A Third of the Way to Korea December 12, 2009

It was a short homecoming.

A week after arriving, I got back on a plane to California to visit my grandmother in a smallish town about an hour outside of LA. It’s cold and drippy, and the retirement community is well out of walking distance from any shopping or entertainment, so I’m busying myself with learning to crochet slippers, reading ‘Tess of the D’Ubervilles’, grading papers online, and sliding across the floor in my slippers.

My whole purpose in going to Korea was to speak more easily with my grandmother. It’s not going so great. This is due, in part, to my limited vocabulary; we mostly learned how to give directions, take public transportation, and meet people. Also, I’m very uncertain of my speaking abilities, so I tend to speak very quietly. My grandmother has become hard of hearing, so I think my attempts to speak Korean are poorly worded, improperly pronounced, and too quiet to hear. She mostly looks at me funny.

This morning, I woke up to the sound of my grandmother’s television. I recognized the show just by the sound of it. It’s my cousin’s favorite show, Two Days, One Night. Every week, a bunch of comedians go on some sort of overnight trip to make food, plant rice, harvest crops, and otherwise make fools of themselves. There are a lot of sound effects (boings come to mind) and a female audience saying ‘whooooooooaw!’ in falsetto when something impressive happens. The show was over soon after I joined my grandmother, so we switched to a soap opera that involved unwanted pregnancy, fainting, a dramatic flash back, guilt, and love. Then we switched to a National Geographic documentary on the Inuit, involving some pretty dramatic walrus killings. I concentrated on my crocheting.

Before my aunt and uncle came home today from church, my grandmother tried to tell me what they were bringing home with them. “Keh!” she said. When I gave her a blank look, she put her wrists together and spread out her fingers. “Keh!” I spread my fingers out, too, wondering if this was some sort of command. Eventually, she gave up. It wasn’t until we were sitting at the lunch table with my aunt and uncle that I understood. My grandmother pointed at the huge, split crabs on a tray and said, again, “Keh!”

“Oh!’ I said. “Keh! Neh.”

They cooled very quickly as we snipped the meat out with kitchen shears. My uncle kept piling my plate with crab meat. “Mashisoyo,” I kept saying, it’s delicious! “Mai mogoso!” he said, over and over again, eat a lot of it!

My aunt is always humming or singing, and my uncle is often whistling to himself, very quietly. They combine with the very loud television in my grandmother’s room. It’s very comfortable and homey, especially since my grandmother only watches Korean shows, and the sound reminds me of being in Seoul.

Home! December 3, 2009

Last Thursday, I pushed my bags through the double ‘EXIT’ doors out of customs, and was back in the US. All the signs were in English, people came in all different colors, and I was small again. I had to stop myself from saying ‘kamsahamnida’ and nodding to people when they helped me out. But I was just home in the sense that I was in the US, hanging out with my sister, enjoying the grocery store and traffic laws.

On Tuesday, I arrived in Philadelphia, and I was home in the suburbs again. I slept in my old bed in my pink bedroom and ate my mom’s delicious stir fry. I watched all the American TV shows I couldn’t get in Korea: The Office, Glee, 30 Rock. It was good to be back in the house where I grew up, but I still wasn’t quite home.

On Wednesday night, my dad dropped me off at my apartment. It’s much too clean and bare without any of my things in it, but it’s still home. I got reacquainted with my ceilings, my books, the depth of the kitchen sink. I read all the notes Trevor left, instructing me to kick the heater to make it work, burn the wood he’d put in the fireplace, where to find my favorite jars of honey. It was lovely to be back in my apartment, but I had one more thing to do before I was home.

I walked in the rain to S’s apartment, where he opened his door and gave me a big hug.

I’m home!

Can’t Help Myself November 30, 2009

I started a blog just to write about things related to Korea, so that everything I did there – even if it was just buying cheese – was Korean enough to write about. I got in the habit of writing about everything that was happening to me, however insignificant. Now that I’m back, I have all these reflections on what’s happening around me, but I feel like they’re not appropriate for this Korean-themed blog. My habit of recording all things big and small gets checked.

I suppose that’s necessary. You need certain restrictions in your writing so that you don’t just barf all over the page (figuratively). But it’s still a little strange to stop recording things just because I’ve changed location.

Yesterday, my sister surprised me with tickets to Ovo by Cirque du Soleil. Though I knew she had planned something, she didn’t tell me where we were going until we drove past an enormous parking lot with huge tents swirled in blue and yellow. It looked as if it had sprung there overnight, like a mushroom.

The whole thing was spectacular in the truest sense of the word. The show had an insect theme, so the sets, sounds, and performances were lush and brightly colored. The whole thing must have taken colossal coordination. I was especially impressed by how they choreographed the set changes – like a romantic tying of safety knots, and the group dance routine/clipping and hoisting a safety net for a trapeze act. I was very grateful for all the safety measures since I was as nervous as a mother. But after awhile, I had to tell myself just to relax and get caught up in the show.

There were contortionists, silks acrobats, musicians, an incredible slack line artist, small people tumbling giant kiwi slices with their feet. I especially loved the trampoline act at the end, which involved a climbing wall that they would jump onto, dance across, and fall back into the trampolines from. The attention to detail at every level – lighting, sound, stage, safety, make-up, costumes, transitions, intermission – was incredible. Even the port-a-potties were luxurious, with flushing toilets and a sink.

I loved it. And I wanted to write about it! I couldn’t help myself.

Korean habits die hard.

Kicking into Low Gear November 27, 2009

P.S. Now that I’m back in the States, I’ll likely be updating this blog much less often. It’s been a lot of fun to write in it, though, to record what was happening and what I was thinking while I was away and share it with my friends and family. So, thank you, all of you, for reading! It’s felt very good knowing that people were following my adventures in Korea, and that when I wrote here, I was connecting with loved ones back home.

Also, now that the arc of my trip is completed, I’d love to know your thoughts on what I’ve been writing! Please comment here, or write me an email.

I can’t wait to hear from you!

All Mixed Up November 27, 2009

When my tutor and I went to Samcheondong last weekend, we walked around a few jewelry and shoe shops, just for fun. At the jewelry shop, I spoke with her in a mixture of English and Korean: ‘Yepuayo, I love the birds. How much is it? Oh, bissayo!‘ When we left, she was laughing.

‘What did I do?’ I asked.

‘It was so funny, the saleswoman didn’t know whether to talk to you in English or Korean because you were talking to me in both, and she looked so confused!’

Later, at the Book Cafe, I asked her to tell me why my face wasn’t Korean.

‘Well, your eyes are too deep, and too big. Korean eyes are not that color. And you have a European nose. Also, your forehead is a different shape.’

I told her that in the US, when people see me, they automatically think I’m Asian, or have some Asian heritage. Many people think I’m fully Asian, even if they could never name which country they thought I was from.

‘Really?’ she asked. She was so surprised.

Sometimes during this trip, I’ve studied my face very carefully, trying to figure out why it doesn’t look Korean. My tutor was right; my hairline is wrong, and my forehead is too narrow. My nose isn’t quite European – it’s actually a perfect mix of my parents’ noses – but it has too high of a bridge between the eyes to be Korean. My eyes are just a little too deep, and my eyelids are creased. My hair is too light, and a shade too fine. But my mouth is more Korean, my build is much like my mom’s, and I’ve got my Korean grandmother’s cheekbones (and her hands and feet).

At the church ceremony on Wednesday, I was very bored and therefore studied the program very carefully. There were hundreds of tiny oval photographs of the people being promoted in the church, each photograph about a centimeter high. Even so tiny, you could tell how different each face was. But I realized that each face in that program was more like each other than like mine. And that each of the hundreds of people in the room with me looked more like each other than like me.

There was something quiet about Korea’s sidewalks and subways. There were always foreigners around, but generally, the majority of the population was Korean. They were uniform enough in appearance that there was rarely somebody who looked very different. Seeing another American was always jarring, a loud note.

In the US, we are different from each other for so many reasons; I’ve missed that. I’ve missed feeling like I fit in in part because of my individuality. And I’ve missed blending in, a lot.

While my friend N was studying theater in Paris, one of her teachers said that people in the US were the most beautiful people in the world, because so many were of mixed race. There are beautiful people everywhere, it’s true, but there’s something very lovely about being a part of many cultures, and having friends who are a mix of cultures, too. We can trace our multiple cultures in our faces, our bodies, our tastes and ways of being.

And it does feel good, too, that we have a President who’s as mixed as me.

Coming Home November 27, 2009

Philadelphia is fourteen hours ahead of Seoul. Right now, it’s late evening in Seoul, late morning in Philadelphia, and early morning in California, where I am. I feel as if I should have already lived today, but the sun’s still coming up.

Yesterday was the longest of days. I woke up in Seoul, with all my packing ahead of me. But soon, Eonni and my cousin’s wife came over and my aunt sent us off to a Korean restaurant for lunch. I would have been happy just slurping up some ramen and patting the baby, and as we wound around the streets in search of the restaurant, I regretted not saying that ramen would have been a good option. But I think my aunt wanted to do something nice for me before I left (as if making all my meals and waking me up every morning and generally taking very loving care of me wasn’t enough!)

I was happy to have gone, though, because the food was fantastic. We took off our shoes when we got to the restaurant and sat on the heated floor at low tables. Pretty soon, the servers came out with bowls and small platters and plates of food, lots and lots of food, until the entire table was literally covered from corner to corner. There was kimchi, shellfish, other pickled vegetables, seaweed, several different kinds of fried fish, crab, rice, chiggae (hot and spicy soup), bulgogi (delicious seasoned beef), and a lot of other food I’m now forgetting. I made a point to try all of it; uniformly delicious. And it was lovely to spend time with two of the women I’ve most enjoyed getting to know better in Korea.

When we got back to the apartment, Eonni gave me a large box of liquid tea as a parting gift. Unfortunately, I was freaking out about not having enough space in my suitcases, and that my luggage might be too heavy, so packing ended up being sort of stressful. As I was flitting around my bedroom, trying to make sure I had everything and wasn’t leaving the room in total shambles, the sickness that’s been percolating in my lymph nodes for the past two weeks started to creep up towards my head.

Saying good-bye to everyone was really hard, but I was late enough for the flight that I had to say good-bye very quickly. I tried to express how grateful I was, and how nice of a time I had, but it was hard. I said kamsahamnida over and over again, and jemissumnida, which means, ‘I was happy’. I hugged everyone.

Oppa and my aunt took me to the airport. I kept falling asleep in the back seat, but my aunt kept trying to wake me up so I wouldn’t miss any of the scenery. My nose was starting to run, and my throat felt raw.

I got checked in (bags under weight limit – boo-yah!), and said good-bye to Oppa and my aunt, which was very hard. Again, lots of hugs and telling them how happy I was, and thankful.

Seoul’s Incheon airport is actually ridiculously cushy. I couldn’t believe it. The international terminal had a bunch of high end shops, like Coach and Bvlgari. I was more interested in the yogurt cups at Paris Baguette, and the upstairs Korean Culture Museum.

It was great! They had exhibits on traditional royal dress, royal processions, movable type, the alphabet, and music. One exhibit on music involved famous paintings that they’d animated, so you could listen to each individual instrument and watch the person play it, and then put together the instruments to make a song. Also, there were two women working at the desk (which was much more than necessary, since I was the only person there), and they seemed really happy to have a visitor.

More than anything else, that made the airport trip a pleasant one, because it genuinely took my mind off of the stresses of traveling.

The ten hour flight was as pleasant as an intercontinental flight can be. I’d tried to arrange my seats so I would have a whole row to myself, and I definitely gave the stink eye to the man who sat down at the end of my row. But after a minute, we befriended each other. He was from Nepal, and going to Boulder, Colorado to study at a community college there. I gave him a stick of gum, and he gave me a mint drop. When we were both woken by a screaming baby in the middle of the flight, we just looked at each other and laughed.

Singapore Air is incredibly nice, even though the price of the flight was several hundred dollars less than any other airline. They served us a Thanksgiving dinner (cranberry sauce in a tiny, tiny cup), handed out snacks like bananas and chips and Mars bars, gave us lots of blankets and pillows, and had a full range of movies and television shows on demand. I watched ‘500 Days of Summer’, ‘Julie & Julia’, and ‘Pushing Daisies’. When we passed over Japan, I stared at what looked like incredibly bright lights on boats, illuminating the water around them. For breakfast, I got the Indian meal, which was seriously tasty, and ate it while watching ‘Scrubs’. When we landed, we touched down so gently I didn’t even realize we were on the ground. Singapore Air pilots should give how-to courses on lovely landings; my landing in Korea was just as smooth.

It was disconcerting to be back in the US, even in the airport. The stalls in the bathroom were different: rather than the narrow floor to ceiling doors in Korean bathrooms, there were wide metal ones with large spaces on the bottom and top. There were also reams of paper towels, a rarity in Korean bathrooms. The customs agents were the friendliest I’d ever met; I wished each one a Happy Thanksgiving and had to stop myself from greeting them in Korean and giving them a small bow. And then I rolled through the large doors and back into the US.

Korea is like a box of chocolates November 26, 2009

I brought a box of shell-shaped chocolate truffles when I came to Korea, expecting to find an occasion to give it to someone. And I found that person in the Yakult woman who sells me milk and juice in the morning. So today, I set out with it to give it to her.

Unfortunately, she apparently only sells to the morning rush hour crowd, and was gone when I arrived at 10 am.

However, her cart of milk was still there, all the coolers closed and the umbrella shut, waiting to be picked up. (Apparently, petty theft isn’t a problem in Korea, judging from the number of outdoor vendors who leave their goods unattended.)

So I sat down to write her a note. It seems like I’ve forgotten a lot of Korean in the one week since my class ended, but here’s what I think I wrote:

‘Hello! I’m American, and every day I drink milk, yogurt, juice. Today, I’m going to the USA. But everyday, happy milk! Thank you!’

I tucked the note under the bow I’d attached to the box, and stuck it in one of her coolers.

Since she knew what I wanted every morning, and asked me where I’d been all week yesterday morning, I’m hoping she knows who it’s from.

In five hours, I’ll be on the plane.

It’s been fun, Korea.

Almost Defeated by a Rice Ball November 25, 2009

Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be on a jetplane back to the States in time for Thanksgiving.

It’s hard to believe that my time in Korea has come to an end!

Today I went to Ewha for the graduation ceremony. I didn’t graduate, not in the least. But I did want to go and say good-bye to everyone. I was late to the ceremony, which meant that I missed all the speeches in Korean (darn). I did make it in time to watch the presentations by the journalism club (lots of slides of hanbok), the photography club (lots of pictures of sky framed by trees or traditional Korean roofs), the music club (a kind of karaoke extravaganza complete with strobe lights and lasers), and the dance club (again, strobe light and laser craziness).

Disappointment from Mongolia was in both the music and dance performances. She’s a very serious student, to the point that I think she even takes having fun seriously, not in a crazy party way but in a ‘I should have fun now’ way. She did look like she was having a good time. However, when she was dancing she’d tied her shirt up above her waist. I couldn’t help thinking, ‘what are you doing? You’re too young to do that! Untie that shirt right away!’ Of course, she’s sixteen, which is prime shirt-above-waist-tying age, but I still felt very out of sorts about the whole thing.

Afterwards, I met up with my fellow students. They were all surprised and happy to see me, and we took lots and lots of photos. Elbows of Turkey was very delighted that I came, and gave me a big hug. I may have disliked her elbows, but I very genuinely liked the rest of her.

Earlier in the semester, she’d had a yellow pen with floppy feathers on top, and she’d flop it back and forth very happily all class. When Disappointment from Mongolia said she liked the pen, Elbows gave it to her without a second thought. But I felt very sad that she was missing a floppy pen. So I gave her a new one, orange this time, with lime green feathers and a plastic Tigger figurine on top. She was very moved. I’m serious. I was really pleased to have given her a new pen to flop.

Disappointment from Mongolia was seriously disappointed in my poor end-of-class performance, to the point that she could barely look at me. But when we were sitting down eating our buffet lunch, I knelt beside her and asked her which of my books she wanted. Before coming to Korea, I’d bought a bunch of Dover thrift editions of classic novels, all about $2 or $3, with the intention of leaving them here. Disappointment and I had spent many of our class breaks eating yogurt and talking about our favorite books. Since I don’t have room in my suitcase for those books, I brought them to give to her. I was worried that she wouldn’t want them, and would wonder why I was dumping all my old books on her (though I think it’s always nice when someone gives you a book they enjoyed). But I had no reason to worry, she was extremely delighted, to the point that she didn’t want to accept them. ‘This is very big gift!’ she kept saying. In the end, though, she took them all; disappointment slightly alleviated.

My teachers were also disappointed in me, but they were very nice about it and only gave me a few sad looks. I gave them each a chestnut pound cake from Paris Croissant.

I only had a few more things to take care of. I wanted to buy a picture frame for my Imo and Imobu, and some chestnut cakes for the doormen in our building. I took the subway to City Hall to go to the Kyobo bookstore, where I found a very cute silver baby frame so they can put in a nice picture of their new granddaughter. And then I walked into the cold, drippy day to take the 402 bus home one last time.

Oh, but before that, I wanted to buy a rice ball. No joke, this rice ball has been haunting me much like the jjimjilbang. After the first day of class, I met Eonni to walk around the shops outside Ewha. We went to Kong’s Riceball for lunch, and then to a juice store for juice. But when I walked by the next day, I couldn’t figure out anything on the menu at Kong’s Riceball. It was all in Korean, and the pictures weren’t distinctive enough for me to have any idea what I was ordering. Most of the rice balls seemed gross when Eonni had reviewed them for me – pork, Spam, tuna fish, beef – so I wanted to be sure I was getting one I liked. But I couldn’t figure any of them out. It was the moment when it sort of hit me how far away from home I was, both in location and language. I felt very, very lost, and hungry, to boot. I was determined to learn enough Korean to buy a rice ball.

When I told S that I was going to skip the test, but felt very bad about it, he suggested that I ask for the exam so I could take it on my own and therefore feel like I had finished the class. As he said, ‘you like neat endings’. It’s true. But rather than take the exam, I realized that the neatest ending would be ordering a rice ball, and then going and getting a glass of juice, just like I had on the first day of school. Only this time, I’d do it all on my own.

So I went up to the take-out awning outside of Kong’s Rice Ball. While I waited in line, I practiced what I was going to order, over and over again. I forget it now, but when I got to the front of the line, the woman there asked me if I wanted that particular rice ball before I even had a chance to open my mouth. I was undeterred. I asked for the rice ball right back at her, and added juseyo, ‘please’. That was it. I paid, and then I stood there while a bunch of people behind me ordered their rice balls and got them before me. I let myself look as forlorn as I felt because although I can order a rice ball, I have yet to figure out how to say, ‘excuse me, it seems like you’re very busy, but I’d just like to check on the status of my rice ball?’ Anyway, looking forlorn (which I hoped communicated the same thing) eventually worked and I got my rice ball!

And then I went to the very cute Bean Juice place and read all the fruits on the menu before picking pineapple juce juseyo. Juices are easy because most fruits are pronounced in English, though they’re spelled in Korean. So just having a grasp on Hangeul means that you can figure out which joo-suh you want. The woman told me that I chose very wisely, and that the pineapple juice was delicious. I drank it while flipping through Vogue in Korean, and then walked off to the Hyundai U-Plex to look for a picture frame.

I’ve yet to eat my rice ball. And I probably won’t. It’s neat enough of an ending just to have ordered it.

jjimjilbanging lonesomely November 24, 2009

When Eonni and I came back from the jjimjilbang last month, she said, ‘now you know what to do, so you can go on your own!’

The thought hadn’t crossed my mind. “Ooh,” I thought. “Now I have to go on my own.”

Today, I finally went. I had a plan: to shower, go sit in the sauna for a long time, sit in the hot springs tub for a long time, then scrub my elbows and knees. I was nervous about not being able to figure out how to purchase my time there, or that I’d feel out of place all by myself. But in some ways, it was much easier going alone. I felt much less self-conscious about being naked because nobody knew me there. I missed having someone to talk to, but I was able to concentrate more on just feeling warm.

The warmness was what I was looking forward to the most. In the winter time, it’s so hard to warm up. Even though today was warm enough that I walked around with  my jacket unzipped, I still felt like my bones were dry and cold, as if they were made of paper. I sat in the sauna until I could feel all that warm, wet heat going through all my layers of skin. I ate two baked eggs (the woman offered me a third for free, but I was full!). I sat in the hot springs tub until I finally couldn’t stand it anymore. And then I scrubbed my skin clean with my yellow scrubbing towel. By the time I left, I felt much like I do in the middle of July, when the heat is so full you can barely move.

When I got back, my cheeks were so pink that my aunt thought I was drunk. I told her I went to the jjimjilbang and she laughed so hard she doubled over.

When I told Eonni that I was planning on going in the morning, so that I could be alone, she said, ‘all the ajumma go in the morning. Maybe one of them will ask you to scrub her back!’

Apparently, this is a common occurrence. You scrub their back, so they scrub yours. But I was very nervous that I would do this wrong, and not be able to understand when they asked me to do it differently… I went in the late afternoon.

Eonni also told me a story that’s apparently popular among Koreans. A Korean baseball player was recruited onto an American team. In the shower, he asked a teammate to scrub his back for him, and his teammate went white and said, ‘I don’t do that!’ A year later, the teammate asked him why he thought he was gay, and the Korean player had to explain that it’s just normal in Korea.

There’s a lot more same sex interaction here, and Koreans are generally more comfortable being physically affectionate with friends. It was surprising to me at first, to see men walking arm in arm, or women holding hands. It makes me sad that I don’t feel that same comfort.

I see this too with children, that adults aren’t afraid to hug children or otherwise play with them. My friends tell me that this is changing, and that people are getting more nervous about touching children affectionately. I think this is too bad. I think it’s nice for children to feel comfortable with adults. In some ways, I think that freaking out about touching kids because you’re afraid it will be taken sexually ends up sexualizing children.

I guess this is mostly because I like hugs. I’m looking forward to many hugs when I get home… in one week!

Sejong Center November 24, 2009

Last night, Eonni and I went to a performance of opera arias at the Sejong Center, where I’ve seen four shows since coming to Korea. It felt very familiar, walking around the huge plaza beforehand, trying to find good food (Thai chicken soup), eating ice cream at Baskin Robbins, and then finding our seats with the help of many, many ushers.

The arias were lovely. I really wanted to be the person hitting the big drum. And during the Carmen section, a whole bunch of little kids in pigtails and red lariats marched onstage. The moment they started to sing, my eyes welled up. But then they started doing hand motions, thank goodness. Dried my eyes right up.

My favorite part of the Sejong Center is the 402 bus, which runs from just outside the center to Gangnam. It climbs up the hill where the Namsan tower is, so if you sit on the right side of the bus, you get this amazing, twinkly lighted view down all the houses, red crosses, highways, and tall buildings.

Unfortunately, the bus was too crowded for me to sit on the right this time (and some kid watching TV on his MP3 player had a PRIME right side seat and missed all of the pretty view), so I stood and peered over towards the window.

It was still lovely.