a day in San Francisco

In case you didn't know, I'm back. Back in the U.S.A. Cue the music. 

I flew from Seoul (Incheon) to San Francisco on Wednesday, January 7. My flight departed at 8:15 in the morning, and arrived at 9:30 AM. Ain't that International Date Line wonderful?

My parents met me at the airport and we made a day of it in San Francisco. I didn't get too many pictures (blame the reverse culture shock), but we had lunch at the Old Clam House (est. 1861), saw the Golden Gate Bridge, rode the cable cars, checked out Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf, and ate some lip-smackin' seafood. 

The sheaves (pronounced "shivs") upon which the cables were strung.

Alcatraz, as if you didn't know.

The view from the Chinatown Hilton at dawn. 

I spent a couple of days at my parents' place near Sacramento, and then I packed everything into my old Jeep and drove 589 miles south to Henderson, Nevada (just southeast of Las Vegas). Miss H and I were reunited after four long months, and to celebrate we went and cleaned out Wal-Mart's do-it-yourself furniture aisle. I've been job-hunting, assembling bookcases, job-hunting, making random runs to Target and Bed, Bath, & Beyond, job-hunting, eyeing all the marvelous BOOZE and BEER at Total Wine & More, job-hunting, learning how to drive again, job-hunting, going to the gym, job-hunting, writing, job-hunting, reading, and basically trying to stay productive and sane. And job-hunting. 

And mixing cocktails. Which leads me to my next post...

I'm not doing NaNoWriMo this year

...and that's that.

For the past few weeks I've thought long and hard about what to do for National Novel Writing Month. I did it last year with great success, as you know. I banged out about 1500 words a day and finished well past the 50,000-word minimum. On the heels of that success, it behooves me to follow up with another project.

But sink me if I can think of one.

And it's not just the lack of inspiration, either. I'm just busy. Honestly busy.

You know all the other times I said I was busy on this blog? Too busy to write? I was whistling Dixie. I have been hustling these past few weeks. The administration and grading of midterm exams has taken up a lot of my time. I just got the last batch put into the university computer system a few minutes ago, in fact. But there's also household chores, beer-brewing (still need to tell you about the second batch) and whatnot. Miss H and I didn't even get to ride the O-Train like we wanted to last weekend. And even though we joined a gym last Wednesday, we've only been once. For three days we were recovering from soreness, the weekend was hectic and this Monday just finished us off—swamped us. Miss H has laundry to do, groceries to buy and a ton of frozen breakfast burritos to make, while I have dishes to wash, Charlie's litter box to clean, and those aforementioned midterms to input (not in that order). Our apartment's a cluttered, dusty mess. Aside from the usual clothes, trinkets, loose change, receipts, scribbled notes and cordage, there's also three half-filled parcels waiting to be taped up and sent off home. We need to get this place whipped into shape, 'cause I still haven't baptized it with the requisite cocktail party.

Oh, and I did I mention the deluge of condensation that's collecting out on the veranda? Or that my favorite great uncle died two days ago of acute pancreatitis?

Yeah. The world's gone nuts.

My current works-in-progress are taking up my attention as well. I feel like Mugunghwa (the 52,000-word novel I wrote last November) is almost ready. I like it, finally. It looks good. Should be ready for e-publishing by the end of 2013. As for Novel #1, a few tweaks will set it to rights. Then I can start shopping it to publishers in 2014.

So no NaNo this year.

What I will do, however, just to keep pace with Miss H (who is doing it, and more power to her), is start up Novel #4.

Yeah, yeah. I know. Novel #3 is only sixty-eight percent complete. Sue me. I know exactly where it's going. I planned this shit out. I know right where Novel #3 will end, and where Novel #4 will begin. This was Miss H's suggestion, actually. And it's brilliant. Why not start my fourth novel, the third volume of my magnum opus? I might as well get the drop on it. I can easily mow down 50,000 words of it by the end of November. Something tells me it's going to be more fun to write than the previous two. Every book in the series will be more fun to write than the last. And, hopefully, more fun to read.

But I'll let you be the judge of that.

the JR Beetle to Busan

You're right, I could have flown. Just hopped a plane out of Fukuoka Airport and zipped straight to Seoul. But you know me better than that. You know how much I hate commercial airlines. And you know I love the scenic route. That's why I'm all about small planes, trains, and...

...boats.

Yes, I said boats. Like this one, the Boeing 929 Jetfoil:

'Course, the one I rode on from Fukuoka to Busan didn't look like this. Mine was red and white and had the legend "JR BEETLE" emblazoned on its sides. But let's not quibble. I wanted a unique and leisurely (and less expensive) way to get back to Korea, and I'd never ridden on (a) an international ferry or (b) a hydrofoil before. This seemed like a great way to kill three birds with one stone: get home and knock a couple items off the bucket list.

'Sides, it's not everyone who can say they've ridden on a boat built by Boeing, right?

So I got up at a ridiculously early hour in Kumamoto on the morning of August 8th. I checked out of the APA Hotel, rode the clanking, creaking tram to the Shinkansen station and caught the next available train for Hakata, on the northern coast of Kyushu. (Like I said, that JR Rail Pass really paid for itself.)

I arrived at the station, got out, asked at the information desk for the best bus to take to the Hakata Pier, and was told that No. 88 would do the trick. At least, that's what I was told. When the 88 dumped me off about ten blocks away, I was somewhat perplexed. But thanks to a helpful tip from the driver, I waited around at the stop and caught the next one, the No. 89, and that turned out all right.

Now, here was my dilemma: I had arrived at Fukuoka Station at something like 10:00 a.m. It had only taken about an hour to get from Kumamoto to Hakata on the Shinkansen and maybe 20 minutes on the bus. But the ticket I had reserved with the Miraejet Ferry Company said that their earliest boat didn't depart until 3:00 p.m.

Was I content to twiddle my thumbs for seven hours? Hell's donkeys, no! I went up to the JR Beetle counter and asked if they had any seats available. They did. I made a reservation. Check-ins would begin at 11:00, and the boat itself would leave at 12:30. Or something.

Now, the process for actually paying for an international ferry ticket from Japan to Korea is a bit involved, so I'll break it down for you:

• I had to pay ¥14,000 ($140), I believe, for the actual ticket.
• There was an "oil surcharge" of ¥3,000 ($30) tacked on to that.
• ...as well as a ¥500 ($5) "terminal use fee."

Jumpin' Jiminy.

The ticket fare and oil surcharge were paid for at the counter, but the terminal use fee was paid by pumping a 500-yen coin into a machine. It then spat out a ticket which you had to show the gate agent before boarding.

After this rigamarole had been dealt with, I walked upstairs to the waiting room and examined the "New Rabbit" convenience store, which was an eclectic mixture of Korean and Japanese products.

After a while it was time to board. Or, not. As soon as we'd passed the main entrance, we were in another waiting room. Then we were sorted into two lines, depending on whether we were leaving on the JR Beetle or the larger, slower Camellia line, departing thirty minutes earlier. There was also a duty-free shop with assorted liquors (but not Suntory whisky, unfortunately).

We Beetle-people went downstairs to yet another waiting room and sat around for another 30 minutes before boarding finally began.

When the white-gloved agents opened that final set of glass doors, you better believe yours truly was the first through them.

Yes, this is a crappy photo. Not only because of the angle (I was at the head of the pack and determined to keep my place...and I did, I was first aboard!) but because my god-rotted camera lens fogged up again.

That's my seat, right there by the window. Aah, what a life.

 

That there's the Camellia thingy, departing ahead of us. It had dwindled to a tiny dot by the time we ourselves departed.

 

Couldn't resist.

And finally, the blue-green waters churning beneath us, we backed away from the pier. I believe that's the harbor control tower in the background.

My final glimpse of Japan.

The trip was largely as I had expected. The captain hit the juice as soon as we were in the middle of the bay, and I felt the ship's hull begin to rise out of the water. There was a momentary cacophony as the vessel picked up speed and the grasping wave-tops clawed at her keel...but then it fell away and died, and there was nothing. (Nothing but for the roar of the engines.) It felt like we were coasting on air. And we were going like the clappers. Though I was sad to leave Japan, I was happy that I'd be back in Korea in such a short time. Sometimes I do like my conveyances on the zippy side.

We blazed along for a couple of hours. The sun was warm and soporific. The only worthwhile sights were Tsushima Island, which appeared off the port side about an hour into the trip, and the 2003 Korean film Tube, which was shown on the big screens in the cabin (with Japanese subtitles).

And then the pine-clad, mist-shrouded hills of Korea hove into view off the port side.

The refueling launch.

I felt a tad gleeful as I stepped off the boat and back to the land of my residence and employ. Ever since I'd first taken a ferry to Busan (in 2008, from Geoje Island) and noticed that the international ferries docked there, I'd promised myself that I'd be on one someday. And lookie here! I'd gone and done it.

Customs and immigration were a breeze. I handed over my passport, ran my luggage through the X-ray machine, and caught the bus to Busan Station. Within the hour I was on the KTX to Seoul. A 45-minute subway ride from Seoul Station brought me to Gwangnaru, where I entered the apartment that Miss H and I share. I hadn't seen her or the apartment for over a month. Our reunion was joyous and luminous, and the remainder of my summer vacation idyllic and diverting.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my vacation to Japan.

Lafcadio Hearn's old house

Day One of Kumamoto:

I don't know why I bothered getting up early and making the first train out of town, both in Tokyo or Kyoto. There was no need. In Kyoto I had to wait around for two hours because I arrived at ten o'clock in the morning and check-in time was at noon. I repeated the mistake in Kumamoto. Even though I slept in and took a late-morning train that took four hours to arrive, I walked into the lobby of the APA Hotel at one o'clock. Check-in wasn't until three.

I paid a few hundred yen to use the Internet workspace and "checked in" with everybody back home. I considered stowing my stuff behind the counter and sauntering outside to see some stuff, but there really wasn't time. I needed to do laundry, too, so I got that started before I'd even checked into my room. The concierge was thoughtful enough to bring me my key at 2:55.

My room at the APA was smaller than the one in the Karasuma Kyoto, a lot smaller. The bed was harder. There was barely enough room for me to turn around in the shower. But I did have a pretty good view out the window and a place to lay my head for two nights (all for the low price of 8,800 yen). I wasn't complaining.

Laundry finished at about four o'clock. Worried about managing to see everything on my to-do list (Lafcadio Hearn's house, the Suizen-ji Gardens, and Kumamoto Castle), I grabbed my camera and my trusty satchel and hit the bricks.

Now, I told you that Kyoto had subway trains and Japan Rail commuter trains as well as charming little trams, right?

Well, Kumamoto is so far south and is such a sleepy little city that all it has are trams. I walked outside Kumamoto Station and saw a tram station outside of the train station. (Trippy.) Cabs and buses, too, but you know me: I go for trams every time. There's a single Y-shaped tram line which runs through greater Kumamoto. For 150 yen ($1.50 per ride) you can go anywhere you want. There are stops every few hundred yards. Best yet, the tram stopped near all three items on my to-do list. So I hopped on after I dumped my stuff off at the hotel. The train rattled and shook. The people aboard blinked sleepily. The brass handles make an even louder cranking noise when the operator turned them. It was like the Keifuku Randen tram turned up to eleven. I loved it.

First stop was Lafcadio Hearn's old house, near the tram stop at Suidocho.

Whoa, wait. You don't know who Lafcadio Hearn was?

It's hard to describe him in one sentence, but I'll do my best: Lafcadio Hearn was a Greek-Irish journalist and writer who moved to Japan in 1890 to be a correspondent for a newspaper and wound up becoming a teacher and a naturalized Japanese citizen.

Boom. There you go.

Aw, rats. I suppose just one sentence isn't going to be enough. Okay, here:

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn was born in 1850 on the Ionian island of Lefkada (hence his middle name) to an Irish-born British Army sergeant major and a Greek noblewoman. With his father he moved to Dublin at age 2, and received "a rather casual education." At age 19 he was sent to the United States, settling in Cincinnati, Ohio, living rough for a while. After befriending some powerful people, however, he started a career in journalism. He lived in New Orleans for ten years and wrote much about that city. However, his short-lived assignment to Japan was the one that changed his life. He liked the place so much (and was in such good graces with local ambassadors) that he managed to snag a teaching position at a middle school. He learned Japanese, took a Japanese name (Koizumi Yakumo), accepted a professorship at a university in Tokyo, married a Japanese woman, and just settled down and lived out the remaining years of his life. He died in 1904 of heart failure. He's best remembered for his writings about Japan, which back in the late nineteenth century was still a black hole as far as most Westerners were concerned: unknown and mysterious. Hearn's 1894 book Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan gained him notoriety and started the Western obsession with Japan and Japanese culture.

My favorite book of Hearn's, however, was the one I read when I was—golly, eight years old or something. It's called Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. It's a book full of Japanese ghost stories. I was just fascinated by it. Here was a group of people, monsters, ghosts and legends that I'd never heard of before. I was (and still am) a huge fan of Greek mythology and was just starting to branch out into others, like Norse and Hindu. Hearn's book was like a bolt from the blue. I loved the simple, straightforward, unpretentious and yet lyrical style of the work, and I adored the vividness of the settings and characters which Hearn coaxed out of the old tales. Kwaidan not only kicked off my long-lived curiosity about Japan and Asia, but also made me idolize Hearn. He became sort of a role model for me: a journalist who didn't do that well in the journalism world, but is best remembered for his travels and the stuff he wrote about the places he saw. I'm also rather awed at how well and naturally he was able to fit into Japanese society, learning the language and marrying a local. It's something to aspire to, you know? That level of linguistic assiduousness and cultural sensitivity.  

Okay, enough of me geeking out. As an homage to Hearn and the impact he had on me at a young age, I decided to seek out his old house and have a look. I didn't feel like stumping up a few bucks to take a peek inside, but I satisfied myself from without. It was a beautiful little house. I was really rather envious.

For my international readers.

There was a lovely little park next to his house, too.

On the whole, I walked away feeling like a better person. I'd completed a successful pilgrimage. Some people go to see Shakespeare's house in Stratford-upon-Avon; others go to see Faulkner's or Twain's. Me, I like to challenge myself a bit. I went to see Hearn's (in Kumamoto on Kyushu Island). Someday I'll see one or two of Hemingway's and some of my other favorite expat writers', too.

Next up: SUIZEN-JI JŌJU-EN. If you want to see me pet a carp, you'd better tune in.

in which the Vaunter comes home to roost

Well, I'm back. I survived 13 nonconsecutive hours on various jet planes to get back to the U.S.A. The family reunion in Iowa is over. The journey home to California is complete. The sun has risen on a new day. The valley looks the same as ever as I gaze down upon it through a shimmering veil of heat waves. That blasting desert sun is the same muted, nebulous thing that shone upon me in Seoul, but undiluted by haze or moisture. The skies are blue, my eyes are dry and my hay fever's resurgent, but at least I'm no longer caked in sweat. (It evaporates almost instantly.)

I didn't expect there to be much difference between this short sojourn home (after 18 months abroad) than there was when I came home Korea the first time (after only a year)...but there is a difference. Odd feelings and sensations are crowding upon my consciousness. Circumstances are much changed from my innocuous return to the U.S. in July of 2009 (four years ago!) and things just aren't the same.

There's the obvious, of course: Miss H isn't here. It certainly is strange—and crushingly lonely—to drive around this town and know she isn't here. Looking up at the stars (most of which I haven't seen in 18 months) without her feels very wrong.

When I returned home in 2009 and lived with my parents for the ensuing two and a half years, the adjustment was practically seamless. My old toothbrush was still in its drawer. My furniture and possessions were still in my old room. My toiletries were still in the bathroom shower, and my clothes were still hung up in the closet. This time around, in 2013, only my easy chair and bed remain. My stuff's packed in boxes in the garage or shed. (Part of my to-do list while I'm home is sorting through that junk and retrieving the unread books and other items I want to take back to Korea with me.)

My old room is now no longer "my old room," you see? It's a guest room, nothing more. The spare bathroom is stark and barren, the old tile ripped up in anticipation of its replacement, my toothbrush drawer shanghaied for other purposes. This house has completed its awkward transition to empty nest.

I'm almost 27, and this process doesn't bother me unduly. But it's more than that. It's not that I don't feel like I belong here, don't get me wrong. On the contrary—I hardly belong anywhere else. It feels great to be back. It's great to see the folks after so long, to reconnect with good friends, to sit down in old haunts and taste familiar brews. But that's exactly what's so strange. I feel like I belong to two worlds. It's like I'm being pulled in opposite directions, as though disparate facets of my soul are engaged in a tug-of-war for my psyche. One is the hard-bitten California desert rat, with his sunglasses and his guns and an airplane and a banged-up Jeep; and the other is the globe-trotting expatriate, the dauntless English teacher entrenched in South Korea, taking field trips to Japan and China in his sweat-stained safari jacket, a fedora on his head and shabby boots on his feet, a roll of gimbap in one hand and a camera in the other.

This is the first time I've ever felt like this, and it's weird. My soul is in flux, my mindset is mutable, and (jet lag aside) I'm restless as hell. It's a tricky situation. My to-do list is lengthy and various: I want to sort through my stuff, see the dentist and the optometrist and the chiropractor, talk to the bank (and my nearest Verizon rep), and purchase a crap-ton: laptop cooling pad, digital SLR, podcast equipment, and who knows what else. I also need to relax, of course: that's the point of a vacation. But I just can't seem to do one or the other. I'll get up and wander around, wanting to be productive, but not willing to venture out into the 99-degree heat. So I'll sit down, and try to write or YouTube or play games, but soon I'll lose interest and be on my feet again. It seems the insidious cocktail of jet lag, reverse culture shock, and loneliness is contrary to the spirit of a vacation. 

So, here I am—your humble correspondent, back in the land of his birth (well, lengthiest residence, at least). The next few days will be spent centering myself, eating my mum's home cooking, watching bad daytime TV, making delicious sandwiches with real cheese and honey ham, and getting up the gumption to pursue that to-do list. Over the next three weeks, I'll be sipping my dad's home-brewed beers, reading Ben-Hur, gouging away at Novel #3, sorting through dusty boxes, sitting in the rope chair on the back porch, listening to the hummingbirds and coyotes and cactus wrens, taking walks in the evenings, missing my girl and my squid-rice, loving the California sunsets, and venturing out at night like some crawling desert creature.

Wish me luck...

Insadong gets me every time

It's July 1, and the day after tomorrow I'm boarding an airplane and flying back home. Not permanently, oh no. There's a family reunion in Iowa that I'll attend for five days, for to see all the aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents. Then it'll be three weeks in the desert.

As so often happens, a multitude of emotions war within me. I feel excited by the thought of seeing my long-lost relations again (I haven't seen some of them in three years or more). I'm dreading the transcontinental flight (always a killer, that). I'm psyched for spending five days at a lakeside resort and the inevitable water sports that will ensue. I eagerly anticipate seeing that pack of reprobates (um, I mean my old pals) from the desert once more. Though flying is out of the question (I'm not current anymore and haven't the time or money to spend on a biennial flight review), I'd sure love to go shooting. I'm a tad forlorn at the thought of leaving Miss H here all alone while I'm gone, and doing without her for nearly a month. (Okay, I'm positively heartbroken.) But I'm pumped at the thought of seeing Japan (and possibly Mongolia, I haven't decided). Think about it: I'll finally be living like I've been meaning to live since I graduated high school. Footloose travel and all it entails. That warm, sunny, bubbly feeling of a dream being fulfilled—like sun tea brewing on a hot day—is welling up inside me.

But chief amongst those feelings warring for primacy in my innermost soul is...well, sheepishness.

Let me explain.

There's a particular street in a particular part of Seoul called Insadong. Insadong-gil, this street is called. Gil, as I understand it, means "lane" or "alley" (though some Korean alleys bear closer resemblance to the Snickelways of York).

Now, I'm not stupid.

Well, okay. Yes I am.

But I'm not a blithering idiot.

I can tell when someone's trying to fleece me.

But the merchants of Insadong-gil get me every time.

Here's the thing: Insadong is a tourist trap. It's a little neighborhood stuck somewhere east of Gwanghwamun (the main and largest gate of Gyeongbokgung Palace) and the Cheonggyecheon (a lovely low-lying landscaped stream that runs east-to-west through the downtown area) in the Jongno ward of Seoul. This street is filled with everything that is innately Korean—or rather, everything that foreigners think is innately Korean, and everything that savvy Koreans know that foreigners think is innately Korean. Catch my drift?

The winding lane is less than a quarter-mile long, but it's packed to bursting with quaint little tea houses filled with wood trim and farming equipment; one-room Korean restaurants tucked under latticed awnings or hidden in bamboo groves; and coffee shops and cafés that were probably avant-garde fifteen years ago. The lane's main feature, however, are the stores and street vendors peddling their multifarious wares: "traditional Korean snacks," jade necklaces and silver rings, handmade wooden puzzles (and other wood crafts like spoons, combs, toys, and statuettes), celadon pottery, metal works (such as bells, wind chimes and assorted sculptures), and oodles upon oodles of folding fans, pincushions, compacts, bookmarks, purses, clutches, handbags, letter openers, ballpoint pens, jewelry boxes, and figurines. Every item is decorated with customary and venerated Korean motifs: cranes, tigers, kings, cattails, women washing, scholars in their crenellated hats, children playing in hanbok, soldiers marching, misty mountains, red-gold suns and redoubtable warships.

                                                                                                       Not my photo, but a dang good one.

A lot of it's junk and I know it. It's touristy stuff. You'd never find it anywhere but here. No self-respecting Korean has a little pewter figure of Admiral Yi on his bookshelf. The stuff looks pretty, and it was probably made by hand, and it would look jolly good in a cupboard or on a mantlepiece. There are exceptions, of course. Some of the merchandise is drop-dead gorgeous, delicately made, and encapsulates Korean culture to a beguiling extent.

But is it worth the money they're asking? Noooooooooooooo.

Do tourists pay the money they're asking? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.

Do I know better than that? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.

Do I know how to bargain? Noooooooooooooooo.

Do the vendors know that I don't know how to haggle? Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.

Has that ever stopped me from buying something pretty for myself? Nooooooooooooooo.

The merchants probably know me on sight by now. I'll heave into view, marching around the corner from the subway station, and they'll exchange a look and make the habitual remarks.

"Look, here comes that saphead."

"Hey, the palooka in the blue T-shirt is back."

"Whaddya know, it's that pigeon who always drops a boatload of cash!"

"Bust out the compacts and the jewelry-boxes, Marge! Our favorite schnook's comin' down the street!"

Honestly, I might as well just get the word "SUCKER" tattooed on my forehead. I was wearing a blue T-shirt today with the words Beginner in Korean, please speak slowly splashed across the front in Hangul. All the vendors loved it. They saw it, read it aloud, and burst into laughter. I knew why they were really laughing. They weren't charmed by my earnest attempt to learn their language and fit into their culture. They just knew they'd be able to snow me in two languages instead of just one.

If I was a bit better at Korean and knew how to haggle, I muttered to myself, things would be different, mark my words.

I mean, seriously: two thousand for a tarnished old Chinese coin the size of a silver dollar? Give me a break!

I shall cease my invective here. I'm sure you came here for other things, like my mouthwatering descriptions of food or the salaciously lovely photographs I put up. Tune in for more of that next time on...

THE (SWINDLED) VAUNTER

NMOC

So, you want to hear about my first week as a professor, eh? Well, you've come to the right corner of the Internet.

(The title, if you'd like to know, is an acronym for "New Man On Campus.")

I was somewhat inured to surprise by the time I actually started working at Sejong University. I'd visited the place three or four times already—for interviews, orientation, and the spring staff meeting. I'd familiarized myself with my textbooks. My students resembled taller, more courteous versions of the middle-school students I'd been teaching previously. (They wore nicer clothes, too.) The thing that's been hardest to adjust to, I think, has been how many foreign coworkers I have. At my first academy job down in Geoje Island, I had two. In Bucheon, I had six, plus the folks from the hagwon a couple floors up who sometimes wandered in. Here in eastern Seoul I have forty-plus, and that's just the English department.

The scale is greater at a university. Everything is larger: the buildings, the classrooms, the offices, the dining establishments. The cafeteria on the sixth floor of my building is like a gymnasium. The student union has a Popeye's Chicken, a Steffdog, and a Paris Baguette. The Gwanggaeto Building, where I teach a third of my classes, is 15 stories tall and boasts hotel rooms, dormitories, conference halls, a full-service restaurant and six elevators. (This is most apropos; Gwanggaeto was a revered king who expanded Korea's territory across Manchuria and into Mongolia and Russia.) The campus museum houses millennia-old relics from Korea's storied past. Even the big tower in the center of campus is not what it seems: thanks to a circular elevator system, it doubles as a car park.

It's been a challenge to adjust to university instruction. This is not because university teaching is impossibly difficult—it isn't. So far it's been straightforward: icebreakers, assessments, and introductory lessons. But I'm trying to get the hang of a new borough of Seoul at the same time—and unpack my material possessions from their cardboard sarcophagi. Every night, it seems, Miss H and I have had to go to E-Mart (Korea's Wal-Mart) for extra supplies. We ride Line 5 across the river to Cheonho, the next station down, and pick up snacks or shelves or clothes hangers. Navigating Gwangjang-dong, sussing out likely restaurants near our apartment, and finding enough space for our mountain of stuff (while adjusting to new work environments) has been a challenge. But a welcome one. I would much rather be here, stuffed into a tiny brick villa on a narrow street in eastern Seoul (and working as a professor) than in our big old officetel in sunny Bucheon, butting heads with recalcitrant eighth-graders.

I have two freshman-level speaking classes and many sophomore-level composition classes. The textbooks are marvelous: clear-cut and useful, and have boatloads of online supplements and ancillaries to go along with them. Like I said, we haven't really hit the books hard yet. This week was the first regular week after the add/drop period, so we've just done housekeeping: reviewing the syllabi and discussing classroom rules and grading policies. I'm still nervous, but I'm focused on the task at hand: finding my feet as a professor. I'm feeling my way as I go, and it's worked pretty well so far. There've been no major disasters yet, anyway. I haven't been late to any classes, and I can operate a projector like nobody's business.

At the end of this week there are standardized assessments, so we'll have to put a momentary hold on the work we've just started. Despite my newness and nerves, I'm looking forward to burrowing into the material with my students, taking away their uncertainties and doubts, conditioning them to speak and speak well, watching the comprehension steal over their faces like the morning sun on a field of sleepy flowers. I can see the blossoms beginning to turn toward the light.

In addition to my regular courses, I have several free-talking periods with four or five students per class. The purpose of these sessions is to prepare the students, verbally and otherwise, for job searching and hiring. We practice interviews, review tough questions, research industries, and discuss networking, cover letters, résumés, and so forth. It's quite a kick, though there are some challenges. Some of my underclassmen lack confidence and are quite shy about speaking, particularly in such a personal setting. It's difficult to get these shy birds to even speak, let alone hype their experience and qualifications. But little by little we're laying the groundwork for success, and that's the best feeling in the world. I'm glad the university has given us the opportunity to do something like this.

I guess that's the heart of the matter, right there...the main difference between university teaching and after-school academies. Here at Sejong I can feel that I'm helping students. The importance, the significance, the value of what we professors are doing for our students is plain to see. I felt frustrated and undervalued at my hagwon jobs, and I grew disillusioned. My energy and enthusiasm fell away from me like sweat from a tired athlete's brow. This university position was a bottle of Gatorade. I take my job more seriously than ever before. I want to do right by my students. I want to put the tools for success in their hands. I want them to understand what I'm telling them—and remember it. I want to give them the best education I can, and grow as an educator along the way.

That feeling is, to say the least, downright spiffy.

Working here in eastern Seoul is, to put it mildly, splendiferous.

I can't help but think back to the place I was, mentally and physically, just a month or so ago. Those were some dark times. I thought I was at a dead end. I was up the creek without a paddle. No job, no prospects, no hope. And now look...just look. Jules came to me with a scrap of newspaper in his hand, and everything changed. I owe him more than I can express in words. How the wheel turns! A few weeks ago I figured I was washed up. Time was running out. Miss H and I were down to the wire. It was either go home to a devastated, barren America, or stay in Korea and continue to numb our minds and hands with thankless drudgery. (Miss H is still numbing her mind and hands with thankless drudgery, but with any luck, she won't have to keep up her heroic efforts much longer.)

So here we are. A new horizon. A new leaf turned over. A new chapter in the book of our lives. More capital to add to the bank of experience.

Maybe they're right, the proverb-makers. They say the road never ends. Paths never disappear. Maybe the road narrows, and maybe the path is winding, but there's always a way forward.

I can't wait to see what's around the next bend.




Now, click the play button on this song and go stare at the picture at the top of this post. It's worth your while. I guarantee it.

springtime for Postie and the R.O.K.

That was a bad reference to Springtime for Hitler, but it'll have to do. I couldn't think of anything else.

Technically it's been spring for a while now, but only today has it really felt like it. At first, the weather refused to warm up. The temperature remained stubbornly low, like a tired donkey. We even had a few freak snowstorms. Then it warmed up too quickly. I was subjected to several hazy, warm, muggy days in the low 80s, which nearly killed me. Heat and humidity do not mix. They are my meteorological Kryptonite, sucking all the energy and courage out of me, and I become a whiny, groveling, short-tempered insect.

But today...oh. Today is just gorgeous.

As you can see, the trees are leafing out, the skies are blue, the clouds are wisps of cotton, the haze is gone, and it's just a beautiful frickin' day. You can't tell from the picture, but the temperature is in the 60s (perfect for me) and there's a lively breeze that carries all the excess heat away from your body and leaves you sunny and magnanimous in its wake.

It's enough to make me forget how tough this week has been. It turns out that my predictions were...premature. Doing the presentation classes has been all right, don't get me wrong. It's my regular classes that have been nightmarish. Somehow sensing that they would be inundated with foreigners this week, and the Korean teachers would be powerless to discipline them, my elementary students have gone off the high side. They're nuts. Uncontrollable. Ungovernable. Loud. Noisy. Crazy. Rambunctious. Related adjectives and synonyms.

Moreover, my guess that I would have the period between 6:15 and 10:00 (quitting time) all to myself was a load of dingo's kidneys. The management cooked up an intriguing scheme to keep the foreign teachers busy during their down-time. We're calling our elementary students at home and chatting with them. Testing their reading comprehension. Discussing the stories we've read in class. Shooting the breeze. We talk to each student for ten minutes and then spend a few minutes uploading comments on their performance to the academy's website. This isn't so bad, but I have to do this fourteen times in a row on Wednesday and Friday. It's nothing the Korean teachers don't do every day—they have to make regular progress reports to the parents—but for a phone virgin like me, it's exhausting. I have a new respect for the Korean teachers now. They have to do this during the regular school year. Cripes.

Long story short, I've been more exhausted at the end of the day this week than I have during at any previous time.

No matter. Today's weather has made me forget it. I decided to take advantage of this auspicious gift from Mother Nature (it was as if she gift-wrapped it personally for me!). I went down to Homeplus and did some shopping. Homeplus, as I may have explained before, is a big outlet store chain, similar to Wal-Mart or K-Mart, only cleaner, more respectable, with more smartly-dressed greeters. Miss H is arriving on—

HOLY SMOKE!!!

I forgot to tell you!

Miss H is coming to Korea.

No, really! She is! Finally!

I bought her a ticket on Korean Air, and she'll be here on Monday. To say I'm excited would be the understatement of the century. She'll live with me for a few weeks and send out some lines, and then hopefully we'll get her a job at one of the English academies in my building. And there we'll be, living and working in South Korea. Together at last.

But first I have to get my bachelor pad cleaned up. I grabbed some cleaning supplies at Homeplus, like a hand vacuum and drain cleaner and whatnot. They really do have every convenience here. I wonder what I'd do for drain cleaner if I was living in Tanzania. Probably wouldn't need it. I'll have to try living in Tanzania sometime and see.

But before I went to Homeplus, I had something else I needed to do. I hadn't gotten my hair cut in three months (sound familiar?). I asked around at work and was told to find the Juno Hair Salon, on the other side of Homeplus from my apartment building. They spoke some English and it was a real class establishment. I located it without too much trouble, and walked in. The place was ritzy. Mirrored walls, glass shelves stocked with notions and fragrances, and (get this) a wine-and-cordial bar for thirsty customers. Class establishment, indeed. I was gestured to a cushioned bench and waited for 10 minutes while the staff finished a hasty brunch. Then I was ushered to a private locker room where I ensconced my coat and backpack. I climbed into a slinky sort of robe-thingy, which belted at the wast. A big soft bib was laid over that. Then, in a low-lit room with lots of strip lighting (which felt more like a private spa room at the Luxor in Las Vegas than a hair salon in Bucheon), I received a shampooing. Indeed, the whole affair was more like a spa treatment than a haircut. The woman's hands gently rendered my windblown hair clean and malleable. 

Then I sat in the chair, and the stylist put a large piece of cloth over me, the customary hair shield. (That's three anti-hair layers I'm wearing now, in case you weren't been counting.) She showed me pictures of hairstyles on her iPad. I selected the likeliest one, and she went to work. She was efficient, she was gentle, and she was talented. Her English wasn't the best, and my Korean even poorer, but nonetheless we managed something like a conversation. I traded pleasantries with her about my job and my country of origin while I gazed out the window at the sunlit streets and the majestic high-rise apartments. I tried not to stare at what she was doing. I wanted to make sure she gave me the hairstyle I wanted, not the slicked-back monstrosity that my old Korean barber wreaked on me. But she performed brilliantly. I've never been so satisfied with a haircut, and that's no exaggeration.

I was then taken in hand by the same shampooist (that's now a word, courtesy of the Postman), back to the strip-lit room. There I received a second shampooing-slash-head massage. And when I say "head massage" I mean that I thought my skull would pop open. This Korean woman had the face of a young girl, and was barely over five feet, with an alarmingly skinny figure. But she had the grip of a boa constrictor and fingers like iron bands. She worked all the pressure points and penetrated deep into the muscles of my jaw and neck. I was limp spaghetti in her hands. I gave her repeated compliments, hoping she wasn't a North Korean agent plotting to snap my spine. Don't get me wrong. The massage was enjoyable in its own unique way, even if I felt like a stubborn egg she was trying to crack open. Even now, as I flex my neck and work my jaw, there is no stiffness. And my scalp feels ready to jump off my head and take wing. Can't put a price on that. It was simply a new experience for me, the foreignness and novelty of which I reflected on even as my head was being molded like clay.

Then it was back in the chair for a quick blow-dry and styling. I politely declined the waxes and sprays. I never put anything in my hair the wind couldn't blow out of it. The stylist combed it down, straightening a few stubborn cowlicks, and set me on my way, twenty-five grand poorer. I received an enthusiastic farewell at the door from my stylist and the gorilla-fisted shampoo girl, plus a free lollipop for my trouble. I was charmed by both gestures. Ultimately, I would recommend Juno Salon to anyone in need of a new hairstyle...who also likes to have their stress wrenched away at finger-point.

And now I'm back in my apartment, telling you about it. With the hour I have left before class, I shall clean the bathroom. Guests are coming for movie night and I don't want them to get the screaming horrors upon entering that sacred room. Then I have four classes (three regular, one presentation) and about six or seven phone calls to make. Shouldn't be too bad. Friday comes with three classes and twelve phone calls, and then the blessed freedom of the weekend, which shall be spent cleaning and tidying in preparation for Miss H's arrival. I shall also explore Gwangjang Market with Andy, if there's time.

On Monday...Miss H arrives.

Heaven ensues.

my new digs

The new semester begins tomorrow. I was wrong about having a four-day weekend, as it turns out. Before things get really crazy, I think it's high time I showed you some pictures of my apartment:

The entry foyer with its vestibule for shoes. (There's also a storage cabinet to the right.) Koreans, like other Asian cultures, have this thing about wearing shoes indoors...

The stunningly large and spacious bathroom. Most Korean bathrooms have the whole room as the shower, with the sink and toilet getting soaked every time you clean yourself. It's rare to find a Western-style bathroom like this. I ain't complainin'.

Immediately as you enter, the bathroom is on the right, and this kitchenette is on the left. The range is composed of two electric burners. Apparently the toaster oven is something of a rarity in Korean apartments as well. That's the (clothes) washing machine open in the center of the photo there. No dryer.

Most of what you see here already came with the apartment. Except for the desk, that is. I pilfered it from the hallway.

Entering the living room and turning around gives you this view.

Remember how I said that there's no clothes dryer? That's where this handy rack comes in.

The staircase to the loft.

My nightstand.

Management gave me a rather nice sheet set...or rather, not. Koreans don't believe in sheets. There's a fitted sheet, a comforter and a duvet or whatever. No actual sheet sheets. Weird.

The view of my living room from the loft...neato-keen!

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the view from my ninth-floor window. The long, low building behind the soccer field is a school. The brown brick building on the right is a church. And behind...row upon serried row of apartment buildings. Koreans live vertically.

So, one small day of madness separates me from the weekend. I've got plans for that weekend, too, which I shall tell you about after they materialize. Until then...wish me luck tomorrow folks.

Your favorite expatriate English teacher, signing off.