Brokedown Palace

The weather is nuts.  It is Saturday and I am on a tour of Seoul.  It rains briefly and the wind is freezing.  Cloud cover comes and the city is gloomy.

My tour guides are new Korean friends.  Kiki and Joe.  After a couple weeks of feeling useless and bummed about not really having any Korean friends, Han in New York rang her friend Kiki. 

We head into the basement of a huge building for a bite to eat.  Japanese food. 

I eat something.  I don't know the name of it but it is delicious.  It is a kind of bibimbap.  Kiki eats udon noodles in a soy sauce with a bunch of stuff ontop.  It is covered in whispy fish flakes.  The heat of the noodles make the flakes wiggle around.  They look like they are writhing. 

We talk.  I ask about a million questions.  Magazine work has prepared me for meeting new people.  Silences can't ever be awkward if I am constantly jabbering.

Both of them studied in Boston.  We talk a lot about Boston.  They know my university which is something that suprizes me.  In all my time in Korea and other places, nobody has ever heard of Suffolk University. 

Baseball is a universal language.  Both Joe and I went to St Elizabeth's hospital in Brighton.  All three of us like the Pour House.  Joe and I order beers. Well, I don't order anything.  In most situations here I am about as useful as a functioning baby. 

We order coffee.  In the foam of Kiki's drink a heart has been drawn. 

Outside snow swirls with the wind.  When I left it was sunny.  It briefly looks as though the world might end.  In an instant the snow is gone and the sun is out.

Gyeongbokgung Palace. 

I had seen this place once before.  A year earlier, almost to the day I found myself making a panicked dash to the US Embassy in order to replace a lost passport.  I see the crowd control vehicles and security at the walls of the embassy.  Security is tight everywhere in Seoul.  Obama arrives tomorrow for the Seoul Nuclear Safety meeting-thing. 

We watch for a moment as men with black beards march back and forth.  They wear traditional garb and carry spears.  A drum keeps time.  It is the changing of the guard. 

The palace was built in 1394.  Since then it has been burnt, destroyed by war, rebuilt, etc.  Walking along the paths it is possible to forget for a moment that we are in Seoul.  Kids play and there are throngs of people everywhere and the constant click of cameras, but it is other-worldly.  This place is older than the USA. 
We walk along side alleys until we are alone.  In the distance are mountains.  Snow reflects light on the tallest peak.  Joe points out a small hut on a ridge and tells me that he spent time there when he served his mandatory military service. 

Two women, dressed in hanboks walk behind the skeletons of trees. 

After, on our way back to the subway they take me to the largest book store in Korea.  Actually, it seems to sell everything imaginable, including guitars and ukuleles.  They help me buy a usb cable for my camera, something I had been looking for passively since I landed here. 

Before we part ways Kiki buys me a bag of warm, spongy, puffs of dough.  Inside there is some sort of custard and sweet bean. 

"It is my favorite food," she says.  "Eat it on the subway."

I eat the whole bag and then feel like an American fat-ass.

Read more...

In Country

Guess what I stared at for 14 hours.

So, I live in Seoul now.  It is a little overwhelming.  I had been looking forward and basically only thinking about comming back to this place for almost a year.  It was almost a year ago that I left my dirty, ratty apartment in Cheongju.  It has been almost a year since Vietnam ("I remember my time in 'nam") and Cambodia, Thailand, and Jordi.

In my time at home I accomplished virtually nothing.  I walked my dog a bunch of times, fell through the ice, ate some burritoes that may or may not have been over a pound, drank a bunch of Brandy with my father in Manville, and ate a bunch of Chillis.  I managed to put on every pound I lost in an impressively short amount of time. 

I am talented like that.

Anyway, here I am.  I am back in Korea.  Cheongju is gone for me, save the best tattoo choice on earth. 

I thought about writing this giant update a while ago.  It never worked out and now I have been here for a week.  So I will play catch-up with a list:

That hole is my shower.

1. I lived in a tiny dorm room with a toilette in it for a few days. 

2. Homesickness and a general totally-bummed-out / what-the-hell-have-I-done feeling hit me pretty hard for a few days.  Largely, I am blaming this on that dormitory. 

3. I also blame a dead computer battery and general inability to communicate with anyone at home for this feeling.  I remedied this by shoving my 3-pronged plug into a 2-pronged adapter and then into the wall without a ground.  So far I am still alive.

4. My school cannot be more different than my school in Cheongju.  Gone are nice family dinners and laughing and... you know, fun.

5. I met Amanda R for Uzbek food in Dongdaemun.  It turned into a boozefest for me.  When I was in Worcester I developed a fondness for a cheap Russian beer that came in 52 oz brown plastic bottles.  I liked it because they cost less than 4 dollars.  I felt infinitely trashy.  Apparently they come in glass bottles at fine dining establishments frequented by Uzbek fabric dealers.

My kitchen and TABLE!

6. As a result I couldn't find my apartment for 2.5 hours.  Memories include getting into an off-duty cab, buying a snackwrap and nothing. 

7. My new apartment is pretty grand.  There is a real neato sliding wood pannel separating the two rooms.  It makes it feel Asian, which is nice, in Asia.  Observe photos below.

8. I didn't actually bring my camera cable so I can only take photos with my iPod until I get paid.

9. I don't get paid for another month.

Ok, that's it.  Actual post to come.

My bed and chair / laundry hamper.  Also, Soju.

My TV and a dead guy.

Read more...

In Country

Seoul is overwhelming. 

I fight to stay awake in the back of the cab that is taking me from Incheon International Airport.  I fail at this spectacularly.  The last time I slept was days ago, and that was drunken sleep.  I spent 17 hours in the air watching "The Big Bang Theory" and doing puzzles. 

Every now and again my head falls back.  My eyes want to shut but I force my lids to stay open.  The cabbie might be weirded out as I am sure he looks into his mirror and sees a guy with his eyes rolled into the back of his head.  I look like a tweaker, maybe. 

I am met on the street by a Korean guy, impeccably dressed, named Chris.  We make small talk as he leads the way to my apartment.  I ask his real name and he tells me that it's "only Chris."  I am too damned tired to ask much more. 

I am barely aware of my surroundings when a door opens in front of me and I am shown my "apartment."

"You will be here only 3 or 4 days," says only Chris. 

It is a nightmare.  The room is not much bigger than a bathroom despite actually containing a bathroom.  A tiny bed is jammed into the space between the toilet and the wall.  A glass divider keeps me from rolling into the bathroom.  A long desk occupies another wall.  With my luggage there is no room to walk. 

Bummer, I think.

I am given some keys and then taken to the school. 

I take in very little.  My systems are shutting down.  I try to be polite.  I meet the guy I am replacing and the other native teacher, both Canadians.  I ask the names of some of the Korean teachers but I make almost no effort to remember them.  This day will exist in my memory as only a blurb. 

On my way "home" I buy a roll of kimbap.  As I eat it with my fingers I notice there is no strip of crab in it. 

This might all work out afterall, I think.  I then pass the hell out. 

Read more...

Ralph's Diner, Worcester MA

The last time I see Mike, Patty, and the other Mike who went to Harvard is at 2am outside Ralph's Diner in Worcester, MA.  Last call is over and the door man has ushered everybody outside.  People stand around smoking, waiting on cabs or designated (or drunk) drivers to pull up.  We are waiting for my mom to come pick us up.

The past several hours are spent drinking.  We drink at Mike and Patty's and laugh at the fact that we spent much of our time together at Chillis because we are apparently 50 year old working stiffs. 

Mike and I go to Walmart where he paid for a pump and walked out without the pump.  The pump is for an air-mattress that he doesn't need because I am not sleeping over. 

"Thanks for the mattress, Godfrey," he says. 

At the bar Jeff shows up, Rick, Lauren, and her sister.  I buy people drinks and lose track of all my money and time. 
The night is cold but it was all a great send off.
As we stand and wait it all sinks in and I don't want it to end.  I wanted to go to Korea so badly but now that I am on the verge of leaving, I am tremendously sad.
When I wake up in the morning I won't fall asleep again until I am in Seoul. 

Read more...

A Korean in New York

It is somewhere near midnight.  I am in SoHo with Han, my coworker from Kim Hak Soo.
I need to stop calling her my coworker; we haven't worked together in over a year.  Now she is just my friend.  A really good friend.  She has done her time and is no longer responsible for my wellbeing and happiness in a country that is strange to me.
 
She goes to school in New York now.  Everytime I see Han in the States it jars my reality.  It is like a kind of ghost of a dream that invades the day.  It is wonderful. 

Last time she was up we got drunk in Ralph's Diner with Mike, Patty, and Larry.  As we laughed, glossey-eyed, at the 3-6-9 game and pounded beers I became aware at how odd it can sometimes be when two totally seperate social groups that span the globe come together in a union you never thought would ever happen. 

If this were at a party that I had thrown, then the two groups would have not mingled at all and I would have gotten drunk alone off the keg in the middle of the room. 

But, we are getting drunk in SoHo now.  Outside New York revelers scatter this way and that.  It is February but the weather is freakishly beautiful, even at night.  Little Tokyo is abuzz.  We are in a Mexican joint.  Through the window I see Kanji script, English, and Hangeul.  We might as well be in Itaewon. 
We talk about students and the other teachers and the rumors of that fledgling school. 
My mojito is destructive.  After that and another beer I am speaking in mumbled slurs.  It is liquid courage that is necessary maybe because I am staying at Han's apartment with what sounds like the United Nations of alcoholics. 

We talk about money.  I am drunk enough to start going on about some nonsense about not caring if and when I die broke and alone so long as I can see the world.  Han agrees with me.  Over the past year and change Han became a really great friend.  It is funny that one of the people that I can relate to the most is a 22 year old Korean girl. 

"I wonder if it is all a huge mistake," I tell her.  My head sinks a little.  It is still drunken conversation over rum and tequilla, but I am talking about something that genuinely worries.
Many of my conversations with Larry from Cheonan entail him telling me not to go back to Korea.  I spent god knows how many nights and days dreaming about going back to Korea and almost always caught myself using my Cheongju friends' faces as stand-ins for the friends I will make in Seoul. 

I have this fear that I will land in Seoul and then get hit in the gut with that "what the fuck have I done?" feeling. 



 

Read more...