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.



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Drool



Until recently, there was a class of three boys at my school. They called themselves Simpson, Kai, and Bell. They were known collectively amongst the teachers as the Three Monsters. When they were together they were impossible to manage without screaming at them or calling in for reinforcements. Nobody gave them homework because they wouldn't do it. Options were limited because they threatened to quit the school if separated.

So, it each day it was a lesson in what a king might feel if his subjects decided suddenly to become anarchists and criminally insane at the same time. They are no older than 13.

Crazy as they were, I did not hate this class. It was slow going, for sure; it took me 10 times longer to teach them anything because I would spend half the time begging them to stop talking / calling me tomato / having hair fights, but they were often funny.

They are all goofy and that is what wins me over. One of them is a bit more malicious and another is a bit more clever but they have this absurd way about them that makes me laugh, even when they are obviously insulting me.

Hair fights are pretty popular with them. I have mentioned this activity before, but it is when you pull out a strand of hair and stretch it out against another person’s hair- first broken hair is a loser. It is perhaps the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. When they bore of deciding who goes first with Rock, Paper, Scissors they will shout “hair fight!” and then start pulling out hair until they get a good piece.

Anyway, they were finally separated with our switch to 50 minute classes and nobody quit. Two of them are still together but they are thankfully much more subdued with the breaking of their unholy trinity.

This is a story about Simpson. I have been here for nearly a year and I have only seen him wear two different pairs of sweat pants. Usually he wears blue, but sometimes gray. When we were learning “what is he wearing?” his partner would always say he was wearing the same thing he always wear. He also seems to own approximately 4 shirts that he wears on a weekly basis.

Of the three he is the goofiest and seems to be less evil than the others. He often answers in a variety of voices. Once he tied his hands together with some string and had to be cut free. He is awesome.

A couple of days ago he came into class saying that he had been sick. No, he didn’t say that. I asked him why he was tired and he pretended to projectile barf on the floor. Throughout the class he kept falling asleep. I would see his eyes roll up, his head would go down, and then he would jerk back awake.

It was funny. Once, when he was out for a few seconds I did a monster impression and scared the hell out of him. He then looked at me like I had just punched his mom.

He then put his head down and drifted off again. I tried to stop him and keep him in the conversation we were having but he just turned his head to the other side.

He was out cold. I kept asking him questions and he just lay there slumped on his desk. He was not faking.

So, I decided to let him sleep. It was just a review class anyway and this kid looked like he was dead.

I played a game with the other student. It wasn’t even an English game. At one point I took down the clock and we tried to convince Simpson that he had slept for hours but it didn’t work. Finally, right at the end of class he sat up and tried to look natural as though he hadn’t been sleeping. The strand of drool was running down his mouth, onto his shirt which fell past the pool on his desk and on its way to the drool on his pants. He tried to wipe it but soon saw the sheer volume of it on the desk and his pants. He looked around and saw the two of us staring at him laughing.

I then made him wipe it all up. It took two tissues.

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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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Kamikaze Magazine

So, I have spent the past few months making a website.   At times this has been a passive effort but several nights have been spent pulling out my hair trying to get it to look right.  Now, it is finished.
I am proud of it.  It isn't the most original design but it looks nice.
It is an internet magazine.  Some friends and I came up with the idea quite a while ago.  Originally, it was going to be in print and we were going to jam it into other publication's magazine boxes.  Because we would likely go broke and get in trouble we came up with the name Kamikaze Magazine.
It stuck. 
So, I spent a little money getting hosting and a huge amount of time trying to change little things courtesy of my lack of web design knowledge.
There isn't much of a topic.  It was mostly created so that we had a forum to write stuff and put it all together and see what came of it. 
So, check it out!
http://www.thekamikazemag.com/

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Seoraksan, Part 2

Forgive the belated posting here, I have been lacking internet for the past couple of weeks.  Anyway, I went to Seoraksan for Lunar New Year.

Seoraksan did not end up being the relaxing getaway that I was hoping for. Looking back on the whole trip, we spent way too much of our vacation on the road (even if the bus was barely moving). No, relaxing it was not.




An incense shrine against the mountains.



In darkness we stood at a bus stop in Sokcho, not entirely confident that we were in the right place. It was our hope to hop on a city bus that would take us to Seorak-dong. Here we would find a hotel with a Jacuzzi or at least a giant TV. The man looking like he was ready to scale Everest at the bus stop was reassuring.

Our back up plan, should the bus not come, was to take a cab. This would have been a costly mistake. After the bus finally came, we spent close to 45 minutes driving at first along the shore and then up the gradual incline at the base of Seoraksan National Park. For a long time we drove in total darkness save a few convenience stores lit by dim night-lights.

That taxi ride would have been costly.

Someday, I will stop assuming that when guide books mention a Noraebang, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a place will be hopping with neon.

Sarcasm and feigned bitterness aside, what would it be saying if this great mountain park had been so developed that love motels sprouted from its trees.

The problem is that I have become spoiled when it comes to hotels. Even at home, I always loved hotels. I don’t really know why. I used to have life-goal in which I could live in a hotel permanently. I realize now that this is called homelessness. Still, coming to Korea and being able to afford rooms with hot tubs, giant televisions, and steam showers has set me up for disappointment.

Sorak Garden Resortel. What I remember is that it had a large lobby with a guy watching television. It was night and he welcomed us in and quickly arranged rooms for us.

If you are a solo traveler I would back away from this place. It wasn’t sketchy and the man at the counter was really friendly it just had a run-down feel that bummed me out.

It wasn’t that it lacked a bathtub (it did, it also lacked any hot water), or a fully functioning TV (only a handful of channels worked so I watched short track and ski jumping) it was that it was like a bigger version of my apartment but with no warmth or character. I refer to warmth in both atmosphere and temperature.

The “concierge” told me that our rooms had once been two singles, but each had a wall knocked out to make two rooms: a bedroom, a larger open space for yo’s (sleeping mats) a “bathroom” and whatnot.

If I went with a whole bunch of friends and we stayed in one room it probably would have been a cool room. Heck, there was even a little kitchen area. In any case, the place wouldn’t have seen so bleak and lonely to me. So, I watched TV with my four imaginary friends and ended up having to use a floor mat as a blanket because of the cold.

Seoraksan National Park was definitely worth the trip. We went in with the assumption that we probably wouldn’t walk all the way to the summit and therefore were not disappointed when that didn’t happen. After paying our entrance fee and storing our bags we set off on a trail that would eventually come to a couple of waterfalls (Yukdamp Pokpo and Biryong Pokpo).

We passed the main entrance, turned to our left, and then crossed a bridge over a largely emptied river. Already the views of the surrounding peaks were extraordinary. They might not be the tallest mountains around, but their granite peaks ripping upwards from the trees here and there give it all a dramatic feel. It all felt rough and natural. I appreciated the difference in feelings between Cheongju and Seoraksan.

The trail we followed was not very long (a bit over 2km I think) and wasn’t generally very difficult. There were a few parts that were a bit steep but any argument for it being a difficult hike could be negated by the fact that the trail did in fact have metal stairs.

The rusted and grated stairs would stretch across the river whose source was the waterfall and our destination, and would hug where the rock had been cut away by erosion. This river probably flowed powerfully in the rainy season, but on that weekend it was largely subdued by ice.

Early on, we passed a kind of concession area. I would call it a concession stand but it was a bit more than that, while definitely not being one of the folk villages that are common on Korea’s mountains. Here snacks were sold.

We passed a woman giving samples of homemade berry juice. Presumably she had made it herself from mountain berries and then bottled it (old soju bottle) to be sold for around 10,000W. She gave us a sample, proudly saying “no alcohol.” It tasted good and was refreshing in a sharp but sweet sort of way. It was also very clearly booze. It tasted exactly like blackberry brandy.

I would buy a bottle on our way back and give it to Han as a thank you for saving my camera. She told me later that even her dad was surprised at the amount of alcohol contained in non-alcoholic mountain juice.

We came at last to the waterfalls. They were frozen: cascading ice into a ripples pond covered in crusted snow. It was pretty. A few people sat around as we snapped some photos. A man meditated off towards the edge of the little pond. After a break we turned and headed back.

After learning that the cable car was out the question (the day was wearing on and the light was soon to be fading) we walked along a more well traveled path. I didn’t even feign disappointment over the cable car. It rose steeply straight into the highest crags of the mountain. The only scenery I would have seen from the ride would have been what my camera shot as I sat in the corner with my head down.

This path led to a clearing in which sat an enormous bronze Buddha. I knew none of this at the time but that likeness is significant enough to have made me feel humble for being in its presence even after the fact. It also made me feel a bit like a fool for not even knowing it was there in the first place.

For a good amount of time we watched as people lit incense, prayed, meditated, and generally showed a huge amount of respect for this huge sculpture. I walked back and forth, switching frequently between my normal lens and my zoom. The weather was becoming chilly and the fresh air was occasionally overpowered by incense.

I found out later that inside this statue are three pieces of the Buddha’s sari. The statue, like the red and blue bridges all around, represent the desire for a unified country.

Further along the path is a colorful temple with scalloped tiles. Two elaborately colored temple guardians stand in the dark on either side of the entrance. The temple, a compound of buildings, stands on a hill and is on the edge of a river. It is serene. It is Sinheungsa and it dates back to either 653 or 657 AD. It has been destroyed and rebuilt a number of times but it is still there.

Sometimes being in an ancient place is pretty incredible.

As darkness fell we made our way back to another hotel, further down in Sokcho.

The next morning I walked onto a jetty while I waited for Ricky and Lauren. I have never been to the beach in the middle of winter. I expected it to be bleak and desolate but it wasn’t. Kids played in the sand feet away from snow. Families walked along the paths and bought food from vendors as though they didn’t notice the chill in the air. I sat for a while photographing the waves as they crashed onto rocks or sand.

Further down, the beach is lined with barbed wire and guard towers poke out of the trees. Tank traps dot the highways if you go too much further to the north.

I then spent hours stuck in Seoul traffic trying to get back to Cheongju.

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Seoraksan Part 1: In which our hero tavels for a long time and loses his most valued posession

If I have learned anything about internal travel in Korea it is this: the news isn’t usually wrong when it predicts horrendous traffic.
After the eternity that was the duration of winter intensives finally ended, Korea was given a much needed vacation.  This was good news.  The overloaded class schedule and bouncing from school to school on Fridays without breaks had wrecked me.  I was looking forward to catching up on some sleep.
The plan, for myself and a couple of friends (Rick and Lauren) was to get from our respective homes in central Korea to the northeast.  We were making for Seoraksan National Park in Gangwon Province. 
One of the things that I will miss about Korea is that you are never very far from a mountain to hike on.  Even if it is not a very large mountain, there is usually some payoff.  Sure, Watchusett Mountain might offer some nice glimpses of Fitchburg and exotic New Hampshire, but the local hike here has a fortress that predates colonial America by a long ways. 
Seoraksan, it should be stated, is not a “local hike.”  It is almost as far from our cities as you can get.  What complicated this issue further was that we were attempting to get there on arguably the biggest travel weekend of the Korean Year.  Lunar New Year was the occasion of our vacation and it was the reason why everyone with a car in Korea takes to the road to reach their home villages and families that they left behind in on their way to urban modernity.  The result is that highways around major cities become something of a nightmare. 
The only other time of year that can compete with Lunar New Year is Chuseok.  We traveled during Chuseok too, but we had the benefit of a KTX (bullet train) that took us from Daejeon to our final destination for Gyeongju.  The KTX was a benefit we would not be enjoying for our relaxing Seoraksan vacation. 
Relaxing would also not be one of our enjoyments.
We would cross the peninsula via bus.  When I asked my coworkers how I might get from Cheongju or Daejeon to Seoraksan, Han informed me that we would have to switch busses a handful of times.  Further, she said that not only would we have to deal with the nightmare traffic, but we would also have to transfer bus stations at one point. 
This last part was what worried me the most.  Reading Korean is no problem.  Bus stations usually have destinations written in English.  What could be a problem was getting from one station to another in time to catch another bus.  Frankly, I was starting to recall the trip to Dacheon Beach in the summer.  I was wondering which one of us would be barfed on.
Han tried her best to simplify things.  Ara, the new teacher, did as well:
“I think you should just stay home.  Or you can just go to Songmisan (the local national park).”
This was actually a valid idea.  I wanted and still want to go to Songmisan.  I even meant to do so last weekend but I was sidetracked by eating lunch.
The thing is, when it comes to vacations I am stubborn.  I rarely budge from my initial plan and it is difficult for me to accept any compromises.  I don’t mean to say that I do not go with the flow and enjoy the unexpected- I am fine while I am ON vacation.  What I mean is that once I decided that I was going to Seoraksan, there was no way in hell that I wasn’t going to go to Seoraksan.  The complicated bus route and the potential 10 hour bus ride (it was ordinarily 4 or so hours) didn’t have the slightest impact.  In the end I conceded a day and we left on Thursday instead of Wednesday to avoid the bulk of the traffic.
The plan:
1. Head to Daejeon Wednesday and stay in my first of 3 motels. 
2. From Daejeon take 3.5 hour bus to Gangneum in the northeast.
3. Go from the intercity bus terminal to the express bus terminal (it could have been the other way around)
4. Take a bus from Gangneum to Sokcho, a bit to the southwest.  Once here, I was ready to call it a success.
5. Take a city bus to Seorak-dong, and find a motel in the national park. 

The reality was not much different from the plan save travel times.  I made it to Daejeon with no problems (like I’ve done many times before).  I stayed at the Sharp Motel near the bus terminal and, as always, it was awesome.  Rick and Lauren treated me to a dinner at TGIF so the day was a total success. 
The next day we woke up bright and early and met at the bus terminal (bright and early for hag won teachers is different from that of normal people: 9am).
The bus, according to the website left at 9:45am.  We then spent a couple of hours waiting around and drinking coffee counting down until 11:30ish when the bus actually left.
One of the benefits of being in Korea alone, is that more often than not nobody wants to sit with you on the bus.  On the rare instance when I am not put in a row with just one seat, the person assigned to sit next to me usually gets up and leaves once the bus starts rolling.  Maybe I should be insulted.  Maybe I should just stop showering at home so I can always sit alone on the bus.
So, for the entire 5 or so hours of the 3.5 hour bus ride, I stared out the window and spoke only to Ricky or Lauren when the guy on the bus TV did something weird.
Rick and I searched for food when the bus made a quick rest stop.  After getting on 3 busses because we failed to remember where our bus was parked we sat down and enjoyed our lunch.
It was called a kebab.  It was a skinny hotdog with spicy sauce wrapped in a soggy tortilla.  How I made it the rest of the way without crapping my pants, I do not know.
After a very long time the plains gave away to outcroppings of the Taebaek mountain range.  We came at last to a city bus terminal where we sat until the bus driver politely informed us to get off as we were at our destination.  It was here that I did the dumbest thing I have ever done.
I rushed out of the bus and stood on the sidewalk for a moment after the bus drove away.  I then realized that I had left a bag containing close to $2,000 worth of camera / lenses on the bus.  I sprinted after it but it was gone.
My joy for vacation was wracked with devastation.  If I wasn’t in shock I probably would have cried.  Not only was that camera important to me, but it was how I made the bulk of my income at home.  For a time I told myself that it was ok, I had to upgrade anyway, but it was all a lie. 
I would be the only moron on top of the mountain looking through the viewfinder and winding the film of a disposable film camera.
In a panic I called Han.  I felt bad for bothering her during the holiday but I saw not other option.  She was my Obi-Wan. 
For an hour things looked bleak.  Things looked real bleak.  She managed to get a hold of the bus company and eventually the driver.  She relayed the message to him that the camera had been left on the back of the bus.  He replied that there was nothing.  He would check the CCTV but he wasn’t hopeful.
“I am sorry Tom,” Han said.  I hung up the phone and felt ill. 
I was drinking coffee with Rick and Lauren in despair when Han called to tell me that they had found my camera, and if I could wait until 6pm, then I could pick it up at the company office upstairs.
Words can’t really describe my relief.  Oh, wait, yes they can: imagine losing your really expensive still camera / cheaper video camera / lens / etc. for an hour and then having them returned.  That is what it felt like.
So, camera bag firmly in hand, we embarked on the second to last bus of the night: Sokcho.  Luck was with us in that too, as we did not have to go to another bus station to get to Sokcho, as I had feared.
The way to Sokcho is interesting.  For one thing, the coastal road forces you to remember the conflict with North Korea.  Vast expanses of the shore are lined with barbed wire.  Here and there, there were manned guard towers casting halogen into the black sea under the moonlight.  According to the guidebook, there were several tank traps along this route to protect against invasion.
So, 10 hours or so after we left Daejeon, we stepped off the bus into the night of Sokcho at the base of Seoraksan.  There, we breathed in clean air for the first time in a long time.

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Sundays

Another week gone by and another week closer to the end of this whole Korea thing. Earlier this week I received all of my pension information from my boss. I couldn’t make much out of it and the amount that has been paid into it seems to be out of date (at least, I sure hope it is out of ) but it told me how to go about getting my money when I leave.


Things are getting a little sad in Cheongju. My friends all arrived around the same time a couple of months before I did and they are all leaving in about a month. Amanda is staying another year and there are a few other people who came after I did, but most of the people I spend the bulk of my weekends with will be gone soon.

Ah, such is life.

Today is Sunday. It is about 9pm. I have to go into work Monday and Tuesday but then I will be on vacation until Monday. With Intensives, poor sleeping abilities, trying to get my portfolio back in order, I am really looking forward to some time off. The occasion is that it is the Lunar New Year. Koreans use this time to go to the home villages of their parents and grandparents. Just like the Chuseok holiday I couldn’t really get much about the traditions of this holiday out of my students.

Accordingly, apparently my kids are going to eat all of grandma’s Mandu-rice cake-soup and steal all of her money. They might wear some fancy Hanboks, though.

My plan is to head to the big mountain, Seoraksan, in the north-east with Rick and Lauren and try to make it to the top. It is no Everest or K2, but it’s a mile vertical anyway, so who knows if we will get all the way to the Summit, but I am going to give it a go. We will spend a couple of nights there before heading back. In my mind it is going to be awesome. Realistically, everything will probably be closed as it was on Chuseok so it will likely be a giant disaster. Oh well.

It seems that I have a firmly established routine on Sundays. I really do not know why given that it is totally unproductive and ends in me spending too much money, but it has become a solid part of my week:



8am- My alarm goes off. I have not woken up at 8am in months. I set this so that I wake up, realize how lucky I am to not have to be into work until 1pm. I then promptly go back to sleep.

12pm- Usually I am reasonably conscious by now. Now, remember, I am writing about Sundays in Korea. The thing with Sundays in Korea is that Saturdays in Korea routinely spill into Sundays in Korea. So, despite being conscious I rarely move. At the most, I might rotate my pillow if I happened to drool in my drunken sleep.

1pm- Think about getting out of bed. Actually, this is an inaccurate wording. This is more accurate: think about getting out of my floor mat. Usually, this is just a bluff.

1:15pm- Realize I am hungry.

1:16 - 1:30pm- Think about what I want to accomplish during the day. Realize that none of it will happen.

2pm- Finish my meal at Burger King.

2:15 - 3:15pm- Walk around Home Plus like a zombie.

That is basically a long way of saying that I spend too much time at Home Plus. This doesn’t really surprise me so much as it makes me worried. On days when I was really bored at home I would sometimes walk around Target. I would generally buy absolutely nothing. I am worried that I am predestined to become a routine part of the mall-walking circuit.

I never bought anything at Target largely because I was flat broke. Now, I am not flat broke. I have become one of those clichéd people who goes to the store for one thing (usually salsa) and walk out with 80 bucks worth of junk.

Now, every Sunday I do the same song and dance at Home Plus: buy salsa, fake pizza cheese, and tortilla chips. I start off on the first floor which is home goods. I like to look at the cameras and the fancy rice cookers. In the beginning of the year I thought about buying a small toaster oven so I could make food that doesn’t involve my pot or frying pan. Now, I have managed to stop myself from making any purchases that can’t be eaten by me as I do not have a very long time left in Korea.
Things I have bought in the home department:

Steaming rack

Floor sleeping mat

Shoe rods that don’t work

Christmas tree (aprox 6 inches)

2 pairs of jeans that I didn’t bother to try on (take that mom)

A Walther PPK BB-Gun (with a silencer).

Then I go down the escalator ramp to the food section. In order to get a huge number of shopping carts to the food floor the employees send them down the escalators in big groups. They become stationary on the ramp and are received by an employee at the bottom who quickly pulls them out of the way. Now, I have seen a few people almost get wrecked when their individual carts get stuck when the escalator ends and the floor begins. Always, I get stuck between two groups of carts and fear for my life enough to formulate an escape plan if the set of carts in front of me. I do not plan on dying via a shopping cart sandwich.

The food floor in Home Plus is almost always ridiculously crowded with people and their carts.

Usually, I am in a good mood until I get to the food floor. I usually walk around the produce and meat departments to see if anything pops out. I don’t usually buy too much food as I eat at school, but sometimes I like to mix it up. Last Sunday I had tacos.

The problem with Home Plus is the aisles. They are smaller than aisles at home and they are also a lot fuller. I often try to walk up and down the aisles looking for snacks but I usually only make it threw a handful before I start getting flustered.

I do not know if it is because of the narrow aisles or something else, but Korean shoppers have this tendency of just stopping in clusters in the middle of an aisle. If I could make eye contact with them or even get them to look at me without making an idiot of myself I would just scoot by. Often times they stop in groups big enough to make the passage into a dead end. So, I go to the next aisle and hope it has not already been sealed.

Within 10 minutes of trying to simply get to the other side of the store my mission of buying snacks turns into a mission of buying salsa and then getting the heck on out of there. As it is, I usually spend a lot of time swearing at everybody beneath my breath.

After this I go home, clean my apartment, eat and then wonder why I can’t fall asleep after sleeping until almost 2pm.

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Insomnia

If you notice that my entries are more spread out, then that is because my life is pretty much occupied. Intensives are ridiculous. I have heard of some people who have it worse than I do (majorly extended days) but compared to my regular schedule it is pretty horrendous.


I have failed to adequately mention my new school. Each Friday I eat a rushed dinner and am outside waiting for a school bus to pick me up at 6:45pm. I would have mentioned that it has been freezing here (it has) but given that temps at home are reading somewhere around -20f with a wind-chill in the  -50’s with a good 4 feet of snow I will save it.

Anyway, I get on the bus full of kids try to squeeze my legs into the seat. There is a TV on the bus which is good because nobody talks to me. This does not change when I have them in class, either.

So, I walk up a couple of flights of stairs with a bunch of kids (late middle school - early high school) until I come to Albert’s other school. The way you can tell if a school is Albert’s is that they seem to always have his face staring at you somewhere on the walls. In my school there is an enormous charectiature of Albert and Kim Hak Su; I imagine that soon Kim will be painted over. At his middle school, a TV is playing his old TV series. In it he has spiked hair and an orange dress shirt. You can’t hear what he is saying (he is usually overpowered by Korean Spongebob on the TV next to him) but he seems to be shouting it at the camera like a smiling maniac. Sometimes he claps his hands. I asked Albert if he is famous, once. He told me that the channel went bankrupt shortly after his program began to air.

At this class I teach a couple of 45 minute classes. They are meant to be conversation classes. The format, until a couple of weeks ago, was to read a quick article about something and then ask the students questions about the article. There are around 30 kids in the bigger of the two classes so I have to make sure there is enough depth to the article without it being too hard. Every week I tell them and Hae Jin, who sits off to the side, yells at them, to answer in full sentences. This never happens.

Recently we switched the format so that we would read the article and then I would ask them questions semi-related to the article. For example, An article about a zoo might warrant something like “What is your favorite animal? Why? Do you like zoos? Why?” etc. Of course, you have to have several alternate sets of questions for the jerks who say they hate everything to get out of answering.

Frankly, we realize reading the actual article is pretty pointless but it eats time. I can sympathize with these kids not wanting to talk, but I become hyper aware of myself standing in front of them when everyone is staring at me silently. Generally, I have to try to explain the vocabulary in simple English and I look and sound like a babbling moron. It is basically a bad 45 minute speech class every week. Also a couple of kids routinely fall asleep.

So, this Friday we are switching to free conversation because even I am bored. It will probably be a nightmare, but oh well.



The past few weeks I have not been feeling too well. I have felt run down. Emotionally, I am happy and chipper an all that but I have been fatigued. My sleeping schedule has been off. Part of this is because I feel no need to go to sleep at a decent hour when I can just wake up at 12:45 and go to school.

So, basically, that is what I have been doing. At night I either write, read, watch TV or work on a website I am making. Some days I am up until 3 or 4am without even thinking about it. Of course, the next day I wake up dead and the thought of waking up with a little extra time does not even cross my mind.

I have also had some moderate insomnia here. It has been pretty consistent but it was nothing that really bothered me too much. I would just lay on my floor mat and stare at the ceiling until 6 or 7am and then fall asleep until I had to go to school.

Not counting insomnia I can’t explain, I basically destroyed my internal clock every weekend. Friday and Saturday are pretty consistently long nights at the bar or the hookah lounge or elsewhere. So, two consecutive nights of going to sleep at 4 or 5am pretty much cancel out any hope of sleeping on Sunday nights.

Anyway, like I said, the past few weeks have been rough as far as maintaining a decent energy level. I couldn’t tell if I was burning myself out by staying up so late and then sleeping so late, whether it was school, or all of this extra stuff I am trying to do and figure out (money / writing / website / Russia / etc).

Anyway, last week I woke up and felt off. I felt crappy enough to call into work and spend the day laying around like a vegetable who is pretty awesome at video games.

When a class of kids came by to visit me / steal my food and I had to hide old beer cans in my freezer you would think that one solution was pretty obvious, anyway.

Since then, my sleep has been way off. With that my ambition went away too. I guess I shouldn’t blame my writing consistency on being too busy, so much as being burnt out. Last Sunday night I laid down to bed and didn’t sleep. It wasn’t an issue of falling asleep at 8 or 9am- I just never fell asleep.

I went to school and managed to function.

I had mentioned my problems sleeping before and Han brought me to the hospital to get some medication to help me sleep. I went home that night with 15 white tablets with no label whatsoever.

Being that I was exhausted I didn’t bother taking one. Also, I don’t like taking pills that I don’t know. Hell, the doctor could be waiting outside waiting for me to eat his roofie.

At 4 am I realized I was screwed. I wasn’t going to suck it up and take a pill and be groggy and hung-over all day. So, I sat there waiting to fall asleep until my alarm went off and told me that Tuesday was going to be an epic sort of horrible day.

I do not recommend teaching 11 classes back to back after close to 72 hours with no sleep.

Eventually I found the name of the pharmaceutical company and figured out that I had been prescribed Ambien. This wasn’t really easy given that pill imprints from asian pharmaceuticals aren’t really categorized on English sites.

So, last night I took one. After watching a pile of close pulsate and my mini Christmas tree thickenning and thinning for a while, I fell asleep. Ambien is awesome.

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Winter Intensives

The school is a lot different than it was a month ago.  For one thing, we have broken off from our parent company of Kim Hak Su.  I was aware that Albert, my boss, had been itching to do this for a while, but I didn’t expect it to happen so fast.  He had told me over beers that while the man, Kim Hak Su, was very smart and a social brother to him, he was also very selfish.  Truth be told, this hasn’t had a noticeable impact on my day to day life.  We just don’t have a school name at the moment.
Boram has been gone since Christmas.  Since then a foreign teacher at Albert’s other school bailed.  To remedy this, he brought Hae Jin to that school.  She has been replaced with a Korean girl named Ara, who has some pretty amazing English under her belt from Australia. 
The problem with Hae Jin and Boram leaving, other than it being sad to see people I’ve known my whole time in Korea leave,  is that they were the ones who really kept kids under control.  Han and I do not inspire the same level of fear of death as those two.  So, to a certain extent, a few classes have descended into anarchy. 
What makes things worse is that public schools have let out for winter break and again the kids flock to private academies.  They come earlier and they stay for a longer part of the day.  Classes have all changed and with that the general dynamic.  Kids who were subdues and peaceful before are now with their friends and they combined to become a kind of axis of evil. 
Winter Class B would be a pretty decent example.  In the class is one boy and two girls who, on their own, aren’t beyond manageable.  Individually, whenever I told one of them to stop talking they would immediately apologize.  The boy would make a heart with his arms and say “Ok, sorry Thomas, I love you ok very good.” 
Currently, I spend most of the class screaming like a lunatic at all three of them.  A week ago, the boy smacked one of the girls on the head and made her cry.  He spent the entire 45 minute class kneeling in front of the smart board.  He still wouldn’t shut up.
Then, there is the Missing Boy (who went MIA for a few hours a bunch of months ago).  I would be lying if I said that winter intensives have made any difference in his classes as he is all alone but he has definitely stepped up his game.
He is one of my first classes a few days a week.  Everyday, he comes in and we do our little dance.  It ends in two ways:
1.  Trap him in a corner, put him in a headlock or pick him up and carry him to class. 
2.  He sprints into class and tries to barricade the door. 
I win both of these scenarios.  He is a scrawny 8 or 9 year old and I outweigh him by approximately 500 lbs.  One day last week, I joined him in a pre-dance glass of orange juice.  We stood there until he took a big sip, threw his glass and ran for the door.  Ok, I thought, scenario 2.  Generally, my strategy is to get my foot into the door as he closes it and then pull the door handle off of the inside (it is broken).  He then closes the door, realizes that he is trapped inside with nothing to hold onto.  I win.
On this day the door was too far broken and wouldn’t properly close.  I thought nothing of it and reached my left arm in and tickled his side.  He responded by shotgun spitting a mouthful of orange juice into my face and all over my folders. 
The dance was over.  He won. 
The next day, after literally dragging him on the floor and into the classroom, he tried to instigate a repeat of the previous day with a mouthful of green tea.  I’m no fool so I laughed and said “no.”  He then spit his at out into my thermos of water.  I said something to the extent of “seriously” and he grabbed my papers and blitzed around me and hurled them out the window.  Kid is like a sneaky little velociraptor. 
As of today, I have been in Korea for 265 days.  I have 100 days left on my contract and I can only imagine that the time I have left will fly by.  The first thing I did upon receiving a cell phone here was set a countdown for the end of my contract.  It wasn’t so much an issue of me wanting time to go by quickly or the need to know exactly how long I have left so much that I sometimes don’t realize time is going by at all.
When I first landed here, a year might as well have been forever.  There were so many milestones that I needed to get through before I went back home: Halloween, my birthday, New Year’s Eve, Christmas, Thanksgiving.  Now: there is nothing. 
In an hour I will check my phone and see that I am down to double-digits.  I don’t know why it is so significant to me; not really.  I suppose I can remember laying in bed at my first apartment in Cheongju with no internet wondering what kind of mess I had gotten myself into.  I recall laying there wondering how I would feel when I was down to the last 100 days; whether I would be emotionally scarred from a Christmas alone. 
I guess I feel pretty much the same as I did at the half way point; which felt pretty much the same as the 4 month point.  Though I am starting to feel that urgency to start doing as much as I can in Korea; my days are numbered.
In 10 days I have a lot of work to do.  I have been mulling over how to get home for quite some time.  I don’t feel like jumping onto an airplane and being home 20 something hours later.  Somehow that seems so anticlimactic to a year abroad. 
Part of the reason I like travel writing and books about journeys (The Hobbit / LOTR) is that they acknowledge that the way home can be an adventure in itself.  I am getting a decent wad of cash when my contract is completed and I feel it would be a waste (both personally and with the whole photographer thing) to skip out on the rest of the world.  As it is, I have not so much as touched my portfolio in a year or so. 
The plan is this: Ferry from Korea to the eastern shore of Russia.  Rail from there to Moscow.  Moscow - Europe (avoiding Belarus).  Eventually I mean to make my way to Barcelona to see an old friend before I finally get on a plane head back to Boston. 
It’s a plan anyway.  A Russian Visa seems to be require a horrible amount of patience, but the embassy told me that it was possible to get while living abroad.  So, I am going to make a go of it.

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Dragons, Guitars, and Christmas

Well, it’s belated but Merry Christmas! I meant to write a nice, if overly sentimental, entry on Christmas night about the difficulties of being away from home for the first time on Christmas. I had it planned all week but I couldn’t write it because I passed the hell out on my floor after being unable to keep my head up for prolonged amounts of time whilst skyping my family on their Christmas morning. Sometimes I even make myself proud.






A family photo- complete with that kid.



A week before Christmas:

We had the Christmas Pageant that my school had been rehearsing for since before Halloween. Every other day the youngest of the kids would have “Do Ray Me” blasted in the class followed by “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” As time wore on and I became more accepting of the fact that I would be spending Christmas sans family I came to appreciate the almost daily Christmas music. As it was in the beginning though, it really just bummed me out. On the rare day that I am feeling particularly glum, there is nothing that sinks that sword in than hearing my favorite Christmas Songs in the classrooms while I freeze my ass off in the teachers’ room.

Still, Halloween soon passed and then November and Thanksgiving and I came to look forward to popping my head into the classrooms. There were choreographed dances to every song. They were nothing overly complicated but that my coworkers built the sequences from the ground up AND taught the lyrics to the kids impressed me.

This video is pretty long.  The kids did awesome but it drags some. 

By far my favorite was Mariah Carey’s “Santa Clause is Coming to Town.” This song and dance number involved almost a dozen late elementary / early middle school girlss and a poor goofy middle school boy who happened to be in the wrong class at the wrong time. I would glance through the window from time to time and see the girls dancing and smiling and he would generally be looking suicidal while trying to jam himself in the corner.

There were a few plays. Hansel and Gretel with no girls. A story about a tiger who is freed from a net by a smaller animal. The tiger, of course, is guilty of take-backsies and says that he will eat his savior. The tiger agrees to go to various other animals that live in the jungle and asks whether or not it would be fair to eat the little animal. Jungle cow is pretty bitter about being made into car seats so he is all for some carnage. Jungle owl says the tiger is a moron and throws a net over him; or something like that.



Han putting tape on their noses.  This was
not as quiet as you might think.



Once December finally rolled around kids would come in and ask me to help them with their reading or pronunciation. A few groups of students were presenting readings or poems to the audience (all of their parents). Two of my nicer girls were doing a joint reading of Cinderella. I spent a few hours with them over the last few days before the pageant helping them read. My little friend, Clara, chose to read a horribly depressing story about an orphan, an abused dog, and a dying grandfather that seemed to take a good 20 minutes if she read quickly.

All in all though, that was pretty much the extent of my contribution to this whole Christmas Pageant. Not only that, but on Fridays a huge portion of my classes were given over to rehearsing which resulted me in having almost nothing to do with anything. I felt bad for a while. Then something happened and I didn’t feel bad anymore: I opened my big fat, stupid mouth.

I had bought a guitar a while back. At the time it seemed a sexy little acoustic number. It grew into a pretty standard, bordering on crap, mass produced guitar. Still, I had some fun with it. I had mentioned this to Han months ago. I might have even mentioned that I no longer fell into the “suck category,” or the “only knows 3 chords category.” I hope I didn’t give the impression that I was a remotely competent or consistent player. That would be a lie. So, I shouldn’t have been shocked when Han told me I would be playing “Puff the Magic Dragon” with one of her classes.

So, I learned “Puff.” Not a difficult song at all, but the difficulty for me lies in playing in front of others. I lose all confidence even in front of drunk friends. There is always some virtuoso making a mental note of my sloppy progressions and erratic tempo. I was pretty determined to do a good job, though, as this would be my only significant contribution to the pageant.

Our rehearsals went well. Most of the song has the same few chords and tempo. There are a couple of parts where it changes and another chord get’s tossed in but the class was ignoring it and I decided not to correct them. I began to have trouble keeping time. I am incapable of hanging onto a pick for more than 10 seconds so if I started with one there would inevitably be a big ol’ twang as it went flying off and everyone would look at me. Still, they are young kids (including the boy who brought in a super-realistic toy pistol) and they seemed to look at me like a rock-star with the tattoo and beard. Talk about a self-esteem boost.

Oh, pause. Forgot to mention I bought a second and genuinely amazing acoustic in Seoul for a fraction of the cost of my original. So, now I am the jerk with multiple guitars who can barely even play them. Again.

Anyway, time went on and it came to the days before the pageant. People began coming in on Saturdays to write cue-cards or rehearse. The boss’ wife and the Receptionist seem to have handmade all of the costumes (simple masks and several fabric Santa cape-things) and they had printed out photos I had taken of every kid in school.



"Santa Clause is Coming to Town" crew.



Somewhere along the line Han picked out the single worst Christmas tree I have ever seen. It had once been a pine tree, but somebody had not only taken off the firs, cut it into 3 sections and sold them individually, but it had also been spray painted black. For a month or so this thing sat in our main room so everyone could see it. Poor Han got ripped on a lot.

I came in on the Friday before the Saturday pageant (I now teach at a second school full of older kids who refuse to talk) to find the entire staff and their friends / brothers / boyfriends putting up Christmas decorations. They told me that I didn’t need to stay but I had none of it. Somewhere, despite committing to ignoring Christmas I was had by the spirit of it all. I might not be seeing any family this year, I thought, but dammit I am going to decorate the hell out of this school. So we did.

They had done most of the work before I had returned, but I clipped photos onto strings of light. In the end the school looked gorgeous. It was really a surprise! Even that damned little dumpster tree looked nice with ornaments and lights and pictures hanging from its shiny black dead branches. I went home feeling accomplished that Christmas had not entirely passed me by.

Back to a Week Before Christmas: Pageant Day and the Departure of Boram

I arrived to find the staff of my school making final additions and alterations to their plays. I sat my guitar in the office and tried to lend a hand but there wasn’t really much going on. I asked Haejin, the newer teacher, if she was excited and she replied with a “no, not really” which is understandable given that she had put in actual work while I sat there playing guitar. I asked the same thing to Boram and she said that she was trying not to cry and I remembered what I had been told a few days before.

Boram, the girl who sat in front of me when I had been picked up from the bus station; Boram, the girl who showed me around town and made me feel better about being away from home; Boram, my friend, was leaving today. Her family owns a restaurant in town. She had always known she was going to take it over. She was going there now to work permanently. I was sad. Boram took me to the hospital once saying to the others that she needed an injection for a cold but bought an anti-hangover drink. She scared the shit out of the kids and was our strongest defense against the worst kids. Despite that I constantly called her Boromir didn’t seem to bother her.

But, the show must go on.

Kids came, dressed in their finest. They separated to 3 waiting rooms running different movies on our projectors. Their parents streamed in, went through the 50433839 balloons, ignored me completely, and sat in the “auditorium.” Soon, Albert was speaking and chaos began.

There wasn’t more than 5 seconds between the different acts and that made things rushed. Kids had costumes to change, candles to light, etc. Further, most kids were in several different acts and they couldn’t always be found where they were supposed to. The parents saw poetry readings, the most adorable little kids doing various adorable things, Albert laughing and smiling. What they likely could hear were their kids getting shrieked at to stop picking their noses or to get in the line, all seasoned amply with obscenity.



Puff the Magic Dragon group.  As you can tell, they are bad-ass.
What you can't see is the booze or blow they are hiding.



I was trying to help. There wasn’t much I could do but maybe hit the back of Doctor Jones head or to wrestle them a little when they were in the movie rooms and I was bored. After a while though, as the “Puff” set was coming up, I started getting nervous. Nerves gave away to sheer panic and sweat and shakes. We went on ninth. I was standing in the corner with sweaty palms trying not to drop my guitar after tuning it for the fifth time. By the time we were on deck, I was standing behind a dozen smiling, laughing, impeccably dressed kids looking like I was about to add a new spin to the Christmas season by shot gun barfing on everyone’s kids. All this, and I was playing one easy song!



Finally, we walked in. Boy, there are a lot of people here. I remember thinking that, then sitting down and trying to set up my camera to record. I was really, really proud of all that we had done. We sounded pretty good when we practiced and a kid didn’t burp or something. There was nothing to worry about.

“Ok, go Tom!” said Han.

 (In regards to the video: sorry.  I was horrified.  If you don't notice, the camera is upside down.)

I remember nothing. I remember hitting the strings once. I remember shaking and feeling like I was going to barf on the kid standing next to me. At some point the kids stopped singing, people clapped; I got up and walked off. I eventually found my 9 year old band mates and they proceeded to tell me that it was horrible. Eventually, I found a quiet place to watch the most poorly shot video ever. Not bad, really. I remain proud.

The last few performances went on, including an AWESOME “Santa Clause is Coming to Town.” Really, it was awesome. I have all of the video second hand, but it was all shot in one take and I lack any software to cut it up. I’m working on it.

Once we had cleaned up a bit, we set out to BBQ. Here, many tears were shed amongst the girls for Boram’s last day. It was sad. The school is a different and more chaotic place without her. We were drunk by 8pm and proceeded on to a fairly raucous noraebang session.



Christmas

I spent Christmas with my Cheongju friends. I woke up hung-over from going out Christmas Eve. I made my own candy (Chunky Godfrey’s) and proceeded upstairs to my friend Amanda’s apartment which would be the setting for our Waygook Christmas.

What can I say?

It was a blast. Christmas has stood out as an important day in Korea since I arrived. I anticipated that I would spend it depressed and black-out drunk. While one of those things happened, I was not depressed.

There was food. A lot of food. Good food. Good drinks. Hot toddies, mulled wine (I think). “A Christmas Story” played on repeat for a long time and then “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” There were inappropriate stories, laughs, drinking. We were warm and comfortable while outside it began to snow.

Photo courtesy of Amanda C.  She is one of a few not pictured.

A white Christmas! In Korea! Who would have thought?

At a certain point my memory gets fuzzy. A short time after this, the memory is just gone. The group of us, Americans, an Irish guy, a New Zealander eventually found our way to noraebang where we sang stuff I no longer recall. I won a wallet at some point, or I stole it. Who knows?

At midnight the party ended and I floated in the holiday and whiskey warmth where I proceeded to, in this order: call my mom, realize I was incapable of keeping my head up or speaking with any coherency, barfing, brushing my teeth, passing out on my floor.

It was a great Christmas that I will never forget despite not remembering much of it.



New Years Eve

Copy Christmas / Paste / add Ricky and Lauren from Daejeon



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