If You Move To Asia

A friend of mine works with inner city youth and teaches them to use writing as an outlet for their frustrations. The following is a poem I wrote to help me laugh at the difficulties I often face in a country where I literally don't fit in sometimes.

If You Move to Asia

If you move to Asia

A hunchback you may be
Bend on down
Try not to frown
Especially when you clean



Brooms come to the knee
Sinks come to the thigh
Snore and more
On the floor
Where all your linens dry



Don't start me on the markets
Cart handles are so low
My back deflates
I'm not eight
Why did I have to grow?

Shoe shops are a nightmare

They never have my size

Not in feet

Not in mete

er, can you empathize?

Why are fish down there?
Why do grandmas stare?
They have long hair
I'm so bare
I don't fit in anywhere!


Their legs are in a pretzel
While they eat their food
Mine are long
And don't belong
Is standing up so rude?


I walk into the store,
They tell me "No large size"
I got fat
Just like that
Woe are Western thighs!



The cars here are so small
The subway seats tight-knit
I'm so pleased
I'm not obese
because I wouldn't fit



Am I five-foot seven?
Am I weighed in pounds?
Fahrenheit
Isn't right
And miles can't be found



WHY DID NO ONE WARN ME?
That I would become

a hunchedback
circus freak,
big-footed
Kpop geek,
floundering
everywhere,
too big for
underwear
too long-limbed
for the clothes
making me
a too-exposed-
DAUGHTER OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
LIVING IN A TIME-WARP ZONE


WHEN WILL I FEEL AT HOME?
(Must I buy a Samsung phone?)

I've been here almost a year
And now I'm setting free
The pressured thought
To find a lot of
Asian things to suit me

One Shot!

The title of this post is from a trip we took to the natural rock water slides in Meeryang, where the group organizer could hit the first rock in such a way that he could slide down all the subsequent rock slides in one shot. Everyone started yelling "one shot" whenever they wanted to encourage someone to slide the gauntlet:

I've posted over 500 pictures on Facebook since I've been in Korea, and that can be a little bit overwhelming when I want to look at a quick pictorial overview of my year here. So here it is, the beauty and dynamism of Korea in 50 pictures or less:

my shot!

Korea has technically outlawed corporal punishment in the schools, and my school is desperately trying to find new ways to deal with unruly students. One of the most common ways to punish them now deals with physical feats of strength, so here they are being forced to walk flat-footed while crouched down, pulling on their ears. After doing this for 10 minutes, I suppose I would also be deterred from wearing my uniform jacket inside out ever again.

Nowadays, it's common for me to walk down the hall and see a scene like this. These students were being punished for being late to class.

a traditional Korean meal

and a traditional Korean attempt to make Western food: here, Kelly is not too happy that they put her savory ham sandwich (which they call "sand" for short) on a blueberry bagel

A typical beach scene in August. Koreans REALLY hate the sun, which is why they're all hiding underneath these umbrellas

A traditional Korean/Asian dessert, "pot-bing-su" which is Chinese for 'ice red bean.' It's red beans (used in all their desserts here), ice, assorted fruit, and ice cream. I promise it's delicious!

Koreans LOVE nail design, and it's usually far more intricate than anything American women ever get.

You can buy books in vending machines in the subway!

Koreans are obsessed with beauty, so when I moved here I wasn't too worried about finding the face moisturizer that I use daily to protect my skin. The Korean words on the bottle sounded like "Hey-a-neese-euh" when I pronounced it, and it didn't sound English to me, so I figured it was some Korean word I didn't understand. All summer long I kept commenting to my friends that I had fewer freckles than usual, but I reasoned that perhaps the Korean sun wasn't as strong as Indiana sun. I really wish that someone had warned me that Korean women only use moisturizer that has whitening bleach in it, because that Hangeul on the bottle was actually trying to say "Why-te-neese-euh," or... WHITENESS.

Korean couples often wear matching T-shirts or socks to prove that they're together... but perhaps this is taking it a bit too far?

Korean rice cake. NOTHING like our rice cakes back home

Bakeries have been a recent fad here, and they go all out to compete with those countries that have several decades on them.

A traditional Korean market, where you can buy anything: beans, kimchi, hats, octopus, dried squid, high heels, lettuce, rice cakes, chopsticks, tupperware, etc.

Koreans don't like to carry around thick books, so it's normal to rip a book in half or into quarters, or tenths. My students often come to class with one unit ripped out of their textbook. So when an author like J.K.Rowling comes out with thick books that weigh several pounds, the publishing companies save the consumers the hassle of ripping apart their precious books and instead partition them ahead of time.

Here you can see the fourth book divided into four books

On this particular night, a bunch of us had gathered at a galbi buffet restaurant to bid our friend, Alexis, goodbye. At the next table over, we noticed some Korean guys having a birthday party for their friend. When they started singing "Happy Birthday" in English, we naturally joined in the chorus. They thought that was great, and so they proceeded to share their cake with us and take several pictures with us throughout the rest of the meal. After that, two men from another table came over and treated us to soju and beers. This kind of experience is not all that unnatural here =)

Dried squid, a favorite snack of Korean people, especially when accompanied by beer at a baseball game

Korean-style pizza. I think this one had popcorn shrimp, pineapple, honey mustard, soy sauce, sweet potato, coconut, and green peppers

A typical Korean shower/bathroom. There's no separate bathing area, just a toilet, a sink, a shower head and a drain. I actually prefer this kind of shower now, because I can easily clean my entire bathroom while cleaning myself!

Kimchi for Breakfast

When I was younger, one of my favorite books was entitled "Ice Cream for Breakfast." It told the story of a family who did everything backwards - they walked on the ceiling instead of the floor, they slept with their head at the foot of the bed (Pippi Longstocking style), and they ate ice cream for breakfast. I remember thinking how cool that family was and how I wanted to be different like them.

I of course had no capacity at age 7 to appreciate the social commentary that the author could have been making about defying the norms and challenging the status quo. Instead, the first time I moved out of my parents house I grabbed a bucket of ice cream from the dorm mini market and dug my spoon in it at 8am with a triumphant "Ha!" I might not have been nutritionally prepared to go to my 9am class, but I delighted in foregoing America's traditional breakfast options for my own interpretation of what breakfast could be.

Which was dumb. Outright stupid. What body would ever want its host to dump such crap in it first thing when it wakes up in the morning? And not just the day when I chose to eat ice cream, but all the days when I've forced cold carbohydrates or dairy into a digestive tract that hadn't woken up yet. I remember reading in my yoga journal last year that it's cruel to put anything cold into your body first thing in the morning, because the digestive tract hasn't warmed up yet and cold food makes it angry. Which makes perfect sense. My body does, after all, prefer a warm shower in the morning instead of a cold one.

I listened to my yoga journal for a month or so, preparing warm oatmeal in the morning as opposed to cold cereal. But one thing I couldn't get on board with was the suggestion that I should start eating vegetables for breakfast. I get it, I really do. When you first wake up in the morning, you need energy, and the best place to get that is from plants which produce their own energy.

But like almost every American I've ever known, we were raised to believe that you eat eggs, bacon, cereal, fruit, yogurt, toast and a whole bunch of other grains, fruits, dairy, and even dessert for the first meal of the day. So it was very difficult for me to force myself to ingest something green at such an early hour when I had been trained and conditioned to believe that you only eat green beans and broccoli for lunch or dinner.

Koreans, of course, think this is ridiculous (and rightfully so). They've been trained and conditioned to believe that the best way to start your day is not Folgers in a cup big enough to dunk your donut, but rather by ingesting something that on the previous day was receiving energy from the sun. So they eat greens, along with their staple of rice and kimchi. Energy + something to fill your stomach + something to aid your digestion first thing in the morning. It makes sense.

It also makes sense to eat the same types of food for all your meals. When did our culture begin thinking that we had to section off breakfast as this time of day when eat fewer or no vegetables? Why didn't the mantra "Momma always says, eat your vegetables" apply to the first meal of the day?

Kimchi sold in our market. Doesn't this look appetizing for breakfast?

I researched (and by that, I mean I wikipedia-ed) breakfast in different countries around the world, and it seems that vegetables are eaten for breakfast mainly in Asian countries, sometimes in African and Middle East countries. Other than that, people in Europe, Australia, and the Americas tend to eat meats, fruits and dairy. I wonder if this is in any way related to the rate of obesity? Or related to energy and productivity in the workplace? Koreans, after all, don't need caffeine in the morning in order to wake up. Coffee here consists of pouring a tube of instant coffee (coffee-looking crystals that have the flavor of coffee but not the caffeine, plus copious amounts of cream and sugar) into a tiny paper cup, mixing it with scalding hot water and taking it like a shot. They usually don't have this for breakfast, however, and instead drink it after their lunch or dinner as a dessert.



I wish I could say that all of this pondering has encouraged me to change my lifestyle and that I will pledge to eat kimchi for breakfast for the rest of my days, but in a year full of so many changes to my daily routine, perhaps maintaining a bit of comfort when I first wake up in the morning is okay.

Can You Relate?

Koreans put a lot of value on relationships, and I'm not just talking about the marital/lover kind. Every single relationship holds incredible importance, whether it's mother/daughter, brother/sister, storekeeper/customer, or second-eldest-brother-of-my-mother's-father/youngest-daughter-of-my-younger-brother's-daughter. And they have a special name for each of those relationships so that neither you nor the people you are talking to ever have a doubt about the relationship you have to any person you are talking about.

For example, a girl's elder brother is "oppa," but a boy's elder brother is "hyeong." Husband of a girl's elder sister is "hyeongbu," but husband of a boy's elder sister is "maehyeong." My aunt on my mother's side is "Imo," whereas my aunt on my father's side is "Gomo" (special side note about that - when you go into a restaurant and you're not sure of the status of your waitress, you revert to calling her "Imo," because everyone knows, as my Korean friend explained to me, that everyone is more fond of their mother's sister than they are of their father's sister).

Needless to say, it gets a little confusing. I just want to know one word for aunt, one word for brother, and one word for friend instead of having to remember the special name for my father's sister's youngest daughter's husband. But from the Korean perspective, they can't understand why on earth we would want to put ourselves through the elongated possessive ordering of saying "My neighbor's daughter's boyfriend's parents' dog attacked me last night."

Also, because Korean people have a special name for every kind of relationship, this means they want to know everything about you when they first meet you. It's very common for me to meet a new person, and they'll never ask me my name, but for 15 minutes they'll fire a battery of questions at me, such as "Where are you from? What is your job? Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend? Who was your first lover? How long are you staying in Korea? But no seriously, WHEN are you planning to get married?"

At first, it felt a little strange to be asked so many personal questions, especially when they were coming from my male students. But it felt even stranger to have a 30-minute conversation with someone, only to have it end abruptly once the Korean person was satisfied about how I was going to fit into their society, because I would stare at them as they walked away and silently ask "But what is your name?"

The reason why they don't feel the need to ask a person's name is because their job is considered to be more important. Thus, everyone addresses one another based on their title. When I want to call out to one of my friends at school, I say "San Sang Nim!" ("Teacher!"), or "SSAM" for short. Yes, you would think that every teacher within earshot would turn around when hearing this, but miraculously, the teacher you're aiming for seems to know when it's he or she who's being called upon.

When you go into a hospital, you address each person there as "nurse" or "doctor," and if you bump into your friend while shopping at the local market, you address her as "chubu," which means "housewife," because raising children is considered to be an honorable full-time job, so it's important to address such a woman with the respectful title.

We Westerners like to say our name immediately upon introduction, as if our name and name alone will somehow signify everything the other person needs to know about us. And maybe that was true centuries ago, when our surname related to our job, such as Blacksmith, Farmer, or Builder. But nowadays it holds no other meaning than the people we're related to, which is why the introduction can oftentimes be followed with, "Ohhhh, is your mother's sister's husband's father the owner of the bank?"

I'll end this post with what originally inspired me to write it, which was the encounter I just had with the local restaurant owner of the place where I like to buy my gimbab (any number of ingredients rolled up with rice in a dried seaweed wrap):




I've been going to this restaurant for several months now, and I always walk in and say "Chomchi gimbab hana poja, ju-sey-oh," which means "please give me one tuna gimbab to go please." I don't know why it took so many months for the Imo at this restaurant to finally have the courage to barrage me with the typical set of introductory questions. Perhaps my pronunciation has improved and she therefore thinks I might speak a little more Korean now, or perhaps she was trying to get up the nerve to ask me the questions in English but gave up. Or maybe the way I was dressed today lent an air of approachability. I don't know. But whatever the reason, she meekly handed me my gimbab then in rapid succession hit me with "Are you Russian? Oh, teacher? Where? How old are you? Are you married? No, do you want to marry a Korean man?" When I finished explaining the origin of my particular type of species, she seemed much more relaxed and confident and then smiled at me as she put extra radishes in my bag and said, "Service-ee for beautiful woman."

I had no idea that I had been stressing this poor old lady out by not offering up this vital information about myself from the very first time I stepped foot into her restaurant, but I'm glad she had the courage to approach me today. Hopefully she'll no longer look terrified every time I stop by, and with any luck I'll continue to score free radishes based on my looks. I just wish I knew her name.

Korean wisdom

I really need to start posting here more often than I do on Facebook, because this is a much better venue for telling stories. Some of you may already know this story, but I want to post it here for the memories:

I've mentioned in a previous post that Koreans are schemers at heart, especially when it comes to school politics, and yesterday I experienced another fabulous display of that. Next week is Chuseok, or Korean Thanksgiving, so we have a holiday on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Friday is my school's birthday, so Kerk and I decided to go to Japan for the entire week if I could only worm my way out of going to school on Monday.

Originally, I had planned on lying American style by calling in sick on Monday. But my co-teacher informed me it would be "very impolite" to do such a thing. I was surprised, since I've seen them lie their way out of so many situations, but apparently lying about sickness is very rude, because why would you make people falsely worry about your health?

So she devised another plan. She told my Vice-Principal and Principal that I have been having severe pain in my hands since I arrived here (which is true) and that I haven't been able to find a doctor who can cure me yet (sort of true. I had a blood test taken and the doc said that I have inflammation, but has no explanation for it). So she told a white lie that I found an English-speaking doctor who can only see me on Monday!

My VP nodded and told me to "take care." My Principal nodded and told me to "take a Korean man for my boyfriend and get married." I replied, "Huh? Did she translate correctly?" I laughed and said thank you and he signed my permission slip to leave on Monday.

I went back to the teachers lounge and asked my co-teacher to explain. Why do I need a husband? How will that help the pain in my hands? She replied, "Women need to marry if they are sick. Because of the hormones... you know what I mean? The sexual hormones."

This of course made me double over laughing. If my Principal were a doctor, basically he'd say to me that pent-up sexual frustration was residing in my hands, causing me pain. As soon as I marry, the pain will go away.

Just another amusing day in Korea!

Englishee is Dippicult, part 2

I have this recurring problem with my cell phone here, where it will spontaneously turn off, usually at the worst possible timing - mid text message, mid phone call, or the worst, middle of the night. I say the worst, because in our technically-groovy day and age, no one uses an actual alarm clark anymore! (do they?) I use my cell phone as my alarm, so it stands that I have been late to work a total of 4 days since I arrived in Korea, and I'm beginning to worry that the excuse "my alarm didn't go off" is becoming a bit hackneyed... and probably suspicious. Especially since it didn't dawn on me until now that 'my alarm did NOT GO OFF' is a STUPID ENGLISH PHRASE. How could I have missed this one? When every day I am so careful to use simple English words and speak at a rate 3 times slower than usual, how could I not realize that in most languages, 'not go off' equals 'stay on'???

I feel like an idiot. All this time I've been saying "I'm sorry, my alarm didn't go off" and they've been thinking, "Yeah, so why does that explain why you're late?"

Is this why the majority of my students have given up trying to learn English?

The Hawaii of Korea

Ever since we came to Korea Kerk and I have been in the habit of calling each other "Bookend," because live in the same building and thus have the privilege to bookend our days together. For summer vacation, Kerk's parents became our temporary Bookend Parents as we romped around Busan and then flew off to Jeju Island, "The Hawaii of Korea."


Mama Kerk took this picture of Mount Halla from the plane

When we got to the airport in Busan, everything was going smoothly until we went through security. Apparently, I had accidentally left a pair of small scissors in my cosmetic bag that I always have in my purse. After padding me down and murmuring some disapproval in Korean, they had me sign a paper. I have no clue what it said, but my name is now on a list with a bunch of other offenders! Oops!

On our plane ride to Jeju, the Stewardesses invited all the passengers to play a game of 'Kawi, Bawi, Bo' (Rock, Paper, Scissors) in order to win some prizes. We're not sure if this is a common phenomenon on all Korean domestic flights or if they felt unnecessarily guilty for our 10-minute delay in boarding (even though we ended up arriving in Jeju 5 minutes early), but either way, it was very amusing to play this child's game with 150 strangers!




When we landed 45 minutes later, our taxi driver was waiting for us. Bless his soul, he tried to write our welcome sign in English, and it read "Any Mansfield." It's very common that Koreans try to spell my name with a "Y" at the end, but we still couldn't help but crack some jokes about any person with the last name Mansfield being tempted to take our chauffer up on his offer.

My co-teacher, Sangmi, had arranged for him to take us on a scenic tour of the island before dropping us off at our hostel in Seogwipo, on the southern side of Jeju. The landscape was unlike any we had ever seen. Jeju was formed entirely from a volcanic explosion one million years ago, and the odd formations that resulted from it were astounding.

Here is one of the many random islands that you see everywhere, all of which claim to be "the top that blew off Mount Halla during the volcanic eruption" in the description of their legend.

Here are some "Dolharubang," or grandfather stone statues. You seem them everywhere, because there are several mountain sides with formations that look like an old man's face, so dolharubang are the protectors of the island.

Here are my favorite volcanic formations, the columnar joints, which arise from the contraction of molten lava during cooling, which splits the rock into polygonal columns.

When we arrived in Seogwipo, we were very pleased with the view of both the ocean and Mount Halla from our hostel rooftop.

We ate breakfast up here both mornings, and we stargazed and met new friends up here at night.

After getting settled in our room, we went for an evening walk across an interesting bridge. At night it lights up as a bunch of different colors, but we failed to take a picture of that


Then we crossed the bridge to a Jurassic Park-esque island:


After that, we followed a beautiful path


... to our first waterfall sighting! This is Cheonjiyeon Waterfall:
Here, soft sedimentary rocks formed 1 million years ago met a more resistant cap rock of volcanic lava flow (formed 400,000 years ago). Below this resistant shelf, the splashback into the softer rock stratum formed two plunge pools, one in front of the waterfall and one behind.

The following day, our taxi driver took us on an all-day scenic tour of the island. First we stopped at Jeongbang Waterfall:
The legend here is that a man named Seobul came to Jeju 2,000 years ago in search of an elixir of eternal life for Chin, the powerful emperor of China. After he failed to find it, he carved his name in the cliff and left.

We didn't find an elixir of life either, but I think that finding a rainbow in a 75-foot waterfall that meets the sea is pretty magical:


The next waterfall was called Cheonjeyeon (and yes, it took us awhile to realize that this was different from CheonJIyeon Waterfall, the one we saw the night before):
"Cheonjeyeon" translates to "God's Pool," and the legend is that the waiting maids of heavenly God stepped down a gorgeous viaduct to this pool, playing jade flutes and mandolins at midnight, safeguarded by stars for bathing.

After a morning filled with waterfalls, we went to the northwestern part of the island to Sanbangsan which literally means "mountain-room mountain." It is famous for the naturally-formed grotto in the side of the mountain which has been turned into a Buddhist shrine:


Our driver also took us to a beautiful temple on the sea, which may or may not have had the effect of making a certain Indiana girl want to give up Apple computers and shave her head in order to be able to stay here:






That afternoon, we swam at the beach and then retreated to our hostel, completely and wonderfully exhausted.

The next morning, we woke up fully refreshed, ready to climb part of Mount Halla. It takes 9 hours to climb the whole thing, so we insisted that lack of proper climbing gear was the only reason we didn't go that far ;-)
Here we are getting ready:

The trail:


Folding Screen rock


That afternoon, we visited Manjangeul, the lava tube cave. Like most caves, photos are forbidden, but I stole this picture from a website:

When you walk through it feels like you're inside a giant tube. It was formed when a rush of lave found a soft spot and went underground, much like a snake would. Here's a picture taken from inside the entrance:


It began raining immediately after leaving the caves, so we went to the Haenyeo Museum and learned about what has become my favorite story in Korean heritage.

The Haenyeo are women divers who have chosen their life's work to be diving into the sea to provide for their family and community. Because the volcanic island was infertile a long time ago, the Jeju inhabitants had to survive off the sea.



When a young girl decides to become Haenyeo, she joins the other Haenyeo in her community to learn from them. There are three levels of Haenyeo - first, second, and third class - depending on how deep you can dive and how far you can venture from the coast. Each Haenyeo has a sort of buoy that holds her findings - whether it be seaweed, abalone, or shells - which is attached to a rope that stretches down to the ocean floor so that she can keep her bearings. When she comes to the surface, she breathes out so forcefully that it sounds like a train whistle. Breathing out all the air allows her to intake a fuller breath as she prepares to dive back down. Some women can hold their breath up to three or four minutes!



After the women find what they need, they bring it to shore where the other women in their group have been burning fires to either boil water to sanitize their catch or to keep themselves warm in the colder seasons. During this time they sing and share stories about their ancestors, and the young girls learn about womanhood.

During the Japanese invasion, several Haenyeo combined forces to educate the Jeju inhabitants on how to fight and resist the invaders.

This tradition of free-diving (diving without special equipment, such as air tanks) has been carried on for over a thousand years, but is now sadly dying out due to advances in agriculture and fishing. The youngest Haenyeo is 30 years old.

This is the outfit they used to wear before modern wetsuits were invented:


That evening we arrived at our minbak (an inexpensive room with a kitchen), which was listed in the Lonely Planet guide as being "near Sunrise Peak mountain." What the guide failed to mention was that it was right smack dab up against the mountain itself. We had an amazing view of this crater mountain:


Here's a different view:


We were told that the best time to hike up Seongsan Ilchulbong was early in the morning to catch the sunrise:


It was a cloudy morning, so we couldn't see the sun very well, but we were proud of oursevles for waking up at 4:30am to be the first to get to the top! And the views of the crater and surrounding area were totally worth it.

Here's the crater with what looks like a patch of mowed grass in it. We passed the time waiting for the sun to rise by making jokes about the man who climbs up here with the lawn mower each week to mow this area so that his family has a nice place to picnic.




The rest of the time we were in Seongsan, our activities were a bit hampered by the typhoon, but we braved the weather a few times in order to catch a quick glimpse of the surrounding areas before finally admitting defeat and retreating to our minbak to watch movies and play cards.



We didn't, however, miss out on one of the island's famous dishes, abalone porridge:


But we did purposefully forego trying the other island specialty, black pig pork, after we found out why they're special: they're fed with human feces. This fact is apparently appealing to Koreans? I can't understand it, but it must be true because I found an entire street devoted to it in Jeju City:


All in all, we had a good experience with the culture of the island. Other mentionable foods were the infamous Jeju tangerines, which you could pretty much find on any street corner. Omija tea was also a big souvenir stand item. Aside from food, the most famous item to buy was a piece of clothing (or a purse or hat) that had been dyed with unripened persimmons. The islanders wear them when farming, but lately they've become stylish for visitors to the island. Mama Kerk bought a hat:


Here are some shirts being hung to dry after the dyeing process:


Now they are being made into more fashionable styles:


Our last day we had a nice walk around Jeju City, and then Mama and Papa Kerk got on a plane back home. It was definitely one of the best vacations I've ever had, and I hope I get the chance to return to Jeju one more time while I'm here. Who knows, maybe I'll even brave eating the black pork!

Until then, I'll cherish the memories of the beautiful places I saw and the beautiful people I saw them with. Thanks, Kerkians