For ever and for ever when I move

A few friends of mine here in Korea have an excellent film hobby, and occasionally they allow me to play along with them. Taken with an old metal clunk of camera, an old Pentax belonging to a friend, I walked around and shot in my neighborhood. It’s fun to look at the world through the lens of a film camera. Select, focus, adjust meter, focus and refocus, click.

I developed the film, not the photos, mind you, in my chemistry buddy’s makeshift photography development studio in his bathroom. Mix chemicals, agitate solution. Timing is important, select songs with appropriate time, agitate and shake, rest, shake, rest, mix new chemicals, shake, wash, shake. Interesting stuff.

It’s nice to have friends with interesting hobbies to learn from.

Here are a few of my pictures. I’ve got another roll we’ll develop later this week, and if any are good I’ll put them up.

Textures on my school campus, Yeoju, South Korea.

Mr. Choi, with the tie on the left, is one of my favorite teachers here. He is great. To the right is the Chinese characters and history teacher. Yeoju Girls' High School, South Korea.

This street is greatly responsible for the absolute lack of silence in my apartment. Thanks, traffic. Can't wait to leave you. Yeoju, South Korea.

The windshield shop down the block from my apartment. Here is where a pack of dogs continually give me low, terrifying guttural warnings when I pass. Yeoju, South Korea..

Carved singing guy in the park near my apartment. Yeoju, South Korea.

Honeybee fluttering near the honeysuckle tree, Yeoju, South Korea.

Pavilion on top of the hill near my apartment. To one side is the South Han River, to the opposite side is the cityscape buried in mountains. Yeoju, South Korea.

Lesson warmup:

Write what you have heard about American High School Life.

Student 1502:

1. Very Free

2. Dance with men! Every year dance party

3. Big ground playing US soccer (football)

4. Men sweat and Adam’s Apple

Student 1502 pen pal letter:

“Dear American pen pal friend.

Hello! American pen pal friend! How about your school life? Korean school life is very hard, bad, sad, upset, angry and cry! But little fun. Korean school have school uniform. Very comfortable. Korean school finish late. For dinner and night self study 2 hour. Very sad. American school students have a driving licence? It’s wonderful! My dream is have a driving licence. You American school life what? Fun? Boring? I wonder your school life. Bye bye.”

Letting pictures speak louder than words: my weekend in review.

Hyang Temple at Sunrise on Turtle Island, Jeollanam-do, South Korea

Breakfast after the 6am hike: seafood fermented bean curd soup. My favorite. Amazing. Jeollanam-do, South Korea.

Boats at Yeosu Harbor, Jeollnam-do, South Korea.

Geomundo Island, a two hour boat ride from Yeosu: mid-morning hike to the lighthouse. Jeollnam-do, South Korea.

Fresh fish breakfast after our morning hike on Geomundo Island, Jeollanam-do, South Korea.

Nangan Folk Village- Traditional houses where we slept one night. Jeollanam-do, South Korea.

Boseong Tea Fields, Jeollanam-do, South Korea.

Boseong Tea Fields, Jeollanam-do, South Korea..

Green tea infused with particles of gold. Jeollnam-do, South Korea.

For the past few weeks in Korea, I have been insatiably hungry. I wake up hungry, I go to sleep hungry, throughout the day I feel a hunger digging inside of me.

That’s not to say I haven’t been eating. I eat regularly. Every day at school I stuff myself with rice, kimchi, spicy vegetables, soup, and some odd meat dish at lunch. Fairly often, I go out with friends for dinner, and we eat galbi (barbequed ribs), or samgaetang (chicken ginseng soup) or nangmyeon (iced noodles) or bibimbap (rice and fresh vegetables and spicy sauce, mixed) or samgyeupsal (pork, think really thick slabs of bacon) or occasionally we’ll get pizza (always with corn on it… why, Korea? Why the corn on pizza?)…. and I fill myself. In Korea, the method is generally eat until stuffed, and yet… I still feel hungry.

Granted, my meals at home are fairly piecemeal and undesirable, odd snacks, rice and dried seaweed, bowls of ramen, hard boiled eggs, cookies, bananas, milk…. but still, this hunger is there.

I don’t know how to describe it. It’s quieter than hunger. It’s as though my torso has been filled with a soft resonant ache that reminds me of hunger. It’s almost as though my hunger receptors had been replaced by desire receptors, and my system is confused.

I’ll admit it, I’ve been having some cravings lately. Take, for instance, a grilled turkey sandwich, like the ones from Panera. The mere thought of it has me drooling.

Grilled. Turkey. Sandwich. Commence drool.

I have vivid daydreams about food. Sometimes, during lunch, as I’m arranging a pile of spicy sweet bean sprouts on top of my rice, I daydream about taking a bite of a turkey sandwich, the alfalfa sprouts squishing into the guacamole, the thick center of grilled turkey and hot melted cheese squishing between my teeth… and as my chopsticks reach for a bite of kimchi, I imagine red slices of tomato sliding out from the sandwich as I taste that sweet, seedy inside mixing with that earthy bread flavor… and as I hold one chopstick steady and pull the other along the spine to separate the meaty portion of my breaded fish from the stomach cross section portion, I imagine lasagna, hot from the oven, layers and layers of melted cheese, fresh parmesan, goopy unsweetened tomato sauce….

and as I wrap up my meal, scoop the uneaten spine and somach of the fish in with the last few pieces of turnip kimchi I didn’t finish, I feel insatiably hungry.

I can’t describe it. I’m hungry, in so many ways I can’t describe, in a manner I’ve vaguely felt before, but never for so long, and never so strong as this.

I daydream of basil omelets, french toast, blueberry flaxseed oatmeal pancakes, oatmeal with sliced apples, bananas and cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top, Malt-O-Meal with a dash of brown sugar and sweet cream, thick slabs of homemade wheat bread, hot from the oven with a dab of butter melting on top, cheesy scrambled eggs on the side, fresh blackberry jelly from the Famer’s Market, a pot of fresh coffee on the countertop, summer breezes through the window, the Current drifting lazily on the radio…

Every day I eat, but…. oh brother, how I hunger.

“I think about English is like a maze
because it is confusing but not.
good… or bad I’m very confusing… hahaha : (
so, I think about English maze.
but, I love English
so, more and more love English!!”

From my first grade student, Lee Su-hee, English name Grace.
Very honest and unique response on her opinion of English.

“Dear, new friend.

Hello, I Glad meet you!

Umm… You don’t know me. So I introduce myself of face & body.

I have a little mole under my nose.
It is a complex. but my mother say “it comes for luck.”
I think “oh, I love it very much.”

I have black hair, short hair.
I wish long hair and more black hair.

oh, I have glasses. maybe big glasses!

my friends say “You charm is legs!”
Yes. My legs turn on the charm.

That’s it for now. I waiting you letter!
good bye! 🙂

From,
Sophia”

From one of my first grade students, Korean name Lee So-Jin.

“My name is HyeBin Lee.
I hope character very very kind.
My favorite singer TVXQ.
My dream is to be a doctor but people say, “You can’t do it.”
Ha…ha… I will be a doctor!!!
I love to play the piano.
It makes my soul clean.”

From one of my first grade high school students.

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.

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.

I love this springtime weather, the air thick and humid, alive with the blossoms on the trees, the smell of the outdoors drifting softly in through the windows, the soft and seemingly distant sound of the birds as they chirp, a spirited chorus in a world still free, the green leaves of the freshly budded trees vibrant and lush against the dark hues of the sky.

Inside the classroom, the tan of the students’ uniforms is mild against the soft wood color of the desks, forty black heads of hair, over half in bangs, thick big lenses the mode of style, orderly arranged and seated in eight rows of five desks that obediently face the front.

Due to a schedule change, this is the second time I teach this class today, and consequently my entrance was calm, the students a little more tired than the morning, the air warm and comfortable enough to softly slip into sleep.

I stand in the front as their heads are bent over crossword puzzles, occasionally they look up thoughtfully, make eye contact with me and hold it for a moment before the corner of my mouth smiles and they giggle and look away.

As I walk around the room, the students working at their journals, the breeze from the window pulls at my senses. Conversation rises and falls around the room, there is a quiet echo of the math teacher’s voice from the hallway, the doors at the front and back of the classroom are both open, the room is peaceful and calm, a secluded space with full awareness of the school activity down the hall and the tops of the trees in the world outside the third floor windows.

The spring breeze is incredibly moving to me. It is fragrant, thick, full of memory, heavy with longing, with the present, with the past, of Taiwan, of California, of greenhouses tucked warmly away in cold spring days of the Midwest, of puddle jumping in the streets as the rain beats down on our heads, laughter and study and friendship and family, so full of new life, peaceful and warm, everything connected, we are old and we are young and this is life: a spring breeze that softly passes through the classroom window.