Three Month Mark

The leaves, the light, the landscape – it all seemed to change abruptly this past week in Busan, ushering in Autumn with such speed that we didn’t even get a backward glance from our Indian Summer…

Many of the reasons I chose to live in Busan were about the beach, and the last few months of sunbathing, fireworks festivals and soju drinking on the sand have been ideal. But years of living in Seattle must have rubbed off on me quite a bit, because I was delighted at the first rain, eager to wrap a scarf around my neck and sip something warm from a mug. The views from my 18th floor apartment have been beautiful too: the clouds blanketing the green mountain in the morning, the leaves changing colors on the streets below.

I am now nearing my three month mark in the country, and yet I’m still not used to many of the things that make Korea….well, Korea. The smells are still overwhelming; walk down the street on any given day and you will get a whiff of some sort of dreadful, god-knows-what, a result of bad sewage systems and a lack of garbage cans (which is easily my biggest complaint about Korea – there are NO garbage cans ANYWHERE! I often must carry an empty water bottle or a granola bar wrapper across town before finding a place to dispose of it).

And the pushiness. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the way Koreans plow through crowds like line-backers, shoving anyone who dares get in the way, bumping shoulders and cutting in line without so much as an “Excuse me,” or “I’m sorry.” The other day I was on the subway during my short commute to work. There were no seats available, so I stood with my hand wrapped around one of the metal poles to keep balance. I was staring out the window when suddenly: BAM! A pain shot through my hand, and I turned to realize that an old man seated next to me had just karate-chopped my hand so he could use the pole to hoist himself up. Never mind that the pole extends from the CEILING to the FLOOR and he could have placed his hand on another part of the pole, or simply tapped me to let me know he was about to get up. No, no…extreme force is always necessary, and forget an apologetic smile or even the recognition that he’d done something wrong. The old guy just scooted past me as the subway doors slid open, my mouth gaping with shock.

Another curious thing about Korea is the “love motels” that populate every block in every city. These buzzing neon buildings have names like “Romeo and Juliet” and each room is complete with things like heart-shaped hot tubs, DVD players, and free condoms. They are frequented by Korean men and their mistresses, I believe, although unmarried couples living with their parents are also among those who use the love motels. I have to walk by a large number of them on my way home at night, and I usually see about half-dozen men outside each, smoking cigarettes and waiting for whoever is going to join them. The most hilarious part is that each motel has a parking lot that is kept hidden from sight by a wall of hanging strips of cloth – they look like the rotating arms you would see at a drive-through car wash.

It all seems a bit odd in a country that is otherwise so conservative, but I guess Koreans need some way to blow off steam – like I’ve mentioned before, they work six days a week and pride themselves on not taking holidays. My company only offers five vacation days a year, and there is no such thing as a “sick day.” My students are constantly little balls of stress; it seems there is always a huge exam looming, or an assignment they must complete. When I stroll into class on Fridays, excited about the approaching weekend, I have to remind myself that they attend school most Saturdays, and so Friday afternoons aren’t quite so special.

A majority of students do not take part in activities like sports or student government; instead, if they squeeze in something unrelated to academics, they learn paper-making or calligraphy. It blows my mind that my elementary school years were spent riding bikes, building forts and playing basketball, while these kids perfect their handwriting. I find that many of my students, although shockingly smart, lack the childhood creativity and curiosity you’d usually see at such a young age. And then again, a lot of times they surprise me with how imaginative they can be when prodded.

Example: the kids had a writing assignment where they had to imagine their parents had left them home alone for the entire summer, with just $20 to spend. They needed to figure out a way to survive on their own. Most of my students just kept whining about the assignment, insisting that it wasn’t practical.

“But, Teeeeaaaccheeer! Why would my parents leave me alone for the summer? My parents would not leave me alone! I am only eleven years old!”

Me, trying to be patient: “This is HYPOTHETICAL, you guys. Your parents aren’t really leaving you alone. You just have to imagine that this could happen.”

“But! Teeee-cha, why do I have to imagine something that is not true?”

Most of the class continues in this manner, but one of my students, Sophia, is madly writing throughout the remainder of the hour. When I stop by her desk to peek over her shoulder, I see that she has written nearly a page. Her response is detailed, revealing how she would go to E-Mart to eat free samples of food during her meal-times; she would sell her Dad’s new computer to pay the bills, and sleep on the beach if she couldn’t afford to pay the rent at her apartment.

She and her friend Lydia are two of my favorite students, mostly because I see a sparkle in both of them. Their favored status was sealed when I read over one of their homework assignments during our “homework check” at the beginning of class. They were asked what they would do if they could be principal for a day at their school. Sophia said she would introduce tea-time at school, where Korean students could enjoy different types of tea and snacks, and improve their social skills (the girl has a point – Korean students are notoriously awkward). She also thinks it would be a good idea to have water-gun fights on the playground so the students could blow off steam from their stressful schedules.

Lydia wrote: “My principal is very strict and always distorts his face. I would not be strict and I would not distort my face.”

I laughed when I read that, praising her on good use of vocabulary and asked her to show me what his distorted face looked like. She scrunched up her features into a look of pure displeasure. “This is how principal always looks,” she said. Yeah, I don’t think I’d want to have to deal with someone like that either.

I’m sure many of us can remember being that age and sure that any member of the opposite sex had cooties, wanting nothing to do with the other gender. Kids in Korea are like that multiplied by a thousand – they won’t sit next to each other in class, won’t talk to each other, and certainly won’t work together on school assignments. The easiest way to punish the boys in my class is to make them sit next to a girl. Attitudes don’t change drastically in adulthood, either – women usually hang out with other women and men usually hang out with other men. Most people don’t seem to have friends of the opposite sex, although young people around my age ALL have boyfriends or girlfriends (and they all wear matching outfits; see my photos). Being single is the most undesirable of situations to find yourself in if you’re a Korean (or anyone, in their eyes). If I’m seen talking to a boy, it is automatically assumed that we are dating.

My friend Anthony works in the classroom next door to mine, and we often chat in the hallway during breaks – this has led the students to believe that we are married, and they constantly ask me questions like, “Teacher Jenn, do you love Teacher Anthony?” No matter how I respond, they burst into loud giggles and contemplate our life together. When Anthony wore a new jacket to class last week, they insisted it was because we were going on romantic date after class ended.

I can only imagine what they think my life is like – I try to think back to my teachers, and what I thought of them. I had a surreal moment last week when, standing at the white board, giving a lecture on how to take good notes, I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the floor-to-ceiling windows at the back of my class: black blazer, trousers, heels, blue marker in hand, fourteen students with their eyes on me. How did this happen? I thought suddenly. When did I get to this point? I guess there is no one moment when we are “grown-up,” but a series of moments over time, so that it probably shocks the hell out of everyone when we see that adult image reflecting back at us.

It certainly scared the bejesus out of me.

Farewells and Festivals

It seems that Koreans love festivals almost as much as they love kimchi.

The past few weeks have been a blur of festivals, both here in Busan and in other areas of Korea, and a week can't go by without some sort of cultural celebration...Mask Festival, Mud Festival, Mime Festival. Korea has 'em all.

The festivals kicked off with the Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) which was one I had actually been aware of before arriving in Korea, a week-long affair I was really excited about attending. It's one of the largest film festivals in Asia, with over 300 films from 60 countries, and an emphasis on showcasing talent from third world countries. I managed to see eight films, ranging from a brutally chilling account of boy soldiers in Liberia, to Bill Maher's hilarious religious documentary, to an horrendously boring story about an Argentine sailor in Ushuaia.

The following weekend I traveled with a half-dozen friends to Jinju, a relatively small town about an hour and a half from Busan, for the Nam River Lantern Festival. I wasn't expecting much, the image of red lanterns hanging outside Chinese restaurants in Seattle stuck in my head. It was rather beautiful though: large, colorful figures floating down a wide river through Jinju, the warm lights from within the thin material casting a glow on the water. There were multi-colored warriors, bright cartoon characters, vivid green dragons, plump ladybugs. The area was packed, and we wandered for several hours along the riverbank, stopping only for Turkish ice cream and meat on a stick, which we munched happily under a new moon.

Last weekend I braved the crowds to attend the Fireworks Festival here in Busan, on Gwang-an Beach. Again, I figured a firework show is a firework show, and I've seen plenty 4th of July parades in my day. I considered not going, especially when I heard that crowds were estimated at 1.5 million, but decided at the last minute to join my friends. The amount of people there was exorbitant, even by Korean standards. We arrived about 4 hours before the show began to secure a spot on the sand, and people just kept coming and coming...and coming. At 7pm, the police closed off the beach, which is exactly around the time I decided I had to go to the bathroom. I've never had such a difficult time. It being Korea, there was only ONE designated restroom for all million plus people and a line that easily stretched 1/2 mile. I finally managed to beg an ajumma (older lady) to let me use the bathroom in her restaurant and then battled the cranky old men and the drunk young men to get back onto the beach.

But man, was the show worth it. I've never seen a fireworks production like it, with a fountain of white lights streaming from the Gwang-an bridge, green lasers shooting across the sea and onto the skyscrapers lining the boardwalk, the music of Queen reverberating from all sides. The word "fireworks" in Korean literally means "fire flowers" and it is a perfect description - the fireworks were like bursts of bright light blooming in the nightsky. I'm sure I will never see another show like it.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, my childhood friend Jenna departed for the United States. We have enjoyed two months of Korean adventures, and the pace certainly didn't slow during her last week here. Besides all the festivals, we finally managed to try san nak ji (live octopus) in Jagalchi fish market, which was a horrifyingly wonderful experience. We wandered from stall to stall for a while, inquiring at each: "San nak ji?" Finally, a man in yellow coveralls smiled, reached into a tank, and pulled out a glistening grey octopus the size of a small child.

Jenna and I squealed as we watched him chop the head off and then slice the thing up into pieces and slide them onto a plate for us. The pieces looked like slugs, wriggling madly toward the center of the dish as though they really were trying to mold themselves back together. My first attempt at swallowing a piece went awry quickly - octopus is very chewy, and the bite was too big, lodging in my throat and writhing about as I desperately tried to cough it back up. I finally managed to get a few pieces down, but not without a lot of giggling and screeching from both sides of the table.

We did have a lovely going-away dinner and party for Jenna on her last night, a testimony to all the friends she's made in just a few short months. We ate barbequed duck, drank too much soju, and stumbled home as the sun began to rise around 6am.

My studio apartment is a lot quieter these days now that I'm without Jenna, and even the Street Meat Man has been asking her whereabouts, but I'm keeping busy sculpting the minds of Korean youth, getting scrubbed down in Korean bathhouses, and contemplating my next culinary adventure (dog meat, perhaps?)

Summer's Final Adventures....

This week, I am discussing the idea of memory with my Intensive Listening class. More specifically, I am teaching them about age and its affects on our mental abilities, how well we can learn and retain information. I ask them who they think would perform better on a simple memory test: them or their parents?

The answer, of course, is them. As children, their ability to learn and remember is much greater. My class this week brings me back to the novel I just finished reading, called “The Year of Fog,” about a woman who loses her child on a San Franciscan beach early one morning and struggles to remember details that will lead to the girl’s discovery. Memory, the narrator says, is not unlike a photograph with multiple exposures. One event is layered on top of another, so that it is impossible to distinguish between the details of the two. The older we get, the more multiple-exposure memories we have. As the years progress and we experience more and more, the mini-narratives that make up our lives become distorted and corrupted.

I feel like I’ve experienced so much this year that my memories are already beginning to blur together. I notice now, as I am experiencing something, I am already trying to re-create the memory, to picture it in my mind or figure out how I will re-tell the details later. Memory is such a fragile thing, something that begins to erode before it’s even fully formed, and I don’t want to forget a single moment. This is impossible, I know, but through words and pictures, I will try nonetheless….

Last week two of my roommates from training in Seoul traveled out to Busan to visit, which was amazing. My Khanh, who also attended university in Seattle, stayed with me in my little studio, and we spent Saturday drinking tons of coffee and people-watching on the beach. We’d been trying to spread the last days of our Indian Summer as far as we could, and I think our afternoon on Haeundae may have been the end of sundresses and swimming for a while. On Sunday we wandered Jagalichi market, one of the largest fish markets in the country, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It reminded me of both Seattle and Africa, the smell of fresh fish, vendors wrapping their catch in paper and shouting to passerby, the wriggling and bulgy-eyed seafood laid out before us. The weather was overcast and gray, perfect for trying some sort of Korean pumpkin stew, which everyone disliked but me.

On Wednesday, Jenna and I finished classes early and boarded a bus to Gyeongju, about one hour north of Busan. The city is known as “the museum without walls” as it holds more tombs, temples, rock carvings, pagodas and ruins of palaces than any other place in South Korea. Of course, Jenna and I had a mere 16 hours so we awoke at 7am, took a bus to Bulguksa temple (a UNESCO World Heritage site) to admire the Shilla architecture amongst green gardens, and then left quickly to escape the throngs of Korean school children. We hailed a taxi up a winding road to the mountains above Bulguksa, and the grotto of Seokguram (another World Heritage site). There we paid $4 and then walked up a path through a thick wood, leading to the main attraction: a huge golden image of Buddha, where Koreans were kneeling to pray and more school children were shouting and taking pictures. I think the peacefulness was a bit lost on us, as the 400 or so grade schoolers seemed to spoil any serenity or quiet, but it was beautiful and well worth seeing.

Our tour de Korea continued Saturday, when we decided spur of the moment to hop over to Jeju island. The trip was easily one of the highlights of my time in Korea thus far. We arrived in Jeju-si, the island’s capital, early Saturday afternoon. The island atmosphere was immediately evident, the bright blue water sparkling below us as the plane landed, the bright green palm trees outside the arrival gate at the airport. Backpacks slung over shoulders, we immediately caught a cab to Sanseonghyeol Shrine, a site about 10 minutes from the airport. The shrine sits in the middle of a quiet and lush garden, an area that is basically three holes in the ground where legend says three brothers (Go, Bu and Yang) rose from the ground and founded the island. We wandered the grounds, snapped photos of the three holes and had the chance to see two of the remaining harubang, 250 year old statues carved from lava rock that were built to protect the island’s fortresses in the 1700s.

After dinner we boarded an old bus to Seongsan Illchulbong, a town about an hour and half away on the extreme eastern tip of the island. We were dropped off on the side of the road around 10pm, and were surprised to find the village dark and quiet. After walking up and down the high street several times, knocking on motel doors and questioning cab drivers snoozing on the side of the road, we found a place to sleep. Jenna’s cell phone woke us at 5:30am for our planned sunrise hike to the top of Illchulbong crater, a lush green volcano that plunges over the edge of the island, above the churning South Sea. Seeing the small village in the soft pre-dawn light was incredible; viewing it from the top of a jagged crater was breathtaking. I felt like I was at the edge of the world, the wind howling around me, the bright lights of fishing boats below as they returned to shore, the gray sky meeting gray sea before me. My friend Adam always recommends seeing a new place from its highest point, and doing so in Seongsan was magnificent.

Following a short nap, we boarded another teal-colored city bus to Manganggul, about 30 minutes north-east of Seongsan, to see the world’s longest system of lava-tube caves. We ate okdom for lunch, a salty snapper fish with transparent eyes, along with black rice porridge and plenty of kimchi. Then we bundled up and descended into the caves, dark black tunnels that were formed around 30,000 years ago as the lava cooled and hardened. For the first time since arriving in this country, I enjoyed over a half-hour of quiet as we followed the small lights on the cave floor, stepping over deep puddles and occasionally seeing the dark figures of Korean tourists as they passed by in the opposite direction. The cave’s ceiling seemed to be perspiring, dripping cold water atop my head from the ground above. I wish I had paid more attention in Mr. Border’s geology class in high school, trying desperately to remember the name of rocks or the processes they go through, but the eerie passage through the tubes was interesting regardless.

In mid-afternoon we boarded a ferry bound for Udo Island, off the eastern edge of Jeju. Skimming the grey waters on a cloudy day reminded me of Seattle, and the ferry rides from Bainbridge or Whidbey, bundled up in scarves and sweaters and sipping coffee. The island, about 16 km around, seems unspoiled, the only signs of tourism being the scooter rentals available as you step off the ferry. We were unable to convince the middle-aged Korean man to rent us a scooter, instead offered rickety old bicycles with metal baskets. Jenna’s was bright pink and mine a suitable green, and steering the things was like trying to maneuver a grocery cart with a wonky wheel. We cycled around the perimeter of the island, past the porous black rocks and startling white light house set against the lush greenness of the island. We spotted the weathered old ladies crouched on the rocks and in the sand, sorting through their catch of the day with quick fingers, staring out at the sky that looked like it could open at any moment.

The whoosh of the frothy waves was all I could hear along that winding road, keeping an eye on the flash of pink that was Jenna’s bike ahead of me, her hair blowing out behind her, the same jet-black as the lava rocks to our right. We walked along a white coral beach, coarse sand littered with shells and sea glass of varying aqua colors. It was serene and beautiful and unforgettable, and undoubtedly one of my favorite afternoons in South Korea.