food

I have about a half an hour left here at school and I just want to devote one post to food. I've been pretty good about adapting to Korean food, and I've taken a little pride in the fact that I haven't fallen back on McDonald's or KFC or anything like that (okay, except that one time at the airport with Burger King when I was in a hurry and a bad mood). I can count on one hand the number of times I've eaten Western food in a restaurant in Korea, and I can count on the knuckles of one finger the number of times I've eaten non-Korean food for breakfast, lunch or dinner because I was just craving it or was completely unappetized by Korean food. I actually have sort of wished that I would be pushed to that point more often so that I could justify visiting Popeyes or whatever, but I've always managed fine. I really like Korean food these days. I even like stuff that's kind of weird, like dried squid, and things that used to gross me out, like fish from the cafeteria that's been cooked with all it's skin and bones and is kind of difficult to separate out, so you just eat the skin and fins and stuff. I actually look forward to that fish now. We had it today for lunch and I was excited. And have I mentioned that I love kimchi? I really love it. I really didn't like it too much when I first got here. But I love it now, especially the really spicy kimchi that's just a bit salty. That stuff is great.

Anyway, so I'm ranting now because I've been craving non-Korean food more these past couple days, and this afternoon is worse because I'm pretty hungry and I just got out of a discussion practice session with the three girls who are going on to the provincial competition and the last thing we talked about was what snacks I like. And I started thinking about cheese and crackers. I've had cheese that wasn't American cheese or pizza cheese once this year, and that was back in November when we had Thanksgiving dinner at the Ambassador's house. Oh, and I had this kind of Camerbert cheese sandwich once at a deli in Tokyo in Feb. So I'm thinking about cheese, and good cheeseburgers, and good Mexican food, like I would love a nice, greasy carnitas taco right now (with or without cheese). I would even love some decent pizza. There's plenty of pizza in Korea, but the kind of host family always orders is sort of limp and uninspired and always (too often) has corn and potatoes as toppings. Pepperoni doesn't seem to exist in this country. Wednesday night, at SOS, while I was volunteering, one of my students walked in with a slice of pizza and sort of shoved it in my face backwards so I could have a bite. And I got sort of excited because it had a good, sturdy blanket of cheese on it and I thought I even saw a black olive. The bite I took was from the untouched crust but I appreciated it. I would love a good slice of pizza from back home, nothing that special, something with a lot of classic toppings and a nice slightly chewy crust. Ah, man. Okay, I think I'm done.

Sorry for that scary show. Especially to any fellow ETAs reading. Once I eat dinner I'll feel better. I'll sit down to some bulgogi and forget all about it.

movies

Not too much is new. A few interesting tidbits...My host mother called the police up again to see how the case with the stalker guy who stole my wallet is going. I haven't seen the guy in over a month, when I strangely ran into him in Gwangju. The cops said that they can't really make any moves on him unless he starts bothering me again. Of course, fat chance of that happening since now he's thoroughly afraid of me (I didn't do anything scary, really, just asked him for my wallet back). But the funny thing is, my host mother mentioned that a cop had seen me last weekend at some point and followed me for awhile...I guess, you know, in case the stalker chose that short span of time to emerge and start stalking me again. I think this is proof that Suncheon cops have too much time on their hands. My host mom wasn't able to get the precise details because the phone started breaking up at that point, but I'm extremely curious about when and where the cop followed me. It kind of makes me feel like I'm in a movie or something.

I went to see Episode III tonight. It was good, and by good I mean it was impressive compared to the first two episodes. Like Ewan McGregor remembered he could act for most of the movie. It was fun though, nice special effects and all that. I came home and remembered that I have a phone interview tomorrow morning with a non-profit in NE Portland, so I need to prepare a little. I'm thankful that tomorrow is Friday, as I always am, though these days the weekdays seem to sort of float by (knock on wood). I have a sneaking suspicion that what feels like a sudden onset of effortlessness may actually illustrate a further decline in my teaching skills. It's like my teaching metabolism has plummeted, and with only two months left it's going to take some concerted effort to get it back up. I blame the fact that I watched the movie Mean Girls 18 times over the past two weeks.

you don't have to go

We had the contest selection process yesterday, which was really interesting and I think a little nerve-wracking for everyone involved. None of the teachers or the students had ever participated in that kind of discussion format. It reminded me of being Chair of Appointments Committee at Reed, when we had to interview applicants for student government positions and you were trying to be tough and discerning while at the same time trying not to make them too nervous. It went pretty well over all, only one girl cried. I think the other teachers enjoyed meeting Greg. He's a pretty funny guy. I often feel vaguely overwhelmed when I'm hanging out with him, since he's really gregarious and speaks really fast--during the discussions he kept making jokes and getting really enthusiastic about certain questions (even though he admitted to me he's afraid of Korean schoolgirls because of all the Korean horror movies that involve them). I'm curious what the other teachers thought of him. They already think he's strange because he's planning to become a househusband in August when his baby is born, and that's completely bizarre by Korean standards.

I found out that my school isn't planning to apply for a Fulbright ETA for next year, which surprised me and made me a little sad, since I think this is a wonderful school and a great environment for an ETA. But maybe they'll be better off with a different foreigner. They aren't applying for an ETA because no one wants to be the homestay, which I understand, and which sort of adds to my annoyance that Fulbright insists that the homestay is so crucial. I do think the homestay is a valuable experience, and it's great for the ETA to have that support (assuming they have a good homestay, like I did) but it bothers me that some schools will lose out because no one wants to take in what is essentially a pretty big responsibility. I told Mrs. Lee that I could talk to Fulbright to ask about the possibility of them getting an extendee (extendees get to live in an apartment), but I think they're not sure if they even want a Fulbright ETA. They would actually like to get two foreign teachers, and Fulbright won't give ETAs to schools who already have a foreign teacher (understandable). But the principal isn't behind it yet. It turns out a couple I know is applying for the job here, and will be coming for an interview at lunchtime. I know them from frisbee, and they're really nice people, so I think I would be supportive of them working here, especially if they plan to stay for a couple more years. Today during the drive to work Mrs. Lee asked me if I would extend and stay at Maesan, and I felt touched. I think if I was interested in staying in Korea, I would probably stay at this school. Back when I was actually considering extending, I had all these conditions like, if I did it, I would want to be in a bigger city, or I'd want to be in the same city with friends, but now that I've been here this long, I can picture settling in in Suncheon , and making a life here for another year or so. If I was interested in continuing teaching in Korea, which I'm not. But I was touched none the less.

I came across an interesting headline on NYTimes today. Some scientists at Seoul National University have made a breakthrough regarding stem cell research. I have to admit that cloning embryos to harvest stem cells creeps me out a little, but to put it in perspective, fertility clinics often create more embryos than they need to help a woman get pregnant and then they just discard the extras. I do agree that cloning shouldn't be used to make babies--but I also don't entirely support all the money couples put into overcoming infertility, when there are so many adoptable children. I know adopting is expensive too, but there's also something a little crass and unnatural about all the surgery that goes into it as well. Probably my thoughts on that will change when I decide to become a mother, but in the meantime, you'll never see me selling my eggs for $8,000.

Gwangju Uprising

Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the Gwangju Uprising, a tragic event still very fresh in the minds of the Korean people. I think most Americans would find it surprising that a dictatorship existed so recently in South Korea. This is an interesting article that talks about the event as well as outlines some of the complaints a lot of Koreans still have about the U.S. government. Many cite the 80s as a period when it became clear that the U.S. wasn't actually as interested in promoting democracy as they claimed, that when it came to the dictatorship in South Korea and the human rights violations that were occuring there, the U.S. government was more interested in preserving their business ties than with actually supporting democracy.

The Marmot's Hole is also posting summaries of the events of each day of the Uprising, which went on for about 10 days. My host mother was a university student in Gwangju at the time and she told me the other day that she spent the time taking refuge in a relative's basement. Some photographs were set up in the rotary near my school yesterday and the day before, pretty shocking photographs of police against demonstrators, and slain students. There was one photograph of a few older men standing trial, I assume the few former presidents who were convicted of crimes against the Korean people but a few years later granted clemency. Someone had taken an exacto knife to one of the faces of the men. I assume it was a middle school or high school student, since they all seem to carry exacto knives in their pencil cases. It's another interesting manifestation of the anger so many young Koreans carry inside of them, about events that happened before they were born.

I think I might visit Gwangju this weekend. I don't have anything else planned, and I've been meaning to visit the May 18th memorial for awhile. This weekend seems like it would be an appropriate time. I suspect I'll be going to Gwangju Friday night anyway to see Episode 3, so maybe I'll stay the night there, and meet up with my friend who graduated from my school last semester. She's going to university in Gwangju now.

episode three

I've been meaning to call up the local police to see what came of that background check they did on the phone number I gave them for my quasi-stalker, but my host mother has been so busy lately that I feel bad mentioning it again. On top of the sort of drama that has been normal at the school of late (things have suddenly gotten a whole lot less relaxed, which I attribute to the new principal), she's in charge of the school's paper drive to send old books and newspapers to North Korea for recycling. A paper drive for North Korea. I just wanted to repeat that because there's something very interesting about it. It seems very war-time-esque I guess, though in this case the war is sort of cold and the ally is technically the enemy.

On Thursday I have to help out in selecting two first grade students to go to the provincial English contest--my neighboring foreigner, Greg, over at Maesan Boys' agreed to help me out. The contest is going to be a discussion-style format this year, which has the teachers bewildered as how to select students for this contest, as this school has never evaluated students based on their creativity or discussion skills. I still don't know what the format will be like; they had a meeting today about it so I guess I'll figure out tomorrow. Greg agreed very kindly to help out, though he told me he intends to go see Episode 3 afterwards, so he can't hang around too late afterwards. He invited me to come. I had no idea Episode 3 would be coming to Korea this soon. I was so disappointed with Episode 1 that I didn't bother to see Episode 2, but Episode 3 actually got a good review in the New York Times, so I guess I'll be renting Episode 2 one of these nights for background. It'll be fun to see a movie in the theater again, especially if it is as good as A.O. Scott says.

lanterns and drums

I wanted to put some pictures up with this post but I'm a bit too tired and lazy to deal with the uploading process at the moment. But Rachel and I got some good shots of the temple last night and this morning.

We went up to Songwansa yesterday afternoon because we heard that there would be some kind of candle lighting ceremony. There didn't end up being much of a ceremony, but there were lots of beautiful lanterns strung up around the temple and over a pond near the temple entrance. It was nice being out there at night, it was very peaceful. We inquired after our monk friend, the one who accompanied us on our hike between Songwansa and Seonamsa, but were told that he was no longer staying at Songwansa. After soaking up the tranquility we walked back down to the little area of restaurants and shops below to get some dinner. I was a little disappointed that there hadn't been much of an event. They didn't even perform the drumming ceremony that they do every day at dusk. I guess maybe the monks were too busy with other holiday-related things to do the nightly drumming. I was glad we got a chance to see all the colored paper lanterns at night, though.

We had a late dinner of bindaettuk (a sort of pancake made with bean) and pa jeon (another kind of pancake made with leeks and octopus) and some dong dong ju (a type of fermented wine), then made our way to the bus. When we arrived at Songwansa we'd asked the bus driver what time the last bus came. He'd told us 10:10. We arrived at the bus stop around 9:30. Shortly after we arrived, a woman came up to us and told us that the last bus had already come around 9 pm. Like all temples, Songwansa is up on a mountain, and getting to Songwansa involved taking a city bus for over an hour through countryside. According to the helpful woman, our choices were spending 15,000 won on a minbak (a type of modest lodging) 20,000 on a yeogwan (type of hotel) or 30,000 on a cab ride. We decided to go for the minbak, reluctantly, but we suspected that even if we did the cab ride, it would probably end up being more than 30,000 (about 30 dollars) because it was night time and we'd have to call a taxi since none were around. Unfortunately we ended up spending 30,000 on the minbak, since the cheaper rooms were occupied. But ultimately I was really glad we spent the night.

Because it turned out Sunday morning was the big time to visit the temple. We'd thought about visiting the temple again in the morning, but when we got up were leaning towards just going home until we saw all the carloads and bus loads of people arriving in the parking lot. Followed the stream of people back up the hill to find that the temple entrance fee had been waived for the day and that paper lanterns had been strung all through the main compound. In the entry way we were given gifts of tea and bead bracelets. A helped ushered us over to a table where we wrote our names, Chinese zodiac and addresses on a special piece of paper that was then attached to one of the paper lanterns around. It turned out that this cost money, but then the helper (who it turned out taught Ethics at a high school in a different province) felt bad for sort of inadvertantly tricking us into it and so he got us extra bracelets and later gave me a golden card of his own that depicted a buddha statue from the temple.

There were many people at the temple, many people actually worshipping, something which I'd never seen on that scale in Suncheon. I did see lots of worshippers when my mother and I visited a temple in Busan at sundown, with a professor from Busan National University (mom gave a talk there). I attributed that to the fact it was an urban temple in a large city. There was a drumming ceremony this morning too, and apparently a free lunch, though we didn't stay for that. The governor of Jeollanam province was also there, making me think we'd picked the right temple to visit that day. We also checked out the temple museum which had some beautiful prints for sale. They seemed to be done with a sort of gold ink on multicolored silk. A monk tried to strike up a conversation with us in Korean. We asked him about our monk friend and got the same sort of mysterious response of "He doesn't stay here anymore." I wonder where he went, and why?

We successfully got a bus back to Suncheon around 11, a sort of rollercoaster ride through the fields that I'm sure took much less time than our busride up had. I ate lunch with my host family while Rachel napped a little (the hot ondol floors of the minbak hadn't been the most restful) and then Rachel and I rented a Korean movie called "The Way Home." Rachel got on a bus to Gwangju a little while ago. It was really nice to see her, since it had been many weeks since we'd really hung out. And like I think I've said before, we always seem to have unexpected adventures when it comes to temples. I'll put some pictures up soon.

happy birthday, big guy

Tomorrow is the Buddha's birthday. Rachel is coming down this afternoon and should get here within the next couple hours. We're going to head to Songwangsa, which is the same temple where we met the nice monk who accompanied us on our hike to Seonamsa. I'm looking forward to seeing the temple again, because it's a uniquely beautiful one, and I'd like to see what it looks like in the springtime. I think I've finally gotten over how green everything has turned around here. Anyway, I don't know what sort of event occurs on the Buddha's birthday, but my host mother thinks that there's some kind of evening ceremony the night before. In any case it will be nice to hang around for the drumming that happens every day at sundown for a change. Even though every town has lanterns hung and some other kind of decoration in commemoration (there's a huge inflated cartoon child buddha in the rotary near my school), the only mention of the holiday in today's newspaper was in an article about how 31 corrupt business men are going to be granted amnesty tomorrow. They were all convicted of giving bribes to politicians. I think some of them have served prision time. The government seems to think that pardoning them will help the economy.

The week went pretty smoothly at school (how else can it go when you're just showing a movie), and I finished Middlemarch, and actually wished that gigantic book would go on longer. I found out I won't be teaching the Thursday evening class of first graders anymore, which is a little sad because I enjoyed teaching them not to mention the extra income, but it'll be nice to have a little more free time. This week I finally attended the Friday afternoon club class that Ms. Hwang runs, and she was ecstatic, so I'll probably end up doing that every week unless I have some reason to leave town early on a Friday. Last night I went out to Elvis and had a good time. I met a Puerto Rican guy who travels around the world to work on ships--but no, he doesn't actually travel on the ship, apparently they fly him everywhere. He's only in town until Monday, when he'll fly off somewhere else. He spoke very good English, though he was bashful about it and tried to speak with me in Spanish. When he asked, "Como te llamas?" I literally almost responded, "Tamara imnida." Then I refused to try to speak any more Spanish with him. Oh, and something else about last night...I'll just say, what do you think about the probability of me getting a Korean boyfriend, 9 weeks before I leave the country for good, no less? You can e-mail me if you want to know more. I don't really intend to elaborate on it here.

I wonder if Meryl Streep knows

This afternoon I went to Suncheon University for my Korean class, but all the foreign students had some sort of event they were attending, so it was just me and the teacher. She invited me to go to a tea house with her and her good friend. They are both in their 60s, and have been studying English for about 10 years. They both speak quite well actually. It was interesting talking to them. We went to a coffee house on the ocean near Yeosu and I had a milkshake and they talked about their children and their wish that they could travel more. Both of them seem upperclass (my teacher's husband was the first president of Suncheon University) and have grown children who have studied at prestigous universities in the States. Both of them said they wish they were more free from their husbands (though they seemed to have pretty free lives). My teacher even mentioned the Bridges of Madison County as a movie that she liked very much. This struck me because I'd had almost the same conversation back in the fall with my host mother (the conversation in which she told me, "I don't think you can understand."). My host mother also identified with the movie, and said that many Korean women did. It was interesting to hear this echoed by women a couple decades older than her. My Korean teacher even said that if she could live her life over again she wouldn't get married. I don't think that they dislike their husbands, they just dislike the fact that they have to do whatever their husbands decide is best. At the same time I imagine the husbands being sort of like empty figureheads, or doddering old kings--their word is followed for tradition's sake but the women are the real heads of the households. I can see why that would be so frustrating. Just the other day my host mother told me her husband is like a fourth child, and she seems very aware that this is occurs more often in Korea than in Western countries. The Bridges of Madison County--a milestone in the Korean feminist movement. I should watch it sometime.

I haven't written in awhile because my mother visited for a week and a half, which was really nice. It sort of felt like I was seeing Korea in a new way while she was here. I guess maybe I was sort of stepping back and appreciating the experience I've already gained here. It felt like a different place while she was here, and now it's slowly going back to normal. I finally have the iPod that my family bought me for Christmas, so it is a nice new addition, another kind of filter to this experience I guess. It's nice to walk to the university listening to Modest Mouse or the Delgados. My entire music library of 4026 songs is on there, and the iPod isn't even half full. Needless to say, a great gift.

What else is new? I'm reading Middlemarch by George Eliot and really enjoying it. It's movie time with my classes and we're watching Mean Girls, because my students wanted to see a movie about American high school, and I thought Mean Girls was a pretty good one. And it's a good movie, one I can stand watching 18 times. I would say I'm on about viewing 5 or 6 and I'm still laughing at the jokes.

I feel like I suddenly jumped from hovering about the 3 months left mark for a long time to suddenly only 2 1/2 months left. Because Mom visited I guess. Last night I had a dream that I was at Renn Fayre at Reed, though that happened two weekends ago. It was a nice dream, seeing all my friends, except for the ending when it turned out that all my teeth had fake crowns on them and the crowns were coming off. That was kind of gross. Oh, and also, for some reason freshmen had been appointed Renn Fayre czars and thus for some reason there were very few people attending and practically no events (though there was a homebrewed keg of beer). When I woke up I felt relief, at first that my teeth were normal and second because in reality no one at Reed would ever appointment freshmen as Renn Fayre czars.