Weekend trip

I went to Ichon this weekend with Etsuko and Mayo. Ichon is not far from Seoul -- practically a suburb, actually -- and it is famous for its pottery.

The all knowledgeable Moon Handbook devotes only two pages to Ichon, but I can sum up its major drawing points even more succinctly: pottery, rice, and hot springs.

On Saturday, we got into town around 11:15 am and had seafood stew for lunch at a place where the owner, upon us asking him how to get to the Ceramic Village, drove us to our desired destination. (I think we should add that as a drawing point: really, really nice people.)

This has happened to me before -- when Maiko and I were in Jindo and needed to find an ATM, the owner of the restaurant we had dinner at drove us to the bank and then back to our motel. This also happened to me once in Prague over 10 years ago, when Lara and I were lost at night in a deserted part of town and came upon a pair of policemen, who, although they couldn't understand us and didn't know where our lodgings were, drove us around and around until they found the place. Does this happen in the U.S.? Etsuko said it wouldn't happen in Japan.

I asked for the card of the restaurant when we were getting out of the owner's van, saying that we'd recommend the place to our friends, but he didn't have any on him, and waved us off. And then drove back in the direction we'd come from -- he'd gone out of his way to drop us off!

At the Ceramic Village (one of about three in the area), we found a really lovely place to make our own pottery. I say "our own pottery" as if we really made it, but in fact, the wife half of the husband and wife team owners very skillfully managed to make us feel as if we'd actually had a part in making our cups and bowls when she was doing all the work. That's quite a gift. No one wants to go home with an ugly clay product, even if it's 100 percent "self-made" -- virtually everyone would prefer to have a smaller part in the process and have a beautiful product at the end. Smart proprietors, they were.

It was really fun to play with the clay and the wheel, and then spend nearly two hours decorating our vessels with drawings and stamps and such. The place was really charming -- a spacious room on the second floor, with a walkway all around, white curtains neatly and artistically pinned together, flower pots on the walkway. Even the bathroom, located outside, was cute -- someone had "drawn" flowers on the walls with blue and white twine, and the five feet or so leading up to the door was covered with gravel and brick stepstones. It looked like the couple, in their 50s or so, lived in the back rooms. Artisans always do seem to lead such elegant, beautiful lives.

I decorated my rice bowl with a cosmos flower pattern, and wrote my name, date, and the city name inside. At the last minute, though, I realized I had written Incheon, the name of another city, instead of Ichon. I managed to correct it, and we had a good laugh about that.

After making our cups and bowls, we sampled some of the famous Ichon rice at a nearby restaurant. It was really tasty, but I can't decide if that's because I was really hungry or if it indeed was better than your average rice.

There were two dogs outside the restaurant, one tied up and the other, a puppy, romping around freely. The tied-up dog insisted on barking when we were obviously not going to do her or her domain any harm, so I stepped right up to her, folded my arms, and stared down disapprovingly. She looked up at me for a minute and slunk into her doghouse, quiet. Heh.

Actually, I kind of felt bad about asserting my alpha dog status like that, but then I reminded myself that there's always an alpha dog in a pack, and it's not like the beta dogs feel hurt about it.

We caught the bus back into town, and strolled along the drag where the shops were, buying this and that randomly (earrings for US$1.60! cropped pants for US$10.75! track pants for US$6!) before deciding that it was getting late and that we should hie over to the Miranda if we wanted to get in our spa time tonight.

The Miranda is a big, ugly, yellow behemoth of a hotel that is mentioned in all the guidebooks. The rooms were too rich for our blood (130,000 won, or US$111, when we could and did get a room for US$30? I don't think so!), but I suspect the hotel gets most of its money from its other attractions, namely, the hot springs, the nightclub, the swimming pool, the sauna, and the karaoke bar. Maybe the barber shop brings in a share of the revenue too.

In any case, we paid our 9,000 won (US$7.75) and tried out all the different pools. The charcoal one was interesting (and charcoal is reputedly good for the skin), but the smell lingered in our skin for some time, even after the dip in the mint pool (I felt like I was in a large teacup), the Chinese herbal pool, the rice wine pool, and the clay pool. The nicest experience, though, much like when Maiko and I went to Asan, was lying in the pools outside and looking up at the night sky. There was a pine-scented dry sauna outside too, and I alternated between going in there and getting baked by the heat (must be some latent longing for L.A. summers) and standing by the tub where Etsuko and Mayu were sitting with their heads back and eyes closed.

The next day, Sunday, was a bit more frustrating. We were first planning to go see the tomb of King Sejong, but the getting there seemed so complicated that we gave up on that. Then we decided to see a ceramic expo, but no one seemed to know how to get there, or what we meant, so after standing around at the bus station for 20 minutes, we finally just boarded a bus that another bus driver had told us to get on. A nice woman who spoke Japanese communicated to Etsuko and Mayu that we needed to go elsewhere (and kept talking to me in Japanese until I slowly and clearly said again that I wasn't Japanese), so we hopped off the bus, and then were at loose ends again, because there were no signs and no indication of any expo nearby.

I ended up asking what looked like a high school or college student, who provided us the most clear explanation of any of the various people who'd tried to help us out (people were either very nice and misinformed, or not nice and dismissive). We probably meant Seolbongsan, and the best way to go was by taxi, she said. So we went to a group of taxi drivers, who insisted on looking at our tourist map, declaring that there wasn't really anything on there worth looking at, and then bundling us into a car and on our way.

Seolbongsan was actually worth going to -- built in 2001, it's a collection of museums and playgrounds and exhibits on Seolbongsan Mountain. We dutifully looked through a museum before succumbing to hunger and fatigue, which led us first to the food vendor, and then to a pavilion near a carpark, where we all three fell asleep, cooled by the breeze off the artificial (I think) lake and the rustling of the leaves.

Yikes -- time for me to get to work. Well, that was all, anyway. We ate dinner near the bus station and endured a very jerky ride home, and that was the weekend. As One-Armed Maggie would say, very satisfying.

Cannot. Stop. Buying. Brassieres.

Yes, you read that right. I'm sorry to use this blog as the forum for announcing my newfound addiction to underwire (though obviously not so sorry as to stop myself), but there you have it.

In the course of an average year, I might buy one bra, though that's not by any means a sure thing. In the past two weeks I've bought 9.

Every time I take the subway home from taekwondo, it's there. Waiting for me at Wangshimli Station. The big, cardboard boxes sitting on the plastic stools. Piles of orange, blue, red, green, peach, sage, black, and purple (and interesting combos like blackandpurple and peachandgreen -- which actually looks better than it sounds...) Most are tackier than the lady I saw yesterday at the hospital, who had cranberry red hair and gray roots.

I root through the heaps of lace and wire, surface with two or three in my hand, and justify it all by saying that I'll never have a chance to buy $1.80 bras again.

I'm right, aren't I?

I'm like the addicted gambler in that Twilight Zone episode, who, even when he locks himself in his room, hears the slot machine rasping out his name. I think he ended up self-defenestrating.

The bras. I hear them coming. They're coming, I tell you! No one is safe from their lacy grip! NO ONE!

AAAAAAAAAGGGGGG!

Today is Buddha's Birthday, and I saw a really terrible movie.

Last year, I announced in class that foreigners could make lanterns at the celebration for Buddha's birthday, and seven of us went to Insadong and made lotus-shaped paper lanterns. Two of those lanterns went up in a blaze of glory when we tried putting lit candles in them at night, destroying in seconds the work of two hours. Etsuko still laughs about it, assuring me that while the lantern-making was fun, the way it burned up suddenly in my hands was really funny.

Of those six friends, two have gone back to Japan and two to North America. Etsuko has a year-long contract to work in Korea, and Gyongli is majoring in business at a Korean university. And I, I am still here too. But this year I didn't go to Insadong, and I didn't make a lantern. Instead, I went to lunch and a movie with Yuri, and the lunch was good and the movie terrible, and after 20 months in a place, you tend not to do touristy things anymore. Cause it's home. You know?

Yesterday I went with Etsuko to our old language school to have lunch with a former teacher. Teachers kept walking by us and starting, because once you leave, you're usually gone. Like, thousands-of-miles-away-and-rapidly-forgetting-Korean-gone. There aren't too many people who stay for very long after they've completed language school, unless they're going through school to fulfill a work requirement, which usually prevents them from aimlessly visiting their old language school on an odd weekday.

I'd heard that they were offering a hanja (Chinese characters used in Korean) class this term, which had never been offered while I was there. (Okay, they did offer it, but in the past six months, when I actually did have time to take an additional afternoon class, not enough students were interested, so no class.) I asked and was granted permission to take the class for free, seeing that they were only meeting six more times.

Hey, that's 50 new characters for me, I figured, and so went to the first class in the afternoon. Loved it. God, I miss school. Learning hanja has been on my list of things to do for so long, I was ecstatic to be finally in a class doing just that. Not to mention that traditional Chinese characters (not the simplified characters that were introduced in mainland China 50 years ago) are fascinating to learn because they are originally pictographs. Built-in mnemonic devices!

I write "traditional Chinese characters" because simplified characters were introduced in mainland China 50 years ago, on the reasoning that the complicated traditional forms were too difficult to learn, contributing to the illiteracy rate. As Taiwan, which uses the traditional characters, still manages to have a healthy 95.8 percent literacy rate (as of Dec. 2003), it's not likely that the complexity of the characters had as much to do with the past illiteracy rate in mainland China as lack of money and resources did. (I think I read this in Lonely Planet China, so don't mistake me for being knowledgeable about this topic or anything.)

Just as a sidenote, Chinese and Korean come from completely different language families; Korean and Japanese are quite similar, and share some similarities with Finnish and Mongolian, but have completely different grammar structure than Chinese. This makes it all the more interesting that 60 percent of words in Korean come from Chinese. Weird, in'it?

Anyway, hanja class is fun. High school students here graduate knowing about 3,000 characters, the ones most often used in newspapers and formal documents. I think I can recognize about 100 now. Just 2,900 to go!

Really, I think that if I could take a break from Asia for a few months or a year and then come back here to study Chinese, I'd be, well, happy. Hm.

Testy

I don't know why, but I've been feeling vexed a lot lately. I wake up annoyed that my grandmother or great-aunt is up at 6 am and rattling dishes around. I stick my earplugs in, irritated at the way they don't completely block out sound. I wake up an hour or two later and don't want to leave my room because I don't want to hear high-decibel commentary from the grannies ("So! You're up!" "Are you going out today?" "What are you going to eat now?" "Where'd she go? Back to sleep?" "No, she's in the bathroom."), so I lie there, aggravated.

I'm bitter about having to leave the house an hour and ten minutes before I start work in order to get there on time. I'm cross because there are no empty seats on the train, and the car is immoderately cold or hot. I'm galled (and appalled) that KB hasn't written in almost two months. I am malcontent with the state of my family affairs.

I suppose what I'm really dissatisfied with is myself. I feel like I'm wasting time here, I miss school and the sense of purpose I had when I was attending, I don't like the fact that I'm going to law school in the fall, I'm disappointed for having had expectations of other people and then feeling down when they don't deliver. You gotta stop getting your happiness from other people, I tell myself, and you gotta start manufacturing your own. The hk factory of happy.

I did try this weekend to do some happy-making: finally finally FINALLY got my hair cut and re-permed straight (regret getting bangs, but happy with the sleek stick straightness), worked on my translation project, met friends for meals and chats.

I had an especially nice time lying around in the sun on Youido Island yesterday with Etsuko, snacking and talking about nothing. We ended up having dinner in Shinchon and, as she is wont to do, Etsuko on a whim called up an old classmate in Ulaan Batoor. Bayra left Seoul a year ago, and while Etsuko calls her from time to time, I haven't been in touch with her at all, so it was a pleasant surprise to chat with her briefly. She demanded to know when I was coming to Mongolia. I'd sort of put that idea in the Later-In-Life basket, but talking with Bayra last night, I pulled it out again and stuck it into the Farfetched-But-Hey-Who-Knows drawer.

On Friday night (sorry, not going chronologically here), I was feeling particularly cranky, mixed liberally with a great big tank of tired and depressed, and I found myself reluctantly going to a coworker's housewarming party in Insadong in part because the subway was so crowded that it was easier to stay inside than fight my way out at my stop.

I was awfully glad in the end, though, because this coworker has the most beautiful, charming house I've ever seen in Korea. It's a real house, not an apartment, and furthermore, it's a traditional, tiled-roof house of the variety you see in guidebooks and no longer in real life, except in government-designated heritage areas like Insadong. Upon entering the wooden gate, you step into a small courtyard, where my coworker had placed seven round stepping stones in the gravel, as a counterpart to the Big Dipper, which on a clear night you might be able to see in the patch of sky above. A spacious kitchen is the first room you see, directly across from the entrance. Clockwise around the courtyard, it connected by a sliding door covered in traditional paper to the bedroom, off which a tiny bathroom and storage room was positioned. The bedroom connected to the living room, which connected to a study. To the left of the entrance, there was a separate guest room, and on the left wall of the courtyard, the Chinese symbol for "double happiness" was inscribed. Benches around the courtyard offered the perfect places to sit and look up at the stars. There was even a tiny, tiny cellar and access to the roof as well.

This coworker bought the house and oversaw all the details herself, hunting for the perfect doorknobs, etc. She's a tall, always impeccably dressed woman in her mid-thirties, very good at what she does (managing art exchange and grant programs with foreign museums) and has perfect taste. Perfect, I tell ya! Look her up in the dictionary -- she's under "elegant." Or maybe "glamorous." She's one of those Beautiful People with Beautiful Lives. And now she has a Beautiful House. But she's also a really hard worker and doesn't have a touch of snobbery about her.

And I'm not sure why I spent a couple hundred words describing her and her house, but there you have it.

Love,
hk, vexed

I think I was still intoxicated when I woke up this afternoon at 12. But a very nice, clean non-hangover morning -- er, afternoon -- it was.

I'd like to go to sleep now, but I've got 25 pages more to go on the freelance job I was supposed to turn in today. Sometimes I wonder where all my time goes, and then I realize that I've actually been working a lot, for a supposed 12-hour-a-week worker. I usually work more than 4 hours a day at my day job. Then there's the fact that getting to work takes an hour and 10 minutes each way. If I'm doing freelance work at home, it actually does take me hours and hours to complete each job. It just doesn't feel like it, because I watch TV while I do it, or surf the net or something.

I've been lucky enough to be on the receiving end of a steady stream of freelance jobs thanks to my day job. But between that and the day job and taekwondo, which is a 2.5 to 3-hour commitment whenever I go, time just seems to fly away.

Anyway. Would like to write more but must finish this blasted essay.

Drunkenness

Oh yes. Very good. Went out with taekwondo students and master to a nearby college that was holding its annual festival (all colleges do this at this time of year -- no idea why), and drank lots of soju, followed up by the required visit to a nearby karaoke place, where I gulped down a couple beers, and had a lovely time singing the Korean songs I learned by studying studiously on bugsmusic.com.

The "rather attractive British man" I mentioned several weeks ago (the one who got married recently to a Korean woman who was his Korean instructor) was also in attendance, and as the two westerners in tow, we had a good time talking about various Korean idiosyncrasies (such as Korean masculinity, which isn't threatened by, say, wearing pink shirts, or hanging large teddy bears from their mobile phones, or perming their hair). Lovely time. Really nice to get trashed with friendly people all round who forgive all rudities (forgive me -- can't think of the word that means socially unacceptable behavior) on account of being foreigners.

Our taekwondo master was much surprised at the British man's having gotten married without telling him. British fellow explained to me that it was because they wanted to keep it as small as possible (even so, 470 people showed up, which was rather inconvenient, as there were 400 place settings). Throughout the evening, our taekwondo master kept referring to the fact that British guy had gotten married, and extracted a promise to invite all of us to British guy's house, where we are to drink lots of soju and beer. And western liquor (which is very expensive in Korea and regarded as rather fancy). He also joked that he would, tomorrow, let down gently the many women who had expressed interest in British man. Heh.

I made tentative plans for language exchange sessions with a 20-year-old guy who is studying to become an entertainer (they call them "talents" here, which means a person who acts, sings, does commercials, game shows, etc.) and a 25-year-old woman who needs to study English to get into military officer training school. I also sang, and drank, and made like I understood what the taekwondo master was saying, which worked about half the time. Did manage to translate successfully for British guy a bit, which made me feel useful.

Lovely, all round. I'm sure it was partly because Julian stayed til the end of the evening. Why is it that I only find Caucasian men attractive? I mean, seriously. What is with that? KB asked me that too, and I could only reply, with a sigh, "I've asked myself that many times, and I still don't know." Growing up in America, which tends to emasculate Asian men? Hm.

Our taekwondo master, as he is wont to do, waxed on about how we should get to know each other outside the classroom in order to grow close to each other, and also in order for the foreigners to have a reason to come back to Korea. From Julian I learned that our master was a Special Forces sort of whiz kid, which I have no problem believing. But he's also a very kind-hearted and generous man, and I'm really grateful to him for creating this sort of occasion. Cause you know, I need new friends. The thing you learn as an expat is that without the people, you're just a tourist.

Along came a spider

There's a spider floating in mid-air above the desk.

It's not a very big spider. It looks like an red ant with a weirdly long extra front leg. The left one must have gotten torn off at some point, which gave me pause -- I knew it was a spider because it was hanging from the lamp, but I miscounted the legs at first and had to peer closely at the little fellow to make sure it wasn't one of those nasty six-legged critters I fear and despise.

I don't mind arachnids, but I do hate insects. I used to be afraid of spiders too, but one day in college, Mr. Rocks ("and-we-liked-'em!") was sitting on the floor when down came a spider, floating right above him. I was all like, "Ew, kill it," but Mr. Rocks just tapped the spider gently, making it frantically crawl up its invisible line to the ceiling. After a moment, the spider came down again in front of Mr. Rocks' face, and he tapped it again. Up, down, up, down. I always had a soft spot for our eight-legged friends, seeing as they kill and eat our six-legged non-friends, but from that day forth, I wasn't afraid of them either.

Unfortunately for this little guy, that doesn't mean I'm content to have a web stretching from the lamp on the left side of the desk to the computer monitor on the right. Out you go into the night, my friend. I think the eatin' might be better out there anyway.

Buddhists don't go as far as Jains, who not only don't eat meat, but also abstain from vegetables that must be uprooted (carrots, onions, potatoes), since "vegetables grown underground are the depository of countless of small creatures" and because "the uproot of such vegetables definitely results in the destruction of plants and trees." This a really fascinating concept -- see the explanation for why grains and rice are "fully non-injurious foods" and why the ideal fruit is that which has already fallen off the tree, on this page.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, the spider has been deposited outside by my dad, who tries to practice the Buddhist principle of avoiding harming living beings. (How many "-ing"s can YOU stack in row? Step right up!) This is often misinterpreted as support for vegetarianism -- Buddha himself was not vegetarian. He advised that meat should only be eaten when it was not seen, heard or suspected that the animal had been specifically killed for the monk's consumption. (Thanks, Anthony Flanagan!) Which poses an interesting dilemma in today's world of industrial slaughterhouses -- we've got no direct connection to the animal being killed, but in the end, the cow/pig/chicken/goat/duck/buffalo is getting killed for whoever buys it, right?

Hey, I eat meat. ("Bacon tastes goooood," etc.) But I also don't kill spiders. So there.

Smoke

I've fallen into the habit of smoking a cigarette on the way home from the subway or the bus, but I always feel self-conscious doing so, like a teenager sneaking off to do something forbidden. It's acceptable, of course, for men of all ages to smoke in public, but I've yet to see a woman walking and smoking casually the way men do. The other day, when I went with Nina to the airport to see her off, I saw an elderly woman, elegantly dressed, light up and smoke next to an ashcan, and that was probably the first time I've seen a woman smoke out of doors.

It's okay now (as opposed to, say, 10 years ago), for women to smoke indoors in mixed company, at a bar or a coffee house. In such places catering to young people, I don't get a second glance. A few months ago, when two Japanese female classmates and I left KB's farewell party to get a bag of ice, we lit up, and a young man driving past in a truck probably gave himself whiplash when he did a double-take of us standing in front of a convenience store, smoking. And this was in Shinchon, one of the party spots in town, where you can go into any bar and see women lighting up.

I know full well that women have the same right as men to destroy their lungs, but I can't help but feel awkward when I do it in public. That night in front of the convenience store, I sarcastically yelled out, "Hello!" to the truck driver as he passed, annoyed and buoyed by a couple beers and the presence of two other smokers, but walking home in this quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of Seoul, I find myself using my bag as a shield to hide my cigarette when I pass people.

It's possible that if I spoke Korean better, I'd not feel so cowed by social expectations -- if I could at least defend myself against a derisive comment with a sharp retort, I might be more openly defiant about it. But as I can't, I walk and take quick drags and watch out for approaching pedestrians. I just don't want to deal.

No one has actually ever said anything to me when I've smoked in public, but it's a possibility. In a society where all older men are "uncles," all older women are "aunts," and all people of grandparent age are "grandmother" or "grandfather," you're a fair target for commentary. Korea is the most homogeneous country in the world, and people feel a strong sense of ethnic identity. In a sense, everyone's family here. A whole nation of parental figures.

Which is bad and good. "Just leave me alone," my American-bred, independence-loving side mutters sullenly. But I know that behind the meddling, nosy exterior of Koreans (mostly older men and women, not so much the Westernized youth), there's a deep well of jong.

Jong is a complicated concept, which can be translated in a number of ways: feeling; emotion; love; affection; sentiment; passion; human nature; sympathy; compassion; heart. It's the reason why an official at the immigration office might give someone the 7th extension on their visa, if that someone were to sob out a tale of wanting to get married to their Korean boyfriend but being stymied by his parents' disapproval. (Heard that tale from a Japanese friend.) Or why a store owner might complain loudly at a beggar and then hand her some food. (Saw that on a TV drama.) Or drive a friend and his daughter and his daughter's visiting friend to a place he's seen 50 times and wait while they tour around. (See the May 11 entry on Uncle Know-All.)

I don't remember who it was, but I heard a couple of Koreans talking about the practice of paying for the person behind them at a toll on a highway. They laughed about it. "Paying it forward" is a noble concept, but jong isn't about making the world a better place. It's about acting from the heart.

Bad Movies, A Musical Interlude, and Drinkin' with Granny

I didn't leave the house the entire day yesterday, just working on a freelance editing job and watching bad American movies on TV. Actually, The Faculty (1998) wasn't that bad -- it was one of those good bad movies, along the vein of Tremors or Dirty Dancing. It featured a weirdly high number of rather well-known actors -- Robert Patrick, Bebe Neuwirth, Piper Laurie, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Jon Stewart -- and now-famous Elijah Wood and Josh Harnett too. Not to mention Jordana Brewster, the daughter of a former Yale president and co-star of The Fast and the Furious. Why do I know all this? Well, partially because I have access to the internet (duh) and thus imdb.com, but also because I absorb and retain so much information about movies and actors -- even when I don't want to! It's a sickness. I attribute it to growing up in Los Angeles.

What else did I watch yesterday? Oh yes, the original Tomb Raider, which was another not-bad bad movie. Seeing Lara Croft run around the temples of Angkor was a little disconcerting -- when I went to Cambodia last year, I hadn't seen the movie yet, and in retrospect, the temples look a thousand times more majestic in real life. It was weird to recall me and Wendy climbing around Beng Melea and saying to each other, "It's a movie set. They obviously built it for tourists," because we couldn't quite believe how magnificent the ruins were, when in fact, the movie version of the temples pales in comparison.

Today, I also stayed home for all except an hour or so -- I was up until 4 am last night channel surfing (by the way, love that Discovery Channel!), so I woke up at 12 pm, spent half an hour trying to decide with my coworker whether it was worth meeting for 2 hours today, decided against it, and listened to CDs for another hour before shaking myself and becoming perversely productive by cleaning my room.

One of the CDs I listened to was Coldplay, which I haven't heard for about a year. Around this time last year, I was listening to Rush of Blood to the Head almost every day, whenever I went for a walk in Olympic Park. I would walk and listen and cry sometimes, trying to get through that awful, awful post-breakup darkness where you seriously contemplate cutting your heart out with a spoon, because it would have to hurt less.

It's still hard to listen to some songs on the album, but I can do it now (track 8 still brought tears to my eyes, though: "When the truth is, I miss you/Yeah the truth is, I miss you so/And I'm tired, I should not have let you go..."). It's strange to think that I will always associate breaking up with John with this record.

It's also strange to think that at this time last year, I was really, really grateful to KB and my Canadian doppelganger for just being in my life here, because they were like flashlights in the tunnel, reminders of the eventual light outside and concrete assistance in getting there. Track 7 always reminded me of them both, but especially KB, because of the title ("Green Eyes"): "'Cause I came here with a load/And it feels so much lighter since I met you..."

After cleaning and neatening up my room (which does wonders psychologically! I see why people do it!), I had dinner with my grandmother and great-aunt. My grandmother had bought some especially tender beef from the meat shop. "Meat on Sunday is the best, because they catch and kill the cow on Saturday," she said. "You can't get this kind of beef in barbecue restaurants, because there's not enough to sell in bulk like that."

She fried the beef on an electric pan on the table, and we ate the pieces with lettuce from the planters on the patio and young salad greens from the neighbor upstairs. A few minutes into the meal, my grandmother said, "Shall we drink some liquor? I'm going to have some liquor!"

Thrown for a loop, I asked, "You drink?"

"Oh, I drink quite well!" she replied cheerily. "Remember when I came to the States with your grandfather and we drank beer?"

Well, no. But I believe her.

She went to the cabinet and took out a two-liter water bottle about two-thirds full of a brown liquid.

"Try it," she said. "I made it."

"You made it?"

"Yeah. You take young pine needles and wash them thoroughly and salt them, and leave them for about a year --"

"A YEAR?"

" -- and a certain kind of berry in the mountains, and then you mix it with soju. Tasty, huh?"

And it was.

At the end of the meal, I asked my grandmother if she wanted to do a shot (bastardized in Korean as "one-shot"). "What's a 'one-shot'?" she asked.

"It's when you, uh, fill it to the top and--"

"-- and you drink it all at once," my great-aunt supplied.

"Why would you do that?" my grandmother wondered.

"I think it's to get drunk faster," I said.

"Okay!" So me and my 75-year-old grandmother clinked shotglasses and downed her pine-and-mountain-berry-soju.

And it was good.

Reason #3 to miss Korea:

A 10,000 won note is worth about US$8.50. With one 10,000 won note, I can buy three (yes, 3!)bras; have a nice lunch complete with stew, rice, 6 side dishes and a dessert drink; and still have enough over to buy a pack of gum. (Okay, the bras were on cutthroat bargain basement sale in the Wangshimli subway station, but still.)

I used to think I just wasn't the acquiring type, but now I know better -- it was just the prices holding me back. I am consumer, hear me roar!

At least until August, that is.

Anxiety

I'm tired. ("Hi, Tired! I'm Hungry!" Nyuk nyuk.) I dreamt last night that I was supposed to teach a class on American history, that it was the first time I was teaching, that I hadn't done one minute of preparation, and that I would have to wing it entirely. I kept half-waking up, disturbed and uneasy, before dropping back into sleep again. I only realized this morning that it was just a dream.

I don't go for all the Freudian dream analysis crap, but yo, I know an anxiety dream when I have one. And what do I have to be anxious about? Oh, perhaps the fact that Parental Unit 1 is arriving on Tuesday in Seoul and I'm going to meet her at the airport, after which I don't know where I'm supposed to take her. She expected to stay with Parental Unit 2 -- but didn't apparently discuss this with Parental Unit 2 (a tiny detail! nothing at all! purely trivial!) before buying her ticket. Parental Unit 2 has insinuated that she's not welcome at his abode, and Parental Unit 1 has no other place to go, given that she's dependent on PU 2's financial support, which, in a fit of pique, PU 2 has stated he is ending.

I don't want to be unfair to either PU, so in case you're thinking that either one is being unreasonable, let me just lay out the truth for you. I didn't want to have to tell you this, but... both PUs are completely, entirely, utterly, exhaustingly -- ooh, look, my coworker gave me a yogurt snack! it's so freakin' clever: half yogurt and half choco-puffy things, and the carton's split in the middle, so you fold it and the choco-puffy things fall right into the yogurt! cool! -- NUTS. Yes, folks, they seem like rational people on the outside, but it's a coverup for their essential craziness.

And as a result of PU madness, childishness, and general inanity, my aunt and uncle are not coming to Korea to visit.

Really looking forward to next week, I am. When did my parents become such children?

And now, a conversation with myself:
~Can I just ignore the whole thing?
~Yes! Run away, hk! Run away!
~But I did that before, and it manifested in the inability to trust people, depression -- you know, the garden variety DSM manual disorders.
~Yes, but -- PU! PU!
~Look, you can't just run away from problems anymore. You -- WE are practically 30 years old. We need to face up to disturbing things like our parents turning into vindictive 5-year-olds --
~PU! PU!
~ -- and us having to play the role of a freakin' marriage counselor, not to mention --
~PU! PU!
~ -- will you STOP THAT?!!!!
~Sorry.
[Sullen silence.]
~Okay, I'm sorry I yelled.
~Yeah, whatever.
~Do you think you might possibly HELP me in my attempt to be the only adult in this situation?
~Why can't bigbro be the adult? Then we can run away!
~Because he's busy making his millions, after which he can buy a freakin' house in Los Angeles for PU 1 and let us all live in peace.
~You really think it'll be that easy?
~It was a joke, you dumbass. Look, he's the Adult in America, so you have to be an Adult in Korea.
~Why can't the ADULTS be the adults in this situation?
~Is there any point to asking that?

Sleep, Drama, and Temples

If you are deprived of all external signs of day or night, your body adapts a circadian rhythm that is slightly longer than 24 hours. So over an extended period of time, you become completely off kilter with the real world outside your WWII bunker or other site of crazy sleep experiments.

Apparently, your sleep patterns can also be affected by the amount of light you expose yourself to -- like reading by a bright light at night, or using blackout curtains.

Last night I was up until 5 am, first watching two episodes of Sex and the City (season 4 is showing on cable here now) and then reading old recaps of the show on televisionwithoutpity.com. Thanks to an old black skirt of my grandmother's, which blocks out the irritatingly bright streetlight outside my window, plus my handy-dandy earplugs, I slept until 2 pm.

(The black skirt deserves a sidenote, which is this: a month or two ago, I was fretting about the brightness of my room at night and how my attempt of blocking out the light with tinfoil -- hey, it worked before -- hadn't worked. My dad got on the case and asked if my grandmother had any black material to put up. She dug around in her closet and came up with a long black skirt. "I was going to throw this out anyway," she said, "I wore it to your grandfather's funeral and my mother's funeral." "Is it okay to use it as a curtain," I wondered out loud. "Don't you want to keep it to use it again?" She shrugged. "Nah. The people I'd use it for are already dead!" she said with a laugh.)

(Sidenote to the sidenote: This doesn't mean that there are no more important people in my grandmother's life. It's more that she probably wouldn't go to their funerals. Last year, when my uncle died of cancer, my aunt didn't even inform my grandmother until the wake and cremation and burial were over; when she finally called from the last funerary stop, the temple, she said, "Yes, we didn't tell you because there was no need to cause an old person distress. It's all over now." As Korean-style funerals involve a lot of work on the part of the deceased's family members -- see my entries starting June 7, 2003 for more -- I can see why my aunt would have waited until after everything was finished to tell my grandmother.)

So yeah, I've been up for only about an hour and a half, but familial drama waits for no man, and when I opened my email 40 minutes ago, I found a lovely missive saying that my aunt and uncle, who were scheduled to arrive next Sunday, may not be coming to Korea after all. Why? Oh lord.

Well, remember when I was complaining about the annoying need to categorize my life on Harvard's financial aid application, and how I needed more than a little box to check in order to properly classify my parents' relationship? Yeah, I wouldn't remember either. The point is, my parents have a complicated and better-left-unexplained relationship (unexplained even to themselves, probably) that tends to flare up once in a while and bleed over into the lives of their closest family members, and mostly I try and am able to stay out of it, but sometimes it does the backstroke over to my inbox, pops up, and says Boo.

(Whoa, metaphor overload.)

I ramped up the frequency of my visits to taekwondo class this week, but no matter how fast my sidestep kick becomes, it'll never, ever be quick enough to avoid this kind of assault, much less knock it into oblivion. I just don't want to be involved. Is that too much to ask?

Well, yes. But I understand why my dad used to say -- seemingly non sequitur -- "You know, I used to want to become a monk." Avoid, evade, and duck.

Speaking of monks, I did want to write about what Nina called the once-in-a-lifetime experience of staying at a temple. Nina had brought the idea up last week after reading about it in the Lonely Planet guidebook, and when I mentioned it to a friend at work, she asked her mother, who gave her the number to a temple in Gyeongju. (Gyeongju is where me, Nina, my dad, and Uncle Know-All went last weekend.)

That temple was a bit too ramshackle for our tastes, so my dad spent the rest of the day asking waitresses, museum staff and random people if they knew of any temples with temple stay programs in the area. He eventually remembered that the temple he's affiliated with in Seoul was sending a delegation to stay at a certain temple about 30 minutes away from central Gyeongju, so we ended up driving to a place tucked away in the mountills (not quite mountains but more than hills) between the city and the ocean.

On the drive there, we heard frogs chirping (I know "croaking" is the usual onomatopaeic pairing, but they weren't), and when we got out of the car, we heard owls hooting. Nothing else.

This temple was a lot bigger and more beautiful than the one my friend had recommended, and we learned that they usually didn't host people off the street like us, but that my dad's persuasive powers had won the day. Nina and I slept in a large, bare room with that smartest of Korean inventions, the heated floor, and doors covered with traditional paper.

We woke at 3:20 am to attend the morning chant. It was pouring rain, which meant that the young monk beating a wooden gourd (mok-tak) was walking around and around the main prayer hall instead of walking around the temple grounds. Entering the hall, we bowed to three golden statues of Buddha and sat down on rectangular brown silk mats. The mats for the monks were scarlet.

Only two monks chanted that morning, both dressed in long gray robes, shaved heads gleaming. One beat a mok-tak, occasionally ringing a bell, as they both half sang, half chanted the prayers. After about half an hour, one of the monks left, and the remaining one repeated the name of the Amitaba Buddha, over and over, for a good 20 minutes: Amitabul, Amitabul, Amitabul...

The rain coming down outside and the monk's low, melodic chanting were hypnotic and peaceful and comforting and the clacking of wood against wood rang in my ears, and I wound up thinking all kinds of interesting thoughts about KB and John and the nature of happiness.

The chanting was over at about 5, and we got to sleep for a little under an hour before we went to get a simple vegetarian breakfast. Then we slept for another hour before taking off.

In the car, we learned from the Moon Handbook for South Korea (love love LOVE that book) that the temple was Girim-sa, one of the largest and most important temples of the Silla dynasty (668-935 C.E.). Renovated and enlarged in 643 AD (the book doesn't say when it was built), it played a vital role in the continuation of Buddhism in Korea, especially during the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910), when the Neo-Confucian power elite severely repressed Buddhism (this, by the way, is why most Korean Buddhist temples are located in the mountains -- besides being a nice place to conduct monastic life, temples and monks were not allowed in cities). During the Japanese invasion of the 1590s, Girim-sa was a command headquarters for warrior monks. The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bulguk-sa (a famous temple nearby Gyeongju and one of the three treasure temples of Korea), which was built in 751 C.E., was originally an adjunct to Girim-sa; today, the opposite is true.

We didn't know any of this when we were actually at the temple, which is sort of nice. We just appreciated the experience -- the quiet patter of rain, the tok-tok-tok of the wooden mok-tak, the upturned corners of the tiled roofs, the morning mist off the mountains. Can you miss a place in which you've only spent a few hours?

GUEST WRITER!

A special treat for you today: Nina agreed to let me post her two dispatches on her trip here. Without further ado, ladies and gents, a fresh new view on the wacky world of Korea.

Dispatch 1
Hello from Korea, where people eat silkworm larvae. I'm trying to get
up the nerve...

I am staying with the lovely Helen Kim, whom many of you know, and her family in Seoul, free from my boring gym existence and into a very different existence indeed.

Korea has leapt forward in so many ways, at such breakneck speed, that it seems to me the country needs to step back and breathe. The grandmothers Kim, age around 75, have lived through:
1) Japan's brutal occupation
2) the Korean War
3) several dictators
4) now: democracy
5) now: a very 1st world country, that in many ways is superior to ours in the US. Just an example...Practically everyone has high-tech cell phone, with features like superpopular digital cameras in them, mobile connections to the internet, and wonderful reception all the time, including in the subway. And 80% of households have DSL.
6) now: Just 10 years ago, people started getting divorced, and now Korea has the highest divorce rate in the world, except for ours truly.

Seoul is unnervingly ethnically homogeneous. As one Korean said to me, "If you have to find someone in a crowd, good luck!" In cosmopolitan Seoul, almost all the restaurants serve Korean food. Although they love Western brands, and revere people who speak English, Korea seems more Asian than Japan and interested in the cultural influence of China on its history. But altogether, Korea seems comfortable in its own, constantly changing, skin.

Love from a kimchi tourist,
Nina

Dispatch 2
Korean Glamour
Koreans are primpers. This is especially true for teenagers and twentysomething women, who use the digital cameras in their cellphones to make sure their makeup is perfect. Every two minutes or so. I learned how to tell if someone has permed hair, (almost everyone does, including many men), and Helen Kim tried to get me to get a perm too, as they're so cheap, but I wimped out at the last minute.

Gourmet, Korean-Style
I have immensely improved my wielding of left-handed chopsticking. Helen's grandmothers, like many Koreans, were worried about my delicate Westerner's insides when encountering Korean cuisine. Korean food is garlicky, spicy, and more complicated than Western food, with sometimes 20 different side dishes at one meal. But I liked it, especially Korean barbecue, which the country has made into an art form. I was especially amused to hear that the most popular gift on a bridal registry is a large refrigerator, different from your regular fridge, for your kimchi. That's because your kimchi would stink up your ordinary fridge, so of course you need to have a second fridge! Priorities, priorities....

DMZ Weirdness/Scariness
I went to one of the most tense and creepy places in the world. It is the Demilitarized Zone between the North and South Korea. There's an all-day tour given by the US Army, where you see downright odd North Korean behavior. Way disturbing. The Northern soldiers are walking around in some places, and you are not allowed to take pictures nearby, because the North might see you, assume that you are a spy, and start shooting. The last stop of the tour is a visit to the tunnel that North Korea was digging under the DMZ to the South. The South discovered the tunnel when it reached South Korea. When confronted with this little breach of contract, the North claimed it was a "coal mine." (There is no coal there.) Mostly the tour makes you nervous the whole time you're there, and for much of the days afterwards.

The Ancients
The final part of my visit was to the Southeast of Korea. We visited lots of beautiful royal tombs, palaces, and Buddhist temples. Helen's father arranged for a once-in-the-lifetime stay at a Buddhist temple with view of prayers that are not usually open to visitors. We attended chanting as the day began (for monks, at 3:30 in the morning), and walked around buildings that were built in the 12th century. What I learned: I know nothing about comparative religions, including my own. And: Korea is really old. And really proud of itself, as it should be. And: I have just begun to visit Asia. And I need to go back, soon.

I write this in Los Angeles, where thanks to the International Date Line, it is earlier than when my departing plane took off. So, I'm still in Korea, sort of. I wouldn't mind at all.

hk here again. Many thanks, Nina. We enjoyed having you here.

Uncle Know-All

Nina left yesterday after a long, looooooooong Sunday coming home from Gyeongju. It was Parents Day on Saturday, which meant that everyone whose parents live in a different city goes to visit said parents, resulting in terrible, turtle-pace traffic on Sunday up and down the peninsula.

It didn't help that Uncle Know-All took the wrong freeway onramp and unwittingly drove for 30 minutes in the opposite direction of Seoul when we left Gyeongju on Sunday afternoon. We ended up in the southern port city of Busan before he realized his mistake, and took another 30 minutes to find our way out of the city.

Uncle Know-All is an affectionate secret nickname for my dad's friend, who is prone to "self-serving bias error" (taking credit for successes but no blame for failures). (Sidenote: Why do I know this term for a principle of management? Because it was on the sample job knowledge portion of the Foreign Service Written Exam. Why was it on the FWSE? Because the testmakers amuse themselves by writing questions that have no possible earthly connection to anything even remotely related to the actual job you would do if you were selected for the foreign service. Why do they do this? Because they are fucked up, man. Fucked. Up.)

So we were on the road for a good eight hours on Sunday, inching along so agonizingly slow that I felt like I was going to fly out of my skin with impatience. Uncle Know-All, despite his predilection for making self-serving bias errors, was a trooper, complaining not at all about the long haul. Overall, I have to give Uncle Know-All major props, because he did a similar trip to Gyeongju a month ago when BC was in town, and didn't even blink about going again. Since he's seen them so many times, he didn't even go into the some of the sights we saw (Bulguksa Temple or the Gyeongju National Museum, for example), instead waiting without complaint in nearby coffeeshops.

Why would Uncle Know-All do this? Because he's an old-style Korean ajoshi (middle-aged or married man), which means he is loud, brusque, abrupt and by our standards rude, but at the same time patient, loyal, uncomplaining, self-sacrificing, and filled with a deep love and compassion for his friends and family.

This means that I suffer from extreme whiplash in his presence, because when he's asking: DO YOU KNOW WHAT GI-WHA IS? YOU DON'T KNOW? YOU DON'T KNOW EVEN THAT? IT'S A ROOF TILE, A BLACK ROOF TILE! and continuing on to a long explanation that has no connection to anything we have passed, seen, or heard in the last half hour, I fight desperate battles with impatience and the urge to kick something very hard. But when he drives without complaint for eight hours straight and waits for an hour outside the museum while we look leisurely around, I feel grateful. And humbled.

Uncle Know-All knows both my parents from college, and while he might boast for twenty minutes about how he was singularly responsible for getting them together, his love for them is far beyond anything we modern young folk could dream of in a friendship.

Well! I was going to write about our stay in the wonderful temple of Gi-rimsa, but that'll have to wait til next time. I shall try to be more regular in posting for the next two weeks, until my mother/aunt/uncle arrive for their 10 days in Korea. The fun don't stop, I tellya.

It's very green here in Seoul; also deliciously cool in the shade and warm in the sun.

Nothing particularly worth blogging about in the past few days, which hasn't stopped me in the past from writing empty fluff, but I'm feeling at loose ends these days and unable to focus. Nina and I went to Namdaemun Market the other day and bargained the price for a cute bag down from 35,000 won to 23,000 won (about USD$20) from a guy who then asked if I had a boyfriend and gave me his number. As I have not had much to report these days, I am actually considering calling him.

The things I do for this blog.

Also, I hate spring.

Fun sidenote: The guy asked if my last name were Park, reason being that his name is Park. Traditionally, people with the same surname and place of origin were not allowed to get married. According to this website, which may be a complete roster of lies for all I know, "today's legal definition of inter-clan marriage is narrowed to those within second cousins in order to minimize the potential constraints incurred by the traditional ban."

Ooh, just remembered two things I wanted to write about, but now have no time to do so. Damn. Okay, I'll jot them down here so I don't forget the next time: Lost in Translation and fitting in.

It's spittin' rain in Seoul today, one of those rainy spring days after which the sun comes out all "hey, what's up?" like it hasn't been gone for three days and you suddenly realize all the world has become violently green as the trees nonchalantly sway in the breeze and pretend they've been that leafy all along.

Nina is out shopping while I work. Hope she's not getting too wet.

-------------------
Warning: preachifying in progress

Another thing I'm going to miss about being abroad? This is sort of related to keeping perspective in regard to careers and noble life goals and shit, but I don't want to forget that America isn't the center of the universe. There's a whole wide world out there, and shock full of places and people and histories and foods and culture that are longer and richer and more awe-inspiring than the U.S.

At the same time, I don't want to forget that in practically every way that counts, America IS the center of the current universe. We're the richest, most powerful nation in the world, and our influence is EVerywhere. My coworker knows more about John Kerry than I do) because the outcome of our presidential elections directly affects people here. There are 69 Starbucks in Seoul alone -- 95 in Korea total. There's a monklet (a kid monk) on the top of Ankor Wat chatting up tourists in English because we've made English the language to know. When President Roh had a phone call with Bush, there were reporters and cameras there filming the call.

My Level 6 language teacher said that when she first arrived in the U.S. for her eventual four years there, she was surprised and a little scared about the absolute lack of care and interest that Americans had about Korea. "Koreans know a lot about America and have strong emotions toward it; Americans either didn't know or care about Korea, or if they did, resented the reports of rising anti-Americanism there. This land is so big and so powerful," my teacher thought, "that they can afford to not care. Koreans should know this."

I have two thoughts about this, both of which I've probably brought up before: 1. We can afford to not care for now, but knowledge is power too, and when others know you better than you know them, that can be a dangerous position to be in; and 2. power doesn't necessarily imply responsibility, but most religions and humanist philosophies agree that it should. I do too.

From taking the Foreign Service written exam two weekends ago, I learned again that the U.S. spends just over 1 percent of its federal budget on international aid, less than any other nation in its economic strata. When you grow up with the advantages (and I'm not saying everyone does in the U.S. -- lord knows a lot of work left to be done there, but that's a different discussion), doesn't it seem sorta of reasonable that you help someone else who had less? I hope I don't forget that that's true on an international level as well as domestic, and on a very grand scale (countries! continents!) as well as very small (spare a brother a dime, give a kid some time).

Buzz buzz
[N.B. Please note time of post. Late. Tired. Sense, she be a candle in the wind.]

Shopping at Ewha for shirts with weird English expressions, watching a reenactment of a Joseon dynasty coronation at the biggest palace in town, followed by drinking rice wine and eating seafood crepes/pancakes has resulted in a tired Nina and Helen. Much fun.

We talked a little bit today about spin, Nina and I did. You see, we both (but particularly Nina -- maybe it's the Harvard thing) have these superstar friends who are out getting plucked from postdoc positions to fill tenure positions at Ivy League schools, creating statistical programs that will be used by the CDC -- you know, that kind of thing. Or even just plain old graduating from top law/grad/med schools and getting published all over the place, or making six-figure salaries and traveling to exotic locales for vacation, etcetera, etcetera.

I was reminded of a very similar email exchange I had with Fearless T last year, in which she wisely pointed out that it's all a matter of spin. hk, she wrote, maybe you look at some of your friends (let's take One-Armed Maggie, for example), and think: that One-Armed Maggie -- she's got the degree from HLS and the Robert Burns-quoting husband with the degree from HBS and the prestigious clerkship -- what a life!, but then how do you know that she's not thinking something along the lines of: man, that hk, she's got this glamorous expat life going on in an exotic locale, and the street-smart boyfriend and time to travel hither and thither -- what a life!

Wise woman, that Fearless T. I think I wrote to her and received that reply sometime in early 2003, after I'd made a trip back to the States and was feeling shiftless and aimless compared to my peers. Somewhere along the line, I grew up a little bit and by the time of my latest trip back in the fall of 2003, I didn't feel quite so ... diminished. In fact, I felt fine. I felt good about what I was doing insofar as living my life, and I looked at my lawyer and grad school friends with more of a hm, that could be something to do when I get back speculative interest than insecure envy.

One of the things that I'm afraid of losing when I get back, though, is that perspective. While I've been here, I've slowly shed that rat-race feeling of comparing myself to my peers -- not entirely, but a good amount -- and I hope dearly that it won't all flood back in August. Although Korean society places tremendous importance on achievement, the people I've gone to language school with don't have the hangups about doing something great that many of us at college had. Have. Calvin Trillin called it the burden of promise, that feeling that with all our advantages and education and upbringing, we owed it to ourselves, to our parents, and to society to achieve something great.

While here, I haven't had much responsibility except to learn Korean -- I don't take my job very seriously, and everything else I do is because it's fun. Even learning Korean is fun. It was a goal I had and I put a lot of effort into it, and ... I don't know, I just lived, I guess, while I was here, without worrying too much about how it all fit into the bigger picture of What I'm Going To Do With My Life.

I occasionally think of a character in Douglas Adams' immortal Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- the extravagant space traveler and political figure with the brain-shattering name of Zaphod Beeblebrox. Beeblebrox (as I remember it) at one point quietly confesses that he doesn't remember how he became the wild and adventurous and socially uninhibited man about the universe, but that he wasn't always that way. He recalls noting some strange patterns in his brain, and checking out his little gray cells, to find that the part of his brain where social inhibiting impulses lived had been destroyed, and that the perpetrator had burned his initials into the gray matter.

The initials? Z.B.

Being abroad has quieted the buzz buzz of whatamigonnadowithmylife and howamigonnafulfillthatburdenofpromise. I just wish I could swat that mosquito into complete oblivion.