Waiting

It is just past midnight on a Sunday.  Tomorrow I will pick up my E2 Visa from the Korean Consulate in Newton, MA.  My recruiter, a man who calls himself Steven, has told me that any day now he will send me the itinerary for my flight from Boston to Incheon.  It seems real now.

It has been a long and unproductive road to this point.  It seems as though it was so recently that I touched down at Logan International Airport in Boston after over a year away from home.  It seems such a short time ago but it has now been nearly 9 months. 

I have done next to nothing noteworthy over the past 9 months.

The weather was turning from pleasant to oppressive when I landed.  I had a girlfriend and my family was so happy to see me.  I saw my friends and I told my stories.

Kelly lives in China now.  My family is probably fed up with the horrible mood swings and general crankiness that accompanies an utterly idle and comfortable life. 

I have this memory of sitting in MJ's, an expat bar in my old city of Cheongju.  I don't really remember who was there but Gavin, the only Kiwi in my main circle of friends, was talking about the difficulties of doing stand-up comedy in Korea.

"It won't translate," he said.  "Nobody will know that the hell an ajumma is."

The problem with comming home after a year of living and teaching in Korea with other people from a bunch of other countries living and teaching in Korea is that you almost forget how to relate to anybody else.  You tell your stories and find youself laughing your ass off by yourself, wondering where your Waygook friends are. 

"I felt like I didn't belong," said my friend Tim the day after I got home.  He had been home for a number of months.  "Sometimes, I still don't."

It is hard to come home after something like that.  Well, it isn't.  When I saw my mother, father, and sister after so long it was hard not to cry.  My dog lost his shit and I spent the next several weeks catching up with friends, family, TV, burritos and alcohol.  I told my stories and they told theirs. 

So many of my friends obtained jobs with decent pay and decent respect.  A few were married, bought houses, and / or had children.  I can barely take care of myself. 

Close friends aside I felt myself falling by the wayside of secondary friends and vice-versa.  It wasn't a bad thing; it was a natural thing.  A short common history was partially eaten by the intense experience that is international friendship abroad.  I couldn't relate to a year of adulthood and they couldn't relate to my year of reckless abandon. 

I knew I wanted to go back to Korea almost as soon as I got back.
I put it out of my mind and occupied my time with distractions.  Within a week or so of landing I was on the road with Brandon, one of my best friends and a guy I missed profoundly, down to Florida to see the one and only Hadley. 

I went to the worst part of Brooklyn and deap sea fishing.

Larry from Cheonan is successful now.  I saw him with Mike and Patty in Brooklyn.  At the train station it was hard to recognize him: clean-shaven and dressed to the nines from work.  It all seemed so different.  Last time I saw him we stunk of booze and I was sleeping on his floor because he had already given away his couch. 

It all came back, though.  A couple months later we all went deep-sea fishing.  I brought peanut-butter and jelly, Mike brought grinders.  Larry from Cheonan brought a package of Oreos and a water bottle full of soju.  This was at 7am. 

I tried to put the feeling of wanting to go back to Korea aside.  It was inconvenient.  My family wanted to know my plan, Kelly wanted to know my plan, I wanted to know my plan.  My plan was to blow through my money as fast as possible.  I immediately went out and bought a new laptop and a giant TV despite the fact that the only TV show that I watch is AFV.

After a few months I decided that I really wanted to go back, but I was wary.  Larry spent a long time telling me that it was probably a mistake.  I knew he might be right.  He told me that he had friends who tried for the "repeat" and it ruined it all for him.  I told him to "shut up" but I knew he was right. 

I sat on the idea of going back to Korea for a while because I was scared that what I actually wanted was to go back in time.  I spent so many hours at Buzz in Cheongju talking to Tim and Andrew, Amanda, Amanda, Katie, Gavin, Robyn, Kim and everyone about how we would pay all the money in the world to go back to University. 

It seemed as though my ideal memories of an idyllic University had been replaced by idyllic Korea.  I knew this was fantasy.

Cheongju was gone.  it was over for me.  The vast majority of the people that made that place special were long gone.  I tried to fight the urge to go back to Korea because I knew my tendency to dwell on the "good ol' days" but it all won out.

I took a job in Gangnam, one of the richest areas of Korea. 

The school covers the same age-range of my old school and, while slightly bigger with 2 foreign teachers, does not have a massive / impersonal number of students. 

So, tomorrow I will find out when I leave for Korea.  I have done this before but still I feel anxiety and nerves saturating my core.  My temper is short and I wake up with the jitters. 

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Busan, Finale

 

Morning.

For various reasons, there was a blur between the end of the night before and the morning after. I awoke after not more than a few minutes of dozing in time to see a man and a younger guy putting in the first of what would be hundreds and hundreds of umbrellas. In a few hours Haeundae Beach in Busan would be crawling; our bed would be pretty crowded.

Turns out, it wasn’t our bed. The older of the two umbrella Nazis began shouting at me that we were in his way. We wouldn’t have been in his way for another hour anyway but I smacked Larry in the back and we moved further up.

All things told, there are worse places to be exhausted and hung-over than Haeundae Beach. Granted, my mouth tasted like black death and my skin was covered in grime and sand from the past 6 or so hours- the stink of bad barbeque hung around me in a shroud of regret. Luckily we were right next to a giant bathtub.

The water reminded me of Hampton Beach and Plum Island in that it was freezing almost to the point of ankle numbness but not quite there so it was refreshing.

Here’s something you should know about Haeundae Beach: you can’t swim until 9am. Why? Don’t know, perhaps you die. We were throwing around a tiny football when a lifeguard came running up and told us to get out of the water. Fun time was over. We spent another 15 minutes in pathetic childlike desperation. The beach was empty save for a few runners, the umbrella Gestapo, and Larry and I as we sat at the edge of the water and tossed a miniature nerf-ish football back and forth like 5 year olds who would drown in more than 2 inches of water.

At some point we fell asleep long enough to fry and woke up to take a quick dip and clean off a fraction of the sand that would cling to us until we were back home.

Our motel cost 90,000W. Not a bad price considering where we were. It was more than we were hoping to pay but it was close to the beach and let us check in at 10am so we took it.

Love Motels. These classy establishments of the cheap and fornicating are one of the coolest things about Korea. I don’t remember our hotel name (I remember spending 30 seconds sounding out the Hangul til we figured out that it had something to do with BEACH) but it was surrounded by a wall and curtains so that those who walked in would not be visible to the outside, more decent world.

There is a certain shame in these places despite that they are literally EVERYWHERE. They are generally a hell of a lot cheaper than a tourist hotel (90,000W is actually pretty damn expensive for a love hotel) and can be a hell of a lot nicer. Sure, they might come with a few questionable extras- battery-operated devices, an extra channel or two, a few brochures for a little company- point is love motels make a lot of sense for the budget traveler. Though, according to Lonely Planet, there is a love motel in Busan at which one can rent a sex machine for an hour- that place might warrant the covert entrances.

We lucked out with a measly condom machine in our room. I have stayed in some pretty shady places in my life (cough, Buffalo, uncough) and this, well, it wasn’t one of them. There was a giant TV hanging on the wall, the bathroom was large with a deep-but-broken whirlpool tub. We had a nice view to the ocean above a handful of buildings. Our beds were firm and comfortable despite being covered in sand within seconds. All in all it was a fine place. I collapsed onto my bed and looked up at the thing that was probably going to kill us in the end.

It reminded me of an enormous wagon wheel. It was deep brown and was fixed to the ceiling. The color went with the white ceiling but the thing was monstrous. I had visions of my end- killed by a giant wagon wheel in Korea next to Larry in a room with a condom machine.

The other thing that made me nervous was our fire escape. We were on the ninth floor and our only way out in an emergency was coiled behind some glass next to the window. Our fire escape was a rope. I am scared of heights and if there was a fire I was supposed to throw this NYLON rope out of the window and shimmy down to the ground? C’mon Korea, at least spring for a rope ladder. They might as well have left a Super Soaker 80 in there with a note that said “…sorry”.

Lunch was a disappointment. We stopped at a sit-down Chinese joint and pointed to several menu items that we wanted included in our “lunch special” and got almost none of them. Instead we got a handful of tiny sample dishes of pretty crappy food. The rolls were pretty good though. We should have sgone for the shark fin or the bird’s nest soup, both of which were listed on the menu.

Haeundae Beach looks a lot more socially acceptable in the day. For one thing, there were no obviously drunk sailors or old men from the GEORGE WASHINGTON looking for meat in exchange for cigarettes. The place was swarming with people. It is still strange to see non-Asians with any regularity but a good percentage of people we passed by or pushed through were from the West. The beach was completely covered in umbrellas and people in skimpy bathing suits. Wait, that last part was a lie. It wasn’t until after Larry brought it up that I really noticed, but Koreans aren’t fans of the newest suits with the least amount of material. Nope, Koreans are fans of wearing a full set of clothes, sometimes even an over shirt on top of their T-shirt, when they go swimming. Whatever they were wearing, the place was hopping. Restaurants were overflowing and convenience store patios were full of people enjoying one or several early afternoon drinks.

We walked with the beach to our left on our way to some sort of shore pathway that brought us to an island and back. It was nice. The last time Larry and I had walked together was at the mountain fortress in Cheongju so this was a breeze. A wooden walkway sat atop rocky cliffs and jetties. Below were families drinking Soju and hunting for shellfish or something else. There was no sand for them to sit on, they just perched themselves amongst the rocks.

The path led to somewhere that was pretty unexpected. It led us first to a small lighthouse within sight of a giant bridge, but it then took us to a big modern looking building. It was the APEC building. Just recently there was an APEC meeting held in Vietnam. In 2005 APEC was in Busan, apparently in the building that stood in front of us.

It was a pretty cool place if a little bit dry. It was preserved so that we might feel like we were present at the time. We saw replicas of the meals they ate (plastic kimchi, anyone?) and saw their huge round table and seats labeled with the country of the representative who sat in it. Outside the meeting room we got to see the chairs they sat on as they looked out over the water towards the bridge. Mind you, we weren’t allowed to sit in them. They looked comfortable.



I was looking forward to dinner. Earlier in the day we had walked past a place called Fuzzy Navel. It appeared to be a bar that was packed beyond capacity but I knew (from being pathetic and googling “burritos” and “Busan”) that they allegedly served half decent Mexican food.

We found a spot on the patio and watched as a woman with two yippy but totally obedient dogs walked around. People sat in a tent next to us as a man read their palms and lightning tore the sky off in the distance. We ordered our food and sipped our drinks as we waited. The waiter brought out drinks to us and I, for one, realized that a “lime tap cocktail” was in no way a margarita. It was some dull beer that was loaded with lime flavoring. If mine was bad I felt fortunate that I had not ordered Larry’s Kahlua version.

Finally our food came. Words can’t describe how excited I was. I dug into my beef burrito. It consisted of about a pound of lettuce, refried beans, rice (according to the menu, it wasn’t on my burrito), a few burnt shreds of beef, fake cheese, and sour cream. If I were at home I would have been pissed, but I am not. I was eating genuine sour cream and what was once beef.  All was right with the world.

Larry managed to order the worst burrito on earth. I finished it when he couldn’t eat any more and it consisted of fake cheese and hardening refried-beans. I lucked out on the meal.

Later, we walked for a time with the beach to our right. We passed a K-Pop concert with 8,000W beers, a mural and about a thousand people at a hundred restaurants. We walked until the bustle of the strip gave way to the port. Fishing boats bobbed in a marina as open air shops cleaned their fish tanks. The night darkened with the lack of florescent lighting and the people became less tourist oriented. We walked through a narrow street and finally came to the end of the way and turned around. On a flat spot on the edge of the jagged rocks before the sea sat a family eating a twilight picnic. On our way back we passed small family fish shops where ladies cleaned or cooked their dinner which was presumably very fresh seafood.

Our Busan experience ended with us sitting atop a lifeguard chair drinking a beer while watching the sea as Koreans laughed and drank soju next to us.

At least, that’s how I would like to think it ended. It actually ended with a lifeguard walking up to us and blowing his whistle so that we would get down. “Damn waygooks,” he probably thought. We then went back to the love motel and watched Independence Day and The Ruins and had one last sip of Mongolian vodka. Before we left I ate an authentic bacon-double-cheeseburger from Burgerking and all was right with the world.  Not a bad weekend.

 
What I ate today: jjajangmyeon (noodles with black bean sauce) and fried chicken.

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Busan, Part I

I spent this past weekend in the southern port of Busan. Larry and I had been planning on heading that way for quite awhile but things hadn’t been working out. Primarily, we were hoping to meet up with my friend Sun Young, with whom I spent days digging in Greece, but she is perpetually on the move or otherwise occupied. This time she was in China. It would have been nice to have somebody with us who 1: spoke the language and 2: knew the city like the back of her hand and could be our tour guide. We decided against postponing because Larry is down to his last few weeks in Korea. We are at the end of the line and he is checking out at the end of intensives.

There was something familiar about our trip to Busan: it reminded me of taking of on an adventure with Brandon. It had this nostalgic feeling despite being basically as far from home as I can get. If I had to put a finger on what kick-started my memory I would have to say is that we had NO PLAN WHATSOEVER.

I talked to Larry in the short breaks between a full schedule. Actually, he had a full schedule; Fridays are a joke on my end. I had three class scheduled and two of them didn’t even show up. I had a total of 30 minutes of classes on Friday.

The furthest along in the planning process we got was that I bought tickets for a KTX train leaving Daejeon, the next city over, at 10:45pm. We would arrive in Busan at about 1:45am. From there we had no idea what we would do. We barely got tickets as Busan is a pretty popular beach destination and figured it would be catastrophic to pay for a motel for two weekend nights. In which case the sensible thing to do is obviously to spend the night in a bar. Problem solved. Done. Worry about the rest after the hangover.

I spent 4,000W on a cab to the Cheongju bus terminal and 3,000W on a bus only to have it stop directly in front of my apartment in Gaesin-dong (my neighborhood). On the plus-side I had Popey’s. The first time I ever had Popey’s in my life was in Cheongju, Republic of Korea. Cool, I know.

From there Daejeon was about 45 minutes with a decent amount of local stops and traffic thrown in for good measure. I had a vested interest in this bus ride as two of my best friends have taken a contract in Daejeon so it is a trip I am expecting to make frequently. It was not bad at all and the way was scenic with the constantly-present mountains raising a bit more dramatically. What is more is that every now and again lightning tore through the black sky and vivid and often repeated flashes. I enjoyed the ride.

Another cab took me from the Daejeon bus terminal to the KTX station. Not too long ago Korea joined the handful of countries with ultra-high speed trains. The KTX has managed to shrink an already tiny country into a more convenient, bite-sized portion. The KTX runs from Seoul in the northern reaches to Busan in the very south with various outward stretches here and there. It’s top speed is 220 mph.

We got lucky with our train. It stopped only once or twice instead the handful of ordinary stops and brought us to Busan in the 2 hours it promised. We were unlucky in that we had to sit backwards the entire way. It is unsettling and a bit disorientating to travel 200 something miles-per-hour backwards in the dark. Further, we had to watch a little Thomas the Tank Engine type show that featured an animated KTX constantly being attacked by an angry train that often sent the KTX flying off the tracks and into the air. It was a pretty stupid thing to show.

Busan is the second largest city in Korea. It is the largest and most active port in the area and makes an attempt to be the vacation destination of the mainland. We figured that our best bet was to head to happening Haeundae beach; but not before we took a stroll down Texas Street.

We came across Texas Street accidentally. We chose to walk to the right and that’s where the street was. Texas Street, according to guidebooks, was a pretty good place to avoid at night. While it certainly had an appropriately seafaring level of seediness to it, it didn’t seem to warrant a “don’t go” label. The first thing we saw was a banner hanging that said “Welcome U.S. Navy!”

Larry and I picked a funny time to go to Busan. Somewhere, not too far away was the GEORGE WASHINGTON, a nuclear powered air-craft carrier that is currently serving as flagship while the combined forces of the U.S. and South Korea stomp their feet and make other very loud noises to show North Korea what’s what. Busan was crawling with U.S. Military.

For a time we walked with the Shore-leave “police” unit assigned to haul in the too-far-gone and misbehaving sailors on Texas Street. In a few hours that would probably be every sailor on the street, but at this point it all seemed pretty festive. There were Russian restaurants and bars with open doors. Signs written in Cyrillic hung here and there. Clubs pulsed to beckon the waterlogged and Russian whores stood by the doors. Definitely worth a walk through and it didn’t seem to be as far gone as Itaewon.

A taxi took us from Texas Street to Haeundae Beach. We were a lot further than we thought we were. Haeundae Beach was still hot and busy at 2am. Sailors and Koreans walked every which way, from bar to beach and back with a steady flow of booze.

We didn’t spend the night in a bar. Instead we classed it up by walking around the beach, dipping our feet in the freezing water and then spending the night drinking and laughing outside of a convenience store. At one point while we dangled our feet over a sea wall two Korean guys came up and asked if we had accomodations and seemed to be asking if they could stay with us. We replied that our accomodations were the beach and a bottle of horrid Mongolian vodka. Soon after, or during, an older Korean guy joined us and barraged us with drunken Korean and promptly ripped a fart and then we left.

We managed to stay awake until 6am, when we skulked into a BBQ restaurant in search of charred meat. A few minutes before we came across an old guy from the U.S. who was crossing the street with a pack of cigarettes. He told us that he had come from the GEORGE WASHINGTON and was also in search of meat.

“I just bought this Korean guy some cigarettes,” he said, “so hopefully that’ll work.” He then offered to buy us a drink or two with the rising sun but I got the impression we were both looking for different kinds of meat. We wished him luck and he to us and we parted.

The BBQ was horrible. Most likely, the older Korean women had served one too many drunk U.S. sailors and wasn’t too happy to see us walk in at dawn. The meat was pretty terrible and most of the food was tossed onto the table without so much as a smile. Scratch that, they were pretty openly pissed off at us for being there.

Bill paid, we found our way to the cool sand of Haeundae beach and built a couple of sand pillows and tried to sleep. Larry, was successful and was unconscious in seconds. I, on the other hand, have been having a lot of trouble sleeping on my bed, let alone on the sand. Ordinarily this would have resulted in me laying around irritated and grumpy. This time, though, I was rewarded with one of the funniest experiences of my life.

I saw the beach combers, 20 or so people dressed in orange with garbage pickers and little nets to clean the sand for the masses that would soon come, about a fifth of a mile away. I should have nudged Larry so that we might get out of their way or otherwise NOT look like a couple of foreigners sleeping in their clothes on a beach with no tent or sleeping bag- kind of gives off a bad impression. Instead, I said nothing pray Larry would not wake up and took out my camera.

It was everything I could have imagine. Larry laid like a little child as Koreans walked by and picked up the garbage that laid around us. They looked at us and gave us (me) a few laughs as I sat there taking photos and laughing in hysterics. One of them even had the amazing idea to pick up Larry’s glasses with her picker.

Alas, eventually they left and I had nothing to do but lay there and look out into the sea as the sun began to burn off the morning fog.  I guess it's not such a bad place to have insomnia...

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Sangdang Sanseong

Incase you are wondering, Sangdang Sanseong is not the leisurely stroll it appears to be in guide books. It’s 4.8 km seem to be vertical and it should not be attempted with only a puny chicken burger from Lotteria in your belly.

The day started off pretty poorly. Larry, who I met at the Cheongju Bus Terminal, and I asked a girl at the tourist information office how we might arrive at the 400 year old fortress-on-the-mountain via city bus.

The Golden Pavilion.
Cheongju

“No direct route,” she said. She then said something neither of us caught and wrote down two bus numbers, a greater than symbol and an “X”. It looked like a math equation. Either way the general idea was that Bus A would take us to Cheongju Stadium in Uptown, Bus B would take us to the fortress on the mountain: Sangdang Sanseong.

Bus A took us nowhere near Cheongju Stadium. Larry and I realized we were in trouble when we found ourselves alone and pulling into a bus station. We quickly worked out that the tourist rep had said that was caught by neither of us. The two busses were the only busses out of god knows how many that did not go to the Stadium.

So, feeling like complete and utter morons we cabbed it to the stadium and there waited for the bus that would be arriving in an hour, give or take.

The thing that is so amazing about being in a new place is that everything seems so exotic. A five minute walk took us the Golden Pavillion. Erected sometime in the 1800’s this place is something for Western eyes to behold. The entrance is guarded by fierce, fanged totem poles. Inside is a golden pagoda that stands five stories tall. What was more surprising is that the place was completely deserted save for a few dogs chained to trees whose job it seems is to scare the crap out of anyone foolish enough to pose in front of a great big bell.

Finally, we caught a break and found ourselves on a bus heading straight up a mountain. I have been on some unnerving bus rides on bigger mountains in my life, but this one was up there. The road was not built for busses, that is for sure. Whether or not the road was even built for a standard car is open for argument but regardless the way was more akin to an amusement ride than a 1000W ($1.00) city bur ride.

The Mountain Fortress.
Cheongju

The main issue is that the road follows the most direct route to the top of the mountain. Rarely is one able to sit comfortably in their seat as most often they are being flung to either side of the bus as the vehicle negotiates hairpin turns without more than a foot of breathing room. To look out any window is to see the trees coming at you only to be replaced by open air. To look out the front of the bus is just plain unsettling as it looks as though the bus is simply spinning in circles. For ten minutes we carried on like this and Larry, nudged and firm against the window, laughed as I bounced around all the while trying not to look outside. You begin to understand that maybe it wasn’t such a good time to ride on the Magic School Bus.

The bus finally pulled down a long narrow road, somehow managed a 3 point turn and let us off amidst a folk village on one side and a pond on the other. We walked until we found a small trail around the pond and decided that was as good of a place as any to begin our walk.

The beginning of the trek around the fortress is deceptive. We passed people sitting by the pond and families walking this way and that. The trail curves at the far end of the pond and doubles back and then takes you up a small incline. This was the end of the “leisurely” stroll that I was expecting.

The trail then turns and races up a very long and very steep hill. It is a courtesy that there are beams of wood laid into the earth so as to form steps but they do not help very much. We passed an elderly woman who was having a hard time of it and was trying to pull herself up the handrail.

I can only imagine Autumn.
Cheongju

At the top of the hill is the first of many views that made the sweat and blisters worth it. The valleys and hills that surround the fortress had become visible already and in the distance urban Cheongju was beginning to become visible.

Sangdang Sanseong is a fortress whose walls reach around the top of a mountain. It was built in the late 1500s and the structures themselves are incredible in that they are relics of a time that seems ancient to somebody from the States.

The way didn’t get any easier. The Lonely Planet guide book fails to mention several things. For example, nowhere do they mention turning a corner hoping to find level ground only to be faced with a fixed ropes course over a bunch of rocks at a fairly steep incline. True, the ropes weren’t really necessary as ice would not be forming at 85 degrees but neither of us were planning to take on the Hillary Step. The book doesn’t say anything about what it is like to sweat and walk up a hill that never seems to end in hiking shoes and then be passed by some jerk slacks and dress shoes.

The valleys of Cheongju.
Cheongju

Still, sweat dries and you are left cool and relieved. We sat for a long time on a couple of rocks that lay more or less at the highest point before the trail continues on back to the pond. We watched as couples, families and children ran by. The views into the valleys were simply amazing. Beyond the fortress walls were the hills, many of which were now well below us, and the smoggy city line of Cheongju and beyond.

“I’ve gotta say,” said Larry, “I didn’t expect this to be so gorgeous.”

Point for Cheongju.

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Sweat and Sashes

Thursday began what would become a very long weekend. Friday, thanks to a huge population of Buddhists, would be another day off for me and almost every other expat teacher. Friday was the Buddha’s birthday. Happy birthday Buddha!

Thursday started off too early and way too uncomfortable. I was told by my coworkers that I would be attending a special meeting at the broadcasting station down the road. I tried several times to understand what it was that I would be going to and how important it was. Still, the most explanation that was given to me was that it was for the parents of our students and that I would be picked up by Boram in front of the Paris Baguette down the road at 8:45am.

Ok, fine, fair enough: 8:45am is not very early for most people but I haven’t woken up at a normal hour in I don’t know how long. One of the benefits of working for a nightlife magazine and then being unemployed is that your hours don’t really change all that much. Further, sleeping later has allowed me to forget that breakfast even exists outside of the realm of breakfast-for-dinner, or Ihop. Heck, there are times when I roll out of my bed to go into the school at 1pm. So, 8:45 was damn early to me.

I dragged my sorry behind, wearing fresh jeans and my favorite sweater, into the humid Korean morning a little early so that I might grab a little breakfast. I do not recommend pizza quesadillas and orange juice. It is not a good combination to start the day with.

Boram arrived shortly after and we were taken by cab to the broadcasting center where we met up with Han, the Younger Receptionist, Older Receptionist, the Directors Wife and apparently everybody who worked for our chain of schools. I walked and soon learned that jeans and my 5-inches-too-short Freddie Kueger sweater were a pretty bad idea. Of the 70 or so people in the lobby almost all were wearing dress pants and a tie at least; a few had full suits.

To make me look even more idiotic and uncomfortable I was given a blue sash with Hangul script and soon looked like an anti-beauty queen.

After standing about for 30 minutes or so the Younger Receptionist waved me over to the door.

“Thomas,” Han said, “you will be the greeting party!”

This day was turning into a nightmare. Here I was in jeans, Hadley’s worn out shoes and a sweater that looked like a belly shirt, ready to single-handedly cause every parent to turn around and pull their kids from the school. To make things even worse the pizza quesadilla and warm orange juice in my stomach were beginning to quarrel. Things had the potential to take a very bad turn.

Then, to my surprise I was joined by a handful of other Westerners just outside the entrance in the hot and humid late Korean morning. I was beginning to think that I was the only white person in this dirty little city. I didn’t even know what to say; it had been a little while since I had had a proper conversation in English that involved much more than noun, one adverb, verb.

There were three guys and we all asked the standard questions. All of them had been in Korea for a pretty significant amount of time and none of them had any immediate plans of returning. The three of them knew each other fairly well and were really nice. If any of that original three were from the States I do not remember but I remember at least two being from Canada.

The heat and humidity were oppressive. Each time somebody walked through the doors we bowed and said “hello” in Korean. While I know the word I generally lack confidence in my pronunciation skills so I spent most of the time bowing, sweating and mumbling.

After a time, another Westerner showed up with a beard in sunglasses. He might have been nursing a hangover but of this I don’t really know. As conversations sprung up amongst us I asked him where he was from, expecting another Canadian.

“New Hampshire.”

Another New Englander! I asked him what town he lived in and to my shock he said Rochester. I laughed and asked if he knew Larry Boire.

“Are you shitting me?”

He did know Larry Boire. Not only did he know Larry Boire but his aunt had been his neighbor at a summer house on some lake. Last he had heard of Larry was a newspaper article announcing Larry’s achievement of Eagle Scout.

It is a small world when it comes down to it.

One thing I was not prepared for in Korea was the humidity. Massachusetts summers are hot and humid but they have nothing on Korea. It would not have surprised me if upon reaching the entrance, a parent would have looked at the four of us pouring sweat and simply turned around and walked back to their car.

We stood there bowing and talking for over an hour until finally we were pulled from our posts and told to sit down until it was time to leave. It was then that we realized that our part at this special meeting was simply to show off that the school employed native speakers. That was it.

A couple of hours later we turned in our sashes, exchanged our phone numbers and were off to our respective schools in soaked through clothes.

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Busses and Quizzes

The general layout of things.

The new apartment is fantastic. It has a more separated and natural layout. The kitchen is a bit more spacious and the bathroom is awesome. The walls and floor are laid with green tile meant to look like marble and it is much bigger than the last one which makes showering a bit easier given that the shower is just a hose pinned to the wall. The main living space has a much bigger fridge and even includes an actual freezer. What’s more is that inside the freezer is a big heavy bag with the picture of a cow and nothing else. The floors are made to look wooden, though they are still made of a sort of soft plastic or rubber. I even have a couple of closets!

My lovely bathroom.  Ignore the
Urkel style.

There are two problems however. The first is that when I close the sliding, foggy glass door between my room and the kitchen and then try and turn on the kitchen light in the dark it looks absurdly creepy and each time I think I see the girl from The Ring. Also, the bathroom sink’s pipes aren’t actually attached so that whenever I run the sink the water just pours out in the general direction of the drain. Oh, another issue is that I have no idea how to heat the floors, but this won’t be an issue until fall as it is starting to get pretty muggy.

A big plus is that this place is directly across the street from my school, so my commute takes about 40 seconds.

After much trial and error I figured out what was wrong with the computer, or rather what was wrong with me. The converter was unnecessary and was preventing enough wattage from getting to the computer; now all it takes is my cheapo adaptor plug. I should have brought more adaptors because as it is only one thing can be plugged in at a time.

Days at school pass by quickly. I get by on a lunch and dinner of rice, a platter of side dishes, a few slabs of spam and occasionally a cold chicken nugget. One thing I must say is that their ketchup is refreshing. For one thing they put it on the last things you would expect anybody to put ketchup on. Spam and sausage, for example, are always eaten with ketchup. Also, it has a much bolder flavor than our own being fortified with a heavier dose of garlic.

The view from my window.

On my first Saturday I walked out my door armed with a list of phrases written in Hangul that would get me to a bus station and then to Cheonan where I would be met by Larry. After, I would be taking part in a pub quiz in an expat bar called Adonis.

There could have been many reasons why I couldn’t get a cab to stop for me. It could have been because I was a foreigner and would be more bother than I was worth, it could have been because I was holding a piece of paper and they knew they would have to decipher from it what I wanted, it also could have been because I was holding my Lonely Planet guide to Korea and nothing good ever came from picking up somebody holding one of those. Whatever the issue, it took me 30 minutes to get into a cab.

I handed the cabbie my paper and assumed it would be a quick and quiet ride. Instead, he began asking me questions to which I just stared at him in utter fear. I said “bus terminal” and he said something impossible for me to understand. After this we both fell back on the idea that if you kept repeating the same statement over and over and louder and louder that it would break a language barrier. It doesn’t.

He drove aimlessly as I called Han and Boram, neither of whom answered. On a small road I called Albert as a last resort. I handed the phone to the driver and they had a long conversation with much laughter that could only be at my expense. After hanging up, the driver looked at me, smiled and said: “Tough driver!”

How I survived the ride is beyond me. He drove at speeds that exceeded even those of the other lunatics that occupy Korean roads. He would sometimes take the trouble to roll through red lights, but would generally just swerve around cars that actually stopped. At one point he took a left in front of 3 lanes of oncoming traffic and then cut in front of a city bus as he settled onto the new street. All the while he kept repeating the words “tough driver” with pride.

Interesting fact about Korea. Almost everybody has a suped up navigational system, and almost all of these are equipped so that they can and do watch television on them. It is horrifying.

So, finally we arrived at the bus station. No sooner had I gotten out of the car when I got a call from Albert. Albert, worried about my general incompetence, had just arrived at the bus station to ensure that I was put onto the appropriate bus. My self -esteem to say the least was on a downward slope.

The bus station was like any bus station in any country in the world. Albert got my ticket and escorted me to the line of people waiting beside the bus to Cheonan. There we waited for a time and Albert would not leave my side, only asked the driver if I might be let on early because I may be capable of somehow screwing that up.

Ten minutes passed and I was soon sitting in my seat watching Albert smoke his tiny cigarettes. A second later he was back on the bus and asking a 10 year old kid to make sure that I got off the bus when it arrived at Cheonan. Albert then patted me on the shoulder and gave me a coke. My self-esteem was somewhere south of Hell.

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The bus ride was great. I am a fan of slow speed transport and have always looked at bus rides as a great way to see a place if you are on your way to another place. I have taken busses across Mexico, to Canada, and from Athens to the edge of Albania and I often find myself too mesmerized to sleep despite utter exhaustion. This ride was no exception.

The land between Cheongju and Cheonan is rural. There were sparse villages and sloped tile roofs. Rice patties dominated the way, but every now and again there were the burial mounds from times forgotten or never recalled in Western memory.

Downtown Cheonan is massive. The bus station quickly becomes a four-story shopping center with a food court and cinema on top. I wandered for a time while I waited for Larry. Upon walking into the food court I remembered that I was starving and that if I was going to have anything to drink at all I needed food, or else I would be barfing after one beer.

There were so many options that I am ashamed that I fell on the American comfort food that is McDonalds. Please, please do not judge me too harshly: I was starving!

I sat alone, the only non-Asian in the place eating a Mc. Chicken and fries. I was fully aware that if there were a decent photographer present I would wind up in some article critical of fast food imperialism and our unwillingness to adapt to another culture.

After, I sat on a bench outside of the complex and watched people cross the street. This was something to behold. Koreans obey crosswalks and pedestrian signals as though they would be thrown away for life with no parole if they jaywalked. They will wait at the corner regardless of the fact that there are no cars coming.

When they do cross, though, now that is really something! By the time the cars stopped and the cross walk opened up there had to be over a hundred people going to opposite sides. It looked like two enormous waves crashing and breaking into one another.

Eventually, Larry and a friend found me and we were waiting for a taxi while he spoke to an American guy and his sister. A short cab ride took us to the suburbs of Cheonan: the domain of Larry Boire.

The drinking began instantly and I was thankful that I at least had a stomach full of Mc. Chicken. While Larry set off to make final arrangements for the pub quiz, I was left in the company of the first native English speakers I had met since home.

We sat around on the floor and played drinking games with orange juice and soju. We played a game I used to play a long time ago in an East Boston apartment off of Maverick Square and they all reminded me of old college friends who are lost now to life in time. They told me how bizarre it was to speak in proper sentences with adjectives after trying to speak simply to Koreans. Before we left we played poker with a big pile of cigarettes in the center of the floor and I felt like I was in prison.

The pub quiz at Adonis was something else. I came to Korea so that I might experience another culture for a year and that I might come away from it a little richer emotionally and monetarily. It is important though to take a breather every now and again. It is perfectly acceptable to go and get drunk with 60 other English teachers every now and again.

My team consisted of Larry’s friend CJ (actually Larry was friends with everybody) and a Canadian named Miranda. We somehow came up with the name Husky Hamsters. We also lost horribly, but I guess that is not really the point now is it?

We drank and drank and all became friends or at least something like it. Miranda was finishing up a job and would be on to at least another year in Korea. CJ was looking for another teaching job. I stepped outside with everyone else for a cigarette.

I remember talking to a guy who looked exactly like Kevin Bacon and the Pixies started playing. Out came the guy from the taxi stand that Larry was talking to. He had been in a motorcycle accident since we had last seen him and had gotten the worst of it. His shorts were stained with blood as well as his shirt. His limbs were covered in road rash and gashes. It was pretty obvious that he needed stitches, though I found out later he would be going to his doctor in the morning to avoid an expensive visit to the emergency room. It was a shock to see.

Still, the night wore on. The quiz ended but the beer kept coming. Miranda left and Larry and I sat in a booth watching people dance or generally have a good time while we finished our beers.

We headed back to his apartment, drank a bit more and called it a night. Larry apologized for a pounding head and what was apparently an early night for this crowd. It was 4am by the time my head hit his hard couch.

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On Dogs and Alcohol

The next day I got lost.

It was bound to happen as it always does. When I moved to Beacon Hill I managed to get all turned around in the brownstones for two hours before I found my way back to Somerset St. I was going to meet Larry from Cheonan at Starbucks in Cheongju and there we would have a reunion neither of us thought would ever happen. Larry found Starbucks with no trouble. I never had a chance.

 

Starbucks, it turns out, was in Uptown while I thought it was in Downtown. This mistake didn’t make much of a difference because I couldn’t find Downtown to begin with. I walked for an hour or more until the people all disappeared and the trendy shops were replaced with dirtier streets and shambled stores.

Being lost in your own country is embarrassing, but being lost in Korea on your third day can be panic inducing. I managed to get so jumbled about that before I knew it I couldn’t even find my way back to where I had come from. I walked and walked until I was pouring sweat in the humidity and more or less wanted to cry.

Eventually I came to the main gates of Chunbuk University. Remembering that Downtown was situated off of the University, I walked a half mile in either direction but never found Downtown. Finally, I plopped myself down against the gates and told Larry that I would not be moving any further or else I might be wandering my way into a North Korean Gulag. If he wanted to hang out then he was going to have to try and find me.

Larry found me in all of 5 minutes. He was a sight to see after not seeing him since my old place at 24 Proctor , and what’s more he was decked out in leather and riding an old black motorcycle. It was good to see him; after all, he was the one who convinced me to pack up and head to Korea.

Together we walked to Uptown as it was the only place we knew the general direction of. It was a long way and it was humid as hell. I would have taken my jacket off if I hadn’t been sweating like a tweeker. We wandered the markets that we came across; almost hidden in alleys. They reminded me of the markets I found while wandering about Mexico: dreary and far off the tourist path but vital arteries of culture. The first was tiny and soon spit us back onto the main road, but the second was something to see.

It was one main throughway on a dingy street. It was dark and a little bit dank but there were so many people! Vendors sold everything: Bugs, crops, sand shrimp that jumped from their baskets, the ugliest fish I had ever seen and bags and bags of this and that. We continued on down the main path until we came at last to a live market.

If people were speaking around us I no longer remember. There were the squawks of chickens and the calls of roosters. One vendor had pens and pens of farm birds, while another had a collection of ducks sitting in tiny wire cages. Another sold rabbits and everybody sold eggs. If only I had my camera. If that was all that was at the market I would have left happy and satisfied. As it was we came into the last stretch and Larry broke our silence.

“Yep, there’s the dog.”

I had heard rumors of this, but I didn’t really believe them, but there was the proof right there. First, it was just cuts of formless meat beneath clouded glass, but finally we came to a few stalls that had de-furred or skinned dogs hanging like sausages in a butcher shop.

It is hard to look down on a culture that you do not understand, and I don’t, but there is something sacred about dogs. Whatever I have ever heard about the historic relationship between man and canine was that it was generally a mutually beneficial sort of thing; but here, there was nothing beneficial going on for Fido who now dangled dead from a chain.

I asked and Larry told me that they got many of the dogs from China as it was illegal in Korea and had been since Seoul hosted the Olympics, but it apparently was not enforced. Still, even he was surprised to see so many openly hanging or laying about.

It was a sad sight to be seen by somebody who misses his dog.

Still, life goes on and I am just a visitor to this place in the end. We wandered for a long time. We passed through Uptown, and through the street with the animal-people and microphones and sound systems and I was once again finding myself dizzy as we walked through the thousands. It seems that always we are walking against the crowd here.

We ate a good lunch in a food court. I had spicy pork, rice, kimchi and soup until Larry informed me that it was essentially squid broth and the once odd flavor and funny little chunks became disgusting. We walked back to the general direction of my place.

I would like to say I went and got my camera and took a bunch of photos, or that Larry and I went and had a cultural outing. I would like to say all of these things but we didn’t do any of them. Like most of my Suffolk friends, the original bond between Larry and I had a high proof. We went to one dark and smoky local bar, then to another where we watched Korean soap operas and ate a potato sampler and drank Cass beer and soju. We ended up at a joint called Vons that had the most wonderful chicken, though I have no idea where it is anymore, where we had one last pitcher. Actually, I had one glass and could not drink any more and poor Larry drank the rest of it.

That was the end of the night.

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