Dec 23 2018

In Anticipation

In anticipation of Christmas
My darling child
Has become an insomniac
Staying up all hours to sticker
His books
And waking in the night;

Singing carols,
Arranging gifts around the tree,
Laughing like Santa, with a ho-ho-ho

Dreaming of footsteps on the roof

Dancing
In anticipation
Of the joy, the surprise

His first remembering
And this time shared
His memories of Christmas.

I wonder occasionally
If I will survive

Hearing his little voice in the night
As it breaks the silence
Like an electric shock to my system:

Mama, mama —

Just as I am drifting into the abyss
The sweet darkness of sleep
And there
A little voice
Calling me.

But I try to remember
The magic
Of the Christmas lights around the tree
The sacred stillness
After hours and avoiding sleep
Bridging the worlds between,
A child in the world of his parents’ making

The beauty of the world
Unfolding
And magic all around.


May 12 2011

Buddha’s Birthday: Insadong

I spent the weekend with my Korean friend, Sojung, and she let me stay the weekend in her apartment. We started the evening on Friday by feasting freely at her mother’s ddukbokki stand, after which we biked around a quiet park. We parked the bikes and sat on a park bench to drink one beer while listening to the frogs’ voices echo loudly through a drainage pipe. After some great conversation with each other, we biked happily back to her apartment.

The next night, after a rather frantic night in which I missed my bus home, we took advantage of another evening together and ate green tea and choco ice cream, watched an old Marilyn Monroe movie, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, and happily accepted a plate of cold spicy noodles around 2 am when her mom came home and joined us.

After my weekend with Sojung, I went on Sunday to Insadong, the neighborhood of Seoul most famous for art and traditional teahouses. Tuesday, May 10th is Buddha’s Birthday, and Insadong is where the biggest celebrations take place.

What I found was an incredibly happy day, light, full of sunshine, beautifully diverse with people from all over Asia, including, off the top of my head, Thailand, Cambodia, China, Vietnam, Tibet, Nepal, Laos, and on and on. Everyone had a smile on their face, there were lotus lanterns all around, bubbles, incense, music and traditional costumes.

It was really something lovely to see, so many colors and smells.

Concrete Jungles of Korea, Dongbae, South Korea

Folding paper into lotus lanterns, Insadong, South Korea.

Korean Buddhist Monks in traditional clothes, Insadong, South Korea.

Bubbles and traditional Korean drummers, Insadong, South Korea.

Small Korean butterfly child, Insadong, South Korea.

Painting station, Insadong, South Korea.

Line of lanterns, Insadong, South Korea.


Dec 29 2010

a Whirlwind of Autumn

Finally, a picture of my classroom! This is a group of 2nd Grade girls, one of the medium higher levels of comprehension. I really really really enjoy teaching this size class– classes of 40 are a totally different playing field. As you can see, they are all adorable.

Classroom of Girls

I managed to get them all to pose for a picture, but it only lasted about three seconds before they were back up again. I love this class! One of my favorites. <3

My classroom is pretty much the technologically savvy classroom in the school– I have the mega computer in the front, which sends the image on the computer to nine different computer screens that are hooked to each of the nine tables in my classroom. Also, I can make the screen project full- size screen on the wall. Great for videos, like the recent ten- minute clip of America’s Funniest Home Videos, Halloween edition, that I’ve been showing my classes. HUGE hit. Pure giggle- scream fest. Awesome.

Sentence Game Classroom

As you can see, my class is a total hit. We do things like run around, create general chaos, and look at adorable pictures of puppies. Hooray, English Conversation class sans textbook! You're the best!

Sidenote,

Sentence Game Image

This is the sentence game-- I show a picture to the class and spent the entirety of the class screaming, running, laughing, cheering and brainstorming in English. It's great.

Halloween is the best holiday ever to teach. Hooray for culture! I’m a total sucker when it comes to an entire classroom of girls screaming, “Candeeee, Teacher, Canddyyyyy!!!!” to me, arms outstretched and eyes begging… I went through a 2.4kg bag of hard candy in my first 2.5 days. Dangit. Luckily I learned to have a little discretion in giving handfuls and occasionally whip out the *high five* prize. The devastated- and- equally- surprised- and- hopeful looks on their faces is priceless. I also love actually giving them candy, which is why I’ve made (literally) three trips to the grocery store already. Sigh. Goodbye, October paycheck, you’re dissolving into the giddy giggles and screams of six hundred rural Korean girls, and I’m helpless to stop it.

On another note entirely, I went hiking up a mountain this weekend! For having a population of 50 billion people, Korea has done an amazing job of preserving the natural beauty of their many, many mountains. This weekend I hopped on a six- hour all- night bus full of tourists, Koreans and English teachers in order to arrive at Juwangsan National Park at 6am. Nope, I didn’t sleep a wink on that all- night bus ride, but it was unbelievably worth it to see the mountains. Due to technical difficulties, the mountains will not be pictured in this particular blog post, but I promise to show them to you soon!

In the meantime, I hope this awesome, random collection of pictures will tie you over until I can get my head on straight and show you thirsty followers some mountains!

Old Grandpa and Bike

Grandpa and bike, snapped on one of my early walks home from school.Autumn rice paddies turn a brilliant, beautiful golden yellow color. I love the alternating strips of yellow and green that crosses the horizon in autumnal Korea.Autumn rice paddies turn a brilliant, beautiful golden yellow color. I love the alternating strips of yellow and green that crosses the horizon in autumnal Korea.

As always, living a new country presents the simplicity of everyday life in a completely new and different way. Korea is not without its simple pleasures, and almost every day I smile at an old person on a bike, or appreciate the leaves scuttling across my path, or find the vibrant yellow colors of the Gingko trees unbelievably and breathakingly beautiful.
Earlier this week the big Gingko tree dropped almost half of its leaves in a radiantly golden halo around the base: I was smiling for half the day from it.
Rice Paddies Ripe and Ready

Autumn rice paddies turn a brilliant, beautiful golden yellow color. I love the alternating strips of yellow and green that crosses the horizon in autumnal Korea.


Sep 27 2010

Chuseok on this!

Well hello there.

It’s been awhile, and for this I apologize.

Athough time seems to have stopped on this blog, it has done anything but in the living world. Today is my one month anniversary in Korea, happy anniversary to me! I hope Korea is happy about it as well. Anniversaries are lonely things to celebrate alone.

Anyhow, boy have things been happening. This past week was a big Korean holiday: Chuseok, the celebration of the harvest, which means that all the Korean kiddos go to grandmother’s house for the weekend and the foreigner teachers bond together to try and battle the traffic and make something of their unexpected- and- rather- abrubt week off from teaching duties. Being that we are all without our official Alien Registration Cards, and consequently unable to leave the country, a small collection of Wisco grad kids and I gathered up our cameras, notebooks and odd- number of travel clothes and went to Seoul! Hooray!

It was great. My second time in Seoul, and I’m in love.

There are, however, a few notable accomplishments that must not be overlooked.

First big demon: the subway. When one is a newbie to big cities in general, subways are a formidable beast to face. There that newbie stands, a colorful bowl of spaghetti noodles mapped out and open in their hand, and for whatever confusing, awful reason, that map stubbornly refuses to let up its secrets. Meanwhile, all around is ordered chaos, a never- ending flow of people that know exactly what needs to be done to get past those beeping, blocking machines and don’t appreciate the awkwardly gawking around and blocking the perfectly synchronized flow of traffic.

Well friends, I have to admit that on my first trip to Seoul, I was that newbie. I meekly followed where my equally foreign friends led (which was, I’ll admit again, to a safe corner of the subway system as we poked the map and begged it to release its secrets), but now! Oh, now.

Let me just tell you, I am a newbie no more. I have conquered the Seoul subway system. When I take that bowl of colorful spaghetti noodles from its expertly folded home in my back pocket, those beautiful lines all crissing and crossing that enormous span of city, I hold a puzzle! An intricate puzzle that allows me to get from any point in Seoul to any other point in Seoul almost instantaneously. It’s amazing. Instead of confusion, it’s a code. Awesome. Plus, I now have a T-Money card that is good for use on the subway, for any taxi in Seoul, and for half the pay- phones in the city. Equally awesome. Goodbye, awkward gawking. Hello suave new white girl, welcome to your second home.

Second demon to face down: traveling alone in such a big city as Seoul. I have to admit, this also was intimidating for me. Something about the ultra- foreign feeling of the language, the absurd way I stick out in a crowd, and the still- not- completely- acclimated- to- the- culture in Korea has made me feel a bit like a turtle roaming out of its shell. I kind of miss that cozy turtley- shell feeling.

But, again, I’ve done it. My first subway ride on my own was a bit nerve- wracking. It didn’t help that as I sat alone in the corner of the train, a little old Korean man sitting across from me and staring at me, without a single blink, dusk slowly setting outside the windows, a blazingly bright traditional Korean mask rested on my head, (one that I had decorated earlier that day at the Seoul World Design Fair 2010). It wasn’t long before I cracked under the pressure and took it off.

Not only did I travel alone to meet an old friend from Madison that evening, but I spent the entirety of the next day kicking around Seoul on my own, and it felt great. I unexpectedly visited the Gyeongbokgung Palace in downtown Seoul, figured out the city map and made it to Insadong, (okay, it was only a few blocks away, but still….): the artsy hub of Seoul, known for art galleries, paint studios and a beautiful open- air market that stretches for several blocks. It was so peaceful to wander the city alone without the stressed- out feeling that has been camping in the back of my head for far too long.

The next few days in Seoul were relatively uneventful in terms of blogosphere ratings, but for this:

Picture us, three ragged companions with me on a train back to rural Yeoju after three nights of very little sleep. Matt plays with his iPad, I sit beside him reading a book, Brian sits beside me staring out the window, Ryan sits beside Brian napping with his headphones in.

We are tired. We are hungry. We have very little money and we haven’t eaten any food all day. The train unexpectedly unloads us and we have to transfer. Before this, we accidentally rode on the train for too long and had to backtrack twenty minutes. We want to go home and we each want to sleep in our own beds. Seoul is beautiful but exhausting. Korea is beautiful and exhausting. I want to be in my own bed in my big apartment and I want to sleep for a very, very long time.

Transfer in Yeong Peyong, get off the train and walk a half hour through the downtown towards the bus stop. It is Wednesday, Chuseok day, and aside from soldiers in the streets with their families and random scatterings of large groups of friends, there are few people out. We are a gangly, the odd ones out in the streets and we are hungry. Most of the restaurants are closed, but as we are passing Baskin Robbins we see a little hole- in- the- wall restaurant beside it that is pretty packed with people. We look at each other and decide to walk in.

Enter the hole in the wall restaurant. There is one open table in the middle and three filled, the restaurant is very small. The corner table to the left is brimming with a group of teenage friends, the back corner table has a couple of old men laughing and eating, their eyes beginning to have the drunken Soju glaze in them. The table to the right has a little old man, his wife and daughter and they have an abundance of food and alcohol on their table. The lady that owns the restaurant clears off the fourth table and wipes away the dead flies and mosquitos as we sit.

Little old man on the table to the right is extremely entertained that we have entered this restaurant. He grabs Ryan’s attention and speaks loudly in Korean, I am beginning to see that he is quite drunk, and he uses his chopsticks to feed Ryan food from his communal dish in the center of his table. Little old drunken Korean man then walks to the back table, grabs a bit of food from their communal center plate, and proceeds to walk back to our table feed it to Ryan. Ryan is doing well under all this attention. The rest of us are half- paying attention, half- figuring out how the hell we’re going to order any food when nothing is in English and we’re bone- weary with exhaustion.

Little drunk old Korean man then decides to feed me a bite of his food, via his hand with his chopsticks, and I am too tired to refuse so I let him. I don’t want to think about what it is, so I just chew. And chew and chew and chew. It’s unchewable, I can’t think about it so I just swallow. One huge gulp and it is down.

“Guys, whatever we order, we do not want that. I promise you. Don’t get what he has. Please. It’s not meat.”

The nice Korean woman is trying her best to take our order but the little drunk old Korean man behind us is telling her we want what he has, pointing at his dish with much enthusiasm, my eyes are begging Brian to change it but the woman is crossing her arms in the ‘no’ symbol and walks away.

At this point, little drunk old Korean man decides to feed us shots of Soju and mechu (beer) mixed together. In the Korean culture it is considered very rude to refuse drinks, especially from people that are on a higher tier of respect than you. Being unsure whether his age is enough to qualify him on a higher tier of respect, and knowing that refusing it will be a much greater battle than taking it, I regretfully accept the shot, and immediately afterwards find another bite of unchewable chunk and liver- paste noodles in my mouth and, desperate not to puke, gag before spitting out the unchewable into a napkin wad beneath my plate.

The rest of the meal consisted in teary disbelief at the enormous plate of pig intestine and, possibly testicle, that we had knowingly- but- powerlessly ordered as all the sounds, sights and smells swirled around me and smacked me hard in my empty gut.

As soon as possible we excavated that restaurant and learned the hard way that a hole- in- the- wall restaurant in Madison is incredibly different than a hole- in- the- wall restaurant in Korea. We trudged on to the bus station and hungrily, with the taste of intestine hoovering on our lips, split ways to our apartments.

Rarely before has a bed felt so wonderful. πŸ˜‰

Hello, culture shock. Hello, new side of Korean food. Hello bright new world! Can’t wait to see what’s next, haha. Suffice it to say I’ve been taking it easy for the last few days, reading, eating rice, eating eggs, ordering safe things like kimbop and dragon noodle soup, both of which are incredibly delicious and wonderful.

Well! That should be enough of a post to make up for awhile. Take care, until we meet agaiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!! I promise in the next post I will use more pictures than I use words. That’ll be a change, eh? πŸ˜‰