly enjoy the fireworks. Some of our cohort was a little intimidated at the prospect of stepping over the masses, but if I have learned one thing after living here for eighteen months, it's this:
Anyway, after one more wee (as my English friends so adorably call it), I settled in to watch the show. And oh, what a show it was.
The fireworks were, for me at least, beyond description. From what we could tell, the purpose of the show is meant to celebrate the rise of the city of Busan from the ashes of the Korean war into a prosperous port city with its own unique identity. The show was about 50 minutes long. Make no mistake: this wasn't just some pretty lights in the sky. The fireworks were synced to music. They were colossal, and colorful, and some of them even made shapes or spelled out letters. There were fireworks falling from the bridge and fireworks on the water. There were several remote-controlled birds that flew over the beach and released fireworks as phoenixes. There was even a group of five acrobats who jumped down a skyscraper behind us in neon-lit suits! Here is someone's (admittedly poor-quality) video of parts of the show:
I think I probably had my mouth open the entire time, just out of sheer wonder. A few tears may have even been shed - and not just by me. One of our party took a few pictures.
All pictures taken by, and property of, the lovely and talented Nerina Van Der Westhuizen.
After the show, the group split up for dinner and agreed to meet back up later. Since nakji (aka still-moving octopus) has been on my bucket list since I set foot in this country, Tall J, Joel, and I headed straight for a restaurant outside our hostel that advertised it and sat down for the most adventurous meal of our lives. Just as we were about to brave the squirming tentacles, the French guys ran into us eating outside and watched, mouths agape, as we ate them. It was epic. Later on, we met up with most of the others and spent a night out on the town.
On Sunday morning, I went with Straight L, Curly L, and The Nymph for a walk along the coast. We walked along the beach and then followed a short trail to a strange building that looked like a UFO but turned out to be a meeting hall for a major political Asian summit a few years ago. Go figure. Afterwards, we made our way back to public transportation. After mustering up all of my Korean skills to talk to the guy at the information desk, only to find that you could not buy bus tickets online in Busan (go figure), Straight and Curly L agreed to head to the terminal to buy bus tickets for us, since Shae-Shae and The Nymph wanted to check out the Shinsegae (which is the world's largest department store) and I wanted to go to Spa Land. Luckily for me, there were no buses available until about four hours later, so I was able to get scrubbed within an inch of my life by an adjuma and appreciate all of the themed rooms at the largest public bathhouse in Asia. Curly L told me that the subway ride from the Shinsegae to the bus terminal was about half an hour, so I figured that I would have plenty of time to take the subway and even grab dinner if I gave myself 45 minutes.
My mistake.
Our bus was scheduled to leave at 7 p.m., and The Nymph had my tickets. Fine. I got on the subway and zoned out for a while, then looked at my phone when I was about seven stops away. I felt the color leave my face when I saw that it was 6:42. Okay, I thought, if it's two minutes per stop, then I will have about four minutes to make it to my gate, and the bus terminal isn't that big. I felt the time slip as I watched the stops go by. Finally my stop arrived and I bolted through the subway, flew up the stairs, and reached the street...only to realize that I didn't know which building the terminal was in. I scared the bejeezus out of some poor shoe vendor by demanding to know where the terminal was, which I then raced toward, steeling myself for the possibility of jumping in front of my bus to make it stop. I reached the doors and, with some relief, saw that the bus was still at the platform.
"Jessica!" Straight L called out to me as she saw me through the crowd. I pushed my way to where she and Curly L stood in line. "Where is The Nymph?" Panic returned as I realized she had my ticket.
"She's not here?"
"No! We don't know where they are."
The bus was delayed, so we quickly brainstormed solutions as I wondered if I spoke enough Korean to explain what happened and beg them to reprint my ticket. Then we saw The Nymph and Shae-Shae running through the crowd. I called out to them, and they came over. The Nymph was so relieved that she dissolved into tears for a few minutes. Laughing, we boarded the bus and headed home.
All in all, a pretty epic trip.
On the bright side, a group of eleven of us took a trip to Busan at the end of October to see the city's annual fireworks festival. It was a fantastic trip - we had a really awesome time with our travel companions, and the show itself was the most breathtaking that I have personally ever witnessed. We decided to get a group together and rent out a ten-person private dorm in a hostel in the Haeundae area. Thanks to Facebook, we quickly rounded up enough people, booked the hostel, and headed out on Friday evening after work - first the EPIK teachers, then the couple who teaches kinder, and finally the hagwon teachers.
THE CAST
EPIK:
J-Ram
J-M
Straight L (as in straight-haired)
Curly L
Mal
KINDER:
Irish Cream
Tall J
HAGWON:
Me
Joel
The Nymph
Shae-Shae
The hagwon crew doesn't normally get off of work until 10 p.m., so we bought tickets for the 10:30 bus out of town a few days beforehand. Shae-Shae and The Nymph, who work at a different school, had bought our tickets for us, so we agreed to meet up with them at the bus terminal. Joel and I got lucky and got a cab right after work, and the driver correctly assessed that we were in a hurry and hauled major ass to the bus terminal. Alas, not so for Shae-Shae and The Nymph. Joel and I sat biting our nails for the next 20 minutes after arriving, waiting nervously as the other passengers got onto the bus and the driver prepared to leave. Just as I was mustering up the courage to use my broken Korean to explain our predicament to the driver (and assure him that our friends really were right outside, the pair came running up to the gate. We all piled onto the bus, relieved, and started the journey.
The bus ride was mostly uneventful, other than a middle-aged Korean woman tapping me on the leg twice and shushing me. It's a little bit obnoxious to be shushed on the bus, but apparently we were spared the worst of it: the EPIK ladies, who were all chatting at the back of the bus, were silenced by a Korean man who stood up halfway through the ride and yelled across the bus, "Hey! Shut up! Shut up! Okay?!"
Lovely.
At any rate, we rolled into town, found ourselves at the farthest-outside-of-town bus terminal in the history of the world, paid a small fortune for a cab to take us into town, and met up with the rest of the peeps. We checked into the hostel, where the EPIK ladies and The Nymph retired to bed. Meanwhile, the guys, Irish Cream, Shae-Shae and I decided to hang out for a while and have a few drinks on the beach. While we were there, we met a group of friends led by a pair of French students studying abroad (which, naturally, meant that I had to put my rusty French skills on display - go figure). We hung out for a while, with the more sensible of us watching the less sensible of us chase each other around with firecrackers in a game cleverly dubbed "Harry Potter." After a few more hours of hanging out, Irish Cream and I headed off to bed, and the others eventually followed.
The next morning after breakfast, I headed to the Busan aquarium with The Nymph, Straight L, Curly L, J-Ram, and Shae-Shae. I had never been to an aquarium before, so I was like a kid in a magical wonderland of Nemos, Dories, and jellyfish. We even got to see the penguin-feeding show! (To be honest, it wasn't much, but I was embarrassingly excited.) After we finished up there, we met up with Joel, Irish Cream, and Tall J to get kebabs for lunch. Mal and J-M had already reserved a spot for us on the beach around 2:30, so we headed over to the beach to meet them just before 4.
Sitting on the beach started out fun. Most of us chatted while Joel and Tall J played Hold 'Em for each others' change. We were lucky to have gotten such good seats, or so we thought - until, as the afternoon wore on, we realized how many people we had to step over to get to any semblance of a bathroom. Because the fireworks show didn't start until 8 p.m., it became progressively more difficult to get off the beach for anything, be that buying snacks or drinks, using a restroom, or hunting for a convenience store that would change my phone battery (which meant that I couldn't take any pictures with my phone). We typically went to the bathrooms in pairs or threes, mostly for protection, because people got angry when you stepped over them - whether it was something as innocuous as stepping on a mat with shoes or as careless as kicking sand into some poor bastard's ramen (which Joel may or may not have been guilty of). I personally stopped drinking anything whatsoever about three hours before the show, but it was inevitable to have to get up at least once more to properly enjoy the fireworks. Some of our cohort was a little intimidated at the prospect of stepping over the masses, but if I have learned one thing after living here for eighteen months, it's this:
Anyway, after one more wee (as my English friends so adorably call it), I settled in to watch the show. And oh, what a show it was.
The fireworks were, for me at least, beyond description. From what we could tell, the purpose of the show is meant to celebrate the rise of the city of Busan from the ashes of the Korean war into a prosperous port city with its own unique identity. The show was about 50 minutes long. Make no mistake: this wasn't just some pretty lights in the sky. The fireworks were synced to music. They were colossal, and colorful, and some of them even made shapes or spelled out letters. There were fireworks falling from the bridge and fireworks on the water. There were several remote-controlled birds that flew over the beach and released fireworks as phoenixes. There was even a group of five acrobats who jumped down a skyscraper behind us in neon-lit suits! Here is someone's (admittedly poor-quality) video of parts of the show:
I think I probably had my mouth open the entire time, just out of sheer wonder. A few tears may have even been shed - and not just by me. One of our party took a few pictures.
All pictures taken by, and property of, the lovely and talented Nerina Van Der Westhuizen.
After the show, the group split up for dinner and agreed to meet back up later. Since nakji (aka still-moving octopus) has been on my bucket list since I set foot in this country, Tall J, Joel, and I headed straight for a restaurant outside our hostel that advertised it and sat down for the most adventurous meal of our lives. Just as we were about to brave the squirming tentacles, the French guys ran into us eating outside and watched, mouths agape, as we ate them. It was epic. Later on, we met up with most of the others and spent a night out on the town.
On Sunday morning, I went with Straight L, Curly L, and The Nymph for a walk along the coast. We walked along the beach and then followed a short trail to a strange building that looked like a UFO but turned out to be a meeting hall for a major political Asian summit a few years ago. Go figure. Afterwards, we made our way back to public transportation. After mustering up all of my Korean skills to talk to the guy at the information desk, only to find that you could not buy bus tickets online in Busan (go figure), Straight and Curly L agreed to head to the terminal to buy bus tickets for us, since Shae-Shae and The Nymph wanted to check out the Shinsegae (which is the world's largest department store) and I wanted to go to Spa Land. Luckily for me, there were no buses available until about four hours later, so I was able to get scrubbed within an inch of my life by an adjuma and appreciate all of the themed rooms at the largest public bathhouse in Asia. Curly L told me that the subway ride from the Shinsegae to the bus terminal was about half an hour, so I figured that I would have plenty of time to take the subway and even grab dinner if I gave myself 45 minutes.
My mistake.
Our bus was scheduled to leave at 7 p.m., and The Nymph had my tickets. Fine. I got on the subway and zoned out for a while, then looked at my phone when I was about seven stops away. I felt the color leave my face when I saw that it was 6:42. Okay, I thought, if it's two minutes per stop, then I will have about four minutes to make it to my gate, and the bus terminal isn't that big. I felt the time slip as I watched the stops go by. Finally my stop arrived and I bolted through the subway, flew up the stairs, and reached the street...only to realize that I didn't know which building the terminal was in. I scared the bejeezus out of some poor shoe vendor by demanding to know where the terminal was, which I then raced toward, steeling myself for the possibility of jumping in front of my bus to make it stop. I reached the doors and, with some relief, saw that the bus was still at the platform.
"Jessica!" Straight L called out to me as she saw me through the crowd. I pushed my way to where she and Curly L stood in line. "Where is The Nymph?" Panic returned as I realized she had my ticket.
"She's not here?"
"No! We don't know where they are."
The bus was delayed, so we quickly brainstormed solutions as I wondered if I spoke enough Korean to explain what happened and beg them to reprint my ticket. Then we saw The Nymph and Shae-Shae running through the crowd. I called out to them, and they came over. The Nymph was so relieved that she dissolved into tears for a few minutes. Laughing, we boarded the bus and headed home.
All in all, a pretty epic trip.
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Saying Goodbye/Dizendo adeus
Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road / Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
The senior-most couple at our hagwon finally said goodbye today. The last of our cohort - the couple that showed us the ropes when we arrived nervous and bright-eyed last May - threw their parties for their students, said goodbye to the staff, and left. Our friends, our rivals, our supervisors, our peers...sixteen months of working together, partying together, fighting together, suffering together, exploring and discovering and navigating and stumbling and fumbling through Korea are over. Our Korean head teacher was so sad that she was in hysterics when she said goodbye, startling my sixth graders during their end-of-session exam. Tomorrow is a holiday, so as of Friday Joel and I will be the senior-most foreign teachers and the proverbial kings of the mountain.
It feels excessively weird.
So make the best of this test and don't ask why / It's not a question but a lesson learned in time
Living and making friends here is so unlike anywhere else. It's such a relief to find someone you can relate to when you're a stranger in a strange land that you tend to get attached to people very quickly. We were no exception. They showed us the ropes at work and around town, kept us laughing when things at work got tense, and reassured us when we were still learning what was worth worrying about and what wasn't. She was more resourceful with the internet than anyone I know and always seemed to have an answer to the questions I was asking, whether it was about food or travel or shopping around town.
It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right / I hope you had the time of your life
She and I shared a lot. She was the first person I summited Mudeung with. She vented her frustrations over her student loans to me; I unburdened my marriage and life stage anxieties onto her. We found common ground in very different childhoods and even more different choices. We bounced off of each other's ideas, disappointments, dreams. She helped me to see what I have and don't have, and how to be grateful for both.
So take the photographs and still frames in your mind / Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
No friendship can remain unchanged over the years, and it would seem that some must end. How can a person know if one ends well, or if it ends right? Or if it should end at all? Is it okay if it fizzles out over late-night hookah and kimbap, or should it just go up in a blaze of glory?
Tattoos and memories and dead skin on trial / For what it's worth, it was worth all the while Perhaps these months will always be a gray area for me, but I loved it nonetheless. Safe travels, nigs, wherever they take you.
It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right / I hope you had the time of your life
The senior-most couple at our hagwon finally said goodbye today. The last of our cohort - the couple that showed us the ropes when we arrived nervous and bright-eyed last May - threw their parties for their students, said goodbye to the staff, and left. Our friends, our rivals, our supervisors, our peers...sixteen months of working together, partying together, fighting together, suffering together, exploring and discovering and navigating and stumbling and fumbling through Korea are over. Our Korean head teacher was so sad that she was in hysterics when she said goodbye, startling my sixth graders during their end-of-session exam. Tomorrow is a holiday, so as of Friday Joel and I will be the senior-most foreign teachers and the proverbial kings of the mountain.
It feels excessively weird.
So make the best of this test and don't ask why / It's not a question but a lesson learned in time
Living and making friends here is so unlike anywhere else. It's such a relief to find someone you can relate to when you're a stranger in a strange land that you tend to get attached to people very quickly. We were no exception. They showed us the ropes at work and around town, kept us laughing when things at work got tense, and reassured us when we were still learning what was worth worrying about and what wasn't. She was more resourceful with the internet than anyone I know and always seemed to have an answer to the questions I was asking, whether it was about food or travel or shopping around town.
It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right / I hope you had the time of your life
She and I shared a lot. She was the first person I summited Mudeung with. She vented her frustrations over her student loans to me; I unburdened my marriage and life stage anxieties onto her. We found common ground in very different childhoods and even more different choices. We bounced off of each other's ideas, disappointments, dreams. She helped me to see what I have and don't have, and how to be grateful for both.
So take the photographs and still frames in your mind / Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
No friendship can remain unchanged over the years, and it would seem that some must end. How can a person know if one ends well, or if it ends right? Or if it should end at all? Is it okay if it fizzles out over late-night hookah and kimbap, or should it just go up in a blaze of glory?
Tattoos and memories and dead skin on trial / For what it's worth, it was worth all the while Perhaps these months will always be a gray area for me, but I loved it nonetheless. Safe travels, nigs, wherever they take you.
It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right / I hope you had the time of your life
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
A Reporter's Glimpse into North Korea
I've toyed with the idea of turning this blog into a sort of North Korea watch blog after we get back home. Then again, I'm not sure if I will want to keep using it as our travel blog; we are, after all, taking the Foreign Service exam in Seoul on Saturday (at least we were, until the damn government shutdown cast doubt on that prospect...eff you, Congress!). Maybe I'll create a separate "North Korea Watch Page" or something.
At any rate, I just find any and all news that comes out of the Hermit Kingdom to be fascinating, including a shipment of ski lift equipment being cancelled due to sanctions and Kim Jong Un's former lover being killed by firing squad. This, however, is a slightly different piece, written by a reporter who has been allowed repeated access to the country by the regime over the last several months. He has written a piece in National Geographic about the different, and confusing, views he gets of the country, between what his government-appointed minders want him to see and the occasional glimpses of genuine phenomena.
At any rate, I just find any and all news that comes out of the Hermit Kingdom to be fascinating, including a shipment of ski lift equipment being cancelled due to sanctions and Kim Jong Un's former lover being killed by firing squad. This, however, is a slightly different piece, written by a reporter who has been allowed repeated access to the country by the regime over the last several months. He has written a piece in National Geographic about the different, and confusing, views he gets of the country, between what his government-appointed minders want him to see and the occasional glimpses of genuine phenomena.
We’ve learned that what we see in passing is often more revealing than our destination. We’ve found that unguarded moments can be captured in photographs taken from bus windows and that wrong turns can provide revealing details. Like the time our bus driver accidentally veered off a perfectly maintained Pyongyang street onto a narrow, dusty road pocked with potholes and lined with unlit buildings. Or when we spotted a moldy tower of apartments one evening, each room lit by a single naked bulb casting a sickly yellow light. We have ventured outside the relative prosperity of Pyongyang to cities without modern high-rises, where dimly lit stores contain half-empty shelves.
It is necessary to go outside the country—to South Korea, Britain, or China—to find the only North Koreans who can speak freely about the realities of totalitarian life: the ones who have left. “Looking back, I wonder now why we had to live such sad lives,” says a former North Korean coal miner, who fled to Seoul in 2006 because his father was politically suspect. Refugees describe a hidden caste system based on ideological background: Three generations of a family can be imprisoned if one member is convicted of a political crime.
The coal miner is one of about 25,000 North Koreans who have escaped to South Korea since the war. They have fled political repression, an enveloping police state, and desperate poverty. The UN estimates that one-third of North Korean children are chronically malnourished. But the number of refugees has dropped dramatically since late 2011, when Kim Jong Un tightened security along the once porous 880-mile border with China. In 2012 only about 1,500 North Koreans made the dangerous journey.
The North Korean government, of course, works relentlessly to present a view of life in which schools are filled with happy, well-fed children, stores are filled with goods, and loyalty to the Kim family is universal. People know to speak to reporters in surreal, mechanical hyperbole, spouting praise for their leaders. “Thanks to the warm love of the ‘Respected General,’ Kim Jong Un, even rural people like us can come here and enjoy mini-golf,” Kim Jong Hui, a 51-year-old housewife from the country’s remote northeast, tells me one day at the country’s first putt-putt golf course, in Pyongyang. Overwhelmed by this benevolence, she says, “I have made up my mind to do my duty to help build a prosperous, powerful state.”
It is easy, after many such encounters, to believe in the caricature of North Koreans as Stalinist robots. The challenge is to find the far more elusive—and more prosaic—reality. Sometimes that takes stumbling onto a subject that gets North Koreans to open up a bit.
Like Gone With the Wind. This nation revels in the 77-year-old novel, finding echoes of itself in the tale of civil war and the ruthless, beautiful woman who vowed never to go hungry again.
...
In a country with few entertainment choices that have escaped the propaganda bureaucrats, the novel gripped the capital. Today it’s hard to find an adult in Pyongyang who hasn’t read it. A guide at the Grand People’s Study House, a musty Pyongyang monolith, sees the book as proof that American women are poorly treated. A Kaesong bureaucrat, a haughty man with a fading blue-striped tie, sees the book as a Marxist morality tale. A woman with a troubled marriage tells me she discovered strength in Scarlett O’Hara’s cold-blooded tenacity. The book is entertainment and solace and inspiration. It’s a window into America. It’s a celebration of a people who, like the North Koreans, are fiercely proud of fighting the Yankees.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Wake Me Up When September Ends/Me acorde quando setembro termina
Summer has come and passed / The innocent can never last / Wake me up when September ends
I suppose in a place like Gwangju - or Korea, more generally - as long as the system of cycling foreign teachers persists, saying goodbye over and over again becomes a way of life. I never wondered why the long-term expats were so much harder to get to know; it always seemed fairly obvious that the normal, mature caution exercised by adults when approaching new relationships might come off as a bit distant compared to the unnerving openness of newly-arrived teachers. I knew that was why the men and women with stable jobs and families weren't as freakishly friendly as the still-jet-lagged hagwon recruits, and why the old-timers joked about the new EPIK class with gentle disdain, and why our Korean colleagues were politely distant and approached us all with caution.
Despite knowing all this, it still feels odd to be on the other end of it.
Like my fathers come to pass / Seven years has gone so fast / Wake me up when September ends
Joel and I have been here for a full 15 months now. With five months to go, we have again found ourselves at the entrance to the maze of getting to know the incoming teachers as we say goodbye to the outgoing ones. To be fair, six/five/four months is not an insignificant amount of time to spend with someone, and we enjoyed the (even shorter) time that we got to know the teachers that were leaving as we arrived...but our minds have already begun to wander in the direction of leaving, and I worry that my efforts to get to know the new recruits will just look perfunctory and shallow.
The couple that arrived at the beginning of August has already lived and taught here for a year, so they are probably already too cool for me anyway. :-D We just welcomed a couple from Canada that is totally new to Korea (today is their first day on the job - good luck, guys!). We had them over for dinner last night, since we couldn't go out to eat as a group on Thursday last week. As soon as I found out they were ethnically Dutch, I immediately thought of one of my bridesmaids who married a man from a Dutch community in Iowa - it was nice to meet someone new and remember home (and not feel like a tool, since I already know so little about Canada).
Here comes the rain again / Falling from the stars / Drenched in my pain again / Becoming who we are
And so we begin September, and the fall - it looks like the horrific Texas-style heat wave that plagued us has finally passed, as the weather has been deliciously cool for the last few days. At this point we have said goodbye to all of the teachers that arrived after us, and at the end of this month, the last two teachers that were here when we arrived - the current senior-most teachers - will go home, and we will be kings of the mountain (or something). One or the other of us may be made Foreign Head Teacher (I personally am not sure they will continue the position). Meanwhile, pop culture back home is still reeling from this year's MTV VMAs, two of our friends from Austin just got married (Mazel tov!), and our best man is getting hitched in October. We have one more vacation this year (coming up in about two weeks, actually).
Oh, and we are apparently gearing up for war in Syria - because the last time we jumped into a conflict in the Middle East, it worked out really well.
As my memory rests / But never forgets what I lost / Wake me up when September ends
I suppose in a place like Gwangju - or Korea, more generally - as long as the system of cycling foreign teachers persists, saying goodbye over and over again becomes a way of life. I never wondered why the long-term expats were so much harder to get to know; it always seemed fairly obvious that the normal, mature caution exercised by adults when approaching new relationships might come off as a bit distant compared to the unnerving openness of newly-arrived teachers. I knew that was why the men and women with stable jobs and families weren't as freakishly friendly as the still-jet-lagged hagwon recruits, and why the old-timers joked about the new EPIK class with gentle disdain, and why our Korean colleagues were politely distant and approached us all with caution.
Despite knowing all this, it still feels odd to be on the other end of it.
Like my fathers come to pass / Seven years has gone so fast / Wake me up when September ends
Joel and I have been here for a full 15 months now. With five months to go, we have again found ourselves at the entrance to the maze of getting to know the incoming teachers as we say goodbye to the outgoing ones. To be fair, six/five/four months is not an insignificant amount of time to spend with someone, and we enjoyed the (even shorter) time that we got to know the teachers that were leaving as we arrived...but our minds have already begun to wander in the direction of leaving, and I worry that my efforts to get to know the new recruits will just look perfunctory and shallow.
The couple that arrived at the beginning of August has already lived and taught here for a year, so they are probably already too cool for me anyway. :-D We just welcomed a couple from Canada that is totally new to Korea (today is their first day on the job - good luck, guys!). We had them over for dinner last night, since we couldn't go out to eat as a group on Thursday last week. As soon as I found out they were ethnically Dutch, I immediately thought of one of my bridesmaids who married a man from a Dutch community in Iowa - it was nice to meet someone new and remember home (and not feel like a tool, since I already know so little about Canada).
Here comes the rain again / Falling from the stars / Drenched in my pain again / Becoming who we are
And so we begin September, and the fall - it looks like the horrific Texas-style heat wave that plagued us has finally passed, as the weather has been deliciously cool for the last few days. At this point we have said goodbye to all of the teachers that arrived after us, and at the end of this month, the last two teachers that were here when we arrived - the current senior-most teachers - will go home, and we will be kings of the mountain (or something). One or the other of us may be made Foreign Head Teacher (I personally am not sure they will continue the position). Meanwhile, pop culture back home is still reeling from this year's MTV VMAs, two of our friends from Austin just got married (Mazel tov!), and our best man is getting hitched in October. We have one more vacation this year (coming up in about two weeks, actually).
Oh, and we are apparently gearing up for war in Syria - because the last time we jumped into a conflict in the Middle East, it worked out really well.
As my memory rests / But never forgets what I lost / Wake me up when September ends
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Waterfalls and Water Parks/Parques aquáticos e cachoeiras
Korea is hot as hell. It really is - I am not exaggerating in the slightest. Over the last two weeks, we have had temperatures hovering right around 37 or 38 Celsius (that's upper 90s for all you Fahrenheit peeps out there) with ridiculous humidity. I normally walk the mile to my yoga studio and back in the mornings - just for a little extra activity - but I have had to start taking the bus because the walk back two Mondays ago was so hot and exhausting that it made my physically sick, which I then had to deal with at work all day. I rarely (if ever) check the weather forecast here, so I was surprised at how wimpy of a Texan I was until Joel told me that the heat wave has been so bad that it made the front page of CNN - about a dozen people in China have actually died.
To add insult to injury, the government is trying to crack down on "excessive" energy consumption by fining businesses and notifying residents when they exceed a certain quota. A while back, to save money, the Korean government apparently purchased faulty parts for their nuclear reactors from (you guessed it!) China, so now two of the country's reactors are down, resulting in considerable strain on the grid. And now, because of their ineptitude, I got a notice in our mailbox asking us to please try to reduce our energy usage because we exceeded our previous month's consumption by 114 kW (about $35). Because the notice was all in Korean, I mistook it at first for a notice that we were being fined - and proceeded to launch into a rage because we have only been running our AC unit on weekends. Needless to say, I was quite relieved when my coworker explained the notice to me, but the whole thing is kind of ridiculous. I suppose it is typical of government to punish its citizens for consequences incurred because of its own fuck-ups.
Anyway, we have been trying to escape the heat through a series of water-related activities. Last weekend, I went hiking on Wolchulsan (a small mountain here in our province) with two of my coworkers on Saturday, and then Joel and I went with another couple to a nearby water park on Sunday. Both were unexpected adventures, albeit in different ways.
The Waterfall
My coworker initially invited my to take her to the summit of Mudeungsan, the mountain here in town, a few weekends ago. However, Wolchulsan was recommended to her by a friend and a longtime resident, so we decided to do that instead, as I had been wanting to check it out anyway. So at 5:20 last Saturday morning, the three of us jumped in a cab to the bus terminal, and from there we bused to Yeongam and took another taxi to the entrance to the hiking trail. The scenery, of course, was beautiful, but the hiking was deceptively difficult. Wolchulsan is only 899 meters high, which is a full 200 meters shorter than Mudeung, which is a pretty easy climb. I thought it would be a breeze - and I thought wrong.
Once you get past the first part of the trail and begin the real ascent, the gentle dirt trail gives way to steep rock steps, jagged rock faces with ropes to haul yourself up, and steel staircases made hot by the merciless sun. It was relentlessly bright and obscenely humid, so naturally all three of us were soaked in sweat after barely an hour. We rested often and sought refuge in patches of shade. We graciously accepted snacks and the quintessential hiking cucumber from a friendly Korean hiker. We huffed, puffed, laughed, whined and did all the things that make a girls' hike so comfortable.
After taking about half an hour to rest at the summit (and snap a few pictures), we headed down to complete the loop we took up the mountain. Around halfway through the descent, we discovered the falls - a small waterfall made by a river snaking down the mountainside that had, of course, been reduced to a trickle because of the summer heat. Still, there was enough water still coming down to make it a highly tempting rest spot. We eyed it hungrily for a moment, then I slipped off my backpack and clambered over to the slick rock face where the water was sprinkling down, almost like a shower. I lost track of how long we stayed there, giggling and sighing and splashing water on our faces and arms to wash off the sweat and dust from the mountain.
After we made it off the mountain, we stopped at a restaurant a little ways down the road to eat "mountain vegetable bibimbap." The only other customers were a large extended family, to whom we probably looked ludicrous with our wet hair and bare shoulders. Eventually we got a ride back to the local bus terminal from a gracious woman who ran a pension out of her house.
The Water Park
Joel and I have been spending some time with a couple from Ohio that we met through a mutual friend. They are super cool and down-to-earth artists: the guy, who is actually half-Korean and has family here in country, specializes in ceramics, and the lady is a photographer. Anyway, she really misses the beach and the pool (much like me!), so we had talked about planning a trip either to the beach or to a water park. I am relatively familiar with the beaches around here, but I don't know anything about any water parks, so I went to the most logical source I could find for information - my students. They recommended several different parks to me, but the two that were most frequently mentioned were Caribbean Bay (next to Everland, outside of Seoul) and Jungheung Gold Spa (in Naju, a city in our province). The students insisted that Caribbean Bay was the best, but the prospect of spending W60k on round-trip bus fare in addition to another W30k for the entrance fee was not appealing, so I set my sights on Jungheung Gold Spa and began collecting intel.
When I initially asked around, no one seemed to know the price of admission, which I thought was odd. A Google search turned up a handful of blogs that mentioned the park, but still nothing on cost. I even tried poking around the park's (Korean-only) website, but no information on price of admission came up. Finally, I asked one of my Korean coworkers to look it up for me. You can imagine my shock when she informed me that single-person entry was a whopping 59,000 won (almost $60).
Teacher, what?
I asked my students about it, and they were just as flabbergasted as I was. They insisted that they had never paid that much, and nearly all of them had been at least once on a school trip. I discussed it with my sixth-graders, who reasoned that the W59k must be the price for those people who stayed overnight at the jjimjilbang, and that a day pass could not cost more than W15k. I thought that seemed reasonable, so I messaged our friends, looked up the bus timetable, and packed our bags.
Once again, I thought wrong.
We made it to Naju, but soon discovered that there were very few local buses that went to the water park. We negotiated with a taxi driver to take us to the park and were in high spirits until I started talking to the ticket window agent.
Me: Hello! How much for one person?
Ticket Agent: 59,000 won.
Me: Yes, but not for sleeping. Just for the day.
TA: 59,000 won.
Me: For one person?
TA: Yes.
Me: Okay but, we don't want to sleep here. I pantomimed sleeping, and then made an "X" with my arms. Just for the day.
TA: Just moment.
The woman got up and brought another agent to the window. I began again.
Me: So, how much for one person?
New TA: 59,000 won.
Me: Just for the day?
TA: Yes.
At this point, I am starting to feel the panic well up as I realize that I have unwittingly led myself, my husband, and our two delightful friends into a trap. "Ask them what it includes," suggested the guy.
Me: What can we do in the park?
TA: Water park and spa.
Me: Just the water park?
TA: Yes. And spa. He pantomimed a water slide.
...Teacher, what?
The four of us walked away slowly and stared at each other. Joel and the other guy studied the map as I studied their faces, bewildered. "It looks like there might be a beach here on the map," the other guy suggested hopefully. "Are we near the ocean, or maybe a lake? Maybe we can spend the day there instead?" So we walked around the parking lot to the "beach," only to find a small dock for motor boats to drag banana boats along a dirty-looking river. We returned to the ticket booth, defeated.
"What should we do?" the other guy asked. I sighed hopelessly.
"Guys, I'm really sorry...I had no idea. I can't believe I did this."
They assured me that it was no big deal, and after some nervous laughter we decided to bite the bullet and spend the money to go. After all, we'd come all that way, so we might as well just do it, right?
Alas, the unexpected surprises didn't stop there. Not only were all of the lines for the rides an hour long, each slide or other major attraction cost an additional W1,000, which you had to pay for by putting credit on a wristband they provided. The wave pool and lazy river required life jackets, which were another W4,000 to rent. The whole park only had a dozen or so rides. We went on a few slides and spent the rest of the afternoon pissing off the lifeguards by trying to sneak into the wave pool, drinking beer and joking about what a rip-off the whole experience was. We had fun, but the trip broke the bank for Joel and I until we got paid this week. Also, I feel like an asshole for leading two (relatively) new and lovely friends into such a ridiculous debacle.
In contrast, going to the beach tomorrow with my Dutch friend will only cost W22k. Perhaps next time I will stick to the devil I know.
To add insult to injury, the government is trying to crack down on "excessive" energy consumption by fining businesses and notifying residents when they exceed a certain quota. A while back, to save money, the Korean government apparently purchased faulty parts for their nuclear reactors from (you guessed it!) China, so now two of the country's reactors are down, resulting in considerable strain on the grid. And now, because of their ineptitude, I got a notice in our mailbox asking us to please try to reduce our energy usage because we exceeded our previous month's consumption by 114 kW (about $35). Because the notice was all in Korean, I mistook it at first for a notice that we were being fined - and proceeded to launch into a rage because we have only been running our AC unit on weekends. Needless to say, I was quite relieved when my coworker explained the notice to me, but the whole thing is kind of ridiculous. I suppose it is typical of government to punish its citizens for consequences incurred because of its own fuck-ups.
Anyway, we have been trying to escape the heat through a series of water-related activities. Last weekend, I went hiking on Wolchulsan (a small mountain here in our province) with two of my coworkers on Saturday, and then Joel and I went with another couple to a nearby water park on Sunday. Both were unexpected adventures, albeit in different ways.
The Waterfall
My coworker initially invited my to take her to the summit of Mudeungsan, the mountain here in town, a few weekends ago. However, Wolchulsan was recommended to her by a friend and a longtime resident, so we decided to do that instead, as I had been wanting to check it out anyway. So at 5:20 last Saturday morning, the three of us jumped in a cab to the bus terminal, and from there we bused to Yeongam and took another taxi to the entrance to the hiking trail. The scenery, of course, was beautiful, but the hiking was deceptively difficult. Wolchulsan is only 899 meters high, which is a full 200 meters shorter than Mudeung, which is a pretty easy climb. I thought it would be a breeze - and I thought wrong.
Once you get past the first part of the trail and begin the real ascent, the gentle dirt trail gives way to steep rock steps, jagged rock faces with ropes to haul yourself up, and steel staircases made hot by the merciless sun. It was relentlessly bright and obscenely humid, so naturally all three of us were soaked in sweat after barely an hour. We rested often and sought refuge in patches of shade. We graciously accepted snacks and the quintessential hiking cucumber from a friendly Korean hiker. We huffed, puffed, laughed, whined and did all the things that make a girls' hike so comfortable.
After taking about half an hour to rest at the summit (and snap a few pictures), we headed down to complete the loop we took up the mountain. Around halfway through the descent, we discovered the falls - a small waterfall made by a river snaking down the mountainside that had, of course, been reduced to a trickle because of the summer heat. Still, there was enough water still coming down to make it a highly tempting rest spot. We eyed it hungrily for a moment, then I slipped off my backpack and clambered over to the slick rock face where the water was sprinkling down, almost like a shower. I lost track of how long we stayed there, giggling and sighing and splashing water on our faces and arms to wash off the sweat and dust from the mountain.
After we made it off the mountain, we stopped at a restaurant a little ways down the road to eat "mountain vegetable bibimbap." The only other customers were a large extended family, to whom we probably looked ludicrous with our wet hair and bare shoulders. Eventually we got a ride back to the local bus terminal from a gracious woman who ran a pension out of her house.
The Water Park
Joel and I have been spending some time with a couple from Ohio that we met through a mutual friend. They are super cool and down-to-earth artists: the guy, who is actually half-Korean and has family here in country, specializes in ceramics, and the lady is a photographer. Anyway, she really misses the beach and the pool (much like me!), so we had talked about planning a trip either to the beach or to a water park. I am relatively familiar with the beaches around here, but I don't know anything about any water parks, so I went to the most logical source I could find for information - my students. They recommended several different parks to me, but the two that were most frequently mentioned were Caribbean Bay (next to Everland, outside of Seoul) and Jungheung Gold Spa (in Naju, a city in our province). The students insisted that Caribbean Bay was the best, but the prospect of spending W60k on round-trip bus fare in addition to another W30k for the entrance fee was not appealing, so I set my sights on Jungheung Gold Spa and began collecting intel.
When I initially asked around, no one seemed to know the price of admission, which I thought was odd. A Google search turned up a handful of blogs that mentioned the park, but still nothing on cost. I even tried poking around the park's (Korean-only) website, but no information on price of admission came up. Finally, I asked one of my Korean coworkers to look it up for me. You can imagine my shock when she informed me that single-person entry was a whopping 59,000 won (almost $60).
Teacher, what?
I asked my students about it, and they were just as flabbergasted as I was. They insisted that they had never paid that much, and nearly all of them had been at least once on a school trip. I discussed it with my sixth-graders, who reasoned that the W59k must be the price for those people who stayed overnight at the jjimjilbang, and that a day pass could not cost more than W15k. I thought that seemed reasonable, so I messaged our friends, looked up the bus timetable, and packed our bags.
Once again, I thought wrong.
We made it to Naju, but soon discovered that there were very few local buses that went to the water park. We negotiated with a taxi driver to take us to the park and were in high spirits until I started talking to the ticket window agent.
Me: Hello! How much for one person?
Ticket Agent: 59,000 won.
Me: Yes, but not for sleeping. Just for the day.
TA: 59,000 won.
Me: For one person?
TA: Yes.
Me: Okay but, we don't want to sleep here. I pantomimed sleeping, and then made an "X" with my arms. Just for the day.
TA: Just moment.
The woman got up and brought another agent to the window. I began again.
Me: So, how much for one person?
New TA: 59,000 won.
Me: Just for the day?
TA: Yes.
At this point, I am starting to feel the panic well up as I realize that I have unwittingly led myself, my husband, and our two delightful friends into a trap. "Ask them what it includes," suggested the guy.
Me: What can we do in the park?
TA: Water park and spa.
Me: Just the water park?
TA: Yes. And spa. He pantomimed a water slide.
...Teacher, what?
The four of us walked away slowly and stared at each other. Joel and the other guy studied the map as I studied their faces, bewildered. "It looks like there might be a beach here on the map," the other guy suggested hopefully. "Are we near the ocean, or maybe a lake? Maybe we can spend the day there instead?" So we walked around the parking lot to the "beach," only to find a small dock for motor boats to drag banana boats along a dirty-looking river. We returned to the ticket booth, defeated.
"What should we do?" the other guy asked. I sighed hopelessly.
"Guys, I'm really sorry...I had no idea. I can't believe I did this."
They assured me that it was no big deal, and after some nervous laughter we decided to bite the bullet and spend the money to go. After all, we'd come all that way, so we might as well just do it, right?
Alas, the unexpected surprises didn't stop there. Not only were all of the lines for the rides an hour long, each slide or other major attraction cost an additional W1,000, which you had to pay for by putting credit on a wristband they provided. The wave pool and lazy river required life jackets, which were another W4,000 to rent. The whole park only had a dozen or so rides. We went on a few slides and spent the rest of the afternoon pissing off the lifeguards by trying to sneak into the wave pool, drinking beer and joking about what a rip-off the whole experience was. We had fun, but the trip broke the bank for Joel and I until we got paid this week. Also, I feel like an asshole for leading two (relatively) new and lovely friends into such a ridiculous debacle.
In contrast, going to the beach tomorrow with my Dutch friend will only cost W22k. Perhaps next time I will stick to the devil I know.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Fogging the Future / Nebulizando o futuro
I have noticed that I am updating this blog less and less often. Partly that is because there hasn't been all that much to write about on a day-to-day basis, as we are well past the initial adjustment-to-life-in-a-foreign-country phase. I have also found myself becoming increasingly busy as time goes on, mostly with extracurricular activities to maintain my professional (i.e. global health) profile. Funny how I always seem to find things to fill my schedule, and as a result to get way too stressed out. Hrm.
This is our second summer in Gwangju, and we are again suffering in the summer heat and humidity. I know our Texas friends are laughing at us for complaining - after all, I think the only place that has summers comparable to Houston is southeast Asia - and I myself wonder why we find it so unbearable. The truth is, though, that here we probably spend much more time in the heat. Back home, everywhere you went had central air, so the only places where you felt the summer heat was on your way from whatever building you were in to your car, or vice versa, or if you were sitting out by the pool (in which case, you could always just get in the pool). Here, we walk almost everywhere (since we don't drive), and there is no central air for the building where we work - the temperature is controlled by classroom, and the AC is tightly regulated by the school owner to save money, so the classrooms are never really all that cool. I have been taking two showers a day since June and I still wake up and come home from work feeling disgusting.
Summer brings its sorrows along with its joys. Unfortunately, some of the plants in Joel's balcony garden have not done very well in the heat. Specifically, the cilantro that he planted was killed by the blast of heat coming from our apartment's AC exhaust unit, as it was positioned right next to the vent. He has also been trying to deal with spider mites infesting his peppers and eggplants. The cosmos also died, and neither the peppermint nor the spearmint wound up doing so well. Luckily, the basil is still thriving, and I am trying to persuade him to use it to make pesto for me (no success on this front yet). Also, 75% of our staff is in the process of turning over: our coworker from Missouri left at the end of June, and we just said goodbye to the Canadian-Minnesotan couple (who got engaged while they were here) and welcomed a couple (one American, one Englishman) last week who are returning after teaching in Korea for a year. The friends from Texas will be leaving at the end of this month, to be replaced by a married couple from Canada, so we will have a lot more non-American representation in the coming year. After that, the current senior-most couple will leave at the end of September. Joel and I will be the last of the (current) old guard. Change can be good, and I am looking forward to meeting new people, but it is always sad to say goodbye to old friends. This year has been a bit of a bumpy ride, but we had some great times with the people we worked with, and I am sad to see them go.
On the bright side, summer brings lots of opportunities for travel. Earlier I mentioned our trips to Seoraksan and Jeju; for our July vacation, we went to Tokyo and just got back on Wednesday. I loved Tokyo almost as much as I loved Kyoto - I remain enchanted by Japanese food, shrines, culture, and just general awesomeness. Joel and I spent four days there with a friend and saw just about everything we could fit into 90.5 hours, including Shibuya (for the massive crossing), Harajuku (to watch the cosplayers), the Meiji shrine, Akihabara (for the maid café experience), the controversial Yasukuni (i.e. imperial war) shrine, Tokyo Sky Tree, Shinjuku (to finally meet my Japanese conversation partner in person!), Tokyo Tower, breakfast sushi at the Tsukiji fish market, the Kyu-Shiba-rikyu garden, and Ginza. Pictures will be available, as usual, on Facebook - when Joel gets around to posting them. We have four days in mid-August (which we haven't decided what to do with yet) and five days mid-September for Chuseok, when we are thinking about going to Ulleung-do. To be honest, I am re-thinking this, since the island (while lovely) is an absolute bitch to get to via public transportation.
We now have six months to go on our contracts, so I have really been starting to think about what comes next. I know that after we finish here, we will be traveling around the world to relax and see family for another six months or so, so it will really be about a year before we need to find jobs...I keep telling myself that it is plenty of time, but somehow I never seem to be able to convince myself. I started looking at jobs in my field again for the first time today, and it is at least a comfort to know that they are there. We have been discussing many options, which are (in no particular order):
1. Go back home, find jobs in DC, and settle in. Alternatively, Joel could go to school in DC while I work.
2. Come back to Korea, where we can get better jobs and Joel can pursue an online Masters degree. This furthers Joel's career ambitions, but not mine.
3. Look for teaching jobs in Japan. Joel could also pursue his Masters online with this option. Again, it doesn't further my career, but it would be a change of scenery at least - and I love Japan.
4. Apply to work for the foreign service. We are both planning to take the FSOT in October, so we will see if we pass and go from there. The drawback to this option is that the hiring process takes forever - if you pass all the stages, it takes 15 to 18 months to be invited to join an A-100 class and start getting paid, so we would be looking at starting sometime in the beginning of 2015.
5. Apply to work for the Peace Corps. This furthers both of our career ambitions, particularly mine, but it pays nothing and we can't have children during the 2+ year commitment.
6. Go back to school. I have been thinking more and more about getting my doctorate, but both of us being in school would put us into massive debt. Not cool.
On top of all of this uncertainty, the question of when, or if, to start a family still looms.
And I swear to God, if one more student asks me why I don't have a baby, I am going to set them on fire.
This is our second summer in Gwangju, and we are again suffering in the summer heat and humidity. I know our Texas friends are laughing at us for complaining - after all, I think the only place that has summers comparable to Houston is southeast Asia - and I myself wonder why we find it so unbearable. The truth is, though, that here we probably spend much more time in the heat. Back home, everywhere you went had central air, so the only places where you felt the summer heat was on your way from whatever building you were in to your car, or vice versa, or if you were sitting out by the pool (in which case, you could always just get in the pool). Here, we walk almost everywhere (since we don't drive), and there is no central air for the building where we work - the temperature is controlled by classroom, and the AC is tightly regulated by the school owner to save money, so the classrooms are never really all that cool. I have been taking two showers a day since June and I still wake up and come home from work feeling disgusting.
Summer brings its sorrows along with its joys. Unfortunately, some of the plants in Joel's balcony garden have not done very well in the heat. Specifically, the cilantro that he planted was killed by the blast of heat coming from our apartment's AC exhaust unit, as it was positioned right next to the vent. He has also been trying to deal with spider mites infesting his peppers and eggplants. The cosmos also died, and neither the peppermint nor the spearmint wound up doing so well. Luckily, the basil is still thriving, and I am trying to persuade him to use it to make pesto for me (no success on this front yet). Also, 75% of our staff is in the process of turning over: our coworker from Missouri left at the end of June, and we just said goodbye to the Canadian-Minnesotan couple (who got engaged while they were here) and welcomed a couple (one American, one Englishman) last week who are returning after teaching in Korea for a year. The friends from Texas will be leaving at the end of this month, to be replaced by a married couple from Canada, so we will have a lot more non-American representation in the coming year. After that, the current senior-most couple will leave at the end of September. Joel and I will be the last of the (current) old guard. Change can be good, and I am looking forward to meeting new people, but it is always sad to say goodbye to old friends. This year has been a bit of a bumpy ride, but we had some great times with the people we worked with, and I am sad to see them go.
On the bright side, summer brings lots of opportunities for travel. Earlier I mentioned our trips to Seoraksan and Jeju; for our July vacation, we went to Tokyo and just got back on Wednesday. I loved Tokyo almost as much as I loved Kyoto - I remain enchanted by Japanese food, shrines, culture, and just general awesomeness. Joel and I spent four days there with a friend and saw just about everything we could fit into 90.5 hours, including Shibuya (for the massive crossing), Harajuku (to watch the cosplayers), the Meiji shrine, Akihabara (for the maid café experience), the controversial Yasukuni (i.e. imperial war) shrine, Tokyo Sky Tree, Shinjuku (to finally meet my Japanese conversation partner in person!), Tokyo Tower, breakfast sushi at the Tsukiji fish market, the Kyu-Shiba-rikyu garden, and Ginza. Pictures will be available, as usual, on Facebook - when Joel gets around to posting them. We have four days in mid-August (which we haven't decided what to do with yet) and five days mid-September for Chuseok, when we are thinking about going to Ulleung-do. To be honest, I am re-thinking this, since the island (while lovely) is an absolute bitch to get to via public transportation.
We now have six months to go on our contracts, so I have really been starting to think about what comes next. I know that after we finish here, we will be traveling around the world to relax and see family for another six months or so, so it will really be about a year before we need to find jobs...I keep telling myself that it is plenty of time, but somehow I never seem to be able to convince myself. I started looking at jobs in my field again for the first time today, and it is at least a comfort to know that they are there. We have been discussing many options, which are (in no particular order):
1. Go back home, find jobs in DC, and settle in. Alternatively, Joel could go to school in DC while I work.
2. Come back to Korea, where we can get better jobs and Joel can pursue an online Masters degree. This furthers Joel's career ambitions, but not mine.
3. Look for teaching jobs in Japan. Joel could also pursue his Masters online with this option. Again, it doesn't further my career, but it would be a change of scenery at least - and I love Japan.
4. Apply to work for the foreign service. We are both planning to take the FSOT in October, so we will see if we pass and go from there. The drawback to this option is that the hiring process takes forever - if you pass all the stages, it takes 15 to 18 months to be invited to join an A-100 class and start getting paid, so we would be looking at starting sometime in the beginning of 2015.
5. Apply to work for the Peace Corps. This furthers both of our career ambitions, particularly mine, but it pays nothing and we can't have children during the 2+ year commitment.
6. Go back to school. I have been thinking more and more about getting my doctorate, but both of us being in school would put us into massive debt. Not cool.
On top of all of this uncertainty, the question of when, or if, to start a family still looms.
And I swear to God, if one more student asks me why I don't have a baby, I am going to set them on fire.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Blizzards and Monsoons/Nevascas e monções
The summer monsoon rains have begun. Actually, they started during our short June vacation, while we were on Jeju island. Very kind of them, really, although they didn't stop us from doing anything we wanted to do, except go to the beach. Go figure that neither time we have gone to an island for a summer vacation have I been able to sit on the beach.
Sigh.
Actually, the main goals of our trip this time around were to visit our old co-worker who moved back home to Jeju, and to climb Halla-san, a UNESCO site and the tallest peak in South Korea. (You will recall that our plan to do that last year was foiled by a typhoon.) We managed to do both, actually. Our co-worker was kind enough to pick us up at the ferry terminal when we arrived on Thursday night and take us out to dinner and then ice cream. On Friday, we slept in and relaxed, taking a few hours to hike another one of the Olleh courses and then making our way to the hotel in Seogwipo. On Saturday morning, we woke up early and caught the bus to the trail head at Halla-san. It was chilly and rainy, so we bought some cheap plastic ponchos and headed up the mountain.
Little did we know what lay ahead.
Most of the way up actually isn't too bad. We had read some other bloggers' accounts of climbing, and most people assessed the trail we took (Seongpanak) to be of moderate difficulty, but we actually found it to be surprisingly easy. It was raining, but not heavily, so the ponchos worked well to keep us dry and a little bit warm. The first third is a very gentle ascent, and while the second third is a little more steep, it is not really treacherous at all. The trail is laid with volcanic rock, which gives pretty good traction, and there are a lot of wooden walkways and staircases. Going up Seoraksan was much harder as far as exertion. Anyway, we stopped at the two shelters on the way up and got some hot ramen at the second one. Then, we headed up for the final stretch.
We hit the blizzard right when we broke through the treeline, with just 100 meters of elevation to go. You may not agree with my assessment that it was a blizzard. I don't give a whiz-bang what you think. It was sleeting, the winds were sustained at around 50 mph, and visibility was about five meters. The wind was so strong that it almost knocked me over. We both nearly lost our hats and our glasses. We struggled up the last kilometer, our ponchos cracking in the wind around our shoulders and necks, with me crying out in pain because my hands were so damn cold.
Finally, we made it to the summit. We crouched by the stone marker, snapped two blurry pictures as fast as we could, and then hauled ass back down the mountain.
We took a break in the higher shelter to thaw before stumbling down the mountain, eight hours and 19.6 kilometers after we started.
Aside from the mountaintop storm, the trip was lovely and relaxing. On Sunday, we went to Manjanggul, a lava tube just outside of Jeju City and another UNESCO site. I took lots of pictures in the cave, so you will have to go to Facebook for those once Joel uploads them. We made our way back to the ferry terminal and, after a choppy and seasickness-inducing ferry ride back to the mainland, we made it home for a late birthday dinner at a Japanese izakaya downtown.
Oh, yeah: Happy 26th birthday, Joel!
We are gearing up for some major changes around here. The weather is hot and muggy, but I finally made sure our AC unit was mold-free, so we can at least run it to keep the apartment from becoming unbearable (we went without last year because I was too lazy to take it apart and make sure it was clean). Along with the weather, summer brings major staff turnover: we have people leaving at the end of every month through September, so we will be training new teachers and saying goodbye to old ones for the next while. Our friend from Missouri leaves at the end of this month (only a week and a half to go!), then the couple that recently got engaged (congratulations, guys!), then the duo from Texas, and last the current senior-most teachers. Turnover (and middle school quarterly exams) mean a lot of change and stress, but it will be nice to meet some new people, too. Frankly, the job has been getting a little repetitive for me, so I won't mind the busy-ness.
As the end of our contract draws closer, we have been doing a lot of thinking about the next step. As of July, we have seven months (212 days, to be precise) left in country. We have talked about coming back to Korea - with the experience at a hagwon, Joel would be qualified for a public school job, and I can get a university job with my master's degree. I am not sure if I want to continue teaching English - I have been maintaining my extracurricular professional activities, but I really want to go back to working in my field. We are also planning to take the Foreign Service exam (FSOT) this October (yes, both of us this time), but that process can take up to a year and a half from start to finish, so I am not sure what we would do in the meantime. The Peace Corps is also an option, as is just going to DC and finding work (the original plan when we came here). It is a good problem to have so many options, but somewhat stressful nonetheless. I tend to fret over this kind of decision-making.
In the meantime, though, we are having a good time - we have been spending a lot of time with friends, and we have a very exciting trip to Tokyo planned for the end of July. I am so excited at the prospect of going back to Japan, but I need to brush up on my Japanese - it has been getting rusty lately.
Sigh.
Actually, the main goals of our trip this time around were to visit our old co-worker who moved back home to Jeju, and to climb Halla-san, a UNESCO site and the tallest peak in South Korea. (You will recall that our plan to do that last year was foiled by a typhoon.) We managed to do both, actually. Our co-worker was kind enough to pick us up at the ferry terminal when we arrived on Thursday night and take us out to dinner and then ice cream. On Friday, we slept in and relaxed, taking a few hours to hike another one of the Olleh courses and then making our way to the hotel in Seogwipo. On Saturday morning, we woke up early and caught the bus to the trail head at Halla-san. It was chilly and rainy, so we bought some cheap plastic ponchos and headed up the mountain.
Little did we know what lay ahead.
Most of the way up actually isn't too bad. We had read some other bloggers' accounts of climbing, and most people assessed the trail we took (Seongpanak) to be of moderate difficulty, but we actually found it to be surprisingly easy. It was raining, but not heavily, so the ponchos worked well to keep us dry and a little bit warm. The first third is a very gentle ascent, and while the second third is a little more steep, it is not really treacherous at all. The trail is laid with volcanic rock, which gives pretty good traction, and there are a lot of wooden walkways and staircases. Going up Seoraksan was much harder as far as exertion. Anyway, we stopped at the two shelters on the way up and got some hot ramen at the second one. Then, we headed up for the final stretch.
We hit the blizzard right when we broke through the treeline, with just 100 meters of elevation to go. You may not agree with my assessment that it was a blizzard. I don't give a whiz-bang what you think. It was sleeting, the winds were sustained at around 50 mph, and visibility was about five meters. The wind was so strong that it almost knocked me over. We both nearly lost our hats and our glasses. We struggled up the last kilometer, our ponchos cracking in the wind around our shoulders and necks, with me crying out in pain because my hands were so damn cold.
Finally, we made it to the summit. We crouched by the stone marker, snapped two blurry pictures as fast as we could, and then hauled ass back down the mountain.
 |
| The summit marker. |
 |
| Joel was in much better shape than I was by this point. |
 |
| Zero visibility. |
 |
| Me, looking (and feeling) like a drowned cat. |
 |
| Some people are more cold-tolerant than others. |
Oh, yeah: Happy 26th birthday, Joel!
We are gearing up for some major changes around here. The weather is hot and muggy, but I finally made sure our AC unit was mold-free, so we can at least run it to keep the apartment from becoming unbearable (we went without last year because I was too lazy to take it apart and make sure it was clean). Along with the weather, summer brings major staff turnover: we have people leaving at the end of every month through September, so we will be training new teachers and saying goodbye to old ones for the next while. Our friend from Missouri leaves at the end of this month (only a week and a half to go!), then the couple that recently got engaged (congratulations, guys!), then the duo from Texas, and last the current senior-most teachers. Turnover (and middle school quarterly exams) mean a lot of change and stress, but it will be nice to meet some new people, too. Frankly, the job has been getting a little repetitive for me, so I won't mind the busy-ness.
As the end of our contract draws closer, we have been doing a lot of thinking about the next step. As of July, we have seven months (212 days, to be precise) left in country. We have talked about coming back to Korea - with the experience at a hagwon, Joel would be qualified for a public school job, and I can get a university job with my master's degree. I am not sure if I want to continue teaching English - I have been maintaining my extracurricular professional activities, but I really want to go back to working in my field. We are also planning to take the Foreign Service exam (FSOT) this October (yes, both of us this time), but that process can take up to a year and a half from start to finish, so I am not sure what we would do in the meantime. The Peace Corps is also an option, as is just going to DC and finding work (the original plan when we came here). It is a good problem to have so many options, but somewhat stressful nonetheless. I tend to fret over this kind of decision-making.
In the meantime, though, we are having a good time - we have been spending a lot of time with friends, and we have a very exciting trip to Tokyo planned for the end of July. I am so excited at the prospect of going back to Japan, but I need to brush up on my Japanese - it has been getting rusty lately.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
One Year and Counting: Spring, Festivals, and HIking/Um Ano e Continuando: Primavera, Festivais, e Caminhadas
If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. --Woody Allen
The weather has been absolutely gorgeous as it has been warming up (and greening up) for spring. I have really enjoyed watching the flowers bloom and everything come to life, especially after a winter that seemed so long. So. Damn. Long. We have been taking advantage of the changing seasons to go to a number of festivals in the area around Gwangju, including the Jindo Sea Parting Festival (at the end of April) and the Hampyeong Butterfly Festival (which we went to on May Day, since we had the day off). We've also been doing a lot more hiking around town - I finally got Joel to come with me to Mudeung, and we've been doing a lot of walking along the river, too. One Saturday, we even wandered into a tiny Buddhist temple, and the monk invited us in and served us tea.
Monday marked exactly one year that Joel and I have been here in South Korea. We had a four-day weekend last weekend, so Joel and I took the opportunity to go hiking on Seoraksan, a national park in the northeastern corner of the country (only about 10 miles south of the DMZ) which is often called the "sea of clouds." It has South Korea's third-highest peak, Daecheongbong. The whole park is generally just stunningly beautiful, and this time of year it is also incredibly green and lush. The weather was gorgeous: it was bright and sunny and not too hot. We took the bus from Gwangju at around 8 a.m. on Thursday morning and arrived in Sokcho, the port city just outside the park, at about 2:30 p.m. (Sokcho is pretty much the farthest city from us in the country). From there, we took a cab straight to the park entrance and began our ascent.
Daecheongbong is 1,708 meters tall. On Thursday afternoon, we hiked about halfway up (just over 1,000 meters) to Huiungak shelter and spent the night there. It was bare bones accommodation - essentially just a room with room for about 180 people to sleep on two levels of wooden floors, which made me really glad we brought blankets (even though they were pretty heavy to carry). We had dinner with some jovial (and very tipsy) middle-aged men who let us use their campstove. We traded stories about Korea and Texas (they were absolutely flabbergasted at how hot Texas summers can get), and then I had a sing-off with one of the more talented guys who knew a handful of John Denver songs. Korean hikers are generally very friendly and curious about foreigners on the mountain, so the first thing they asked Joel when I scurried off to the restroom was how he found such a beautiful and talented wife. (I know it sounds really weird to say that, but I am not joking).
Adjusshi: You are very lucky! Your wife is very beautiful - and so talented!
Joel: Yes, she sings very well.
Adjusshi: How can you find such beautiful wife? Even our Korean baseball players do not have beautiful women like that!
Joel: There are many beautiful women in Texas.
Adjusshi: Oh! I must go to Texas.
The next morning, we set off at about 8 a.m. and began the slow, grueling ascent to the peak. We quickly regretted having packed so much as we practically crawled up along the ridge. Still, the views were lovely, even if the top never seemed to get any closer as we trudged along. We made it up to the top just in time for lunch at noon. We sat, ate jerky and cashews, and proceeded to each get monstrously bad sunburns.
We took the opposite trail down the mountain and exited the park just outside of Osaek, a small hot springs resort. We bused back into Sokcho, spent the night in the "Youth Hostel" (which was really a budget family pension) and then spent Saturday wandering around Sokcho on our sore and suffering legs. On Saturday night we stayed at a little motel in Osaek and spent an hour in the local jimjilbang (public bathhouse) fed by the area's natural spring water. Sunday we got up early, hopped a bus to Seoul and then another one to Gwangju, and rolled into town just in time for a friend's birthday party.
All things considered, a pretty good weekend.
We have lots of vacation in the coming months, so we are really looking forward to doing some traveling: Jeju island in June, Tokyo in July, four unallocated days in August, and probably Ulleung island in September. We had relatively little time off in the winter and early spring, so it will be great to relax a bit more.
Hitting the one-year mark has also gotten us thinking a lot more about where to go from here. Joel is getting ready to begin applying to graduate schools back home, and we are both contemplating the Foreign Service exam. In the meantime, we are weighing our options for our next move and general life goals. There are still so many decisions to be made, but I suppose that's life, youth, and marriage.
The weather has been absolutely gorgeous as it has been warming up (and greening up) for spring. I have really enjoyed watching the flowers bloom and everything come to life, especially after a winter that seemed so long. So. Damn. Long. We have been taking advantage of the changing seasons to go to a number of festivals in the area around Gwangju, including the Jindo Sea Parting Festival (at the end of April) and the Hampyeong Butterfly Festival (which we went to on May Day, since we had the day off). We've also been doing a lot more hiking around town - I finally got Joel to come with me to Mudeung, and we've been doing a lot of walking along the river, too. One Saturday, we even wandered into a tiny Buddhist temple, and the monk invited us in and served us tea.
Monday marked exactly one year that Joel and I have been here in South Korea. We had a four-day weekend last weekend, so Joel and I took the opportunity to go hiking on Seoraksan, a national park in the northeastern corner of the country (only about 10 miles south of the DMZ) which is often called the "sea of clouds." It has South Korea's third-highest peak, Daecheongbong. The whole park is generally just stunningly beautiful, and this time of year it is also incredibly green and lush. The weather was gorgeous: it was bright and sunny and not too hot. We took the bus from Gwangju at around 8 a.m. on Thursday morning and arrived in Sokcho, the port city just outside the park, at about 2:30 p.m. (Sokcho is pretty much the farthest city from us in the country). From there, we took a cab straight to the park entrance and began our ascent.
Daecheongbong is 1,708 meters tall. On Thursday afternoon, we hiked about halfway up (just over 1,000 meters) to Huiungak shelter and spent the night there. It was bare bones accommodation - essentially just a room with room for about 180 people to sleep on two levels of wooden floors, which made me really glad we brought blankets (even though they were pretty heavy to carry). We had dinner with some jovial (and very tipsy) middle-aged men who let us use their campstove. We traded stories about Korea and Texas (they were absolutely flabbergasted at how hot Texas summers can get), and then I had a sing-off with one of the more talented guys who knew a handful of John Denver songs. Korean hikers are generally very friendly and curious about foreigners on the mountain, so the first thing they asked Joel when I scurried off to the restroom was how he found such a beautiful and talented wife. (I know it sounds really weird to say that, but I am not joking).
Adjusshi: You are very lucky! Your wife is very beautiful - and so talented!
Joel: Yes, she sings very well.
Adjusshi: How can you find such beautiful wife? Even our Korean baseball players do not have beautiful women like that!
Joel: There are many beautiful women in Texas.
Adjusshi: Oh! I must go to Texas.
The next morning, we set off at about 8 a.m. and began the slow, grueling ascent to the peak. We quickly regretted having packed so much as we practically crawled up along the ridge. Still, the views were lovely, even if the top never seemed to get any closer as we trudged along. We made it up to the top just in time for lunch at noon. We sat, ate jerky and cashews, and proceeded to each get monstrously bad sunburns.
 |
| Proof that we made it. |
All things considered, a pretty good weekend.
We have lots of vacation in the coming months, so we are really looking forward to doing some traveling: Jeju island in June, Tokyo in July, four unallocated days in August, and probably Ulleung island in September. We had relatively little time off in the winter and early spring, so it will be great to relax a bit more.
Hitting the one-year mark has also gotten us thinking a lot more about where to go from here. Joel is getting ready to begin applying to graduate schools back home, and we are both contemplating the Foreign Service exam. In the meantime, we are weighing our options for our next move and general life goals. There are still so many decisions to be made, but I suppose that's life, youth, and marriage.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Learn Korean Holidays - 518 Revolution Day (Video)
The very first weekend Joel and I were in town, we explored downtown during Red Festa, the annual festival in Gwangju that commemorates 518 Memorial Day. Though the history of the uprising is tragic, it is one of the things that makes me proudest to live here in Gwangju. It may not be the biggest or most important city in Korea, but it is deeply inspiring to live in a place that has historically fought so hard for freedom and democracy.
I am subscribed to KoreanClass101.com's YouTube channel, so I got this video via e-mail and thought it would be a cool thing to share. The video is in Korean, with both Korean and English subtitles, because it is designed for Korean language learners. Still, it is short and I thought it was a great primer to the holiday and the history.
I am subscribed to KoreanClass101.com's YouTube channel, so I got this video via e-mail and thought it would be a cool thing to share. The video is in Korean, with both Korean and English subtitles, because it is designed for Korean language learners. Still, it is short and I thought it was a great primer to the holiday and the history.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
We Must Cultivate Our Garden/Il faut cultiver son jardin
Joel has a new hobby. We have two narrow balconies on either side of our 14th-floor apartment: one has the refrigerator and the washing machine, but the other is pretty much empty except for the A/C unit (and it has a shelf for planters outside of one of the windows). A few months ago, when one of his friends moved from here to Seoul, Joel bought several planters and a large bag of potting soil from him and decided to start a balcony garden. He ordered a few packets of seeds from the internet. When they arrived in mid-March, he planted spearmint, basil, fish peppers, cayenne peppers, eggplants, chives, and a packet of "mixed Oriental greens" that came as a freebie from the vendor that he ordered from.
It stayed cold throughout most of March and the beginning of April, so after nearly three weeks we began to get discouraged. Then one morning, we saw that a handful of the chives had sprouted. The eggplant and the cayenne peppers soon followed, and after that the basil, spearmint, and one lone fish pepper. Soon the greens came up as well.
Since then, the garden has...well, grown, for lack of a better word. After the first planters started sprouting, Joel bought more seeds from E-mart and Daiso (the local dollar store) and has now gone through five large bags of potting soil to plant peppermint, lavender, lemon basil, green beans, marigolds, and cosmos. He has packets of thyme, asters, and more basil still waiting. He has plans to buy an extra laundry drying rack for the beans to climb. Every time we go shopping, he looks at the seeds and picks up a few more packets. I fear we will soon run out of room on the balcony.
Though I often tease him that this is becoming a minor obsession, it is a welcome distraction these days. For nearly two weeks, we were inundated with frantic coverage of North Korea's bellicose rhetoric and constantly speculation that they could launch a missile "at any moment." Both of my parents, several members of my family in Brazil, and a handful of friends back home sent concerned messages. While there was definitely nothing to worry about (NK does this crap all the time to pressure governments into giving them aid, and our longtime expat friends say pull similar stunts every year), and we certainly appreciate the concern (it's nice to know you guys are thinking of us), I would be lying if I said things weren't a little tense.
And now all of this chaos in Boston. Seriously, who the hell bombs a marathon? I woke up on Tuesday morning (remember, we are 14 hours ahead of Texas) to find my Twitter stream dominated by posts about what happened in Boston - people maimed, limbs lost, deaths and hospitalizations, and internet resources to find missing loved ones. The JFK Library was on fire. A fertilizer plant explosion destroys half of a central Texas town and registers as a small earthquake. And then a manhunt for the marathon bombing suspects puts the entire city of Boston on lockdown. Guys, wtf happened to America while we've been gone?
There is a blog post that has been circulating through the expat community over the last few months about what happens to people when they live abroad. I hadn't really given it too much thought, since I knew that we would miss things and be changed by the experience - but now that we have extended our contract and it is sinking in that we will be gone for a while, some things have been weighing on me more. The "honeymoon phase" of culture shock has definitely worn off, and now some of the things about Korea that I used to find fascinating or amusing are getting annoying. I miss Western food, especially Tex-Mex; I just about died when Joel actually found Corona and limes at E-mart a few weeks ago. I am still trying to figure out what friendship means in a place where nearly every relationship has an expiration date. We have missed two weddings already and will miss at least two more (one of which is our best man's, which is really sad for me), and we are barely making it back home to see my maid of honor get hitched (congratulations, Babushka!). Our friends are starting careers, having children, and making lives.
Meanwhile, we are floating in some kind of strange limbo, watching the cherry blossoms flower and shed thousands of petals to the wind.
I guess life just boils down to cultivating your own garden. While friendships here are so short-lived, Joel and I have been spending a lot of one-on-one time together, which has been really nice. We have also been putting a lot of effort into planning trips during our school vacations. We got really lucky and found dirt-cheap airfare to Japan for our July vacation: 90.5 hours in Tokyo for only $188 round trip. We also booked our flight to Italy and reserved an apartment in Venice for our post-contract "grand vacation." Definitely something to look forward to.
In the meantime, at least Joel has the balcony garden to tend...which, admittedly, is a more productive hobby than my ongoing obsession with Skyrim.
It stayed cold throughout most of March and the beginning of April, so after nearly three weeks we began to get discouraged. Then one morning, we saw that a handful of the chives had sprouted. The eggplant and the cayenne peppers soon followed, and after that the basil, spearmint, and one lone fish pepper. Soon the greens came up as well.
Since then, the garden has...well, grown, for lack of a better word. After the first planters started sprouting, Joel bought more seeds from E-mart and Daiso (the local dollar store) and has now gone through five large bags of potting soil to plant peppermint, lavender, lemon basil, green beans, marigolds, and cosmos. He has packets of thyme, asters, and more basil still waiting. He has plans to buy an extra laundry drying rack for the beans to climb. Every time we go shopping, he looks at the seeds and picks up a few more packets. I fear we will soon run out of room on the balcony.
Though I often tease him that this is becoming a minor obsession, it is a welcome distraction these days. For nearly two weeks, we were inundated with frantic coverage of North Korea's bellicose rhetoric and constantly speculation that they could launch a missile "at any moment." Both of my parents, several members of my family in Brazil, and a handful of friends back home sent concerned messages. While there was definitely nothing to worry about (NK does this crap all the time to pressure governments into giving them aid, and our longtime expat friends say pull similar stunts every year), and we certainly appreciate the concern (it's nice to know you guys are thinking of us), I would be lying if I said things weren't a little tense.
And now all of this chaos in Boston. Seriously, who the hell bombs a marathon? I woke up on Tuesday morning (remember, we are 14 hours ahead of Texas) to find my Twitter stream dominated by posts about what happened in Boston - people maimed, limbs lost, deaths and hospitalizations, and internet resources to find missing loved ones. The JFK Library was on fire. A fertilizer plant explosion destroys half of a central Texas town and registers as a small earthquake. And then a manhunt for the marathon bombing suspects puts the entire city of Boston on lockdown. Guys, wtf happened to America while we've been gone?
There is a blog post that has been circulating through the expat community over the last few months about what happens to people when they live abroad. I hadn't really given it too much thought, since I knew that we would miss things and be changed by the experience - but now that we have extended our contract and it is sinking in that we will be gone for a while, some things have been weighing on me more. The "honeymoon phase" of culture shock has definitely worn off, and now some of the things about Korea that I used to find fascinating or amusing are getting annoying. I miss Western food, especially Tex-Mex; I just about died when Joel actually found Corona and limes at E-mart a few weeks ago. I am still trying to figure out what friendship means in a place where nearly every relationship has an expiration date. We have missed two weddings already and will miss at least two more (one of which is our best man's, which is really sad for me), and we are barely making it back home to see my maid of honor get hitched (congratulations, Babushka!). Our friends are starting careers, having children, and making lives.
Meanwhile, we are floating in some kind of strange limbo, watching the cherry blossoms flower and shed thousands of petals to the wind.
I guess life just boils down to cultivating your own garden. While friendships here are so short-lived, Joel and I have been spending a lot of one-on-one time together, which has been really nice. We have also been putting a lot of effort into planning trips during our school vacations. We got really lucky and found dirt-cheap airfare to Japan for our July vacation: 90.5 hours in Tokyo for only $188 round trip. We also booked our flight to Italy and reserved an apartment in Venice for our post-contract "grand vacation." Definitely something to look forward to.
In the meantime, at least Joel has the balcony garden to tend...which, admittedly, is a more productive hobby than my ongoing obsession with Skyrim.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Faith, Tolerance, and a New Pope/Tolerância, fé e um novo papa
A few weeks ago, my mother-in-law sent me an e-mail asking for my thoughts on Pope Benedict XVI's resignation. I thought it was unusual, but interesting, so I laid out my thoughts in the semi-organized manner typical of my longer, subject-treating e-mails. She politely thanked me for my thoughts, and that was the end of it.
Unfortunately, it was also one of the few non-acidic comments I have heard on the Catholic Church and the papacy over the last month.
Being Catholic is not easy, even back home. If you are a practicing Catholic who finds yourself in the unhappy situation of having a religious discussion with an uninformed non-Catholic, it frequently morphs into a simultaneous probe of your personal life and assessment of your common sense. "You're Catholic? How does that, like, affect you?" "Wait, you're Catholic? But you seem like such a logical person!" "So do you not believe in birth control?" "Are you guys gonna have, like, a bunch of kids?" "You know the rhythm method doesn't work, right?" (Side note: Catholics don't even use the rhythm method anymore.) "Do you go to confession and stuff?" "Do you really think people go to hell if they don't do that?" Even better is the unsolicited (and usually inappropriate) commentary. "Those Catholic priests are a bunch of perverts." "I think they're pedophiles because they can't get married, so they're totally repressed." (Side note: This theory has no psychological basis whatsoever.) "The Catholic Church hates women." "Those stupid Catholics don't want us to have birth control." The list goes on...and on...and on.
Here in Korea, it's even more difficult. Out of all of the expats we know here in Gwangju, I don't think we know any other Catholics. There is only one Catholic parish I know of that has an English Mass here, and it is an hour away by bus and then subway, which means that we go to Korean Mass where I can only catch every couple of words. It's not that being around areligious people bothers me - most of our good friends here are not really religious, but we still love them dearly and they respect our faith - but it's not uncommon to walk into a bar or restaurant frequented by expats and hear someone who clearly knows everything ranting entirely too loudly about how they love all people and accept all lifestyles and that Catholics/Christians/Muslims are so narrow-minded/intolerant/hateful/bigoted/judgmental/condescending/insert-negative-adjective-here that it just makes them sick. As if every person who adheres to an Abrahamic faith is exactly the same.
The election of a new pope is no different. I remember in 2005, when John Paul II finally passed on, I got a loving text message from my brother informing me that "Hey your pope died." To be fair, it was a joke, and he was in high school at the time - but frankly, the things I see people my age posting to Facebook now aren't much more enlightened.
"Check out the new pope - same as the old pope!"
"You've gone to hell, Catholic Church...I thought we were saved when the sky didn't fall in December, but apparently the end of the world has finally arrived."
"The new pope is on the front page. Just what the world needs - another lunatic running the masses."
Never mind that he has come to be known for his personal piety and humility. Or that he was especially active in interfaith dialogue and ecumenism as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Or that he lived in a small apartment, rather than the bishop's residence, and cooked his own meals and took the bus to work. Or that he has worked for social justice and poverty alleviation for most of his career. The next day after Cardinal Bergoglio (now Pope Francis I) was elected, I saw a headline that read, "Will the new pope derail the [UN] Commission on the Status of Women?" The man hadn't been in office for 24 hours, much less even made a public statement. Guys, really?
To be fair, most of our friends who have discussed this with me have been level-headed and delicate (probably because they could tell I was upset). But it just gets under my skin to see all of these hateful and condescending messages from people who typically preach messages of human rights, justice, acceptance, and equality. The Catholic Church has two millenia of history of Doctors of the Church arguing and squabbling over theology and doctrine. Today it is made up of 1.2 billion people, all with different beliefs, opinions, hopes, and dreams. Some of us are pro-life and some pro-choice; some are conservative and some support same-sex marriage; some are traditionalists and some believe in feminist liberation theology; some practice more and some practice less. We are clergy, laity, rich, poor, professionals, housewives, travelers, vagabonds, scholars, lobbyists, and politicians. But the one thing we all have in common with each other and with every non-Catholic that walks this Earth is that we are human. And frankly, if you believe in love of any kind, then you should respect our right to choose a lifestyle without judgment, just like every woman, homosexual, immigrant, ethnic minority, and overweight person that is so carefully defended.
Yes, we have a new pope. Seriously, people, let's everybody just calm the fuck down.
Unfortunately, it was also one of the few non-acidic comments I have heard on the Catholic Church and the papacy over the last month.
Being Catholic is not easy, even back home. If you are a practicing Catholic who finds yourself in the unhappy situation of having a religious discussion with an uninformed non-Catholic, it frequently morphs into a simultaneous probe of your personal life and assessment of your common sense. "You're Catholic? How does that, like, affect you?" "Wait, you're Catholic? But you seem like such a logical person!" "So do you not believe in birth control?" "Are you guys gonna have, like, a bunch of kids?" "You know the rhythm method doesn't work, right?" (Side note: Catholics don't even use the rhythm method anymore.) "Do you go to confession and stuff?" "Do you really think people go to hell if they don't do that?" Even better is the unsolicited (and usually inappropriate) commentary. "Those Catholic priests are a bunch of perverts." "I think they're pedophiles because they can't get married, so they're totally repressed." (Side note: This theory has no psychological basis whatsoever.) "The Catholic Church hates women." "Those stupid Catholics don't want us to have birth control." The list goes on...and on...and on.
Here in Korea, it's even more difficult. Out of all of the expats we know here in Gwangju, I don't think we know any other Catholics. There is only one Catholic parish I know of that has an English Mass here, and it is an hour away by bus and then subway, which means that we go to Korean Mass where I can only catch every couple of words. It's not that being around areligious people bothers me - most of our good friends here are not really religious, but we still love them dearly and they respect our faith - but it's not uncommon to walk into a bar or restaurant frequented by expats and hear someone who clearly knows everything ranting entirely too loudly about how they love all people and accept all lifestyles and that Catholics/Christians/Muslims are so narrow-minded/intolerant/hateful/bigoted/judgmental/condescending/insert-negative-adjective-here that it just makes them sick. As if every person who adheres to an Abrahamic faith is exactly the same.
The election of a new pope is no different. I remember in 2005, when John Paul II finally passed on, I got a loving text message from my brother informing me that "Hey your pope died." To be fair, it was a joke, and he was in high school at the time - but frankly, the things I see people my age posting to Facebook now aren't much more enlightened.
"Check out the new pope - same as the old pope!"
"You've gone to hell, Catholic Church...I thought we were saved when the sky didn't fall in December, but apparently the end of the world has finally arrived."
"The new pope is on the front page. Just what the world needs - another lunatic running the masses."
Never mind that he has come to be known for his personal piety and humility. Or that he was especially active in interfaith dialogue and ecumenism as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Or that he lived in a small apartment, rather than the bishop's residence, and cooked his own meals and took the bus to work. Or that he has worked for social justice and poverty alleviation for most of his career. The next day after Cardinal Bergoglio (now Pope Francis I) was elected, I saw a headline that read, "Will the new pope derail the [UN] Commission on the Status of Women?" The man hadn't been in office for 24 hours, much less even made a public statement. Guys, really?
To be fair, most of our friends who have discussed this with me have been level-headed and delicate (probably because they could tell I was upset). But it just gets under my skin to see all of these hateful and condescending messages from people who typically preach messages of human rights, justice, acceptance, and equality. The Catholic Church has two millenia of history of Doctors of the Church arguing and squabbling over theology and doctrine. Today it is made up of 1.2 billion people, all with different beliefs, opinions, hopes, and dreams. Some of us are pro-life and some pro-choice; some are conservative and some support same-sex marriage; some are traditionalists and some believe in feminist liberation theology; some practice more and some practice less. We are clergy, laity, rich, poor, professionals, housewives, travelers, vagabonds, scholars, lobbyists, and politicians. But the one thing we all have in common with each other and with every non-Catholic that walks this Earth is that we are human. And frankly, if you believe in love of any kind, then you should respect our right to choose a lifestyle without judgment, just like every woman, homosexual, immigrant, ethnic minority, and overweight person that is so carefully defended.
Yes, we have a new pope. Seriously, people, let's everybody just calm the fuck down.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Bronchitis is a Bitch / Bronquite é um pentelho
Joel and I were supposed to go skiing on the weekend of February 22nd. We had intended to spend that Saturday skiing at Muju resort, which is a ski town about three hours north of us. We were super excited for the trip - I had a hotel room booked for us, and it would have been a great way to unwind before the start of a new teaching session.
And then I got sick with bronchitis.
I don't get sick very often, but (as my former roommate always pointed out) when I do, it is legit. My freshman year of college, I only fell ill once (with what I thought was strep throat) right as final exams started. I was so fatigued that I nearly passed out walking across campus to take my physics final, and my throat was so sore that I couldn't talk for a week and a half. I ate so little that I dropped ten pounds and, at 129 lbs (58.5 kilos) was at the lowest weight of my adult life. My junior year, I caught the flu and ran a fever so high that Joel and my roommate rushed me to the hospital and called my father, who made the drive up from north Houston (normally about an hour and a half trip) in 40 minutes.
So yeah, I don't get bronchitis often, but when I do, I am down for the count.
The first weekend I was sick, I slept nearly the entire day on Saturday - I think I might have been awake for a collective four hours out of the entire day. I coughed and hacked and stumbled through work the next week, but luckily for me it was finals week, so I didn't have to do anything besides administer and grade tests. Unfortunately, being sick means being tired, which means not being able to do anything fun outside of work. I haven't been able to go hiking or do yoga for two weeks now, and I don't really have the energy to go out. I missed two great shows downtown last weekend because I was feeling like crap. Obviously I need to rest, so I let myself sleep in, but when you work from two to ten that pretty much means you only see about half an hour of daylight.
It's starting to get really depressing.
A big part of it has also been that we are all really sick of the persistently cold weather. It is starting to warm up again, so I think the bitter cold may have finally passed for good, at least until next year. In the meantime, I have been playing a lot of Skyrim on the Xbox, which we got last week - around the time I first got sick.
On the bright(er) side, I got one of several new Wake Up! classes this month. Wake Up! is the introductory, absolute beginner course for new young kids that know basically zero English. We get to teach them the alphabet, numbers, basic objects, and greetings, and the best part is that we get to name them. Some of them already have names, but I took my chance and gave the nameless ones names from Game of Thrones. I have Arya, Sansa, and Catlyn, and my day was made complete yesterday when I got two new students, a boy and a girl. The boy already had the name Jamie, so naturally the girl became Cersei. (Too easy, right?) I also got two new boys in my English World (who became Ned and Rikon) and a new girl in my first-year middle school class (Brienne). Speaking of, the new season of GoT starts at the end of this month, on Easter Sunday. Something else to look forward to.
In the meantime, I will continue to recover from bronchitis and play Skyrim.
And then I got sick with bronchitis.
I don't get sick very often, but (as my former roommate always pointed out) when I do, it is legit. My freshman year of college, I only fell ill once (with what I thought was strep throat) right as final exams started. I was so fatigued that I nearly passed out walking across campus to take my physics final, and my throat was so sore that I couldn't talk for a week and a half. I ate so little that I dropped ten pounds and, at 129 lbs (58.5 kilos) was at the lowest weight of my adult life. My junior year, I caught the flu and ran a fever so high that Joel and my roommate rushed me to the hospital and called my father, who made the drive up from north Houston (normally about an hour and a half trip) in 40 minutes.
So yeah, I don't get bronchitis often, but when I do, I am down for the count.
The first weekend I was sick, I slept nearly the entire day on Saturday - I think I might have been awake for a collective four hours out of the entire day. I coughed and hacked and stumbled through work the next week, but luckily for me it was finals week, so I didn't have to do anything besides administer and grade tests. Unfortunately, being sick means being tired, which means not being able to do anything fun outside of work. I haven't been able to go hiking or do yoga for two weeks now, and I don't really have the energy to go out. I missed two great shows downtown last weekend because I was feeling like crap. Obviously I need to rest, so I let myself sleep in, but when you work from two to ten that pretty much means you only see about half an hour of daylight.
It's starting to get really depressing.
A big part of it has also been that we are all really sick of the persistently cold weather. It is starting to warm up again, so I think the bitter cold may have finally passed for good, at least until next year. In the meantime, I have been playing a lot of Skyrim on the Xbox, which we got last week - around the time I first got sick.
On the bright(er) side, I got one of several new Wake Up! classes this month. Wake Up! is the introductory, absolute beginner course for new young kids that know basically zero English. We get to teach them the alphabet, numbers, basic objects, and greetings, and the best part is that we get to name them. Some of them already have names, but I took my chance and gave the nameless ones names from Game of Thrones. I have Arya, Sansa, and Catlyn, and my day was made complete yesterday when I got two new students, a boy and a girl. The boy already had the name Jamie, so naturally the girl became Cersei. (Too easy, right?) I also got two new boys in my English World (who became Ned and Rikon) and a new girl in my first-year middle school class (Brienne). Speaking of, the new season of GoT starts at the end of this month, on Easter Sunday. Something else to look forward to.
In the meantime, I will continue to recover from bronchitis and play Skyrim.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Friendships, Relationships, and what it means to be Faithful/Amizades, Relacionamentos, e Fidelidade
My best friend got engaged last week. She goes home to visit her family about once every 18 months or so, and this time she brought her boyfriend, a lively Scottish man with a playful sense of humor, with her. Everyone seemed to know what it was about: her family and friends on both sides of the world apparently all saw it coming, so when she made her phone calls to all her girlfriends, they squealed with delight and rejoiced with her that she would finally be joining the marriage bandwagon.
That is, everyone except me.
I can't really say that I was surprised, either - as soon as I saw that it was her calling, I knew what was up - but when she told me before leaving that she was not ready to get engaged and had no intention of doing so on the trip, I (perhaps foolishly) believed her. So when she rattled off the story of his rather unimpressive proposal (in her parents' garage, with no romance or fanfare), made in spite of the fact that she had asked him to wait, I held back my internal cringe, smiled, and offered a muted congratulations.
We had a fight about it over Skype a few days later.
I have been doing a lot of hard thinking about what it means to be a good and faithful friend, and trying to figure out if those two are somehow mutually exclusive. The aforementioned friend has always said that she believes that "honesty is the best policy" in just about every situation. While I have pretty much always disagreed with her, I did believe it to be true within friendships...until now.
Case study #1: When I was in college, I made a friend while living in a Catholic community house the summer after my freshman year. She was a beautiful girl, gentle and cheerful, and it seemed like nearly every guy at the university Catholic student center wanted to date her. Somehow, she managed to pick the absolute worst one. He belittled her, disrespected her (hell, he showed up over an hour late to their first two dates), repeatedly broke his promises to her, and one night she even showed me an e-mail exchange between him and some woman he'd met online that indicated that he was cheating on her. All of her roommates and her sisters told her over and over again that he was bad news and that she deserved better. And she cut us all out of her life and stayed with him, until she dropped out of college and moved back home, and her father finally confronted her about it. Now she is married to a much better man, but it was over a year before she started talking to me again.
Case study #2: After moving back to Texas from Cincinnati, Joel and I were happy to plug back into our old group of friends (and make some new ones, too). We were all a pretty close-knit group, and in groups like that there are very few secrets. One of my girlfriends was really distraught when she and I discovered (what we thought was) really strong evidence that a mutual friend was cheating on his girlfriend. Several of us went around in circles trying to decide what to do about it, until I finally decided I was tired of it all, and just called her. I told her that I didn't know anything for certain, and I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it just didn't feel right. The end result: they both stopped talking to me, moved in together, and eventually got married.
Sometimes we fear that our friends are in questionable, harmful, or destructive relationships, and sometimes we know they are in them. But does it ever do any good to point it out? Does it make you a good friend to be the voice of reason, or to present evidence of infidelity, or even to voice concerns? The logical answer seems to be yes, but now I am not so sure. In all of my experience, and in all the stories I have ever heard told like the ones above, the person confronted always chooses their significant other, without fail. Never once has someone taken the counsel of their friend to heart. Instead, more often than not, they shut them out of their life completely.
Back to my recently engaged friend. She has only really known him well for about five months now. I have never met him in person, but based on the 10-minute Skype conversation I had with him once, I like him a lot, and I am glad that he makes her happy. But based on some details of his past history, and the age difference (she is 27 and he is 36), I just think that it would be prudent for them to date for a while before getting hitched. Unfortunately, I seem to be the only person in her life calling for restraint. We got into a spat when she called me while waiting for her flight. Turns out she didn't like his proposal either, and she was also uncomfortable with getting engaged so soon - basically, the same things that were bothering me - but she was upset with me because she "needed me to be excited for her."
What?
What does it mean to be a good friend - should we place value on being honest, or being comforting? Should we wish our friends to be well or to be happy, when those two seem to oppose each other? Is it our duty to share fully in joy or sorrow that may not be good for our friends?
Does it make me a good friend to confront someone with the reality that they are being disrespected or abused by the person they love, if they are not willing to face it? Does presenting someone with evidence of infidelity make me a faithful friend, or just nosy, or both? Conversely, can I call myself a good friend if I see them being cuckolded and stay silent? Where do you draw the line between minding your own business and being a faithful friend? Can that line even be drawn? More importantly, how would I react to friends bringing these same concerns to me?
Friendships are difficult here. We create bonds so much more quickly than back home, because our time here is so short (at least for most of us), and it is so hard to know where the traditional boundaries fall. It's hard not to wonder if it is worth making friends at all.
That is, everyone except me.
I can't really say that I was surprised, either - as soon as I saw that it was her calling, I knew what was up - but when she told me before leaving that she was not ready to get engaged and had no intention of doing so on the trip, I (perhaps foolishly) believed her. So when she rattled off the story of his rather unimpressive proposal (in her parents' garage, with no romance or fanfare), made in spite of the fact that she had asked him to wait, I held back my internal cringe, smiled, and offered a muted congratulations.
We had a fight about it over Skype a few days later.
I have been doing a lot of hard thinking about what it means to be a good and faithful friend, and trying to figure out if those two are somehow mutually exclusive. The aforementioned friend has always said that she believes that "honesty is the best policy" in just about every situation. While I have pretty much always disagreed with her, I did believe it to be true within friendships...until now.
Case study #1: When I was in college, I made a friend while living in a Catholic community house the summer after my freshman year. She was a beautiful girl, gentle and cheerful, and it seemed like nearly every guy at the university Catholic student center wanted to date her. Somehow, she managed to pick the absolute worst one. He belittled her, disrespected her (hell, he showed up over an hour late to their first two dates), repeatedly broke his promises to her, and one night she even showed me an e-mail exchange between him and some woman he'd met online that indicated that he was cheating on her. All of her roommates and her sisters told her over and over again that he was bad news and that she deserved better. And she cut us all out of her life and stayed with him, until she dropped out of college and moved back home, and her father finally confronted her about it. Now she is married to a much better man, but it was over a year before she started talking to me again.
Case study #2: After moving back to Texas from Cincinnati, Joel and I were happy to plug back into our old group of friends (and make some new ones, too). We were all a pretty close-knit group, and in groups like that there are very few secrets. One of my girlfriends was really distraught when she and I discovered (what we thought was) really strong evidence that a mutual friend was cheating on his girlfriend. Several of us went around in circles trying to decide what to do about it, until I finally decided I was tired of it all, and just called her. I told her that I didn't know anything for certain, and I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it just didn't feel right. The end result: they both stopped talking to me, moved in together, and eventually got married.
Sometimes we fear that our friends are in questionable, harmful, or destructive relationships, and sometimes we know they are in them. But does it ever do any good to point it out? Does it make you a good friend to be the voice of reason, or to present evidence of infidelity, or even to voice concerns? The logical answer seems to be yes, but now I am not so sure. In all of my experience, and in all the stories I have ever heard told like the ones above, the person confronted always chooses their significant other, without fail. Never once has someone taken the counsel of their friend to heart. Instead, more often than not, they shut them out of their life completely.
Back to my recently engaged friend. She has only really known him well for about five months now. I have never met him in person, but based on the 10-minute Skype conversation I had with him once, I like him a lot, and I am glad that he makes her happy. But based on some details of his past history, and the age difference (she is 27 and he is 36), I just think that it would be prudent for them to date for a while before getting hitched. Unfortunately, I seem to be the only person in her life calling for restraint. We got into a spat when she called me while waiting for her flight. Turns out she didn't like his proposal either, and she was also uncomfortable with getting engaged so soon - basically, the same things that were bothering me - but she was upset with me because she "needed me to be excited for her."
What?
What does it mean to be a good friend - should we place value on being honest, or being comforting? Should we wish our friends to be well or to be happy, when those two seem to oppose each other? Is it our duty to share fully in joy or sorrow that may not be good for our friends?
Does it make me a good friend to confront someone with the reality that they are being disrespected or abused by the person they love, if they are not willing to face it? Does presenting someone with evidence of infidelity make me a faithful friend, or just nosy, or both? Conversely, can I call myself a good friend if I see them being cuckolded and stay silent? Where do you draw the line between minding your own business and being a faithful friend? Can that line even be drawn? More importantly, how would I react to friends bringing these same concerns to me?
Friendships are difficult here. We create bonds so much more quickly than back home, because our time here is so short (at least for most of us), and it is so hard to know where the traditional boundaries fall. It's hard not to wonder if it is worth making friends at all.
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