Diving In

Yeongsan River, looking upstream

Today I made a second visit to a location I suspect I'll spend a great deal of time in during the remainder of my time here.

This morning I woke up feeling a bit under the weather, with a sore throat and some congestion. It was nothing too serious, but I was feeling groggy enough that I drifted back to sleep several times before actually getting out of bed. Even after I was up and about I lazed about my apartment, straightening up a bit and making a call home to my parents and probably worrying them unduly with my slightly raspy voice, and my unwashed face and mussed hair when we got the video calling to work.

It could easily have been a day where I queue up some videos or reading and stayed in my building, perhaps even my apartment, all afternoon and evening by giving myself the excuse that I needed to get more rest to nip this cold in the bud.

Alas, yesterday I consumed the last of the calories I had in my apartment. I have been building a collection of Pepsi something-or-others in my fridge that are sometimes thrown into my bags when I pick up bottles of water or late-night-snacks from the 7-11, but I'm pretty sure they don't have any calories. I haven't tried one yet, but there's a large zero near the logo and usually that's a good indicator that I'm not going to enjoy the taste of whatever is inside.

It is possible to get food from the lobby of my building, which could come in handy this week with a whopper of a typhoon apparently bringing loads of rain our way. However, since I was going all the way downstairs, I decided I may as well take a step outside and see where it leads me. I threw on some jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, grabbed my iPod (I'm still relying on Wifi for all communications here, and I knew I needed some pictures for a post this week) my sunglasses, and my wallet, and walked out.

I decided to grab a candy bar (Twix, an old favorite I rarely indulge in because I often give in to the temptation to indulge in new favorites) to hold me over until I might come across some place to eat, or until I made it to the store to pick up some groceries. Really I wasn't sure where I would end up.

I walked past this park near my apartment in Sangmu.

I walked down to City Hall and headed...east or north, or northeast, possibly southeast. I know it wasn't west. There's a road that runs from City Hall past the May 18 Memorial Park and on to the bus station, and I went that way, thinking I might turn at the park and go up to the store to buy food.

Walking can be a great way to explore a new environment, and with plenty of daylight left and the weather being absolutely beautiful this afternoon, I continued along that road past the park. While walking I'm able to take in more of my surroundings than I could by other methods. If I am transported to some other location, I get nervous about being able to find my way back. When I walk (or run) I feel familiar enough with the route I've taken that I know I can basically backtrack if I need to. So I kept going.

I remembered seeing a large KIA plant along that road while riding in the taxi to the bus station with Sarah and Jolene to go to Yeosu a few weeks ago, so I decided to go at least far enough to see that and take some pictures to send to Dylan. He drives a KIA back home and is currently struggling with the pain of having to leave it at home as he returns to college, so I thought he might be annoyed to have me taunting him with reminders of all the KIAs I see everyday.

This one's for you, Dylan.
A KIA dealership near the school

Over time I've realized that getting out and moving around tends to make me think I'm feeling better when I think I'm sick. I picked up the pace and strolled up and down hills pretending I knew exactly where I was going and that I was covering enough of my skin and eyes to blend in (I realized how wrong I was when the first of several passers-by said "hello" to me) By the time I reached the KIA plant I'd forgotten the relative grogginess of the morning.

If you search "Gwangju, South Korea" in Google maps satellite view and zoom in a bit, until the scale is at about 1 inch=1 mile, you'll notice the city is roughly divided into half by the Yeongsan River. On the west side of the river is a large complex of light blue roofs. This is the KIA plant, and it's huge. It makes a great reference point when I'm trying to get an idea of where different landmarks are located in relation to my neighborhood because it sticks out so much on the map.

My route had brought me around the back edge of the plant, so I continued along the perimeter to the other side, which brought me to the bus station. Other than Sangmu, the bus station is the location in Gwangju I have seen the most. It's where I first arrived in Gwangju on the bus down from Incheon International Airport, so it was comforting in a way to have connected the dots between my apartment and this portal to the rest of Korea (and home) on foot. I love Gwangju so far and have much more to explore here, so it's not as though I'm dreaming of escape. Instead, I find it opens up the imagination when I can see how where I am is connected to so many other places.

Before going into the station itself I crossed to the other side of the street through an underground walkway between the bus station, a department store, and the local bus stops across the street. On the other side I noticed an LG electronics store and decided to duck in to cool off and browse around. There seemed to be a wide variety of electronics and appliances, and I was curious as to how many different items LG makes. If nothing else I thought perhaps I could stock up on some toothpaste.

Unlike the LG washing machine and dryer at my house in the states, this product does not sing to me when it's done.

To my surprise, I was the only customer in the store and thus became the focus of the attention of the three workers patrolling the floor. Since I wasn't sure how to convey "just browsing" to them, I decided to ask about cell phones, since I'm planning on buying one soon. I held my hand up to my ear and was led to the phone counter.

Luckily for me, the man working the phone counter spoke very good English. He said he'd spent the past year in Sydney and seemed eager to practice his English, which proved very helpful as I had a large store of questions about buying a cell phone. After fifteen minutes another customer came in, and not wanting to monopolize his time, I thanked him for his help. He wished me luck and saw me to the door.

Often I find myself hesitant to enter situations in which I'm not sure exactly what to do. Even in the states I like to know exactly how to proceed in any number of contingencies, and I'll occasionally avoid situations that I feel present too much uncertainty despite the fact that I'm constantly surrounded by people who would understand what I was saying were I to ask them for help and whom I could understand when they respond.

In that light, walking into an electronics store by myself for no particular reason without knowing much relevant Korean besides "Hello...where is...how much does it cost...thank you" felt like an adventure of sorts for me, albeit one that morphed from a skydive to a roller coaster once I found an English speaker. Still, this is the sort of thing I need to do more often if I want to really feel as though I'm living here and not just working here. I think the trick may be to ask myself, "What's the worst that could happen?" and then not allow myself to imagine an answer.

After leaving the store I crossed the street and browsed through a multi-level (and seemingly very expensive) department store connected to the bus station. I went up a few levels thinking I might look through some nice suits I would never buy, but each level seemed to be more and more devoted to women's clothes, so I turned around and began descending before I went too high up and possibly found myself in a situation that could be embarrassing in any language...an unaccompanied male in the intimates department. This is the kind of anxiety I feel when I begin allowing myself to answer the "worst that could happen" question.

Once safely on the ground floor again I went over to the bus station and browsed through a few of the multitude of shops there, including my first visit to a Korean bookstore, where I was quickly greeted by this semi-familiar sight:

Fifty Shades of Grey in Korean

Ahhh...the power of marketing. Take a mass-market bodice ripper and print it as a trade paperback (I used to work at Borders..RIP) and you have a global phenomenon. I've read one of your paragraphs, book, before I knew what you were. I'm glad to see they keep you in plastic wrap here to protect unsuspecting book-browsers from the gagging that paragraph induced in me.

To be honest, I took this picture again to joke with my brother and decided to include it here in part to fulfill my promise of including more pictures and also on the off-chance that some 50 Shades fans might end up on this page, where they may then actually read to this point in the blog, where I will tell them, "I'm glad you read. If you enjoy 50 Shades you should check out some Zora Neale Hurston or Cormac McCarthy. Their Eyes Were Watching God or All the Pretty Horses might be good places to start. Or if you hated 50 Shades you may want to jump straight to Blood Meridian. It's sort of a reading cleanse diet. For a long time I remembered very little of what I had read in the months before reading McCarthy's Blood Meridian, and for a few months afterwards I had trouble focusing on what I attempted to read in its wake."

For those of you still with me (thank you for that, by the way!) I continued out of the bookstore and on to the ticket counters, which I stared at for about ten minutes, just reading through the destinations and schedules, imagining day trips I could take in the coming months, and how easily entertained I am by just riding on a bus and staring out the window at the landscape and thinking about how incredibly far I am from anywhere I've been before.

Then I wandered upstairs to the IMAX theater, grabbed a couple "The Expendables 2" brochures to mail to my brother Ethan, and spotted a Cold Stone Creamery and a Burger King.

With just a couple hours of good daylight left, I walked out of the bus station and turned west. I decided to walk along the front side of the KIA complex this time so I could take better pictures of it for Dylan to see.

KIA plant gate

Building at KIA plant in Gwangju

The plant stretches along several blocks and covers both sides of the road for the majority of that. KIA's website shows the locations of their plants, and according to it this plant covers nearly 1 million square meters and assembles commercial vehicles and buses, as well as some military vehicles.

When I had finally walked past the length of the plant and thought I was nearly home, I noticed a large sign in the middle of the sidewalk. Having some idea of what it said without really knowing what it said, I walked around it in trepidation. Sure enough, the sidewalk beyond the crosswalk was completely blocked off for construction work.

This is when it becomes very advantageous to live along a river. The Yeongsan River, as mentioned previously, runs through the city of Gwangju. It is considered one of the four major rivers of the Republic of Korea and is part of a trail system that was recently the subject of a major government project to revitalize riverside recreation in the country. A smaller tributary of the Yeongsan runs along City Hall near my apartment and up past the bus station and on to the base of Mudeung Mountain on the other end of the city. Anytime I get lost in Gwangju, it seems if I can find my way to the river, I can find my way home. Of course, I doubt this will ever really be an issue, but it is a comforting thought just the same. City Hall is downriver from just about everything in Gwangju, so if I get to the river and there's anything around me, I can follow it downstream and find my way back.

At the sidewalk closure I made a right turn and headed for a bridge. From that bridge I took the picture I used at the top of this post, and on the other side I found steps leading down to the riverside path.

A picture of he bridge from which I took the picture mentioned in the sentence above and shown at the top of the post, taken from the riverside path which I reached via this bridge

I first walked along a different portion of this path two weeks ago on a similar Sunday afternoon stroll, and was struck by how quiet and removed it seems compared to the sidewalks a mere ten meters away. When I lived in Boston I ran the paths along the Charles quite often. I loved running that, but it includes a lot of crosswalks and is usually about level with the busy roads alongside it. This path goes under the bridges and is often flanked with high vegetation in addition to being set below the roads to really make it feel separate from the surrounding city. It seems to be an ideal location to get back into my running routine.


I followed the path down to City Hall, which is where I began my walk and headed down river two weeks ago (without a camera). Downstream from there the path affords beautiful views of the surrounding mountains as the tributary runs into the Yeongsan as it continues on down toward Mokpo. From Mokpo there are ferries to Jeju and Shanghai.

The  riverside path from under the City Hall bridge, looking downstream

I've always lived right along a river. I grew up in towns bordering the Mississippi and imagined the journey the barges made to New Orleans on many occasions while crossing into Missouri. In addition to running along the Charles in Boston, I also often ran along the River des Peres (aka the sometimes-connected series of puddles des Peres) during the past year while living in the city of St. Louis. I was able to participate in the final Lewis and Clark Marathon along the Missouri River in St. Charles. Having the Yeongsan right here brings yet another element of familiarity to this experience and provides another possible avenue for diving into new and uncertain experiences here.

Looking upstream from the City Hall Bridge (City Hall complex on the right)

When I got back to Sangmu I ordered a chicken sandwich and fries to take back to my apartment for dinner while watching an episode of Mad Men. Baby steps.

Small World in a Good Way

This will be a shorter post. I haven't taken any trips since my last post. That, of course, does not mean that my week was not filled with blog-worthy material . In fact, I just returned from a lovely dinner with a group of my colleagues (including Sarah, whom I've mentioned quite a bit in previous posts but will now mention by name, since she offered her permission). Yet tonight I want to write about last Saturday. And to set up last Saturday I really should return to early last decade in southwestern Illinois.

My family had recently completed the first move of my life, which consisted of heading about five miles south from my hometown (population around 6,000) to the adjacent town (population around 10,000). In our new neighborhood lived a Korean woman and her family. I didn't know them very well, but her son was a classmate of my younger brother. That summer her nephew was coming to spend the summer with her family just down the street.

We lived in what I considered a rather idyllic neighborhood for a kid, in that there was little traffic and lots of young families with kids in grade school and middle school, so you could roam the streets and backyards tracking down playmates for a daytime game of backyard baseball or touch football in a cul-de-sac, and subdivision-wide nighttime games of "jailbreak".

I spent a lot of time that summer riding my bike around and exploring the still-being-constructed parts of the subdivision with the older kids. My two younger brothers played a lot of baseball with the younger neighborhood kids, including the neighborhood boy and his Korean cousin. I joined them on occasion for a game of kickball or home run derby, which consisted of lobbing a tennis ball (from a semi-safe distance) to a kid with an aluminum bat and seeing how far he could launch it.

It was on one of these occasions from which I retain what may be my most vivid memory from that summer for sheer uniqueness and poignancy. The neighbor's Korean name was Hyun-ho, and while his English was a work in progress, I can still hear him consoling my youngest brother after something transpired in the game to bring my brother nearly to tears.

"No cry, Dylan."

My mind may have embellished this memory in the ensuing years, as I notice I've done with some others, but when I replay it I see Hyun-ho hugging my brother to make him feel better. I think the combination of sympathy for my brother, wonder at the sweetness of this boy to try to make him feel better, and the excitement at having someone different around in a town that is about 98% white combined to really burn that memory in my mind.

At the end of the summer Hyun-ho went back to Korea and I figured I'd probably never see him again, unless I happened to catch him if he returned to America sometime. The distance between home and Korea felt so insurmountable to me at the time, however, that I figured a trip between the two was a very rare and difficult event. It still sort of feels that way, though much less so. At the time I never dreamed of going to Korea. I hardly even imagined leaving the states, except for perhaps taking another road trip into Canada. All the travel I could remember doing up to that point in my life had been done on the roads, so I never even really thought of going to Europe.

Lo and behold, over a decade later here I am:

Cooling off in a Starbucks in Sangmu

And here's who came to see me in Gwangju last Saturday:

Hyun-ho showing his Cardinals pride
(whilst showing off his frappuccino so I could taunt Dylan with it via Twitter)

After I decided to come to Korea I contacted our Korean neighbor back home. She was excited to hear of my plans and met with me several times to give me ideas of how to prepare for the move. I'd planned on trying to find work in the southern part of the country, and the first time she talked with me about it she said that was a good idea and that she was from the southern part of the country. After I lined up the job in Gwangju and told her, she told me that was her hometown, and the town where Hyun-ho had lived when he was young.

So, at the age of 25 (Korean age 26), I moved from southwestern Illinois to Gwangju, Korea. When she was about the same age she moved from where I am now (same part of the city where I live, actually) to the states. Hyun-ho actually made the trip to the airport in Incheon to meet me when I first arrived (he lives somewhere around Seoul now, I believe) which was a real blessing for me. It turned what would have been a very nerve-wracking moment of entering a new country into a reunion of sorts, since I hadn't seen that sweet kid who befriended my brothers for a summer in over a decade. We had a smoothie at the airport while I waited for my bus to Gwangju, and he led me to the bus stop and everything.

Last Saturday he came down and we met up to go get lunch at a delicious restaurant a few subway stops west of my neighborhood, and then we came back near here and sat in a Starbucks for a couple of hours while he waited for the time to catch his bus at the terminal. We reminisced about roaming my old subdivision that summer, and about watching the Cardinals, exploring Forest Park, and the pure joy that is a Ted Drewes concrete.

On my last night at home I went with Dylan and my cousins Eric and David (also my best friend basically since the day he was born...so I was best-friendless for the first two months of my life) to Lion's Choice for a roast beef sandwich, and then to Ted Drewes on Chippewa for one more banana concrete.

And less than three weeks later I was in Korea hanging out and reminiscing about how wonderful it is with the kid who came from halfway around the world and played backyard baseball with my brothers (and sometimes me) for the summer so long ago.


P.S. I'll take more pictures this week for next week's post. I can't believe I didn't take any this week. Serious oversight on my part.

In order to add a sugary dose of faux-cynicism to this post I should admit that for a couple of days that summer David and I told Hyun-ho that we were former MLB players and "enrolled" him in our training camp in my backyard. We really thought he believed us and were pleased with ourselves for pulling one over on him. Eventually I realized he probably didn't know what we were talking about and was just happy to have a couple of older kids who would take turns throwing him batting practice. We weren't quite devious enough at the time to think of trying to convince him to pay us for our expertise.

P.P.S. Hyun-ho, if you read this, thanks for all your help buddy! I felt so much better coming over here knowing that, as your aunt says, I have family here to look after me.

Time Passes (Even More Quickly)

A week ago I left you with an idea of the first day of my vacation. If I don't cover the other five days of it relatively quickly I think I may fall hopelessly behind on this blog. During the soon-to-be briefly described trip to Yeosu, I mentioned to a coworker how being in a completely new environment like this prompts the senses to stay on alert and soak in as much as possible. "Sounds exhausting," she replied. It really is, but in a good way. At every moment there is some new experience or thought to occupy the mind, so these eighteen days have been filled to the brim and have also flown by as fast as the fighter jets west of the city. I expected the time at work this week to feel as though it had slowed down, but I've reached this Sunday seemingly even more suddenly than the last one. There were no other 5am nights during my vacation, so the rest of this description should go more quickly, especially as I intend to call upon the descriptive powers of a couple of talented bloggers and coworkers.

Last week we left me on the couch in my apartment with the windows open. After sleeping for a few hours I forced myself up to close the windows and turn on the air-con, because the noise coming up from the street below was too much. Then it was back to the couch, where I stayed for a few more hours, before waking up for the day. That Wednesday passed quickly and uneventfully. The only happening of note (other than the joy I felt after twenty minutes of semi-random button pushing when the washing machine finally started) was that evening, when I ventured out to order take-out for myself for the first time here. Baby steps.

Washing machine in my apartment

I had noticed a fried chicken joint  during one of my several trips to and from Sangmu Citizens' Park the previous day, so at twilight I left my apartment, armed with the word "pojang" and twenty thousand won. I went in and walked up to the counter and said "Take out" and pointed out the door. The woman working there nodded in understanding and asked me something while pointing at board of pictures above the counter. Everything I saw there looked good so I just agreed with her, and she pointed me to a chair and I sat down. I watched the Olympics on a TV in the corner and studied the subway map I'd brought along for about fifteen minutes when the woman called me over to the counter. I took the bag, paid about 14,000 won, thanked her, and walked briskly back to my apartment. Once there, I impatiently ripped into the bag to admire the results of my adventure. Behold:

AFC box of chicken w/dipping sauce, pickled radish, and a can of Coke

I was quite pleased with myself on this one. Granted, it was more chicken than I could eat, but the unexpected addition of Coke made up for that inaccuracy. I just refrigerated the extra and had it for dinner the next night. The chicken was very tasty, especially with the sauce. The radish I'll need some time with. I ate a few of the pieces, but it wasn't really given a fair shake since I thought it was some kind of fruit up to the point when I picked up the first piece and felt how firm it was. Definitely not fruit.

The rest of the night consisted of finishing reading Karen Russell's Swamplandia! before my borrowing license for it from my library back home expired.* Having an e-reader (a gift from my parents for my 24th birthday) turned out to be very convenient when this trip came up. I only brought two physical books along with me: the small leather-bound KJV Bible my parents gave me as a kindergarten graduation gift, and a book called The Aviator my dad recommended to me a couple days before I left. With my nook I can purchase e-books to read, but my library back home has a healthy selection of electronic titles available, and I have several dozen that I've pulled from their catalog and placed in my wish list. Between those, and the kind offer from my coworker Lily to borrow from her collection I should have plenty of reading materials to last me through the year, and probably much longer.**

On Thursday morning, I woke up and prepared for a trip to Yeosu to visit the World Expo. I met two coworkers downstairs and we caught a cab to the train station. We ended up taking the KTX north to Iksan, and then transferring to a different train for the leg down to Yeosu. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and the few hours it took passed incredibly quickly. I spent a large portion of the time just staring out the windows at the beautiful countryside scenes and impressive mountains.

view from the KTX

The train station in Yeosu was located directly across from the Expo site, so we went straight over and bought our tickets, which turned out to be only 10,000 won. I was expecting to pay around 30,000 won, but we were given some foreigner group discount, which was a nice surprise. This was less than two weeks from the closing of the Expo, and it seemed as though many people were trying to get in a visit before it ended. The lines for most of the attractions and pavilions were very long, with some having waiting times exceeding two hours. We went into nearly a dozen pavilions. The Netherlands and Norway had interesting displays, and Norway's was particularly theatrical, with an actor portraying the captain of a ship that used hyperspeed to take us from Korea to Norway via the Arctic Ocean in about 3 seconds.*** Outside of the Romania pavilion we watched a performance of some traditional Romanian music. Other than that we made our way through several pavilions with short-to-no waits, including Cambodia, Vietnam, Brunei, Uruguay, and Peru. It reminded me very much of a more modern and less permanent Epcot, which I guess is sort of what Epcot was going for. Most of the pavilions even had the gift shops at their exit.

We wanted to get a look at the ocean, so we headed out of the International Pavilion and headed out to a pier toward the edge of the Expo area. We wanted to walk to the lighthouse at the end of the pier, but it was blocked off because they were setting up for a concert on the K-Pop stage on the pier. That was a disappointment, but we made our way back to the International Pavilion and had some delicious smoked salmon, potato pancakes, and horseradish at the German pavilion for dinner.

Monster bird puppet performers at the Expo

Romanian traditional music performance

I didn't take many pictures at the Expo, and most of what I did take was with my Sony camera. Unfortunately, I don't have an adapter yet to get the photos from the Memory Stick onto my computer, since I didn't bring the cord for the Sony camera. However, if you are interested in seeing and reading more about the Expo, check out Lily's blog post about her trip to Yeosu here.

The Expo really was huge. Even if there had been no one else there it wouldn't be possible to take it all in in one day. As it was, though, I enjoyed browsing around and just experiencing an event so massive in scale. The St. Louis World's Fair is still considered one of the major historical moments back home even more than a century after the fact. While I realize the scope and nature of such events has changed since that time, it was still something I'm glad I did.**** I was able to visit another part of Korea and get to know a couple of my coworkers (who seem to be lovely people, by the way). All in all, a fruitful experience.

After dinner we left the Expo and caught a cab to the bus terminal. Our bus left Yeosu for Gwangju at 8pm, so it was already dark. The drive back was still impressive though, and once again I stared out the windows almost the entire time. Seeing the mountains at night was very captivating and piqued my interest in venturing outside of the city again soon.

After arriving back at my apartment, I heard music coming from the City Hall area, so I ventured over and saw that there was some sort of concert going on. I watched for a few minutes, then made my way over to the street that runs along the river. I wanted to scout out the riverside trail, but it was after dark and I couldn't see where the path from the road to the trail was, so I turned around and walked home.

Friday was another day of sleep and cleaning my apartment, which I've been doing in sporadic bits. I cleaned up the loft area and the bathroom on Friday, and ventured out again for more takeout for dinner, this time at a place where I could just point to some bibimbap on a menu, so it was much easier.

On Saturday I met up with Jolene, another coworker from a different branch of the school, to venture out to Mudeung Mountain and Jeungsimsa. The picture atop my previous post was taken at that temple. I'll let Jolene do the heavy lifting here. She wrote a post about our visit to the temple that you should read.

part of the Jeungsimsa complex

After visiting the temple we made our way back down to the bus stop to get back home. At the base of the mountain were a complex of restaurants and shops, many of which sold hiking and camping gear. It reminded me of a miniature version of a Rocky Mountain skiing village. My family spent a few days in Snowmass and Aspen last summer taking advantage of the offseason hotel prices and trekking around the mountains, so I liked how the wooden buildings and shopping area recalled the base of the slopes there. I think when the weather cools down I'll try to go back out and hike the rest of the mountain. Hiking is very popular in Korea, which I was glad to hear because I was just starting to really pursue back home before I left. It's something I predict will come up in this blog quite a bit in the future.

After resting on Sunday, everyone at the school hit the ground running Monday morning with intensives. Despite an incredibly busy workweek, I went out with my coworkers several nights, including a delicious dinner at a western-style restaurant to celebrate a birthday. Even with the hard work the teachers at my school do, they really seem to value spending time getting to know and bonding with each other, and I very much look forward to learning more of their stories and perspectives.

If you're interested in learning more, I recommend you check out Lily's and Jolene's blogs. We all work for the same company, and Lily works at my branch. Lily's been here almost a year and Jolene just a few weeks, so for those interested in learning more about our school or the general experience of teaching English in Korea it's worth a read. I also read their blogs and will try not to rehash too much of what they've said in places where content may overlap.

For now, I need to rest up for another week of intensives (minus a holiday on Wednesday), so it's off to bed and I'll try to check in next week. Thanks for reading!

*I enjoyed Swamplandia! It has an endearing whimsicality while also hitting its dark notes clearly and profoundly, though they sometimes are darker than what I expected. I was very struck by her story "The Hox River Window" (excerpt only) when I read it in Zoetrope: All Story last fall. I thoroughly enjoy that magazine, by the way. Mom and Dad, feel free to open up and check them out when they arrive at home.
**I'm sure Lily's mini-library is quite good...she grilled me on my tastes in literature shortly after we met on my first night here. Fortunately my fondness for Faulkner and Virginia Woolf were met with approval. I'm also relieved she didn't ask for my favorite movie because I'm not sure how my boss and other new coworkers would have felt when I responded "Jurassic Park".
***I suggested we visit Norway in hopes that they would show footage of Lofoten, and I was thrilled when they did. It was only a few seconds of video, but it somehow made me feel closer to home. The several days I spent in a fishing hut in Lofoten when I met my older brother in Europe six years ago were the highlight of that trip for me, and that trip included Venice at the beginning and Frankfort during the World Cup at the end, so that gives you some idea of what my favorite types of environments are. Italy and Germany were great, but hanging on a ledge between jagged peaks and the sea in the Arctic has a way of distinguishing itself even amongst such esteemed peers.
****I don't think this Expo will have introduced anything like the ice cream cone to the world as the St. Louis World's Fair claims to have done, but I also did not see any "savage villages" built along the shore. Times change, more for better than for worse.
*****I need to figure out how to use superscript so I can start numbering these if I'm going to keep this format. Perhaps I'll go back to using parentheses. Any more asterisks and I'll be too confused.

Ten Days In

Jeungsimsa (증심사)

This is the last evening of my summer vacation and thus the perfect opportunity to briefly review how I spent my six days off work. They were well earned, might I add, after having worked a total of three days at my new job, the majority of which I spent observing other classes. I did sort of luck out schedule-wise, since I came to Korea as quickly as I could after accepting the job. I sent my paperwork to Seoul the same day I received my referral number from the school, and I sent my other paperwork to the Consulate General in Chicago the same day I received my visa application number. The school booked my flight for Wednesday, July 25, and so I was becoming nervous as the planned departure day neared and I waited for my visa to arrive. Fortunately, the doorbell rang around noon on July 24 and within twenty-four hours I was boarding an Asiana plane to Seoul-Incheon at Chicago O'Hare.

Thus the welcome strangeness of my schedule here so far. My training was a bit expedited so that I can begin teaching a full slate of classes starting tomorrow. Our school has a summer intensive program for the next couple of weeks, during which extra classes are offered before students return to regular school at the end of the month or early in September. So I've been able to get a feel for the school with a few days of training, I've had about a week to explore the city and work out my jetlag, and I will have a couple weeks of serious immersion in teaching classes at the school. So hopefully by September I will have found a happy medium after bouncing around extremes during my first month here.

Don't let me give you the impression that I am displeased with my time here thus far. I am anxious to get in the classroom and dive into the material with the students. There seem to be many very intelligent students at our school and it will be rewarding to see how they respond to my teaching and to hopefully learn more effective teaching skills. I observed nearly twenty classes, and we have some very talented teachers at the school from what I've seen. I gained some useful ideas from them and will work to implement those ideas into my own classes.

Speaking of teachers, it seems I've really lucked out with my school. They've taken great care of me thus far. As I've said, we are a rather large school compared to others in the city and have a large number of foreign teachers. They've all been very friendly to me, and the first few nights I was in town a group of them took me to a few different places for dinner and introduced me to some wonderful new food. When vacation arrived, it seemed most of the foreign teachers planned to leave town for trips to other parts of Korea or abroad, so I prepared myself to do plenty of solo exploring of Gwangju, with a healthy dose of sleeping to straighten out my schedule in time for intensives.

On Tuesday, the first day of vacation, I headed out with my camera and a healthy layer of sunscreen to check out the area west of my apartment building. A coworker had told me about a park with a track out that way, so that was my original destination. I found the park a few blocks away, Sangmu Citizens' Park, and walked around the track before leaving the park and turning north, as it appeared the city becomes rather sparse west of the park. A few blocks north I came across Kim Dae Jung Convention Center and found a large map of the city, the first I'd really looked at. Until I saw that map I had no notion of where I live in the city or where anything else in the city is located. Now I have at least a vague notion of which side of the city I live in. It seems to be the west. In fact, the "Seo" in Seo-gu, the name of my district, or neighborhood, or municipality, or something along those lines, means "west" (according to my once-in-a-while reliable translator application).

After studying that map until I felt I might be drawing too much attention to myself from the various passers-by, I descended into the KDJCC subway station on the next block. I studied the subway maps for a bit and was able to procure a handy brochure map from a transit worker. However, lacking the adventurousness and exact change needed to board a train and see where it would lead me, I went back up the stairs and headed east along Highway 22, with a naive notion of perhaps reaching the bus terminal where I had arrived from Seoul five days earlier.

This ill-conceived endeavor was mercifully cut short a few blocks later as I lingered near a string of stores and restaurants. The sight of a Puma Golf shop had amused me and made me think of my younger brother, a golf fan who would love to browse through a store like that and would loathe the prominence of a Rickie Fowler cut-out carefully observing each potential customer.

The poor quality of this picture almost makes him look real.

As for me, I consider myself a fan of Rickie Fowler, in small part because of his willingness to resemble a highway cone, and largely because of his fascinating ability to irritate my younger brother. For that, I have much to learn from him, and perhaps following his lead and spending part of a paycheck on one of this store's more neon-y outfits could be a great place to start. Come to think of it, I have been wanting more attention, and that may be just the thing I need to stand out from the crowd here in Gwangju. I'll put it on my to-do list, right after getting my alien registration card and setting up a bank account so I can actually start receiving a paycheck.

With an amused smile on my face I continued eastward, deciding on the street since a string of parked cars had decided to claim the sidewalk of the side street I was following on my way back to Highway 22. I was listening carefully for oncoming traffic, so I turned quickly when I heard my name being called from across the street. Another foreign teacher from my school waved to me, and I crossed the street to greet her. We decided to grab lunch together (which was a great relief to me, as I was still dreading the first time I would have to order food for myself here). We had some delicious beef soup with kimchi that was boiled right in the center of our table. During our conversation I learned that after nearly two hours of trekking I had ended up a mere five minutes up the street from our school, about a fifteen minute walk from my own apartment. She also informed me just how far I was from the bus terminal and put to rest my thought of walking there in the middle of a hot mid-summer day. Most fortuitously, though, she liked my idea of venturing to Yeosu to see the World Expo during vacation, which would likely be the last feasible opportunity to see it before the closing on August 12.

After we ate what we could of the soup, (it was delicious, but there was so much of it...this will be a common refrain, I think. I should learn to say it in Korean) we parted ways, with me taking a slight detour to get some items from LotteMart. That was my first visit to LotteMart after two trips to the local E-Mart. Honestly, I'm not sure how people choose between these two stores. To me they seemed nearly identical, sort of like multi-story and classier Targets. Perhaps one of my coworkers will read far enough into this post to see this and can inform me of their distinctive qualities, other than the fact that I may live about 100 meters closer to one than to the other.

Here are links to the two store chains. If you open them in Google Chrome it does this cute thing where it asks if you want it to translate from Korean to English, and then fails miserably when you accept the offer.
http://www.lottemart.com/shop/worry.do?SITELOC=MI017
http://www.emart.com/index.do?method=getIndex&pid=direct&ckwhere=direct&sid=direct

Mr. Home Star. The Korean actually sounds like this too. This name suggests this character's potential to attempt to masculinize housework. Mr. Clean is a bit vague in my opinion. How much better could society be if we could envision people like Mr. Home Star sweeping floors and scrubbing dishes?

After a nap and shower I received a message from the coworker with whom I had lunch to meet up with her and a couple of other coworkers in Sangmu Citizens' Park, where we pedaled around a bike-buggy contraption for fifteen minutes or so, and then prepared to meet up with some of their other friends in the area for dinner.

For dinner I had samgipso for the first time. It was quite good, and grilling the food right at the table was entertaining as well. After dinner we met up with more of their friends at a bar, where I ordered a "Cola, chusayo" while enjoying lively conversation and trying to get some idea of how judo works as several Olympics matches played on the projection screen above the bar. I'm still not sure exactly how it works, but I am pretty sure I could beat any of my brothers at it, especially if I catch them when they don't realize we're competing.

The quality of this picture is so bad you may mistake one of these players for Rickie Fowler.

After that bar we headed to a more relaxed tavern-like spot with a wide variety of beverages from around the world, including good old American grape soda, which I enjoyed over a few games of darts with the men of the group. Though I lost both games (those guys were very, very good), I had no time to despair because I was lucky enough to catch the US women's soccer game against DPRK, aka North Korea.

I love soccer. I loved playing soccer in high school, and had it been co-ed I probably would have tried out for the team all four years. As it was, my school restarted the cross country program my second year of high school, and cross country was co-ed. Thus, to this day I run regularly, yet only manage to get in a pick-up game of soccer once in a great while. However, I watch the USWNT whenever I can. I made sure I was in front of the TV for the semis and final of last year's World Cup, and I was thrilled to be able to see them here in the Olympics, although I did end up seeming a bit rude when I kept glancing behind the head of one of my coworkers to catch glimpses of the action as she was trying to converse with me. Actually, I didn't just seem rude, I was rude. I apologize. Thank you for sitting on the TV side of me so I didn't have to be turned completely away from you to see the game. And from what I remember of the conversation it was very interesting and I hope to continue it sometime.

That conversation was cut short, however, by the closing of that spot at about 3:30 am and the relocation of our party (now grown by two more who had joined us at the tavern) to the streets of Gwangju, where we plotted our next move and I wondered in amazement how in the world I would be able to keep up with such a vibrant crowd. They quickly decided to find a norebang, or karaoke room, and so we made our way to my penultimate destination for the evening.

We entered a silent and clean building and took the elevator to the third floor. It was very well-kept, not quite what I anticipated. An attendant came to greet us and led us to a room down the hall with a large table surrounded on three sides by cushioned booths and facing a projector screen on the wall with two microphones hanging from the wall. A timer beneath the screen began counting down the time from sixty minutes, and others in the group began entering songs into a queue, and the singing began. The music was appropriately loud, as was the singing of my coworkers, and the video images playing on the screen were wonderfully random. At one point during Oasis's "Don't Look Back in Anger" I saw the iconic (in St. Louis, at least) footage of Mike Jones tackling Kevin Dyson to end Super Bowl XXXIV. I suppose for folks in Nashville that video may have actually seemed appropriate for the song.

My coworkers encouraged me to pick out a song, and I finally decided on "Proud Mary". I wanted something upbeat, and when I thought of that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to remind myself of home. It was nearly 5am by that time, so my sleep deprivation had erased much of my usual inhibition, and my coworkers joined in, helping me to sing out much more enthusiastically than I imagined I would. It felt great to sing that song, and it felt like a great way to end the night, especially since I could barely keep my eyes open any longer.

The timer beneath the projector ran to zero a few minutes later, and we filed out of the norebang into the pre-dawn light. The group considered where to go next, but I was done for the night, or morning. They were kind enough to consider my exhaustion and accept my farewell without much objection. Walking through the streets of a city at 5 in the morning was certainly an odd sensation for me, but I arrived home without incident and sprawled onto my couch as the sun's most slanted rays began to illuminate the shades over my windows.

And here I thought I needed to mentally prepare myself for long stretches of isolation and passing time alone in my apartment over the next year. It's a good thing I didn't load up a suitcase with my book collection.

That was the first day of my vacation, and the longest one. Seeing as it took me a few hours to hammer out that blog post and I have to prepare some materials for school in the morning, I will leave the rest for a future post, or at least whatever portion of the rest I decide is worth describing. I'm quite new to the blogosphere and welcome your feedback, dear (and committed, may I add, to have made it this far) reader. I think probably I should aim for shorter posts in the future. Leave me any suggestions you have, as I want this to be digestible for those who are interested in it, and thanks for reading!