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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

 

Read more...

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. 

Read more...

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.

Read more...

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.

Read more...

A Vocab Test that Includes the Word "Poop"

I know it is trouble from the start.

I am sitting in the small teacher's office at my hagwon.  The Korean teachers around me are filling out report cards, talking, or are otherwise doing things that make them seem as though they are doing much more than me. 

They are. 

School is much more chaotic this time around, but still, I make more money and do far less than my Korean counterparts. 

Behind me, my fellow foreigner named Alix hacks up a lung.  It is an illness that seems to have taken everyone but me.  All I have is an earache. 

I look at the topics of two of my classes and cringe. 

Koreans have this thing where they are obsessed with poop.  It is a pretty common thing, I guess, particularly at a young age.  At this school and the last I find that the vast majority of classes at some point have an outbust of "Dung!"  No translation necessary.  I have one little student who, while consistently doing better on her vocab tests (impossible not to as nobody even pretends to try in that class) always draws that ever-so-common-in-Korea seaming pike of shit.  It is like her call sign.  If she ever becomes a mastermind of evil, she will leave a card with a steaming pile of shit.

This is why I am not looking forward to teaching.  Further, I don't know quite how to go about this subject.  I teach a number of "subjects" at school, each a facade for learning English.  It is pretty clever, really.

Why did they dedicate a chapter to the digestive system for elementary schoolers?  Why id diahrea(sp) featured so prominantly in a class called, appropriately enough, We-Wiz? 

In We Wiz, the main character goes on about his family has all of these health problems.  His grandmother then goes on to list a bunch of home remedies.  Eating steamed sweet potatoes before bed helps for diahhrea, by the way.  If you have some pimples on your face then you should wash with lemon juice. 

They handle it all pretty tactfully. 

My big concern is my Junior class.  There are two immature boys and one immature girl.  They are going to have a field day and I won't finish the lesson.

I worry about this because it is becomming increasingly difficult to control most of these kids.  Further, there is one smart girl who looks at me with judgemental eyes when I fail to corral Adam, who seems to exclusively wear sweat pants, and Joshua, who is like a catalyst that only operates when at the worst possible time. 

Last week Adam and Joshua got into it.  I had to keep them apart.  Joshua left class first and was followed by Adam. 

Adam called Joshua to look back and then pinched the shit out of his cheeks until I grabbed his arms.  It was like the lamest grandma-mafia hit ever.

I have been having trouble keeping control and actually finishing the lessons. 

I walk into class and a girl named Lisa smiles and says "Sorry teacher!  I didn't do my homework!"
This is like a joke. She has done her homework precisely one time.  It is kind-of her thing.  Even on review day when we do homework in class she still somehow manages to not finish her homework. 
We listen to the audio for the unit.  A camera has been ingested and it is explaining the roles and details of everything it passes.  I kid you not. 

The kids laugh a bit. 

I try to move on.  I don't want to linger on this whole thing.  The sooner we are filling in the blanks and not listenning to Bob the Rectal Camera tell us about breaking down food and waste the better.
So far so good.

When it comes time for the vocab test I hand out the papers and let them study.  I don't bother to read the list before hand.  This is the simplest part of the job- almost impossible to screw up. 
"Intestines."

"Saliva."

"Mouth."

"Are you serious!?"  Number four catches me off guard.  I didn't imagine it was an actual possibility. 

"Teacher!  Four!"

"Poop." 

There is a brief chuckle amongst kids before it becomes apparent that it isn't quite as hilarious for a non-native speaker.  I burst into laughter and turn red.  I am the least mature person in a room full of 11 year olds. 

Read more...

Brokedown Palace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gyeongbokgung Palace. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more...

In Country

Guess what I stared at for 14 hours.

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

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

I am talented like that.

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

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

That hole is my shower.

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

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

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

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

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

My kitchen and TABLE!

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

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

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

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

Ok, that's it.  Actual post to come.

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

My TV and a dead guy.

Read more...

In Country

Seoul is overwhelming. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bummer, I think.

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

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

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

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

Read more...

Kedros Revisited

These past few weekends have been busy but rewarding for me. As Korea comes to an end I have finally put follow though into my effort to see a couple of people in this country. I have 22 days or so left here and there was really no valid reason for not seeing these people. I wish that I had seen them earlier and that I had seen them more frequently, but I am happy that a year in Korea did not pass without me visiting Sun Young and Dawoon.

Top: Dawoon and I outside the hostel in Kedros.
Below: Dawoon and I outside Motel Tomgi in Seoul.

These two were very much a part of my birth into serious travel as they were present at my first trip abroad. They were already seasoned travelers when I met them outside of the bus in Ioannia, Greece but I was about as naïve and clueless as they come. I often say that I don’t know what the hell is going on in Korea, but I really didn’t know what was going on in Greece.

I’ve retold this Greece story enough times to warrant its absence here, but it had a huge impact on how I thought of things around me, of myself, and the grand scheme of the world. Most importantly I left Greece with an openness to new experiences, new people, and new places that wasn’t entirely present before I left home that first time.

Sometimes I compare this experience to Greece. I was in Greece all of 3 weeks and I will have been away from home for over a year by the time I get back from Cheongju. I realize though that the length of time doesn’t make much difference on the impact an experience can have on you.

Left: Sun Young and I on the road in Kedros.
Right: Sun Young and I at a temple in Busan.

Greece was basically a long vacation from hell. We were freezing the entire time, aching from day 2 until the end, and navigating the awkward situation of a bunch of people from around the world sleeping together on a couple of very wide beds and sharing a dirty bathroom.

When we said goodbye it was as sad as it can be with people you had known only a short while, but in intimate circumstances. Well, not that intimate. Some people did make out once, though. I last saw these two in the Athens airport. We stayed up all night with Jardiel from Mexico as the rest of the group likely did the same in Thessaloniki. We drank cheap wine from Styrofoam cups and toasted to the whole wild experience and told the worst stories from our lives that we could come up with or force ourselves to remember.

I was happy for the company I had. The four of us said goodbyes and hugged and passed on to lost luggage, medical school, magazines, and memory.

That I have seen all 3 of my airport companions since then is incredible to me. We planned reunions but even I, the novice, knew that the nature of these sort of friendships is that they usually end at the airport- at least as far as actually seeing each other in person.

I saw Jardiel a year later in Mexico. My work camp failed to pick me up and I spent the scariest night of my life sitting in a dark corner chain smoking with a homeless man and a feral cat that ate cockroaches as a truck full of heavily armed men drove by. Cabbies I had been cautioned against came closer and closer asking me to get in and me with $2000 of camera equipment wrapped around my leg.

After a week I finally found Jardiel and we spent a night eating and talking about the cold, about the dogs, about the work, about the mountains and the people we met Greece.

So, after a lot of planning I went to Busan to see Sun Young and then to Seoul to see Dawoon. This isn’t to be over dramatic but I barely recognized them. We were all grown up, or something like that. We were wearing proper clothing and we weren’t covered in clay or pine needles, or dressed against winter in the mountains. Everyone had legit jobs.

Still, underneath it all we were basically the same. So we all relived a little of Greece in Korea and laughed at Shibal and the pizza, and talked about the nomad Josef, and the cheese and the hikes. It is reassuring to know that as this thing is ending for me that these friendships don’t really end.

Maybe someday I will see the rest of these mad Kedros people.



Read more...