recent revelations

1 i can't remember what silence sounds like.

there have been several moments lately in which i've become aware of a constant dull roar in this city. whether it's walking down the street and always hearing people talking/air-conditioners running/vehicles zooming by, or sitting in the teachers' room at school and always hearing korean teachers talking/kindergartners yelling out in the hall/faint noise from the street below through the window by my desk, or laying on my bed and always hearing the neighbors across the alley/our life-saver of a fan blowing/laptops humming, there is always noise. i don't know if i experienced silence before i came and just didn't appreciate it or if there's truly a dull roar everywhere in the world. but i miss pure, calm quiet. the absence of man-made noise, anyway. the weekend we spent in the mountains was beautiful in its peacefulness and i will be glad to take a similar trip again sometime (hopefully sooner rather than later).

2 i'm in limbo.

i've noticed a strange tension in the past several days that comes from the realization that i no longer belong in the u.s. but i do not yet belong here. i don't know if i ever will feel like i belong here (i am a foreigner and always will be in the eyes of koreans). but i do know that if someone offered me a ticket back to the states and a well-paying job when i arrived, there's no way i'd accept. i'm too far removed from the life i had there. to be fair, there are parts i miss for sure. and there are people i would love to see and spend time with. but i don't want to go back. i have felt lately like being here has been the most necessary challenge i've ever had. i've learned a ton about myself in just two and a half short months. not only that, but the changes that were begun in me in college have been simultaneously cemented and opened to further development. my eyes and mind were opened so much to the world and to the beautiful differences that are out there, and my desire to see and know those differences for myself was deepened. those things have only grown more apparent since coming to korea. it's been incredible to learn about the culture and the language directly from korean people. all that said, there are things i've learned about myself that make ten more months in seoul a little daunting. being surrounded by so much activity has made me realize how much i truly want/need to be surrounded by nature. in the past when i feel like i've lost perspective, i've found it by feeling small under the stars or on a mountain or next to the ocean. it's much harder to find perspective by feeling small in a city of ten million people; the smallness is an consequence of isolation rather than awe, and that has been a challenge for me to deal with. it gives me the feeling of trying to fit into something i'm not sure i want to fit into―it's like i've gotten on some ship and i was really excited to be on the open seas, but i don't know where the boat's going or if/where i'll want to disembark.

3 some cultures smack you in the face, some let you absorb them over time.

i've said this before, but i didn't know what to expect from korea. i really wasn't sure what would be different, besides the food, and i didn't know how it would affect me. what i've found is that there hasn't been a moment of culture shock but rather that there have been many moments of curiosity over the culture here. i've discovered korea gradually so far and been able to absorb each new thing as i experience it, and that's been nice. of course some things are easier to accept than others, but there hasn't been anything huge to which i've had trouble adapting. some are amusing, others not as much. a few examples:

-people never say “excuse me,” they are loud and slurpy when they eat, and it's not uncommon to be pushed out of the way by a little old lady on the subway.

-people are very public about drinking here. businessmen go out after work and drink soju until all hours, passing out on the bench or the street before heading back to work the next morning. lots of people drink beer and soju freely with their dinner, or grab a few bottles and drink with friends at a table outside one of the many convenience stores on every street.

-people are dressed up all the time. women wear heels everywhere―to work, to run errands, to hang out in the park, to hike mountains (not kidding, unfortunately). men wear suits everywhere―to work, to walk down the street, to hang out with friends, to relax on the weekend. all dogs look ridiculous―nikes on all four paws, little outfits just for going on a walk, dyed pink tufts of hair, extremely odd shaving jobs...they are like dolls for their owners. although i guess when you consider the alternative (being eaten), it might be alright to be so horrendously accessorized.

4 it's easier to judge others than to judge yourself.

in the midst of all this thinking and learning about myself, i became frustrated with other foreigners who have come here to teach. i had put them into two groups: those who get through work during the week and spend the weekend partying hard, and those who huddle in their apartments and go to bed early during the week and on the weekend. the problem with the former group, i felt, was that they weren't just satisfied with a good thing. they wanted more, and this usually meant staying out all night and staying in bed all of the next day. the problem with the latter was that they didn't take any risks. they did what was comfortable and didn't get out into this new culture into which they'd put themselves. i didn't fit into either of these groups; i like to go out but i don't like to waste the next day, and i like relaxing in my apartment but there's so much to explore. i'd been so extremely frustrated by this, and it felt really isolating to be unsure if there was a place for me here, if there were people who also found themselves in between. but the other day while walking to work, i had a thought that literally almost stopped me in my tracks―i'd been just like the people by which i've been so frustrated. the problems i saw in them were also in myself. being here has been more than a good thing. it's been awesome, yet i wanted more after only being here a short time. i wanted everything to fall into place and i wanted friends who understood me and i wanted life here to be perfect. not going to happen. first of all, no place is perfect, and second of all, you only get out what you put in. yet i've been sulking in my apartment wishing i had friends, unwilling to take any risks or make much effort to find those people i wanted to find. sure, it's overwhelming to think about finding friends who are like you in this huge city (needle-in-a-haystack sensation). but i've got to put myself out there if i ever want that to happen. i had such a good morning after i had that little epiphany on the sidewalk, because thinking about all this gave me the impetus i needed to do something about what's been frustrating me.

that's all from this side of the world. hope you all are doing well and that it's staying cool wherever you are!

love and hugs, 

heather

lessons from a drunk man on a bicycle

we had this past friday off for memorial day, so ellie and i decided we were going to get out of seoul for the first time since arriving in korea. i pulled out my guidebook and found seoraksan national park (located in a mountainous region on the east coast of south korea). pretty photo + nice-sounding description + cheap hostel in the mountains = perfect destination for a weekend trip. perfect destination assuming you can get there, that is.

before i tell this story, you should know that ellie and i tend to have difficulty getting places in foreign countries. we are aware that we have this problem and laugh about it every time we think about our travels. prime example: going from london to rome when we were in europe two summers ago. we got off a plane that we were pretty sure was made of plastic at 10:00 pm in a military airport that wasn't even in rome, then took what we hoped was the right shuttle bus and ended up at rome's biggest bus terminal an hour later. we had directions from there to take a city bus that, as it turned out, wasn't running any more because it was too late at night. after a horribly confusing conversation with an italian taxi driver, we got in the backseat of a taxi that held us, our driver, and some random passenger who would be dropped off before we were taken to our campground hostel. forty-five minutes and fifty euros later, we finally arrived. it was amazing and completely worth the hassle in the end, but man, that was a rough day of travel.

somehow we failed to remember this and other experiences while we were figuring out how to get to a hostel in the middle of the mountains in a part of korea we'd never been to. our directions said to first take a bus from one of two places: a big shopping center/amusement park combo in jamsil, or a bus terminal called dong seoul in gangbyeon. jamsil is slightly closer to our apartment, so we figured we'd go from there. well, after wandering around for a little while we came across a tourist information booth and a helpful korean lady who said "oh, there aren't any buses that go there from here." right. so the adventure began...

we hop on the subway to dong seoul and find the ticket counter. the place for which our directions said we needed to buy bus tickets isn't listed in the choices of destinations, so we buy tickets to a city close (or so we thought) to where we were going. we've just missed the previous bus, so we wait three hours in the terminal for the next one. once it finally arrives, the ride itself is great--comfy reclining seats with footrests, barely anyone else on the bus. three and a half hours later, though, our bus pulls into a terminal listed nowhere on our directions. the next item on the directions? free pick-up from a terminal we're not at. so we've gotten off the bus in a city we've never been to, it's dark out and the information booth is closed. this isn't looking promising, and it's beginning to feel vaguely reminiscent of the night we got to rome. as we are standing outside looking lost, a drunk man weaves by on his bicycle and yells something at us. we look at each other like "nice. this keeps getting better." but then, out of the blue, relief: a korean man walking up the sidewalk says to us "don't worry about him, he's crazy." we look at each other and think english! he speaks english! and almost fall over ourselves to stop this man so he can help us. he's friendly so we hand him our directions, point to the address and say, “we need to get here. do you know where it is or how we can get there?” he doesn't. “well,” we say, “we've got this phone number but it isn't working.” he looks at it and informs us that we've been dialing the country code for korea as part of the number. [we're awesome.] so he calls and talks to the hostel woman, and then informs us that we'll need to take a taxi to the hostel. it's going to cost between 25,000 and 30,000 won (roughly $25-30 USD). fine, whatever. at this point we just want to get there. he kindly finds a taxi for us and explains our situation to the driver. after much jabbering in korea, the driver agrees to take us. we get in. he pulls down the road a bit and then wants the phone. turns out he doesn't actually know where we're going. so he has a conversation with the hostel woman, and soon we're en route to our hostel. twenty minutes of winding through the mountains later, the driver has started to slow down and start to pull off to the side of the road every so often. eventually he pulls into some random parking lot and asks for the phone again. he calls the hostel woman one more time, and after a brief conversation he drives under an overpass and turns onto a dirt road. at this point both ellie and i have the brief, frightening thought that our taxi driver has decided to kill us in the middle of the mountains in a part of korea we've never been to. oh-so-thankfully, he turns the corner and there stands the happy road guest house for backpackers. it is glowing beautifully in the dark, roughly eight hours after we bought our bus tickets back in seoul.

in the end, though, that ridiculous journey led to a wonderfully relaxing time in the mountains, complete with hammocks and a waterfall. we were the only foreigners at the hostel, which meant we could just chill out and do whatever we wanted to. there was no one to talk to besides each other and no pressure to talk to people just because they also spoke english. it was lovely. i needed a break from the city, and a day and a half with no clock or computer or cell phone gave me the relaxation and reflection time i'd been missing. and it ended up being a lot easier to get back—we bought two tickets for dong seoul terminal from a little old lady running a restaurant in the village, got on a bus that picked us up on the side of the road in a dirt parking lot, and were back in our apartment four hours later. 

the problems we had getting there (and their subsequent solutions) made me think about two things. the first is how small, not-so-noteworthy occurrences might have a much bigger impact than we realize. take the drunk man on the bicycle. probably a fairly common thing, considering the amount of soju that koreans of all ages like to drink. but had he not wobbled by us while the english-speaking man (who also, coincidentally, was a bicycling enthusiast—though we think he was sober) was walking up the sidewalk, who knows how long it would have taken to find someone who spoke english, or if we even would have. the second thing i thought about is the kindness of strangers. for how cold and unfriendly i've found the average korean walking down the street to be, when i've needed help people have come through brilliantly. that man didn't have to help us near as much as he did. he didn't have to help us at all. but he seemed to want to fix our little pickle, and he did everything he could. there have been other instances throughout the two months i've been here as well, and it's helping to restore my faith in the basic goodness of people. working for any amount of time in any customer service job will kill that and the credit union was no exception. my amazing co-workers definitely helped to balance out the negatives; still, i came away from that job wondering if the majority of people on this planet really care what happens to those they encounter. i am not without fault in that area, for sure, but thinking about it has made me realize part of why i love traveling/living in a foreign country so much. it's because doing so is one of the best reminders of how it feels to be helpless, fully dependent on the goodwill of strangers, and how someone will come through for you when you could really use some help. 

i hope this finds you all well and that you enjoyed the may photos. thanks to everyone who's been staying in touch—i appreciate it so much. miss you all!

festivities and explorations (photos from may)

this is a reposting of my second facebook album of korea for those not on that site.

namdaemun:

this transvestite was talking to everyone who walked by...if only we understood what he was saying

this is where the namdaemun gate (one of the main national treasures of south korea) used to be. a man who was angry at the government for taking his land set it on fire

a tiny piece of namdaemun market

spices in the market

hi seoul fest, gyeongbokgung:

we missed the ceremony, but we got to see all the participants go back to their buses

haha some of them wanted to take photos with us

the palace as the sun was beginning to set

hi seoul fest, world dj festival:

waiting for the subway and hoping we're not going to have to take a taxi all the way across seoul

this is where we're headed

for this!

people and lights everywhere

during the dj that was playing when we finally got there around 1:30

that is a gross pig's head, which sadly somehow kept finding me

fire dancer

brandon, ellie and i around 3ish, plus a random man who jumped into our photo

glow sticks that created a short-lived mosh pit

we danced till the sun came up!

and felt really bad for the festival staff on trash duty

dirty feet after a long night of dancing

way too many stairs before six a.m.

olympic park, children's day:

people evvverywhere

somehow we avoided getting hit or clotheslined by all the many kites

i miss playing with bubbles

so many things flying through the air

first potluck in seoul:

ellie whipping up some veggie stir-fry

our yummy meal

haha nick and jimmy got couples' t-shirts

olympic park, buddha's birthday:

this is sara, an inquisitive and persistent little girl who came up and wanted to talk to us, throw frisbee, and borrow my camera to take photos of herself...

...her little sister and ellie...

...she and i...

...and her family, haha

mini-excursion to mok-dong:

tyler up in a pagoda on a hill that gave us a 360-degree view of endless city lights

cute little girl that giggled every time we waved at her or said "annyong haseyo" :)

teachers day:

check out all the gifts i got...two hankerchief sets, an umbrella set, a mascara set, a rose, sunblock, and a carnation in the gaudiest flower holder i've ever seen

ellie being silly with the flower scepters

all of our flowers hanging up to dry

insadong market:

london has come to south korea

army bride photo op, anyone?

decorations in one of the areas of the market

we found these excellent new treats at a street vendor along the way...this is a deep-fried donut pancake thing, and it is probably the most unhealthy food you'll find in korea

part of a small protest against china's repatriation and human trafficking of north korean refugees

we stumbled across an awesome martial arts ceremony/demonstration thing down a random side street

one day soon i will begin exploring the alleys i find in seoul

oh, the fatality waiting to happen...

costco trip (thanks baron!):

one result which we will thoroughly enjoy

we had to eat some right away

exploring near school: 

this is to prove that once in a while we can actually see the mountains

i came across an early-evening soccer match and felt like i was back in zona seis in guatemala

a path and stream that wind through songpa near olympic park

the koreans really love their exercise machines

world cup qualifying match, south korea v. jordan:

masses of people streaming out of the subway station

they unfurled a huge south korea flag before the game started

world cup stadium!

this is to point out how many people were there and just how much red those people were wearing

penalty kick for south korea! (resulted in a goal)

final score: sk 2, jordan 2. we were waiting for overtime but it never came...