Hello, Goodbye

I spent some time in Greece a few years ago. I wasn’t there for very long, just a few weeks, but the experience was one of the most profound that I have ever experienced. At the time, the only traveling I had done outside of the country was to Montreal to get drunk.

Tim and Andrew during the trip to Daecheon.

Those three weeks were overwhelming. Here I was, this minimally cultured, shy guy who had just spent a year working in a cubical and going to the same bar every Saturday night. Before I knew it I was freezing as the rain flirted with the idea of turning to snow and then did so in the mountains in the north. Albania was a stone’s throw away.

I remember sleeping on one of a few giant, communal bunk beds in the village’s hostel. I remember hooking my arms into links of chain in the back of a flatbed next to a back-hoe so I didn’t fall out as the driver took sharp corners at mad speeds atop cliffs that dropped off at the side of the road. I remember digging holes into the clay all day only to find that rain had washed our saplings out and about the ground over night. I remember eating feta cheese and kalamata olives to the same frequency that I eat rice and kimchi now.

Amanda and Robyn pre World Cup.
Not shown: Tim having appendicitis.

I remember a lot of things about this brief time in my life, but one memory sticks out as the most representative of that time and all good travel experiences.

It was the eight of us who had stayed the duration of the work camp sat in a restaurant. It was dark and cold, save a fire in the fireplace. It was empty save a Bulgarian cook, her assistant son, and her groundskeeper husband. Carafes of wine lay strewn about the table. Outside was lit by lanterns for a ways but we were just a blip on a very large mountain amidst other large mountains. Most of the world didn’t and doesn’t know that Kedros exists.

We sat for a long time, Mexicans, Greeks, a Frenchman, a couple of Korean girls and myself, talking about all manner of sentimental and obscene things. The entire duration of the trip, the restaurant played the one damn CD they owned, and so it does now.

Tim and Amanda on the way to Daecheon Beach.

Late into our last night a strange thing happens. The alcohol mixes with sadness that it is over ,and the happiness that it happened. The Frenchman and Greek girl stand up and dance to the 19438th playing of “Hero,” by Enrique Inglesias. We all laugh but soon we are all swept up and we are dancing about an empty restaurant to a song I would usually skoff at. The cook’s son asks the Greek girl to dance and soon the night is over. Soon after we are all home or at least not there. We are each other’s fuzzy memories now.

The friends you make abroad are like no others. Maybe it has nothing to do with being abroad.  Maybe it is really about the experience that bods you together with your friends.  Either way, the friends I have made in Korea are like no others that I have had, and recently I had to say goodbye to most of them.

It was rough, even if I am basically incapable of showing emotion.

We started off at MJ’s, the 8 of us sitting amongst the smoke and beneath the heat of a horribly powerful heating duct. We drank and played darts. We listened to music and asked each other if we would ever do Korea again and other such things you ask someone who is about to end a significant experience in their life.

Katie, Tim, and I hiking the fortress.

Gin and tonics, Black Russians, wine, water and vodkas, and beers added up for a long time. A few fought for control of the music play list (and failed) as others played pool or just sat around a table in the middle of the Thursday night bar scene. Titanic played on the giant televisions for god knows why.

There was a dread amongst us. That much was obvious. There was also an honesty that I really appreciated; that of people who have traveled or experienced enough to know the realities of travel.

There were no “oh, please! I say we all meet up this time next year!” There was no “eh, I am not sad man! Nothing is going to change.” 

Christmas, pre Jim Beam.

One of the unique aspects about this Korean experience is that it is all temporary. True, Amanda is staying for another year and Robyn for another 6 months, but regardless we enter into these friendships knowing that the experience they are founded in has an end-date.

And this Korean experience is intense. The most any of us have known each other is a year, and some of us haven’t even known each other that long. But how long you have known each other here becomes irrelevant because we are all having this experience.

All of us left family, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, everything -our whole lives- thousands of miles away. You meet these people her,e so far away from home and the lives we knew, and you become fast and close friends because you are all each other has.

Everyone talks to their family and friends but the fact is they are not a part of our day to day lives here, not really anyway.

So, instead of going to the same college joint in across town every weekend, or going to the same restaurant every week you go to the same foreigner bar where you know almost everyone even if you don’t talk to them. And instead of the same restaurant you go to a place where you can’t even read the damn menu and hope for the best.

This general cluelessness about our lives is a bonding experience.

I don’t know. All I know is that I met these people 10 or so months ago and they all had such a profound effect on me that I dreaded their departure for a while before it happened. Their leaving was the end of an era for me and the beginning of the end of my experience in Korea.

We left MJ’s and headed to one last Noraebang. Most of us probably should have just gone home, some of us had to work, but that didn’t seem important.

The last hookah.

I do not like Noraebang. I didn’t like Noraebang in the beginning and I don’t like it now. I do not imagine this will change. Generally speaking if the night is headed to norae I bail and I bail quick. Part of me wanted to just bail that night and remember my friends in a way that didn’t involve me standing in one place “singing” in a giant, awkward mess. I didn’t though. We all sang something that night. All of us: Tim, Amanda, Amanda, Katie, Andrew, Gavin, and I. We drank more beer. Amanda R. wasn’t wearing shoes. A week before she had returned to Korea from the states and was still out when I left at 4am.

Dedicated mother fuckers.

Our hour was running out and that sadness that was blocked by laughter and alcohol was creeping back up.

More time added. Nice guy at the front desk.

We sang or slumped into the sofas for what seemed like a long while, fatigue making the end of the night and the inevitable goodbyes necessary. It was ending, soon. It was a bad feeling. I remembered when I had no friends. I remembered when I missed my home and sat on my floor eating pizza by myself. I though about meeting Craig and how he died. I thought about when I saw Amanda and John walking out of my apartment building last spring and meeting the people who would be some of the best friends I’ve ever had. I thought about Frog Rain, Daecheon Beach, Daejeon Rock, and hiking. I thought about the time I ate a lot of cheese and almost crapped my pants on a bus hours after someone shotgun barfed on Amanda. Screen Golf. Barbeque. Jokes. Indian food. Obscenities. Taxi cabs. Lotteria. Lots of alcohol. Hookah. Risk. Tim getting appendicitis. The World Cup. North Korea. Christmas. I thought of all these things and I appreciated this group of people singing like the drunken stars of what my life is now.

Looking back at my friends and the year or whatever amount of time and our experiences, how the night ended was perfect.

The last norae.

Until the day that I die, I will NEVER be able to listen to “Hello, Goodbye” by the Beatles without thinking of these people. Wherever I am, I will drift off for a moment and think of the ending of that night and the end of OUR experience in Korea together: seven drunken fools with their arms around each other dancing and singing in a circular love fest.

The man at the front desk looking at the security camera probably wondered whether that extra time had been wise and whether he had enough sanitizer.

So, outside we said our goodbyes. There were no naïve “I will see you soon”s except for those of us staying. The really, really difficult thing about this whole experience is knowing that the goodbye could likely be the real deal. I hope it isn’t. We hugged. Some of us cried. Some of us fought to hold it back. We got into our taxis and went into the night all better off for knowing each other.

At least “Hello, Goodbye” isn’t as embarrassing to have on my play list as “Hero.”



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A Birthday in Cheonjgu

Burritos courtesy of Han.

Yesterday was my birthday. To be honest I was not expecting too much and wouldn’t have been disappointed if nobody so much as threw a “happy birthday” my way. In recent years I have not been a huge fan of my birthday. I could go without the presents if I could stop getting older

It would not be Korean for my birthday to pass unnoticed.

Actually, I knew that I would at the very least be getting a book from the Young Receptionist because she made me sit down and pick a book from the Korean equivalent of Amazon. I am very excited for this present as I am having problems finding books written in English. I am almost at the end of Road Fever by Tim Cahill and would have jumped straight into the Lord of the Rings trilogy but now I will be reading The Best American Travel Writing. I am not sure what edition it is but before I came I read a recent installment edited by Anthony Bourdain and I enjoyed it a lot. Some of the stories weren’t my cup of tea but all in all it was like reading a really great travel section in a Sunday paper.

As soon as I sat down in my little office Han gave me her present contained in a Tupperware container.

“Tom, I made you burritos,” she told me. I could have died. I am from the Northeast but have been craving American-perverted Mexican food for the past two months. I probably WILL take a two hour bus and subway ride to Itaewon just to go to Taco Bell whenever the place finally opens. To get a burrito on my birthday was like being given a car or a million dollars.

‘But,” Han went on, “I could not find a recipe so I made it up myself.”

This could be a problem, I thought. Even if they were the worst burritos on earth I still would have been appreciative but Koreans tend to put some pretty funky things in their foods. Still I was determined to down at least one even if a tentacle fell out when I bit into it.

There was no octopus inside, and no fish. They were as genuine as burritos got this far from Mexico. They were made with real beef, fresh tomatoes, onions, red and yellow peppers, and about a dozen tiny slices of fresh chili peppers that I didn’t see until it was too late.

It was that sort of food burn where you feel at first a tingle on your lips and think “this is going to be bad” before the pain kicks in and next thing you know your eyes are watering as your face is under the faucet. Still, they were amazing and I ate two of them.

Boram gave me travelers coffee cup with a picture of Seoul stretched around it. The Older Receptionist gave me a shirt but promptly took it back when she thought it was a little too big. I was pretty proud as I have lost 20 lbs since I have been here. My boss’ wife gave me some K-Swiss sandals.

If the day was like any other day I can say that we sure ate a lot more than usual. A few hours after the burritos the Young Receptionist brought us all Red and White burgers from Lotteria. I should point out that Lotteria calls everything a burger and they are not to be trusted as this was made out of shrimp.

Part of me genuinely thought that I would go home after work, maybe have a drink and get to bed like any other night. I have this thing where I think about what food I will eat when I get home if I was still hungry after dinner. Would I make chicken nuggets? Mandu? Donkkaseu (pork cutlet)? No, I wouldn’t make anything. I would go to the Kimbap joint next door and get the donkkaseu meal (cutlet, radish, salad, rice) or omurice (a sort of omelet with fried rice).

Everyone else knew we were going out but they didn’t tell me. Oh, don’t think that it was meant to be a surprise or anything like that- they just didn’t tell me. Nobody tells me nuthin’.

After work we hailed a cab and soon we were at Seduce in Downtown. In the beginning it was just Han, Boram, the Older Receptionist, the Younger Receptionist, and I. Several things happened at Seduce that likely played a hand in how the night turned out and the quality of teaching experienced by the kids the next day.

Boram and one of my birthday cakes.
Cellphone camera.

- We started with beer.

- We ended up doing a few tequila shots each. I learned that it is a horrible idea to be polite in Korea when it comes to alcohol. The Younger Receptionist told me that I could have more tequila if I wanted it. I stated that I would only have a shot if everybody else wanted one. Thus we found ourselves licking salt, downing the thing and sucking lemon for a fourth time.

- Albert’s wife showed up and ordered a cocktail that was mostly Bailey’s.

- Albert showed up in his shiny suit a cake from the exotic Baskin Robbins.

- The restaurant gave us free food, which was very nice. The food consisted of peanuts, cooked beef jerky (from a package- I know my jerky and I knew the brand), and heated mayonnaise. It might have been the trashiest thing that I have ever eaten.

- I had to choose between the cake brought by Albert and the cake brought by my coworkers. I don’t even like cake.

- Albert offered to extend my contract and hire my girlfriend when the school reaches 100 students.

- I was served a flaming shot of 151 which was pretty scary.

We walked out of Seduce at 11pm and I was feeling pretty happy. If I had to celebrate another birthday then I was happy with how it had turned out. I became a bit self-conscious as I was walking around with shopping bags and wearing socks with my new sandals. I thanked everyone as Albert and his wife, citing fatigue, went home.

“Ha! Tom,” Han said, “you think the night is over?”

No, of course the night wasn’t over. This is Korea. We went to another bar with a name that made it sound like an all-male strip club and found our way to a wooden table in the corner by the windows overlooking a fairly quiet night in Downtown.

There was more beer and a lot of conversation. I feel so bad sometimes that I can’t communicate with the two receptionists. They are trying to learn English when it should be me trying harder to learn Korean; I am, after all, a guest here.

Still, we all talked for what seemed like a very long time over a fiery hot chicken dish. One of the more poignant things that I have learned through international traveling is that communication is often not held down by language barriers. It is true, that 90% of the time I have no idea what the heck is going on or what anybody is saying but that didn’t seem important.

The night still did not end when we left. We made a trip to the horrible dance club Frog Rain only to find it closed. I thanked god for my luck and we found ourselves at noraebang.

Noraebang.
Cellphone Camera.

Ordinarily, I am not a fan of the karaoke rooms but tonight I did not care. I threw ego to the gutter which, given my song choices, was a very good thing. By the time we left the place at 4:30am I had willfully sang four songs while my coworkers danced on couches, banged tambourines, or smoked cigarettes in the corner as the colored lights pulsated.

What did I sing?  I’ll tell you.

Buddy Holly - Weezer

Semi-charmed Kind of Life - Third Eye Blind

Girlfriend - Avril Lavigne (…I know)

Bitch - Meredith Brooks

To say the least, students did not learn anything new the next day as we hung onto podiums just to stay vertical. Still, it was an awesome birthday in Cheongju.

Things I ate today:

Noodles with black bean sauce

Lettuce wraps with spicy pork and sauce.

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