Holidays, Culture, and Tradition

I have delved even deeper into ATK (All Things Korean) in the past week and a half since I last wrote as Korea just celebrated its largest holiday called Chuseuk. I was able to celebrate the holiday at school with the kiddos and then had a nice break, some of which I spent learning more about Korea and its culture. Koreans LOVE to teach foreigners about their history and culture.

Thursday was the day we celebrated Chuseuk at school so all the children wore hanboks, traditional Korean clothing; it’s very colorful and silky and makes little kids look one hundred times cuter. It was interesting observing modern day children wear traditional clothing – they were proud to wear it and show off their heritage, but they couldn’t help but complain that it was hot and too heavy to wear. In the morning we made ‘sang pyok’, which is a rice cake filled with some sweet powdery substance. You flatten out the rice (it’s in a big mass like puddy), fill it with the powder, then close it up. It was a fun activity, and my students showed me how to make some, made some for me, fed them to me….I ate a lot of sang pyok that day. We also made toys out of tissue paper and a metal washer (coin as they called it.) You folded the ‘coin’ into the tissue paper, then poked a hole and pulled the tissue paper through to create a sort of hacky sack toy. The kids loved playing with them, but they girls had a hard time kicking them due to their very long dresses. In the afternoon we went to the gym (which is finally back in use after the flood that hit the school right before I got here) and we played traditional Korean games. One was playing with the ‘hacky sacks’, another was kind of like jacks but with small cubes, and the last was one that involved throwing sticks to find out how far you would move on a board. It was loud, chaotic, and fun.

I have begun a language exchange of sorts with a family – I teach English to the daughter (age 6) and the grandma (age 60) and I learn some Korean in turn. I am slowly memorizing the vowels, but as there are about ten that are lines and squiggles to me still, it’s hard work. It’s very bizarre teaching a 60-year-old the basics of the English language and it’s hard not to feel as though I am being condescending towards her. ‘No, cat. Cah-ah-tt.’ The 6 year old has yet to learn English letters or Korean symbols and also has a short attention span, so it’s been….an interesting process. I really like the family though; I get to dine with them whenever we do our language exchange so I have been having some more wondrous Korean meals. I now crave kimchi daily; in fact I wish I had some right now….The mom enjoys teaching me things about Korea and over the Chuseok break invited me over for a family dinner, then out on the town to show me around. We visited a statue of King Sejong, who was an amazing man, especially in the eyes of Koreans.

King Sejong was born in 1397 and was one of the most revered Kings in Korean history. Before he became king Koreans spoke Chinese, which was a very hard language to master especially because so many Koreans at that time who were hard working folks with not a lot of time or energy to learn this confusing language. Therefore, when King Sejong began ruling he created a new alphabet and language, which is the Korean used today. He was a big proponent of education so he sent a lot of scholars around the country to teach this new language to everyone. He was quoted as saying, “Because people form a country’s foundation, a country finds peace only when it has a sturdy foundation.” Pretty rad if you ask me.

He was also known to have a sense of absolute pitch, and created a lot of interesting instruments, two of which are called Pyeonjong and Pyeongyeong. What was a really neat thing and quite serendipitous, was that there was a band playing right outside of the museum, and they were using one of the instruments that King Sejong created. This band was composed of five women, and they kind of reminded me of the Korean version of the Spice Girls, except they actually played instruments. The outfits they wore were stereotypically Korean (short skirts and high heels), and their faces looked like that of dolls; I am assuming some of them got some plastic surgery along the way. I saw them come out during their dress reherseal with all of these traditional Korean instruments and thought they would play a traditional Korean song. But lo and behold, they warmed up with ‘Dancing Queen’ by ABBA. I giggled for a long time.

The museum of King Sejong also had a part in it about another Korean hero, by the name of Admiral Yi Sunshin. Learning about his history made me realize how many times Korea has been taken over by neighboring nations, namely Japan. The woman with whom I went told me that there is still a lot of hatred for the Japanese even today. Admiral Yi’s major accomplishment was a battle where he has 13 Korean ships against 133 Japanese ships, and he won the battle, which we learned about through a 4-D movie. AWESOME. I think I would have majored in history if all the lessons were taught with 4-D movies.

Monday I visited my first palace with my friend Susan. It was quite magnificent, and ended up being the temple that was right behind King Sejong’s statue. Small coincidences still occur in big cities. It was the Gyeongbokgung Palace, which was first built in 1395, burned down (by the Japanese) in 1592, then was reconstructed and expanded in 1865. The palace was alive with color and made me think back to America’s old historic buildings, most of which are white. It was awe-inspiring to be in a palace that was first built in 1395, and learn about a culture that has been around for so long. Afterwards we visited the palace museum, but most of the explanations were in Korean so we just meandered around looking at things and guessing what they meant.

Over the vacation I went to a spa for the first time, and what an experience that was. I won’t go into too much detail because I know that some male relatives read this, but let’s just say I saw a whole new side of Korea. I got a body scrub and massage by an old Korean woman (clad only in a matching black bra and underwear) and the massage would have been very relaxing except she kept hitting me with a cupped hand to promote circulation. It just made me very jumpy and a bit nervous. She also literally walked on my back, and would hold my hands down with her feet. After that I went into a sauna that was about 200 degrees, and they had another one that was even hotter where people not only sit and sweat it out, but the spa cooks eggs in there. Kill two birds with one stone, eh? Another ‘sauna’ was a cold one with ice on the walls and a snowman in the corner. Fun and odd, which is what so much of Korea is to me.

School has been a bit of a stressful environment lately as our awesome principal is quitting. As the school is a ‘hagwon’ (private school), the owner sees it as a business and not really a school. He wants to make money and often makes some dumb decisions. He doesn’t listen to the principal or us, the certified teachers, but makes his own executive decisions. The parents have been coming in to complain, the owner is now there more than ever, and his wife is working the front desk along with the new woman who works the desk (the other one quit because the owner was extremely mean to her one too many times.) There are a lot of changes going on, report cards are due this week, and parent teacher conferences are next week. I am a bit stressed out, especially with the after school activities I have added on, but it’s just another growing/learning experience. Things like this sometimes happen in jobs and if I can get this experience as a 27-year-old, I will be ready to take on any challenge that comes my way later in life. This is the stuff that they don’t teach you about in college. I am thankful to have amazing co-workers to talk about this all with and get support from. I think this will all blow over, as something similar has happened before, but only time will tell. It’s just hard working for someone who is more interested in money than a complete education.

I hear it’s getting quite cold back at home, but here it’s still hot and sunny most days. Right now there are cumulus clouds in great big blue sky, sun shining in through my window on my new plants (one of which just produced some flowers!!), so it’s a promising day to get out and explore. Korea and its sights/smells/noises are becoming more familiar to me and it’s starting to seem more like home. I still think about all of you at home a lot, but every day I am getting more settled into this new life.

Until next time.

To Dine is Divine

I'm getting behind in my writing and overwhelmed in the sheer number of words I want to pass along. Here goes!

It’s finally September in this fine land (and in your fine land, too I’m sure) though the weather is still in full summer swing. The nights are starting to get a little cooler and are actually quite pleasant, which is a nice change. I keep trying to picture Seoul in winter mode, but it’s hard to do when the cicadas are ringing, the sun is shining, and it’s 80 degrees out. I look forward to watching the change of the seasons in a new country.

During the last weekend of August I had a most wonderful time and was fortunate enough to experience All Things Korean (ATK.) Dinners, baseball games, swimming, and art festivals - Oh My! My friend Kari just left town and had made a lot of wonderful friends, and she invited me to a going away party with one group of said friends, though these were not only friends, but a real live Korean family. Actually there were two families: Mom, Dad, Grandma, two little girls and a little boy; then Mom, Dad and a little girl, and another friend of the families was there, too. It was so wonderful and one of those MOMENTS when I just had to stop myself, look around, and think ‘holy shit, this is the kind of experience I came here for.’ There were quite a few old-school Korean values that I took notice of: the Mom and Dad of the household sat at the heads of the table, the women did all the cooking and cleaning up, people never poured their own drinks but waited for their neighbor to do so (drinks were poured with two hands or one hand supporting the other), and the guests were served first (and by this I mean they actually served me.) The meal started out with a noodle ‘appetizer’, which I assumed you chow down first and then move on to the other things. When I finished, the Mom was a bit flustered and asked if I needed more. Then someone explained that I was just Western and in our culture we eat the appetizer first, then the main course, etc. instead of doing it the Korean way where you just eat everything all at once. Living and learning in this ‘ol world, eh? The rest of meal was fantastic; I ate pig’s foot for the first time and as long as I didn’t think of what it really was, I was okay. There was some sort of breaded chicken, which I assumed was some sort of chicken bites but quickly realized they were actually chicken-with-the-bone-in-them-bites, which taught me two things: there is no tactful way to remove bones from your mouth when with company (and you have cloth napkins), and trying to eat boney chicken with chopsticks is a challenge.

Another interesting food served at the dinner was seasoned acorn jelly (dotori muk muchim), which looks like a brown mass of congealed fat, with the taste of a slightly bitter….acorn. I was a little nervous to try it, but the ajuma (an old Korean woman who has already had kids, or the grandma in this case) made it and looked at me very expectantly from across the table, so I really had no choice. I will have to give it a ‘meh’, but I am happy to know now that it’s not huge blocks of fat they’re selling at the market near my apartment. The dinner ended with a history and language lesson, and also some wonderful stories about Korea as the vocal chords were well lubricated at that point. I felt very blessed to be able to be a part of a dinner like this, especially one where so many Koreans were able to speak English so I didn’t feel left out and confused the whole time. It was extremely wonderful to be around a large extended family for a nice dinner because family (blood family, but also close F/friends and family friends) is one of the things I miss most about living away from home.

The next day was Sunday and I had the pleasure of hitting up a swimming pool on the last day that it was open! It was right near a place where our school had a field trip, (side note: The field trip was quite lack luster, which was very disappointing as I was more excited to go on it than my students were. I’m just glad I was able to sleep the night before it, which I was not able to do when I myself was in elementary school.) so I had scoped out this pool before and thought how grand it would be to swim there. And then bam! There we were. I again went with two friends/co-workers, and the two Korean guys we're friends with, plus another woman who used to work at our school. The one downfall of this swimming pool, and all outdoor public swimming pools in Korea, is the fact that you have to wear a swim cap. A big 'ol tight, ugly, black swim cap that cost 10,000 won (10 dollars.) When in Rome...so on it I donned it and had a faboo time. Afterwards we all went to a baseball game and had a grand time. It was a bit disconcerting the way all the Koreans there knew the same chants and songs and movements and things. It was almost like they had all gotten together before and practiced; I was half expecting them to get out of their seats and bust a well-choreographed move in the aisles. Each person had those inflatable bat looking things and hit them together at the exact same time and swung them to the right, then the left at the exact same time. For us foreigners, it was both mesmerizing and slightly alarming. (The picture to the left is where the 1988 Olympics were held. Now they have other sporting events and concerts there.)

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend a Korean Tattoo Convention, called “Tattoo Virus.” Quite an unappealing name, if you ask me, but there are a lot of things about tattoos I don’t understand. As some of you know my older brother Chris has a lot of tattoos, so I have been exposed to some ‘tatted’ people in my day, but it was really a whole other experience at a convention in Korea. The culture here is very against tattoos; Korean culture is very proper (although it is okay for anyone, male or female, to hauk a loogie on the street) so people with tattoos are really looked down upon. It was great to see and meet a lot of people who are doing what they want and not holding themselves to standards other people have set for them. I have included a few pictures, one of which is a woman getting some artwork done on her back; she got pins/feathers/ribbons placed into her back for some decoration. OUCH.

I did some hiking again and this time went more off of the beaten path, which entailed some rock climbing and finally being alone out in the woods here. Last time I went I was alone, but there were still people milling all around me. This time I staked out a spot on a rock far from any path, ate a PB&J, looked at the view, and just sat. It was amazing. I watched a rather large slug for a long time (slug friend to the right), almost got lost, found a garden, and then hiked back down. Next weekend I am taking a longer trip with a woman I work with, and it’s said to be in a part of Korean not many people go. I’ll believe it when I see it.

Lately I have been very aware of some more racism towards white people/Americans here. I have not run into anything as overt as that man in the post office, but I have had a few instances of cabs not picking myself and other white friends up, or the usual of getting stared at, or shushed on the subway, or pushed extra hard getting on or off the subway. But I often wonder; was that push aimed at me because I’m white or because that person is an asshole? Am I becoming more sensitive to things people do because I have, in the past, been a target of racism? Is it racism when you think that people are being mean to you because you’re from a huge conglomerate of a country, but since you feel the same way you think they are justified in what they are doing? I’m happy I am able to be in a situation where these thoughts are coming to my mind a lot, but it doesn’t make it any easier to try and figure out the answers.

Quick happy note – I bought some plants from a guy on the side of the road who told me, in Korean, how to take care of them. I just nodded. But it’s been a week and I think I notice some growth! It makes me so darn happy to have some green life in my room.

I would like to wrap up things with another Louis anecdote. He came up to me in class before leaving for the day, again in his too small red Winnie the Pooh hat, and looked me in the eyes very seriously and asked, “Miss K, why did the tiger smell?” Well, I thought to myself, I have never heard this one, I wonder what the reason could be. “Louis, I don’t know!” “Because it ate dung.” He didn’t even crack a smile, but just kept staring at me in the eyes before walking away.

*More pictures will be added when my internet is not as slow as molasses and it's not time for bed.*