Score!

I'm halfway through our school's winter break, and so far it's been the best staycation I've had in Korea. I usually sit around and mope about how everyone else is off on a Southeast Asian beach...

This is a Northeast Asian beach, along the Han River in downtown Seoul.

...or in Europe or back home in the US of A while I freeze my Niblets off in the Land of the Morning C-c-c-calm. But I've watched good movies on the computer, read an extraordinary YA book (The Hunger Games) and am about to start reading the sequel, gotten about town, spent time with Hasher friends, and done some great retail therapy.

Usually just spending money doesn't make me happy (unless it's on books; my shameful English-teacher secret is that buying books elates me a lot more than reading them.) But a couple of days ago I bought a terrific tiger-head winter hat. I was only going to wear it on the hash, to fit in with the silly hats and socks and such that are popular among the hashnoscenti, but  it makes me happy, so I'm wearing it around the 'hood (in lieu of a hood) too. And the locals don't seem to be laughing at me any more than usual.

It looks something like this.

New Year's Eve was a party in Itaewon with "my" Yongsan Kimchi group and the Osan Bulgogi group; New Year's Day was a walking-trail hash in the same place, where I also bought my "happy coat": a satiny short kimono-like robe with one's home hash group's logo on the back, on which one sews all the patches (which serve as sort of demerit badges) from the various runs. Yongsan Kimchi's happy coat is my favorite color combo, the Michigan Wolverines' midnight blue with maize trim. I'll go back to Itaewon in the next couple of days to get the ajumma (middle-aged lady) who embroiders them to embroider "Corndog Millionaire" on the lapels and sew on my patches. Psyched for that.

And then today, Sunday, the Southside hashers hosted a great run through the streets and over a snowy, slippery mountain...

\

It looked something like this.

 
, and then, since the hash was on the right subway line anyway, I went to Home Plus. Home Plus is much like E-Mart, but better, with a wider selection of groceries and some clothing that actually fits me. I don't go there often, as it's a bit of a journey, but today I hit the mother lode.

It's so hard for a veghead to find a variety of food here; 'most everything has meat or fish in it and you can't be sure what doesn't, because those dang Koreans insist on listing the ingredients in Korean. I end up eating the same few things, and not necessarily healthful things, over and over. And a lot of eggs, ova and ova.

But at Home Plus today I found vegetarian ramen (I bought a dozen packets), Italian-style diced tomatoes, vegetarian chili, and cheap but delicious pomegranite juice. I'm trying hard to eat better and more varied food. I had veggie burgers at both hash events in Itaewon this weekend, too!

Unless you're a vegetarian in a non-Western-alphabetted land (hint: you're not), you can't imagine how rare these items are and how stoked I am to have this cornucopia of good eats.

To paraphrase the mortal words of the Ohio Express, "Yummy yummy yummy, I got grub in my tummy."

Oh, and I registered for my first half-marathon, in April. And I expect to do another full marathon in the fall.

So, as the young'uns say, it's all good.

Nexen's the one?

I'd like to thank the Mets for getting me in gear yesterday; I'd planned to ease into Saturday by watching their game online, but they considerately fell behind 7-0 very quickly, which sprung me early from my Web-induced trance.

I had a good long run. Or a good, long run. I now know all the parks in the neighborhood and, along the stream, all the rubberized-surface areas and where the shade's likely to be at various times of day. This time, I ran six and a half miles without ever getting more than a mile or so away from home, winding around the water and through the parks wherever my whimsy and my Asics took me.

I'm adding five minutes each week to my weekend long run in preparation for the marathon. This one was 65 minutes and it felt good. There's a feeling of strength and satisfaction and, I guess, virtue after such an outing; it's a pity for newcomers that the eleventh through, say, thirtieth minute can feel like such a slog that many people give up running entirely. At any rate, this run felt really good, though by the end my calf muscles were tighter than shrink wrap.

So, a little later, I thought it might be a good day to get a massage. That's been a challenge here: most "massage" places aren't... um, erm... legitimate, featuring more "happy endings" than Meg Ryan's filmography. The massage therapists generally don't speak English and tend to be very, very forceful; I've seen them at the jjimjilbangs using what appears from a distance to be steel wool. My Korean skills don't extend to "I'd like a fairly gentle, stress-releasing, completely PG- rated rubdown from a licensed practitioner, please." But my shoulders are boulders, my lower back is always sore, and my calves... well, just say I prefer it when I can walk normally.

I'd received a brochure for a legit therapeutic massage place, and talked to the personable, Anglophone owner, at the 5K race a few weeks ago in Bundang. His studio is in Itaewon, just a couple of blocks from What the Book and the Foreign Food Market, so I headed over there. ("Over there" is roughly as far away as Over There was for George M. Cohan's doughboys in 1917.) When I got to Sky Massage, it turned out that the Chinese guy who's very good but really rough-- my fellow teacher Susan got a quick rubdown from him after the 5K and said it hurt like hell-- was there, but Maureen, who sounds as if her skills are exactly what I need, is in the States. So I'll try again in a week or two.

The trip to Itaewon wasn't a waste, however, as at I got a Runner's World magazine, a couple of Robert B. Parker paperbacks, and a Korean "phrasebook" on cd for transfer to my iPod, at What the Book, and a lot of prepackaged curry from India at the food mart.

My big outing for the weekend was supposed to be a trip with our principal Ron and his family to the Twins-Giants game at the stadium; Michelle at work called on Friday for tickets, but they were already sold out. That was certainly unexpected, and probably due to the Giants' fans, who are the most devoted in Korea. The Giants play all the way down in Busan, but their supporters travel all over to support them, generally wearing inflated orange plastic bags on their heads at the games... yeah, I don't know, either.

Anyway, Saturday was so beautiful, 75 degrees and sunny, and there I was in mid-afternoon in Itaewon, full of energy, that I decided to take the subway 'way out to southwestern Seoul to see how the "other" team in town does what they do.Their guests were my old friends, the Samsung Lions from Daegu.

The Nexen Heroes are the sad sacks (Sad Sox?) of Korean baseball. In 28 years, they've played in three cities and been known as the Sammi Superstars, Chongbo Pintos, Hyundai Unicorns, Woori Heroes, the Heroes of Seoul (the only team ever not to have a corporate sponsor) and, as of a week before the season started, the Nexen (tire company) Heroes. The fans' plastic sticks are translucent and cheap-looking; they look like somebody inflated condoms for a health-class lecture. Their mascot is a ridiculous big-headed, jutting-chinned guy who looks like the love child of Clutch Cargo and Jay Leno; the back of his head is lightning-bolt shaped, as if he had some hideous accident during birth.

I swear the only reason I took this video is so you could get a glimpse of the Nexen Hero in the bottom-right corner in the final second. Honest.

I suppose that, as the patron sinner (I'm no saint!) of lost causes, I ought to adopt the Heroes as my team. But their park is way, way too far away for them to be my home team, I hate their Redskins' colors, their mascot and their name, and as a lifelong Met, Ranger, Knick and Big Red fan and Democrat, I think I've suffered enough. This matters to no one but me, but I don't know if I'm a Bears (my home team) fan or a Lions (my first home team) fan when it comes down to it. For this day, I was a Lions fan.

The Heroes' park is, in size and amenities, between the Bears' (and Twins') modern stadium, which was built for the '88 Olympics, and the Lions' dump back in Daegu. On this day, I sat among the rabid Lions fans (note: the "rabid" is lower case; the team is not the Rabid Lions) and, with my back to an aisle and an empty seat on either side, it was a lot more enjoyable than at the games at the big ballpark with thunder sticks thundering right in my ears. I'd guess that 10,000 of the 18,000 seats were filled and more fans came the 200 miles from Daegu than from the area around the ballpark. Sad Sox, indeed.

So I had a great time, I learned some new fan sing-alongs (to the tunes of Sing Sing Sing, Red River Valley, and, my favorite, Cum on Feel the Noize), and the Lions prevailed 5-0. Sixteen more subway stops and eight hours after I'd left, I made it back home, tired but sated.

Today? Another beautiful day, had coffee with Lauren, planning to watch the new Doctor Who episode and take a shorter run and, later, a bike trek to the park out west to grade papers in the sun. Another good weekend... and the Pac-Man beepety-beep from those awful bike machines isn't even bugging me as much as it did at first... though they're no walk in the park.

Life's (mostly) Good in the shadow of the LG building.

***

Later that evening...

The run was kinda cool; I came upon a Korean man who was tired on his run and had started walking; when I reached him, he started running again and we ran together for 20 minutes, having a nice though halting conversation in his limited English and my entry-level Korean. Mr. Gwang is 55 and grew up in the grinding poverty after the war. ("Grinding poverty" is my phraseology.) He's a nice guy and it's good to run with somebody, even somebody you don't know. He was kind enough to be impressed that I could read "Gwacheon Marathon" in Korean letters on the vests of runners passing us... but, damn, that's two marathons I had no notice of within blocks of my place in the last three weeks!

I never did get out to that park in the west, as Nicky the art teacher called to see if I wanted to go to get pizza with her and Dex. (Guess what my answer was.) It's nice to have a little network that spreads info: she told me where to get a cheap used bike, I told her about a big sportswear clearance, they showed me where to get cheap pizza...

So it's been another really good weekend, oot and aboot. (This entry has been dubbed in Canadian.) And in four weeks I'll be in California...

Snow place, like home

I had already had my Eggo waffles and pot of coffee this morning when Lauren called; she was back from Christmas in Daegu and wanted to know if I'd like to join her for our traditional Sunday brunch... I would. We stayed in the neighborhood, at CofFine Gurunaru ("CofFine Gurunaru wants to be a tree and a ferry in a river just like a place to rest," as it says on the mug.) Having already eaten, I comported myself in a saintly manner and only had a caramel latte. (A big one; I said saintly, not messiahesque.)

By the time I got back to the apartment, it was snowing; the flakes were small albeit multitudinous and determined. I looked out my balcony window...

...and knew I had to get out in it. I have missed snow so much.

I've come back to the view I had as a kid in Ithaca, that snow is magical, and I felt absolutely exhilarated when I got out. I walked, in something much like one of Thich Nhat Hanh's walking meditations, along my running path down by the stream, escorted by ducks, egrets, and magpies...

...for a half hour, till I got to the AT Center, the convention hall where they were having a huge clearance sale with dozens of clothing and shoe vendors. It was a cold but serene walk.

By the time I emerged with a shell top and a pair of gloves for running, the local drivers were having even a little more trouble than they always do with the concept of merging at an intersection...

...and, by the way, I've been meaning to post for months that 95% or more of passenger cars in Korea are white, silver, or black. This video is Exhibit A. Just be glad that you're not a food-delivery guy on a scooter in Seoul traffic today... or any day, come to think of it.

I walked back to E-Mart, bumping into our principal Ron's wife and son along the way. (It's a small town after all.) Outside High Brand, the five-story gallery of little shops above E-Mart, I found proof that neither snow nor cold nor wind nor... um, more snow... will stop those poor girls who have jobs trying to draw attention to stores by wriggling about to K-pop music. They're pretty ubiquitous, both here and in Daegu (I posted about it back in April), but in this case, I think they went above and beyond...

...and, just as always, absolutely nobody passing by paid any attention to them whatsoever. Ah well, there's no business like snow business.

Then I stopped down at E-Mart (for horseradish sauce, ketchup, soy milk, pancake syrup, and cocoa mix... I have one hell of a recipe.)

And there, despite all the lovely, peaceful, blessed snow, I found the true high point of my day, a remarkably large kiwi, which, considering also its acquisition of a primitive sort of self-awareness, I suspect has been genetically modified...

...thus completing a truly fruitful journey. I returned home...

...to a whiter place than I'd left.

I love me some snow.

A pretty girl is like a malady

What you see above is a plastic surgeon's ad, which I found on another blog, illustrating the modern Korean ideal of beauty: Caucasian, basically. Young women, often to better their chances of getting hired, sometimes have surgery on their eyelids and cheekbones to look more Western.

It's kind of ironic, really, considering how many Western men find East Asian women attractive; seems that, for some, being a pretty-but-Asian-looking woman is almost considered a medical problem. Okay, that's way too strong, but it does allow me to use the title I slapped on this post.

Koreans also, apparently, find lighter skin attractive, possibly as a holdover from the days when it was a sign of status to be able to stay out of the sun, unlike fieldworkers. Now that the hot sunny days are here, I see a lot of women using umbrellas. Either they think they're Mary Poppins, they're performing an homage to Rene Magritte, they're Zapruder film re-enactors, or they're trying to keep cool and untanned.

Also, many, or most, store ads use Western models and most cartoon characters, which are used heavily in the media, look Caucasian.

...and that's precisely the kind of hard-hitting social commentary you've come to not expect from my blog. So let's see what else is going on...

Yesterday was an odd, traveling about and doing nothing kind of day for me. I taught in the morning, got out at 1, as I do one Sunday a month to go to Writers' Group meetings, took the bus downtown to Club That (erstwhile home of our base, Hami Mami's, and still our gathering place), only to find no one there but Pill-kon, our one Korean member, sitting at the picnic table in the courtyard. After 15 minutes, nobody else came, so I left. Then I got a phone text from Justin saying he'd be late because he was finishing lunch, joined him and his girlfriend at the Holy Grill for a beer. bought some sandals, went home and boldly went where this man has gone before, taking a nap.

(By the way, Star Trek movie? Terrific.)

It was a hot day, up to 93 Fahrenheit, but we're still in that short period where it cools off at night, and come dusk I had to get out into the world. The three of us were woefully short in the cat-litter department, so I took the bus to Costco, about a 20-minute ride. It's always fun horsing the 30-pound jug of litter, along with whatever else I've bought, onto the bus to come home.

This time I had a slice of delicious horrible wonderful fatty heavenly greasy Costco pizza, which I took out to the bus stop because the tables inside were taken. I was hurrying to engulf it when the 323-1 bus pulled up, I shoved the pizza slice in its box into my bag, and I hopped on.

Well, here's the deal. The 323 bus runs a big loop counterclockwise, the 323-1 the same route clockwise. I take the 323-1 to Costco and the 323 back home. Unfortunately, your greasy-fingered friend here hopped on the clockwise-loop bus this time. No biggie, right? Probably I'll just have to ride a little longer. How long could it take?

Well, I didn't know the 323-1 from Costco visits the west side of town (but at least I got to see the Woobang Tower in its multicolor floodlit glory), every backstreet in Daegu, and I think, parts of Shanghai as well. It took 95 minutes to get home, but it seemed longer because I kept wondering when we were going to turn around and, as we finally got back into my neighborhood, whether I'd recognize the stop in the dark from the direction opposite to the one I'm used to, or have to walk a half-mile uphill with a 30-pound container of cat litter.

Still, my newfound serenity helped; I was much less tense than I would have been before I found a spiritual path. I would have been having kittens over it in my neurotic, crisis-mode way not that long ago. I once was lost, but now I'm found. Even when I'm lost.

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.

Best. Weekend. EVER.

(Don't you hate it when people think that their cats-- who, after all, look like a hundred million other cats-- are so cute they'll stick a photo up even when it has nothing to do with what they're talking about? Me too.)

...well, maybe not the best weekend ever. (My honeymoon was pretty good.) But I'm teaching the kids to use strong, interesting words, and I didn't think "A Really Nice Weekend" would cut it.

As there may be one or two Anglophones to whom I haven't whined about how I got offered my dream job (with 600,000 Won a month more in salary) six hours after I'd sent my degree to Daegu and how FedEx promised to redirect the package but didn't, and how they actually called me to apologize for delivering the package faster than promised to the address on the label... I should put in all the tragic details here. But if I do, I'll be up all night and my tears might short out the keyboard, so I'll save it.

But I've been in touch with the aforementioned dream school (St. Paul Preparatory Academy, an elite international school in Bundang, a new and ritzy Seoul suburb) and this weekend I bought my bullet-train ticket for next Sunday to go up, see the school, and meet my contact there, Tony, who sent me the contract last August with the note: "Please please tell me you haven't sent your papers to Daegu yet." He says that they've expanded their enrollment a great deal already in their first year, there's a good chance they'll need another English teacher, and mine is the first name he'll present to the headmaster... so we shall see. I couldn't spend the rest of my career at LIKE school, but I might could maybe do so at St. Paul... I also hope to see Margaret, one of my ex-St. Joe students and cross-country runners, who is teaching up there.

Besides that... I found Korean class on Saturday morning to be difficult, possibly because I didn't glance at the materials all week long, but I made some friends: Joelle and Cliff, though half my age, have let much more adventurous lives than I, including stints in the Peace Corps. We arranged to meet at Club That on Saturday night for the launch party of Daegu's first magazine for Anglos and locals. (Check it out online at daugupockets.com).

During the afternoon, I did my teaching, then skipped the health club (for the first time in ten days!) and went downtown. I was too late for Joelle's birthday dinner, but met them at Club That, along with their friend (my new friend) James. It was less than ideal, as it wasn't so much a party as a shouting match over the band, but then we went down to the first floor (where Hami Mami's is in the daytime) and had a nice talk. Joelle asked if I wanted to come to the Writer's Group at the same place at 2 on Sunday, and being a decisive sort, I said, "Maybe."

Today (Sunday), I went for a run in the park, then showered and headed downtown. Joelle and Cliff were there, as were Emma from New Zealand, Jeremy from California, Justin the Yankee fan and Princeton grad (who despite it all seems like a nice guy), and Pill-kon, who, as you may have guessed, is local. We had 90 minutes or so of people sharing good writing and exchanging commentary. I hadn't brought anything, so I recited the only thing I've ever written that I've memorized:

***
Tom
(once sperm a secret's size
and egg a whisper's width)
Spoke knowingly today.

"God is dead,"
Thomas said.
***

(That poem, by the way, is older than anybody else in the writer's group and shorter than most Koreans.)

So I have friends (my first in Asia with whom I don't work!) and will be going to the meeting next month. They're all smart, friendly, and talented, but I think I could take 'em all in a 60s-sitcom trivia contest. Maybe.

Afterward, Cliff and I went to see Inkheart at the movies. I liked it very much indeed; it's gotten mixed reviews, and it won't be any hit: too dark for little kids, too fairy-tale for a lot of adults, but it's the best movie I've seen in a long time. Right up my alley, anyway.

...and then I stopped at Kyobo Books, bought a gorgeous, 19th-century-looking hardcover journaling book (Tradition notebook: Precious Memories, Magic Spells), complete with placemarker ribbon, for seven bucks, and came home to begin my procrastination over writing this post by Facebook Friending everybody I just met... and now Justin tells me via Facebook chat that...

There. Is. A. Regular. Bar. Trivia. Night! (As you may know, the only things in the world I'm good at are writing, trivia, and one other thing that modesty and a solicitous concern for the sensitive reader prevent me from sharing with the public...) It occurs to me that I work nights, so I might not make it to trivia... but maybe I can work something out; it doesn't start till 11 p.m.

So, to recap, this weekend brought me:

A ticket to check out my dream job
A magazine that might help me find out what the hell is going on socially in this town
A beer
A writer's group, meaning:
a) a kick in the gluteus for my writing, and
b) FRIENDS!
A good movie
A gorgeous journal
Hope for a rebirth of trivia

...and, oh yeah, spring. It's been in the 50s Fahrenheit through all of late January and early February. (Jealous much?)

I feel as if, after over five months of going to work and going home, my world is opening up...and next Friday starts a three-day weekend! So... sometimes you eat the bear. Or, in my case, the bear-shaped block of tofu.

Boos, shoes, 'n' blues

None of the Korean kids had much idea about Halloween. George supervised the preparation of the school for the holiday, hanging shredded streamers at the head of the hallway, putting black construction paper over our classroom windows and purple construction paper over the overhead hall lights, and hanging a few bats and spiders at strategic spots. It all looked pretty spooky. I brought in mini-chocolate bars for the kids and had to teach them all that you don't get a treat by shouting "Teacha! Candy! Candy!" So now they know about Trick or Treat. A few of them had witch hats or capes on; I predict that Halloween will be big here in five or ten years.

Today, Sunday, I was supposed to go hiking on Palgongsan with Micah, but he canceled at the very last minute. Actually, that's just as well; I'm still pretty beat from going up the mountain several days ago and I was mostly going to go to show him around. I was already partway downtown, having taught a class for the absent Heeduk, so I decided to go on down there and find some running shoes. Mine have worn down pretty quickly; the sidewalks here are bad for me, literally from head to toe. (Ha!)

So I located some New Balances at a smallish shop and then found Hami Mami's for some French toast. (It's okay now to not call it Freedom toast, isn't it?) I'd been to the little Hami Mami's Western-style brunch restaurant by Camp Walker a couple of times, but this was the real thing, the one run by Hami herself. It's in Club That, the jazz bar/restaurant that draws a lot of English teachers and other Westerners. There were a few Yanks there today, and to tell the truth it was nice to hear American spoken. I had actually been there once before, saying goodbye to Curtis, up at the tiny third-floor bar. The place is kinda mismatched and funky in a way I like, sort of like the Rongovian Embassy back home, all grown up. I'll be going back to Club That some evening in hopes of making some new friends.

I'm planning a get-together with some of the friends I've already got, Obama supporters who work at LIKE. On Wednesday morning, we're having an election-watching party (a Democratic party) at my place. Maybe a half-dozen people, which is all the apartment can hold, will come. I found a site that streams MSNBC and CNN (and F-word News) live and one of the guests is bringing a wireless router so we can set up several laptops. We'll have brunchy stuff and maybe, I hope, a little champagne. It will be a great party... if we win.

To tell the truth, I'm a little worried about the election; Obama's way ahead in the popular vote, but that includes huge margins in New York, California, and Illinois. He's only a little ahead in a lot of battleground states, and between the hammering about taxes and the (incredibly suspiciously timed) illegally leaked info about his illegal-resident aunt and possible buyer's remorse by the undecideds, they might flip. It's just possible he could get 52% of the popular vote and lose the electoral college. I don't expect it to happen, but it might. I'd like to say that I'd just die, but I already died in the last two elections.

Anyway, I went looking for mugs and glasses. I walked several blocks west of downtown, where I had never been before, to the huge Seomun Market, and found something I'd rather not have seen (see the post below this), which is still haunting me, but no mugs. I took the bus back and stopped at E-Mart and found the most darling mugs on special. (That adjective was in solidarity with those opposing the anti-gay measures in California and Florida.) They have happy cartoon donkeys on them! (The mugs, not the people opposing... oh, never mind.) If our side wins, I'll give the mugs to my friends as souvenirs.

It will be a great time if we win. We'll paint the town Democratic blue. If not, we'll be the ones who are blue.

Odds and... well, frankly, odds

It's been an interesting few days, at least if you're living it. As you're only reading about it, I make no promises. Actually this is probably going to be pretty dull. I hope I don't lose either of my fans.

It's been a week since I decided to take a really, really close look at the local sidewalks, and I've healed up remarkably well. I had my stitches out yesterday, although it will be a couple more weeks before the doc wants to stop covering it. He told me to not get it wet for a week. I suspect that if I don't shampoo for that time, I'll look like Larry from the Three Stooges, or maybe like our friend in the picture above.

The purple has receded under my eye to the point that it's only visible in a thin line where I have a wrink... a wisdom crease. The doctor says I'll have a small permanent scar, which bothers me, as it may cut my appeal with the local chicks. Maybe if I say it's a dueling scar...

I wore my new glasses for two days, feeling drunk, before I had to conclude that the lenses weren't right. (I have astigmatism, so if they aren't at precisely the correct angles, you might as well be wearing SADD drunk goggles.) I went back to the optical store and, through the saleswoman's extremely circumscribed English, my gestures, and a little diagram I drew showing my pupillary distance (needed to get the focal points right), I hope we got it right. I'm supposed to get them back in three more days.

I expected to go back out to Palgongsan today to show off my not-running-for-the-bus skills, but woke up with my body saying, and I quote, "Who you kiddin'?" My schedule's shifted so I don't have to go to work till dinnertime most days, so there's no rush. Especially for the bus.

As you may know, I can be pretty indecisive. Or maybe not. Anyway, on Sunday I couldn't decide if I wanted to go to the Samsung Lions' playoff game or just take it easy and check out a department/grocery store I hadn't been to, HomePlus (which is a branch of the British Tesco chain). Fortunately, as both destinations were north of downtown, I headed in that direction and waited for serendipity.

I decided that the ballgame was too much hassle, went to HomePlus (well worth the trip: a bottle of pomegranite juice and some English shredded wheat/cranberry cereal!) But when I came out, it was an hour to gametime and there were the ballpark lights RIGHT... THERE...

Tickets were all sold out, and I thought it might be just as well, but then a scalper buttonholed me and sold me a 15,000 Won ticket for... 15,000 Won. (I'm not entirely sure how Korean scalpers make a profit.) When I got inside, every single seat in the park was taken, and I ended up standing the whole time on the concrete walkway separating the lower from the upper seats, over on the visiting side along the first-base line. On my way there, I saw three Americans, one wearing a Phillies cap, who, seeing me wearing the blue and orange, graciously taunted me on the Mets' collapse.

Speaking of Mets vs. Phillies, I've been to games in Philly where a third of the fans would be rooting for the Mets, which led to cursing and the occasional drunken brawl. I once had a cup dropped on my head from an escalator at Veterans' Stadium. In contrast, here the sets of fans just ignored each other; in front of me were a few thousand Doosan Bears fans with their cheerleaders and flags and signs-- I was even given a kind of Karate-Kid-head-sash reading "Let's Go Doosan" in Korean. Behind and all around me were the Lions' fans. I never heard a harsh word between the two groups.

They'd tarted up the place (and the prices) for the playoffs, with two huge Lion statues in the stands, flame- and smoke-emitting nozzles for when the Lions scored, and a huge banner, twenty rows high, that would unfurl down the stands at opportune moments. The Lions won, my back decided that seven innings of standing on concrete were enough, and I went home.

I received my absentee ballot via email and want to mail it back today. However, I have to print out a certificate swearing I filled out my own ballot and so on, and I can't get it to print. That's odd, considering that the ballot printed. I blame Karl Rove. I hope that Manager Park at school, who speaks no English but is an electronics whiz, can fix that... I would truly hate to not get to vote.

Please insert your own snappy ending here.

Anybody got a chainsaw?

(This picture is two days after the recent unpleasantness. Six stitches lurk under the bandage.)

On the brighter side, I've found out that the prices here for healthcare and the services rendered can be amazing.

When they took me to the hospital, they cleaned me up, examined me, took x-rays, stitched me, gave me an antibiotic shot and wrote me a prescription. Out-of-pocket cost: $19. Cost of one day's pills (nine pills in all): $2.

Each of my follow-up visits: in and out in 15 minutes, checking the stitches, short consult, change the dressing, new prescription: $3.20.

I went to replace my glasses today; I picked out a titanium frame, which is very very thin and tough. The total cost in the States, even at Wal-Mart, would have exceeded $300. Here? Eighty-six bucks. I could have had them in ten minutes, but since I'm astigmatic, they had to order the lenses. At home, it would take a week. I'll pick them up tomorrow.

(Now, if you see the guy in the photo in your neighborhood, lock up your daughters, your sons, and your small animals... and hide the sharp objects.)

Material boy

Did you ever see "Survivor", when the tribes have been out on the island of East Kumqatki for a few weeks, and they go bull-goose loony over the opportunity to win a hamburger or a beer? Well, I've been something like that in regards to a few things.

I have searched and searched for frozen veggies (not available here), fresh broccoli, cauliflower, and so on (not available till I found some expensive broccoli at E-Mart a few days ago), a flat (top) sheet, flannel lounge/pajama pants for wearing around the apartment... Yesterday (Saturday), I hit the mother lode.

I was paid for the first time on Friday and was worried because the bank the school uses for direct deposits is way out of my way, as the various banks' ATMs do not display English on their welcome screens. But I found that the ATMs for all four bank chains I've tried do display English once you've put your card in. And that includes one in the school's building and one a block from my apartment!

I wasn't certain I wanted to join Costco; for one thing, I thought I had to go all the way downtown to catch the bus there. But the bus stops a block from my place (right across from the ATM). So I went. Costco is the only really English-friendly store I've found; one of the women at the customer service desk spoke excellent English, and every item at least has a sign in English saying what it is. (That's important; I'm afraid to buy half the food at E-Mart because I don't know if it has dead animal in it, and when I do buy something... well, a few weeks ago I bought what I thought was tube-like pasta, brought it home and slathered it with Prego, and found it was some kind of sweetened Chinese extruded rice pellet stuff.) And a lot of the stuff at our Costco came straight from the US. Even half the clothes are in American sizes.

And. I. found. A six-pound bag of frozen mixed veggies. Flannel lounge pants (two pair for nine bucks.) A flannel sheet set (fitted and top sheets and pillowcase: fourteen bucks). Winter gloves. A soft, lightweight fleece blanket. Soft, thick socks for hiking and surviving winter. And, on my way out, a gigantic, delightful, greasy, sinful slice of New York-style pizza. Also, though I didn't get any on this trip, they have (absolutely essential for me) glucosamine at a good price and nice, heavy cold-weather shirts in my size.

So the place is feeling a little more homey all the time. And later, in the building next to the school, I found some good hiking/winter boots for 1/3 off.

The Won has fallen from 1,000 Won=96 cents two months ago to 1000 Won=76 cents today. I don't know what up wid dat, but I hope it goes back up before I go back to the states. Still, most things are pretty cheap here... a few days ago I got the best haircut I've had in a long time (at the "Blue Club Men's Beauty Shop") for $4.50.

I've come a long way in my thinking in the last year or so, realizing that I don't need a lot of stuff to be happy. But it feels good to have at least a little stuff to make this place seem more like home.

Now it's back to the $15 a day regimen for me.

Oh frabjous day...

...callooh, cally, he chortled in his joy.

What a great day!

I got paid yesterday for my overtime work on Chosuk weekend, and my friend Ray and I had been talking about going out to Camp Walker, one of the US Army garrisons, to see if some of the stores out there had clothes that would fit us. So this morning we did.

First, we found a little Korean-run restaurant that specializes in real, genuine, honest-to-gosh American brunch! Much as I like Korean food, give me some French toast with syrup, eggs, and coffee once in awhile. Which they did. Heaven on earth! (They also had bagels, croissants, pancakes, orange juice, and that old breakfast favorite, Kool-Aid.)

Then, in a little shop just outside Camp Walker's gate, we hit the mother lode: I got a heavy-duty winter coat, a really nice windbreaker/raincoat, and a t-shirt, all for about a hundred bucks; I know I should have haggled, but somehow it still feels like I'm using Monopoly money, and I've always hated haggling... I have to overcome that! As I expected, a lot of hip-hoppy clothing, definitely not made for a Simon and Garfunkel kind of guy. But the jackets are great.

Then, across the street, I got a bookbag/backpack for thirteen bucks that was comparable to the ones for fifty that I passed up at E-Mart. Come to think of it, the belt I bought last week from a table on the street was seven bucks, compared to E-Mart's seventeen. Hmm...

(I've found that I've had to make some compromises with my ethics about animals... the winter coat has down in it and my belt is leather. I hate that! But the fact is that it would be nearly impossible to find strictly animal-friendly clothes here. I did reject a coat that had fur trim around the collar. We do what we can.)

After that, I found a tiny shoemaker's shop. That is, the shop was tiny; the shoemaker was merely diminutive. I asked him to punch one more buckle-hole in my new belt (to make it tighter, believe it or not; it's not that I'm losing weight-- the belt's just really big) which he did, and he refused to take any money.

Then, when I got home, the guy came and hooked up my Internet! Oh, this is great. It only took a month (exactly) since I got here. I have DSL service, the visit was free and it only costs a little over 30 bucks a month. By the way, remember how I mentioned the service ethic here? The DSL company didn't say the guy would come out between eight and one or one and six... they said between one and two, and he was there by 1:10.

So this, my friends, has been one terrific day.

And yours...?

We'll be back in a minute with more (clap) stuff

...if you've been keeping up with my obscure pop-culture-related titles, here's a challenge: where's this one from? Meanwhile, here's some (clap) stuff:

***
I've been working on picking up a little Korean, and I don't mean a short local girl. I can make out about ten characters and can spell "Kim" (the bosses' family name) in Korean characters. It's tricky; with Rosetta Stone, I've been trying to make out if "man", for example, is pronounced num-da or num-ta; according to the Korean Made Easy book (and Heeduk), it's num-ja. Things the books say are pronounced with a "j" are actually, to my ear, more like an "s", and so on.

I like the main streets, because they have road signs in both Korean and English. It's helping me learn, much the same way as (according to my parents) I learned to read at age 4 or 5 by reading chirons on tv commercials that matched what the voice-over was saying.
***
I don't know why, but it seems Heeduk has taken a real liking to me. In the last week, he's asked me to go to lunch with him three times-- once with a student, once with Luke on his first day off the plane, once with just him, though I asked if Ray could come along. Yesterday (Tuesday) I didn't have any duties till 8:15 and showed up before 4:00; he said he was going to Kyobo Books, and did I want to come along? I did, and then he took me back to the waffle house for another banana-split waffle. And, of course, I was the only teacher asked to the family home for the Chosuk ceremony.

He's said he enjoys my company, though I don't know why; I mostly just ask questions. I have made him laugh a few times. Maybe he just wants me to re-up next year. I know I'm young and pretty, but I have no reason to think that he's gay. We certainly don't have much in common; I'm twice his age. Maybe he just respects the hell out of Cornell. I dunno.


In Korea, the "senior" person always pays; as the boss, that's him. Monday, he paid for my lunch and ordered take-out for dinner; Tuesday, his parents paid for lunch and he bought the waffle. Later he brought an "American cheesecake" back to the office. Both my midsection and my wallet are staying pretty hefty.
***
He's shifting me very heavily to the high-level kids, especially coaching them on writing. This is great. Yesterday, I just had one student all day: 45 minutes of writing followed by 45 minutes of TOEFL speaking. Today, I have one small class doing "Lord of the Flies" and two one-on-one writing sessions. He's rearranged this week's schedule to give me Thursday off and have me come in for some SAT teaching on Sunday. I intend to always come through for him, which may be what he had in mind all along. In return, maybe he'll keep me out of the dorm.
***
I had lunch in a little storefront in the underground today (there's another huge underground shopping area in Banwoldang, a bit south of what I call downtown.) I seem to recall an SNL skit nearly thirty years ago about a toast restaurant. Maybe it was some other show. Anyway, that's this lady calls her little storefront a toast restaurant. Through gestures and trying to draw a cow and a chicken, both with slashed circles over them, and then drawing an egg, I tried to indicate I wanted a toasted egg sandwich. That didn't work.

What did work, however, was the laminated menu, a foot from my hand, that had "egg sandwich" written in English. I also had a kiwi smoothie and it all came to 3,000 Won (about $2.65). According to the lady, "egg" in Korean is "egguh" and "toast" is "toastuh". That ain't what the books say, but if it works... at any rate, my favorite things on the menu were "nude toast" and "sausage nude toast". Maybe I'll try them next time.
***
It's amazing what people sell in the street here: there are tables and trucks and people just plain sitting on sidewalks, selling produce, food, jewelry, clothing... yesterday my belt broke and I bought a new one from a guy on the street. Stupid Americano got ripped off... his little sign said his wares were 3,000 Won and 5,000 Won. The belts, however, didn't reach around me, except for one... He held out three fingers on one hand and five on the other, and I thought he wanted 3,500. Wrong. Eight. And I paid it, like a sap. I figured that's just over seven bucks, which seemed like a good deal anyway, and my new belt is way bigger than all the others he had... if I had a six-pound buckle, I could be Toby Keith.

Turns out, later I saw an almost identical belt on another sidewalk table, priced at 5,000, and Ray told me you can always, always haggle, and I probably could have gotten it for 3,000. Oh, and speaking of street vendors, there's a guy right outside our building who sells little pancakes stuffed with cinnamon, fresh and very hot off the grill, for 45 cents. People who have much less willpower than I say the pancakes are delicious. (Burp.)
***
I was all over town on bus, subway, and foot today, and noticed that all the subway platforms have locked cabinets with gas masks. I looked up "Daegu subway" on Wikipedia; right in the downtown station I always use, in 2003 a suicidal man set several trains on fire and 200 people died.

I also went through two major department stores, neither of which has clothes my size (and they were very expensive, anyway), Daegu Station, the main train depot, which is near the ballpark, and Dongdaegu Bus Station. I walked from the former to the latter, and to work, in ten minutes. I really am beginning to know my way around a bit better. I can be anywhere (that I know of) where I want to be within 40 minutes of home.
***
Okay, I'm going to post this. I'll be back sometime soon with more (clap) stuff.

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.

This place is amazing

It’s Sunday evening now and I’ve done several more things today. My piggies are beginning to feel better, so I walked to PapaRotti’s coffee shop, which is a Web hotspot, and sat outside with my laptop and a bun to upload my previous post. I like their coffee and I love their buns. (Please don't take that last bit the wrong way.) The buns are addictive: big, warm, wheaty, a little sweet. Most of all, I love the block the shop is on. It feels so continental, with wide, shady walkways and a plethora of coffee shops and restaurants and little tables with umbrellas in front of the storefronts. Just on the one side of the street, there are five coffee shops: Dunkin' Donuts, PapaRotti's, Sleepless in Seattle (great name, neh?), DaVinci, and Angel-in-us. And that's not counting the Starbucks in E-Mart, across from Dunkin'. Oh, and there's a "men's beauty shop", too.

Everything was perfect, except that the laptop supposedly connected to the ‘net but wouldn’t open any pages. I'm so frustrated; I wanted the Internet at home within a day or two of my arrival; by the time I get my foreigner card, and thus can get a bank account, an Internet account, and a cell phone, it will have been over a month. Anyway, I guess PapaRotti's signal wasn't strong enough out in front of the store.

I blew my budget all to hell today; I bought some groceries and a wall clock at E-Mart, on top of the Costco trip. I need the apartment to feel like home, and that means cooking from time to time and having a few basic furnishings. I’m in living room 90 percent of the time, and I’ve sat aimlessly in front of the tv, not realizing how much time’s gone by; the clock should help. If I don't buy anything but lunch, I can get my budget back in shape by the weekend. It's two and a half weeks till my first paycheck.

When I got back from that trip, I headed right back out again for a short walk, and a half-mile to the east (the opposite direction from all my usual haunts), just past a gigantic community garden, I found an ultra-modern sports arena and a concert hall; behind that was a neon-laden neighborhood with a couple of dozen restaurants, sports bars, and hotels (including the one in the photo above). Best of all, there was a carnival area with batting cages, bumper cars, a mechanical bull, break-the-balloon and shoot-the-basket games like at a carnival, big plush animals for the kids to ride up and down on like the tacky horsies in front of K-Mart back home, and some real amusement park rides: merry-go-round, tilt-a-whirl, that big swingy-back-n-forthy pirate ship thing. But, this being Korea, it wasn’t so much a pirate ship as a dragon. If I hadn't just wandered randomly, I would never have known any of that was there.

The locals aren't really big on copyright law: that little area has Popeye's sports bar, the BMW restaurant (complete with the car company's logo), and the Prada Motel.

This place is amazing.