Kimchee and Manatees

I just experienced my first BIG holiday away from America and it was, well, uneventful. It was so bizarre to have to work on Thanksgiving and be in a country where most of the people did not even know it was Thanksgiving. I kept expecting Koreans to see me and give me a nod of the head or something so as to say ‘Happy Thanksgiving Tall White American Girl.’ Then I quickly realized that was just more of my white privilege emerging. Most of the Canadians I worked with didn’t even realize it was Thanksgiving day, let alone the millions of Koreans I interact with in some form throughout the day. It was a good experience for me to go through; sometimes I need to be reminded that America is not the end all and be all of the world, which I’m finding to be ingrained in me in a deep level. I find it a bit disconcerting, but I’m glad some of it is fading away with this new experience.

I had to do some language exchange ‘work’ on the evening of Thanksgiving day. I thought the family would remember about it being an American holiday, especially since they lived in America for some time, but no go. I had dinner with them, which was fish soup that had the bones and innards of the fish included that gave it a weird taste, along with kimchee (of course), rice (another staple), apples/cherry tomatoes/tangerines/corn in a yogurt sauce, some sort of seaweedy thing seasoned with sesame perhaps (very tasty), boiled beef and quail eggs in soy sauce, and pickled radishes. It was almost as though the mom thought to herself, I’m going to make the complete opposite of a traditional American Thanksgiving meal. Bam! It was, and an experience I thoroughly enjoyed.

Korean food is definitely one of my favorite things about this country. It’s delicious, surprising, spicy, and homemade with knowledge passed down from generation to generation. I feel much more connected to the culture and the people enjoying and eating their food so much. My school started allowing the foreign teachers to opt for school lunch for $2.50/day. It’s a SWEET deal. There is always kimchee, rice and some form of soup, along with a variety of sides; kkakdugi (kimchee made with radishes), fried lotus root, acorn jelly, pickled radishes, random meat dishes with random brown sauces, omelet like pieces of egg, and all the foods I mentioned earlier. There is a lot of repetition in the food here, but each meal is accompanied by so many sides, you appreciate the simple basics of every meal.

One of the best parts about eating our (I chose this amazing lunch option as did two other girls I work with) Korean lunches is that we get to do so in the little lunch room at school along with others from the Korean staff; the front desk lady, two bus drivers/maintenance men, the music and art teachers, and the principal (who never did end up quitting, though she threatened to for a while.) It’s great to get to ‘hang’ with more people who are from Korea. The two bus drivers are my favorite of our little lunch bunch. One of them has complimented me on my chopsticks skills multiple times and looks at me and giggles approvingly. He often talks to me and then waits for one of the bilingual Korean staff to translate. One day, after he noticed how much kimchee I consumed during lunch each day, he told me how happy he was that I and the two other foreign teachers liked Korean food so much. Koreans, especially of the older generation of which this man is, take their food very seriously and are really overjoyed when you like it. The next day he proudly brought in his own kimchee and kkakdugi that he and his wife had made to share with us. So good! So happy!

Now is kimchee making season as fall is coming to a close, so there is a lot of kimchee flowing everywhere you look. I have seen stacks of napa cabbage (the main performer in kimchee) that are fifteen high, five deep and 55 wide. Or something like that. This is fine with me as it’s my favorite of the Korean dishes. FAVORITE. I eat it at least twice a day and sometimes as a late night snack. Though the big downfall of having your own is that it STINKS up your fridge (my water sometimes tastes like kimchee, which I’m not all that cool with.) Though most people here have a kimchee fridge. Just for kimchee. This makes sense now knowing that they make the shit out of it once a year and need a big place to store it. I wish I could mail some to everyone I know so they could enjoy the splendors, too.

And holy moly! I almost forgot about an amazing experience that I was recently privileged enough to have. I SAW MANATEES. Most people know about my love of manatees because the obsession at one point in my life was so large, and they somehow make their way into my thoughts and/or conversation at least twice a week. So naturally when two friends of mine here went to the aquarium and saw the manatees, they took a video and showed me the next day. That weekend, I was there. At Co-Ex Mall Aquarium. It was so, so, so, so, so, so, good. There were so many weird fish, sharks, MANATEES, seals, jellyfish, an octopus, and lots of animals you wouldn’t expect to see in an aquarium; monkeys, bats (they were AWESOME), prairie dogs, and even a rabbit on the bank above some water filled with fish. I saw the manatees and I cried a little. I would give my right arm to go to Florida one day and hop in the water with them and have a manatee and the sea adventure day. I can’t wait to go back.

I’m went to an American Thanksgiving celebration last night and got to indulge in the glories of an American Thanksgiving feast; turkey, chicken, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing (thanks for the Stovetop, mom!), cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, dinner rolls, and the like. There were a ton of us there crammed into our friend Tia’s tiny (but luxuriously big compared to the apartments the rest of us have) apartment, both foreign teachers and some of the Koreans we work with. We ate, drank, were merry, played a turkey trivia game, had a ‘photo booth’, and played pin the wattle on the turkey. It was so fun and felt like a real-live holiday. It makes me feel a bit more grown up experiencing a holiday away from home and making it my own. I was grateful to have the holiday celebration because I really did miss being home and in a country where it was the national holiday.

I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving and are ready to be bombarded with CHRISTMAS. It’s happening here, and I can only imagine the mall displays and commercials in America. Time to get a little jolly.

Until next time.

I Got Lost, But Then I Found

I recently went on a cleaning spree (that ended with the demise of my on-again/off-again bathroom spider friend named Clyde) that made me think about the interesting part of living ‘la vida loca’ in another country, but still having to be a real person and do things like cleaning, laundry, and cooking. Sometimes I feel as though, since I am in a new place for only this year, I need to constantly GET OUT and DO THINGS so I don’t waste my time. But then I realize how happy I am when my floor is swept and mopped, or how joyous I am to share with friends that my bathroom drain is FINALLY unclogged and the floor in there no longer makes me feel weird inside. It’s more practice of this thing Balance that I hear about, and something I get the hang of the older I get and the more experiences I have.

The cleaning spree was enacted shortly after I succumbed to my first Korean Stomach Bug, which was just like an American Stomach Bug; a major bummer. I woke up Saturday morning feeling weird and ended up spending the next two days in bed. I always feel philosophical after having a sickness that confines me inside my bed. (I say inside as I have a mosquito tent around my bed to battle the never-ending hordes of skeeters that make their way into my apartment. The tent changed my world.) I have been working a lot lately and I know that my body enjoyed the rest I got, or ‘deep rest’ as the father in my language exchange family put it when I had to cancel on Sunday. It always feels good to have to stay in bed and do nothing but watch movies, sleep and think about life and get some perspective on things.

This weekend I was able to get some perspective on things even though I wasn’t sick in bed with the flu. I had a most excellent weekend, one that makes me so glad that I am doing what I am doing, one in which I was able to appreciate the present moment a lot and made me thankful for the opportunities I have taken advantage of. I got a lot of sleep Friday night and had a fun Korean adventure on Saturday; I went with some friends to Insadong (I’m trying to link this with a website so you can see more about it if you would like to.) It’s a very traditional and touristy area of Seoul with lots of stores, restaurants, and street food, vendors, and performers. I’ve been there twice and each time have witnessed a seemingly impromptu parade. We ate in this neat vegetarian restaurant located at the end of a random alley where you had to take off your shoes upon entering and sit on the floor. I really enjoy this once in a while, but I have to say that my Western body and mind get tired of eating on the floor after a while. I always want to be really into it and have perfect posture, but the truth is that I slouch, my legs fall asleep and I constantly have to change positions. Anyway, the food was delicious and made my eyes water, my mouth burn and my nose run so I would say it was successful.

We were able to catch some street performers after that and I saw my first banjo playing in Korea!! I let out a lot of ‘Woooooo!! Banjo!!!’ while wildly trying to make eye contact with the older gentleman playing it so we could have that ‘moment’ of being excited by the same thing. There were four of us on this adventure and had previously talked about seeing the lantern festival that was somewhere in Seoul. Once it got dark we called the ‘Korean Foreigner Help Line’ and they informed us it was at the next subway stop over! Not really Proper Planning, but this one worked out in our favor. So over we headed, as did about 500,000 other people, and waited in some long lines to see wondrous, beautiful, handcrafted lanterns on a small river in the middle of Seoul. I took a quick bathroom break with my friend Amber, to one of those ‘pay 10 cents (or 100 won) to enter.’ I don’t think you should have to pay before you go pee, so I tried to cheat the system and sneak in after Amber was done and before the door shut. Word of warning, do not try this. A big jet of water spanning the enter floor sprayed out so a river of water started cascading on my feet and then the lights went out. And I couldn’t open the door from my end. So I started yelling. And Amber was laughing so hard, as were all the other older Korean women standing outside waiting in line who kept chuckling and saying ‘wey-guk’ (foreigner), that she couldn’t find 100 won. Luckily one of those old ladies had an extra so she put it in the slot for me, the door closed, I started to pull my skirt up, and the door opened up again. For long enough that it was just a liiiittle bit awkward staring everyone in the face as I waited for the door to once again close. I stopped drinking so much water after that.

But the lanterns were great and there were many interesting people to interact with. So, so, so many Koreans, which still amazes me one in a while. I love these little festivals that Seoul puts on; it makes me feel more connected to the culture and country, and the people I share it with.

Sunday was a day of victory for me. I finally found Quaker meeting!! I was hell-bent (heaven-bent?) on making it there and I’m glad I had such determination because it was quite the trek from my apartment. I had to ride the subway for a half hour, get off and find a random bus stop, take a bus from there for about 20 minutes, get off at a stop and walk for 15 minutes down a main road, then up a hill that led into a maze of alleys. I walked around those alleys for a good long while, looking for that Quaker Meeting Sign, and started to follow a Quaker looking Korean man (he had sensible shoes, and was dressed in funky clothing and I could smell the simplicity about him) but to no avail. I finally asked someone, which can be a daunting experience when you’re foreign, and he told me the way. Turns out, it was the same place as where I followed the Quaker looking man earlier, but the sign is so small I didn’t see it.

I walked into meeting a little late and after taking off my shoes in the foyer, I stealthily walked into the main room and took a seat on a pillow on the floor. The room was pretty big with a lot of windows and light and there were about 15 Korean folks sitting around; two other women, and the rest were men. Some of the men looked the part of a very spiritual Asian person in big billowy pants and facial hair that came to a point off of their chin, while others were your run of the mill Korean men. Some people shared towards the end of meeting, but as it was in Korean I had no idea what they were saying. I did get a feeling of peace, which was awesome and reminded how amazing the human spirit is. After meeting was over we stood in a circle and held hands for a bit, just like in my Quaker Meeting at Journey’s End in PA and then sat down to chat. There was more Korean and I was starting to get nervous I wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone, until one of the woman said, ‘Would you like to introduce yourself?’ Yes! So I did and it turns out that at least half of the folks there spoke English and were very interested in who I was and how I ever found the Quaker Meeting in Seoul. We all chatted more during ‘hospitality’ which was held in the same room as meeting. We all sat down around a low table in the middle of the room and ate rice cakes, kimbop, bananas, and tangerines and drank tea. It was flippin’ WONDERFUL. I was able to talk a bit and also just enjoy the experience and listen to everyone chat in Korean and laugh a lot. I will be back soon, and it makes my heart sing to know that.

I’m off to school for the day, and looks like today I’ll finally pull my coat out. It’s sunny and 32 degrees, finally getting into winter! Hope everyone is well. Much love.

I had a Moment

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Sometimes when I walk around the city, am in my apartment, or during a lull in the classroom, I think and get those MOMENTS. Of clarity. Of the realization that I am here for a reason, I am in another country, and I am doing well. I’m doing IT. Daily life can get in the way of that not so profound thought, and I’m getting more adept at capturing those little moments. I carry a notebook of sorts around with me, a gift I received before embarking upon this journey, and while one of the reasons I love it so much is because it makes me feel like a spy, another more important reason is that it helps me to record those MOMENTS. So here’s to them; if it seems disjointed, just pretend that you’re in my brain. Welcome to my world.

The classroom keeps on being a wonderful place for me in the mornings, and an ‘okay I guess I’ll be here and teach’ in the afternoons. My Kindergartners are lovely, just lovely, and they grow on me more every day. Sometimes it literally seems as though they grow on me because the girls love to be all up in my business and cling to me, jump on my lap, smooth my hair and face, and call me ‘mommy.’ One little girl looked at me and said very seriously ‘Miss K, I really wish you were Korean’, which I didn’t know if it was meant to be complimentary or not. I don’t think she knew either.

The Kindys wow me daily with the intelligence they exhibit in a second language. I didn’t learn the things they are learning in my own language until I was a couple years older. And they rage right through it all. We have been focusing on planets lately as space is our upcoming End-Of-Year performance topic, which reminds me how much I love space. In fact, teaching all of the basics makes me realize how much information is out there and inspires me to want to learn more about it…with little kids…because their excitement level is rival to my own. Anyway, one of my students LOVES space and the planets, his favorite being Uranus, which he shouts out. A lot. (Uranus!! It’s my favorite!!) We had been discussing the orbit of different planets around the sun and how long it takes for different planets (88 days for Mercury, 224.7 days for Venus, etc.) James had the few we talked about down pat in a matter of minutes. He was absent on Monday and came back bursting at the seams because during his sick down-time he researched the rest of the planets orbital path around the sun and had every planet memorized, even Pluto the dwarf planet. The numbers were down to the decimals, like the thousandth place.

Those kinds of kids make me LOVE being a teacher. Another thing that makes me LOVE being a teacher is that I can sing pretty much any time I want. You know if you’re doing something, or saying something and it makes you think of a song? And you just want to sing it out loud? (My brother and I inherited this gene from our father who has been doing this for as long as I can remember.) When you’re teaching a Kindergarten class, you can. And they love it. And if they too know the song, they will unabashedly join in. This prompted me to start doing ‘song madlibs’ with them. Madlibs is the game where you get a paragraph with all the nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, etc. taken out of it and you have to think of new words to add in, making for a hilarious mixed up story. I started doing that with songs; taking out all the adjectives, nouns, verbs from songs, like Umbrella by Rhianna for instance. BIG HIT. I love when you do something with a kid and you can both genuinely laugh together. The songs we create are hilarious because the words that little kids think of in their second language are amazing. “You can stand under my belly button, you can stand under my belly button, utton, utton, eh, eh. These fancy smelly feet will never punch in between….”

I have much more to pass on to you all about the past few weeks (gotta pass along some moments, eh?), but I’ll try and do some more of this ‘blogging’ tomorrow. I am off to the Korean War Museum to see some dead bodies in celebration of the great holiday known as Halloween.

Much love to all back home.

Korea: The Good, The Bad, and the Weird.

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Living away from home for this long and this far often makes me feel as though I’m on a roller coaster of emotions. Sometimes I’m full of nervous expectations at the top of the hill, other times I’m flying down with not many thoughts but ‘oh shit’, other times I just want to get off, and other times I’m taking the smaller hills with ease and enjoying every minute of it. As I am getting closer to my three-month mark I’m starting to realize that I won’t be here forever, and I don’t want to waste my time here thinking how the culture doesn’t always suit my fancy, or how Koreans in Seoul can be rude, or how far away home is. One day I’ll be back in America, probably back in good ‘ol NEPA, looking fondly back on my time and experiences here. Here’s to riding the small hills with joy and excitement.

This past weekend really flipped my thinking switch for me as I got to see a different and magical side of Korea. Last Sunday I went to Yeongdong county in Chungcheongbuk-do with some friends for a music/wine/fall festival. AMAZING. We went with a group called ‘Adventure Korea’, which caters to foreigners but there were some Koreans, too. The bus ride was three-hours out of Seoul, but well worth it. We started out in a Music Village of sorts and visited a museum with traditional Korean instruments; I think I saw some sort of traditional Korean banjo, but as it was behind a case I could only stare longingly. Then we went into a room full of traditional Korean drums and were taught how to play them. Bum, bum, bumbumbum! The drums lay on their side so there are two heads at each end; one side is hit with a mallet and the other with a slim wooden stick. It was FUN. The woman who was teaching the class was amaaaazing at the drum and she showed off a little bit, which was grand.

Then we were bused off to the wine/music/fall festival about 20 minutes away from the first stop. This was a place full of tents turned booths, with wine tasting, FRUIT (grapes of course, apples, a pear/apple mixture of magic fruit, persimmons, peaches, apricots….), food to eat, some games to play (ring toss on bottles of wine), and a wine tasting show of sorts in the middle. I went with three other friends who were also ready for a Korean Adventure. We got some food first, and luckily my friend Nicole has been here a while so she can read some Korean and we knew what to order. It was amazing how much more friendly Koreans were to us foreigners outside of the city. One lady kept coming over to us, oooing and awing over Ada and Nicole’s tattoos, and trying shoving makoli (Korean rice wine) in our face. Then one old man who worked there brought us, free of charge, some sort of Korean kimchee pancake/crepe. It was good, bad, and weird. The table next to us held some adults and two little girls who kept coming up to us and talking, which their dad was pushing them to do this at first, but then they became enamored and hung around longer. Being good Koreans talking to foreigners, they giggled a lot, stared, and told us we were pretty.

Then we met back up with our group and got to take part in the wine tasting. As we were waiting in line to sit at our tables right in the middle of the festival, I tried chatting it up with a local vendor asking about his wine. I guess he took to this waeguk (foreigner) because before I knew it he asked me to write down my name, then proceeded to give me a folded up piece of paper with a drawing that he did on it…..of a short Korean looking cartoon woman in an apron holding a broom and dustpan. It was a good drawing and I had him sign it; it’s now on my fridge. Perhaps it was his way of showing me how good my life could be if I married a Korean wine-maker?

We finally sat down at our table, along with other foreigners on the trip, and each had a bunch of local Korean wine on our tables to sample, along with some snacks. We all felt like high royalty as folks kept coming around to us pouring wine, telling us about the wine, and generally giggling as they talked to all the foreigners. I sampled a few, when in Rome eh?, and they were very, very sweet as are the grapes here – go figure. I didn’t really like any of them, but ended up winning a free bottle in a dance competition. Korea, the good, the bad and the weird.

During the sampling there was a band playing, then a guy up front speaking in Korean. We had no idea what was going on, but were following what the other Koreans in the tented tabled area were doing. There was a Korean wine-making woman next to our table who told us to dance when the guy up front finished talking, so our whole table got up (the only one) and busted a move. I was confused, but I like to dance so I kept going. Then our table got called up front. In front of the other 20 tables, and a crowd of Koreans gathered around the edges of the tent, we were told we were going to have a dance-off of sorts. In instances like this, I’m glad that I’m a Kearney and also a teacher and therefore don’t mind being the center of attention sometimes. We all danced together first, then each got a number and danced one by one. All of the sudden I found myself charged with the task of dancing my heart out in front of 100s of people I didn’t know and whose language I could not understand. So I danced. Hard. We all did, but the winner was David, a tall, gangly, white boy from Maine who danced just like you would imagine a tall, white, gangly, white boy to dance. The Koreans were cracking up and declared him the winner.

But! Lo and behold, enter one of the little girls we met while we were eating lunch, and her very pushy father who insisted she had a dance off with David. Words were said, then the dance off began – David vs. 7 year-old Korean girl. Both had great moves, and the father kept showing his daughter the ‘right’ way to do things, and at the end picked her up and put her in David’s arms. I’m not sure if I have ever witnessed a more awkward scene in my life, and it was purely amazing. We all ended up winning a bottle of wine (David got two, the little girl got something, not sure what) for being such good sports.

Once the shock of that experience was over, we got to explore the rest of the festival. We started walking towards another part and watched some traditional dancing for a hot second before we were scooped up by an adjuma who just said, “Hello! Follow me!” How could you say no? So she took us to this HUGE drum and we had to hit it three times with a big drumstick – I believe it was meant to ensure a good harvest. So the four of us hit that drum with all our might and while we did that, about 23,442 Koreans took pictures of us. I can honestly say I have never had so many people I did not know take pictures of me. Korea: The Good, The Bad, and The Weird.

Next our adjuma guide took us to another drumming thing, with drums like we had played earlier in the day. I felt a little bit like a rock star since I already knew how to do it, and while I was playing there were again 23,442 Koreans snapping pictures of us. It was disconcerting, but entertaining and it made me giggle. Once we rocked the drums once more, our adjuma took us to a traditional green tea drinking ceremony. We took off our shoes, sat down on pink pillows in front of another adjuma dressed in a hanbok (traditional Korean dress for women) and had a down-right tea ceremony. There was a proper way to hold the cup (one hand underneath the mug, one on the side) and we had to smell it, take it away from our face, and then sip it – three times. Afterwards we enjoyed a sang pyoeong, which is a sweet rice cake. We got to do the tea-drinking twice, and even met the mayor of the town whilst doing so. I have to say, politicians look very similar despite their cultural heritage. He was kind though and was excited to meet us foreign ladies. Again during this whole process, lots of pictures snapped by those unknown to us.

The adjuma bid us farewell at this point, so we decided to check out some more of the traditional Korean instruments. I really enjoyed one that I had seen in the King Sejong museum as it was an instrument created by him. Almost like a lap dulcimer, it had strings that were actually made of string and boy howdy did I really enjoyed it. The lady who was running that musical tent showed me some things and was impressed when Ada told her I played banjo so she showed me some more strumming techniques, after she wowed me with playing “Ob-La-Di” by the Beatles on her instrument. I have to say it was GD thrilling to be able to play another stringed instrument sort of okay because I play the banj. I have wanted to be able to play instruments my whole life - here’s to doing things that you want to do.

We shopped around a bit (I bought a present for my big bro-ski that he just has to wait and see about) and then headed back to the main wine festival part to make some wine cookies. I tried to make a volcano, but the woman made me push it into a crater and I’m not too sure why. When we were leaving I ran into the wine guy who gave me the picture he drew and he really wanted a picture with me, so he gave his camera to Nicole, grabbed my hand, and we had a nice little photo shoot. I grabbed a frozen persimmon on the way out and the owner of the stand took a picture of me and Nicole eating our frozen fruit, then shoved his daughters next to us and took another picture, then gave the camera to his wife and he got into the picture, too.

It was probably one of the best Korean adventures I have had thus far.

To bring it back home, on Monday I celebrated my first Canadian Thanksgiving…in Korea. Half of our staff is Canadian and my friend Ada in particular was really bummin’ to be missing this big holiday at home. So we banded together, bought a cheesecake, some roasted chickens from the chicken man, made some potatoes and veggies, and had us a feast. These gals here are feeling more like my family away from home, and I love the opportunities we all have together to bond. I have done things with them that I have never done, or probably never will do again, with anybody else.

I can get overwhelmed here sometimes, but it’s all a journey. I am here now because I am supposed to be, and I am enjoying my moments more and more. Thanks for reading. Happy weekend.