to-do list for March

Here's what I've got so far:

• go visit my Korean friend down on Geoje Island
• get a wastebasket and a reading lamp
• compile some simple Korean recipes and start actually cooking for myself
• venture forth to Itaewon and find What the Book?, the English-language bookstore I mail-ordered from when I was here before
• buy some booze and get the bar running again

No doubt other items will make their appearance in due time.

My friend down on Geoje-do is Charles, the liaison I worked with at Reading Town. He's got his own hagwon now and I'd love to stop by and see how he's doing. He took good care of me when I was here before.

I made some delicious bulgogi for myself the other night, and I want to get all the necessaries for bibimbap (one of my favorites) and cook up a batch.

What the Book? seriously saved my bacon when I was languishing with homesickness. I ordered a stack of books and started going through them like they were cocaine and I was Kobe Bryant. I spent a lot of money, sure, but the bookstore's rates are very reasonable and they do free shipping on orders over a certain amount. But now I'm close enough to just ride the subway there and buy books directly from the store! Hot diggity dog!

And the last one's self-explanatory. I need to get the cocktail bar back in business. I called it the Hole in the Wall when I was down in Geoje, and now that I'm here in Bucheon I see [cough] no reason to change things.

Friends, furniture, food, books, and booze...I'm quite the epicurean, aren't I?

escape from Bukhan

Bukhan is the way you say "North Korea" in the native language. Buk is north and han is Korea. (South Korea is Namhan.)

Even if the average American is aware of the deplorable situation in NoKo, not many realize just the enormity of the North Koreans' plight, even those who have escaped the Kim regime and sought their fortunes elsewhere.

Those North Koreans who get up the courage to make a break customarily go through China. They are aided in this by Korean and Chinese "brokers," who perform a similar function to the coyotes in Mexico, forging false documents for the refugees and providing maps and routes. Once into China, however, the refugees' plight is far from over. The People's Republic, in complete defiance of international law and common decency, routinely and rigorously captures North Koreans and repatriates them.

I probably don't have to tell you that attempting to defect is a capital offense for a North Korean. Those refugees caught by the Chinese and shipped back to North Korea face execution, imprisonment in gulag-style concentration camps, torture, and untold suffering. Pregnant refugees are subjected to brutal abortions. Dissidents are thrown into work camps where they perform hard labor for 12 hours and attend reeducation classes for four more, only getting four hours' rest. The slightest complaint is answered with a public execution. There's a reason North Korea has been branded the world's largest prison camp.

In case you think I'm bloviating, I have a source for this information. His name is Mr. Lee.

Lee is one of the lucky ones. Not only did he pull off a successful escape, he saved up enough money to get his mother, his wife and his children out as well. He moved through China to Thailand, emigrated legally to South Korea, and worked any odd job he could find to pay the way for his family. He bussed tables and swept streets because he couldn't find anything better.

And now we come to the third and most perplexing part of the sad tale of North Korean refugees. Should they manage to escape their homeland and traverse unfriendly China in safety, they still face hostility, prejudice and callous indifference from South Koreans. The average South Korean holds the North Korean refugee in lower regard than a Pakistani or Cambodian...and believe you me, that is saying something. Mr. Lee reckons it has something to do with money. South Koreans judge foreigners by their monetary worth and potential. That's why they bring so many American, Canadian, English and South African nationals to this country to teach. We Anglos are from affluent countries and are classed as skilled labor. People from poor countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh, and elsewhere are looked upon as wastes of time and space. The average North Korean refugee shows up in South Korea as a penniless migrant. Guess what kind of reception he gets?

Mr. Lee beat the odds. He made enough money to get his family across, at something like $3,500US a head. (Nowadays the fee is roughly $10,000.) They're living quite happily in the Itaewon area. Mr. Lee works hard to support them, and still finds time to devote to his charitable foundation, North Korea Peace. It's a divine mission, he says.

To hear a North Korean speak of God is almost laughable. Mr. Lee was brought up to believe that Kim Jong-Il was the people's one true god, and that Christianity was merely a ploy by the Western powers to weaken and oppress the Korean people. In school he was taught that the Joseon War (what North Koreans call the Korean War) was begun by Christian missionaries, with the backing of the U.S. military. He never saw any evidence to the contrary; he knew no other alternative. So he believed.

But when the Chinese police were walking toward him down the aisle of a rattling train car on a midnight run to Shanghai, Lee prayed. He prayed feverishly, passionately, determinedly. He asked God to spare him, to save him. And in His way, God answered. A knife-fight broke out in the adjacent train car. The policemen had approached to within 10 meters of Lee, checking IDs and asking tough questions. Neither Lee nor any of his party spoke a word of Chinese. They would have been caught for sure. But the fight drew the cops' attention. They rushed away to the adjacent car and Lee got his reprieve. It was a seminal moment. Lee believed that God had saved him for a purpose. God was handing him a mission, and by the time Mr. Lee had arrived in Thailand, he'd figured it out. He would help as many of his fellow North Koreans as possible, still held in bondage on the other side of the DMZ.

So he started North Korea Peace, and with the aid of a few other Koreans who were fluent in English, began recruiting foreigners to his cause. The balloon launch on February 25 was the culmination of that endeavor. Mr. Lee, his assistants, and foreigners from six different countries (from Austria to Indonesia) inflated weather balloons, suspended cardboard boxes of warm socks from them, and released them into the wispy white skies over the city of Paju, a stone's throw from the Demilitarized Zone.

Here are some pictures.

Unpacking the hoses. The boxes of socks are on the left.

Adjusting the first balloon for inflation...hah, adjusting for inflation, geddit?!

The hydrogen tanks. Apparently helium is expensive and hard to come by in Korea. These spawned a lot of Hindenburg jokes...most of which may or may not have been told by yours truly.

Inflation commences...

...and it's ready!

My turn to help out.

Whoa Nelly!

Merciful Balloon #4, ready for launch!

Hana, tul, SET!

And there she goes!

After the balloons had been launched, and had floated away out of sight into the stratosphere, we piled back on the bus, chilled to the bone, and drove to the Imjin River. There stood the Imjingak, "Freedom Park," a sort of monument/museum to the Demilitarized Zone. I wish I could properly describe the place to you, but words simply can't capture it. Shall I tell you about the thousands of paper prayers hung by North Korean refugees in tribute to their imprisoned loved ones a few kilometers to the north...?

The rusting, hole-ridden hulk of a steam locomotive on a scrap of track, which was once the proud railway link between Seoul and Pyongyang?



The miles and miles of barbed wire stretching into the distance? Dim, distant Songhaksan, my first glimpse of North Korea, nearly hidden on the horizon behind the Imjin Bridge?

Or shall I mention the observation platform with its 500-won binoculars, the incongruous kiddy fun park with its tilt-a-whirl and carousel, the souvenir shop selling North Korean fruit wines and maps of the Joint Security Area printed on red and blue handkerchiefs...?

Combine these things and you get the Imjingak.

It was while we were waiting to board the bus that I received a drop of tonic to soothe the ache in my soul. As fun as the launching of weather balloons can be (trying to hold onto a fully-inflated balloon in the brisk Korean breeze was like trying to hold a bucking bronco at bay), the joy was tempered by the ever-present knowledge of the cargo's eventual destination. One could not help but brood on the suffering of the shoeless, starving North Korean people, and the monstrous injustice which put them in such a position. My distress had been further compounded by the Imjingak. Nothing makes me sadder than seeing a railway line that ends in the middle of nowhere, and a once-functioning locomotive rusting away to nothingness on a forgotten siding. I could only ponder on the romance and adventure of taking the train from Seoul to Pyongyang, and thence to Beijing or Vladivostok, or even across Mongolia and on to Europe. But no: the locomotive forever stares across the uncrossable gulf of barbed wire, empty fields, frozen river and skeletonized bridge supports. Across the barren, lonely hills with their bare trees lies a land of death, suffering, and political oppression.

Depressing.

So that drop of tonic on my soul was greatly appreciated. I began chatting with Mr. Lee via his translator, Cecilia. He asked me if I was particularly interested in North Korea and its citizens.

"Just Korea in general," I answered. "My grandfather fought in the war."

"Wow," Cecilia, of Korean descent herself, answered. "Will you thank him for me? From the bottom of my heart?"

"Uh, sure," I said, taken aback. "Absolutely."

Cecilia translated this for Mr. Lee, and he began speaking very quickly.

"He says he'd like to thank your grandfather personally for his service," Cecilia said. "South Korea is as great as it is today because of what the Americans did in the war. If they hadn't fought the Communist North, the entire country would have been taken over. Whenever Mr. Lee hears someone say bad things about America, he thinks they're not right in the head."

Well, folks, that bowled me over. This fellow, who hadn't even met my grandfather (and had been born on the wrong side of the fence to appreciate his sacrifices) was thanking him with every fiber of his being. It blew me away. All I could do was jerk my head, thank him profusely, and promise to relay his message at the earliest juncture. It seemed a poor thank-you for the sentiment Mr. Lee had expressed. But somehow, even though I was merely a conduit for this man's heartfelt gratitude, I was nonetheless buoyed by it, soothed by it, calmed by it. The weight on my heart seemed lessened somewhat. They call Korea "the forgotten war"...it was nice to know that there were some people, in some far-flung corner of the world, who hadn't forgotten, and still appreciated what the skinny, shivering draftees had fought and died for in the frozen mud of the Korean peninsula.

When I told Grandpa over the phone about what Mr. Lee had said, he chuckled. Then he cemented his status as a true American hero by saying that war memorials should not be built for the men who fought and came back, but the ones who made "the supreme sacrifice" and lie buried in foreign fields. He said I should relay that to Mr. Lee the next time I saw him.

I'll leave you with a video that was taken by a real journalist at the balloon launch. It conveys what I'm trying to express with more eloquence and less pomp.

Your humble correspondent, signing off.

re-donning the mantle

It's been an unusual experience, sliding back into Teacher Mode. I expected to re-adapt instantly to the hectic crunch and wracking nerves of the amateur teacher's life. Not so. I've had one heck of a time. Perhaps it's because I'm in a new city, and working for a new institution. Maybe it's just because I've been out of the game for almost three years. But whatever the rationalization...

...I found myself sitting at my desk on February 13, lessons planned and re-planned, teaching materials arrayed neatly on my desk, heart pounding, watching gimbap crumbs swirl languorously in my water bottle. I'd taught two classes the previous week, but only in a training capacity. Today was my first day in the ring as a genuine educator. I was gravitating somewhere between hard-won exhilaration and paralyzing fear and doubt. Could I really do this? Teach, I mean? Sure, I'd done it before, but this was a whole new ballgame: a large, well-known hagwon in a strange, massive metropolis, filled with businesslike people and rambunctious children. Except for the exuberant kids, it was nothing like my old gig down in Geoje. The Korean teachers there were all laid-back and friendly. I saw the director every day, and he'd fulfill any reasonable request at the drop of a hat. The Korean teachers in Bucheon had thus far been uncommunicative and even somewhat standoffish. And I hadn't even met the director of my new school, much less passed the time of day with him. (As of this writing, I still haven't.)

So it was with something akin to panic that I threw some pens, markers, and an eraser into a tray, grabbed the textbooks and lesson plan, and crept down the hallway to my first lesson. I walked through the door, set my stuff down on the podium, and faced the class. Eleven pairs of unfamiliar eyes met mine. I took a deep breath, picked up my eraser and marker, and said "Hi. My name is Andrew."

Everything got easier from there.

After two full weeks of teaching, however, I'm starting to think I've got a handle on it. I've caught myself slipping back into some bad teaching habits, even. (Don't worry, I've corrected them adroitly.) Even though the new semester will begin on March 4th and I'll have to contend with new courses, new textbooks, new students and new schedules, I believe I can handle it. These past two weeks have been eye-opening and instructive as much as nerve-wracking and frustrating.

There have been some tough spots, sure. Some of the classes are quiet and respectful, which is just dandy. But some of them are too quiet: I can't drum up their enthusiasm to save my soul. I wind up doing all the talking and the students just stare at me and mumble monosyllabic replies to my questions. And quite a few of the classes, unfortunately, are loud, noisy, playful and distracted. At such times the best a teacher can do is hand out "extra paper" (lines, basically) and rearrange the seating chart. A strong show of force and a consistent method have sealed the discipline breach to a certain extent, but nothing will stop an ungovernable pupil from having his day in court. (Their behavior, as bad as it can be, is nothing compared to what I used to have to deal with on Geoje Island, however. That at least has been an improvement.)

Some obstacles have come not from the student body, but from my own. I caught a cold on Friday of the first week—a customary experience for a newly-arrived foreigner. Against my better judgment, however, I let myself get talked into going out with the gang for drinks that night instead of staying in and tending to myself. We painted the town. Bars. Beers. Shots. Whiskey on the rocks. Darts. Billiards. Noraebang (karaoke room). The works. And I have been paying for it for eight days straight. The fever hit with full-force on Sunday evening, robbing me of sleep until five a.m. Monday morning, when it finally broke in deluge of sweat. Back pains from my rock-hard mattress compounded matters. I wound up getting as little as two hours of sleep. Add in the persistent jet lag (from which I am still suffering, even three weeks in) and...well, it wasn't a pretty picture. I basically taught for three straight days with a sore throat, crushing fatigue, aches and pains, and virulent self-loathing. Even after the symptoms disappeared, the damage to my throat (due both to the sickness and the off-key warbling that I did at the noraebang on Friday night) plagued me. I would slowly slash my vocal chords to ribbons every day, attempting to make myself heard in boisterous classrooms and shout troublemakers down. By the end of each workday my voice would be practically lost. I lost count of how many liters of water, ounces of citron tea, and cups of warm brine I consumed in the attempt to heal my poor neck. Then I'd go back to work and the process would begin anew. It was agony. Only this very weekend has broken the vicious cycle, and only today have I felt like I'm completely back together (though I'm still coughing).

Boozy indiscretion, rambunctious children and unfamiliar surroundings aside, I have made myself at home in Bucheon and at my new place of employment. Two weeks in, the Korean teachers are warming up to me nicely, as are the students. I've established a routine, have planned my lessons down to the minute, am up-to-date on my paperwork (except inputting homework on the school website, which the Korean secretaries must enable me to do beforehand), and my apartment is clean and livable. I've finished unpacking my clothes and am situating my toiletry and grocery items. My blinds are open and a fabulous vista of a dozen towering apartment blocks, splashed with scattered lights, is glimmering outside my window. I'm well-fed, hydrated, healthy, warm, and comfortable.

Oh, and there's a four-day weekend coming up.

What more could an expatriate English teacher ask for?

a shindig in Hongdae

On Friday night, after having successfully taught my first classes and survived the first truncated week at my hagwon, my fellow foreigners and I decided to go out on the town.

Hongdae, that is.

This isn't my picture. Obviously I went to Hongdae in February, so everybody should be bundled up and running very fast to get out of the cold. But you get the idea. Lots of people, lots of neon.

Hongdae is an area of western Seoul known for the massive Hongik University. (The name "Hongdae" is actually an abbreviation of Hongik Daehakgyo (홍익대학교), the institution's Korean name.  The surrounding suburb contains a plethora of bars and nightclubs, and a modest indie music scene. Being only 20 minutes away by bus and subway, Hongdae is a natural choice for anybody in Bucheon looking to get their party on.

That very feature, however, makes it an extremely popular place on weekends.

It was madness from the get-go. The multitude which tried to exit the subway station at Hongdae were funneled into a tiny stairwell no wider than two people abreast, causing something of a traffic jam. I felt like I'd stepped into Diagon Alley when I emerged from this cattle chute: the narrow, uneven, tilted streets ran in every conceivable direction, lorded over by untidy piles of buildings plastered with more neon signs than a righteous god should've allowed.

Andy and I ducked, dodged and slid through the throng until we reached the comparative sanity of a second-floor coffeehouse, where we met Joe. Our fellow co-teacher was sipping peppermint tea and crooning over the secondhand guitar he'd purchased that afternoon. Andy ordered an espresso and the three of us laid plans. We were expecting some more people to show up, so we decided to go someplace visible. Across the street and up a rickety metal staircase was the Bar Rising, a bottled-beer sort of joint with black floors and walls and ceilings and tables and chairs, and enormous windows looking out on the chaotic street below. The cheapest beers were 4,000 won a pop, so we decided to have only one and then adjourn somewhere more reasonable. In the meantime, another third of our entourage showed up: Kim (Andy's girlfriend), Mel (another English teacher who lives in our same building), and Jay, an institutional sort of expatriate who's been here for several years.

We socialized for a spell and then headed out. The next stop was Vent, a tiny basement bar a few hundred yards up the street. Down a twisted staircase lay a lopsided room with a short bar (dozens of bills of foreign currency pasted on the walls behind it), a miniscule DJ's pulpit walled off by cinder blocks, a large fridge of beer bottles along one wall, and stools and tables stuck haphazardly wherever they fit. The main attraction of this bar was the Manchester United/Liverpool game being broadcast on the widescreen TV. We crammed ourselves into a nook and began our evening, laughing, joking, watching the game, and getting buzzed on cheap highballs. I was in high spirits. I was rapidly becoming readjusted to Korean nightlife, and it was good to unwind after a stressful first week in a new land.

We left Vent a few hours later. It was bitterly cold. Eastern Seoul isn't that far from the coast, and a chill wind was blowing off the Yellow Sea (pardon, I mean the West Sea). Blasts of moist, frigid air went rattling down the streets of Hongdae, seeping down coat collars and sending cute Korean couples in their chic designer clothes scurrying for the nearest coffeehouse.

Not us, though. We were intrepid foreigners and on the lookout for a good time. So we forged a path deeper into the interior of Hongdae, searching for a half-mythical pub which Jay had been to once and really liked. Shamrock and Roll, it was called: an Irish pub concealed in the folds and back alleys of Hongdae's sinful heart. After a few blind alleys and several false alarms (during which Liverpool had time to score a goal on Manchester, upping the ante) we found it.

How shall I describe to you the weirdness of living for a week in a city populated (mostly) by Koreans, and then suddenly stepping into a noisy, smoky, crowded bar filled with nothing but foreigners?

It was the height of oddity. My brain took an hour to adjust to it, though this may be attributable to the soporific effects of alcohol. There was hardly a Korean face in the crowd. I saw English folks, Canadians, Americans. The men were tall, or short, or muscular, or rotund, or bearded, or hairless. Some women were willowy, some petite; some with long hair, some with short. Eyes and skin tones ran up and down the spectrum. Foreignness aside, the mere heterogeneity of the room astounded me.

By some miracle the booth in the back corner was unoccupied. We claimed it in the name of Avalon and got straight to drinkin'. After some time, the remainder of our entourage finally fought their way through the crowd to join us: Jeff (my old Canadian buddy) and his girlfriend, Jennifer. We had quite a caucus going in that back corner. Joe and I switched from beer to whiskey, Andy and Jay smoked and laughed at the Liverpool offense, and the ladies sparkled and scintillated amid the piles of coats on the bench.

Full to bursting with drink and camaraderie, we waddled out of Shamrock and Roll at almost one o'clock. The street vendors were still in business and going like gangbusters, even despite the cold. We made a consensual pit stop and bought steaming hot kebab and Pad Thai, capping our night with savory munchies. After a bit of friendly banter with the vendors we made our way to the main street and hailed a taxicab.

The jet lag finally caught up to me in the backseat. My head lolled and I began to snore.

Jung-dong at a glance

This is a photo of my school/apartment building. Copyright me.

I should explain some terminology here first so you'll understand what I'm talking about.

Municipal areas in South Korea are split up into many different administrative levels. The ones I want to talk to you about are gu (pronounced just like it's spelled) and dong (don't snicker).

Gu are roughly equivalent to districts or boroughs in Western countries. Dong are the individual neighborhoods which comprise those districts.

I live in the city of Bucheon, sandwiched between Incheon and Seoul (about 25 kilometers west of the latter), in Wonmi-gu, Jung-dong.

It's this neighborhood of Jung-dong that I'd like to focus on here.

Bucheon is no small city, but my coworkers were quick to point out that the district of Jung-dong is one of the best and busiest. Everything can be found here, and most of Bucheon's residents wend their way to Jung-dong whenever they need to shop or carouse. 

As you might expect, I'm beginning to like this neighborhood.

Last Thursday night my teachers-in-arms went out for late-night dinner of ddok samgyeopsal at a restaurant a few blocks from my hotel. Samgyeopsal, well may you ask, is pork belly, cut into strips and fried with kimchi and bean sprouts. You eat it the way you eat most grilled meat in Korea: wrap it up in some lettuce with onions, ssamjang (meat sauce), and whatever else your little heart desires, and bolt the whole thing at a gulp. It's delicious. Ddok is rice cake—rice ground into a paste and molded into various shapes. In this case, the ddok takes the form of flat rectangles which are laid beside the samgyeopsal and fried, and then wrapped up in the lettuce and eaten with the meat. We had a feast—beer, soju, side dishes, and two portions of samgyeopsal (enough for eight people) for only 13,000 won a head. That's about $11.60 at the current exchange rate. Peanuts. Now I remember why I love Korea. You can get the most delicious food (and all the booze you can drink) for absurdly reasonable prices.

Following that we went to the Park—a pub one block west of the restaurant. We crossed some brilliantly-lit streets, passed neon storefronts and laughing crowds and disjointed snatches of pop music, traversed a frigid staircase and two smudged glass doors. We were standing inside a strangely-shaped, darkish sort of room filled with wraparound wall benches, oddly-contoured metal-and-plastic chairs and spindly tables, American hip-hop oozing out of the speakers, and a comprehensive list of cocktails (written in English!) inscribed behind the bar. The owner is Korean-American and speaks perfect unaccented English. He owns a stubby bulldog who greets patrons by trying to boulder his way up their legs. Joe, a fellow American who's been with Avalon four months, summed it up appropriately. It's like having your own private party room: you can request specific songs on the stereo, beers and drinks are incredibly low-priced, pool and foosball are free to play and—as this was Thursday night—we had the place entirely to ourselves. We took full advantage of the situation.

Even just a superficial glance of the streets and alleys in the vicinity of my hotel reveals a treasure trove of shops, cafés, eateries, stores, and other gold mines of comestibles and consumer products rarely seen outside of an American super mall.

There's a wonderful lunch room in Apartment 807 in Eczema...no, Enema...no, Enigma...no, Estima, my future apartment building. Between the hours of 3-5 they serve free lunch to Avalon teachers, and they also put together trays of snacks which they send over to us in the afternoons. Wednesday they had ddokpokki (rice cakes in a spicy red sauce), and Thursday they had these sort of rice dumpling things, which were absolutely killer. And on Friday they had peeled, boiled potatoes, served whole with sugar on top. And yesterday, on my first day of real teaching (which I'll tell you about in a few hours, or possibly a couple of days) they had sweet sandwiches. Yes, sweet. Sugared sammies. It's Korea. Don't look at me like that.

Just down the stairs and around the corner from my school is an excellent gimbap shop. Gimbap is basically Korean sushi, only instead of raw fish, the rice and seaweed are wrapped around a filling of vegetables, ham, and egg. It's quite intoxicating. This grub joint serves a variety of foods, including donkaseu (fried pork cutlet in sauce) and my personal favorite, bebimbap. Take a stone bowl, heat it, pour a wad of sticky rice into it, pile some gochujang (hot pepper paste) on top with six varieties of vegetables and a fried egg, and serve it. That's bebimbap. You mash it all up with a spoon until the rice is smeared with red gochujang, and devour the concoction while it's hot. It is AMAZING, and beats anything I've ever been served in a Chinese restaurant. (And I'm not just saying that because I'm against Communism.)

One hundred yards away is a tiny shop across from a police station, which sells street food: ddokpokki, hot dogs on sticks, and deep-fried vegetables. Everything is cheap and all of it is delicious. And you don't even need to talk to order: just jab an emphatic finger at what you want, and the lithe, brisk, bright-eyed proprietor will snatch it up and prepare it for you.

Across the street from the school—right next to the 7-11—is a franchise called Paris Baguette. Koreans have a sadly skewed idea of what pizza and burritos are composed of, and which ingredients are involved in their manufacture. Nonetheless, Paris Baguette has managed to copy the finer points of bread-baking and streusel production tolerably well, and the muffins, rolls, and pastries are beyond reproach. The food is pricy but satisfying.

And this is just what I've discovered in three days. Can you imagine what will come to light in a calendar year?

Much more awaits, even within this single square mile of turf which marks the limits of my experience in Bucheon, the immediate vicinity of my school and my apartment building. I've caught the merest glimpse of the basement of the Hyundai Department Store, an enormous fortress-like edifice directly across the street from Avalon. There's a food court down there which would knock the Mall of America into a cocked hat. Several other food shops have been recommended to me: pizza parlors, fried chicken kitchens, gimbap places, and other miscellaneous grub joints.

And only 25 kilometers away lies Seoul, with its museums, monuments, fine dining and shops.

But I'll get to that later.

purgatory

Imagine believing that you were immune to a crippling disease only to have the ailment blindside you with a vengeance.



Love is a complex organism. I say "organism" for a specific reason. Even though love is an emotion, and as such is merely a cascade of hormonal responses to physical and psychological stimuli, it is far from being a simple biological process. It takes many forms. It has many facets, many dimensions. It grows, blooms, develops, quietly coalesces; booms, explodes, resounds, vibrates; inspires, infects, invigorates, impels; deepens, widens, broadens, brightens; extrudes, inflates, surrounds, pervades; conquers, commands, embroils, enslaves; leaps, flies, whirls, floats, splashes; sings, roars, screams, mumbles, gibbers; and does a great many more things which writers, musicians and poets have not yet found the words to encapsulate.

Love is at once a disease, an enigma, a paradox, a riddle, a torrent, a disorder, a storm, and a living, breathing creature, constantly shifting and changing.

I only realized this fact when I left my beloved Miss H behind to come to Korea. The revelation of it has nearly struck me dumb with shock. The constant sorrow and fear I feel at being separated from her is paralyzing, numbing, all-consuming.

I never knew love could be like this. Before I fell into it, I thought love was like water. Either you were in it or you were out of it, getting wet or drying off. But now I feel more like love is the vast, spinning Universe itself: nigh-incomprehensible, ever-changing, broad, dynamic, constantly morphing, governed by laws beyond the understanding of humankind. To be involved in it—truly involved, not mildly interested or childishly infatuated—is a mind-blasting, life-changing, paradigm-shifting, eye-opening experience. I feel as though I've been wandering around in the dark my entire life, only to suddenly be told that I'm wearing too big a hat. Upon doffing it, my eyes behold for the first time the vastness of the world, its vividness, its wonder, its beauty, its charm, and its staggering diversity, and my brain is simply knocked for a loop.

I have her to thank for telling me my hat was too big. Miss H, I mean. I wish there were words in the English language—or Korean, or any tongue known or unknown—to describe precisely how wonderful she is, how she makes me feel, her charm and grace and demureness, her every intoxicating movement. The fall of her hair, the glow of her skin, the light in her eyes, the sweet music on her lips. It's utterly indescribable. But then again, perhaps that's a good thing. Perhaps the very act of describing such beauty would thereby ruin it, just as the most heavenly work of art may be crudely interpreted, and the funniest joke diluted with needless explanation.

So when I tell you that I am missing my beloved like crazy, I want you to understand my full meaning.

It is only this sudden separation which has given form to my mental state. It was only after we had parted that I realized just how much I love her. And with that realization came soul-crushing agony, a bitter and sorrowful loneliness, a longing that spans oceans and continents, as every inch of every foot of the 5,500 miles which separate us pierced my heart to its core.

For three days, I have been an absolute wreck inside. Granted, some of it was garden-variety homesickness, and some of it was new-job nerves, and some of it was living-out-of-a-suitcase frustration. But the balance of my anguish was the affection I have for my girlfriend, and the tyrannical yearning to see her angelic face again, in the flesh, even only for a moment.

Honestly, I don't know how I've survived. At home, we would regularly go five days without seeing each other; here, with the Pacific Ocean dividing us, I was ready to break down after 48 hours.  

Pitiful, I know, but true.

I'm feeling better. I've isolated the grief, broken the emotional circuits, cordoned off the crime scene from the rest of my soul's prying eyes. I still feel her absence acutely, and wonder every day whether it'd be feasible to jump on a plane and fly twelve hours back to see her, but I've come to terms with those feelings and have established a modicum of control over them. Having taught a few classes has certainly helped. Goodness knows it was difficult trying to contend with heartsickness, homesickness and jangling nerves all at once. Now that I've taught a bit, the uncertainty is gone. I feel better about teaching again. I've remembered that I can do it if I just stay on top of things. This weekend I'm moving into my apartment, too, and will commence making as much of a home out of it as can reasonably be expected. All that remains, in fact, is the crippling lack of the queen of my dreams.

We've discussed various options. She might fly out to see me in summertime. She might get a teaching job near me and come live in my apartment. Or we might try to tough it out for a whole year. We're still tossing things around. As bad as things have been for me, for her they have been worse: sitting at home, staring out the same old window at the same old scenery, with no new job or new horizons to distract her from my absence. She's as desperate as I am to reunite. We'll figure something out, I'm sure.

The insanity of the moment has passed. We're no longer feeling lost and frightened. We have Skype, after all; it's not like we won't see each other for months and months. But it would be desirable if we didn't have to go a whole calendar year without the pleasure of each other's company. We'll attempt to find a compromise, a way in which we can see each other again.

Until we do, my personal purgatory continues.

welcome to the R.O.K.

I've arrived.

Being back in Korea is as much a frustrating pain in the neck as it is a nostalgic reunion. I'm glad of the triangle gimbap, the godawful convenience-store food, the PC-bang and the excellent exchange rate, but on the other hand, I'm being reminded of all the things which annoyed the hell out of me the first time, too. The complete lack of public garbage cans, for one thing. Can't find one to save my life. The homicidal drivers, for the other. The cab driver who brought me from Incheon International Airport to the S.R. Hotel in Bucheon was a classic example.

And now, having checked into a hotel, exchanged all my money for Korean bills, let my family and friends know that I'm alive and well—and having survived my couple of days on the job—my head's in a whirl and I'm feeling completely overwhelmed. And yet somehow, I'm relieved. As I should've expected.

Perhaps I can sum the whole affair up in the message I sent to my parents earlier last evening:

Okay, here's the scoop. I'm a hotel room. This is pretty standard since the person I'm replacing hasn't moved out of the apartment yet. I'll be taking possession on the 12th.


Whoo boy, where to begin? I arrived at my room at around 6:45 PM on February 7; I fell into an exhausted slumber at 7:30, awaking around 5:30 AM this morning. I channel-flipped for a few hours (finding two English-speaking channels, one for dramas like CSI and one National Geographic Channel), then put on my clothes and began to explore the neighborhood. It was bitterly cold and windy, the wind chill putting the already frosty 19 degrees down into the single digits. Thank GOODNESS you guys bought me some long underwear and I've got my rabbit fur hat and gloves with me. I'd be so frozen without them...


I should add at this point that my hotel room is VERY warm, with a heated floor, hot water, a big bathtub and shower, and this computer I'm typing on. I finally got it to work!


So: Mr. M (the English fellow who is apparently the head native English teacher at Avalon) came at 1:30 and we walked me to school. It's quite close by...not even five minutes from the hotel. And right next door to the apartment complex where I'll be staying eventually. But this is where it gets complicated. Avalon actually is TWO facilities: the old one on the second floor of one building, and another on the fourth floor of the building next door. Some teachers work primarily out of the one campus; some teachers primarily out of the other; some both. It's maddeningly confusing. Things only went downhill from there. My head is a whirling tornado of grade levels, classes, and other information. This Avalon school is a LOT more stringent and professional than Reading Town was. They make Reading Town look like a half-assed wannabe English school, in fact. They make you keep daily reports (which do come in handy for keeping track of things); fill out lesson plans; and are in the process of overhauling the curriculum. Rumors abound that class times (which currently stand at 70 minutes, five classes per day, though most teachers only teach four) will be altered next semester, which begins March 2. That's right, I've come in on the tail of a semester. Swell. I felt overwhelmed at first...still do, in fact...but after sitting in a couple of classes (two of them taught by Andy), I feel a whole lot better. Andy assured me that this looks a lot more complex than it really is, and I'm beginning to see that. I'm just going to have to really sweat it out for the first week. I'm teaching two classes and observing one tomorrow. The good news is I have three hours to prepare my lessons, with the aid of Mr. M and the woman I'm replacing.


Her name, incidentally, is C.A., and she's from Columbia, South Carolina. She does have a bit of an accent. Out of decency I haven't pumped her for the details of her dismissal, but I do know that she already has another job lined up in a podunk town south of Seoul, in an elementary school. For lunch break today she took me to a little shop she knows of which sells street food. We ate sausages on a stick while she took me up to the apartment I'll soon be occupying, No. 908. I love the layout. The bathroom is surprisingly spacious, there's lots of storage and the view is spectacular. There's a little sleeping loft above the kitchenette which is a perfect nook, in my opinion. I'll send pics as soon as I can. I received more good news in that I don't need a transformer (both my laptop and my phone charger can run on up to 240 volts, so all I need is my adapter; I'm beginning to think the monitor of my old laptop getting fried was just a tragic coincidence).


So...long story short, I have the Internet in my hotel room (so I don't need to use a PC room and pay money for the moment); my laptop is charging; my first day of work went swimmingly; and my living quarters are VERY close to a humongous amount of shopping, plus bus stations to the interior. This really couldn't be a better setup. My only worries are my wrinkled clothes, being thrown into the teaching crucible tomorrow with virtually no training, and trying to get organized and in-step with operations. Plus I'm homesick as hell, even worse than last time. The cookies you baked me are definitely helping, Mom. I'm trying to set up Skype on this computer so maybe we'll talk this afternoon, eh?


Love, Andrew

the champion of León

                                                                                                                                                             from thecouponguide.net

And so, W-Week has drawn to a close, and the to-do list has been completed with assiduous diligence.

On Wednesday I got up at 4:00 a.m. to ride with Miss H's father (Mr. B) while he delivered a 28-ton load of lime to a construction crew at Camarillo Airport. That was a fun trip. There were a few things about riding in a big rig that I didn't expect: namely, the noise, the cramped quarters, and the constant leaping and shaking. That huge diesel engine is LOUD. The cab is not as spacious as it may seem. And all the kinetic energy from the two tanks we were hauling was transmitted directly into the rear axle of the rig itself, which shook us in our seats like marbles in a jar. The ride was only 2½ hours down and the 2½ back, but I nonetheless felt sorely abused by the end of it, as though every tendon and muscle in my body had been pummeled by a grizzly bear. It was intriguing, however, to see how a semi handles, and to get a look at the logistics of the trucking industry: the logbook Mr. B keeps of his travels (mileage and hours); the ear-splitting air pump used to blast the lime from the steel tanks and into the dispenser truck at the construction site; the complications which stopping for food and bathroom breaks represent; and all the other aspects of the biz. I left feeling like I'd been hit by a train, but enlightened no end.

Thursday was a largely unremarkable day, because Miss H wasn't in it. I had to leave her at home while I finished packing (completely finished, mind you) and went shopping. Shopping for what, you ask? Presents. Gifts. Cards. As it happens, my father's birthday is February 12, my girlfriend's is February 13, and February 14 is Valentine's Day. I was a shopping fool: chocolate, a new leather wallet for Dad, lotions and fragrances and candles from Bath & Body Works, and a necklace from Icing.

Friday was a designated fun day. Miss H and I had set aside that day by prior agreement to celebrate her birthday and Valentine's Day. I gave her her presents, she gave me mine, we hugged, we kissed, we laughed, and we may have misted up a little, perhaps. Then we hung around the house and relaxed. I hadn't noticed, but this moving-back-to-Korea thing has exacted a heavy toll on me. I've been under a lot of stress and last-minute panic. I hadn't quite realized just how heavy the weight was on my chest until I packed my last sock, zipped up the duffel bag, looked around the room and heaved a deep sigh. I felt like collapsing on the floor and not moving for a week.

Then the unexpected happened. An old friend came in from out of town. I'll refer to him by his initials, B.E. He happens to be a Canadian friend of my other Canadian friend, Jeff. I met him in Seoul during Seolnar a few years ago. He lives in San Francisco and he came all the way down to see me off. What a pal. He, another buddy Chris and I went to a dive bar in eastern Apple Valley and whooped it up until 2 a.m.

After getting my head screwed back on Saturday morning, Miss H and I went to the local arcade for some one-on-one time, the last we would probably have before I left. But lo and behold! B.E. and Chris showed up out of nowhere. We bumped into them as soon as we walked through the doors. We all bought some tokens and set about throwing balls into holes worth 4,000 points and shooting rampaging tyrannosaurs and punching crocodiles on the snout. It was a blast. Then Miss H and I picked up some Pizza Rolls and headed back to set up for the grand cocktail party send-off. A fun time was had by all. We drank, we caroused, we joked, we played Would You Rather? and Taboo, and just generally invested capital in the bank of camaraderie. The party broke up at three, and Miss H and I fell onto the bed and were asleep in milliseconds.

And today was a red-letter day! For we packed up the truck, drove to Buena Park, and feasted at a wonderful venue called Medieval Times. For those who may be unaware, Medieval Times is a feudal Europe-themed eatery where you gorge on tomato bisque, roast chicken, prime rib and garlic bread off pewter bowls and plates (with your hands; no forks or knives) while, below you in a dirt-floored arena, knights in shining armor joust and duel for your entertainment. It's an immersing experience. Strobes flash. Heroic trumpets sound. Standards whirl through the air. Sparks fly from clashing blades. We were seated in the green section, which meant that we cheered for the Green Knight, a champion of León. Sadly, he was defeated in his second bout by the Red Knight (who was later slain by the tournament champion, the Red-and-Yellow Knight). The entire show lasted about two hours, with exhibitions of falconry, martial skill, and fine horsemanship. Andalusian horses with gossamer manes pranced and cavorted in dressage. The food was delicious, the entertainment rousing, the company marvelous and the evening well-spent.

And now here I sit in a hotel suite somewhere in the vicinity of LAX, preparing to make a late-night run to Taco Bell (for my last taste of godawful Anglo-Mexican fast food before I leave for Korea). My flight leaves at 11:50 a.m. The countdown is almost over.

Further bulletins will, from here on, originate in the Far East.

Wish me luck...