This past month has gone by quickly. It seems like yesterday I was in the Busan beaches for Korean Thanksgiving, and the day before I was packing my things in Colorado. Knowing how fast my time in Korea will elapse, I'm starting to worry about life after Korea. I can already feel the gravitational pull of the NYC job market. If you're wondering where I'm planning on going after Korea, well...don't hold your breath. I mention NYC only as a gut reaction to the word "job". Honestly, I could not guess where I will be a year from now. Would I have guessed last November that I would be sitting in Seoul, South Korea right now? Maybe. And then maybe I'd be struck by lightning for that heinous lie.
I thought I would write this post in order to clear the clutter in my head and perhaps get a few ideas for next year outlined, but all that comes to my mind as I sit here, mulling life over, is ______. I'm still waiting for that epiphany down here, Big Guy.
I have not yet decided if it is better for me to be here in Korea, uncertain about what to do with myself, than to have taken a job in America, also uncertain about what to do, but around friends. Sure, I am learning a foreign language. Hopefully I will be passable after a year. But how I will apply this skill to my future job search, I do not yet know. When it comes down to it, I really just want to do something worthwhile and meaningful. I have not really felt that deep sense of accomplishment in a good while. You know that feeling. It's a nice feeling, if I recall correctly. I feel trickles of it occasionally after a very good class, but not the full-blown, "Damn I'm good!" feeling. As you can tell, you've caught me at a confusing time. If my life were a Magic 8 Ball, it would say, "Things are cloudy. Check back again later."
I'm still having fun in Seoul, however. So hold off on sending me the "Positive Thinking" books for Christmas. When I have time, I sit on a bench down at the playground around the corner from my apartment to work and think about Stuff. Usually I just do homework or read a book there. It's always fun to have little kids of any age run to me, climb up onto the bench, look at whatever I'm doing for homework and point out any errors in my grammar or spelling. This generally helps my grades, these 4- to 8-year old spell checkers, but I've noticed that one of them, a decidedly unintelligent 4 year old with a very loud shriek for a voice, always incorrectly changes my words/phrases. After multiple returned homework assignments with red marks next to the words that Jun-Bok "corrected", I've decided I will never again accept help from him. Who needs help from a 4 year old anyway? It's the 6 year olds who are truly helpful. At least they know basic sentence structure. Stupid Jun-Bok...Partially because of being busy at work and partially because the novelty of being in Korea has begun to wear off, I feel that I have been in a bit of a lackluster rut. Sure, I've been keeping busy with the "regular" life of work, language classes, working out, etc., but it has been a few weeks since I just grabbed my subway map, backpack, and baseball cap and jumped on the subway to go explore someplace new. I really would like to get that feeling back again, and I tried this weekend by going to a Salsa dancing club with my Peruvian friend. In a nasty ploy to lure me along (just kidding Catherine), she neglected to tell me that she had, in fact, danced Salsa before and even performed it on one occasion. I had assumed she was mo
re like me, a complete Salsa noobie. To further my embarrassment, the Koreans in the class were all great dancers. I couldn't believe it. I thought I was going to waltz in there (no pun intended), learn a few moves quickly, and show these people how to cut some rug. I imagined myself like the dancing version of Tom Selleck in that one movie where he goes to Japan to play baseball and thinks he will, by default, be the best ball player in the country. But, just like the venerable Mr. Selleck, I learned a valuable life lesson: Koreans can play ball. Mine was a similar case of incorrectly stereotyping Koreans. Perhaps Asians in general are not the best dancers, but Koreans have got the devil in their damned feet (I had forgotten that Koreans made the game Dance Dance Revolution). I looked like a cloven-hooved goat on the dance floor in comparison. Hint: that is not me in the picture. The girls were leading me, my hips were made of stone, and I was constantly staring at my feet, trying to do the Salsa step-counting, "1, 2, 3...5, 6, 7...damn! Sorry! Wait, we have to start over, I'm completely lost." It was a very humbling experience. Nevertheless, I think I will be back next week, and the week after, and so on, until I can compete with the likes of Emmit Smith on Dancing with the Stars.
I was in central Seoul at a restaurant earlier last night, and I have never felt safer in my life. By that, I mean the security was excellent. And by that, I mean there were thousands of stick-wielding riot police lining the sidewalks, sitting in organized rows on top of their riot shields and helmets. You might have heard of the recent US-Korea Free Trade Agreement and that rioting has been marring the otherwise lovely little village of downtown Seoul. Korean farmers are protesting the pact because this agreement would lead to an influx of American produce. Rice was left out of the deal, thankfully for Korean agriculture (this FTA is the largest ever for Korea and the second largest for the US). There were droves of these riot police all over the city tonight. I couldn't get a good picture of the police because a Korean I was with insisted I put my camera away lest we be arrested (for taking pictures?), but, naturally, I tried to snap off a few furtive frames. These police look like they mean business, and the sword-like sticks on their backs I'm sure could break a bone or two.
Also last night, while trying to find a restaurant, we walked past this very amusing sight: a small Korean man wielding a very large mallet, perhaps bigger than him, pounding rice into a thick paste. This Korean Gallagher heaved his large pounding tool over his head and, with a war cry, brought it smashing down onto a large bowl filled with rice. Rinse and repeat. He would do this until the rice was pulverized into a paste that was used to make Rice Cakes, small rice candies (very good). As you can imagine, a large mallet like this would have a lot of energy as it smashed into the rice paste, and, seeing him put on gloves to scoop out the paste, I could see the steam rush out from underneath the smoking hot rice paste. It was a rare moment of thinking back to a high school physics lesson about Potential and Kinetic Energy. I vow it will never happen again.Here's another amusing story: Last Saturday night I was invited by a friend from my Korean language class to go to a club. Seeing as I had no other plans/excuses, I agreed, but wasn't so sure I would enjoy the experience because I wasn't sure what type of party animal I was getting involved with. He is 23 years old and from Switzerland, so paint whatever mental picture you want. During classes, he is the person who steers all discussions towards how to use the material at a bar. After learning the word for "girl", the natural progression in his questions would lead to the word for "girlfriend", and then to the phrases, "do you have a boyfriend?", "but is he even here?", and, finally, "let me buy you a drink." His questions are quite useful, I will admit, but tend to detract from the "academic" environment.
Anyway, I went to this club, along with a friend from work, and we arrived around 2 am. We could hear the House music being pumped from around the corner, and it seemed like a very promising place. We paid the necessary 20,000 Won entrance fee ($20) and found my friend. He was very sorry to hear that we had paid any entrance fee at all, because he was friends with the owner and manager. He slapped a couple of VIP bracelets on our arms and led us into the bowels of the club (almost all night clubs are underground, because there's not more space in Seoul at street level, so they need to get creative). He also was friends with the DJ that was spinning the tunes; apparently he is a very famous European DJ called StoneBridge. If you recognize that DJ, then it was a successful name-drop on my part. Anyways, up in the VIP lounge (looking down on all the poor souls trapped in the crowded tangle of sweaty bodies and limbs below), we sat down with his friends, who apparently run a model agency in Seoul. My Swiss friend went to grab drinks and I notice that there was a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and an empty bottle of champagne already finished on the table. Hmm, I thought, these people drink the good stuff. When he returned, he was carrying two more bottles of Grey Goose and champagne! I was delighted, but even more so when I read the label on the champagne: Dom Perignon. I looked back at the empty bottle, also a Dom Perignon. He told us that everything they drank was "service", Korean for "on the house, baby!" By the time I left, the table was littered with empty bottles of Dom, Grey Goose, and MGD (considered a top-shelf beer here). It was "service", but if I tallied it up correctly, we drank over $1500 worth of alcohol. I think I will be accepting any invitation from this particular classmate in the future without hesitation.
Another random story: One of my students came up to me after class and said, "Can you get me into Harvard?" I was so taken aback by the directness that I laughed, but quickly recovered as I saw the confused look on his face. He then asked if I could read his "college essay" for him. It was a piece of notebook paper upon which he had scrawled "College Application Essay" at the top. The writing was barely decipherable. His essay was nice and...concise. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the euphemism of the century. The essay went something like this: "I want to go to Harvard. It is best school and I like Harvard. I want to be President of USA like JFK, the best president ever. Harvard is so smart, and that is why I want to go to Harvard." He then asked me for my business card and again if I could get him into Harvard. I told him I would do everything in my considerable power to influence the Harvard admissions officers. And I have. Which is to say, I concentrated very hard to mentally project my thoughts at them, and then patted myself on the back for a job well done.
Well, that is all. Sorry for the delay. But the best things in life are worth the wait...
I'd like to go out on some Mr. Baseball quotes (the Tom Selleck movie I couldn't remember above):
[a reporter asks Jack what he thinks about Japan after being there for less than an hour]
Jack Elliot: Well, the airport's nice. I guess. And there's lots of little people walking and talking very fast.
Toshi Yamashita, Jack's Interpreter: [in Japanese] Architecture beautiful. Society on cutting edge of progress.
Jack Elliot: I'm a World Series MVP!
Skip: That was four years ago, Jack. Last season, you hit .235.
Jack Elliot:LAST SEASON, I led this team in ninth-inning doubles in the month of August!
