Steady work flow this week has meant that my entries have been very piecemeal in the forming, and perhaps awkward in the reading. I should think about getting a connection in my hasook jeep, so that I can sit in my 7x7 room and comfortably compose blog entries. I do get to feeling sorry for myself at times - woe is me, I don't have enough time to really focus on my writing, but then I am reminded of Wallace Stevens, coming home after doing vice presidential things at his insurance company, and writing poems at home.
You think maybe Wally wrote during his commute? Did he take a train into the city, or a car, or a bus? I remember watching the Hepburn-Bogart version of Sabrina and being surprised that Bogey rode to work in a car with a telephone of some sort in it. Maybe Wally had something similar? Or was that only for company presidents? My ride on Tuesday night with the KF president reminded me of that scene in Sabrina. I didn't know that people had drivers anymore, though it's certainly understandable in Seoul - I am amazed that there aren't more accidents in this city. It's a madhouse! My dad tells me it's much worse in other countries, but I am still pretty goggle-eyed at the scene here. Returning home from a concert last week: there are cars for a couple hundred feet lined up in the left turn lane outside the Seoul Arts Center, waiting to turn around. But the oncoming traffic doesn't let up long enough for more than two or three cars to U-turn at a time. So after a while, during a red light, the dozen or so cars closest to the light just make the U-turn where they are. This might all work out fine, except that there are still lots of cars in the opposite lane, so there's no place for any of the turning cars to go!
I'm glad I don't drive here. But the subway has its own charms. Rule number 1: You will be pushed. Rule number 2: You will learn to push back. Rule number 3: You will learn to look around for older people in order to offer your seat to them - but apparently only if you are a woman. If you are a man, you will (usually) calmly remain in your seat, ignoring the grandmother holding on to the handgrip with great difficulty. Rule number 4: You will learn to sleep without falling over.

WATER COOLER!
Well, it's confirmed. I'm losing command of English (and at a much faster rate than I'm learning Korean), and there ain't no denying it. A shout-out to Brooke for sending me the answer first and, er...at all. As grand prize winner, she gets a big bowl of kimchee stew, any time during the next 11 months, in Seoul.
So last night I had dinner unexpected with the president of the Korea Foundation. Myung-soo had two tickets to see a concert at the Seoul Art Center, so she invited me, and then the president found out and decided she would treat us to dinner. So we met her and went downstairs with her and her driver whisked us away in a nice black car, all the time chatting about this or that. In the car, Myung-soo said her name was rather masculine, and the president said her name was rather masculine too, which helped her gain more respect at the start of her career.
It was a little weird - the weirdness of having dinner with your boss' boss' boss, with an extra dash of weirdness thrown in. Like, I'm not sure how deferential I should be - as a Korean employee, I'd be using the highest form of respectful address to talk to her and being very kow-tow-y. As an American, I'm not expected to know how things are, and so (hopefully) was excused for any etiquette breaches last night. As a Korean-American, well, I kind of know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't really want to do it, as I'm not culturally used to showing that much respect to anyone.
Well, maybe that's not true. Some college professors lived on that god-like level of social hierarchy, I suppose. We stared at them, awestruck, in lecture and once a semester in section, and they did their lofty god-like things in colloquiums and classrooms and offices and conferences. I wonder what it's like to be so comfortable with a mantle that automatically demands so much respect.
Must say, dinner was really good - soon dubu (a kind of hot tofu casserole) that actually matched the stuff I had in L.A. with Sarah (hey Sarah, I finally found a place that's as good as ours! (I told the prez I'd tell you, too)). Afterwards, so as to be able to meet other similarly elevated personages, the president hauled ass to the venue, with Myung-soo and I in tow.

One last note - I am in the midst of writing a letter for the prez, and just showed a draft to her. She was coming back from the ladies' as I came in, and was wearing -- as is typical in Korean offices -- house slippers on her teeny elegant feet. Hee hee. I wish presidents in American companies did that.

Not much to report today, except that I studied quite diligently last night (four hours or so after getting home from work). If only I could manage to be so conscientious every night! Well, we all know what happens when it's all work and no play -- you wind up in a lonely mountaintop hotel in the middle of winter chasing Shelley Duval with an axe... I really liked that particular Stephen King book, actually, and have not gotten around to seeing the movie yet. All in due time, my young Padawan learner.
Okay, quit it with the quote-y-ness. What is up with me today?
I made plans to study this weekend with a Japanese woman in my class, Haruway. She's a 29-year-old kindergarten teacher who would have liked to have gone to college but whose family couldn't afford to send her, as she is one of seven sisters (she's the second). She said she had two dreams - one, to become a kindergarten teacher, and two, to learn lots of different languages. She looks like she's 24 or 25 -- I swear, I canNOT tell anyone's age here. It's just impossible!
You can glean a lot of what I'd consider personal information quite properly here. How old are you, how many siblings do you have, what do your parents do and where do they live, how old are they, why do they live apart, are you married yet, do you have a baby? All quite normal and standard. Much of it is so that you can figure out what kind of relationship you have - married people, even if young, should be accorded more respect, as well as anyone older than you. The Korean language has different word endings that correspond to how much respect you should have for the other person. So the age thing is quite important. It's not just language either - if someone is your un-ni (what a girl calls her older sister) or noo-na (what a boy calls his older sister), they're supposed to take care of you - show you around, buy you meals, that kind of thing.
At my hasook jeep, Yuki and Hesok both call me un-ni, which I've discovered I'm rather uncomfortable with. I don't want to take care of anyone! I'm a little bit more comfortable with calling someone else un-uni, but I lapse into friend-level talk all the time with Aya, and I haven't spoken to Maiko or Haruway in the slightly elevated way either. I'm definitely uncomfortable with calling an older male friend oh-pa (what a girl calls an older brother). And I find that it's hard to coax the Korean word for father into conversations with my dad. As time goes on, will I become more at ease with the hierarchies here? Your guess is as good as mine.
Yeah, probably not.

Kawfee Tawk
It's always the little things, isn't it?
On my first day at the office, I was told to parttake freely of the coffee and tea there. I didn't see a coffeepot, but assumed that I'd figure it all out later.
On Saturday, under the tutelage of Myun-soo, I figured it out. Coffee in Korean offices is offered in long, slim wrappers -- like a candy bar, but thinner. One side is instant coffee and the other is sugar; you open the packet on the coffee side and keep pouring until you have as much sugar as you want. Then you pour in the hot water.
In this office, you can take your pick of regular, decaf and hazelnut packets. I'm not really sure what you do if you want cream; at school, there are vending machines that offer the choice of coffee with cream, coffee with sugar, coffee with cream and sugar, and coffee black. You put your 200 won in (maybe 15 cents), and the machine pours out your coffee into a nice little paper vessel, measuring maybe1/3 cup. At break times, students line up at the coffee machines to get their fix.
I actually like the school vending machine coffee, in part because it's about the strongest coffee you can get here. I haven't tried Starbucks yet, but in my first week I had coffee in a cute little bakery called Migo in the basement of the Hyundai department store, and lemme tellya, if I didn't know before that coffee is different here, I sure got to know it then and there -- what came out of that nice silver coffeepot was a liquid so pale I thought Aya had ordered tea. I tasted it and was stunned to find coffee-flavored water upon mine taste buds.
I had dinner the other night with Maiko, a Japanese woman from my first Korean language class here (I subsequently moved into another level), and the waitress apologized that she didn't have drip coffee just then, she only had instant. "Oh, that's all right," we said, little knowing that we were about to be treated to flavored water. Upon tasting our extremely weak, watery coffee, Maiko and I launched into a lengthy discussion of the socio-psychological ramifications of weak coffee in Asian society... okay, well, no, we didn't talk about that (how could we, in our broken Korean?), but we did agree that Koreans sure make their coffee weak. (It's not an Asian thing; in Japan, coffee is stronger - Maiko, Aya and Uchidashi all confirmed that.) Is it the moderation thing? How come the alcohol's so strong, then?
Well, at least now I know why mom always made coffee so weak. And why I once made coffee for John and Naomi that was so weak that even John, who is not a coffee drinker and indeed puts about a quart of sugar into a cup when he does drink it, said, "Uh, I'm really sorry, babe, but this coffee tastes terrible," to gales of laughter from the Nome. See, it was all cultural, you big booby!

One more thing about drinkage: you know how in the States you have paper cups at the big Sparkletts/Arrowhead water dispensers (if these machines have a name, please tell me; otherwise I'll assume that I'm not forgetting my English whilst learning Korean very slowly)? So here, I couldn't figure out how people drink from these dispensers, until I saw someone take a little flat envelope from a dispenser at the Grand Mart (a huge department store near my house), open it up on one side, fill it up, drink, and dispose of the envelope in the wastebasket.
Ohhhhhh!!!!
They really do look like little business card-size envelopes, and yes, they do hold water just fine, thank you. L'chaim.

Haven't done much this weekend. Yesterday after work I headed over to Dad's apartment, which is near the Songnae subway station, and I'm still here. I hung around here yesterday reading an old Cynthia Voigt novel (A Solitary Blue), and Dad, after he got home, put a bowl of fruit next to me as I read. Just like when I was a kid and Mom would periodically come by with snacks. Very comfy.
I conked out around 6 pm. Dad woke me up at 8 for dinner out of a strange dream where I was back at college, just after winter break senior year, and telling Anna Dorfman, "I don't want school to be over. I don't want college to end." Some girl I lived on the same floor with freshman year, Bridget Somethingorother, came by, nodded, and said, "I'll fix it so we won't have to go to graduation." Dad woke me up just then so I don't know if we did end up going to graduation after all. Anna and I didn't go to the same college and Bridget and I exchanged maybe 5 words during our four years of attending the same school, but hey, that's the dreamlife of Helens for you.
Today my grandmother, who is actually my stepgrandmother, came over to the apartment. It's actually her apartment, and when the government tears down these old apartment buildings, she'll be entitled to a place in the new building.
The weekend I arrived here (or maybe the weekend after?), I saw a picture of my real paternal grandmother for the first time. She was in her twenties at the time, but Dad didn't know when the picture had been taken. She died when Dad was 5 years old, in 1953, while giving birth to a baby who also died.
The picture is small, perhaps 2" by 1.5". She is dressed in a hanbok, the traditional Korean dress, but you can only see the dark silk jacket, with a flower pattern, in the photo. Her hair is parted slightly to the left of center, and drawn back smoothly. She wore no jewelry, though I think I can see a touch of lipstick. Her mouth has a distinctive upper lip that I recognize in my aunt's, uncle's, and cousins' faces.
The picture is resting on my eraser, which is next to the keyboard right now. Though I don't know exactly when it was taken, it must have been sometime in the 1920s or 1930s, since my oldest aunt was born in 1939. Korea was a Japanese colony then; she probably spoke and read Japanese, since it was the only language permitted in schools. Wait, did she even go to school then? Certainly she didn't go to college; women didn't do that back then.
Who were you, and what were you like?

Last night, going home on the subway, I saw a really dear thing. Two boys came in and sat down. They looked about 18 or so and were rather good-looking, which is why I noticed them in the first place (jokes about robbing the cradle may be sent to the Kid, a.k.a., John). So the guys came in, looking like they could very well be walking into the subway in DC or New York - perfectly spiked hair, perfectly baggy jeans, perfect dark V-neck long sleeved shirt on one, perfect hooded sweatshirt on the other. Sweatshirt Boy started talking on his cell phone. V-neck Boy leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and noticed that Sweatshirt Boy's pant cuff was bunched up above his ankle. So he reached over and straightened out cuff so that it fell over Sweatshirt Boy's sneaker, and then leaned back into his seat again.
Maybe it doesn't sound like much, but it caught my attention. I can't imagine too many 18-year-old American boys who would do that so unselfconsciously and naturally. But then again, not too many American boys and girls walk arm in arm together past the second grade. Here, young women often walk with arms linked. I've seen teenage boys drape an arm around each other's shoulders.
A friend at work, Myun-soo, told me that if someone I don' t know very well happens to pick some lint off my sweater, or push a stray hair off my face, it's because that person wants to know me better and is being friendly. Hm. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I kinda like my space. But it's nice to know that if I have food on my face, I don't have to ask a friend about it. They'd just probably wipe it off for me.

Work
Unbelievably, work is continuing to be slow today.
I say unbelievably, because it's been unbelievably busy since my first day here two weeks ago. For a quasi-governmental organization, there's a lot of work.
Well, I do only work 4 hours a day, so maybe there isn't all that much work to do. I dunno.
Okay, let me start from the beginning, because I can see that this is becoming a very muddle-y entry. I started working as a parttime editor at the Korea Foundation on Monday, Oct. 14. I applied for the job while I was still in DC; Mary came across it and let me know about it. (Gosh, did I ever thank Mary? Or tell I actually got the job? D'oh! (Incidentally, as Tomas told me and Uichol, the German version of the Simpsons has Homer saying "Nein!" for "D'oh!" Uichol and I both agreed it was a travesty.) Anyway, here's big shout-out to my homegirl Mary, for finding me my job here.)
So I applied from the U.S. and took an editing test over email on Wendy's computer. I arrived in Seoul on Saturday, Oct. 5, interviewed with the Foundation on Monday, Oct. 7, found out on Oct. 8 that all the right people didn't think I was a psycho, and started work on Monday, Oct. 14. What luck!
So I work here four hours a day, editing people's letters, articles for two magazines that KF publishes, brochures, Web material, all that stuff. It's all in English, but the translators/writers are at varying proficiencies, so it makes for an interesting time.
The KF promotes Korean business and culture, so there are perks. Last Saturday I went to a concert benefitting Hep B patients (carriers? victims? dunno) at the massive Seoul Arts Center. And last week I had a fun time searching the internet for the correct way to address a letter to an ambassador and his wife. Next week - another concert.
The KF magazines -- Koreana and Korea Focus -- focus on Korean culture and current events, respectively. The articles for Koreana that I've read so far have dealt with Korean ceramics, Techno Mart (the biggest Korean electronic store - it's a huge building), and Anmyeondo, an island whose sleepy (its name means place of good rest), rustic nature is being destroyed by tourism. Well, that's what I think, at least. Since Koreana is basically propaganda, the article insisted that the disappearance of all the native wild roses was justified by the improvement in infrastructure and the burgeoning tourist industry. In the course of my editing, I tried to insert a few critical points into that article, but was subsequently told that it was not my place to do so. No banner bearer of journalistic integrity is this! It rankles a bit, but yo, I'm just a parttime lowly editor, yo.
My predecessor was apparently an infamous character - "a big, stupid American guy" - who was sacked because he apparently didn't do much work. Except he didn't know he was sacked, because KF found him another job! At a high-profile nonprofit international organization, no less! (I asked my interviewer - "Um, if you don't like the work I do, will you find me a job too?" He didn't really respond to that.) He was also given a farewell dinner. Yeah.
Don't ask me to explain, I just work here.
Okay, it's 5:53 and I have no work, so I'm gonna split. Unfortunately, even though it's Saturday tomorrow, I have to come into work, because I'm contracted to work four hours every other Saturday morning. Until recently, everyone in Korea worked a six-day week. Recently, the financial and public sectors have moved to a five-day week. But the five-day week isn't standard (yet).

Just had a thought - since I'm going to be working six days a week (every other week), I think I'm gonna need some more clothes. Hm. That'll be interesting. Sizes will be right, but will I have to wear bows on my shoes? I think the Pops and I are going shopping this weekend, so I'll be sure to have fun stuff to write next week. The department stores here are not to be believed.

The Boarders
I have a minute to breathe at my job here, so I'm going to start my first real entry on this here blog of mine (she ain't what she used be, ain't what she used to be - sorry, hunger getting to me).
This morning I was woken at 7 am by the food truck. I don't know what else to call it. It's a truck (I'm guessing - I've never seen one, just heard them) that drives around in the morning and hawks food via a recorded message that's broadcasted via bullhorn (again, a guess). Since I've been in Seoul, I've heard it just about every morning. Usually it's a man's voice; today it was a woman's. The music is quite piercing, and sticks in one's head most unmercifully.
It was rather annoying about being woken up at that time, because I really wanted to catch up on sleep. This week I've been staying up late for various reasons, the most recent of which is that I was reading a good book and stayed up to finish it. The book, Time and Again, was given to me by a coworker at TPG (thanks, Steve!), and was absorbing (clearly, since I stayed up til 2:30 to finish it).
I read the book in my tiny tiny room in the hasook jeep (boarding house) where I'm living. Hasook jeeps are very popular residences for university students here; for a few hundred US dollars, you get room and two meals a day AND an ajuma (older woman/auntie) who worries about you and finds things out for you and in general acts like a surrogate mom.
My ajuma is 62 years old (but looks about 50), about 4'11", sings in a church choir, and is very, very nice. When I mentioned I was interested in learning taekwondo, she called a taekwondo studio for me and found out how much it cost, how to get there, class times, etc.
The other students boarding at the house are also just about the nicest people ever. The first one I met was Yuki. She just graduated from a university in Japan this past May, and two weeks afterwards came to Seoul to study Korean. She's a Japanese Korean (ilbon gyopo). While she was in college, she spent a month in Nepal volunteer teaching kids how to speak Japanese. Then she spent another month in Mongolia doing the same thing.
There's Aya, a 28-year-old Japanese woman who's been studying Korean for about a year. She's also interested in learning taekwondo, so tonight we're going to go to the studio together. She majored in economics at Tokyo University (I think), and is a super student. I'm really inspired by her dedication to learning the language - at dinner last night, she learned some new words from the ajuma, and ran to get her notebook and dictionary so she could memorize them.
Actually, another student does that too -- the German fellow, Tomas. He just turned 23 last weekend, so most of the hasook jeep boarders went out with him and his classmates to celebrate. He's here on an exchange program from his college in Germany (I forget where, though - sorry, Tomas!). He must be at least 6'3" or so - towering over everyone else in the house. He's learning Korean quite quickly - in part because the ajuma is constantly teaching him phrases. Actually, she does that for all of us, but I think it's most fun with Tomas because he cheerfully horses around and mugs his way through each meal.
Uchidashi is an older Japanese man who is also taking Korean classes. Outside of the house, he looks like your typical Japanese tourist - shaded glasses, baseball cap, fanny-pack. But inside the house, he is much more accessible-looking in his gray sweatsuit. Last night, his face was rather red from drinking beer - he drinks a beer every night, he says, because it helps him study. Hee hee! The other night, he gave me and Tomas small calendars of pictures of Japan. How nice was that? I think he gave Tomas a dictionary for his birthday. Like I said, the nicest people ever.
There are two Korean students at the house also. Hesok (?) is a freshman studying physics, or something incredibly hard like that, and has a scholarship at Sogang. Uichol, who lived in Canada for two years, is studying computer animation at a hakwon (private educational institute) that is literally 20 feet away from the house. I told him that I had a friend starting a computer animation company, and he was all, "Hey! Help a brother out here!" So Wendy, he's just started this instruction, but he knows lots of animators in Korea, so lemme know if you want any info about animators over here.
Finally, there's a very quiet Japanese high school (?) student learning Korean, but he's a real beginner, so I haven't talked to him much. He does, however, have the coolest hair - about two and half inches long all over, mahogany colored, sticking straight up out of his head in all directions.
There are two other persons in the house - the ajuma's sons. One is a business man (or at least dresses in business clothes for work) and doesn't mingle at all with us. The other - well, I don't know what he does. He sleeps in the same room as his mother and doesn't mingle with the boarders either. He actually avoids us, I think - once, as I was finishing up a late dinner, I heard the ajuma tell him: "Everyone's done, except Helen, and she's almost done - so come out and eat dinner." I think he did, that time. But just when I think that he's a rather sullen loser, I see him jump up and hurry into a room because his mother's asking him a question about taekwondo studios. That might not sound like much, but I had this vision of him as a kind of weirdo, not going out much, staying at home living on his mom's dime because he didn't want to do anything - you know, that kind of thing. But he was very responsive to his mother's request that time, literally jumping from his seat at the table to go see what she wanted.
Ya just can't tell.

Hey there. I'm jumping into the bloggy sea, for the thrill of seeing my stuff on the Web. Whoo hoo! Check in once in a while to read about my non-adventures as a (Korean) American in Seoul.