Monkeys, the "Best View in Kyoto," and (almost) every type of food/Macacos, o "melhor vista de Kyoto", e (quase) todo o tipo de comida

Joel and I have definitely been keeping busy here. Despite ping-ponging illnesses (first Joel had bronchitis, then I caught a nasty cold, and now that I am recovering it seems like he has picked up said cold from me), we are out and about for most of the day, pretty much every day. We like to walk as much as possible to save money on train fare, so unless our chosen target is on the other side of town, sometimes we will walk twenty or thirty minutes to get there. It's quite nice actually, despite the cold; we can take in the sights along the way, stop into any random little shrines we happen to pass, and try different kinds of street food. When you are on holiday, every day is Saturday, so there's never really any hurry.

Last week we went on two tours of different imperial holdings: one of the Shugaku-in villa on Wednesday and the inner palace on Friday. We have two more tours scheduled for this week also - the Katsura villa on Wednesday and the Sentou palace on Friday. These places are free to visit, but only if you make a reservation for a guided tour (you can't just wander around by yourself). They aren't all that spectacular visually but are still interesting if you like the historical aspect (which Joel is a big fan of). Plus, when you're just bumming around town for a month, why not?

Saturday was kind of disappointing. The weather forecast said it was supposed to snow through the night, and Kinkaku-ji (the famous Golden Pavilion) is said to look its finest under a cover of fresh snow, so we tentatively planned to make the trek up there in the morning. Alas, we woke up Saturday morning to the sound of rain, which meant no snow and no walking, so we did laundry instead. After wandering around town for a bit, we went to a sento (a public bathhouse or - for those of you still in Korea - a jjimjilbang) in the evening to get the chill out of our bones.

Did I mention that the house we are staying in is bloody cold? There is no central heat and no windows, and we have a single gas-powered space heater in our room. You can see your breath in the house.

Anyway, the true adventures finally found us yesterday. After Mass, we headed over to Arashiyama (a quaint, touristy district on the west side of the city) to eat lunch and visit the monkey park. The region is known for its tofu (among other things), so we picked a restaurant at random and ordered two meals off of their Japanese-only menu, also at random. Lunch was a delicious assortment of various tofus excellently prepared in eight different ways.

There is a species of macaque, commonly known as the "snow monkey," that is native to Japan. There is a pretty large group of them that live near the city, so they advertise a "Monkey Park" that people can visit to see and feed the monkeys. The "park" is really just a hiking trail that goes up the mountain and ends at a clearing with a pond and a tin-roofed shack with grates on the windows. Despite its simplicity, it was probably my favorite part of the trip so far. Unlike Joel, who got to see (and have his food stolen by) vervet monkeys and baboons while living in Zimbabwe, I have never experienced wildlife up close, other than raccoons at my father's old place in the woods and the occasional deer. I felt like a toddler who was visiting a zoo and seeing wild animals for the first time in my life. The monkeys are, quite literally, right there and everywhere.

The monkeys are used to people and comfortable with many visitors, so you can just walk right up to one and watch it eat dirt or groom its neighbor from a foot away. As we walked up the path, they ran in front of and behind us as they chased each other, jumped over our heads in the trees, or just lounged right by the path and ignored us as we walked by. I must have uttered some variant of "Dude, the monkey is, like, right there!" at least ten times while Joel just laughed at my childlike amazement.

To clarify, the shack with the grates on the windows isn't for the monkeys - it's for us. People love to feed the monkeys, but they are so used to people that they will jump all over you if you have food, so the park management only lets you feed them fruit and nuts from inside. Naturally, the monkeys have figured out how to work this system quite well - they take turns hanging on the grate with their arms threaded through the bars, palm up, in a calm but nonetheless demanding "Feed me, damn it" sort of gesture.

Here is a short video of Joel and I feeding the monkeys:

We were also lucky enough to see a "feeding demonstration" done by park staff. It is kind of a gimmick - they play some really bombastic classical music as they dish out the food - but I enjoyed it despite its tourist-oriented nature:

Afterwards, we headed back down the hill and along the river to Senkou-ji, a temple that advertised having the "best view in Kyoto." The uphill path offered a series of very interesting (and kind of hippie-ish) signs and messages.

The temple itself was no less unusual. Aside from the typical assortment of old relics and statues, it sported several rainbow-colored flags and a collection of very temporary-looking huts and shelters where things were piled haphazardly. The main structure, built on wooden stilts, indeed offered a fantastic view of the city. We shared the room with another Japanese couple and a woman who was working on an arrangement of plum branches. The temple monk was attempting to train two dogs busy barking at each other outside. Frankly, the place was kind of a dump, but intriguing nonetheless.

After a session of experimenting with my phone camera's macro-focus function (and running down the battery in the process), we wandered back into town. Feeling munchy and kind of inspired, Joel and I proceeded to sample the different street foods, including fried chicken, croquettes, deep-fried fish paste with cheese, and green tea mochi balls filled with red bean paste. We caught a train jam-packed with tourists back into the city, where we had the weirdest Chinese food I have ever tried. Finally, we finished the night with two small burgers from Mos Burger.

All in all, not a bad day.

The Moss Temple: Permission to Visit Saihou-ji (Kokodera) Granted!/O templo de musgo: Permissão para visitar Saihou-ji (Kokodera) Concedido!

One of the things that Joel was most excited about when we planned our trip here was the prospect of going to Saihou-ji, a temple and UNESCO site that requires advance permission to visit. More commonly known as Kokodera (Japanese for "Moss Temple"), the temple is famous for its garden which (as you might have guessed) has over 120 different types of moss.

From the Wikipedia article:

The famous moss garden of Saihō-ji is situated in the eastern temple grounds. Located in a grove, the garden is arranged as a circular promenade centered around Golden Pond (黄金池 ōgonchi). The pond is shaped like the Chinese character for "heart" or "mind" (心 kokoro) and contains three small islands: Asahi Island (朝日島), Yūhi Island (夕日島), and Kiri Island (霧島). The area around the pond is said to be covered with more than 120 varieties of moss, believed to have started growing after the flooding of the temple grounds in the Edo Period.

The garden itself contains three tea houses: Shōnan-tei (湘南亭), Shōan-dō (少庵堂), and Tanhoku-tei (潭北亭), which were partially inspired by phrases from the Zen work Blue Cliff Record.

• Shōnan-tei was originally built during the 14th century, but was subsequently destroyed. It was later restored by Sen Shōan. Iwakura Tomomi was famously sheltered here towards the end of the Edo Period. Shōnan-tei is registered as an important cultural property.
• Shōan-dō was constructed in 1920, and contains a wooden image of Sen Shōan, after whom the teahouse was named.
• Tanhoku-tei was donated to the temple in 1928 by potter Zōroku Mashimizu.

The eastern temple grounds also contains the main temple hall, the study, and a three-storied pagoda.

• The main hall of the temple, known as Sairai-dō (西来堂), was reconstructed in 1969, and it was in this year that the current image of Amitabha was enshrined. The paintings on the sliding doors are the work of Inshō Dōmoto.
• The three-storied pagoda was erected in 1978, and is used to store copies of sutras, written by Rinzai adherents. The pagoda was constructed to honor Bhaisajyaguru.

The northern temple grounds contains a Zen rock garden, and a temple hall known as Shitō-an (指東庵). The arrangement of stones in the rock garden is said to be demonstrative of Musō's creative genius.

The gardens of Saihō-ji are collectively considered to be both a historical landmark and a "special place of scenic beauty" in Japan.

Apparently, the temple was open to visitors up until 1977, when - to protect the moss - the staff changed its visitation policy to only allow one visit per day, which has to be requested, in advance, in Japanese, by pre-paid return postcard. For this reason, Joel requested the assistance of yours truly.

And thus my mission began.

We planned to stop by a post office on our way to the train station on Monday, so we got our address from our landlord on Sunday night. I woke up early that morning and scoured the internet for tips and instructions on how best to go about making my request (read: something already written in Japanese that I could just copy). Luckily for me, there was a site with a document that did just that, so I downloaded the PDF to my phone and made note of the Japanese word for the specific type of postcard that I would need (ofuku hagaki). We headed to the post office by the station, and I walked up to the cashier confidently.

Me: Ofuku hagaki kudasai! [One pre-paid return postcard, please.]
Cashier: Hai! Hyaku en desu. [Yes! One hundred yen.] Approximately one dollar. She hands me a postcard.

So far, so good...until we get back over to the table with the pens and can't figure out which side our address goes on, which side the temple address goes on, and which side the message goes on. Rummaging (read: grasping desperately) through my memories of studying kanji, I make an educated guess as to where to put the addresses, and then we try to reason through where the message goes. I slowly copy the following message from my phone and take it back up to the counter.

西芳寺御中,

下記の通り苔寺の参拝を希望致しますので、ご返答をお待ちしております。

拝観希望日： 2014年　2月　18日 (火)
人数： 2人
名前： [our names]
住所：[our address]

Me: Daijoubu desu ka? [Is it okay?]
Cashier: Ah...ano... [Um...]

She then proceeds to explain to me (in extremely broken English) that I have written my message on the wrong side. She offers me another postcard for ten yen, which doesn't do much to cheer me up as I realize that I must painstakingly write the message again. I write everything on a second postcard, take it back up, and breathe a sigh of relief when the cashier gives me a nod of approval.

You can imagine our delight today when we came home and saw the reply.

I guess there are benefits to visiting during the tourist off-season.

Welcome (back) to Kyoto: (Second) First impressions/Bem vindo (de volta) a Quioto: (Segunda) Primeira impressões

When we came to Kyoto in the fall of 2012, I knew almost immediately that we had to come back. I fell in love with the city instantly: with its quaint city streets, with the retro feel of the taxis and subway stations, with the overabundance of French-style cafes, and with the shrines and temples around every corner. We stayed in a hostel that offered a work-stay program, so when we came back we resolved to include a significant amount of time in the city in our post-contract vacation. Unfortunately, the work-stay in the hostel didn't pan out (bastards), but we found a very reasonably-priced boarding house on AirBnB, so we will be here for the entire month of February.

During that Chuseok (the Korean Thanksgiving holiday), we only had five days to cram in as many attractions as possible, so the city was kind of a whirlwind. Now that we have a full four weeks here, we are able to take in the place more slowly (and it's a good thing, too, since Joel has been sick and I can feel myself heading in that direction). Our general daily plan is to wake up early, have Joel pack lunch while I work on my freelance assignments, and then choose one destination each day to go sightseeing.

The House

The boarding house where we are staying is an older place, one of several owned by a group of Israeli guys. Our boisterous "landlord" (for lack of a better term) has seven houses in the neighborhood - from which he rents rooms to a variety of travelers, teachers, job-seekers, and other vagabonds - as well as a bar. The place is pretty rustic (and gets really cold at night), but there is plenty of kitchen space and a large-ish common area for lounging.

Our own "room" is pretty spacious, with two sections separated by a sliding glass door.

We share the house with a French couple that live and work here semi-permanently and an Irish guy whose story remains unknown to me. The French woman teaches English at a French school for French-Japanese children (you can imagine that I had no idea that such a thing existed), and her boyfriend teaches English to students of all ages. The only thing I know about the Irishman is that he is most definitely the skinniest dude I have seen in recent memory. They are nice enough but mostly keep to themselves, which is fine by us.

The City (and Culture)

Like I mentioned before, I am absolutely in love with the city of Kyoto. It is everything that Gwangju isn't: clean, quiet, polite, not crowded, orderly, and secretive. The streets are well-paved with sidewalks and bike lines, and people drive slowly and follow traffic laws. In fact, they won't even cross a one-lane one-way street if the crosswalk signal is red, even if there are no cars. No one litters, everyone waits in line, and every single salesperson is cheerful and exceptionally polite. One of the things I hated most about living in Korea was being shoved around and having people cut in front of me in line, so it has been a major sigh of relief to come to a place that has such reverence for social order...though I must say that I sometimes miss the warmth and familiarity of Korean shop owners. Japanese society is extraordinarily polite, but warm and friendly it is not. It makes for a nice change of pace, though.

One thing that has been frustrating, though, is finding ourselves suddenly illiterate. There is almost no English on any signs or menus, and it is impossible to read Japanese kanji without serious study (and I haven't seriously studied any Japanese for over a year). It is slowly coming back to me, and I have begun reviewing the material I learned before, but I still constantly garble Japanese and Korean in my mind.

The Plan

I feel like if you lived here for a lifetime you could still never see everything that this place has to offer. Joel has planned for us to try to visit all of the UNESCO sites (except the museum, which is closed for repairs). We are also going to schedule an appointment to tour the Imperial Palace, and today we sent a return postcard requesting admission to a temple called Saiho-ji. Apparently, the moss that grows on the grounds is very delicate, so they only allow twenty visitors per day, and you can only request a visit by snail mail at least seven days in advance. We will also visit the famous Kinkaku-ji (Golden Pavilion, hopefully when it snows), go to an onsen, visit the monkey park, and take a day trip to Nara.

What I am most looking forward to is a chance to spend some time being quiet, to visit places and just absorb them. We spent the last month in Gwangju seeing as many people as possible and spending every minute possible with the friends we love. One of our friends graciously opened his apartment to us and gave us a place to stay (after our contracts were unexpectedly - and rather ungraciously - shortened by a month). We are so thankful for that time, but the time here will hopefully give us a chance to be still and unpack everything that we experienced in Korea, and to understand the connections we made (and hopefully give our friends the chance to get some sleep and recup their finances).

The winter season, while not necessarily an ideal time for sightseeing, is an ideal time for reflection. Most of the trees are bare, but there is still life in the evergreens and the beautiful ground moss that blankets much of the city. It is a time for rest, for us to turn inward and soul-search and write while nature sleeps and gathers its strength to blossom in spring. Soon we will have to begin applying for jobs and figuring out what our next life and career moves are. But for now, I can write, rebuild myself professionally, and reconnect with my husband.

Nomads in the Night (Goodbye, Gwangju)/Nômades na noite (Adeus, Gwangju)

Joel and I said goodbye to Gwangju on Monday, and then to Korea yesterday. We had a big collective night out on Saturday night, starting with a large group dinner and a pub crawl that ended with a club (and several of our guy friends dancing on its poles). Sunday followed with its own adventure, and another night out on Monday (and let me tell you, going to a dance club on a Monday night is a weird experience), after which we (somehow) made it to Seoul on Tuesday on an 8 a.m. bus. Several of our friends met up with us in Seoul on Thursday (most everyone had Thursday and Friday off, because of the Lunar New Year), where we went clubbing yet again.

I may never want to see the inside of a dance club again.

Finally, Joel and I did some sightseeing on Friday, met up with a friend for dinner at the airport, and then watched Korea shrink out of sight from an airplane window at about 9:30 p.m. We spent the night in Kansai airport last night, then caught the train here to Kyoto first thing this morning. I am writing this from our boarding house in Kyoto. The place is old and simply furnished, but pretty sweet. There is an Irish guy and a French couple staying here as well, and they seem pretty friendly and down-to-earth.

I was kind of surprised that I never cried over leaving Gwangju, particularly when saying goodbye to some of our good friends. Unfortunately, it's difficult (if not impossible) to give each goodbye the proper attention it deserves, so perhaps it was better to cry for none than for only some, when others may have been more deserving of tears. But I suppose in the end, I knew it was time to go - not because of any one thing, but because (almost) two years is long enough to get to know a place and be ready to move on to the next one.

Also, I really, really miss my mom.

Joel says I complain about every single job I have. I know he is right, but I still maintain that every job had something worth complaining about, as well as things gained. This job taught me that I love children but do not have the patience or optimism for teaching. Joel truly enjoyed our time there and would like to leave the door open to go back if nothing pans out back home; I see the value in that but would frankly just rather not. I know I am qualified to teach at university, and would probably appreciate the extra pay and extensive vacation, but I truly miss my career; I thoroughly enjoy public health, particularly global health, and am eager to get back to it. I also felt my first moment of panic yesterday when I realized that the clock is now actively ticking down until we run out of money and I need to find another one. I am not worried at my ability to do so per se, but we are not sure where we will end up, whether (or where) Joel will be accepted into grad school, and whether I hate my next job, too. But that is life, I suppose.

They say that living abroad grows you in a way that nothing else will, but I don't think I fully understood why until we finally got ready to leave. When you live away from home and everything that is familiar - particularly in a place with a relatively small community of Westerners, like Gwangju - you make connections and spend time with people who would never have crossed your path back home, and I'm not just talking about people from other countries. We met people who had never left their home countries until now and a guy who has lived on five different continents. We met people who had taken only one lover their entire life and people who took pride in living la vie Bohème. I lost track of how many sexcapade stories I heard (and how many times I got laughed at for how sheltered I was). We met Catholics, Episcopalians, Evangelicals, and spent more time (and in conversation) with atheists than I ever imagined I would. We watched people build relationships and families while others set their own lives aflame. We made friends and lost friends, welcomed new faces and said goodbye to old ones, gave our hearts away and received them back full to the point of bursting.

So thank you, Gwangju. Thank you for the kids I taught - both the nice and the nasty - and the chance to see everything that kids can be. Thank you for the lessons in friendship and love. Thank you for the food and the temples and the mountains. Thank you for the chance to study the Korean language and the Korean people, and the constant reminders that I never came close to fully understanding either one. Thank you for the trials we overcame and the temptations we resisted. Thank you for the lessons learned and the forgiveness that came from admitting to mistakes. Thank you for the growth through isolation and the warmth of unexpected friendships. Thank you for the chance to defend my faith and model it through love to those who needed to see it done properly, and for the chance to better understand those who made radically different choices from me as people. And most of all, thank you for the chance to weather the storm with the man I love, to strengthen my marriage through shared trials and triumphs and joys and suffering.

Thank you all for the laughter, the tears, the fights, the drinks, the hugs, the kisses, the dances, the noraebang nights, the cook-offs, the house parties, and the hangovers. I will seriously be on the wagon for the whole of next month.

Here's lookin' at you, Gwangju.

NOW hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.

Oh never fear, man, nought’s to dread,
Look not left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There’s nothing but the night.
-A. E. Housman

The Desolation of Memory/O desolação de lembrança

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.