A very Seoul weekend--again

Spent this weekend in Seoul to with Kristen--basically doing all the things I didn't do last weekend. We had a great time wondering around Insadong, the artsy fartsy, touristy trinkety area of Seoul. There are a lot of amazing things to buy there--everything from tourist kitsch to real antiques. I was basically in heaven, but held off and didn't really buy anything substantial.

After having an excellent time just chilling, we went to Kristen's friend's show, which was a UNICEF benefit. We supported him and then went out to Hongdae and did the Hongdae party thing. Hongdae is one of the most famous places in Seoul to party. I wasn't aware, partying in Daejeon, just how many military folks there are around here. All the Western men in the club were military, and they were quite nice, actually. A few guys were teasing their buddy who wasn't drinking, and I got to talking to this guy, who was pretty nice. The next day, after crashing on Kristen's friend's couch, we met up with this guy and headed back to Insadong to check out a book store (omg so many English books--70,000 won later). We went to Gyeongbukgung, the palace in Seoul that Stephanie and I visited back in the fall, and just enjoyed the beautiful weather. It was a good time, just meeting new people and enjoying some sites in Seoul.

This weekend, though, I am definitely not planning on doing Seoul--I don't know where I'll go yet, or if I'll just stay home, but I definitely need to find something interesting to do, because I'm feeling very restless and frustrated. My students haven't been good to me and I just... haven't been on the ball with teaching. My temper is short. I'm homesick, and the kids know it. I try to be a better person, but sometimes it just doesn't work. I keep thinking that I can't possibly be cut out for this, so I turn to art, or writing, which just comes out bent with my already frustrated mindset.

In other news, I have a Suite101 account, where I will be publishing articles about travel and life in Korea. I'll put up some links when I have articles out.

Summer is finally here!

The weather is fantastic--humid, but it's quite warm and it smells like deliciousness. I've been looking for patios all the time, just sitting around and enjoying myself in a regular day-to-day kind of life. This week we had Wednesday off, which is a wonderful way to have a week--haha, I never want to work on Wednesday again.

This weekend I enjoyed just sitting on patios and being social. I really had a good time. Talking. Just talking. It was a global weekend too--hung out with people from 3 different continents. On Friday I did the usual haunts with the Daejeon crew, then I got up and went to Seoul to see Jim and his new digs there. We met up with Stephanie and enjoyed a drink at a bar, sat next to a wide open window and watched people below. Seoulites running around in their Seoul-y-ness. The city is so interesting. Every time I go there's so many things to see. Different kinds of people--even some counter culture kinds of things--something I never expect to see here. Not in Daejeon, at least, which is a lot more conservative when it comes to style and culture. (And by conservative I don't mean skin-wise, because everybody's legs are hanging out. I mean that everybody must have the same kind of style, not like Seoul where there are alternatives.)

On Sunday Stephanie and I ate shabushabu, which was immensely filling and quite nice, and then we went to Itaewon. I got a massage, and that was a very, very good feeling. I haven't had a massage since November or December... way too long. My back was just in all kinds of pain. Next time I'm going to stay for an hour and I might even ask them to do my feet, because just the little attention she gave them seemed to release so much tension. They say that your feet are the end points for all your meridians... and that paying attention to your feet will keep you safe from ailments. They have these interesting bare-foot paths that are supposed to heal you. Mostly they just hurt, but according to Jim, if you can walk on them with no pain, you are completely healthy. I wonder what bunions mean in this context... a continual growth and deformity in the direction of one's life? A build up of superfluous antics that cause the main toe to go astray.... cause the direction to go astray. I bet I could write a short story about that. Someone who gets bunion surgery and then all the things she keeps hidden in her bunion simply pour out into her life like ghosts. Now that would be absurd but oddly telling.

(I've been reading Neil Gaiman short stories at an alarmingly fast rate. I'm trying to plow through the books I have here so that I can buy new ones. I have a great list on my Amazon wishlist of travel narratives that I want to read, and other sorts of things. Ahem. For those of you who want to purchase me birthday presents, you have my address and Amazon delivers here..... quite quickly, I might add. Har har.)

Anyway, on Sunday after my massage I met up with Kennedy, my Ghanaian friend who I met in Daejeon so long ago, when I was a brand new Korea-ite. He and his business partner, Mark, took us out for drinks at a Mexican restaurant with (you guessed it) a delightful patio. Stephanie and I drank juice and coffee while they ate and we all talked together for something like 3 hours. It was amazing. I loved it. We talked African politics and development, and all these things that I had forgotten that I loved to talk about. And I fell into the grove of slow talking and moving, and I just felt very alive.

And when I tell myself "you might not have enough money to go back" or "you might not really want that anyway", there are reasons like these to remind me. The logic might not be there, but the emotion is--even with people I barely know. People I just met that day.

When we met, Mark was introduced to us and we passed by a Baskin Robbins. In which there was a whole slew of Ghanaians, who called out to him and called us in. And they called me obroni. I was so happy just to hear the word, and then I heard their language--Twi I think, but I wasn't sure. I could never pick them apart. But it sounded like music.

But talk about globablization. I ran into 10 Ghanaians, eating ice cream at Baskin Robbins, in Korea. And then we went to a Mexican restaurant, where we were copiously hit on by a Japanese man.

He leaned over and was bothering us, and finally he got too close to me, and I backed up, and then Mark said: "Excuse me, could you please give them some space?" In this kind of "That is not a question" way. And he backed up, and embarrassed, I said "Thank you", but all of a sudden I realized that nobody had ever done that for me before. I had always had to exhaustively deal with men who bothered me like that. I was so happy that he had said something. So glad that I could let a man speak up for me, and then I realized--why don't I speak up for me? So I made a resolution to do that more often.

Anyway the weekend was wonderful. Great time just meeting with friends. Nothing rushed, nothing hurried. Nothing too much. Just a calm, great time.

Some things this weekend.

Well I had a pretty uneventful week. My Ghanaian friend came back into town, but I missed him--it appears as though the Daejeon auto companies don't have a lot of good stuff this time around, so he headed up to Incheon before I had enough time to meet up with him. Bummer. Been making an effort to get out in the morning, but this morning my goal is to clean my house, because I'll be gone all weekend at a monk festival! Yeeeeahh!!

Anyway, we have a new teacher here. Alex is at the end of his contract and so the new girl is here. She's from South Africa and she looks like a lot of fun. I haven't actually hung out with her except with our bosses, but she's interesting and kind, so I think we'll get along.

This weekend I hit up Seoul and hung out with Stephanie, which was definitely what I needed. I spent a lot of money, but it was a well worth it trip. First I met up with the TeachESLKorea folks and met some people who had been placed by my recruiter. They were all really fun and intelligent, and had some really interesting stories. I met one guy who was working in a technical High School--you know, for non-college bound students. This sounds like an amazing job! Sometimes I just wish I got a chance to touch kids who weren't privileged.  But I think my hagwon sits in the middle of the economic world here, so I'm usually pretty happy with the students.

The real kicker was Sunday, though, because on Sunday I went to the Heritage Mass Choir concert. It's every month in this church in a really hip area of town, seemed like a lot of young worldly minded people. (There was even a sincere jazz club in the area!) The Heritage Choir is a gospel choir in Korean--and you'd think that would be kind of dorky, but these people can BELT this music. I was so impressed. And I had so much fun. It was really uplifting--even though I did cry the ENTIRE time--it was just so amazing to see so much passion in the music, and feel so connected. After I managed to stop balling, I started to follow along with the songs (church songs are simple for a reason, in any language). They had the words posted on the screen above the choir, and the audience was encouraged to sing along. So we did. In Korean. It didn't strike me until later that I was reading a completely different language, and SINGING--doing something pretty familiar to me throughout my youth, but in an Asian country, in an Asian language. That moment kind of renewed my faith in life, and religion, and interfaith/interculture--everything.

The best part of the thing, though, was the sermon. Recently I'd been frustrated because some English speaker was leaving letters on my door saying "Please come celebrate Jesus's death with me." Or something--commemorate the death, I think were the exact words. Anyway I was so not ready to go and be all excited about death and violence and suffering. Ask me to celebrate Jesus' life, and I'll be happy to do so, but ask me to celebrate his DEATH, and condone suffering and violence, and then I get a little testy. Since that was barely the point of the majority of the gospel anyway. Sure he died. But then he came back--and truthfully, that's more of the miracle, right?

Okay religious rant aside, I was going feeling a little testy towards Korean church. I hadn't been able to find a church where the preacher made me feel inspired. In fact I felt more inspired by the speeches that characters on Grey's Anatomy gave. But this sermon at the church was NOT a message of suffering and death--it was a message of hope. It was about giving and finding hope, and always spreading hope, and being witnesses to the hope of new life through Jesus's LIFE. And hearing a positive Christian message really just made me so happy. (I know all this because one of the women in the choir was bilingual and was providing translation services to the foreigners sitting in the corner.)

On the whole it was an amazingly uplifting experience. I recommend it to anyone in Korea who has an ounce of musical appreciation or religious appreciation. The next one is on May 2. It's Dongsoong Church at Hyehwa Station. (It's up a hill a ways on the left of Exit 2, I believe.)

Welcome to 2010!

Wow. A whole decade. It makes you feel kind of old. I mean, since this is the first time that I've been old enough to remember the turn of the last decade. (And I do remember hoping--just a little--that Y2K would hit and I would suddenly become the heroine of a young adult post-apocalyptic novel.)

I had an excellent New Years, and spent the evening with my friend Maddie and her family, who were very kind and just took me in as a surrogate daughter for the holiday. We went to see "Jump!" a comedy martial arts and acrobat show, which had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. (Partially because it was really good, and partially because the man in front of me had an enormous head.) Seeing stuff like that, even in a comedic way, inspires me to get more flexible and work harder at my Taekwondo--though I did notice that most of their flashy stuff was Kung Fu. It was interesting--they kicked like Taekwondo, but all of their weapons work was very Kung Fu--to the point where I actually started to recognize forms that I'd worked on in high school.

After the show we went to a bar that was VERY Korea (underground, tiny, shoved away in a nitche that could easily have been the size of a bathroom in the States) in the area where the New Years festivities were to take place. There were walls of police, which you don't really see too often in Korea, but I soon realized that they were there not to intimidate us, but to keep us away from the setting up of the stage, where some terribly famous performers were about to engage in K-Pop madness.

The New Years Tradition, as I said before, is the ringing of the Bosingak bell 33 times. The Bosingak Bell is located in Jongno in Seoul, and originally constructed by the Joseon dynasty in 1396 (but has, of course, been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times). These days it is only rung on New Years Eve. When we arrived there were parties of dancers preforming traditional Korean music, and this is the first time I've seen such excitement in Korea. They were dressed up and dancing in a circle, pounding on drums, and it was a great beat. We had to dance a little just to keep warm, but we tried not to make absolute fools out of ourselves (of course.)


Then, the countdown happened, and I believe we skipped about 5 seconds, because the clock and the crowd were not on the same plane of existence. And then the cheers went up, and people started to shoot off fireworks in the crowd. (A totally acceptable past time, it seems, because they were selling fireworks to the average folks, with long tubes that you could point up in the air. Only in Korea would this work, because honestly nobody shot each other with them, or even made any mistakes.) The best thing, though, was the sound of the bell. Things were rather quiet, except for the hissing of the fireworks, and the sound of that enormous bell. It had a rather eerie toll, and so we rung in the New Year with something more solemn. I liked that. It fit Korea well--everything so modern and excited and happy, but the pervasive, comforting sound of this ancient Buddhist bell.


Another thing you might find interesting about the ceremony is the Korea Times report on who was chosen to ring the bell. Sixteen people were chosen, of which there appear to be a few naturalized citizens. Five city officials (including the Mayor) are selected by default, but the populous chooses by survey who the other 11 are. (Though I don't know if it is consistently 16 each year.) Everyone was recognized for service to the poor, or educational prowess, or one Mongolian woman, who was chosen because she recieved a "filial piety award" for serving her sick father in law. Intriguing.


It's nice to see people accepted into Korean society. A lot of foreign teachers complain that they will remain "foreign teachers" forever, and that the Korean world has no place for them, and that this is "the most racist country in the world". After seeing things like this, though, I don't think it's necessarily the "foreign-ness" of us, but our status in a complicated social and economic structure that puts us in the "foreign teacher" box, which may be much more difficult to assimilate than the mere "foreigner" box.


Anyway, I know I promised a post about Jeju, but I am slacking considerably. Maybe tomorrow.

You know, I write a journal more than a blog...

I guess that's okay, most of the time. But I am enjoying reading some of the other things that I run across--more bloggy things, and I wonder--how can I do that?

My mom sent me this article on the Matador, called: "The Expat Conundrum: The Longer You Stay, The More You Complain". It is kind of an interesting article. They are taking about Mexico, but I do feel like the people who have been here the longest complain a lot. I actually ran into a guy down by the river who had lived here for several years. He definitely had the "they" attitude that the author talks about. Harsh. Serious. Acted like he got stuck here. After I said I was new, his first idea was to give me the name and number of someone to call if I "got into any trouble."

Now the other article that I was reading on this website was this: "6 Ways To Not Be A Holier-Than-Thou Traveler." I am guilty of some of these things--especially here in Korea. I'm trying my hardest not to let Ghana spill over into my experience here, especially now that I am trying to make new friends... but I can't help it. I mean, everything there seemed so much more hard core. More difficult. So when this gentleman told me that if I "got into any trouble", I should call this guy... I thought: "What kind of trouble can I possibly get into that is worse than the trouble I could get into in Ghana?" So I am majorly guilty of the Holier than Thou attitude. Because your wallet can get stolen in any country. Your passport can get stolen in any country. You can be in a terrible car accident in any country--but I drop "Africa" like it is this magical place that makes me more hard core than the others here. And I know that if my African friends heard me say those things, they would be annoyed. But sometimes, that "this is easy because I've done something much harder" attitude gets me through the difficult days here. Because, really, it is hard here, too, and I need something to remind me that I can do it.

Anyway I am really enjoying these articles on Matador, and browsing through them. It feels good to be a traveler again, no matter where I am--and that brings me to my excellent weekend, which I promised I would report on.

Let me sum it up for you.
Saturday:

Sunday:

On Saturday, as I mentioned before, Stephanie and I visited Gyeongbokgung. This enormous palace was constructed for the Joseon dynasty, which ruled Korea from 1392 to August 1910. The picture above is from the retreat quarters of King Gojong. Inside there are quarters for the King and Queen, as well as a study--though it was most certainly blocked off from tourists. The area was restored in 2007, after having been dismantled in 1909, during Japanese occupation. An art museum was put on the location in 1939.

The palace had two main areas--the public and the private. The public areas were enormous, impressive, places where the king could strut, as it were. The roofs were two tiered, everything was tall and extravagant, and the painting was out of this world. Humans just looked insignificant next to and inside these enormous buildings.

 After going to this palace, Stephanie and I set out for a market, that turned out to be a shopping mall and not a market. But the journey to the market was one full of tiny street vendors. In Korea street vendors sell things out of these little retractable trailors. When they are finished selling, they close down the doors and drag the metal box away--like a dragable garage. Then they bring it home or just leave it in some alley somewhere. I saw one man packing up and I thought this was just brilliant, and quite hilarious to boot. Of course, there was another man along the road who was selling notebooks and paper supplies out of the back of a pick up. Stephanie stopped to grab a notebook, and I just stared in true-love fascination.

I picked up a bunch of little trinkets, which I adore, even though they may be kitchy and touristy. I like touristy stuff--no prob for me. Now I have some little glass kimchi peppers on my phone, haha.

After we discovered that the market was actually less interesting than the street-to-the-market, we departed for Itaewon, which is the foreigner section of Seoul. It used to be sleezy, because it was mostly military men, and there are a lot of American GIs still there, I guess, but now it is full of just about anyone. There is a big mosque on a hill, and there are Muslims everywhere. I was simply overjoyed about that one. There were lots of Africans, too, and Stephanie and I went to a restaurant owned by Ghanaians!! Not only Ghanaians, but people from the Ashanti region, which means that they spoke Twi! We made some nice new friends... and actually this one guy insists on calling me two or three times every day, which is something that I hated when I was in Africa, but now it's kind of nice. I get to talk to someone before work, and it isn't about work, and it isn't complicated and confusing. Just talk. It also helps that I don't live in Seoul, though, lol, because he doesn't constantly ask me to visit him. 

Anyway, our new African friends were definitely NOT Muslim because they decided that it would be an excellent idea to get us to try their 'healing' wood liquor that had been home made in Korea. (Of course, it's home made in Ghana, too, but seeing it in Korea is weird and confusing. Also because it definitely looked like it was in a juice jug.) That was an enlightening experience, lol... especially because they totally refused to let US refuse. I had a good laugh, but had Stephanie not been there I probably would have been awkward and upset about it. I do believe, though, that it was the same material that I had been drinking in the stilt village on my 21st birthday.


Anyway, on Sunday Stephanie and I visited a huge Buddhist temple called Bong Eungsa, or 보은사. This is a full time used temple, with monks and nuns and worshipers coming in and out. I loved the feeling of it. A quiet, sacred sense settles over you, and you feel like a tourist, but not like a worthless tourist. You feel like you've come to see something important. There is also an awkwardness about it, because there are people praying and worshiping around you. That is hard, but the tension makes you realize things. Tension always leads to realization, I think, anyway, and I enjoy it.


The painting on this temple was out of this world. I've seen good painting, especially at the palace that we visited on Saturday, but this temple had murals on the walls. Scenes from the Buddha's life, scenes from the lives of Bodhisattvas and probably kings as well. There was no one to explain it, so as the monk chanted in the main building, I simply stared at it, and attempted to take a few measly pictures. They don't do it justice.


The monk was chanting when we arrived, and the prayer hall in the front of the building was full to the brim of women. It was all women, not a single man. I don't know why. The chanting was as beautiful as the buildings. As the monk left, I came eye to eye with him, bowed my head in some kind of greeting, but I don't know if it was rude or just 'typical' for a foreigner to do something awkward like that. But I wanted to let him know that I appreciated his voice, and his temple, and his religion, and his purpose... so I looked him in the eye and greeted him. I hope he saw it that way, but I doubt it. Ah well.


The temple had several main halls in the front of the complex, but it was in front of a rising mountain, so smaller Bodhisattva complexes rose up into the forest above. The higher we climbed, the more of metropolitan Seoul spilled out from behind the temple roofs. The ancient, painstakingly maintained buildings with delicate painted halls stood in front of glass sky scrapers--the Seoul World Trade Center--the Co-Ex twin-tower shopping mall--roads of busy, honking traffic. It was ironic and rather superb that this temple, a relic of "old" Korea, but a reminder to "new" Korea, stood in the middle of this development and urban bustle.  

After the temple we went to a market, which is where the first picture is from. It was mostly closed, but I enjoyed it anyway, and since there was a lack of people, I didn't feel too pushed and shoved with my big backpack on my shoulders. (Then quite full of trinkets, clothing, and rinkydinks that I bought.)



It's time for me to get on my bike and tool down to work, so I'll leave you with this image, and a link to the others on Facebook. 

Holy Canoli, Batman! Seoul!

So this weekend I made my first trip up to Seoul from Daejeon to visit Stephanie! We had an excellent time. We ate at an Indian-Nepalese restaurant, an African (Ghanaian!!) restaurant, AND a Mexican Restaurant! We went to a beautiful palace AND a beautiful temple, and we even heard some amazing chanting. I bought shoes, shirts, and kitchy trinkets that I l-l-love! We even went to a book store!

I arrived around two on Saturday, and Stephanie and I went to Gyeongbokgung, or 경복궁, which was founded in 1395 by the Joseon dynasty. Since then it has been destroyed twice by the Japanese, once in the 1592 invasion, and again in the more well known invasion precluding WWI. One of the important figures in Korean occupation was Empress Myeongseong, who fought the Japanese until she was assassinated in 1895. I'm excited to find out more about her, but so far I don't really know much. All of these buildings were beautifully restored in the mid 1990s and early 2000s, and they're still working on other parts of the enormous complex. It is intriguing and breathtaking that this place is so old but so young, and also such an important symbol. There were many tourists there, but they were from everywhere--and more than 50% were Korean tourists. I heard some Japanese, and actually spoke it a little bit with an older woman. And by speaking I mean, I repeated what she said because I understood it, and she was dumbfounded and asked me if I spoke Japanese, and then I said "a little" and went on my way. But you know. Whatever you can get. Actually that day I spoke four different languages... because I spoke to the Japanese Lady, spoke Korean to folks, and English with Stephanie, and tiny Twi with the owners of the Ghanaian restaurant. Granted... I only used a few words in all but English, but, yeah I'd say that's pretty cool. I'll give myself permission to be proud of myself for that. :P

Anyway, the grandeur and impressiveness of this palace are just beyond beautiful. Everything is enormous, complicated, intricate, and well thought out. There are two impressive mountains standing behind the palace grounds, and they are distinctly Asian mountains. The rock formations are just not anything you would see in the US, and the way they stand is different from American mountains and African mountains. It might be easy to assume that rock is rock everywhere place to place, but no.

There are pictures from the weekend posted on facebook. I won't regale you with the entire story now because that post would just be too long, but check out my gallivanting, and hopefully you'll have a long enough attention span when I attempt to write about it!