I got to my mother’s house last night, and woke up this morning to wallabies in the driveway. I won’t be posting a lot of content these days because she still has dial-up! Yes, it’s 1997 in Ravenshoe, Queensland. But here is a picture of what I saw, while having rye toast with homemade grapefruit marmalade.
Well, it’s a touristic obligation, right? Last (and first) time I was in Syd, I didn’t pay this icon a visit (it was a wintery June, I think, and pouring rain). So here, I did it, this time. I walked 2 km up George Street from the train station, took a photo, ten minutes ago, and put it here.
I’m sydneyed. Sitting downtown, being my typical, cafe-sitting self. I so much prefer just being places, to trying to be a tourist. Tourism, per se, is not actually something I enjoy. But I love sitting and existing in new or different places.
The bus from the airport was free of charge, because the authorities were feeling guilty the airport train was shut down for maintenance, I guess. A cheap Sunday morning holiday in Syd. 30 degrees C warmer than Seoul. Awkward climate transitions. Australians are so casual. They tell jokes and give sarcastic answers to strangers.
But the place I’m sitting, I’m overhearing two different conversations in Korean. And one in, maybe, Chinese. Sydney is global.
I had a weird insight, last night, sitting in the airport at Incheon. Korea fascinates me because although it is stunningly post-modern, it manages to be post-modern in a deeply earnest, largely unreflective, and completely unironic way. And that’s just plain weird, because for the Western sensibility, the post-modern position is definitionally ironic.
I think I'll go to Australia now. Sitting, waiting for the airplane.
I will have a 10 hour flight to Sydney – almost straight South! – where I have to wait 10 hours to connect to a 3 hour flight to Cairns, whence a 2 hour drive to my mother's house.
Maybe 10 hours is enough to do something vaguely touristic in Sydney – there's an airport train there that connects to downtown, but according to the website, it will be closed for "track maintenance" tomorrow. I guess there might be buses. I'll definitely have to try something – 10 hours is too long to spend in an airport.
Anyway, I'll update from Sydney, somewhere.
I went to Seoul over the weekend. Well, technically, I went to Ilsan, only passing through Seoul. I didn’t do much of what I’d originally planned. My visit with my friend who owns a hagwon in Ilsan turned into an impromptu job interview. I would say… it could happen, if we both take the leap to commitment.
How do I feel about this?
I had been focused on the idea of signing for another year somewhere in Jeollanam Province. Not at my current school – I have enough points of dissatisfaction that I was feeling it would be better to “roll the dice” and see what came up with a different public school down here. But, when I first came back to Korea last January, I had had mind set on working for my friend’s hagwon, but the job didn’t work out due to the financial constraints of my friend, the owner. So if there was any specific hagwon job that could draw me out of the public school teaching gig, it would be that one.
Additionally, I have been singularly unimpressed (not to say annoyed) by how I keep seeming to fall through bureaucratic holes in my efforts to follow through on this renewal. I suspect my school administration is partly at fault, in this matter. But I don’t really know – I just know that while most of my fellow foreigners-teaching-in-Jeollanam (of the cohort that came in April of last year), I seem to be the only one that hasn’t been presented with renewal options in writing, yet. That’s just strange. What does it mean?
So it feels proactive, to just jump on something that seems more certain, more trustworthy. The other advantage is that I get to return to my beloved megalopolis. The drawbacks are easy to enumerate, too, however: the longer hours and less vacation time that goes with hagwon work, and the likelihood that my accelerated Korean-learning will decelerate, once I’m back in the “everybody-speaks-English-around-here-including-the-clerks-at-the-seven-eleven” land of suburban Seoul.
Well, anyway. I will be meditating on this decision. And it may fall through. I have to keep my expectations in check.
I took the bus back to Yeonggwang earlier today. Here is a picture I took from the bus, as we approached my current home town from the north: Yeonggwang Skyline.
Any Westerner who has spent time in Korea knows about the “subway ajumma” – the experience of being shoved or trampled by what one would initially expect to be benign tribes of elderly women. In general terms, Koreans have very few of the qualms or social constraints on pushing, shoving, cutting in line, etc., that are so important in typical Western culture. For the most part, in the subway, I’ve gotten used to this and it doesn’t bother me in the least.
Yesterday, however, I had decided to go up to Seoul and go hiking with my friend Mr Kim at Bukhansan National Park. There was something a little bit crazy in driving up to Seoul on Saturday night for what seemed the sole purpose of hiking and Sunday, and then heading back south again Sunday night. That appealed to me. Really, I think Mr Kim had some kind of important errand to run, and he decided this would give an excuse for the trip.
He has a small apartment in an excellent location in Seoul. I think it’s a sort of “investment apartment” – he uses is a few days every other month, or so, as a kind of dedicated hotel room up in the capital. I understand the investment angle – I’m sure, based on its location, that it’s worth a mint. It’s a few blocks from city hall, within the boundary of the now non-existent ancient city walls, near the “media district” (where the newspaper headquarters buildings are strung out between city hall and Seoul Station) and several universities that climb the hills west of downtown toward Dong-nim-mun.
We got there sometime after midnight, Saturday night. We woke up pretty early, but he went to run his errand (to the building manager’s office, he said), and we ate ramen for breakfast. We started hiking from the east side of the Bukhansan (in northeast Seoul) at around 9:30.
The crowds were stunning. It was like hiking in the midst of a migration of goats. I really wasn’t feeling that healthy, it turned out, either. Cold-like symptoms, and still not as energetic as I was feeling before my food poisoning, two weeks ago. After several hours, we ended up skipping the peak. Mr Kim was gamely pushing and shoving his way toward the top, but one elbow too many on a precarious-seeming ledge caused me to finally put my foot down and say, simply, “I can’t do this.” I think he understood why I was unhappy. We got away from the worst of the crowds on an alternate path down.
For future reference – be careful when opting to go hiking in a major national park located within walking distance of the Seoul subway system on a stunningly beautiful (if somewhat chilly), sunny November Sunday.
Here are some pictures.
Leaving my apartment, around sunset on Saturday night. The view southwest from in front of my gas station (which is in front of my building).
Several views from the top of the building where Mr Kim’s apartment is.
Some things that I saw on the mountain, despite the crowds.
Looking toward my old home, Ilsan.
The crowds. Let’s all go climb a mountain! Is this fun?
An iconic image that I think well captures contemporary Korea’s spot between past and future.
Yesterday my friend Mr Kim and I went hiking at Duryunsan (두룐산), which is in Haenam County about an hour and a half’s drive south of Gwangju.Originally, we’d discussed taking an overnight to Song-i-do, but Mr Kim couldn’t do an overnight, so we did this instead. 
After our hike, we drove another 30 minutes to a place called Ttangkkeutmaeul (땅끝마을), which translates pretty literally as Land’s End Village. That’s because the spot is the southernmost extremity of the Korean mainland. There are thousands of islands scattered in the area farther south, including two large islands, Wando and Jindo, that are connected by bridge – so nowadays Ttangkkeut is no longer the farthest south one can go by car, but historically, Ttangkkeut is the “tip” of the Korean Peninsula.
It was a good day. There were a lot of steep and rocky spots. In Korea, all “up-the-mountain” hiking trails are substantially engineered, but this one included a number of spots where one had to use attached hand-holds, hanging ropes and chains to cling to the sides of pretty steep (not to say sheer) rock faces. I always have a little bit of acrophobia in such situations of exposed heights, but I’m pretty good at just “dealing with it” and pushing along.
So here are some pictures.
I saw some jang-seung (장승 – left and right, above). I love jang-seung – I want to become a jang-seung sculptor in my next career, I think
There was a cheesy stone lion (courtesy Lion’s International) at the park entrance.
Just starting out, we met a group of senior citizens who were starting their day with hefty doses of purple makkeolli (rice beer flavored with some kind of root or flower, I forgot to write down the name).
They insisted I drink with them, and eat seafood jeom pancakes and kimchi. One has to comply with such requests – it’s social obligation. So… two big bowls later (makkeolli is traditionally drunk from bowls, not cups), I began the hike in a bit of a drunken haze.
At the base of the mountain, there was 대흥사 [dae-heung-sa = Daeheung Temple].
I saw a scary demon (or was it a portrait of a new member of anger-rap group Insane Clown Posse? Hard to tell…).
I saw some bodhisattvas (I think they were bodhisattvas) riding on animals.
I saw Siddhartha thinking about his deceased parents.
About halfway up the mountain, we found a construction area near a small hermitage (암), affiliated with the temple.
There was a mysterious backhoe. A construction worker told us he drove it there. But we’d traversed some very rocky and un-drivable paths to get to that point, and so we were sceptical. A monk later told us the construction worker had lied – the backhoe had been delivered with a cargo helicopter.
There was a cute, but rather grumpy, old temple dog.
At this hermitage, we found a 미륵 [mi-reuk = Maitreya, which is “future buddha,” but also is used to refer to a statue of buddha]. It was a big, ancient one, enclosed in a little temple/shelter structure to protect it from further erosion from the elements. It was really awesome to see. It was my favorite part of the hike.
The view from a helipad.
Hints of fall in the foliage.
A difficult, steep stretch, where I had to hang on a rope and pull myself up through a hole in the rocks.
Some panoramic views. Pardon the specks of dirt visible on the camera lens. Looking east.
Looking southeast – toward Wando, I think.
A summit marker.
Mountain-top-deep-thinker.
In this picture, I tried to capture a little bird that Mr Kim told me was rare. You can barely see it, in the lower left quadrant. But I liked the sort of abstract look of the face of rock that the picture captured, so I decided to put it up.
Here is Mr Kim, in among some trees.
This is a charming green moth that was lurking on a lavender-colored flower.
The mountain is supposedly a reclining buddha. So there are multiple peaks: head, belly, feet. I think this is buddha’s head, but looking toward the chin from the valley of his neck/chest area.
Here is a natural stone arch that we went under, after going up some very steep, steel stairs hung on a cliffside.
Clowning around on said steel stairs.
Here is Mr Kim, having one of his long conversations with random strangers, that he likes to enjoy. I think he likes to “brag” about his foreign friend, a little bit – I’m kind of a walking, smiling status symbol, for him. I don’t mind – he’s very intelligent, and, to the extent we succeed in communicating, interesting to talk to. We both learn a lot of each other’s respective languages, although we are often just as exhausted from the effort, mentally, at the end of the day, as physically.
A panoramic view from the peak, looking eastish.
The obligatory top-of-the-mountain victory pose.
Here are some people we met. I mix up the various groups of hikers we meet. This group, or another one, were a church group who served us kimchi, apples, makkeolli (rice beer) and coffee flavored hard-candies: lunch snack of champion mountain climbers everywhere!
Sharing food in the middle of nowhere is a deeply embedded part of Korean culture, I’ve come to believe. My friend Mr Kim will literally walk up to just-met strangers and begin a conversation with something like, hey, do you have any kimbap? Or they will greet us with, hey, get over here and drink some makkeolli – and here’s some kimchi to go with it.
A little monk’s hermitage (암) we encountered on the way down.
The painted wooden panels on the temple building at the hermitage were amazing. I love these things, and they’re easy to find, all over Korea.
Two pictures of boats at Ttangkkeut.
Here is a man parking his boat at a dock where my friend Mr Kim bought an octopus for his wife. That seems like a really romantic Korean thing to do: buy a fresh, wiggly octopus for one’s loved one. The fisherman’s Korean was incomprehensible to me. And he had a young, Philippine wife standing on the dock, assisting, and her Korean was even worse than mine, and I wondered… how do they communicate? Is communication really even a part of their relationship? It’s very common for rural Korean men, these days, to find “foreign brides” – because all the Korean women go to university and go live in the cities, wanting nothing to do with farmers and fishermen. A very interesting cultural phenomenon.
Here is a tiny scrap of rock with some very Korean-looking trees clambering around on it, just off the coast of Ttangkkeut at the ferry terminal (well, really just a chunk of concrete where the boats can disgorge their vehicles).
A bright half-moon over a tree and rock at Ttangkkeut, at dusk.
A big rock that says “땅끝 . 한반도최남단” [ttang-kkeut. han-ban-do-choe-nam-dan = Land’s End. Korean Peninsula’s Southernmost Column (i.e. column of rock on the beach there, I think)]
This morning, I awoke at 6:40, which felt decadent, given I normally get up an hour earlier. My legs are a bit sore. There were dumptrucks rumbling, roosters crowing, and goats bleating, outside my window. For breakfast, I had some coffee and some leftover cake that a student’s mom gifted me with, last week.
Hace 16 años estuve en Patagonia. Recientemente (re)encontré en el web un lugar que recuerdo muy vivamente: El Desafío es una especie de “folk art” que se ubica en el pueblo de Gaiman en el valle del río de Chubut. Un parque construido completamente de materiales reciclados: ladrillos, botellas de vidrio y plástico, autos rotos, toneladas de basura. De hecho, resulta en una clase de “theme park.” Algún día, gustaría regresar al valle de Chubut, con sus raices en las culturas galesa e italiana, su belleza desolada; es uno de mis lugares favoritos en Sudamérica.
“Un desafío a la solemnidad, a la falta de amor, a la inercia, a la incapacidad. Un canto a la vida, al optimismo, al humor, a la creatividad.”
… from my hike up Naejangsan.
I went on a great hike with my friend Mr Kim, today, at 내장산 [naejangsan]. Up the mountain, and down again, pretty fast (about 4 hours). Rain threatened, and then, as we were arriving at the bottom, raindrops. We sat under a canvas awning in a vacant restaurant in the little tourist ville at the entrance to the park area, and ate 전 [jeon = Korean egg and vegetable pancake] and 김치찌깨 [kimchijjikkae = kimchi stew]. And it rained. It was beautiful, and very relaxing.
Here is a picture from the inevitable temple-at-the-bottom-of-the-mountain we stopped at. And a picture of me at the restaurant. I’ll post more pictures tomorrow.
Here are the promised pictures from my hike up Mudeungsan, yesterday.
I met with my friend Mr Kim, yesterday. We went hiking on Mudeungsan, which I’ve hiked parts of, twice before, but never to the top – it was over 6 hours, round trip, and we were basically jogging down, the last hour, trying to beat the setting sun, because we’d gotten a late start.
The late start was because we’d taken our time. He took me to his alma mater, Chosun University. It has a very attractive campus nestled on a southwest-facing hillside on the eastern edge of downtown Gwangju. It’s probably the most attractive university campus that I’ve seen in Korea, and it reminded me quite a bit of Humboldt State in its hillside layout.
The main building of the campus is against the hillside, quite a ways up, just like Humboldt’s Founder’s Hall is in Arcata. But the building is huge, and of a very distinctive architecture. Seeing it from a distance, looking up at it, I had always assumed it was one of those postmodern follies dating from a recent decade, but today I learned that the building in fact was made in 1946, making it that rarest of Korean architectural gems: a structure that is post-colonial but pre-Korean War – at the height of Americanizing influence in the peninsula, during the post-WWII occupation, but when things were much more idealistic than in the no-more-utopias phase that came after the 6/25/1950 war (as they call it, here).
After the campus tour, we parked at the very touristy base of the mountain, the west-facing, Gwangju entrance of Mudeungsan Park. We then went to one of the plethora of restaurants that cluster there, to serve the infinitude of day-hikers. The place that we went was absolutely the most delicious Korean restaurant I’ve eaten at in recent memory.
One highlight was the 도토리수재비 [do-to-ri-su-jae-bi], which is a kind of nuts and dumplings savory soup or stew. No meat or fish (which always strikes a chord with me), loaded with all sorts of different kinds of roots, veggies and nuts, a thick, umamiful (yes, I just made that word up, but look up umami in wikipedia sometime) broth, and these amazing acorn-flour dumplings (really, they were Korean acorny gnocchi).
The absolute culinary miracle, for me, however, was something I will never forget – my first taste of 흑마늘 [heuk-ma-neul], roasted, sweet, black garlic. Oh, this was a truly amazing treat – imagine whole cloves of garlic with a consistency and vague taste of chocolate, that you can eat like candy.
We finally started hiking at about 1220.
Here are some pictures of the campus and the lunch. I will put pictures from the actual hike at a later post.
Looking down on the Gwangjuscape from the main building at Chosun University.
The distinctive and ancient (by modern Korean standards – 1946!) and massive main building of the university.
The stairs leading down from in front of the main hall to the rest of campus, including the dormitory building and the 16 floor engineering building where my friend Mr Kim studied nuclear engineering back in the 80s, in the distance.
The spread, for lunch. Look at all those amazing banchan (side dishes).
And the really stunning, delicious, unique roasted black garlic.
우리는 울산에 갈 수 없지만 대둔산에 등산을 하고 갔습니다. 재미있었습니다.
산봉우리에서 도착한 때 좀 막걸리를 마셨습니다.
이 식당에서 맛있는 청국장을 먹었습니다. 친절한 사람입니다.
I hiked up to the top of 월출산 (wol-chul-san = Moon Rise Mountain) with my friend Mr Kim. It took 7 hours – about 3 hours longer than we had anticipated – we went very slowly, like ants (우리는 개미처럼 천천히 가고 있었습니다) . We spent a lot of time pausing and trying to communicate with one another, me teaching English, him teaching Korean.
I became frustrated with “faucalized consonants” (or sometimes called “tense” consonants, and mistakenly understood by many as geminates because they are written as “doubles” of the regular series: ㅅ[s] / ㅆ [s͈]… ㄱ[k] / ㄲ[k͈] … ㅂ[p] / ㅃ[p͈] … ㅈ[t͡ɕ] /ㅉ[t͡ɕ͈] … ㄷ[t] /ㄸ[t͈]). Not even the linguists seem really to understand these sounds. To my English-trained ear, I am simply incapable of hearing how they’re different, but there are many minimal pairs where understanding the distinction is important. I can’t produce the sound consistently either, although I can sometimes make myself understood by pronouncing a geminate or by using the “ejective” series that I worked so hard to master during my phonology classes as a linguistics major: p’, t’, k’, q’, s’ (these ejectives are common in many African Bantu-family languages, like Xhosa, I think).
Memorably, I was trying to say the word “dream”: 꿈 [k͈um] (standard romanization <kkum>), but Mr Kim was simply incapable of figuring out what I was talking about, because he was only hearing me say 굼[kum], which, standing alone, is a nonsense syllable. I was almost in tears when I realized I simply couldn’t express the sound correctly. Will I ever be able to do it? I wish I could meet a Korean-speaker who was also a trained linguist (or, a trained linguist who was also a Korean-speaker would do, too), who could teach me what to do with my vocal tract to make these sounds reliably. Most Koreans, when faced with the idea that the difference is hard to hear for non-native-speakers, will simply pronounce the faucalized versions louder, because that is part of how they’re perceived psychologically, I think.
Anyway… here are some pictures.
Approaching the mountain in the car from Yeongam Town.
A small temple under construction. I like the detailed woodwork on the eaves.
A small purple flower.
I’m not sure what “shemanism” is (sounds vaguely West Hollywood), but it’s definitely not allowed.
The Cloud Bridge (구름다리)
A dragonfly.
“Hiking while drunk prohibitted.”
Looking east.
At the summit.
A man surfing the internet on his cellphone at the summit (because we’re in South Korea, of course).
On the way back down: Six Brothers Rocks.
Me, trying to look very tired (because I was very tired).
A waterfall.
I don’t really know the name of the street. It’s one of basically two streets that make up Hongnong town. There’s a “High Street” and a “Low Street” – I mean these literally, because one street is farther up the hill than the other, and they run parallel to each other, with little alleyways between, for about 10 blocks in length. The bus terminal is on the southwest end of “High Street” and the elementary school where I work is on about two-thirds along the same street, toward the northeast end. Beyond the elementary school is the middle school and the fire station.
Here’s the little video I made – all shakey and walky but whatever… it sorta captures the town. Although that morning I didn’t run into any of my students, like I normally do. The music is “Fractured” by Zeromancer. Awesome track.
(Sorry the resolution is so poor – I’ve been having nightmares with uploading large files from home, so I cut the video output filesize way back, to make it tolerable on upload – it still took 25 minutes to put it on youtube.)
Yesterday I took a day trip. It followed the pattern of many day trips I’ve taken with Koreans – a little bit random, with an initial plan but a lot of ad hoc changes, too. A bit like many things. Unlike in work situations, however, this kind of thing doesn’t bother me in the least. It’s a good way to do things.
I have a coworker, Haewon, who is Gyopo. “Gyopo” is what Koreans call fellow Koreans who are born or have lived abroad and pertain at least as much to that foreign culture as to Korean culture. Haewon grew up in Houston, Texas, and she is not a full-time teacher – she’s kind of bottom-of-the-totem pole, because she’s young – university age – and I don’t think she holds a Korean teaching certification. She’s kind of just a teaching assistant or part-timer. Anyway, being the only truly bilingual person in the school (and possibly the only truly bilingual person in the entire town of Hongnong), she often gets stuck with “translator duty,” which I think must be very hard on her.
At first, I didn’t feel that comfortable around her – she seemed too serious, and kind of gloomy. But I’ve come to think highly of her. She’s quite intelligent, although she hides it for the most part, and she’s got a sort of understated, wry sense of humor that shows up at odd moments. Friday, she told me she had been invited by one of her adult students (she teaches a night class at the nuclear power plant) to go drive down and look at Boseong, which is where the famous green tea plantations are, at the other end of Jeollanam Province. She conveyed her student’s invitation that I could come along too.
The adult student was Mr Kim, who is a nuclear engineer who works at the power plant as a senior reactor operator. Interesting stuff. He’s my age. He’s trying desperately to improve his English (because his next promotion depends on a certain minimum level of proficiency – it’s tied to recent contract the Korean Nuclear Power company has finagled to build reactors for the United Arab Emirates), hence the fact of his taking the night class, with Haewon, and also his invitation through her to any “foreigners” she might know to spend a Saturday hanging out and touring around. He’s a nice guy, and generous.
We didn’t follow the plan of going straight to Boseong. We ended up going the opposite direction, at first, because he wanted to go see this giant causeway (it’s a bit like the giant polders the Dutch have built to increase the size of their country, in engineering terms). First, though, we stopped at a ancient Buddhist temple called Seonsun, which is one of the oldest in Korea, having been established in 577.
The causeway, which stretches south of Kunsan in a great arc jutting into the Yellow Sea, is called Saemangeum, and basically, as I hinted, the Koreans appear to be taking a cue from the Dutch and are attempting to build more, brand new South Korea, from scratch. One dumps dirt and rocks and cement into the ocean, fills things in and drains water, adds roads, trees, buildings, harbors, and viola, more Korea!
The project is still in early stages, but the plan is humongous, vast – and although it’s not terribly photogenic, especially in the sticky summer fog, I tried to take some pictures. Then we drove to Boseong, after stopping at a fish market in Kunsan and eating some dried, smoked octopus tentacle, and then nearly drowning in a rainstorm while tailing a dumptruck.
Here are some pictures. I really liked the dumptruck bas-relief attached to the monument at Saemangeum – it would maybe make a good logo for my blog.
Here is a flower I saw at the side of the road, while walking to meet Haewon and Mr Kim at 7 in the morning.
Peering into one of the temple buildings, at Seonsunsa.
Me and the dumptruck.
Me and Mr Kim.
The giant, super-humongous tidal flood gates, near the midpoint of the 50 km. long dike that we drove along.
A stream in the woods near the tea fields.
Peering at tea from under cedars, misty day.
Tea fields.
More tea.
Me, candidly, eating naengmyeon.
Such as it is. The music: “Shower Scene” by Saint Etienne.
One of the things about the Thursday-Friday school staff fieldtrip that got me really depressed was the fact that I didn’t receive a lot of positive encouragement in my efforts to speak or understand Korean. I felt frequently ridiculed and mocked.
I’ve indicated before, on this blog, that right now, in my life, trying to get better at Korean is near the top of my list of priorities. Call that quixotic, or peculiar, or pointless. But it’s true.
So to the extent that the fieldtrip, and my interactions with some of my coworkers, squashed my optimism and enjoyment of trying to learn the language, it was was a real downer. And so… what have I done, today, in the wake of this?
I felt crappy. I didn’t go off to Seoul, as I’d planned – I lacked motivation. I had zero interest in going out into the Korean-speaking world. I sulked. This is bad behavior. I know.
Here are some pictures taken during the better part of the trip, done with my cell phone, so they have rather poor resolution. We were climbing the mountain Daedun.
And here are the principal and vice principal, plotting some new humiliation – or maybe (more likely) just being clueless and cold-hearted, in a good-natured and paternalistic way.
I have just returned from the worst 24 hours I’ve ever spent in Korea. Well, maybe there were a few 24 hour periods back when I was a soldier in the US Army stationed at Camp Edwards, up in Paju, (DMZ/Munsan/Ilsan) that were worse. But I’m just sayin.
My biggest mistake was that I’ve recently been relaxing my formerly teetotaller approach to alcohol – since my trip to Japan, when I made the breakthrough realization (or recollection – call it “personal historical revisionism”) that one of the reasons I managed to learn Spanish effectively in the 1980’s was because I wasn’t adverse to falling under the influence. It lowers inhibitions, which is a big issue with language-learning.
But this school that I work for – well, they’re a tribe of “college-frat-party”-worthy binge alcoholics. And that’s not my thing. Never has been my thing – even when I was doing my own share of binge-drinking myself, back in college.
Maybe I’ll give a detailed breakdown, later.
Let’s just say, I was witness to manifold unkindnesses, and became depressed, despondent and angry. I was in tears when I got home to my tiny Yeonggwang apartment. I haven’t been there, in quite a while – in tears, I mean.
I hold it all in: the anger, the tears. Bottled up. And then it comes out, when I can finally get alone, even though the drunk moment has passed. Alcohol sucks. And I’ve always been a weepy, grumpy, judgmental drunk – I know this about myself.
Hell. I know I can never renew at this school – alcohol reveals depths and truths about people, and although there are many kind and wonderful people working at Hongnong Elementary, none of those kind and wonderful types are the ones running things – the manager-types showed their true selves pretty effectively, as far as I’m concerned. And not in their own favor, frankly.
I will survive this contract. I can avoid the management types, mostly. But they are cruel, unkind people, who furthermore insist on excusing their cruelty as “tradition” and “Korean culture.” Fine. I know, confidently, that there are other types of Korean culture: types that don’t require cajoling people to get drunk, that don’t require laughing at (not with) underlings, that don’t require groping female employees.
Mr Kim (remember him? – the PE teacher) was actually among those who were pretty kind to me. He seemed a bit disgusted with how out of control the alcohol games got, too. He explained to me, mostly in Korean (with a dictionary in hand), that we should make a Hongnong Alcohol Blacklist, and that the first three members included certain highly placed individuals in the school’s administrative staff. I laughed at that, and he was sullenly pleased that he’d managed to make a joke across the cultural and linguistic divide.
Okay. That’s enough.
Looking out the window of the bus, coming home, I saw a cloud with a silver lining. Literally. Korea is a beautiful country. And there were enough “off to the side” kindnesses shown to me in my sadness, today, that I know better than to give up on the humanity of Koreans. Generalization and stereotyping are almost always really bad ideas.
Here’s a mountain or two, that I saw.
I'm in Daejeon with my coworkers. The whole school staff piles into a bus, the moment the kids have left campus for the start of summer vacation earlier today. We drive to Daedunsan (Muju), the more ambitious hike some trails (I'll post some cellphone pics later), we drive to Daejeon, and have a hweh-sik with way too much beer, soju and makkeolli flowing. Now I'm in a hotel, and my roommates, being high on the seniority list, have been socially obligated to go drink some more. I've bowed out. Tired, and, as many know, I don't enjoy drinking too much. I'm feeling deeply melancholy as it is. I don't need more.
Korea has no donkeys, mules or horses. I don’t know if this is characteristically Asian, or if it is more specific to Korea, as a legacy of the total destruction that occurred during the Korean War. But it’s one way in which that makes rural Korea different from other poor or developing countries I’ve visited – mostly these have been in Latin America, where there are strong traditions of using equine beasts of burden, but I also remember seeing a lot of rural animals pulling things in Morocco.
Anyway, rural Koreans use these small, two-wheeled tractors instead. They can pull carts to and from town, they can work in the fields… they are general-purpose, internal combustion beasts of burden – although you can’t eat one if things get rough. Back when I was in Korea with the US Army, the soldiers had a slightly insulting name for these tractors: kimchee rockets. For whatever reason, that term has stuck with my mental vocabulary – it’s difficult for me to think of them as anything else.
We were constantly having to dodge kimchee rockets when we (my support battalion) drove rural highways in northern Gyeonggi province (near the DMZ) back in 1991. There’re a lot of expressways and much more development up there now, so the kimchee rockets are rare on major highways. But there are still a lot around in Korea – especially down in the significantly backward part of Korea that I’m in now.
Here is a picture of a farmer driving his kimchee rocket towing a low-tech, ad hoc trailer, into town on the road in front of my apartment here in Yeonggwang. I took the picture yesterday morning as I watched the fog lift, while waiting for my carpool to arrive.
Here are some pictures to go with my last post about yesterday’s hiking experience on the southern flank of Mudeungsan.
In many spiritual traditions, there is an experience that involves going out into the wilderness (either psychologically or physically at some level) and "becoming" some kind of animal or creature or spirit. You can think of stories like Carlos Castaneda's "Teachings of Don Juan," for example. The French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari riff on the idea a great deal in their amazing masterpiece, "Mille Plateaux," too.
Well, this past weekend, I experienced this, in a weird way. In the densely populated wilds of Mudeung Mountain park, in eastern Gwangju City, I had my own weird "becoming." What unexpected creature did I become? The common Korean Ajeossi. What is an ajeossi (아저씨)? It's a term that basically means, "mister" or "middle-aged man," and it's very widely used as a form of address to strangers, of affection for older male friends, or even of disrespect when talking about obnoxious middle-aged male behavior.
I went hiking, or "mountain climbing" as the Koreans insist on calling it in English (due to the semantic field working a bit differently in the Korean language, where 등산하다 covers both activities). My friend Byeongbae took me, along with two of his friends. I realized that Byeongbae is more than just 5 years older than me – he's somewhere around 60 and nearing retirement – both his friends are already retirees. I guess he wears his age pretty well, since I thought he was in his early 50's. Then again, maybe I should just take up the Korean habit of more bluntly inquiring people's ages – but I still have a hard time bringing myself to do that.
We parked in this area at the southwest corner of Mudeungsan park, that was swarming with Sunday-outing hikers. Hiking is predominantly an old-persons' activity in Korea, in my experience – at least the kind of day-hiking that occurs in large parks near urban areas. And it's a high-density affair, too. It is, of course, critical to have the right "equipment" – fancy boots are universal, as are these rather ridiculous-seeming (to Western eyes) aluminum walking-sticks.
After milling with the crowds for half an hour, waiting to all be together and on the same page, so to speak, we finally set out at about 10 AM. The climb was relatively steep, and being with locals, we took a much less densely populated trail than I've seen before in such settings. Nevertheless, we passed many groups along the way.
I think the reason why I felt I was "becoming" an ajeossi had to do with the fact that the three older men I was with were not treating me like the sideshow attraction one gets used to experiencing as a foreigner hanging out with Korean friends. They mostly ignored me, just as they would a taciturn fellow Korean, which, given my level of fluency, is about right. I understood enough of what they were saying that they didn't have to stop and invent some English to let me know what was going on, which is often a stressful proposition for Koreans. Thus I was managing to avoid being the stress-inducing "foreigner" and they were able to relax and just be themselves.
"Hiking" in Korea seems to invoke the following recipe: take 1 part actual hiking, combined with 1 part "resting," 2 parts eating, and 1 part drinking makkeolli or soju; season liberally with off-color jokes, friendly conversations and exchanges of shots of soju with random strangers met along the trail, and garnish with at least one heated argument about the relative merits of different brands of aluminum walking sticks.
So mostly, I just kind of followed along, occassionally shocking the other groups of Koreans met on the trail with fragments of Korean. There was one moment in particular that I was pleased with: some intensely athletic, youthful mountain bikers passed through an encampment of a dozen ajeossis and paused to rest and bullshit for a bit. The conversation turned to the stunningly high prices of some of the mountain-bikes (up to ten million won = $9000), and I actually added my own brief comment to the effect of "yes they can be very expensive." A dozen faces snapped in my direction, as everyone realized I was actually following the conversation. I felt very proud of my limited ability at that moment, and for once was not bothered by being the center of attention.
I was struggling with the fact that we were eating much more than hiking. I try very hard not to overeat, which is a hard thing to do under most circumstances in Korea. I really am puzzled at the fact that, relatively speaking, Koreans aren't that overweight, although it's a growing problem. If I ate as much as the Koreans around me urge me too, I would balloon back up to my erstwhile 250 pounds quite quickly.
I hope I didn't make my Korean friend uncomfortable by my refusals to eat so much. I did drink some makkeolli, which made the trail a little more challenging. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to work?
At one point, I even laughed at a joke at the right moment. That was a cool feeling of linguistic accomplishment, too. It was a very simple joke, involving a mis-use of vocabulary: two of the guys said to their friend, "come over and eat." He was away to the side, smoking a cigarette. "담배먹고," he replied: "I'm eating my cigarette." One shouldn't use that verb with that activity, but he was making a sort of pun.
We didn't go that far up the mountain, and we came back down through a very peaceful and stunning grove of cypress trees that resembled a sort of scaled-down redwood forest. I'll add some pictures later. At last, around 12:30, we re-emerged at the entrance area after rounding a lovely little reservoir, and the guys were ready for "lunch." I think they found my incomprehension that it was time for lunch amusing.
Overall, I enjoyed my morning of ajeossiness. Ajeossinosity? Something like that.
My friend (and colleague at work) Byeongbae took me to his home, where I met his wife. He lives in a very modern and nice apartment in a modern development in the southeast part of Gwangju – the area reminded me a lot of Ilsan, actually. Here is a view from his apartment.
After that, he said every Saturday he goes to a bathhouse. He invited me to accompany him. I’ve always thought the Korean bathhouse tradition was cool, but I admit I often feel uncomfortable as a “foreigner” going to them – so it was nice to go with someone as a “guest.” It was actually very relaxing. After that, he and his wife and I drove out the eastern flank of the city, in Mudeung Mountain Park (actually near the hotel where I stayed during my orientation). We visited a temple there called 원효사 (Wonhyosa). I took some pictures.
His wife joined some friends at maintaining a vegetable garden that is in the woods near the temple.
Here is my friend, hamming it up a little bit beside his car, while we waited for his wife and their friends to get back out of the woods.
[this is a “back-post” added 2010-06-21]
I'm going to spend a night with a coworker who invited me to his house in Gwangju, and we're going hiking tomorrow. He's an older teacher, maybe a half a decade ahead of me, but I think the main reason we've connected is because our respective ability levels in each other's languages are almost identical – we both completely suck: I suck at Korean, and he sucks at English. This gives us both lots of opportunity for improvement. So I'm off for an overnight of communicative inefficacy!
A while back I took a hike up the mountain to the east of the town. Here are some pictures.
Looking east.
Looking back along a little road.
Looking at the town. In the foreground, one of the monuments to the dead that can be found everywhere on hillsides in Korea.
Here are some more pictures from last weekend’s hike over to Gamami.
First, of me – the town in the valley behind me is Happy, Harmonious Hongnong.
Next, walking down the highway near Gamami.
A little before that, looking down from the mountain, southward, over the Beopseong inlet.
Last, the (in-)famous nuclear power plant – one of the largest nuclear power production facilities in the world, from what I understand. “Springfield, Korea!”
Today, I went with my friend Peter (who’s finished his contract at hagwon in Ilsan and who is visiting me for a few days) on a long, long hike over to Gamami beach (가마미), which is the coastal part of Hongnong Town. It was a great hike. Here are a few pictures.
[This is a “back-post” added 2010-05-21]
This morning I decided to come to Gwangju – it being the last day of my pop-vacation (neologism in the spirit of "pop quiz"). I got the 9:05 from Yeonggwang, and I was planning to coming downtown when I got to Gwangju. Gwangju has a subway – but it's kind of lame as subways go – only one line, and that single line doesn't make it to either the bus terminal or the train station (although it does manage to pass the airport). You can walk to the subway from the bus terminal, but it'll take about 10~15 minutes (10 large city blocks). Or you can figure out a bus or take a taxi.
But as I was coming into Gwangju, zigzagging through the sprawling western suburbs of the city as the bus does, the bus stops at a place called Songjeong-gongwon (Songjeong Park), and I realized that it was really close to one of the far western stations of the subway line. So I hopped off the bus there instead of at the terminal, walked about 2 blocks to the subway station, and came downtown. By doing this, I saved a lot of time – it's a very efficient way to get to downtown Gwangju, it seems like.
Today, I went out to Hongnong to hang out with my FFT (“fellow foreign teacher”) and experienced severe apartment envy. Not only do I envy the fact that she lives within walking distance of work, but also her apartment is just as big as mine and much cleaner and brighter (more and better windows) than mine. Ah well… such random inequities are inevitable, right? I will try to focus on the positives of my apartment in Yeonggwang. It’s more centrally located and convenient to a marketplace and bus station. And it doesn’t have Jehovah’s Witnesses lurking about on Saturday mornings – we shooed some off at her place this morning.
Anyway… I wanted to walk up the mountain west of Hongnong, but she wasn’t interested. I’ll do that on my own, some other time, I guess.
Here is a picture of Hongnong Middle School, seen from the main drag. Note the rural character of the community. Heh.
Meanwhile, here are some pictures of my long walk around Mokpo yesterday.
[This is a “back-post” added 2010-05-09]
Al fin de cuentas, ayer en la tarde no pude resister un viajecito rapidito hacía Seul para visitar mi librería favorito, el muy bueno 교보문고 (Kyobo Mungo), donde me compré un nuevo atlas coreano y el número más reciente de mi revista preferida, The Economist. Todavía no sé exactamente como voy a aguantar el hecho de que no voy a poder comprar aquella revista cada semana en mi nuevo pueblo en Yeonggwang… tal vez tendré que inscribirme para recibirla por correos.
Pero lo más importante fue una visita al restaurante Dos Tacos (que se escribe en hangeul 도스타코스 = doseutakoseu), que tienen los mejores tacos al pastor en Corea (izquierda). También comimos unos taquitos de pollo (que suelen llamarse flautas) muy bien hechos.
Fuimos yo y mi amigo Peter, quien recién se ha acabado con su contrato en hagwon en Ilsan y se ha dedicado a pasar un rato de modo de turista antes de volver a los EEUU.
Después, anoche, Peter vino a Suwon y salimos con mis amigos Mr Choi y Seungbae, y acompañados por un señor alemán bastante divertido que se está hospedando en la casa de huéspedes acá. Resulta que Peter habla alemán excelentemente. Tomamos makkoli y comimos un kimchijeon muy sabroso.
Ahora son las seis y media de la mañana de domingo, y estoy arreglando mis libros y otras posesiones los cuales vine a recoger, para poder llevarlos todo a Yeonggwang. Me alegraré ya no tener mis cosas tan distruibidas por todo el país.
The last time I talked with my mother, she shared an aphorism with me that’s been rolling around in my brain: “Before enlightenment, there are trees. After enlightenment, there are trees.” This is probably a paraphrase of something aptly Buddhistic, but I like the simplicity of it.
I was thinking of it, and looking at trees, yesterday, as I climbed up the path up the mountain behind my hotel here in Gwangju. There were many trees, in various stages of springing forth, from bare branches to luxuriant pale, glowing green, with lots of blossoms too. Some of the trees had little labels on them placed by the local park service that maintains the park, and so I set to trying to learn some of the Korean names of trees – assuming I could identify the tree in question based on my own somewhat stale knowledge from my classes in botany of 20 years ago.
It was a steep climb – good exercise to reach to top. The view out over Gwanju wasn’t spectacular: there were too many trees. But it was beautiful. And I had the space mostly to myself, since rain was threatening. It’s pretty rare to have park-trails to oneself, in Korea.
Here is a picture.
Here are some low-rez cellphone pictures from my long walk to the monument to Baekje Buddhism site that I visited yesterday.
