The Gem

The Grand Ole Opry, Itaewon.

For the past few months I have been something of a hermit.  After losing my Gangnam job, my money situation fluctuated between frugal and oh-shit.  Add in various factors like apartment furnishing, a trip to the States for Christmas, a fairly luxurious dinner at the top of Namsan Tower (I realize that these things are all elective expenses), and life in general and the sum of the parts was a not very social Tom.

Finally, after the alignment of the stars (payday with no huge expenses to worry about) I managed to take a trip to the pub with my coworkers.  It has solidified in my mind that if my school isn’t entirely the coolest place on earth, I got lucky again in that I have cool coworkers

We went to Itaewon.  In the past I have been extremely down on Itaewon.  Part of my disdain for that place is legitimate.  Saturday night that place turns into a horrible place.  I have, however, learned to appreciate it for what it is on the surface: an escape from the monolith of Korean society. 

Grand Ole Opry.  Itaewon, Seoul.
Take the Wolfhound.  We go here first.  It is a two floored Irish pub.  I had been here once before, briefly, with my girlfriend.  The place is actually owned by the same owner as a little sports pub in Yaksu that we frequent.  At that time there was a soccer game on TV and the place was teeming with screaming, chain-smoking, drunk Brits.  We turned around and found our western food elsewhere. 

Tonight it is a lot different.  A recent law that bans smoking in bars and restaurants with more than 50 seats saw to the cigarettes.  Further, the upstairs is open and we are led that way and shown to a booth. 

The place is accented with dark wood and plaques.  Off to one side a game of darts is underway.  It is owned by Koreans but it is no different than an Irish pub in Boston.  I can’t speak to its authenticity as an Irish Pub in Ireland but it hit the spot for us.  It serves a mishmash of burgers, sandwiches, pub grub, and Irish dishes like lamb stew.  I avoid all of this and get the chicken fingers.  Fucking great.  They might not actually even be great.  I don’t care.  I am so hungry that I load on the barbeque sauce just for extra sustenance. 

We talk and drink at two different tables before congregating together.  Sometimes going out with coworkers makes me wonder if my kindie teacher went out and got drunk with all the other kindie teachers at Beal School after work.  We pass the point of having really wonderful ideas and wander over to a bar called the Grand Ole Opry; which is the real point of this post.

We take a left outside of Wolfhound.  People are out.  Itaewon is at its prime.  Teachers, soldiers, and Koreans are at all manner of trashed.  Nobody is passed out on the curb yet, so it is still pretty early.  We cross the street and begin walking up a hill; or should I say: The Hill. 

Hooker Hill has served as an enigma since I arrived in Korea.  I had heard about it in seedy stories about wild nights out or in jokes.  I remember reading about some US soldier who damn near burned the whole place down when he knocked over a candle in one of the brothels that line the street.  He did take out one of them.  I had been there once, or rather, been near it with Larry the first time we went to Itaewon.  I caught a glimpse of it in the daytime a couple of weeks ago when I was looking for Golden Grahams cereal and Cheez-Its. 

Here we are though, right at the mouth of the beast.  We walk up the hill a little.  It is night time but I don’t see too many of the shady scenes that I expected.  Just a glass storefront and some drunk foreign guys sauntering down from further up the hill.  There could be great bars further on, at the top of the hill, but I just assume everyone is coming from a brothel.  It’s easier to lump them into stereotypes that way.

This bar we step into is called the Grand Ole Opry.  It is dark.  The sides of the bar are dimly lit in a pale, orange hue.  The lights are dimmed and diffused by the smoke of a dozen cigarettes.  It gives the appearance that candles or torches dance behind the shade.  The floors are dirty and the walls are covered with notes written on US dollar bills, Korean won, and probably a handful of other currencies.  Despite not being a thief, I think of taking some of them to both read the notes closer and then buy some candy later on.
In the center of the giant room, surrounded by groups of people who laugh deeply and loudly, is a small wooden dance floor.  As it is, nobody sets foot onto it.  Not for a while, anyway.

Our group sits at a table on the side.  Even in the light that seems to whisp around me, contained in tobacco smoke, I can see that some of the bills pinned to the wall are ancient.  This place has probably been around for ages (I look up the history, later, and find almost nothing other than the bar owner’s anger over a recently enforced early curfew for U.S. troops; courtesy of a rape and some other pretty serious trouble).

Our beer comes.  I order a Cass.  We talk and I look around.  The clientele of this place throws me off.  I see cowboy hats.  Particularly, I see a ten-gallon hat.  The man wearing it is my age, perhaps a bit younger.  His hat is black and he wears a black button down-shirt that leads down to a flamboyant belt buckle.  He is polished.

I immediately take on this cocky attitude.  This place is so foreign to me.  I realize pretty quickly that I am more at home in a Korean hof than a country-western bar.  I am from New England.  This place in Itaewon is so damn far from my experiences in Shrewsbury, in Worcester, or in Boston.  I sneer.  I don’t do it maliciously.  I have the attitude of almost any New Englander in a place like that.  Maybe it’s because I realize I don’t fit in here.  Maybe it’s because I am taking it too seriously.     

Suddenly everyone is standing.  I am laughing about something and I recognize the words to the Star Spangled Banner.  I am in a state of light-hearted disbelief.  Hats are removed from heads and placed on hearts.  Eyes turn at attention and focus on the Stars and Stripes hanging from a dark wall.  Hanging next to it is the Confederate Flag. 

Immediately after the anthem is “And I’m proud to be an American…” which is perhaps my least favorite song of all time.  I sit down and wonder what will come out of the speakers next.

The night wears down and we have some laughs.  What comes from the speakers is a steady stream of new and old country, a spatter of folk and blue grass.  At the end of the night, before a group of us make our exit into the Itaewon night, I see the man in the cowboy hat dancing with a girl.  If she is Korean or not I don’t now remember.  It strikes me that they are not grinding or bumping or anything like that.  He is smiling as they waltz along to the music.  I don’t know if it’s a waltz but it was classy and even through the booze and the smoke I could see his smile. 

We are greeted by hookers.   They sit behind glass in the storefronts (actually brothels) across the street from the Opry.  I am beginning to feel a little guilt over my immediate disdain for the Opry, but my first thought is about how much money these places must make from a bunch of whisky-drunk country dudes.
I see a girl, a bit larger than the average Korean girl.  She is sitting on a chair behind glass.  The lighting is red and dim but she seems to be reading something.  She shifts in her seat and I can tell she is barely even wearing shorts.  Behind her is an older lady, fully dressed that I take to be the madam.  Another girl walks out but she barely pays our group more than a vaguely annoyed glance. 

We make our way to the main drag and fight for a taxi and go home.

When I wake up I get to thinking about the Opry.  I feel a bit bad about the stereotype I had for, well, most of the people in there.  I get to thinking about how it might be the most legitimate “old west” saloon I have ever or will ever go to. 

It was smoky.  The bartenders were gruff old women.  There were pictures of one in a whole bunch of different countries.  Whether she picked up a pension for Americana on her travels or just fell into the Opry, I don’t know.  There were cowboy hats and belt-buckles worn with pride instead of irony.  People seemed to drink hard and smoke hard.  Likely, everyone in that place could have handled themselves in a brawl.  And, like every bar in the West according to Deadwood, it was surrounded by prostitutes and the grime of a seedy and dirty road in a seedy and dirty neighborhood.

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Wangsimni

The Fork at Wangsimni.

I leave my tiny apartment in the neighborhood of Wangsimni in Seoul at 9:20am at the latest.  It takes ten minutes to walk the couple blocks to my school.  This is the latest I can leave.  I try to leave earlier but the reality is that it doesn’t matter: whether I arrive on time or early I sit at my desk and do nothing.  I do not utilize the 30 minutes of prep every morning. 

The route is a straight shot.  I hit the pavement, turn left outside of my building and keep walking.  Eventually I cross an intersection.  The intersection serves is in essence an unofficial border in much the same way Charles Street is the border between Beacon Hill and Back Bay in Boston.  From the other side of the intersection I cross another street, shuffle past a convenience store, down some stairs, into a narrow and dirty alley, and then into school.

My commute is no different from that of almost any member of any workforce on earth.  What makes this morning jaunt worth mentioning is that I am not from these parts.  In a previous life I lived in the homogenized borough of Gangnam.  My daily walk then involved Starbucks, Smoothie King, and Burger King.  Though my life is dirtier and less affluent, it is also more valuable to me as an observer.

I step outside my building and it is raw.  This is no surprise: my bathroom is part of a poorly made addition in my building and there is no insulation.  If I hang my head out of my apartment and look at the outside of my bathroom I see a window that holds in some Styrofoam and cardboard.  This is the only insulation I have in that room.  If it is freezing outside then there is a layer of ice on my toilet and I shit with my hat on.  I could see my breath in the bathroom.  I already know that it’s cold outside. 

Across the street is a small hair shop that caters to old men and women searching for something with no frills apart from some curlers.  It is empty at this time in the morning. 

A man walks through Wangsimni.

Next door to my place is a butcher, one of many in the neighborhood.  I live in a marketplace.  Butchers dot my daily life here.  They display their meat, bones, and insides on counters and in the open air.  On my way home at night the proprietors sit amongst hooks, knives, and saws as they watch Korean dramas on old TVs jammed into the corners of harshly lit showrooms of sorts. 

The butcher next to me is quiet as he cuts spring onions on the street.  He looks at his knife and to a pile of green stems lying on the wet pavement.  It’s tame.  The other night I wandered out to a steady thud to find him chopping the giant, lifeless head of a pig down the middle with an axe.  At home in the States butchers use saws or cleavers, butchers paper and gloves.  He used an axe.  The street was covered in skull fragments, brain, and gore. 

This morning, it’s only onions. 

I pass three food markets.  Boxes of cabbage, radishes, bananas, oranges, bean sprouts, and about a dozen vegetables whose name I have no idea are being pulled out onto the curb.  One grocer maintains a giant tent at the entrance, giving it the appearance of a perpetual east-Asian bazaar.  I pass them and see the first bit of fresh seafood of the day.

Squid.  Squid is a part of my daily life.  If it isn’t served at school for lunch or at the bar for anju (the necessary drinking appetizer at the local pubs), consumed by my girlfriend, or stockpiled by my students then it is a guaranteed part of my morning walk.  They swim in dirty tanks.  They lay in clumps in buckets.  They fester in cardboard boxes covered in ice.  Their grey, white, and silver bodies glisten in the morning light.  It is too cold to smell much but come nighttime even the cold can’t keep their stink down.

Squid have good company.  At one stall I pass by squid, crabs, scuttle fish, octopus, shrimp, snails, flatfish, mackerel, and a dozen other things I don’t want to see sitting in their own post-mortem slime right after I ate my coco ball cereal. 

The street glistens for the whole walk down this stretch.  Water leaks from bubbling tanks holding flounder and eels.  Vendors spray yesterday’s scales, guts, and general grime from their area.  Oil and blood from the butchers flow down the curve of the street and into the gutter.  Every wetness and trickle contains the insides of any manner of things you don’t want on the bottom of your work shoes. 

I pass the claw game.  I pass the game that requires the player to operate a piston that will hopefully knock free a little trinket.  The prizes range from stuffed animals, mp3 players, Zippos, playing cards, and vibrators.  There are all in the same machine.  It is also possible to win a pack of batteries for said vibrators.  I pass five of these machines.

The vendors operate in all manner of structures.  Most maintain wooden shelves of varying levels of utilitarian decrepitude.  Thought in these places is not put into décor or into making something more appealing.  The most common element in the local motif is blue tarp or pressure-treated hunks of 2x4.  One hunched old woman sits day and night on a tiny grey blanket selling carrots and other vegetables.  Her goods sit on crumpled and saturated newspapers of Korean script.  Her only shelter from the weather is the remains of a cardboard box that she has arranged as a wall to separate her body from the heaps of wires, trash, and filth of a dark alley.  Just outside of the market is a brothel.

A wagon stocked with cardboard.

This woman squats for hours looking straight ahead at the mandu shop.  Steam rises from the jutting stall of dumplings.  The proprietor of this stand sells pork, kimchi, and vegetable mandu.  There is a small selection of steamed buns and large slabs of rice cake to be had, but her main business is in cheap dumplings.  It is possible to sit in her florescent cubicle of a dining room in the back and watch a flickering TV as you eat but nobody but old men half drunk on rice wine indulges in this luxury.  Mandu is a utilitarian meal best enjoyed to go.

Towards the end of the walk I pass a stretch of building populated by stores selling pots, pans, bug killer, floor mats, flowers, cutlery, candy, and all manner of junk.  Across the street a bent old man is pulling the covers off of the same Styrofoam boxes of slimy fish he was trying to sell last night when I made the return trip at 7pm. 

I pass by empty restaurants that will be teeming with the locals in a few hours.  Now empty tables will be teeming with men and the occasional woman grilling pork bellies, intestines, kimchi, and garlic.  Soju spills early in these places and come night time the entire neighborhood will reek of sizzling meat and oil. 

In Korea the difference in fare between breakfast and every other meal is thin if not, at times, entirely nonexistent.  Small restaurants that are hardly bigger than the greasy kitchen populated by one or two wrinkled old women are already full.  Men and women slurp noodle soups, scald their immune mouths on boiling red and brown stews.  The most common fare in this neighborhood is sundae gook.  It is a soup not made of vanilla ice cream but of a kind of black blood sausage filled with cellophane noodles.

Fish drying in the sun.

Before I make it to the intersection and into the part of Seoul that looks no different than the working class districts of Boston, of New York, of Worcester, of any city anywhere in the world I pass one of the dozens of fried chicken joints in the market.  The windows are dark now but in a few hours bones will be crunching and oil will be dripping from the fingers of the classiest Samsung execs.  An empty counter sits in the open air.  It is abandoned but soon there will be a couple dozen chicken feet steaming in the cold, coated in a spicy red sauce.  Those that enjoy them will eat them with clear plastic gloves and let the tiny bones fall out of their mouths as they enjoy the succulent but tiny amount of gelatinous meat on them. 

The last stall I pass sells tteokbokki, a kind of rice cake not unlike gnocchi that is braised in a sweet and spicy sauce.  It is popular with everyone in Korea.  Students and business people, local vendors and old women will stop by for a glutinous snack and walk away with a thick red mustache in an hour’s time.  It is likely that I myself will drop a dollar and walk away with a cup full of the rice cakes, fried mandu, and sundae to snack on while I walk back.

After I pass a Dunkin Donuts, cross the first intersection and then another on my way to do battle with my lot of kindie students.

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I'll Be Home for Christmas

The past week has been dominated by holiday plans. 

I have been in Korea for about 9 months.  Most of this time was spent in Gangnam at a school called Jung Chul Jr.  Don’t bother looking it up; we burned that mother to the ground (in a business sense).  While my job now has taken quite a bit of time to get used to, I am thankful to have fallen in with a decent school and a bunch of funny, sarcastic coworkers. 

The downside to this situation was that unless my folks came here, I would likely not see them for another year.  My original plan was to take a month or so off after my original contract ended to get my Shrewsbury fill but this “school closing” thing really but a bad spin on that.

As a result of that realization and certain other stresses, I have lately felt a considerable amount of homesickness.  I found myself laying up at night thinking about Manville, my parents, my sister, my dog.  I thought about my friends at home and for the first time in this whole like abroad thing, really missed EVERYTHING.

A few weeks ago I found out that my Christmas vacation is fairly sizeable.  The idea of going home for that little spell popped into my mind and never left.  Soon enough I was listening to Christmas music and I knew it was inevitable.  So, $1400 later I will be home for Christmas. 

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Open Class or What the hell have I done?

7-3 Represent

To say that I was eased into the transition from a relative life of relaxation into that of a new school would be a total lie.  As if joining a large group of well-established friendships with a totally new way of doing things weren’t enough, I was thrust right into the single worst week of the LCI calendar. 

I first heard the rumor of upcoming Open Class on my first day.  In the tornado of both relevant and irrelevant information that was hurled at me on that rainy morning, a few words about Open Class came my way.  I guess.  I didn’t really think very much of it.  At the time learning how to adapt (or more accurately cope) with the overwhelming presence of kindie kids in my life seemed much more pressing.  

As time went by and one hectic day of getting everything done blended (or crashed) into another day of not having enough time I got used to hanging out with my kids.  The problems that were plaguing my life, problems that hassle everyone in every new environment, had nothing to do with my kids.  To my surprise I found that I genuinely enjoyed my kids.  Most of them.  Yerin is a doll, Nora is a sweet heart.  Jimmy might not have heard a single word I have ever said still makes me laugh.  Eric calls me Mr. Tom.  All these kids make me laugh (well, except for Kevo; he is kind of an ass hole as far as little kids go).  Point is the kids are great but I found myself struggling to stay ahead of paperwork and find the learning curve. 

Then, suddenly everyone was panicking about Open Class and I had a week to prepare.  Briefly, I entertained the idealist idea that I wouldn’t rehearse with my kids.   I understood their parents were coming to watch an hour of our 5 hour class.  It was in a meeting with all of the other foreign teachers, plus our Korean liaison that I was informed that Open Class was not simply a look into what we do every day.

Open Class is everything that is wrong with this industry.  It is an hour of nothing but fraud and carefully scripted cuteness.  In this hour all children must speak equally.  Their lines must be carefully memorized.  The songs must be choreographed.  The games must be colorful and props need to be used at all times.  These were some of the things discussed.  We should move around a lot.  Our liaison was telling everyone to use a lot of “finger play” which, after some confused looks, was discovered to mean a hand signal given to children to make them promptly shut the fuck up without going through the routine of screaming at them. 

This and a number of other things were said, including the confession that the administration was aware that nothing about this class was real.  Departing foreign teachers suggested aggressively that the fakeness of the class be done away with, that the stress was too much and that it would be much more beneficial to have parents simply observe a genuine class, but nothing could be done about this year. 

All of this came about because the first Open Class crashed and burned and resulted in a pretty bad day for everyone and a room full of parents who were angry that there weren’t enough props.  Open Class solidifies the role of English teachers in Korea more akin to a circus clown than an educator. 

Also not that all of these rehearsals had to be secret: parents wouldn’t be too pleased if little Yerin announced that she knew the answer to the word problem because “we did this yesterday, and the day before.”

When it came time for my dry run with our liaison it was a disaster.  My kids wouldn’t stay still and they wouldn’t shut up.  While I might have looked like I wanted to throw them out the window I couldn’t blame them entirely.  The whole ordeal oozed tension and awkwardness.  Making things, the liaison does not handle stress well.  Seeing that I was bombing she seemed to forget it was a practice run and basically lost her shit.  She would get up and pace and look through my papers.  She yelled at kids who played with her pencils.  At one point, flustered almost to the point of tears, she demanded to see the game I would play.  I handed her two identical sets of cards that were to be part of a sentence building game and she promptly shuffled them together, thereby fucking everything up.  Her anxiety didn’t help and in the end nothing productive came from that practice.  Instead her sole purpose was to make me and my kids nervous as hell. 

Shortly after open class, we all decided it was best to disappear from
mainstream society.

The practice left a bad taste in my mouth.  In the days leading up to my Open Class I couldn’t sleep.  My anxiety levels were through the roof.  I stayed late to make colorful (but pointless) props.  I begged my kids to be quiet and behave.  Kevo, a devious little guy, was screamed at daily for being a jerk to everyone.  In our last practice he knees-upped Yerin in the face while dancing to “Knees Up Mother Brown,” and he almost dislocated Nora’s arm in the middle of “The More We Get Together.”  Things weren’t looking good.  In the end I settled on bribery.  I would give them all candy (an extra gift for Kevin if he wasn’t a jerk intentionally) if they did well and didn’t tell their parents that there was nothing genuine about what they were going to see. 

Despite sweating profusely my Open Class went well.  Even though my liaison looked as though she was going to shit her pants the entire time (something that my new co-workers assured me was her MO when in duress), nothing bad happened.  The kids were cute which satisfied their parents and I moved around like a buffoon which also satisfied their parents.  In the end the only complaints were minor.  The director said that the only problem was that some of the kids took too long to answer my questions as their answers weren’t totally scripted.  Another parent was worried her kid didn’t speak much.  These can all be contributed to a sweaty teacher trying to conduct a fake class and students surrounded by 20 adults taking videos. 

The only major problem came from Jimmy.  Jimmy has some minor impairment.  What it is is only rumor.  He is a funny kid and makes me laugh often but his progress is incredibly slow and he has to be watched constantly.  Parents used to complain about him, I am told, because they were worried that his presence in the class was detrimental to their own kids.  Kindie though they are, my class is gifted.  Everyone speaks advanced English and they police themselves like the gestapo for any spoken Korean.  Jimmy has problems but even he speaks only in English.

Jimmy and his mom came in late.  It screwed things up.  It threw the whole show off kilter for a bit but we recovered.  One of Jimmy’s issues (along with every other kid) is that he will play with anything near him.  Usually this is ok, sometimes hilarious.  In gym he kept kicking everyone’s soccer balls.  He wasn’t doing it to be a jerk, that’s just what he does.  If a ball came near him, his or anyone else’s, Jimmy kicked it as hard as he could in whatever direction he happened to be looking in. 

For this reason no kid was allowed to have his or her pencil case in front of them.  They had one pencil (no erasers as these were useless: in this situation I marked every answer correct and gave them a high-five even if they wrote “49” as the answer to “2+3”) and an object.  The object was a prop.  At a certain point I asked them all to describe their objects using adjectives. 

Jimmy had a tape measure.  Jimmy was the only one un-phased by a room full of adults and he showed this by constantly playing with the tape measure.  He was starting to become distracting but I delayed saying anything because, well, that’s Jimmy.  Also, the idea of disciplining a kid in front of his mom was not something I felt like dealing with.

Cute kids.

My liaison, however, did not handle it well.  She stood up, walked behind Jimmy and grabbed his shoulders and loudly whispered something that while she later claimed was a very soothing “please stop,” was essentially a pretty aggressive “shut the fuck up Jimmy or I’ll kill you.”

The aftermath was pretty serious.  Jimmy’s mom flipped on the liaison and left in tears.  She skipped the parent teacher conferences (thank god for me) and told the liaison that she was thinking about pulling Jimmy out of school.  She said something in the manner of Jimmy goes to our school because we give him more leeway than a normal school would.  It’s understandable as patience is sometimes lacking in some schools.  Anyhow, the Jimmy Incident took a lot of attention off of me.  My performance was ultimately forgotten and soon enough the nightmare was over.

 

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Goshitel Style

When all is said and done, and this whole affair with the slow, sinking demise of Jung Chul Jr. is over, Alix, my Canadian coworker and I are forced from our apartments.  For a few days we relish in our fairly luxurious Gangnam apartments.  Then, one night I bump into Alix, Phil, and their buddy Jason.  They are towing a few oversized pieces of luggage.  On the side of the road at Bang Bang Sageori I see Aliz as my neighbor for the last time.  A few days later her apartment is bare; it doesn’t even have a bed, something our landlord is fairly pissed about.

Then, I am gone.

I live, at this moment, in a goshiwon.  I have been in this place since September 9.  It is now September 26.  I will stay here until October 1.  I have done quite a bit in this forced vacation.  I have gone south to a small town called Andong.  I have wandered around an old folk village, eaten fish, and drank copious amounts of beer.  I have run a lot.  I have climbed a mountain (and been scared totally stiff on said mountain).  I have also spent a decent amount of time visiting Che in the hospital.  My final memory of Gangnam is Che tearing her ACL in triumphant fashion.

So, some of my plans for this free time were altered. 

A goshiwon, or goshitel, is a kind of place where people who have nowhere else go.  A Korean friend told me that they are good places to concentrate, as noise is frowned upon.  For my first few days here I would only speak if I had a blanket over my head to muffle my voice. 

They were originally meant for people who need solitude to study.  Each room is equipped with a vomit-yellow floor, a shelf that actually covers a good 2 feet of the end of the bed, cabinets, a TV circa 1991, a tiny fridge, and a bed (if you opt out of the floor mat, called a yo). 

Now, I didn’t mention a window.  Some rooms in this goshitel don’t have them.  The people in these rooms almost always leave the doors open; unfortunate because their depression spills out into the hallway with their trash and dirty slippers.  My window had a window once.  For a while, the only thing ineffectively keeping the bugs out was a swatch of blue mesh held in by match sticks that were pushed into the wall.  When the bugs came in just the same I made some spikes out of soju bottle caps.  It did the trick.

Then a typhoon came and a giant storm-window came down and I haven’t had fresh air since.  This is a problem because Korean food is a touch smelly by nature.  Half of the foods eaten here, by myself as well, are fermented or are coated in something fermented.  One of the benefits of these places are an unlimited supply of rice and kimchi (until the kimchi runs out and isn’t refilled again until after your hospital-bound girlfriend complains via messenger). 

To make matters worse somebody down the hall has been eating something that smells like that flaky food you feed fish in a tropical aquarium.  This smell is piped into my room by a tiny vent window until I am drowning in it.  If it doesn’t smell like fish food, then it smells like cigarettes.  On the rare off day when the one giant fan in the giant, dark-as hell, firetrap of a hallway blows the odors from the communal toilet (something which constantly overflows) it actually smells like shit. 

So, when the air is a little heavy and smelly the rooms can become a bit overbearing.  With my luggage there is not enough room to do anything more than stand.  I live in a place no bigger than an American prison cell. 

The people in this place seem to run on both sides of the track.  No, that’s not right.  I think everyone here is poor.  The price per day at this place is less than $10.  It is economical.  While a negative picture is painted above, it is really not bad.  However, if I had a bunch of money I probably wouldn’t be here.  On the one hand there are a lot of kids who seem about college age.  Since we are close to Dongik Univerist I can guess this is their form of a dormitory- a comparison that really isn’t too far off.  They never speak to me.  Nobody ever seems to speak to anybody here.  There’s a general sense of shame and mistrust here. 

There are business men.  These men are all older.  If they are successful or not, I don’t know.  I would say no, but with a lot of people in Korea working long hours and commuting long distances it would make sense to just foot a $10 / day bill for a place to crash during the week.  These are the people who surprise me. 

The only people who have spoken to me here have been two older guys.  One of them came up to me while I was cooking ramyeon in the kitchen.  He handed me his business card and tried his hardest to give me a message in English.  The jist of it was that he was in room 30.  If I ever needed help I should knock on his door or call him.  Then, he turned around and was gone.  He comes in at about 7pm daily in a sharp suit.  The goshiwon is his weeknight home. 

There is another man, a bit further on in years.  For the past three nights he has knocked on my door.  His English is broken but this guy always gives me food.  He has given me a peach, 4 eggs, and just 5 minutes ago a croquet from a fake French bakery called Paris Baguette. 

There are these guys who make me really love the experience of staying here, and then there are others.  There’s the dude covered in tattoos who never wears a shirt.  He is incessantly smoking in the bathroom.  Everybody does this, but he does it even at the urinal.  There’s an old lady who more or less runs the hell away whenever she sees me.  Then there is a younger guy across the hall who never leaves, and never puts on clothes.  EVERY time I have walked by he has been laying on his floor mat in his boxers, watching TV.  As far as I know he doesn’t own a single shirt or pair of pants.  He is basically the poster child for the depression brought on for living too long in a windowless room in a goshiwon. 

 

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Welcome Back Ambition

I thought long and hard about quitting this blog.  I put way more thought into that decision than it warranted; after all, it’s just a stupid blog.  On the one hand I haven’t updated this thing in months.  What is worse, I never even finished a story that was really important for me to finish.  The last post was about my return to Cheongju.  Cheongju is a place I hold dear to my heart, partially because in a stroke of spontaneous stupidity or love I had it tattooed onto my chest.  My return to that place was monumental in my mind.  It is the place that I associated with my entire experience in Korea.  In Cheongju were my friends, my students, and coworkers who I consider to be my family over here.  I never mustered it up to finish the story.

I saw Oo-Rin, but also Jun-Ho.  I didn’t recognize Jun-Ho because he grew up so much.  I was scared he wouldn’t remember me.  He did.  In a quiet moment at the front desk while everyone was teaching he came up to me and sat on my lap, hugged me, and rested his head on my shoulder. 

I saw other kids.  All of them had grown up so much.  So much had changed in their appearance and my own.  Some didn’t know me at first.  Those that did told me I was slim.  My hair was good, they said.  Whatever problems I had in Seoul and at my Gangnam job faded. 

One older student, who had an obsession with Bon Jovi, was confused when I asked if he still played Mine Craft.  I told him my friends built a giant boat, that I became obsessed with it at home.  He clearly had no idea who I was but he was polite.  Before he left I told him that I was his teacher once.

“What! Tom Teacher?!” He said.  He bowed and hugged me and patted my belly.  “So good!”

I saw the elementary school student who gave me a gift.  As he walked out on that last day his eyes were watering and his voice was cracking.  He was trying not to cry and I recognized it because on that day I did the same several times.  The last thing I said to him was a lie.  I told him I would see him again.  I am proud that I saw him again.

Most of the kids were gone, but some of the key players of my time at that school were still around.  Older, pimply faced and awkward with puberty but still there.  They asked if I would be their teacher again and while I wished I could be, that things were different, I could not. 

Billy, who somehow looked exactly the same, walked in and didn’t even say hi.

“Game?” he asked.  Barryfun English.  The wheel game that I wasted so much time playing with him.

At a certain point the Crazy Boy with long hair walked in as bat-shit crazy as ever.  He looked at me behind the desk in shock.  I smiled and said hello.  Another teacher asked if he remembered.  He looked at me again in a comedic portrayal of fake confusion.  He walked around the desk.  At first I thought he would give me a hug.  I thought this boy who sang “Puff the Magic Dragon” with me and who pulled a very realistic toy pistol on me why trying to demonstrate “crazy” would hug me.  No.  He ripped back my left sleeve, saw my tattoo and said “ok.”

There were drinks that night with almost everyone.  Han was gone, Hye-Jin was sick, Shaina was gone, and Ara was in Australia.  Everyone else I ever worked with at that school was there.  We drank for a long time.  I was happy.  I felt as though I had come home.  I saw Albert and we hugged.  The money issues fell into the past and I can barely remember ever being mad at him.  We drank together until 4am, Albert, Boram, and I.  It made me happy to come back to this country when in all honesty I had been questioning it. 

So much has changed since then.  I lived in Gangnam.  I taught at a rich school.  My kids were better dressed but just as crazy.  I worked with Alix.  I ate dinner every day with Alix and Phil.  I then went home and slept next door to Alix and Phil.  Life had a routine.  It was comfortable but I never left Seoul.  My experience felt stagnated. 

Three months ago I lived in a nice apartment in a place made internationally recognized by Psy.  I was comfortable with Gangnam Style.

It all changed so fast, for both good and bad.

I met a girl called Che-Eun.  I quit smoking quite a while ago.  I lost my job.  We all lost our jobs.  They told us that the school was moving.  If the school is actually moving, I don’t know.  What I do know is that none of us are going with it. 

For 2 months Alix and I reached for motivation to teach kids, grade tests, and write report cards we knew were pointless.  Rapidly, we went from a full schedule with few breaks to nothing but breaks.  Kids quit so quickly that by the end we were teaching classes of individuals.  Then, finally, it was over. 

We bonded with our coworkers.  Bankruptcy is like death, I guess.  It sucks but if there is one plus to it is that it brought us together to some degree in the end.  I left Jung Chul feeling as though we were finally all friends.  Too late, but friends just the same.

So now I am here.

I signed on to a kindie north of the Han River in an area called Wangsimni.  I feel sad that the last 6 months counted for little, professionally, but I also feel fortunate.  The first few months of being here I confirmed my nightmare that I was trying to recreate Cheongju.  I now get a second chance.

I’ve done so much since that last entry.  I went to Taiwan, we’ve had three typhoons, I moved, an entire business collapsed.  I regret not writing about them, if even for my own memory.

So, I have decided to start this blog again. 

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Going Home Part 1

Its some time in the early afternoon.  The bus pulls out of the Express Bus Terminal in Seoul.  It all feels so familiar even if I have not been to this place in so long.  I am lost for a long time in the cluster-fuck shopping center of the subway station.  I somehow over shoot my intended exit and end up in a satellite branch of the terminal. I am hot, sweating, hungover from too much soju, and late.

It all seems about right. 

This whole bus ride seems strange but also warm.  It is all reversed.  Instead of the weekend trip being Cheongju to Seoul, it is Seoul to Cheongju.  Its strange that I am escaping some place to relax in Cheongju when for so long the opposite was true and necessary.  Almost always this trip ends in me at the Tomgi Motel.  The world is all topsy turvy.  Never do I end up in the Gallery Motel near the express bus terminal in Cheongju, fighting to wake before a noon check-out.  That's where it ends this time.

Still the journey warms me.  A sense of anxiety builds as we pull onto the highway and leave the megatropolis of Seoul behind.  I catch glances of the buildings and mountains that make up that panorama of Seoul as they fade.  They are replaced with the mountains and rivers of Central Korea, a place that, even still, I am more familiar with, more at home with. 

I am nervous to return to Cheongju for a million reasons.  I am scared that my old coworkers, people I have this last year referred to more often as family than friends, will be cold to me.  I am worried at the pit of my heart that they have somehow either forgotten me or forgotten the warmness they accepted me with once.

I did leave.  I did cause a bit of a stink over money.  I did regularly show up to work hungover or half bombed. 

I am scared that the school won't be the same.  This is what worries me the most because I know that, whatever the case, it will be true.  I left.  Another foreigner took over and left.  He had to cut away the weeds and shadows that I left behind and surely his ghost remains.  I am fresh in nobodys mind.  Maybe they mourn for him.  I thought about them all a lot while I was gone living the wasted time that I did. 

Most all of the teachers are gone.  Hanbyul is in New York.  Boram is working at a restaurant in Cheongju.  Eunhyang is in Cheongju still I guess.  She is hard to keep track of but I know she doesn't teach and I don't know if I will see her.  Shaina isn't there anymore.  So Young is teaching.  Ara is in Australia.  As for the Receptionist and the Bus Driver I know nothing. 

Mostly I am nervous that I won't want to leave.  I am horrified that I will see everyone and it will awaken this whole demon of regret.  Regret of leaving Korea.  Regret of leaving that job.  Regret of going to Seoul.  Regret of ever returning at all.  I am scared the fear that I am trying to recreate a time past will be realized fully.  It is a devastating thought that scares me enough to make my heart beat a bit too fast to maintain focus on my book.

Still.  The ride is nice.  I have missed these green fields and paddies that we pass.  Rice paddies form rounded steps up a hill.  The hill leads to a green forest and the forest to a green mountain that ends in a blue sky.  It's the blue sky of the Korean countryside, not the gray one of polluted Seoul. 

We pass greenhouses that stretch forever.  I see the tiny and dirty cattle farms, the majority source of the primo-expensive beef in this place. 

I feel far from Seoul already and, truth be told, I feel more at peace, somehow.  The stress of my job and the stress of the city melts off as I sweat on the bus. People snore.  I am not free of my life as a Seoulite but at the moment it doesn't feel so important.  Gangnam is far away.  Report cards don't matter.  My head teacher doesn't exist in the minds of these people. 

The bus pulls off the highway just past a sign that reads "Cheongju" in English and in Hangul.  I am excited and nervous but also comforted.  There is a sense of relief.  A certain part of me accepts that these next moments are why I came back.  When I left I thought that I would never return to this place; that all of the "I'll visit"s and all of the "I will see you soon"s were happy lies.  As the bus pulls into the famed tunnel of trees leading to the hopping transport hub of Cheongju I feel a bit as though I have beaten some sort of odds. 

We drive around and I am in memory lane.  Amanda C and Andrew lived near here.  I see farms and restaurants around me.  They always traveled so far to Chundae for drinks.  I can still see Andrew's face imposed on the plastic ID cover on my wallet.  His wallet.  I don't really know. 

Soon we pass from rural to urban.  This swatch of Cheongju that looks lake every hub in every Korean city.  Seoul is only a Cheongju on steroids. 

Soon I see the bus station.  A place I've seen a million times before.  A place I walked to once searching out a foot long from Subway.  To my right is a bus stop that lead Larry and I to the bus garage instead of a beautiful fortress- the least drunken of our misadventures.  Larry fucking Boire.  It's been a long time since we were in this place together.  He always hated Cheongju.  Once his motorcycle broke down on our highway and he left it for days. 

Larry is to be married in two weeks and I will miss it because I am here. 

To my right, just before we pull in and I set feet on Cheongju terra-firma I see a sign advertising American Burger.  American Burger sells the worst middle school cafeteria style burgers in all of Korea.  I will not be fooled.  I am no naive passer-through.  Not in this place. 

I step out and feel the heat.  I smell diesel and while diesel smells like diesel anywhere, I feel this warmth of remembrance wash over.  I decide to take it all in as much as I can.  The past year of my life has been building up to this. 

I walk out and hang a left.  There is a group of love motels near the station.  I went there often.  Rick and Lauren from Daejeon stayed there whenever they came.  Gallery Motel.  I find it without trouble and am horrified to pay 60,000W for the night. 

It's worth it though.  I head up to a dark hallway a few flights above.  Neon lights give off a blue hue.  As always I feel like some kind of pervert in this place but I am a foreigner and alone.  It is my first love motel in a year and I remember immediately why these places are the best. 

I pop my key into the slot and am greeted by a giant room with a fake mahogany floor, a giant TV, king bed, mood lighting, a huge whirlpool, et al.  I turn on the TV and as I light a cigarette from a crumpled old pack I find in my sack I realize that the last patron never switched from the porn. 

I take a look in the mirror and fix my hair, brush my teeth, and spray a bit of cologne.  This is something that I would have never done before.  Cheongju Tom is, if not entirely dead, dormant inside me.  I had a girl then.  I didn't care how I looked, what people thought of me.  It is entirely fucking obvious in every photo from those days. 

I walk out, hail a cab and somehow manage to recite my old address.  No problems.  It is a rarity. 
We double back and I am in Gavin's old neighborhood.  I remember watching Elf with him and Robyn.  The streets are all the same but everyone is gone.  Melodramatic, I know. 

The new neighborhood is up.  We pass Home Plus and Chunbuk University and are in Gaeshin-dong.  My old home.  We drive down the main drag, turn left near Pizza Maru, another right at the Sundae joint and before I know it I am looking at the window to my old apartment.

If much of the Cheongju that I knew has changed, Han-ga-ram apartment complex is still a huge piece of shit that looks like it belongs in Chernobyl.  I stand for a while and then leave, scared that the old landlord will come out and invite me to another lunch. 

I take the long way to Kim Hak Su, now called Kim's Human English.  Cafe Pasucci took over.  I don't remember what used to be there but it makes me sad.  As I round the last corner I see that my old kimbap joint is gone.  I ate there every day.  I had hoped to have a quick meal there and see the nice woman who always gave me watermelon (as opposed to the lady who hated my guts).  It is the only thing that makes me genuinely sad. 

My heart pounds as I open the door.  I walk up the stairs and take one last deep breath before I walk in to my old school.  It is a place that remained and will remain a significant place in my heart.  I don't know quite what to do. 

I hear a squawk from the boss' office.  Mrs. Kim.  I can see her face contorted.  She always had this adorable bunny rabbit face.  I see it clearly as she bursts out of the dark room.  I smile.  It's like a roller coaster.  From this point on, I have no control and it is like the "good ol' days."

She almost knocks me down.  She hugs me and says something in Korean and squeezes my belly. 
"Ahhh, slim!"  She says. 

I hug her and tell her she looks great.  She doesn't understand me but it never mattered so much.  She shouts and a Koean guy pokes his head from the teacher's office.  A classroom door opens and closes.  It is So Young.  She looks beautiful.  She smiles.

"Tooommmm!"

We hug.  I don't remember much of what we say.  I make it a point to tell them both how much I missed them.

So-Young takes me to a classroom.  I am shaking.  It isn't quite visible but I feel it.  Too much caffeine, I think, but I know it is just a kind of happy shock.  I forget about Seoul, about Shannon, about Gangnam. 
Inside the class I am stared at like some sort of monster.  They look at me with curiosity.  Nobody knew I was coming.  I glance over the faces and for a moment I don't see her in the corner behind the teacher's podium.

"Thoma?"

I would have known her voice anywhere.  I missed her the most, I think.  She was my first class at this school.  She was there for my first teaching day and dealt with my inability to communicate better than most, despite being 8. 

Alice.  I never called her by her English name.  Oo-Rin.  I see her smiling and I rush over and hug her.  She looks the same.  She was so young then but so damned mature.  She comforted Junho when he was upset and calmed him down when he got excited, even though he was just a little younger. 

It is the second happiest moment I have in that school that day. 

The memory of my last day rushes forward.  I shook her hand goodbye and she said:

"Thoma, please, hug."

It almost broke me.  I never thought I would see her again. 

I am visibly shaking.  I can't stop it.  I feel light headed and anxious.  The class goes on even if they all stare at me and Oo-Rin explains me to her friends.  I keep looking at her and smiling.  She basically changed my mind on kids. 

I sip my coffee to try to hide my shakes, but it only makes it obvious.  I step out for a moment and try to collect myself.  I am worried that I might cry.

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Kia Tigers

The subway is mad.  It is the worst I have ever seen it in Seoul. 
Once, I experienced the sardine tin that is the Tokyo subway at rush hour but that somehow had more order to it.  I remember being jammed in the middle of the car.  I was unable to move or hold onto anything but the fear of falling was pointless because there was not enough room to fall. 
No, this disaster of sweat and jostling for grip and spots near the door reminds me of the unfortunate nights when a show at Axis or Avalon on Lansdowne Street at the same time the game at Fenway let out. 
Makes sense, I guess, as an old woman shoves me to the side and I am nearly run over by another, I am on my way to my first baseball game in Korea.  Also, I am riding on the Green Line.
When I come out at the Sports Complex stop I am a hot wreck.  I hope my shirt doesnt soak through.  I am trying to show off my new clothing and my new shoes; shoes that cut deep into my ankles and soak my socks in blood by the end of the night.  I spot my friends Kiki and Joe at the top of the stairs.  We pour from the tunnel like ants. 
I am relieved to breathe fresh air*.  I spent the entire last part of the subway entombed in the middle of the train, being bounced around and pushed, all with my hands in my pocket so nobody thought the sweaty foreigner was out for a grope.
We wait for a girl named Jeong A to arrive and we are soon walking into the stadium.  Anyone accustomed to the security and checkpoints and general assumed rules of baseball stadiums in the States is almost at once horrified and delighted.
We walked right in.  Tickets were cheap, a kindness from Joe, but they arent subject to the scrutiny of back home.  Further we have bags of food and booze that is let in with no fuss.  If we had forgotten beer then it was possible to buy a can for less than 3,000W. 
The game is great.
Joe's team, or rather the team of his parent's hometown and thus his own, is the visiting Kia Tigers.  Taking on the number 1 Doosan Bears, the home team.  We sit on the visiting team's side of the field.  This is important. 
The game goes like any other, anywhere on earth.  There are fouls and homers.  If anything, it is a bit tense as one team takes the team after another.  Pitchers are pulled out (in painfully rapid succession that leads to an hour long 7th) and balls are thrown.
What is different is the shear noise.  It transcends so far beyond the noramlcy of the screaming at Stateside games that it transcends into what I always thought was an exaggerated cliche. 
There is a lot more singing, for one.
Every batter steps up to a theme song and a chant.  One guy steps out and Yellow Card's "Ocean Avenue" blares.  These chants turn into songs and then silence when the other team picks up the bat.  Like everywhere else, the desibles soar with loaded bases. 
En lieu of the frank and beer (which would cost a hefty amount at home) we eat bread with cream, cho-bap, sandwiches, and a bowl of ramen. 
In the end the Tigers win and Joe can't speak because he scream / sang the whole damn night.  I can hear nothing because I was simply present.

 

*But this is Seoul, so it isn't very fresh.

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Insadong

Insadong

Mandu Near Tomgi.  Insadong.

It is a place that I have spent the most time in in Seoul but also a place I know the least about. 

It was my R and R destination when I lived in Cheongju.  I don't know how many nights I spent in the Tomgi Hotel that last time around, but I figure they came away from our torrid relationship with no less thn 500,000W of my not-so-hard-earned money. 

The Tomgi was good to me.  I can't imagine I will ever be desperate enough or rich enough to stay there again now that I am a resident of Seoul but it is nice to see it as I come to the surface from the subway.  It is still there: neon letters, trash, derelicts, and business cards for in-call prostitutes.  Empty green bottles, once containing soju, rest against the curb and the trash bins are overflowing; remnants of the soju tents that appear at night and vanish come sun-up.

I smile when I see the building.  A Korean couple (at least in the physical sense) open the tinted door and run in.  40,000W for 4 hours in the day, if I remember. 

Still this is basically the extent of my knowledge of Insadong.  I remember hearing about art galleries, antique dealers, and stalls selling every manner of traditional Korean goods.  I saw this part of Insadong only once, with Dawoon who I met in Greece, when she took me on a walk through the main drag.  I remember drinking coffee and catching up, talking about trees and mountains in the coldest and most rugged part of Greece in the winter.  That day, Korea was an extension of our experience together in a work camp. 

I remember tea shops and hipsters, tourists and the Blue House but not much else.  My real area of expertise then was the stretch of road between the Tomgi, the store next door that sold soju and cigarettes, and the McDonalds down the road.  On these solo trips I made no effort to get to know Seoul- I got drunk and watched Jersey Shore (known locally as Mad Party House) and sat in the in-room jacuzzi.  A love motel at its finest requires no love other than a man and his snack wrap. 

The music shop is still there.  I bought a guitar there.  It was cheap and a higher quality than anything I had owned previously.  I played "Puff the Magic Dragon" with it for the Christmas Pageant in Cheongju.  It is now owned by Han's father.  I remember it fondly.

I walk to Tapgol Park.  As far as historical monuments go it is easy to pass.  Inside, behind glass panneling stands a 10 storied pagoda.  It is a remnant the 15th century Buddhist temple that once occupied the area.  Now, it is perhaps more relevant as the place where the March 1st Movement of 1919 began.  In this area the Proclamation of Independence was read for the first time. 

Old men sit about, cross-legged drinking booze.  A school group is waiting in line for the bathroom.  I cut infront of them, see the 50 foot troth that serves as a urinal and walk right on out.  There are certain moments in which kids who want to say "hi" to you are not welcomed. 

I wander through alleys for a long time.  A few hours pass and I am lost in that I don't specifically know where I am but not worried because the bustle and the smell of fresh fish and burning meat tell me that I am still in Insadong. 

The alleys are dark.  The overhangs of the buildings that form these arteries and the spider webs of cables serve to blot out the sun.  If this wasn't Korea it would be a prime place to get jumped.  It is Korea though and the biggest danger is, as always, the possiblilty of being run down by a lunatic delivery man on a scooter or scaled by steam pouring from a mandu shop. 

I surface again on the edge of a park.  To my left are the walls of the Jongmyo Shrine, a place that has existed in one form or another since 1394.  It is an extremely significant place in Korean history and thus its nationalistic culture.  Ordinarily, a tour guide is required to enter but as luck would have it it is Saturday, and on this day it is not. 

I am about to walk in but to the right I find what might be one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen in this country.

In Cheongju I came across 30 or so ajummas practicing some sort of rythmic drumming routine on the side of a river.  As they marched back and forth pounding giant drums while still dressed in the standard, clashing ajumma uniform they struck me as an army.

Instant Cancer.  Insadong.

In the park next to Jongmyo are hundreds-no thousands- of ajoshis sitting beneath the trees.  I want to say that I see their movements like birds in a bush but the truth is they are hardly moving.  The only thing that really gives any indication that they have not all died at once is the murmor of ambiguous conversation.  Occasionaly there is a loud grunt, sometimes the sound of a throat being violently cleared (one of the main tracks on the Korean Soundtrack album, by the way). 

As I walk through, cautiously snapping a couple of photos, I become aware that there isn't a single woman in this whole bunch.  They are all playing, waiting to play, or hovering over a game of Reversi.  Just about every last one of these unsmiling men is chainsmoking to such an extent that even in the open air the smell of ash and tobacco is overwhelming.  There are no pigeons here.  In any other park of this sort they would be lingering everywhere.  They have either been replaced by this lot or they have all died of avian lung cancer. 

I pay my 1,000W to get into Jongmyo.  It is a serene place in this city but still obviously in a city.  While its grounds are expansive there are groups of school kids running around everywhere.  I have to walk all the way to its forested rear to get any solitude.  I find a colorful shack in the trees and wonder how old it is and if it is haunted; turns out to be a bathroom. 

Jongmyo Shrine.  Insadong.

I see tourists now and again with the English guidebook, available free of charge.  Mine is in my pocket.  I often go to these historic places with no previous knowledge of them whatsoever and then read about them later.  This is a stupid habit as I often pass by something really awesome without knowing that it is anything but a mound in the grass. 

I am making this whole treck because I am on a kind of self-imposed deadline.  The One Year Issue of Kamikaze Magazine is set to come out the next morning.  I am going to be spending the rest of the weekend trying to finish it.  The purpose of this trip is to make a few more images.  I don't linger anywhere too long. 

There is something unearthly about the shrine if you can remember that it is not a fancy place that is going to blow you away with sparkle.  It is subdued and natural in a sense because it is old as shit.  Like most ancient places in Korea, the Japanese felt the need to burn it when they came over.  If you want real accurate dates and a detailed history Wikipedia is always close at hand. 

It was built for the sake of ritual memorial services.  After a time of mourning that lasted various amounts of time for various kings and their wives (maybe others, I don't know) tablets representing the souls of the departed were brought to this place.  A ceremony with sacrifices was held and these spirit tablets were entoumbed. 

This place still hosts the Spirit Tablets of the kings of Joseon Dynasty.  I feel linke a bastard when, upon hearing "Spirit Tablets" for the first time, I think of The Legend of Zelda.

The wole thing was a somber and ritualistic affair.  It is something that seems to be taken seriously.

Ceremonies have been greatly simplified but the place is still sacred.  Amongst the paths and colorful pagodas, ponds and twisted trees is a line of stone.  Atop is a sign that asks visitors not to step on the rocks:

This is for the spirit.

I leave and find my way to the main drag of Insadong: Insadong-gil.  It is a stark contrast to the shrine.  It is not peaceful.  It is chaos.  It is every boardwalk and tourist strip put together.  It reminds me of the streets I wandered aimlessly in Barcelona, almost a year to the day earlier, but somehow it seems busier here. 

I realize that photos would be fairly crappy here because I can't see more than a few feet ahead of me.  Off to the side Turks sell ice cream and fuck with little Korean kids, denying them ice cream with clever turns of a giant spoon.  I see loads of tourists.  I know that they are tourists and not expat teachers or military personel because sometimes they say "hi" to me.  It is nice to not be in a place where even in a tiny kimbap joint it is standard practice to ignore other foreigners, despite the fact that almost all of us are here because we don't know what the fuck we are doing with our lives.

Off in the alleys I find restaurants and curiosities.  I pass a cafe with caged birds outside the door.  The next alley is vacant and polluted: a recycling plant devoid of anybody but a bent old woman hauling a load of cardboard that would rival the shingles my father spends endless hours hauling up roofs.  It is an interesting sight but nobody so much as slows down because they don't sell pottery or calligraphy pens. 

The Spirit Path.  Jongmyo Shrine.  Insadong.

In the middle of it all, parting the sea of people like Moses, is a man with an intercom and a cross painted onto cardboard on his back.  I can't understand him but people avoid him more than they avoid the legless men who drag themselves singing into megaphones here.  I get the idea.  He is the local equivalent of the guy with the signs that say "repent" in Boston and every other local in the greater Massachusetts area. 

As I leave this place, back to my current dwelling in rich-ass Gangnam I pass a stage surrounded by people.  An old woman is playing a traditional instrument.  It is set to that universal Korean ballad tempo and everyone seems enthralled.  It sounds beautiful.  I look around and all ages seem smitten with this lady.  I snap a few more photos and listen for a time.  I listen long enough to identify the song, even if it is in Korean.

Elvis.  "I Can't Help Falling in Love With You."

More photos of this and Gangnam here.

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