A strongend

...is the opposite of a weekend.

Yesterday, Sunday, was Seollal, the Lunar New Year's Day,  the biggest holiday in Korea. It bothers me that everyone in America calls it Chinese New Year; it's also Korean, Japanese, Tibetan, Vietnamese, and Mongolian New Year. On the other hand, it tickles me that ten percent or so of the Americans who think they know their Asian Zodiac signs are wrong. For example, the Year of the Snake (my year!) started yesterday, not on January 1; if you were born before Lunar New Year's Day, you're actually one spot ahead of what that cute paper place mat told you. Your friends may think you're a rabbit when you're actually a tiger, nuch like every movie librarian when she takes off her glasses and shakes out her hair.

Anyway, it's been an active weekend for me.

On Friday evening, a bunch of us teachers got together for poker. I started with an incredible run of bad cards and went broke. Then I bought back in and my brilliant strategic play soon had me hoarding the biggest pile of chips. Then, through unbelievably bad luck, and despite my tactical acumen, I went broke again.

On Saturday, my hash group said goodbye to one of our most popular members, After School Special (a.k.a Nina). She named the occasion the Afro Circus Hash, so we had hashers in neon-colored Afro wigs, tiger-head hats (me), even a monkey suit...

 Crazy foreigners.

We ended up at a bar whose owner probably didn't know what hit him, between the songs, the noise, and the bagpipes. My friend Val even brought her son Maddox; he had the best time of all and didn't want to go home.

Did I mention that we had a balloon artist, too?

On Sunday, I went with my friend Kat, her boyfriend Jason, and three of their friends to Bukhansan National Park, the collection of mountain trails and peaks on the far north edge of the city. Koreans adore hiking and ordinarily on the weekends Bukhansan is wall-to-wall people, but on Seollal, in the snow, it was pretty quiet. 

How hard could it be?

We bought crampons at the base of the mountain and started up through the snow and the ice and the stillness. It was beautiful, sunny, and one hell of a challenge. We scaled Baegundae, at 2744 feet the highest mountain in this part of the country. Bukhansanseong Fortress, erected in the 1700s, and a number of small Buddhist temples, stand on the slopes of the mountains.

 This is Jason's friend Matt. I got sweaty palms just looking at him standing out there.

The crampons were a life saver for me, almost literally, as the last stretch to the top of Baegundae involved using two hands to haul myself up a steep, uneven snow-covered granite dome. My knees (and my jeans) didn't always want to bend far enough to take the next step. Getting down was interesting, too. And, oddly enough for the mountains in early February, it was cold up there.

Jason and Kat.

I hope I don't make it seem as if I'm patting myself on the back too much. (However, in the interest of honesty, I am 59 years old and kept up with five people 30-plus years younger than I, four of whom are on active duty in the US Air Force, so... yeah, I rock. (I pretty much take my good health for granite.)

Me, bein' all manly an' stuff, above the city.

This was the first really strenuous hike I've done since leaving Daegu over three years ago, and my most strenuous since the three-waterfall hike in Yosemite 37 years ago. So I feel pretty good about it. About that, and about not plunging to my death.

Me, bein' all manly an' stuff over on the other side now.

And today, on the third day, I rested.

Too cool for Yule

Our two-and-a-half-week school break ends in two more days. I've faced my usual challenge, filling the time and trying to be useful while everyone I work with is off in Thailand or California or some equally mythic land.

It's been cold. How cold? Really cold. Colder than you're thinking. The penguins have been wearing booties.

Being so far from home, without family, is hardest at the holidays. My hashing friends and I did a pretty good job, though, in the Comfort and Joy department. There may have been adult beverages involved in some instances.

On Christmas Eve, DW (note: the hashers' names in this entry will be abbreviated to protect the delicate sensibilities of my readers) invited bunches of us to her apartment in HBC (Haebongchan, the foreigners' neighborhood right by Itaewon, Mt. Namsan, and the Seoul Tower) for a pajama party. She prepared stockings for her guests and she and others made wonderful, warming food. She's the kind of person who makes everyone feel welcome and cared for. 

 Couch potatoes? No, hashed potatoes.

 
Several of my friends stayed over, but I was only there for a couple of hours, because I'd promised my good friend Kat (Jedi, in hash nomenclature) that I'd attend her burlesque show at a bar in Itaewon. Kat and two of her friends put on a sweet, silly, somewhat sexy show. Kat did a Jessica Rabbit number; I hadn't known that she can really sing.

I'm used to a cat on my lap. A Kat? Not so much.

The part where she sat on my lap and sang to me (well, she sat on a lot of people's laps, but...) was fun and touching (not like that) and maybe a little unsettling, simply because she's one of my favorite people--vivacious and caring and just really alive in a way I've always been too inhibited to be--and she's a real friend; we've shared a lot over dinners and such. And she's less than half my age. And her boyfriend was sitting three feet from me. That's not to say I didn't like it, mind, in a not-at-all-dirty-old-man way...

I rushed home just before the subway closed for the night, slept a little, and headed out for Foo Foo's apartment by noon for the Pirate Santa Hash. I have to say, I get one good idea a year and this was it, with a week to spare. Simply because being alone on Christmas is so dreary, I set up a hashing/eating/drinking/sharing get-together. Everyone brought food and a gift, I had patches made...

 

 More like Pilates Santa, amiright?

...and prelaid a trail, we had a wonderful feast, and everyone slip-slid-away on the trail, opened a present, which could be stolen (well, a trade could be mandated) by the next person in line, and feasted. And laughed a lot. was there from noon to 10 p.m. with two dozen jovial hashers, none of whom could be bothered to change the DVD (so we saw How the Grinch Stole Christmas four times), and despite the frigid winds and icy sidewalks outside, it was warm and wonderful. What it was, was Christmas.

I went back to DW's to cap off the holidays. For New Year's Eve, she invited a few people over for Game Night. I took a few games and she was going to teach me to play Settlers of Catan. Things did not go according to plan; we ended up with another full house and somehow ended up playing Cards Against Humanity, which is Apples to Apples, but with offensive cards. I'd just played it the day before after the hash, so it got old quickly, as did my being hit on (It happened, I tell you) by a very drunk Irish girl who one of the guys invited in out of the cold. But it was nice to be with people as my 60th calendar year ended.

On New Year's morning, I magically turned 61 by the Korean method of counting, but I'm not Korean, so I'm still 59, which is plenty young enough to go back to DW's one more time for her marvelous mimosa-French toast-quiche brunch. This time, the turnout was more manageable, the food and mimosas were marvelous, and the holidays--and my appetite--got topped off just right.

On the non-holiday days, I've tried to keep busy, prepping for school, doing some writing and a lot of reading, cleaning house, reaching the end of the Internet. I've tried to get out twice a day, just because 24 hours with nobody for a cat to talk to and nothing but a cat to look at is so wearing. I usually only hash with my Yongsan Kimchi group on Saturday mornings, but with my extra free time I've been going to the Southside hash on Sundays as well.

I laid a really nice Southside trail, if I do say so myself, which I have to, because you won't, in my neighborhood...

which the pack...

...seemed to enjoy.

What with the holidays and my extra free time and desperately wanting to get out into the world to obviate Cabin Fever, I've hashed 17 times in the last seven weeks, through some of the bitterest weather I've known since the mid-90s, when I left Ithaca. I've slipped and fallen three times, once while running, once while walking and laying a trail, once while walking to the bus. (Conclusion: slipping is better than tripping; I'd rather fall on my hip than my eyebrow. Been there, dinged that, got the stitches.) But I didn't slip on the three-story, two-inches-of-ice stairs; why doesn't the whole world have a railing?

In hashing, you face some interesting challenges...

 ...and meet some interesting people, such as Foo Foo,

not at this moment doing a naked snow angel, on the right...

 ...and C3, newly arrived from Texas, whose rendition of such traditional Scots ditties
 as the Marine Corps Hymn and the Star Wars theme
 brought dozens of Koreans out to gawk and take video.

I also downloaded an Android app, Zombies, Run! It's an immersive audio program/game that uses the phone's GPS to measure how fast you're running and intersperses a post-apocalyptic audio story with your musical playlist. A couple of times in every run, your radio operator tells you that the zombies are approaching, and you have to sprint to keep away from them. The menacing, growling approach of the undead in your earbuds is a wonderful incentive to do speed work. I had to force myself to not go out and run with the zombies today; I'm old enough and wise enough (stop laughing!) to know that running for the fifth day in a row was probably a bit much for me.

When I haven't been running, I've made it a point to get out to the school, to E-Mart and Costco, to Itaewon, to the mall, to the movies--Life of Pi in 3-D is astonishing, by the way--just to spend a little time around people and to be out where it's blue overhead and white underfoot.

And now it's almost back-to-school time. In 36 hours, I shift back from wanting-to-be-with-people mode to wanting-to-be-alone.

As P!nk sings, "Leave me alone, I'm lonely."

I'm versatile that way.

Aaand here's another picture of me. You're welcome.

St. Pat's and expats

We've just begun our week-long spring break. Huzzah! I actually kicked my break off a little early by helping chaperone a history-class trip to the National Museum on Friday afternoon. I'd been there once before, and felt the way I often do at museums: awed and engrossed until, say, the hundredth clay pot, then eager for the coffee shop. Unfortunately, I got assigned the group of kids whose docent was lecturing in Korean. But it was cool, especially this 14th-century crown-and-belt set. I'm gonna try to get one to wear in class.

 "Respect mah authoriteh!"

Yesterday, Saturday, was a more full than a Triple-Stuft Oreo. It was St. Pat's Day in Korea (well, everywhere, really), and the weather was gorgeous-- 60 Fahrenheit and sunny. I attended my 73rd Yongsan Kimchi hash in the 17 months since I started, and it was great, five miles of running through back alleys and neighborhood streets

The run was at Sindorim Station, in a very ritzy area of town I'd never been in before. After the run and the circle, a bunch of us walked a short way to the amphitheater just outside the brand-new subterranean D-Cube mall. It seemed that every expat in Korea was there, and a bunch of locals too, for the annual St. Pat's Festival.

 A bunch of hashers and a bunch of normals. 

I'm in the picture, if you want to play Where's Wald O'.

There were green shirts and green balloons and green stew. (Okay, the stew was not green--there wasn't anything green in it, just shades of brown--so I couldn't eat it.) There may have been some beer on the premises. There was Roveresque and Clannadesque music. There was an MC MCing in Gaelic-accented English and Gaelic-accented Korean. There was a lot of step-dancing-- and I have to say Korean women doing Riverdance are quite attractive. I took a video with my phone, but Windows doesn't support the file type, so sadly you'll have to settle for a still. That's a shame... the little girl in green was twirling and high-stepping and having the best time of anybody in East Asia. I'm surprised she's not moving in this still picture, like a Harry Potter photo.

You could give me Red Bull through an IV tube while jolting me with a thousand volts and I would never feel as joyous and present as the little green girl. But it was still one of those moments, like the hountain hike I wrote about recently, that just felt alive. It was just good to be there, basking in the energy and the... well, aliveness. I don't know a better word. I don't live out "Be Here Now" often enough, but I Was There Then.

And then it was time for the Seoul Hash House Harriers. That's the oldest hash in Korea, and the only one in the area I'd never attended. It's male-only, and I don't like excluding people. Also, between the physical toll of hashing twice in a day and not wanting to take up a whole day when I have school prep and grading to do, it just never seemed wise.

But twice a year they allow women at their hash, and this was one of those days. And, with the whole week off, I couldn't plead lack of time, even to myself. And it started and ended at the same spot as the morning's YK hash. So off we went, boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke, though this time I walked with a bunch of others.

It was getting chillier, and after four miles or so, the six of us who were still together decided  to taxi back to the start. We flagged down a cab, and the driver insisted we all get in, even though it's a hard-and-fast rule in Seoul that cabs only carry up to four passengers.

I've never attended clown college, but now I've taken Clown Car 101. In your standard-issue Hyundai, there were two women in the front seat, and two other guys-- two other big guys, each six-foot-two vertically and two-foot-six horizontally, a woman, and little me, squished like a Nerf ball against the door. When I finally got out, I made a vague wheezing accordion noise, like Wile E. after he's fallen off a cliff.

But then it was time for the Seoul Hash circle, which goes on forever, with each hasher expected to take a turn telling a joke or singing a song. We even had three women from Tokyo, in for the weekend to run the Seoul Marathon this morning. For all I've posted about being so much older than the other hashers, that isn't true at Seoul H3; there were several around my age, including one friendly American who's been living here for 34 years. I'd thought I was a veteran waegook with three and a half.

At the SH3 circle. This is my favorite recent photo of me, though it certainly shows my age.

As Indy said, "It ain't the years, honey, it's the mileage."

Finally I limped home, 11 hours to the minute from when I left. This morning, my calves were taut and tight and it took awhile to hobble to the coffeemaker, but it was worth it.

It was a good day. O'Really.

"...and, doggone it, people like me."

You know that stuff I wrote two entries ago, "I'm not alone"? Yeah, well, never mind. I was only kiddin'.

Seems I'm a ramblin' guy again; Kyung and I are off. I won't pretend I'm not disappointed, but I'm fine. Maybe I am alone, but 2011 was still a success because I learned I don't have to be alone.

Anyway, we're three weeks into our four-and-a-half-week winter break (necessitated by Korea's biggest holiday, Seollal-- Lunar New Year-- coming so soon after our usual two-week break). My colleagues are beginning to trickle back from their excursions to such strange, exotic locations as Vietnam and California, but most won't be back for another week.

I've been keeping busy writing, hiking, milling on the tread at the gym (shut up, I'm an English teacher), going to a movie, soaking in hot tubs, and hashing. During the school year, the Saturday morning Yongsan Kimchi hash is about all I can commit the time to each weekend. Now that I'm on vacation, though, I'm hitting both YK and Southside HHH on Sundays. It's a delicate balance, trying to keep the January cold out without being so bundled up I sweat through all those layers while running. Usually I fail.

Yesterday's YK hash, going all the way up and over three mountains while covering six miles in two hours, was epic, but it was last week's Southside that I'll really remember. We clambered over and between and around boulders all the way to the top of a mountain so high that even the traffic sounds of this metro area of 22 million completely faded away.

Halfway up: Headshot, Burt Reynolds, Mr. Blister, some guy, 

Dead Porno Society, Corndog Millionaire.

Top of the World, Ma! (The escalator was out of order.)

The long, long way down was enchanting, with a beautiful little stream frozen solid all the way down through the silent woods. Maybe the best thing about Seoul is that spotted all through this huge city there are the hills and mountains, so natural, so peaceful, so quiet.

But in case one is ever tempted to forget that this is still Korea, near the top of the mountain is a bunker, built after the war, that's used by the army to train their men how to watch out for invaders from the north.

Still, it was a lovely day, and the hash means so much to me in terms of conditioning, friendship, and self-esteem.

And you know, though it seems improper to say it... friends and acquaintances tell me it's impressive that someone my age (58, if you're keeping score at home) has run over 80 hashes, and completed two marathons, in 15 months. And I always go, aw shucks, tweren't nothin'. But you know... it is impressive. I rock. In some ways.

And now for something completely different.

When I was new in Korea, every day brought something funny, or sad, or odd enough to want to blog about. After a couple of years, though, I stopped noticing as much, or caring as much to post it. And there is a lot of funky stuff here. For example: 

-The underground shopping malls have so many rotundas and stairs and corridors branching off in all directions that they were apparently built by gophers with architectural degrees.And then there's inexplicable stuff like this:

-One of the moms in the English club I emcee at school gave me a Christmas present: a shocking-pink bow tie with gold filigree. (She knows me so well.)

-There are always so many salespeople standing around in stores that you can't twitch without having someone suggesting stuff you should buy, but for Seollal they're mostly decked out in lovely, traditional hanbok outfits. And you can't find half the stuff in its usual place because of all the gift packs on display, including Korea's favorite holiday delicacy:

-Close your eyes, delicate readers: as written in Korean characters, hope and hof (beer hall) are spelled identically; so are rub and love; so are park and fuck. (It's important to remember the difference in a no-parking zone.)

-There is actually in Korea a "free" cat who cost $1200 at the vet's due to nasty plumbing problems, an eye infection, and fluid in the lungs. Unfortunately, he lives with me.

If he wants legs, too, they're coming out of his allowance.

...and so, as Nick Carraway said, I beat on against the current, and survive the winter, and occasionally remind myself that, though I may be thoroughly single again, doggone it, people like me.

Day 362

I've always liked the week between Christmas and New Year's. Aside from the thrills of Boxing Day, when we put away the Christmas boxes, or box up our unwanted presents for return, or watch a Rocky marathon on TV, or buy colorful underwear, or browse pictures of brachycephalic dogs with underbites, or some damn thing (I've never quite been sure), it's a quiet time of reflection, catching one's breath, and tranquilly contracting hypothermia. And for more than half of my years on earth, it's meant time off from school.

Looking back at this blog, I see I've posted an ungrand total of six entries in the last 22 weeks. (For comparison, I made 35 posts in my first month in Korea and 14 in my first month in Seoul.) I guess this is because I post about things I find novel or interesting and, after three-plus years here, not much is novel anymore. Maybe I'm a little tired of my own glibness, too. I've thought of dropping this blog entirely, to tell the truth. (I haven't, evidently.)

There was a time not long ago when I would have found so many things ripe for blogging:

• Tug went into the shop for plumbing repairs (to the tune of $1000) and is back there now for treatment of a cold and an eye infection, both of which he picked up when he boarded there the first time.
• I fell on my head (and chest and wrist), running downhill on hash and tripping on a drunk bump in the street; at our hash Thanksgiving dinner afterward, I bled like a new red hoodie from Wal-Mart and, four weeks later, my wrist is still sore. (In my post about the marathon in November, I wrote that if there had been a string in the street, I would have tripped. At the time, I thought I was joking.) It's the third time in my life I've gashed myself just above my left eye by falling on my head... one is supposed to learn something from experience, and what I've learned is that I turn my head to the right just before I fall on it.
• The gang I started working two years ago at school continues to disperse, one by one, around the world: Nick, our counselor, has moved back to the States and Lauren has moved from San Diego to Copenhagen.
• My hashing friends leave, too... GI Ho, Spartakicks, and Spread Eagle Scout Master (among many others) are gone, TKO is leaving, and it's only a couple of months until we lose Shitonya and Bootylicious.
• Korea continues to impress with its tech. For example, this is one of a dozen panels at a particular subway platform:

 ...while you're waiting for the next train, you scan the items you want with your handepone (cellphone) and send it to HomePlus. Your groceries are delivered when you get home.

• I MC the Moms' English Club at school every Thursday evening, bringing the joys of Fried Green Tomatoes to the land of pickled cabbage.
• Kim Jong II died, making way for Kim Jong III, and I'm told nerves are frayed on our side of the border, though I can't see it anywhere.
• The stores go crazy for Christmas and, gee, Gangnam is pretty, all lit up with LED trees and gift-wrapped building facades. But the day itself is pretty much like any other; everything's open for business. And what I really miss are Christmas cookies and trees with lights.

 In Itaewon: possibly the biggest light display in Korea.

• Penguins in parkas are patrolling the park. (It's c-c-cold.)
• And so it goes.

The biggest thing worth blogging about is my relationship with Kyung ah, and that's almost too personal to write about. We've been seeing each other once or twice a week, and it has done me-- and I hope, her-- a world of good. We go to dinner or a movie, sing together at a noraebang, play a little pool... one day she drove me out past Incheon Airport to a dock, where we took a ten-minute ferry ride to a little island on the West (that is, Yellow) Sea. I loved every second of it: the salt air, the sea breeze, the hungry gulls, the company.

 ...you can get a lucky shot, even with a cellphone camera.

Beyond that, we just enjoy each other's company, and it has been a long time since I've had someone in my life.

And, years from now, if I remember one thing about 2011, it will be this: it's when I met Kyung.

That means it's been a good, good year: I'm not alone.

Strange day indeed

It's an odd day.

Almost everything is closed for Seollal, though Lauren and I did manage to get together for coffee, as two of the four coffeehouses in the neighborhood are, surprisingly, open. But E-Mart, Costco, and every restaurant-- everything but the convenience stores-- is closed. The streets are nearly deserted. It's 41 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly 30 degrees higher than the recent norm, but nobody's out enjoying it.

Meanwhile I'm watching remarkable live coverage of the Cairo uprising on Al Jazeera's English web site. It's objective and comprehensive, much better than you could find on an American cable-news channel; I've been listening to gunfire and seeing Molotov cocktails being thrown by thugs and undercover cops, thinking of my friend Joelle, who lives in Cairo just a few blocks from the square where all the protests have been taking place. The US government said to get out now. She sent out detailed live-history emails six hours ago, but I hope she's on her way to the airport. If she's not scared, I am.


Funny how a couple of months ago people were worried about my safety.

Meanwhile, I made my very own improvises ddeokboggi, the spicy red rice-cake-and-sauce dish so popular at the ubiquitous street vendors' stands, like this one.

 

The big letters say "Gongju Ddeokboggi".

My improvised recipe: boil the ddeok for a minute, drown it in store-bought pasta sauce, throw in tomato chunks, sprinkle in Tabasco sauce, nuke, eat. The whole process took five minutes and the meal cost maybe fifty cents. Ddeok dishes are to Korea on Lunar New Year what hoppin' john is to Dixie on Reg'lar New Year... what you eat for good fortune in the coming year. So I'm all set till the dawning of the Year of the Dragon.

...and the Eagles are playing Seoul in six weeks. The flippin' Eagles. I'm going to try to see them, though a foreigner practically needs to submit a retinal scan and a polygraph test to get a ticket to anything.

I'm a-walkin' down the street and I'm not eatin' meat, I got three big hashes on my mind.
One's up in Ouijeongbu, rhymin' like this song do, one's the Sunday morning kind.

ah, heck, songwriting's hard.

My bunny lies over the ocean

We're have five days off from school this week, counting the weekend, for the biggest holiday on the Korean calendar, Seollal, Lunar New Year. In the States, it's generally called Chinese New Year... and by the way? Those Chinese restaurant place mats that give your Chinese sign? Yeah, well, if you were born in the first three to six weeks of the year, they're wrong... the New Year doesn't begin on January 1, you know. So if you gave birth today (which I imagine would be a big surprise to you), your child would still be a Tiger, not a Rabbit, no matter what the place mats at Ho Lee Chow say. (That's the actual name of a restaurant in Itaewon... it's a lot better than "Chinee Takee Outee" in Gainesville, Florida, at least.)

The Rabbits arrived a little early at Gimpo Airport this year.

Anyway, tomorrow, Thursday, is the actual date of Seoullal, the start of the Year of the Rabbit. I'm going to go to the "38th Parallel Hash" in Uijeongbu (home of the fictional but beloved 4077th MASH) on Friday, and I'm supposed to find a rabbit hat or ears or something before that. (Wearing my handsome tiger hat would be a faux paw, akin to wearing a "Happy Old Year" hat to Times Square for Reg'lar Ol' New Year.)

But what I really want to note is the array of riches showered upon us teachers in the last couple of days...

The father of one of our girls who got early admission to a Japanese university brought in a huge box that held a dozen flat, rectangular boxes; each box had the LG logo on it, so I was rather hoping for a flat-screen tv, but the six soaps, three shampoos, three conditioners, and six tubes of toothpaste will be welcome too. (LG, like all the Korean conglomerates, has its name on every kind of product and service imaginable.)

The mother of one of our kids gave those of us who wrote recommendation letters $50 gift cards to Starbucks.

For Seollal itself, various parents gave us:

an eleven-pound gift box of magnificent Korean apples, each one the size of John Goodman's head.

a big bag of  ddeok. (What's up, ddeok?) They're round disks made of rice flour that are usually served with spicy red sauce but can be thrown into soups and such.

a chocolate birthday-style cake made of rice flour.

wicker baskets full of rice candy and tangerines.

A $30 gift certificate to the upscale Shinsegae department store, which fortunately is also good at E-Mart, which Shinsegae owns.

...so I'm set. I'll certainly never have to buy soap or toothpaste again, anyway. 

E-Mart and Home Plus and other department stores are always packed and colorful leading into the big holidays, displaying expensive gift boxes full of fruit (as above) or toiletries (as above) or Spam (a great delicacy) or wine or whiskey. Most of the multitudinous female sales associates still wear their jacket-miniskirt-leggings combos that say "Heineken" or "Kelloggs" or whatever, but a lot of them are resplendent in their traditional hanbok like the outfits the kids are wearing in the rabbit photo above.

And tomorrow is the big event itself. As the French say, "C'est une bunny day." (It's a good idea.)

Do I know it's Christmas?

or "Hashing through the snow".

A few years ago, if you'd suggested I'd be sitting in an unheated bus station (at 15 degrees Fahrenheit) in a city I'd never heard of before-- in Korea-- at 9 p.m. on Christmas night, I'd have thought you delusional. Nor did I, oddly enough, envision running across a horserace track-- in my boxers-- at an equivalent temperature the next day.

But, in fact, I did both.

Actually, I guess that would have been an odd opening paragraph if I hadn't.

Christmas is hard far from home, with just a cat-- who speaks only Korean-- as company. So I jumped at the chance to join the Yongsan Kimchi (my group) hashers down in the city of Songtan, 45 minutes south of Seoul, on Christmas. I took the bus down and shivered my way to the Osan Bulgogi hashers' home bar, just around the corner from the US's Osan Air Force base.

After a long time of milling and mingling and chilling and jingling, the hash started. It was soooo cold, but the hares laid a great trail, through the city and up and down a trail on the mountain as the lightest of flurries started, and we all got back safely and happily.

Not actually me, but close.

Then the festivities began, amid the twinkling lights and Christmas music. We had the usual postrun circle, though people tried to clean up their comments and song lyrics because one of the hashers had brought his son and daughter. And finally it was time for the pot  luck, with draft beer and turkey and ham (though not for me) and fresh fruit salad (I cut it myself!) and cookies and apple pie and pumpkin pie and pecan pie. It felt like being rushed by the august fraternities, Eata Bita Pi and Tappa Kegga Brew.

Sorry.

Apparently the festivities went on long into the night, starting with beer pong and ending with people sleeping on other people's floors, but at about 8:00 I made the cold walk back to the bus station and waited for the penultimate bus back to Seoul.

The next day was Boxing Day, so the Southside hashers sent directions to wear boxer shorts on their run. So we did, over our tights and sweatpants. We met at the deserted Seoul Racecourse Park, just a few miles from my apartment. The windchill, I think, must have been in the single digits. That's actually plenty warm enough when you're running, but the gathering time and the circle afterward, in the light flurries... well, we took turns sitting in somebody's heated car.

Southside has the reputation of being more hardcore than my home group, Yongsan. And this trail was laid by Mr. Blister and Soju Sonata, who are a) active-duty military and b) insane. Their trail led us through a lot of shiggy (hash talk for hills, brambles, thorns, fences, some with wire of the barbed variety) and across both sides of the actual racetrack, which I had never known consists of thick soft sand... I really would have hated to be arrested in my underwear, by the way.) Then it was up the mountain and over, sliding down parts of the slope on my boxer-clad butt on a carpet of dead leaves...

For the second half of the trail, I kept company, far behind the pack, with LesBalls (a female South African friend) and Cooper.

 

Cooper. Lab plus beagle equals... Leagle?

Finally we lost the trail... I blame Cooper. Fortunately, I'd learned to always wear my GPS watch to hashes and to mark our starting point, so we went to the road and ran the half-mile back to our compatriots, who were frozen in place like people who'd seen a basilisk.

It was the shortest on-after ever. I decided to take the subway to the COEX Mall and almost forgot that I was wearing my boxers on the outside. So, for the first time ever, I dropped my boxers in public and took off into the nice warm underground.

The thing about Christmas is that you don't want to be alone; a few days ago, the Huffington Post showed what the said was "the saddest Christmas card ever": "Merry Christmas to you and your cat." It was very good to be among friends, however loosely tethered to normality they may be, and to have something fun to do. I topped off Boxing Day by watching the Doctor Who Christmas episode, which was a treat.

And now to do useful stuff during my two-week break. Almost all of my school friends have flown out of here. But I've got places to go, classes to plan, an apartment to clean, and treadmill running to do (I need 13 miles in five days to reach 900 for the year.) And an intraKorean peace to keep.

Happy holidays, everybody.

Fahrenheit 4? 5? 1?

The sun is just now setting over the mountains on Christmas Eve. It's c-c-cold; at the moment, the wind chill is 3 above zero Fahrenheit. It was well below zero this morning.

On the brighter side, though, there's always the threat of war. It's nice to know that Wolf Blitzer, in North Korea this week, called the Koreas "the most dangerous place on earth". I don't understand why the South, which for the last seven years has refused permission for a local church to erect a giant Christmas tree right by the DMZ, let them put it up this year. Why intentionally provoke the crazy guy in the attic? South Korea is two-thirds the size of Florida; they probably could have found another spot for the tree.

It's strange to be here right now. It's Christmas; my friends are in Ithaca or St. Augustine, the family's in California, and almost all of my coworkers taking off for Thailand or Indonesia or home during our two-week break. Nicki and Dex Puckett and their amazing month-old son Loku have asked me over for dinner this evening, so that's really nice. And tomorrow I'm taking the bus down to the city of Songtan for a hash (20 Fahrenheit with 25-mph winds forecast) and a little Christmas cheer at the pot luck afterward. But it's not quite how it used to be at Christmas.

There's only one present I want this year...

Coach Dog says thanks, kids

The Mighty Mighty St. Paul Cross-Country Club.

It's Thanksgiving Eve. (Is that even a Thing?) I'm thinking about how Thanksgiving was always my favorite holiday, with lots of food and relaxation but without all the pressure of Christmas. (Yes, I'm a twentieth-century-never-learned-how-to-cook slob; at least on Thanksgiving, unlike on Chuseok in Korea, the women, after fixing all the food, can eat with the men.)

The holidays are the hardest time to be away from your family and country.

Today, I called a halt to Cross-Country Club till spring. I'll be running all winter, but it's getting pretty cold and pretty dark pretty early and I wanted to stop before the kids get run over on the way back to school or, worse, quit. I loved actual cross-country coaching more than anything else I've ever been paid for; I lived for those fall days and mourned when each season was over. (This is a shout-out to all those Flashes and Jackets I helped coach... I love you guys!) :: sniff ::

This has hardly been the same; we've just gone out twice a week to the park and the stream and all but a couple of the kids have run a few minutes and walked and talked for a half-hour each day. Korean girls seem to think that running makes women muscle-bound. (Koreans also widely believe that your blood type determines your personality, getting rained on makes your hair fall out, and sleeping in a closed room with a fan on will kill you.)

I'll miss it, though... they're good kids and I like to think I (or the experience) helped them somehow. Maybe in the spring more of them will see how running can enrich their lives. If not, that's okay, too.

Meanwhile, I'm thankful for Monica, Stephanie, Susie, Ecllid, Leo the Swift, Yuri, and little Christina and Kelly (who hold hands everywhere they go-- sometimes while running), and for peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Happy Chu-soak

It's 9 a.m. on the morning of Chuseok, I've been up for two hours, and I haven't seen a single person walk by on the street or in the park. It's not raining now,

but...

 it...

 

has...

 

 been.

As these captures from local tv demonstrate, we've had a bit of rain. It hasn't been nearly as bad in our neighborhood; I guess all the rain in our area drains right into the Yangjae Cheon. We haven't had flooded streets or anything, but it's been nasty. A low-lying area by the stream was already under water when I went for my run at 10 a.m. yesterday, and then the sky opened up as it does in Florida and it rained for hours and hours as it does in Ithaca and oh, my galoshes, it was wet.

The Korea Times says that parts of Seoul got ten inches of rain yesterday.

I was delighted to get a dinner invitation from Nikki, our art teacher, and her husband Dex, who will be our art teacher for a couple of months while Nikki's out having a baby. As I took the five-minute walk to Costco to get a dessert to take (Boston cream pie!) the rain permeated my umbrella and dripped right through onto my head.

Nikki and Dex were in Zach's old apartment, the big one by the school that I had passed on because two and a half people need the space more than one person and a cat. They had just had their ceiling patched up, but when I got there, they had a bucket on a big tarp to catch the rapid dripping coming through. The stairs all the way up to their fourth-floor flat were soaking wet; water had cascaded down the stairs all the way to the ground.

I lived for over fifty years in, first, the grayest town north of Robert E. Lee's pocket, and then the humidity of the hurricane belt, and I've never seen anything like the soaking, squishy weather we've had here for the last couple of months. We're all really sick of it and we wish to complain to the management.

As for the dinner, it was very nice; Dex had prepared tofu and traditional Korean veggies, and did I mention the Boston cream pie(!)? I'm very proud-- I bought it myself. After dinner, we played a Korean ripoff of Monopoly called, in Korean letters, "Ho-tael Gae-im". Who knew that Dex, who looks as if he just time-warped from Woodstock, was such a ruthless capitalist? Or that the two most valuable cities on Earth (the game's Boardwalk and Park Place) are Seoul and Busan? The fun part was constantly having to figure out with every transaction, that, for example, "150 man Won" is 1.5 million.

So it's Wetsday, halfway through our week off, and it's cool (temps in the low 60s... maybe blessed fall is here at last. I believe that we're caught up on precipitation till, say, November.

2013.

Seoul survivors

Our school has the week off for Chuseok, Korea's big holiday, on which Seoul empties out as everyone visits their families in their ancestral homes. In the days leading up to the day itself, Costco and E-Mart make it impossible to check out-- Costco's lines on Saturday morning stretched literally three-quarters of the way back through the store, and every cart was overflowing, especially with gift packs of delicacies like this:

I don't know why Spam is the epitome of fine dining in Korea. I hesitate to speculate.

(Speaking of Spam, imagine my delight in learning that Monty Python's Spamalot will shortly be playing here on stage, and my disappointment upon realizing that, of course, it will be entirely in Korean. Python's chaotic enough already.) But, as I always look on the bright side of life...

I've been busy. Last Thursday, Vanessa, our Chinese Chinese teacher, came over to translate for the cable guy, who was here to hook up my new cable and Internet. It's ten bucks cheaper than the old company's service and allegedly has faster 'net (not that I've noticed) and a better channel lineup. Well, it's got more English-language channels, including news from Russia, news from China, the Australia Channel, and EuroSport (German ping pong at last!)

All you need to know about what Koreans care about in the Western world is that the system carries CNBC and Bloomberg but not CNN; it's reminiscent of Kyobo Books, which has bookcase after bookcase of Anglophone business books but a measly fiction section in which Sidney Sheldon is considered a hot author. (But I digress... I lost a bunch of good Korean tv channels. At least there's BBC Entertainment, so I get an hour a week of Doctor Who from two years ago. Vanessa must have spent three or four hours last week helping Lauren, Bob, and me get the new hookup.

I'm glad the flag bearer on the left has made good use of the mustache I donated.

We had no classes on Friday; instead, we divided the students. Um, I mean into groups... let's not get grisly here. I had a group with Faina, our new English teacher, and Ron, the principal and his wife, Jill, and Faina's and my homeroom kids.

F

Faina's on the left. I dunno who's on the right... short white hair... apparently it's my dad. Huh.

All of the groups had the task of taking photos of themselves at well-known spots all around the historic center of Seoul. Our group was doing great until, after two and a half hours afoot and 15 shots, the kids ran out of energy and decided to, first, squabble about where to go next, and, secondly, spend a half hour of our precious time at McDonald's. We finished second, and by the time everyone got home, we were all happy to have survived the trek.

Tug's worn out, too.

On Saturday, I carted two packs of veggie dogs up the hill above Itaewon to the Margaritaville-themed social of the Seoul Flyers running club. I'd met a few of them at my last race but haven't been able to join the group runs. The get-together was at a lovely apartment right near Mount Namsan and Seoul Tower. Jae, the president (and everyone else I met) was friendly and helpful, and the Heineken and daiquiris flowed freely. I'd hoped to clear up some confusion-- should I do the marathon like this: run at nine-and-a-half-minute-mile pace for four minutes, walk a minute, all the way through, as I've been training for? Or just do 11-minute miles with no walking?

Jae's on the left, too. (When did I start to look like Tim Robbins?)

I'm delighted to say that I came away twice as confused as I went in... Jae, who hates run/walk, thought I should run the whole way. Shira, who likes run/walk, thought I should run/walk. In addition, Jae suggested that I appropriate one of the race entries of someone who had to cancel out of the Chuncheon Marathon, which I tried to enter two days too late. Chuncheon is two weeks earlier than the Joongang I'm registered for, has a prettier course, and allows six hours, not five, to finish. So now what? Try the run/walk there and if it doesn't work, the slower run in the Joongang? Two marathons in 15 days? What about my work friends who said they'll come out to cheer me on in the Joongang? They're not going to take an hour-long bus ride into the countryside for the Chuncheon...

People who are faster than I am are on the left. And the right. And directly in front of me... as usual.

Oh, my brain hurts. And my knee. And my calves are a little tight. And a few of the students have been giving me a pain in the...

On Sunday, I ran my six miles, got caught up with Lauren over coffee, and then wasted half of the day looking all over town for a couple of items I couldn't find in any stores. Today, well... no run, no Lauren, found one item.

I've been afraid of having nothing to do all week while the locals travel, but Nikki and Dex have invited me to their apartment tomorrow for grilled tofu, and the Seoul Veggie Club is having a Chuseok Day picnic on Thursday (on top of the buffet lunch ten days ago). And, dammit, I've got lots to do... that German ping pong isn't going to watch itself.

 ...so long from me and from Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear.

Rice/Czechs and ice cream

Oh, almost forgot to tell about this...

On New Year's Eve, Chris, Lauren, and I went to Gangnam, the ritzy shopping area three or four miles from home. They wanted to go to a Chinese restaurant, so we did; they shared a multicourse meal consisting mostly of strange and somewhat offputting sea creatures, totalling 100,000 Won (85 bucks); I searched for something, anything, I could eat and found "Rice with bean curd and beef". We had a nice waitress who seemed to speak English pretty well, so I asked for it "gogi upseoyo" (without beef). I figured rice and tofu would be fine. Well, when it came, I didn't find and tofu, but I did find a whole bunch of little shrimp. Since I was already about two courses behind Lauren and Chris, I gulped, tried not to worry about what was in the sauce, and gave my friends the shrimp, which ironically were the most normal-looking things they ate in the whole meal.

Then we went to a nice coffeehouse. I'd made my resolution to lay off sweets completely for the month of January, at least, so I had to back up and get a running start; I had Americano and "ice cream wapple". (Korean has no "f"s.) That was whipped cream, chocolate, two scoops of ice cream and a Belgian... um... wapple. But it's now the evening of January 4 and I've kept my resolution in 2010! Of course, that could be because I'm still not hungry after New Year's Eve.

Finally, we went to Castle Praha, a very neat old-world pub with their own in-house draft beers, made with equipment imported from the Czech Republic, with ingredients ditto. It's a little place paneled in dark wood, very much like the hofbrauhauses I remember from 40-plus years ago in Munich. (Yes, I know Munich is not in the Czech Republic.) The tv's were playing a K-pop concert, kind of the equivalent of Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve. K-pop music is like cotton candy; a little bit is fun, but too much and you get a bit queasy.

At about 11:58, the tv cut over to downtown Seoul, where they had a countdown to midnight (Yeol... aho.. yeodol... ilgo... yeoseot... daseot... sa.. SAM... EE... IL... HOPPY NEW YIEO!) They repeatedly swung the big battering ram into the huge bell , we all clinked glasses back in our little hof, and oddly, things looked about the same as they had a couple of minutes before. The house did treat us all to bottles of good Czech beer, which was nice.

A couple came over and was eager to talk with us; he's Chinese (his name is CheolGang Yoon, by the way; say hi for me if you see him) and she's Korean. They both work for IBM in someplace called Dalian in China. We didn't talk of anything important, but everyone was full of New Lang Syne and chatted amiably and animatedly for awhile and exchanged business cards.

And then we caught the last bus home. If we'd missed it, we would have had a 75-minute, cold, cold walk; the taxis won't take us home (barring a huge overcharge) because they'd rather wait for longer rides, bigger fares, and drunker passengers.

You know, it seems as if every year I can remember, on New Year's Eve we all think, "That was sure a crummy year; this one's got to be better." Well, my personal 2009 was fine, but as for the world... this one's got to be better.

Happy Year, everyone!

And so this is Christmas

It's dinnertime on Christmas day and I'm in for the night. All day there was an odd grayness in the air, which seems to always be the case in Seoul when the winter warms up a little. It isn't fog, it isn't smog... you know how the air looks in the distance when it's snowing over there someplace? It's like that all day here, but there's no snow, there's just gray. My steel-gray windbreaker blends right in; I was going to call this entry "Don we now our gray apparel", but that sounded too negative.

I'm off for ten days. This week at school, we had our little Christmas party with the students on Wednesday evening (I wore my Santa suit) and took a field trip yesterday to the Seoul Art Center, which has an exhibit on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There are Monets and Picassos, Van Goghs and Liechtensteins, O'Keeffes and Wyeths. I'm whatever the equivalent of tone-deaf is when it comes to art, but I was glad to be there, especially to see the Wyeths; as is required for a middle-brow American, he's my favorite.

I admit I was kind of down last evening, Christmas Eve, with nobody around to share it with. I went to the health club and I was even the only person working out there for awhile. Christmas isn't a big-deal holiday here, though the stores certainly do their best to pump up the spirit. On Christmas morning, the Christians (a quarter of the population) go off to church, the bigger stores open, and the streets and subways are a bit emptier than usual.

I wasn't entirely my usual effervescent self this morning, either. Lauren's off to Daegu, Nick to Taiwan, Zach to Miami, and I'm just here. I'm not calling the grandboys till tomorrow morning, and it was rather a solitary morning.

But at noon I met my new friend Ray from the Veggie Club and we went off to a Loving Hut restaurant nearer to me than the one I wrote about in my last post. Then my day brightened; a couple of hours with a sympathetic friend can make a big difference when you're a long way from home on a holiday. We talked about our pasts and our beliefs and gorged on vegan goodies and it was all very nice. The restaurant was packed, I think with people coming from Christmas services, and that was good to see.

When we came out, it was raining; I was going to call this entry "I'm dreaming of a wet Christmas", but then it stopped. It stayed damp and windy, though, as I went to Kyobo Books for a little atmosphere and then back to the 'hood to E-Mart (which was packed) for a little Tug Chow and came home.

And here I am, on quite a quiet Quistmas. I haven't actually done this yet, but I wish I could write like this, so I'll quote Dylan Thomas:

"...I said a few words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."

Merry Christmas, everyone.

* * *

Stop the presses!

I'd just completed the post above, resigned to just spending the night at home, when Chris from work called, asking if I'd like to go out and eat. I wasn't hungry, but it took me about five seconds to decide that it was a lot better than sitting here alone all evening, so I said absolutely. Chris wondered if it was raining again, so I slid open my frosted-glass balcony door and found...

Snow, snow, lovely feathery snow coating the park across the street and wafting through the air. To quote from my entry from one year ago tonight, "And then it was Christmas." I laughed out loud like a delighted little kid; instantly, faster than instantly, it really felt like Christmas at last.

We slipped and slid to the bus to Gangnam, where we sat, surreally, in front of an electrical heater, in a little plastic-tented alcove at Dos Tacos, watching the snow blow by as we ate burritos and I sipped a lime margarita from a glass with a stem shaped like a saguaro. So very, very Korean.

...and as we were walking back from the bus stop at 11 p.m., snow blowing around us, some windchimes tinkled... or it may have been sleighbells...

You saw Mommy doing what now?

Saturday night was Santacon Seoul, the local iteration of a worldwide event involving cheap Santa suits, songbooks full of irreverent-to-filthy carols, and copious amounts of liquid refreshment. In mid-afternoon, Zach, Chris, and I headed to Costco for candy (a shared bag of 300 chocolate coins for Zach and me, sixty bucks worth of Tootsie Pops and candy canes for Chris) and took a long, sardined bus and subway trip to the plaza by City Hall and the US embassy. Chris and Zach, being bolder/braver/crazier than I, pulled their Santa suits on right outside Costco and rode the whole way there passing out candy to... well, mostly to attractive girls.

Fortunately, it was unseasonably warm, unlike the conditions right now, when the wind chill is 7 Fahrenheit. (Pop quiz: think of an adverb and an adjective that begin with the letters "f-r-i-g".) But, as I say, on Saturday is was pretty balmy, just like us.

We met Tony, in his Santa suit, and his Korean girlfriend Olivia, very fetching in Santa hat and jacket, I struggled into my outfit, and we put on our beards and went to work. In the plaza, there's a big, brand-new statue of King Sejong the Great and, way behind it, an enormous ramp had been set up for a huge snowboarding competition. We had decided to start our Santacon several hours early, hoping to see some of the hotdogging action, but we never got near it.

The second we started ho-ho-hoing and passing out candy, we were mobbed. Kids' faces lit up, dads by the dozen asked us to pose for pictures with their kids, children (and a lot of grownups) eagerly reached for chocolates... have you ever tossed a few crumbs to a pigeon or a scrap to a seagull? You don't have one bird for long. I felt like Robert Pattinson at a Twilight convention.

Oh, it was terrific; the excitement on little kids' faces made my Yuletide bright. Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow shouted out with glee... um. I'll start over.

It was so perfectly Christmas.

Zach's and my chocolate coins were gone in five minutes, but we still had people asking for photos and saying "Merry Christmas!" and smiling at the crazy Americans. After awhile, we retreated to a restaurant for a beer and some taters, then we caught cabs to Hongdae, the neighborhood by Hongik University.

Hongdae is every collegetown bar/restaurant/bar/shop/bar/coffeehouse/bar area you've ever seen, rolled into one. Santacon started at 7:00, at one of the three bars in the same building, called Ho Bar 1, Ho Bar 2, and Ho Bar 3. This event was at number three. That's right... the Ho Ho Ho Bar.

Yes, there's one guy in a banana suit. Just go with it.

We were among the first there, but Santas just kept thronging through the door. It quickly got packed, loud (deafening dance music) and smoky.

This is me at the Ho Bar. It was posted by someone else on Facebook and I can't seem to enlarge it, so you might not notice that the beer bottle's full of water. A regular Billy Bob Bad Santa, that's me.

It was kinda cool to see 200 Santas in a little bar, but after awhile the novelty wore off and it was just a packed, loud, smoky, red bar. Not my thing, really, though Chris and I did have a friendly darts game (he destroyed me, then was destroyed  in turn by a vivacious new Aussie friend named Kat...) 

I stuck around long enough to take part in the procession to the next bar. That was nearly as much fun as our afternoon adventure, 200 Santas parading along singing "Jingle Bells" and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" to the astonished smiles of the local college kids. The next gathering place was a more upscale restaurant/bar where perfectly nice Korean couples who'd come out for a quiet dinner were suddenly surrounded, like Moses, by a red sea. A loud, singing red sea. And, night owl that I am, 9:30 seemed about the right time for me to head home.

I took off the Santa suit, rolled it up inside its own belt, and caught the subway back. (Young woman on the platform, noticing the outfit I was carrying: "Part-time job?") Horrible, horrible trip home, seventeen stops, so crowded that for much of the way I had four strangers up against me. They were touching me at my northeast, southeast, southwest, and, I believe, west-by-northwest compass points. I hate being pressed up against strangers. When I got back to Gangnam Station, I was so tired and my knee so sore I just couldn't face another bus ride and I took a cab all the way home.

I found out later that, in addition to the raunchy songs and general debauchery that comes later in the evening, I'd missed a big fight involving two soused Santas and a special guest appearance by the police. Maybe Santa wears a red suit so the blood won't show.

Anyway, it was an enormous hassle to get there and back and the bar scene was no thrill, but the moments of Santaing, singing, hohoing, and giving candy to kids made it more than worthwhile.

Merry Christmas.