A tale of two countries

A couple of things happened this weekend that reminded me what a backward, forward country I live in.

Yesterday after the hash I talked with Half an Angry Pirate. Pirate graduated from Cortland State, which is just 25 miles from Ithaca. Small world and all that.

We talked about animal rights and vegetarianism; Pirate sometimes puts on a bandanna and runs through the hideous dog farms nearby, taking photos. He's young and fast and knows the farmers can't catch him. He uses the photos in protests against eating dogs.

The treatment of dogs here, the big breed raised specifically for meat, is beyond barbaric, in their life and in their death.

There's a bosintang (dog meat soup) restaurant down the street from the school. In general, cooked dog is called boyangsik, "vitalizing food"; it's supposed to give you lots of energy on hot summer days and, like so much that decimates animals in this part of the world, to give guys stamina in bed. Always men's top priority, apparently.

I gather that the younger generation of Koreans is turning away from boyangsik, either because they feel it's wrong or out of embarrassment at what most of the world thinks. The dog restaurants aren't legal de jure or  illegal de facto, sort of like prostitution.

Do I think what they do to dogs is more horrifying than what they (and we) do to chickens and pigs and cattle and turkeys and everything else that tastes good? I do and I don't. I have a gut feeling that our species made a bargain with the dogs many thousands of years ago: protect us and love us and we'll protect you and love you. But I doubt the other "food" animals are impressed with our bargain, and a pig can suffer fully as much as a dog.

Pirate is far braver and more dedicated than I. I don't want to see the poor dogs jammed into cages like potato chips in a bag and I don't want, as a foreigner, to lecture Koreans on their morality. I'm a wuss, I guess; just trying to live the way I feel is right and explaining the whys to people who ask are about all I can manage.

Insert jarring segue here.

Today I went to E-Mart. The first floor of the building next door is a big showroom full of 3-D TVs and computer tablets and such. there are two signs outside, Samsung Di-gi-tal Pla-ja and LG Best Shyop. In front of the Samsung sign, there was a speaker system blaring K-pop while two young women, dressed in hot pink tops and black hot pants, gyrated to the beat. Fifty feet away, in front of the LG sign, there was another speaker system blaring different K-pop as a young woman all in scarlet danced, along with a ten-foot-tall guy (on stilts, duh) dressed as a Buckingham Palace guard.

The scarlet woman (pardon the expression) and the stilt guy seemed to be having fun. She was smiling and her dance wasn't completely robotic; he was blowing up balloon animals and waving to drivers. The pink girls expressed all the involvement of people watching their clothes in the washer going around and around while the laundromat's fluorescents flicker. Their dance isn't all that different from that of the cheerleaders at all the baseball games (who look as if they're having fun), but on the street they seem so joyless and mechanical. It's depressing.

Be that as it may, my point (and, as Ellen said, I do have one) is how strange it is to occasionally see the juxtaposition of one of the world's most aggressively modern, technological, capitalistic societies and the cruel medieval world that peeks through its cracks.

The Otter Limits

I have a hard time, as a veghead, finding stuff for lunch. There's a little kimbap restaurant near the school, and it makes a quick, cheap takeout lunch...

but I can't get across to them that I want it with no meat, no fish, no crab. They have bibimbap (veggies with rice and hot paste) and ice noodles for eating in, but the place is always packed with LG employees at our lunchtime and we can't get a table.

A nice big restaurant has just opened around the corner from there, and, wonder of wonders, they speak English! But when my friends and I went there for dinner, our hosts were so flummoxed trying to find something for me to eat that they finally came up with a bowl of sticky white rice and a kind of tofu broth; they thought so little of their own creation that they gave it to me, apologetically, for free. Tony suggested I put the rice in the broth and bake it on the grill set in our table, and it wasn't bad, but still, it would be an awful hassle explaining what I want and having them figure out what to charge me.

I'm sick of walking home for eggs and I'm sick of taking pb and j's to work and I'm sick of Costco pizza, let alone the hassle of getting in there, fighting through the crowd to the basement, standing in a long line to order (twice, ajummas [aunties-- middle-aged ladies] have butted in line right in front of me as if I didn't exist), waiting in another line to pick up the pizza, and riding back up two escalators to the outside.

It all kind of came to a head the other day when I went to a coffee shop and was ready to pay six bucks for a veggie wrap; they don't have one, just chicken or ham or tuna, but I decided to order a chicken wrap without chicken, just the lettuce and tomatoes and such. With my pidgin Korean and the two girls' pidgin English (despite the fact that everyone their age has taken several years of English in school), it went something like this, in a mixture of Enrean, Konglish, and gestures:

(Me:) Chicken wrap, no chicken, please...      (Girl:) What?
No chicken. Chaesik (veggies)...      No chicken?
No chicken...      (girl points to menu) Ham?
No ham...      Menu changed: no ham, bacon.  
(At this point I'm willing to settle for a wrap without bacon instead of without ham; I'm easy.)
Bacon wrap, no bacon. Chaesik...      No bacon?
No bacon...     Tuna?
No tuna. Chaesik...     (silence)
Chicken wrap, no chicken. Bacon wrap, no bacon. Tuna wrap, no tuna, I don't care...     (silence) 

Chaesik wrap, please...    Oppseoyo. (We don't have that.)
:: sigh :: Thanks. Bye.

It's sometimes hard to stay true to my beliefs when I seem to be the only one in the country who believes them. Even most of my Western friends say either they've eaten dog (and it's delicious) or they'd like to, and sometimes at the grill-it-on-your-table restaurants, the pork sizzling under my nose is too much, even though most of the restaurants have these aluminum elephant-trunk things hanging from the ceiling to suck away the smoke from the grill. And I won't walk into a restaurant that has, as so many do, fish and eels and octopi on death row out front.

Speaking of our aquatic amigos, I did something a couple of weeks ago that I'm not proud of, though most of you will think I'm nuts for minding and one or two will be disappointed in me. I was at the huge underground COEX Mall, which looks like it was designed by moles with architectural training; it has tons of really upscale stores, and the corridors wind around and around, giving few clues as to whether they have three Adidas stores, or whether you've just passed the same one for the third time. COEX also has a Kimchi museum and a stage where they tape videogame championships, which constitute full-time programming for two tv channels. Be that as it may, they also have the biggest aquarium in Korea, and... I don't know why... I visited it.

Now, animal rights people, of whom I'm one, believe that animals are not our property to do with as we like, to kill, eat, imprison, wear... I haven't been to a zoo in twenty years, and for all the times I passed Marineland and Sea World in Florida, it never would have occurred to me to go inside. They need to buy all the imprisoned animals one-way tickets home. And yet, somehow... boredom, sightseeing frenzy, the idea that, hell, they're fish, they'd have been eaten by now if they were in the ocean, I don't know... I went in.

I'll admit that the gigantic tank where you walk through the tunnel and let the sharks and rays and all swim right by you and over your head is cool, and I don't quite know what to make of the "whimsical" room where they have live fish in mockup toilet bowls and bathtubs and the bases of lamps and the front of a Coke machine:

...but, though I was only theoretically opposed to their keeping the fish, however hypocritical or illogical that may be, I hadn't counted on the penguins, the lizards, the bats, the toads, and (my favorite animals in the world) the otters...

..all of which were in enclosures entirely too small and immeasurably smaller than their rightful enclosure, the planet.

I'm sorry I went, sorrier than I am for my troubles finding lunch in Korea. If I'm the only living veghead on this peninsula, then I guess that makes me Korea's Sexiest Vegetarian. Always look on the bright side of life.

Raccoon oar dog?

It's been a long day, as 16 hours ago (at 4:30 a.m.) some neighbors decided it would be a good idea to sit on the park bench 50 feet from my head (and I like to sleep with the windows open) and have a loud long conversation. When I finally drifted uneasily down into sleep again, Tug McClaw commented loudly every 20 minutes or so about how I was going to miss my ride. I think that's what he was saying; I was begging him to shut up too much to really decipher his message.

Anyway, I finally dragged my carcass out of bed (I won't say up) at 7, and at 8:30 was joining seven of my SPPA compatriots in a three-hour van trip to go... white-water rafting! We were actually north of the 38th parallel, the one-time border between the Koreas...

 

and just a few miles from the DMZ and the worst country in the world.

We had lunch, put on our life preservers and helmets, grabbed our paddles, got a quick lesson in how our guide would guide us (left one two, right one two, boce one two [that's "both"; they don't have "th"s in Korean], back one two, boat down [grab the rope and jackknife your body forward, 'cause we're all gonna die oh God oh God]) and we were off.

Tony, the head teacher, arranged the trip and I wasn't going to miss it; I've been so cautious my whole life, and it was about time to change that. I was a bit apprehensive, but actually the water was low, now, at the end of the season and the trip was pretty mild even by my standards. (If I'd known how it was going to be, I wouldn't have worried about taking my camera and I'd have some nice pictures for you.) There were white things tangled in a great many of the trees fifteen feet above us, and I was cooking up some romantic story about native customs, when the guide said, through Tony's girlfriend (our interpreter) that they were all trash bags... that line fifteen feet up is where the water rises to.

Still it was so much fun, and it did have some rapids, a lot of splashing, and a plenitude of rocks. At one point, we had to all repeatedly jump up in the raft on the count of three so our guide, in the water in his wet suit, could free us from the rocks; mostly we just had a lovely time paddling and looking up the steep cliffs, topped with impenetrable forest, on both sides. We were accompanied the whole way by a flight of dragonflies, who liked to perch on our heads and our paddles. On our break halfway down the river, we found a lot of lime-green frogs, the size of my little fingernail, in the sand. (Frog pee is actually quite cool to the touch, by the way.)

But for me, the highlight of the trip was when we saw an unusual animal staring down from far above us: it was too big to be a raccoon, which they don't have on this side of the marble anyway; it wasn't a badger or a wolverine; what the heck was it?                                                                                                          

Later research at home proved it to be a raccoon dog, which roams eastern Asia apparently unable to make up its mind what the hell it is, sort of the oriental version of Senator Arlen Specter. Actually, though it looks pretty darn coonesque, it's a member of the dog family. Different pictures of them look quite different, and ours was closer to a brownish red, so much so that I wondered if it was a red panda, but... uh, no, no bamboo 'round here, and this ain't the Himalayas. It was a raccoon dog, all right. Do you recall a couple of years ago when it was uncovered that the faux fur in Sean Combs' clothing line was in fact, faux faux, that is to say real? Well... that was raccoon dog. Fortunately, this guy still had his own coat on.

So, anyway, I'd like to go back sometime when there's a bit more water and they gots it turned up a couple notches, but we had a wonderful time, I did something I should have tried long ago, and I'm tired. Everyone at school was supposed to fly to Jeju Island tomorrow, but overblown fear of H1N1 axed that, so I guess my little bi(ologically)curious friend was all the adventure for this week. Aside from the Seoul weekend traffic, that is.

But... coming in January... maybe Japan.. maybe Thailand... stay tuned!

Yum!

Some animals are *not* more equal than others

I hope I don’t alienate any of you who read my blog; I didn’t feel I could put off writing something like this any longer.

On my way to work today, I saw that one of the ubiquitous fish tanks in the front of one of the ubiquitous mom-and-pop restaurants seemed to have a hose of some kind wrapped up near its top. As I came closer, I saw that the hose was moving and actually separated into individual strips. Then, as I got closer, I saw that what it actually was, was dozens of eels that had wrapped themselves around the heating element. Some eels were trying to wriggle their way in by forcing others off. I don’t know why they were doing this; maybe the heater was running on half power or had recently stopped working and the element still had some warmth. Be that as it may, I found it to be both repellant and sad.

I do my best to step back mentally and separate myself from my natural feelings when I unavoidably walk past all of the tanks in all of the restaurants holding all of the creatures: fish of all kinds, squid, eels, octopi, swimming and floating and sitting on the bottom and clinging to the glass, waiting all unknowingly to be netted, killed, and eaten (sometimes alive, in the case of the octopi). It’s the same trick I had to teach myself at supermarkets back home, walking past the lobster tanks. I’m secure in my beliefs and it doesn’t bother me that hardly anyone I know agrees with me, and I retreat into my “serenity to accept the things I cannot change” mode as best I can. It always saddens me a little bit, but I wall myself off pretty well, until I see a dead fish they haven’t removed or one swimming upside down or a tank where the fish are nose-to-tail for lack of space… or eels desperately clinging to a heating element.

In many ways, Korea is no worse than the West in this regard; just because we don’t see the slaughterhouses doesn’t mean that the cows and pigs are better off than these sea animals—in fact, in many ways I’m sure they have it much worse. I’m even almost resigned to the fact that some few Koreans eat dog; logically, if not emotionally, it’s the same thing. It’s the fact that so many people believe that the adrenaline that pumps through a dog’s system with terror and pain makes the meat taste better that I find hard to think about. I understand eating meat; I did it for 38 years myself. I don’t understand a mindset that making food taste better is worth torturing animals.

The most appealing aspect of Buddhism as far as I’m concerned is its call for compassion toward all beings. I don’t, however, understand how apparently no Buddhists (at least here) except for the clergy practice it.

Another, more trivial, turnoff for me is marketing meat in a cutesy way, as if the animals are delighted to die. Many, many of the restaurants here have grinning cartoon animals on their signs, flashing the peace symbol, giving a thumbs-up, grinning ear-to-ear, practically gleeful in their invitation to come on in and “Eat me.” Sometimes I’d like to say that to the restaurant owners myself.

A(ir) Holes

This one time... at E-Mart... I saw a woman stick her little foofoo dog in a small locker out in front of the store. E-Mart has little lockers in which to store your stuff before you go in; you put in 100 Won (7.5 cents) and get it back when you reopen the locker. (Incidentally, a shopping cart also costs 7.5 cents, but you don’t get the money back, and a plastic shopping bag will cost you 3.75 cents. But all that has nothing to do with my point, so I won’t mention it.)

Anyway, I thought the woman was some kind of sadist to stick her dog in there, but another time I happened to look closer at that particular bank of lockers… they have air holes in the plastic windows; they’re dog lockers! Well, possibly infant lockers, too.

Koreans’ relationship with dogs is weird and sometimes awful. Little teeny tiny pop-‘em-in-your-purse pups are wildly popular; I hate walking past the grungy little pet shops near the big Banwoldang intersection; they always have puppies the size of my fist, alone or in pairs, in little plastic cubicles in the shop windows. I’m pretty sure (no kidding) I saw a couple of pups once that didn’t even have their eyes open yet. One of my friends told me he went to a restaurant here in Daegu that has dog on the menu; it’s technically illegal but apparently completely winked at. I’ve already written about how dogs are killed for food; I need to stop now.

Cats are, as I’ve written, generally despised. Stores that carry any cat supplies or food have five or ten percent as much of that as they do dog stuff, and it’s all wildly overpriced. I’ve found that human-grade mackerel costs about sixty percent less than canned cat food. And every couple of weeks I take the 40-minute roundtrip bus ride to Costco for a 30-pound jug of cat litter; otherwise, I’d go broke buying it. It’s not easy having two cats here, but it’s not easy being a vegetarian either, or being an Anglophone, or being green. Ask Kermit.

---

이-마트 (E-Mart)’s big competitor is 홈 플러스 (Home Plus), which is co-owned by Samsung and Britain’s Tesco supermarket chain. Just as at E-Mart, every time you walk in the door, an attendant bows from the waist and rattles off ten seconds of welcome; what a great job, doing that all day. Also just as at E-Mart, there is a huge number of attendants waiting to pounce on you and “help” you if you hesitate a moment to look at something, and the grocery floor is generally a cacophony as salespeople shout endless come-ons to buy their… whatever that stuff they’re pointing at is… what do you think it is? I’m sure I don’t know, but it’s not going in my mouth.

But once in awhile at Home Plus you get a little bonus, a plus if you will. I’ve been there a couple of times when 20 or 30 aproned, gloved, bonneted grocery employees line up with their backs to the walls and coolers, a jaunty tune (actually, the melody is “If You’re Happy and You Know it”) is piped in, and the poor schlemiels clap, twirl, and practically line-dance in unison, looking none too happy about it. They will keep customers waiting if need be to do their little dance. Said it before, say it again... everybody here crazy.

Posse cats

(Some of this post is graphic and shocking.)

I made a huge change in my life today, one that will affect me for many years: I have two cats now. I'd show you photos, but they've been here for two and a half hours and they haven't come out from under the couch yet.

On Friday, I thought I'd check out the little pet shops across town near the big Banwoldang intersection, just to see how much they charge for cats. (Ordinarily, I would never, ever buy an animal from a pet store, but there simply are no shelters here. None. Not one. And there's no way I, in my situation, could lure a stray and domesticate it.) Turns out that the pet shops just have dogs: tiny pups the size of your fist, from little breeds; the puppies are kept one per little plastic cubicle. There was one sleeping pup, a terrier I think, that may not even have his eyes open yet. This is a cruel, cruel country for animals, and I will have much more disturbing, disgusting information a few paragraphs down.

But this part of the post is light-hearted: I went to Hami Mami's, the American-style brunch restaurant inside Club That, the downtown jazz club/bar. As I was leaving, I asked the cook, whose English is pretty good, "Where would you go to adopt a cat in Daegu?" She said that less than ten minutes before, a woman had been in, asking if she knew anyone looking to adopt a cat! I left my phone and email with a vague hope that they might call me and headed to the bus stop. Two blocks down, I realized I had left my Mets cap and turned back. When I returned, the cook said the woman had just called, was right downtown, and would be back in five minutes. (I know the universe tugging at my sleeve when I feel it.)

When the woman got there, we did some pidgin communicating (cats among the pidgins?) and she showed me online photos of four six-month-old cats, from the same litter, that her friend was fostering, street cats she had been feeding that had finally allowed her to pet them and pick them up. One of them is nearly an identical twin of JP, my beloved tiger cat who died 13 years ago. The cook translated for me that that one "is friends" with the orange one, and that "they are man". I told her I was very interested in taking the gray/brown tiger, and maybe his orange brother to keep him company, and she said someone would call by Sunday (today).

Later that day, Heeduk told me that landlords don't rent to people with pets, although if you sign the lease and just move in with pets unannounced, they can't do anything to you, as the leases don't have no-pets sections. (Apparently they're not familiar with the concept of the damage deposit.) The thought of the difficulties of moving with a cat in Korea, perhaps several times, and eventually returning to the States with them had my head saying it would be nuts to adopt one, and totally insane to get two. My heart wanted the company, though, and I went around and around with it.

This is what I found out on the Web on Saturday: though many Koreans love dogs, there is a folk belief that eating dog, in addition to being a great meal, is a cure for impotence. Also, they believe that if the dog is in horrible pain for a long time, it enhances the flavor and the potency, due to the adrenalin in its muscles. So dogs, especially big yellow dogs (which are considered especially tasty) are generally tortured to death. I won't go into details.

Cats, as a species, have it worse. Folk belief is that cats are devious, hateful animals, and strays are fair game. They are no laws protecting them, and Korean men especially (I read) enjoy killing them. I know that every single cat I've seen on the street slinks away when a person comes near. In addition to everything else, cat soup is considered a rheumatism remedy, and they are commonly stuck in a bag, smashed on the head, and, conscious or not, boiled alive.

I believe these things, because everyone has told me Koreans hate stray cats, these statements were posted by both Koreans and Westerners, and one posting had links to YouTube videos. I didn't watch them, of course.

At the moment, this country seems like a medieval third-world hellhole covered with a high-tech Samsung-LG-Hyundai veneer.

As you might guess if you know me at all, I could not not adopt a couple of cats after reading that information. Everything I believe in would be a lie if I didn't do so.

Today I got a call from a young woman who speaks excellent English and we made an appointment to meet at Club That this afternoon. I busied myself at E-Mart, buying food and supplies; there are a few people here who love cats, and the store's cat section if five or ten percent the size of its dog area.

When I got to Club That, two women were waiting, neither of whom spoke more than a few words of English. But within five minutes, Hyunjong, the young woman who had called me, arrived, and I heard the background information. There's a tiny, loose coalition of animal lovers in town who make it their business to TNR (trap, neuter, release) street cats. One of their friends, who was not there, had saved these four, paid to spay or neuter them, and has been feeding them for weeks.

After an interminable time over coffee, the four of us took the long drive to her house, where I met my new posse, my friends, my kids. Both the boys have rounded left ears, as Korean law says that the vet must clip the tip off the ear of a cat when it's neutered: it's against the law to harm a neutered cat, and the ear is how people recognize one (as if they would notice or care that it had been fixed.) I signed a contract saying that I would never be cruel to the cats or abandon them, paid 60,000 Won (a fraction of what she'd paid to get them neutered) and agreed that she could call periodically and come visit them to see that they're being treated well.

And so, eventually, Hyunjong and the two other women I'd met at Club That came back with me to my apartment, where we let the guys out of their carriers. That was three hours ago now, and they still haven't come out from under the couch. (After all, they're strays who had just learned to trust one person.) Once in awhile I hear a tribble noise. Sooner or later, they'll come out for food and we can begin bonding.

I know from experience that a cat has to grow into a name; the right names will come in a little bit. For the moment, I'm calling the brown-gray tiger Tug; it reminds me of the way JP would lie on his side and bat dry food to his face, and is the name of my favorite baseball player. The orange guy, for now anyway, is Tiki, after my favorite football player. Tug and Tiki: has a ring to it, I think, but maybe other names will present themselves.

I believe in spreading kindness and healing, though I have failed so many times to live up to it. This is one way I can act on what I believe in. I look forward to years of sharing my life with these guys. But first they have to come out from under the couch.

Update: bedtime, midnight, seven hours in: not yet.

I'll never go into a traditional market again

In planning for Wednesday morning's election returns get-together at my apartment, I went looking for mugs and glasses. (I have two of each, and I expect a half-dozen guests.)

I ended up 'way on the other side of downtown, at Seomun Market, the biggest traditional Korean market between Seoul and Busan. I was leery of going anywhere near a market after seeing the dog carcass at one of them, but I know that you can find nearly anything there, for much cheaper than in department stores, and I planned to steer clear of any dead animal stalls, which are always grouped together.

The market is amazing, a giant labyrinth of dark, tiny little shops with four- or five-foot aisles between them, with many thousands of people trying to elbow through each other, sometimes motor scooters plowing through the crowds, and literally millions of items for sale. The photo above is of the widest, brightest, least crowded area there, and at that I waited for a dozen people to pass me before I took the picture.

I had just entered an area with a lot of dead fish and decided to turn around when up ahead I saw a gorgeous little fluffy white dog the size of a purse, in a cage barely bigger than he was. He was panting happily and wagging at everyone who walked by. He was so cute and happy that he should have been in a Mighty Dog commercial.

He was food.

No doubt they'd sell him as a pet if you wanted, but he was there next to a lot of little cages, each with a half-dozen chickens jammed into them. (If I had seen them earlier, I would have turned around then.) He was food.

I just do not understand how you could kill and eat something that's wagging its tail and smiling at you.

For a moment I thought wildly about buying him. But I can't have a dog where I am. It ran through my mind to buy him and just let him go on the street to take his chances. But I've seen half-starving cats on the streets, and I haven't seen any hint of an animal shelter in the city. It seemed even crueler to turn him loose to suffer, and all that would happen then is that they'd bring in another dog tomorrow to take his place on Death Row.

It hurt badly, but I turned around and walked away as fast as I could. Did I do the right thing?

Tanks of fish and octopi and squid are in the windows, or on the sidewalks out front, of restaurants everywhere here, and I always feel terrible thinking about their waiting all unknowing to be grabbed and killed at any time. I know that animal cruelty is just more open here than in the U.S., and I know that ignoring the situation doesn't make it go away. But focusing on it doesn't make it go away either.

Did I do the right thing? I don't think I'll ever know.

Pop Goes the Weasel

I went back to Mt. Palgongsan and Donghwasa Temple on Wednesday. (Actually, that sentence belongs in the Departmental Bureau of Repetitious Redundancy Department, as those names mean Mt. Palgong Mountain and Donghwa Temple Temple, and you can see the photos.) (And yes, that's a picture of the spot where I tripped; I told you the sidewalk was bad.)

I was supposed to go with Micah, the newest guy at work. For me, teaching in Korea is a huge adventure; for him, it's the Ritz: he's spent several years tramping around Afghanistan, Pakistan, and a bunch of other places that end in stan, sleeping on the locals' floors. Be that as it may, Micah contacted me that he'd barely slept the night before, so I went alone.

I learned something about myself on the ride out. The bus was packed to the gills, and I ended up standing down in the stairwell at the exit door. Every time we came to a bus stop, I'd come up off the stairs to let people out; at one stop, everyone around me (but me, for a moment) noticed that I'd step up, someone would disembark and the door would start to close, I'd step down, and the door would open. I'd step up, it would start to close, I'd step down, it would open. This happened three or four times. Inside of five seconds, everybody in the back of the bus was laughing.

I thought it was funny too, and I was laughing as much as anybody. Not long ago, I would have been humiliated because I thought they were laughing at me; now I just felt how funny it was. So here's what I learned: I've shed a lot of my defensiveness and ego. Knowing my ego is shrinking makes me so proud of myself! (Wait; what?)

The trip up the mountain was challenging and uneventful, so I'll skip to the trip down. I just kind of struck out on a new trail, which ran out, and I blundered about a bit, sharply rightward and steeply downward (kind of like the Bush administration).

Within ten minutes, I made two unexpected acquaintances. A big ol' ferrety animal popped out from under a rock and froze when he saw me. I froze too. We stared at each other for quite a while, then he skittered under a log. When I came home, I searched the 'net and determined he's a Siberian weasel; I don't know if he tried to google me. (I've been trying to upload a picture from the Web, but apparently the tech department at Blogger is also run by weasels. You'll have to search for Siberian weasel images yourself, or take my word for it: he looked like Frank Burns.)

Then, way out in the woods, I was greeted by a Korean lady who knew some English. I thought at first that she was taking pity on my befuddled expression and was going to help me find my way, but then she said she was Jehovah. I was pretty impressed till I realized that none of the bushes was burning. She meant she was a Witness. She asked me if I could read Korean and wanted to give me a J's W tract. I played dumb (that is to say, acted naturally) and went on my way.

I finally found a real trail and the way to the Donghwasa complex. It's hard to encapsulate how I feel about it. There are many buildings of various degrees of religious importance, and a mixture of worship and rubbernecking going on. I saw a monk in an Adidas track suit, and people touching their heads to the floor in a pavilion facing the giant standing Buddha (which, the brochure says, encases two pieces of the historical Buddha's bones.) As I've said before, I find the icons and music offputting, and there was a deep tuneless chant, which I thought sounded vaguely menacing, playing over loudspeakers the whole time.

But I still feel very peaceful there; I don't know if it's the setting, with the mountains looming above and all around the courtyard, or the earnest belief of the pilgrims, or what. But, for whatever reason, it's one of the most serene places I've ever been. Afterward, on the walk down to the main road, I passed three women kneeling in front of a Buddha image carved into a boulder; the sign said the image was carved between 1200 and 1400 years ago. St. Augustine calls itself the "Ancient City" because it's 443 years old; I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

Then I walked down to the bus stop, checked for blood on the sidewalk and found none, and came home.

You may want to skip this; it's not pleasant

This one is hard for me to write.

All of us with a few months’ experience or less were asked to go to the Samduk school this morning for a little training with Dr. Kim and his wife. There were five of us: Ray, who’s been here three months, Alex, Luke, and Nicole, who’ve all arrived in the last week, and me.

Afterward, Ray led Luke and me across downtown to one of the bigger outdoor markets. There were hundreds of shops and stalls. Vendors of similar items were grouped together: ten with tools, a dozen with dishes, and so on: herbs, clothing, kitchen items.

And then we came to it: a narrow aisle with dozens of, maybe a hundred or more, food vendors. I was a little put off by the piles of big dead octopi and tanks of living fish the size of my forearm, and more disturbed by the tubs of live turtles waiting for slaughter. I tried to look straight ahead and run the gauntlet as quickly as possible. Then we came to a couple of tables with skinned dog carcasses.

According to the ‘net, it’s illegal now to eat dog in Korea, but it might still be done in some of the rural villages. Two and a half million people do not constitute a rural village. This market is only a few blocks from shops selling Ralph Lauren and DKNY!

Logically, as an animal-rights person, I think that it shouldn’t be more horrifying to eat dead dogs any more than, say, dead pigs. But that’s not how it feels, even for me. It feels as if it's a step short of cannibalism.

I’m sad when I walk by a restaurant with a big tank full of doomed fish or I’m in the grocery department of E-Mart and see the aquarium with dozens of crabs, each with a leg span of twenty inches, piled on each other. I learned to turn my response off back home, going by the lobster tank at the grocery. The restaurants here have tanks out front, with squid or crabs or carp in them. Sometimes there will be one swimming, or floating (dead), upside down. And that bothers me, too.

I don’t believe in causing the suffering and death of sentient beings to serve our "needs". Kindness to all creatures is at the heart of my spirituality. (I’m sorry if I sound preachy.)

But the slaughtering of dogs is one step beyond; knowing it happens and seeing the results are two different things.

I still feel sick two hours later, and I expect to see it behind my eyelids when I close my eyes tonight.