Happy New Year to you

Siem Reap. The airport.

We're finally getting out of Cambodia. Not that the time here has been bad. It's been ... educational. And varied. And stomache-achey. And incredible. And sad. And difficult. And charming.

Yah.

I'd write more but I have to get on a plane to Hanoi in 5 minutes. Yargh. I'll try to log on in Hanoi. In the meanwhile, happy new year to all and smooches to the appropriate people. Wait, that would be none. At least, not in that way. Get me off this terminal, I'm suffering from diverticulated verbal diarrhea.

Oh yeah, happy new year again.

Merry Christmas to you

It's Christmas Day and very, very hot. As in, 10:30 am and upper 80s. I had to come back to this internet place this morning to post last night's blog -- just as I was about to publish the whole of it, the server went down. Fortunately, I was able to save it on the hard drive.

Anyway. I'd write more about our adventures of the past two day (or at least, in more detail), but we haven't had breakfast yet and it's our last morning in Phnom Penh, so I'm going to skedaddle. Have fun eating your turkeys and gravys and cranberry sauces (the ones out of the can are the best, you know). This afternoon we're off to Ankor Wat, site of dozens and dozens of temples that date back hundreds of years. Wendy suggests that we ride an elephant to a temple to see the sun set tonight. If we do, you'll be sure to read about it.

M.C. to all the homies.

Phnom Penh

Oh god. Where do I start?

Well, I guess I can start by saying that there's a gecko on the ceiling of this internet... place (not really a cafe, as there's no food or drink, just wicker partitioned computers) in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, and that it is a balmy 78 degrees or so out by the river. How do geckos stay attached to ceilings? Hm.

Oh, and the price for 60 minutes of internet use is is 1500 riel, or $0.375.

Okay, still don't know where to start. Huh. Well, we arrived yesterday from Bangkok, where we bid our 4-star hotel a sad farewell, and managed to call the Riverside Hotel, one of the hotels recommended by Lonely Planet. As we waited for the hotel shuttle to pick us up, we sat on the curb of the tiny airport and gazed at the parking lot and the palm trees and the big sign in the distance that read "Welcome to Cambodia" and we thought, "Oh yeah. This is gonna be good."

This feeling held throughout our ride to the hotel and through our getting settled in our room, which at $35 a night is pretty pricey for Phnom Penh (in comparison, we have TWO rooms, one with AC and one with a river view, at a guest house tonight that together cost $12). I opened the window and was greeted by a mild breeze off the river and the sound of scooters zipping by. (According to a hotel staffer, 70 percent of Cambodians have scooters, but I couldn't tell if that was 70 percent of all Cambodians or 70 percent of all Cambodians who have motor vehicles.)

Scooters, or motos, are the preferred mode of transport here -- no public bus system and few taxis around. It's not uncommon to see a family of 4 all on one moto, and once in a while, a family of 5 or 6. Not to mention passengers carrying shopping bags, bicycles, windows, and wicker chairs.

We headed out of the hotel to see Wat Phnom, the place for which Phnom Penh was named. Legend has it that a Madame Phnom found four statues of Buddha at this hill ("penh"), and thus Phnom Penh was founded. At the temple, there is statue of Buddha in the main building, and a smaller shrine to Madame Phnom in the back.

The wat was cool, but cooler yet was when we walked out of the temple and spotted monkeys in the trees surrounding the building. Very cute. "They steal things, you know," Wendy said, and I took a tighter grip on my camera as I snapped away. As I was focusing on one, a sudden movement to the right caught my eye, and what to my wondering eye did appear but a monkey that had just caught a bird and was killing it. And then chowing down on it.

Monkeys. Very cute. Very scary.

There were several people walking around with cages filled with birds, and I thought they were merely selling them until Wendy pointed out someone who had just bought two birds. The young man held them in his hands while his friend ran inside the temple to get a cup of holy (?) water (a bucket of water with lotus petals floating in it was available). His friend sprinkled the birds with the water from the cup, and he then let the birds free. They flew to a nearby treetop. Apparently, they come back to the cage, where they are sold, released, and come back again.

We also saw an elephant near the temple, whom we could have fed a banana to, but refrained. Instead, we just watched as another foreigner fed it the banana. And wondered if the elephant didn't sometimes get sick of bananas.

After Wat Phnom, we headed down to the Central Market, which radiates out from an enormous four-wing open building. The vendors inside the building were shutting down for the day, but those outside were going strong. Orchids, silks, fried spiders (yum!) (just kidding. didn't have the stomach to try 'em), clothes -- yup, all that, plus the other 99 percent of things that I can't remember.

While I was taking pictures of the fried spiders, beetles and grasshoppers, a monk in orange robes and glasses came up to Wendy and said hello. "Where are you from?" he asked. America, Wendy replied. He asked her a few more questions before saying, "I'm sorry, I'm busy, I must go now," and striding off into the stalls of the market.

You all know I'm not much of a buyer of things. (In fact, just today, at a shop where the proceeds go to help poor Cambodians, I was about to leave without buying anything when Wendy said, "It's beautiful, it's well-made, it's for a good cause, and it's cheap. We're not leaving til you buy something." I ended up buying a gorgeous silk purse that I now adore. Thanks, Wendy!) So even though I enjoy markets, I think of shopping as a sightseeing activity (even at home!). Here, it's a spectator sport, one that I am no good at playing and am more than content to let Wendy do. Because we're westerners, we get quoted a different price than the locals, usually 10 times the price or so. Which doesn't bother us, given that we've got 10 times the income that locals do. But getting quoted one price, getting shorted on the change, and being lied to when we challenge it is, well, something else.

Today, for example, we bought teeny tiny bananas (like, bananettes) and the vendor quoted us a price of 1,000 riel (about a quarter). I didn't have enough in riel, so I gave her a dollar, and she gave me back the change in riel (the dollar and riel are both accepted here). Only the change amounted to 3,900 riel, and we should have gotten back 4,000. When we asked about the remaining 100 riel, she pulled out a calculator and punched in "3,900." Um, no. Wendy managed to find 1,000 riel, so we asked for the dollar back and gave the vender the riel instead.

That kind of thing was a shock yesterday. It's only natural to the locals that we should look like large, human-shaped ATMs, but the feeling that everyone is out to get me is, well, not pleasant.

But that was nothing compared to the man I bought two books from. See, at the Bangkok airport, I started reading a book called First They Killed My Father, an account of the author's experiences as a child during the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, wanted to turn Cambodia into an agrarian worker's paradise. They did this by imprisoning, torturing, and killing teachers, monks, intellectuals, anyone who wore glasses or spoke a foreign language, and their families. Today we saw Tuol Sleng, or S-21, the high school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison and torture camp. We also saw the Killing Fields, where 17,000 men, women and children who were imprisoned at S-21 were bludgeoned to death. Nearly 9,000 skulls (all that have been exhumed -- I overheard a guide say that the rest will remain buried; in Buddhist belief, if the head is disturbed, the spirit cannot be at rest.) are encased in a tall shrine in the fields, which are, in that curious twist of fate that sometimes accompanies these things, bucolic and beautiful.

Because of the long years in which the Khmer Rouge was waging war against the Vietnamese and other enemies (can you tell I don't have my copy of the Lonely Planet in front of me? thought so), the countryside is littered with land mines. Lonely Planet is very clear about always, always staying on the path, even if you need to answer the call of nature. Better to be caught in a compromising position than to find a land mine by the method most are found -- some person or animal steps on it.


So. At the market, I was about to pass by a man selling books, when he held out a copy of First They Killed My Father, which was $20 in the Bangkok airport. He was selling it for $3. I saw another book about S-21 that looked interesting, and while I was looking through that, a group of street urchins came up and began to pester Wendy for money. When I offered the man $5 for both books, rather than $6, one of the street kids mutely pointed to the man's left foot. It was made out of wood. I paid the $6.

After that, though, the kid wouldn't leave us alone. He followed us around the market, repeating the few English words he knew: "Sir, hungry, money, what's your name, see you tomorrow." He was dirty, barefoot and persistent, and a combination of guilt, annoyance and sadness welled up. I finally walked over to the plant section and studied the orchids, which sell for so much in the States, and ignored his pulls at my elbow and his pleas for money and food long enough that he said, "Okay, see you tomorrow," and left.

After that, I felt shell-shocked. I knew about the poverty in Cambodia before I came here, but I don't think anything I could have read or heard or seen could have alleviated the shock. We went back to the hotel, and I lay on the bed and cried quietly. The dust, the dirt, the vendors, the beggars, the missing limbs -- it was just too much. I thought about how I'd looked out the window a few hours earlier and felt so happy about the warm weather and the palm trees.

I managed to get my feelings under control a bit after writing everything down in my journal, and today, things were much better. In fact, they were great, and I am very much enjoying seeing new things and learning about Cambodia. The sense of guilt and sadness is still there, but locked away where it can't overwhelm me as it did yesterday.

Oh, there's so much more to tell, and just not enough time to do it. Going to a restaurant last night and not having a ride back to the hotel, going between the Lonely Planet's phrasebook and gestures for 10 minutes to ask for a taxi or a phone, winding up on the backs of two motos after someone who knew English finally stopped laughing in the back of the room and came up to help us out. Today, blowing a tire on the way to the Killing Fields, showing local kids their pictures on my digital camera, and -- again -- getting rides from two motos. The cows in the fields and the shacks by the dirt road, and the children playing and begging around the mass graves. The horrific images and memories at Tuol Sleng. The diamond eyes and 8,000 other diamonds on the Diamond Buddha in the Silver Pagoda, located on the Royal Palace grounds. Eating a burger with a heart-shaped fried egg at Mondo Burger. I wish I could treat all these memories with as much time as I have devoted to describing just the first few hours here. But I didn't come to Cambodia to aggravate my carpel tunnel, so I'll stop here.

There are some Christmas lights around, and some really annoying tinny Christmas jingles were coming out of a fake Christmas tree at Mondo Burger, but Cambodia is still mostly Buddhist, and tomorrow is not a holiday here. Still, I know that in some parts of the world, children from one to 92 are lying awake, listening for the jingle of sleigh bells and -- phtooie! Ew, where did that dreck come from? Sorry about that.

Merry Christmas, from Cambodia.

Last night in Bangkok

Back on Kao San Road, where the cheapest lodgings and cheesiest Thai souvenirs can be found. Having updated (halfheartedly, true, but still) yesterday, I've not much to add at this point. But I figured that writing from Bangkok gives the entry a cache of its own. So much so that I don't even really have to write anything. And I haven't! Whee!

Hm. Larium-induced psychosis? Urgh. I took my weekly malaria pill this morning. I didn't experience any side effects last week but who knows when the suicidal thoughts, nausea or bad dreams will start?

Today we went to the temple of the Golden Buddha (Wat Traimit), where a 5-ton golden Buddha sits. About forty years ago, a stucco statue fell from a crane, cracked, and revealed the solid gold underneath. It's theorized that the statue was covered to protect it from marauders... way back when. (Lonely Planet says that it was during the late Sukhothai or Ayuthaya period, but I'm too lazy to look up when those periods were. Sorry.) The face of the Buddha was, as it usually is, mezmerizing. Why is that? Is it just me, or do you also feel a sense of peace looking at his face?

After Wat Traimit, we went to the Teak Mansion, a Victorian-style three-story mansion built for Rama V, the king of Thailand who died from kidney cancer in 1910. I know this fact because the Thai guides repeated it about every 4 minutes on the English language tour. The mansion is quite beautiful. I wish I could have understood the guides better, but their accents and the large size of the tour group made it difficult. Being in the completely western-style mansion (boasting the first indoor western bathroom in Thailand!) made me think of my old academic interest, imperialism. The mansion was built in the late 19th century. In Korea at about the same time, the Joseon royalty were also adopting western technology and such, like cars. And... oh, I was going somewhere with this, but it's too hard... on vacation. Mind included. Will come back to it at some point.

I can't believe it's Dec. 23 -- there is a fake Christmas tree in the hotel lobby, and we just ate at an expat bar where there was a fake white tree on the bar, but it doesn't feel like Christmas at all. This is good. Have I mentioned how much I hate the holidays? There's always some sort of family drama going on, and not that there isn't drama at other times of the year, but around the holidays you feel like there shouldn't be drama, because it's Christmas for chrissakes, dammit, Christmas!

We had originally scheduled to be in Ankor Wat on Christmas, but flight hub realities led us to move stuff around. Now we are -- wait a sec. I'm behind again. We were going to be in Ankor Wat, but then we changed the plan and were going to be on the beach in Sihanoukville on the 25th, but then we changed plans again and we'll actually be flying from Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia) to Ankor Wat on the 25th. So, ancient temples for Christmas after all.

This morning we were both a bit down, as we realized that no, we can't see everything we want to see in three weeks. Boooo!!! So we decided to hit the areas on the cusp of overtourism first (Cambodia and Laos) and then head over to Vietnam, which is much more developed.

I've been trying to use Thai occasionally, like with taxi drivers who speak hardly any English. I didn't know before coming here that Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese and Cambodian (I think), are, like Chinese, tonal languages. Thai sounds a little bit like Chinese, but softer. It's fun trying to swing my voice up and down and straight and low and high, but also terrifically hard. English romanizations of Thai words don't really swing it. It is really fun, though. I would like to learn Chinese some day.

It's such a luxury being able to stay in touch with people while I'm over here. That, as well as being with Wendy, who stayed here for a whole month during her last trip to Thailand, takes a bit away from the feeling that I'm in a foreign country. It's odd. During the first cab ride, from the airport to the hotel, I felt like I was in Los Angeles -- the traffic, the smog, the family sitting in the bed of a truck... Bangkok is like any other big city in the world, and big cities share more in common with each other, even if they're in different countries, than, say, a rural farming town and a big city in the same country. It's been fun here, and I was dazzled by the golden Buddhas and the fantastical architecture, but I'm also looking forward to seeing something totally different. I think Cambodia and Laos will probably hold quite a few surprises for me.

Bangkok

Internet cafe in Bangkok. It's Sunday night, and we're in the really touristy part of town, where Thai people are few and far between. By the recommendation of the travel agency in Seoul where I booked our flights and hotel here, we are NOT staying with the rest of the Americans, Europeans and other sightseers, but rather in a slightly remote but extremely posh hotel. The Grand Hotel is grrrrand indeed. But only $50 a night!

On Friday night, even though we were dead tired, we went out to a fabulous night market -- Suan Lum Night Bazaar -- where I tasted heaven in the form of a spicy papaya salad so piquante that my mouth burned for 20 minutes after. A bit like a German biergarten, the Night Bazaar is composed of a large square in which tables are packed. You get your food from the dozens of vendors lining the square, and order your beer from the skimpily clad teenagers waiting on the tables.

After eating, we roamed the stalls behind the square and I learned how really, really cheap merchandise is here. "And these are the really overpriced prices that they tell tourists," Wendy advised.

Yesterday we did the touristy thing and went to see the Royal Palace and a couple temples. The Royal Palace is a place of great respect for Thais, and accordingly, all visitors have to wear the appropriate clothing. Which meant that Wendy, who was wearing a pair of shorts, had to borrow a sarong to wrap around herself. (They lend the sarongs for free.) I have a picture of this, but Wendy has forbidden me to post it online. Even though it's really kind of cute. Oh well. You'll just have to ask me to email it to you. (Just kidding, Wendy!)

Wendy is sitting next to me doing her email. I just started writing something about her but she just looked my way so I had to erase it. Just kidding. Oh god, this reminds me of college when we first discovered instant messaging and Rosa and I would sit next to each other in the computer room and instant message each other for two hours. Okay, quit it.

So after the Royal Palace, in the same compound, we saw the temple of the Emerald Buddha. This Buddha is made of jasper, not emerald (source: Wendy), and has three outfits -- the rainy season outfit, the cold season, and the hot season. The Thai king personally changes the Emerald Buddha's outfit when the time comes each season.

After the Emerald Buddha, we went to see the famous reclining Buddha. Forty-six meters (source: Wendy) of gold-plated enlightenment. This is the image that is quintessentially Thai, and it is totally all that you think it is and more. Absolutely stunning.

I should write more but Wendy's done and my back's starting to ache from sitting in this uncomfortable chair. In brief: after reclining Buddha, dinner by the river and across from Wat Arun (Temple of the Dawn) as the sun set; a riverboat to the famed Oriental Hotel, where we were refused entry because of Wendy's shorts and my sandals; and an hour-long Thai massage which was weird at first but eventually relaxing.

And today? Hours at the biggest street market in Bangkok, where silk sells for $5 a yard and you can find anything, ANYTHING you need. Outfits for dogs? Check. Siamese fighting fish? Check. Sculptures? Check. 1940s-era U.S. cigarette cards? Check. Electric violins? Yessir. In fact, the guy playing the electric violin is accompanied by a 66-year-old singer and six other violinists hanging out around the stall, and you end up striking up a conversation with him, after which you are so charmed by the music and the talk that you go and buy 5 beers for them. And then? You buy 5 bazillion yards of silk for a friend, decide that you too want a bazillion yards of silk, discover that the saleswoman knows the English word "sage," amazingly enough, though inaccurately, as she was actually referring to chartreuse. In any case, you get a great deal of silk and manage to finagle a 50 percent discount on a silk bag as well, all of which is of course at a price 100 times higher than Thai people would buy at, but oh well, you're American and you're on vacation, and $5 a yard is really a pretty good deal.

Okay, gotta go. Will write again as soon as have the chance.

Tired but Ready (I hope)

Was late an hour to pick up Wendy at the airport last night, but like the resourceful good trooper she is, she blinked nary an eye, somehow persuading the information desk employee to look up my blog so that she could find out my cell phone number. Which was a good thing, since I hadn't taken into account the rush hour traffic that turned the normal one-hour trip to the airport into two and a half hours.

Today we spent far too much time at the travel agency trying to figure out hotels for Bangkok, then finally headed over to Insadong, where we looked at Korean craftwork and art. After a puzzling lack of street stands offering it, I finally found a vendor selling silk worm larvae, and I'm sorry to report that Wendy quailed at the prospect of eating such a foul-smelling and looking dish. To be fair, she was pooped out, which makes grotesque foods even harder to face. Well, we still have Jan. 12 to try it out.

Because Wendy took two weeks to figure out exactly what to bring on our three-week journey, it took me 20 minutes. I just packed similar clothes that she did. I didn't have to pack any mosquito repellants, electrolyte replacements, iodine tablets, soap, shampoo, etc., since she did. It's good to travel with Wendy.

Tomorrow we set off around 7 am for the airport for three weeks of warm weather, good food, malaria-ridden mosquitoes, beautiful temples, colonial architecture, dazzling beaches, polluted rivers, and wacky adventures. I will try to log on once in a while to update, but I can't promise anything. Have a safe and restful holiday season, all. I'll be thinking of you.

Now it is time on Sprockets when we drink

Yesterday I spent an absurd amount of time at the travel agency, waiting for my ticket to get dropped off, and then for my hotel information to download. I also didn't get around to the Cambodian embassy. Annoying!

After the graduation ceremony, our class had lunch, which was pretty quiet, since most of my classmates had been out til midnight or 1 or 2 drinking together. But not me, because I had another appointment. Boo!

After lunch, I hung around the school for no good reason, just sitting at the window with a couple of other classmates who drifted hither and thither, also for no good reason. Then we started feeling depressed. Wah!

Then I planned to go to taekwondo for the last time this year, and I didn't. Weak!

But instead I went out with Gyung-li and Midori, who graduated the language program yesterday, and had barbecued pork, soju, coffee, beer, lemon soju and another kind of liquor at, respectively, a BBQ place, a karaoke bar, and a regular bar. Score!

An excellent time was had by all last night. None of us had been out drinking for quite a while, so we had a rockin' good time. I ended up sleeping over at Gyung-li's apartment, on the delightfully warm floor (heating systems usually consist of hot water pipes under the floor, you remember). And even though I woke up with my contact lenses like, stuck to my eyeballs, I feel in good spirits. Today is my last day of work and this evening Wendy is arriving. And the beat goes on.

Over.

The term is over! Yay!

I read an article today written by a professor of sociology at Ewha Womans University about "lonely goose fathers." These are fathers who stay behind in Korea to work and support their children, who are studying abroad. The mothers of the children go with them -- these are truly children, too; junior high school or high school kids, and maybe even some grammar school kids -- to take care of them.

In October, one of these lonely goose fathers died alone at home. His two high school-aged children and his wife were in Canada. He had undergone heart surgery several months earlier and was under considerable financial and emotional distress as he worked to support the kids and mother in Canada.

This death got a lot of people talking about this goose father phenomenon, which not rare in Korea. (Note the turn of phrase I used there, indicating that I don't know how widespread it is. How clever I am!) The importance placed on the education of children is so high that this is not considered weird at all. Yet.

I'm off in 5 minutes to do some Christmas shopping for the family, and to have dinner with Vivian, my Taiwanese friend. It really doesn't feel like Christmas, even with the decorations in the stores and such. My Korean friend Hyo-jong said that the Christmas spirit seemed particularly deadened this year.

Tomorrow, I pick up the plane tickets, go to the Cambodian embassy, and sign up for a tour of the DMZ for when Wendy and I get back. All in separate places, naturally. And all after the graduation ceremony. Two of my friends from spring quarter are graduating, and will get all decked out in hanboks (traditional Korean dress) for the ceremony.

This morning I went to the hospital to get shot up with Hep A and B vaccines, plus get a prescription for malaria prevention pills. Asan Hospital, the second largest in Seoul (and therefore Korea), has an international clinic, where the nurses and doctors all speak English and help non-Korean speakers to a sort of ridiculous degree. The amount of respect shown to foreigners would be fine (I got to go to the head of the line to make an appointment, for example) -- if that same respect were shown to fellow Koreans. That it isn't is wack.

Oh, and if this entry seems crazy, blame it on the Lariam (malaria meds). Among its possible side effects: nausea, bad dreams, and difficulty sleeping. "However, people taking Lariam occasionally experience severe anxiety, feelings that people are against them, hallucinations... depression, unusual behavior, or feeling disoriented. ... Some patients taking Lariam think about killing themselves, and there have been rare reports of suicide. It is not known whether Lariam was responsible for these suicides." Well, so far, I do feel a little loopy, but that could just as easily be from hunger as from the drug. Unless the "malaria drug" is not really for "malaria" but actually is an attempt to control my thoughts.

C'mon! Cheap humor is fun!

Over. Almost.

Except for my interview test on Monday, finals are over. I feel drained. I was at school until 10 last night, studying with Lewis, the New Zealand sheep shearer. Fellow westerners that we are, we struggled through untranslatable grammar forms and piles of vocabulary until the security guard came to lock the classroom for the night. Upon reflection, we really would have benefitted from having a Japanese or Chinese student around. Ah well. It's over.

I go on a brief trip tomorrow to the south of the peninsula, along with students from my dad's college exchange program. Five hours on the bus. Hm. But seeing a new part of Korea will be nice. Somehow, somewhere along the line, I went from being a tourist to just someone else who studies, works, has dinner with friends, sees movies, and fights to get on the subway here. Just like any other Seoul dweller.

I know how the subway works, I can negotiate buying multi-segment tickets at the travel agency, I know where to get the cheapest kimchee stew in Shinchon -- I can even tell you the storyline of the most popular TV show. When did this all happen? And what happens next?

Last weekend I saw Love Actually with Yuri, who is not Russian. (Yuri is a girl's name, though I did meet a Korean Canadian man with that name who, with no small amount of frustration, said that he was forever explaining to Koreans that his parents gave him a Russian name, not a girl's name.) The reviews are generally right -- overloaded, but a considerable amount of charm. If anyone's seen it in the States, though, can you tell me if there is indeed a storyline with two porn movie stand-ins? I keep reading about that couple in the reviews, but it wasn't in the version I saw here, so I don't know if they cut it for Korean audiences or if it ended up on the director's cutting room floor.

Yuri and I went to a great Italian restaurant after the movie (food's not that great, but atmosphere is almost European) and had wine and cheese, both being hard to find here -- at least, good wine and cheese (and the cheese wasn't even that great, actually) -- and it was lovely.

Hm. What else? My grandmother had back surgery and is coming home today (I think she's back by now). My great-aunt asked me to call if I'm going to have dinner at home, so she can make the rice to coincide with my arrival. Freshly made rice is best, she says, and I agree, but I eat two-day-old rice with equanimity and I don't think it a big deal in the least. I just don't like having to be accountable, I think.

Oh, jumpy entry! Why dost thou have to be so hither-thither and unconnected? Forsooth, mayhap it is because I am empty of stomach and likewise of brain. Verily, I shall get me some nourishing food stuffage. Etcetera, etcetera and exeunt.

Reasons, not excuses!

Mad busy with studying for tests, getting ready for the trip, dealing with piles of work at work (the nerve!), and two very unfortunately timed editing requests, both of which I will probably need to turn down if I want to pass my language tests. So probably no new entries until Friday (my time).

Thanks to all my New York-dwelling friends who wrote to reassure me that they're not freezing to death in their apartments. I got your messages, and I will write back as soon as I can.

And the han don't stop

I wrote previously that the word han was "originally used to signify the kind of sadness that would cause a dead person to linger in 'this' world, becoming a guishin, or ghost, rather than departing for 'that' world." Almost, but not quite. Cross out "originally" and replace everything after "used to" with: "signify the kind of sadness that stays with a person even after death. According to my dad, interpreter of all things Korean, han is usually paired with a verb that means, roughly, 'undigested'. So if someone with han dies, their han remains. Unchanging, undigestable, unresolvable."

Miss D writes in to add that the writer of the West Wing episode is Korean American.

In totally other and unrelated news, I studied a few hours with Lewis, the NZ sheep shearer, and had lunch with him and Antoine, the Frenchman. If you recall (which you probably don't, because it's only significant to me), in the summer, I ended up somehow sleeping on the floor in Lewis' room with both of these gents, and smiling up at the ceiling at the absurdity of it all. So at lunch today, I thought of that, and smiled again, as we devoured our food and listened (not by choice) to Christian songs on the music system.

After studying until 4 or so, I went to my Chinese friend Gyung-li's apartment and hung out there a little bit before heading out to do some shopping. Picked up some excellent sweaters for less than $10. (We'll see if they hold out after the first washing!) Freakin' cold, but a good time. We also met the world's most honest salesman, who, when Gyung-li was choosing between two pairs of Nikes, said, "To be totally honest, this pair is totally unpopular, and no one wears it." Gyung-li and I burst into laughter, and the sales clerk, probably a college student, broke into a smile. "I'm just saying," he said.

Gyung-li didn't buy the shoes. But an hour later, after buying several other things, we went back to the store and she bought the shoes anyway, asking, "Please don't tell anyone at school that I bought a pair of shoes that no one else would be caught dead wearing."

Translational Difficulties

There are a lot of Korean words, as you might guess, that you can't translate into English and vice versa. Someday I'll write about those words. But today I'll just introduce one: han.

I've been meaning to write about this one for a while, ever since I read the Television Without Pity recap of a West Wing episode that aired in October. The episode was about a North Korean pianist who gives a concert in Washington, DC, and asks President Martin Sheen for asylum. Martin Sheen doesn't exactly say yes and he doesn't exactly say no -- he just says that because there are some delicate secret negotiations going on with the North Korean government, he can't help directly, and that the pianist needs to decide for himself what to do.

Putting aside the extreme unlikelihood of a North Korean pianist getting that close to the Prez, I'll harp on the definition of a word the pianist uses to describe his state of mind to Martin Sheen. Verily, it was han. He doesn't explain it to the Prez, he just asks Martin if he knows the word, and then plays a very sad song on the piano. Later, the Prez says this to a staffer:

"There's a Korean word, han. I looked it up. There is no literal English translation; it's a state of mind -- of soul, really. A sadness. A sadness so deep no tears will come. And yet still, there's hope."

Very nice, very topical, very culturally aware. And wrong.

Han is indeed a deep, deep sadness. The word was originally used to signify the kind of sadness that would cause a dead person to linger in "this" world, becoming a guishin, or ghost, rather than departing for "that" world. There's a story about a Goguryo era general who died in battle, but whose coffin could not be lifted by his soldiers until his wife came to say that he should come back in peace to his homeland. The weight of han was lifted after his wife spoke, and the soldiers were able to then carry his coffin back.

Han is an interesting concept, and I'm delighted to see a Korean word introduced on network TV in the States. But. Han does not include any hint of hope. None. It's sadness, through and through. Deep, terrible, unhealing sadness.

Now, what the writers may have meant, if I want to give them credit, is that the concept of han in Korean culture is often paired with the effort to overcome the sadness. Korean songs or plays or whatnot may feature someone suffering from han and their struggle to resolve it. But han in of itself doesn't come close to including any kind of ultimate, faint hope.
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Random factoid: the Japanese do not have Christmas off. They do, however, have a holiday celebrating the sea.

Reminders

I went to taekwondo for the first time in 9 days, and it showed. Felt good though. There are two new students, both foreign. One is a nice Canadian (wait, is that redundant?) who teaches English. When I said my name, she said that the director had mentioned me to her; apparently he said that I was very nice and that he wasn't sure if I should be called a girl or a woman. (Britney Spears shout out?)

A couple of people said hey, it's been a while, and I felt sort of validated, like hey! You noticed I wasn't around!

I've been waffling about paying for this month, because I'll be taking off on the 20th to go to Southeast Asia, and I've got finals and stuff, but I'm really glad I went; my mood flipped from kind of blue to bitches brew.

On the walk home from the subway, I noticed three things that reminded me, yes, hk, we're not in Kansas anymore.

1. The live seafood in the tanks outside a restaurant just steps away from the station. King crabs, unearthly, squat and ominous, in one tank, and several squid, ubiquitous in Korea -- it's a very common side dish for drinking, like peanuts -- repeatedly and futilely surging up against the walls of the tank, hoping to escape, I guess. Felt kinda bad for the squid, probably because they're kinda cute.

2. A few steps away, there was a guy selling fresh peanuts out of a flatbed truck. Piles of shelled peanuts heaped up on boxes and lit up by a generator.

3. A glance down the alley market was rewarded by the sight of another flatbed truck half-filled with Napa cabbages (the kind you make kimchee with). The stack was probably my height.

It's not that you can't see live seafood or truck produce in the States, it's just that it's so common here, and right in the capital city.

Marriages and Music

My high school friend Kanaka, whom I was supposed to wed if we were both still single at age 50, just got engaged! My fallback is gone, and I'm very happy about it. We weren't really a good match, anyway... and my, these grapes are sour! (Just kidding.)

I got the email yesterday, and was touched that he asked if I'd be around in the fall of 2004 for the wedding. My immediate thought was, "Good lord, how could anyone know what their plans will be two years in advance?" And then I realized it was next year. Like, less than a year from now. I feel like someone keeps increasing the speed of the treadmill, only I can't see them.

Yesterday, after a somewhat weepy afternoon (for no apparent reason), I roused myself enough to go to a classical music concert that my office sponsored for foreign residents in Seoul. Quartet 21 is a four-person Korean classical music group. They played Haydn and Dvorak before being joined by a pianist for a Shumann quintet.

The hall where they performed, Miral Complex, is a brilliant building, distinguished by the use of ceramic artwork as sound diffusers. I know nothing about acoustic science, but I know that getting good sound acoustics in a hard-surfaced room is tough to do, and to my amateur's ear, the sound was perfect. I don't know how they did it, but the effect was cool, arty, and modern. Go Seoul!

And the sound -- I don't know why this is either, but in the past few years or so, whenever I've gone to see a classical music concert, I have to fight back tears in the opening movement of the first piece. I always forget how beautiful strings sound in a concert hall, how smooth and sweet, silky and rich, like melted chocolate, or a swathe of silk rippling in a breeze. Last night was no exception. I just gave up and let the tears fall down.

I can't figure out why I was so moved last night. I felt like I understood the music (none of which I'd heard before) and could appreciate it in a way I couldn't before. How could I have missed this before? I thought. How can I have spent so many years not appreciating this? The hush of the hall after the one of the movements in largo was the quietest moment I've experienced in many months.

Maybe it's getting older that does it. Appreciating music, appreciating friends, appreciating time to study, being interested in the world and its happenings. Every stage is better than the last.

I wanted to make the above insightful and profound but I'm too tired to try. Must go to bed and try to catch up on some sleep. 'Nite.

Hospital Visits

My grandmother entered the hospital last week, a day or two after moving. It was a scheduled visit, as she has been having back and leg problems for some time. It seems that her sciatic nerve is the problem, and she may have to have surgery. Not a life threatening situation, but a major discomfort for her, of course. Fortunately, her sister, living sons (2) and daughter all live nearby and have been visiting her in succession, as well as various grandsons and daughters.

I visited her briefly on the way home with my dad tonight, and the hospital, the second largest in Seoul, didn't remind me of the Washington Hospital Center until I sat next to my grandmother's bed in the room she's sharing with five other people. We only stayed 10 minutes or so, but in the elevator going down to the car, I leaned back against the steel wall and remembered visiting Nina last year -- god, no, now a year and a half ago. Funny how a hospital -- any hospital -- will trigger memories of other hospitals.

Read Bel Canto last night, late into the night. There's nothing like being gripped by a story so much that you don't want to stop, even when you really should be finishing some odious editing for your job that you promised you'd have done by the next day or doing Korean homework. From now on I'm going to have all my reading and all my clothes pre-selected by friends and family.

Props to BC, who today taught me what "the steel beam of sleaze through the American psyche" is.