For ever and for ever when I move

Two chapters of travel thus far: the first, a meditation on slowness, allowing the body to break out of the pattern of stress built on stress, reassuring the self that it is okay to not be working. After the time of harvest comes the time of plenty, to eat and use the food which has been saved. The practical counterpart to making money is spending money. Be smart, buy only what you need, avoid all luxuries except those which are simple: fresh grapefruit on occasion for breakfast, local jam for the bread, whole milk over skim. Don’t eat meat and don’t buy alcohol. Take bread from the baker and not from the grocer. Allow your mind and your body to relax. Release the stress which has so long accumulated in the back of your neck, pinching tight in your shoulders, aching across your lower back. Let your legs grow strong with the steps you take. Your writing is flitting with panic, white fear which flushes through your skull and makes you blind:

Let it go.

The pages turn and days pass by, still carrying too much, but there is progress. Approaching the calm.

Enter the second chapter, passing through the houses of friends. After the development of self comes the time for relationships. Beginning in Aachen, where conversation carries us through the days; focused on the words we speak, we tour through the city. The next day I walk our same route, alone, and realize with a laugh that nothing is familiar. Focused on ideas, I saw only the cobblestones beneath our feet. Breakfasts stretch out long, lazy, comfortable, moving from coffee to tea, sharing so many words. Feeling home in the company which I traveled so far to meet. Easter Sunday approaches and passes, I move through Germany in the companionship of a new friend, to stay in the houses of old. Travel now switches its focus to deepening and expanding existing relationships. Feeling the glaciers in my chest shift and moan, melting slowly, making space. Not yet understanding the significance of this. No longer spending money except in transit; now cooking meals together in the comfort of so many kitchens, falling into a routine, learning again how to spend time on drawing. The mind is still slightly spasmodic, but the spasms decrease in intensity and number.

Moving toward bicycles in Freiburg, where the air is warm; the mind welcomes the warmth with such gladness. My soul rejoices as the tiny buds break forth on the branches, tiny grey fingers which grasp at the air and explode into color, twisting into brilliant green leaf. The streets are filled with people, sitting on their doorsteps, filling the parks; the cafés open their walls and spill their tables onto the sidewalks and suddenly there are so many people. Public space once again becomes shared, life no longer limited to existing solely in the warmth of the private sphere. Conversation fills the streets, bodies walking for the warmth of the sun and the clean goodness of the air; the city bursts with life, shared gladness at winter’s passing. Time becomes gentle and easy. I move further south in a leap, to Perpignan, to Bordeaux. The second chapter draws to a close and demands decisive direction for beginning the third.

Soon I will move back from the company of others into the company of self. From what is familiar to what is unknown.  Always moving forward, embracing opportunity as it comes. Do not shy back in fear. Not sure where it will carry me, I wait to turn the page.

“This is my first time in Germany!” I excitedly told the driver of my carpool, a hitched ride from Amsterdam to Köln. We met in the cold air outside Hotel Ibis, the car an eclectic mix of persons all looking for cheap transport into Germany.

“And you’re going to.. Aachen?” he asked, in slow disbelief, making the soft guttural scratch of the German ‘ch’-sound. “Yup! Going to Aachen.” I smiled, without granting clarification, my own pronunciation so much more flat and lifeless. English: the neutral divide between lilting, dancing French and softly guttural German. Words pronounced by clicking the tongue definitively against the teeth, in the forefront of the mouth, largely ignoring the back of the throat, keeping our vowels chained beneath the tight restraint of our consonants.

It’s been a unique tour de Deutschland thus far, as I have planned my route via towns where my scattered collection of German friends reside. Aachen, Köln, Marburg, Darmstadt. Still to come: Mannheim, Stuttgart, Freiburg. I make a sharp cut across the western side of Germany, from the northern Netherlands border to the southern Swiss border. From Freiburg, I will take a bus into southern France and move just north of the Pyrénées, across the southern French landscape into Bordeaux.

It’s an incredible relief to be out of hostels and to stop paying exorbitant prices for B&B’s, which, due to weather and circumstance, were the only available options in Iceland and Scotland. In Amsterdam, the hostel was full of stone-cold potheads, dragging out their days in clouds of smoke in the dank basement entrance of the hostel. Three days of walking through the frozen city, watching snowflakes shimmer in the air, the sun a cold reminder of how far away summer actually is: It was enough. Make a beeline into Germany. Warm up the days with friends and couches and free cups of tea, forming a new resolution with self. Fill out job applications and purchase watercolor pencils. Begin to sketch again. Move south, until the short, dying bursts of cold and snow have disappeared into the folds of the warm bosom of a later spring. May, not March. Leave March behind in its own cold dregs and move south, for god’s sake. Leave this awful, bone-chilling cold behind–the long evenings twisting restlessly beneath too-thin sheets, the frozen toes, the heavy bulk of blankets and sweaters and socks, the unrelenting frustration at the sting, the bite, the chill–and move south.

To beaches, to sunshine, to shorts. From beer to wine, from heavy to light, from this collection of snapshots with friends to form the deliberate montage of self. Moving toward a purpose. Searching.

And all the while, with one clear direction in the back of my mind:

Move. South.

“Dear. Amanda

Hi, Amanda. I’m Jane.
I feel a sense of loss because I heared you go back.
I remain in our’s memory in last summer vacation
English camp and all lessons.
It is really great time for me.
funny lessons, new friends and I saw your family! ^^
I’m unforgettable our memory.
and please you remember Yeoju girl’s high school,
many students and me!
Really thanks my teacher. ^^
Take care of you health.
Always good luck!
Goodbye, Amanda

Jane”

Friday morning, the sun is bright. I walk to school and am greeted by a cool and pleasant breeze as I pass beneath the trees. The bricks are a comfortable, burnt red color, a molded path that has settled into its place long before my feet met this ground. The hazy heat of summer, grey and heavy, silently took leave and in its place are cool whispers of autumn, quiet auras, hushed like secrets, a few lone brown leaves that scuttle across the street.

In the courtyard of my school, students are huddled in large, teeming clusters of matching costumes: bright red shorts held with suspenders over bright yellow shirts, soccer jerseys with names printed on the back, forty purple polo’s topped with ridiculous headband bows, the striped bow ties sticking straight into the air off of forty giggling faces, forty sets of Pikachu ears perched on forty pig-tailed heads. The deep pounding of drums resonates across the courtyard and in order of class, the students perform choreographed dances to start off the day. Their synchronized moves are met with wild screams from their fellow students in the stands. I wander with my camera, snapping pictures, smiling at the excited, “Amanda teacher!” greetings. The teachers sit under an awning on a raised platform that overlooks the courtyard: there are tables heaped high with clusters of grapes, boxes of rice cakes, perfectly sliced watermelons. Here, the air is cool and the sun cannot reach them.

I love the twang of the Korean musical instruments, girls’ voices screaming with the beat, the traditional drums booming through the air. My students are happy, today they are freed from their studies, they dance and scream as they compete with each other: three-legged races, tug of war, dodge ball, relay races. Nobody gives me instruction, but it no longer seems necessary. The sky is blue with fat, white clouds, and I am so immersed, this life has normalized for me.

“One year ago,” Mickey says as she sits beside me on the cement steps. “I remember one year ago, your first day. You seemed so kind, and beautiful, and… something like that.” I smile at the air between us, warm with her encouragement, before raising my eyes to meet hers. We’re both preparing to leave, standing in the anxious few days of familiarity before we step off the ground into our next plane, actively changing the world as we know it.

My stomach knows it, knotting in excitement, in nervousness, begging my brain to make lists to assuage the anxiety, to maintain control over the details. My last class has finished. My heart feels the weight of the temporary, relishing the slowness in the moments. The twang of the drum brings me back, feeling distant but calm, my last few days in Korea. The whistles scream, the sun is hot, we practice warm ups with my relay team, the students’ screams fill the courtyard and I am selected to run first. The frantic beat of the drums fill the air, we stand in a row and the students fill the space around the track, dancing and cheering wildly, a photographer stands with his camera at the ready, the microphone screeches from the podium as we wait for the shot from the gun.

First day of school in a new semester.

I wake up early, hop timidly over the half- packed piles of clothes, books and gifts to make my way to the small stretch of counter I call a kitchen and put some water on the burner. Hit the button on the water heater, hop in the shower, make a stiff pot of french press, dig out a pair of black pants from a tangled pile of clothes, throw on a blouse, pack up my bag for the day.

On the walk to school, I pass a huge pile of window panes and screens in the parking lot, the workers crouched on their haunches, cigarettes hanging out of their mouths as they point at the windows and argue. A minute later, I look up to the building to find that half the windows in the school are gone, the full walls of the classrooms gaping, open to the outdoors. It is eerily quiet on the grounds. I don’t encounter a single person on the steep walk to the front door, not a soul in the hallways, the stop at the shoe locker to change into my school slippers is silent, silent in the staircase, the quiet rustle of my feet as they click the linoleum steps the only sound. I walk to the teacher’s office and abruptly find a class of students, who smile and wave at me. I pause, suspended in an awkward moment where there are no words, and duck away from the doorway to stand aimlessly in the hallway, lost. I turn to walk a couple steps and pause, unsure. A teacher sees me and points to the far end of the hallway, previously home to the second grade classrooms, where I find a bustling teacher’s office.

I walk in. My old desk buddy sees me and jumps up to warmly greet me with a handshake and a cheerful face. I stand, alone, confused, before I’m told, from across the office, that my desk has been moved, the words accompanied with a vague motion of the hand to the air across the courtyard. I’m given a box of things from my old desk, which are placed on a chair near me, and I continue to stand. I’m asked if I have the key to my old desk locker, which seems to be located beneath my co-teacher’s desk. After a frantic, fruitless search through my backpack, I’m left alone in another moment of standing aimlessly, completely lost, completely clueless, without a desk, emotionally void. Mickey rushes up to me to tell me that I haven’t paid my apartment bill since I moved in, and I need to give my tax papers to the office. I’m informed with an apologetic look that my computer has been adopted by my co-teacher and will not be given back. Two letters are handed to me, one of which is a phone bill. I continue to stand and wait, letters in one hand, morning coffee in the other, box at my knees, backpack on my back.

After a few minutes, my old desk buddy feels sympathetic for me and walks over, picks up the box and walks with me to my new office, three floors up in a different building. As he drops the box at my new desk, he gives me a confident, companionable handshake and puts his hand on his heart, drops his head with a sad shake and walks out. Another co-teacher talks on the phone, his voice booming through the small four- desk office that is now my new professional home, and the voice of the principal booms through the loudspeaker across the courtyard, distant. I wait. After a moment, the phone call is finished and a schedule is handed to me. I’m informed I teach first period, which starts in three minutes. The key to my classroom is locked in the desk underneath my co-teacher’s desk on the second floor in the first building across the courtyard.

My classroom is exploding in mold spores, the room reeks of mildew and water damage, I direct students to open all the windows, I turn on the air. I gather my students in a circle in the front of the room where we painstakingly discuss questions like, “How was your vacation?”, to answers such as, “Boring, so- so, just study, school every day, play computer game, eat,” before playing a timid game of catch phrase, more Korean spoken than English.

So here I sit, my stomach rumbling, the office is cold, boxes of papers to my left and right, the hum of a trimmer through the windows to my right, the sound of Italian opera screeching loudly above me.

Eight more days at school, sixteen more days in Korea. Mama mia, mitchen.

Summer thus far in Korea means grey days and rain, rain, rain.

Tonight it is raining steadily and I’m staying in, drinking my second cup of thick, green Kohyang mugwort tea. Something about it reminds me of Malt O’ Meal, hearty and thick. Comforting. Listen to the rain and the roar of cars as the tires scream through the puddles, flying past my apartment. My eyes are tired. Soft lamp and the darkness of night.

It is so nice to be relaxed with this job. Easy conversation with students, asking questions, forming sentences, jotting down correct phrases and words on scraps of paper. The teachers at school let me borrow the video camera for the next week and I walked around with it today. Students either strike an immediate pose or, in quick desperation, hide behind their hair, their flailing arms, their friends.

In extra class the students prepared messages for me and I filmed them.

“Teacher, I very very missing you. Teacher, don’t leave Korea. If you leave Korea, I am so sad. Oh, no! So very, very sad. Teacher, when you come back Korea? When you come back, call me. Teacher, I really very miss you.”

After the table of three second graders, we were all on the edge of tears. “Teacher, eyes, red! Teacher, no, don’t cry.” Wearing my emotions on the short, feminine sleeves of my blouse.

Finished developing another roll of film on Tuesday night. High temperatures in the makeshift bathroom studio, experimentation with exposure times, low quality film. Grainy and nostalgic.

Group of sophomore students at sports day. 여주여자고등학교, South Korea.

Buddha's Birthday in the rain, looking at the river. Yeoju, South Korea.

Buddha's Birthday, lanterns at Silleuksa Temple, Yeoju, South Korea.

Spring into Summer. Yeoju, South Korea.

Short walk to school, along the 남한강 river. Yeoju, South Korea.

My watch broke and even after I flick it hard on the back of its face, the most it will do is click the second hand forward, backward, forward, backward.

I’ve never seen a clock click one second over and over and over again, refusing to acknowledge passing time. It just moves, one second at a time, forward, backward, time going nowhere, just forward, backward, forward, backward.

Nowhere to go but here.

Maybe it’s a sign that I need to shift my attention from the blur of the past as it slides slowly into the blur of the future, re-calibrate my system to slide sharply into focus on the present. Time is short and moves so quickly. I won’t be in Korea forever, and someday I’m really gonna miss it.

Or maybe it’s just a sign that I shouldn’t have bought a vintage watch.

Well, friends, here we are, at the end of winter vacation and already six months into my contract. What a whirlwind of emotions and experiences it has been, and still six more months to go!

This week begins a new academic school year here at Yeoju Girls’ High School. March 2nd is the first day of school, and I can only imagine that time will fly by even faster than last semester, with a full load of classes to teach, extra classes in the evenings, the weather growing more beautiful, the days becoming longer and lighter, continually finding more mountains to hike, food to eat, people to meet, language to study, nooks and crannies to explore…

Though Korea has more than a usual amount of frustrating days, with no end of cultural differences to adjust to, the frequent isolated times where it feels no meaningful connection has been made for the entirety of the day, and several sick to the senses days where any sort of normalcy is absent…. I must say that Korea has only continued to grow on me. It is a beautiful country: the landscape, the cuisine, the people. Koreans are incredibly kind-hearted people whose deeply- rooted values of hierarchical respect, filial duties and studious, hard-working mindsets continually astound me. I feel that, no matter how many words I used, I could never quite capture the level of respect and honor that has been given to me here.

As a brief editorial note, I realize I didn’t post in this blog for a little over a month, and for this I apologize, but I decided not to try and catch up on my vacation travels through Taiwan and Thailand, and instead limit this blog’s content to Korea.

So, Korea it is. I am sure I will be able to keep you entertained with material in the next six months: we have lost sixteen teachers at my school, including four of my best young female teacher friends, and gained sixteen new ones. I have been moved to a cubicle desk on my own, and no longer have Mr. Choi sitting beside me. I will no longer be teaching classes on my own, for my classroom has been taken away and I will now be co-teaching all of my classes, each of which will have 35+ students.

In another note, we have summer, hiking, a school festival, an entirely new semester, and summer camp to look forward to before this year’s adventures in Korea come to an end. So, here’s to a new year, in continual meditation on the fact that change, though sometimes painful, is the regular and necessary rhythm of life.

To a new year! Here we go.

Two of the teachers that left for different schools-- during finals week last semester when we snuck out of school to get a waffle and some coffee from Ti Amo 🙂

If you know me, you know that with anything that requires continual attention under a constantly recycling time schedule, I generally fall behind. This list includes, but is not limited to, watering plants, doing laundry, eating leftovers, washing dishes, buying toilet paper, turning in weekly school assignments, updating my blog.

I owe you an update about Taiwan, in which I should tell you how wonderful it was to spend comfortable time with old friends in a new country, drinking oolong tea in the mountains and spending long rainy mornings drinking coffee and eating fresh fruit in the comfort of a Taiwanese home, discussing books, language and travel.

And as it goes, in three weeks I will owe you another update about Thailand, in which I will be traveling for fifteen days, two thirds of that on my own, trekking through ruins and rainforests and islands on foot and bike and elephant.

And, technically, I should be updating you about my current winter camp, which is going wonderfully, for I adore my small class of nineteen eager students, two hours a day for two weeks, and look forward to connecting them in conversation and potential trans-Pacific friendships to ten eager American students, via the amazing connective poweress of the interwebs, aka Skype.

But, as my easy mind would have it, instead of finding me on the interwebs connecting myself to you, I have found myself calmly, peacefully, and quietly falling back into notebooks, sketches, and scribbled words to myself, occasionally in the company of other wonderful artistic people I am lucky enough to call my friends.

I have shamelessly stolen these pictures from my friend, Emily Albun, to whom all picture cred in this post will go.

Sketching at Bar Da, Hongdae, Seoul

Bottle of wine at Bar Da

Bar Da in Hongdae, Seoul: An Artist's Haven

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.

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.

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,

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!

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.

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.