so it's been a crazy, busy, ridiculous month, as i mentioned. everything that's gone on in the past few weeks, as well as the start of a new year, has meant a lot of thinking and reflecting.
yesterday i enjoyed a lunar new year crepe brunch with a few of my closest friends here. it was really nice to have that, especially since we weren't around for christmas/new year's celebrations with people. the conversation revolved around life, marriage, and culture—three topics that have been on my mind a lot lately.
i'm now almost done my tenth month in korea, and let me just say, WHAT? the time has flown by faster than i ever could have anticipated, and it feels good to look back and see the process. ellie and i just extended our contracts from the end of march to the end of june, and i am excited to spend a few extra months (and another spring) here. so many people who come here do their year and leave without a backward glance. but as i told a friend the other day, i know that this is where i'm supposed to be right now regardless of how strange it may seem. so i'm staying until that feeling changes. most people i know who are my age (consider that most people i know are part of mennonite communities) are finding a good job, finding a good person, and getting married. they're settling down and starting families. i remember thinking when i was around fourteen or fifteen that i'd be doing that by now.
yet i'm far from ready for it, in the typical way at least.
it took coming to korea to truly realize how fulfilling it is to do things on my own and do things that i want to do, to find meaning in them based on whatever they are to me at the time. i did what was typical, what was expected, my whole life until i got to college. at some point during those four years, though, that shifted into me wanting something different. wanting to take steps, on my own, beyond what i was "supposed" to do. and when i look back on the time from now to that shift, the growth and changes i see are incredible.
the point is that while what i'm doing with my life right now is far from typical compared to what i grew up thinking i'd do, i am happy and i am growing. i can think ahead more than a few months (something i haven't done in years) and make plans with the knowledge that there's no fixed commitment involved. there are definitely days when i think it'd be nice to have someone (besides ellie, although it's awesome to have a best friend like her) to share it with, but even then, that person would have to want the same things i want—which right now do not include marriage, kids, or settling into a comfortable life back in the states. there's still too much world to experience and too much to learn.
speaking of experiencing the world, what a interesting time it was in vietnam. one thing that's important to understand is that in korea, politeness and respect are unspoken mandatories. they are part of society that are ingrained into everyone as they grow up, they are built into the language structure, and they are what we have come to know as a way of life. confrontation is almost non-existent; koreans hate confrontation and don't handle it well. so to encounter what we did within mere hours of leaving seoul was a rough introduction to my first asian country outside of korea.
from what i've heard, the people in saigon and in the rest of the country are not like those we encountered in hanoi. but it was really interesting to experience what we did because so far, countries close to each other that i've visited haven't had that much of a gap in societal behavior. in both latin america and europe, i've spent time in various countries and each time found the people to be similar in comparison to those in neighboring countries.
that said, i really enjoyed hanoi in one regard—it was so much more third-world than seoul. trat and koh chang in thailand were more of the same, and when i arrived in thailand i had the feeling that i had come to this place i never knew i wanted to go. it is similar to how i've found south korea to be the place i never knew i needed to go. asia has never been at the top of my list, and south korea in particular wasn't even on the list. but coming here has been this amazing experience that i had no idea how badly i needed to have. in the same manner, thailand is a country i knew little about and might not have ever visited had i not moved to seoul to teach. but when i got there, i realized how badly i wanted to experience all of it. the really cool thing about thailand for me was that it was third-world, like the cultures i love so much in latin america, yet i couldn't speak or read the language. while i was there i felt so fully like i was in a completely new place, like there was nothing known and everything left to learn. that is the true passion of traveling for me and the reason traveling makes me feel so alive.
seeing these differences between countries that i've always [ignorantly] assumed were very similar has made me really excited to go other places in asia. part of our talk over crepes was about the identities of various countries around the world. i just read "eat pray love" by elizabeth gilbert, which is about a woman who goes to italy, india, and indonesia and focuses on one specific thing in each place. there are countries around the world which, when you think about them, bring certain images or thoughts to mind. countries that have a natural pull and invite learning and understanding through personal experience. south korea is not one of those countries--it is still changing, still developing its identity. because of that and some of the cultural aspects it has developed, it is not a place that welcomes foreigners to actively learn about it. all the ways i've become actively involved in understanding the culture have been the result of great individuals, not because south korea itself has been an eager teacher. all that said, i am excited to see what else is in store for me this year.
i hope you are all well and that the new year has brought and will continue to bring new learning and new opportunities for all of you. keep in touch!
love,
heather
27 January 2009
and we thought winter would be boring...part one: recent happenings
hello! happy 2009 a few weeks late :) this will be a long, two-part post as it's been quite an interesting month since my last blog entry...the past four weeks have held some (much-needed) vacation, a new school building and new classes as well as two foreign teachers leaving our school, and a lot of thinking and discussion about culture and life. this first part will be everything that's happened since christmas...
first, the saga of our winter vacation in vietnam and thailand.
i've said this before, but generally when ellie and i travel together things don't always go smoothly, and there are many moments of trouble/annoyance/frustration that we look back on and laugh at (or not) later. i've said this before too--this trip was no exception.
ellie and i traveled with our co-worker sebastian to hanoi and then on to bangkok, where we parted ways with him. we had a layover in hanoi that allowed us enough time to leave the airport and spend about 15 hours in the city. so we got our bags and found a taxi..."only $12," the man said. "12 u.s. dollars, right?" we all emphatically double-checked with him, thinking we had found a great deal. he confirmed, put our bags in the trunk, and we were off to hanoi. the man was very friendly, making a bit of conversation along the way and even pointing out a load of skinned, dead dogs (on their way to be cooked and eaten) strapped to a motorcycle. the taxi pulled over in the old quarter as we had requested, and it was time to pay. the man wanted 1.2 million vietnamese dong which at the time was equivalent, we figured out later that night, to somewhere around 90 u.s. dollars. in the taxi we were struggling to convert from vietnamese dong to south korean won to u.s. dollars, not really figuring it out, but aware that it did not equal $12 and was in fact way, way more than anyone should pay for that taxi ride. the man did not take kindly to our refusal to pay what he wanted, and a flurry of rapid vietnamese mixed with broken english ensued. we tried reasoning with him and reminding him that we had agreed on $12 at the airport and were yelled at. we tried writing on paper what we thought was an acceptable compromise and were yelled at. we tried giving him about half of what he had asked for and had the money thrown back in our faces.
eventually we ended up paying him roughly $40, apparently enough to avoid him driving off with our bags still in the trunk, and went to find a hostel. after wandering in circles throughout the old quarter for a half hour, we found a decently-priced hostel and dropped our stuff off to wander around hanoi for a while. ten minutes into our exploring, a friendly old woman carrying pineapples in baskets strung to a wooden pole resting on her shoulder approached us. "photo, photo!" she said, and without waiting for a reply placed her fruit carrier on my shoulder and her hat on my head. we were surprised into agreeing so ellie took a photo, promptly after which the woman proceeded to thrust two small bags of pineapple into our hands and demand that we pay her for the photo and the fruit. she, like the taxi driver, wanted more money than what we should have paid, and for the second time in under two hours a friendly face turned nasty.
after paying her some crazy amount for three slices of pineapple, we finished our walk and found dinner uneventfully, and then made our way back to the hostel for some sleep. in the morning the hostel desk clerk called us an airport taxi and we were on our way to thailand.
or so we thought. i'll spare you the long version, but it includes a changed gate, a turn-around back to vietnam due to "a technical issue" (either they forgot to fill up on fuel or one of the wheels was coming loose, we remain unsure), meals served and cleaned up halfway through twice, and an arrival in thailand four hours after planned.
once in the bangkok airport, we split paths with sebastian, who would be spending a bit of time in bangkok before returning to vietnam for the rest of break. we were ready to be out of the city for a while, so we found a bus to the ekamai terminal on the east edge of bangkok (there was no way we were taking a taxi this time). our plan was to bus to laemngop and ferry to the island of koh chang, but we had missed the last bus there because of the plane issues. so we took a six-hour bus ride to trat, a small city close to laemngop, and spent the night there. we stayed in a great, cheap hostel with helpful owners and taxied to laemngop for the first ferry out the next day. it felt so wonderful to finally be on that ferry, sun on my face and wind in my hair, watching the island get bigger as we approached.
on koh chang we found a bungalow place and rented a hut right by the water. over the next week we relaxed, rented motorbikes (not without difficulty and hilarity) and kayaks, swam in the beautiful turquoise water, enjoyed fresh fruit for breakfast every morning, swung in hammocks, saw elephants, and took in thailand at a wonderfully slow pace.
going back to seoul, the original plan (and what our plane tickets were for) was to fly from bangkok to saigon, have an eight-hour layover in the airport there, and arrive back in seoul monday morning with just enough time before starting work that day. we realized partway through the week that a day at home before jumping right in at a new building would be not only nice but almost necessary. so we left koh chang on thursday afternoon to spend the night in the same hostel we had previously stayed at in trat, and returned to the bangkok airport by friday afternoon in hopes of switching to an earlier flight. there were none available so we spent the night in the airport and the next morning tried again. no luck. by this time we were really tired and just wanted to get back to seoul, so we bought new one-way tickets on a flight leaving saturday evening and spent the rest of the day making a movie of all the funny things you can do in an airport. it was a lot of fun, but by the time we boarded that flight we had spent 32 hours in the bangkok airport. once we arrived in seoul there was a long, slow line for immigration and the bus back into the city ended up dropping us off nowhere near our house...i don't think i've ever been so happy to see my apartment as i was that morning :)
second, all the craziness at school.
when we returned from break, we began at a new building closer to the center of seoul. it's a beautiful facility that is in a nice area, although we now have to bus to work because it's too far to walk. things have been fine with teaching; the kids seem to have made the transition fairly well and so have the teachers. however, two situations within the past two weeks have made things a bit ridiculous at school. one was expected, one was not.
the first is that sebastian, the co-worker with whom we traveled to vietnam, was accused by parents of inappropriately touching their daughter. he did not, but the parents wanted a spoken apology and a signed confession stating what he had done. he refused, the parents became more angry, and within about four hours on that friday, sebastian was no longer teaching at our school.
the second is a situation that's been gradually building over the past two months. a teacher joined us in the beginning of december from japan. she is married to a japanese man and has spent the past nine years teaching in thailand, taiwan, and japan. i got a bad feeling from her almost immediately but hoped i was wrong. unfortunately, i wasn't. i won't go into detail, but basically she a) has some issues, b) refused all help anyone offered, and c) made life miserable for everyone at work. she gave two months notice just before christmas but, after a situation that was apparently the last straw last friday, was asked to clear her things out of her apartment and not come back.
it was hard seeing sebastian leave, especially because it could have happened to any of us. as far as the other teacher, no one's sad to see her go. but this means that now we're down to three foreign teachers when there should be five.
so there's all that's been going on here! i'll post the second part soon with my thoughts and reflections on everything, but in the meantime here are links to recent photos :)
december (more added since i included the link with my last post):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011190&l=6f921&id=148800130
vacation (two albums):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011557&l=25693&id=148800130
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011559&l=509a4&id=148800130
january (will probably add a few more within the week):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011837&l=4409b&id=148800130
hope everyone's holidays were good time spent with family and friends...love and miss you all lots!
peace,
heather
first, the saga of our winter vacation in vietnam and thailand.
i've said this before, but generally when ellie and i travel together things don't always go smoothly, and there are many moments of trouble/annoyance/frustration that we look back on and laugh at (or not) later. i've said this before too--this trip was no exception.
ellie and i traveled with our co-worker sebastian to hanoi and then on to bangkok, where we parted ways with him. we had a layover in hanoi that allowed us enough time to leave the airport and spend about 15 hours in the city. so we got our bags and found a taxi..."only $12," the man said. "12 u.s. dollars, right?" we all emphatically double-checked with him, thinking we had found a great deal. he confirmed, put our bags in the trunk, and we were off to hanoi. the man was very friendly, making a bit of conversation along the way and even pointing out a load of skinned, dead dogs (on their way to be cooked and eaten) strapped to a motorcycle. the taxi pulled over in the old quarter as we had requested, and it was time to pay. the man wanted 1.2 million vietnamese dong which at the time was equivalent, we figured out later that night, to somewhere around 90 u.s. dollars. in the taxi we were struggling to convert from vietnamese dong to south korean won to u.s. dollars, not really figuring it out, but aware that it did not equal $12 and was in fact way, way more than anyone should pay for that taxi ride. the man did not take kindly to our refusal to pay what he wanted, and a flurry of rapid vietnamese mixed with broken english ensued. we tried reasoning with him and reminding him that we had agreed on $12 at the airport and were yelled at. we tried writing on paper what we thought was an acceptable compromise and were yelled at. we tried giving him about half of what he had asked for and had the money thrown back in our faces.
eventually we ended up paying him roughly $40, apparently enough to avoid him driving off with our bags still in the trunk, and went to find a hostel. after wandering in circles throughout the old quarter for a half hour, we found a decently-priced hostel and dropped our stuff off to wander around hanoi for a while. ten minutes into our exploring, a friendly old woman carrying pineapples in baskets strung to a wooden pole resting on her shoulder approached us. "photo, photo!" she said, and without waiting for a reply placed her fruit carrier on my shoulder and her hat on my head. we were surprised into agreeing so ellie took a photo, promptly after which the woman proceeded to thrust two small bags of pineapple into our hands and demand that we pay her for the photo and the fruit. she, like the taxi driver, wanted more money than what we should have paid, and for the second time in under two hours a friendly face turned nasty.
after paying her some crazy amount for three slices of pineapple, we finished our walk and found dinner uneventfully, and then made our way back to the hostel for some sleep. in the morning the hostel desk clerk called us an airport taxi and we were on our way to thailand.
or so we thought. i'll spare you the long version, but it includes a changed gate, a turn-around back to vietnam due to "a technical issue" (either they forgot to fill up on fuel or one of the wheels was coming loose, we remain unsure), meals served and cleaned up halfway through twice, and an arrival in thailand four hours after planned.
once in the bangkok airport, we split paths with sebastian, who would be spending a bit of time in bangkok before returning to vietnam for the rest of break. we were ready to be out of the city for a while, so we found a bus to the ekamai terminal on the east edge of bangkok (there was no way we were taking a taxi this time). our plan was to bus to laemngop and ferry to the island of koh chang, but we had missed the last bus there because of the plane issues. so we took a six-hour bus ride to trat, a small city close to laemngop, and spent the night there. we stayed in a great, cheap hostel with helpful owners and taxied to laemngop for the first ferry out the next day. it felt so wonderful to finally be on that ferry, sun on my face and wind in my hair, watching the island get bigger as we approached.
on koh chang we found a bungalow place and rented a hut right by the water. over the next week we relaxed, rented motorbikes (not without difficulty and hilarity) and kayaks, swam in the beautiful turquoise water, enjoyed fresh fruit for breakfast every morning, swung in hammocks, saw elephants, and took in thailand at a wonderfully slow pace.
going back to seoul, the original plan (and what our plane tickets were for) was to fly from bangkok to saigon, have an eight-hour layover in the airport there, and arrive back in seoul monday morning with just enough time before starting work that day. we realized partway through the week that a day at home before jumping right in at a new building would be not only nice but almost necessary. so we left koh chang on thursday afternoon to spend the night in the same hostel we had previously stayed at in trat, and returned to the bangkok airport by friday afternoon in hopes of switching to an earlier flight. there were none available so we spent the night in the airport and the next morning tried again. no luck. by this time we were really tired and just wanted to get back to seoul, so we bought new one-way tickets on a flight leaving saturday evening and spent the rest of the day making a movie of all the funny things you can do in an airport. it was a lot of fun, but by the time we boarded that flight we had spent 32 hours in the bangkok airport. once we arrived in seoul there was a long, slow line for immigration and the bus back into the city ended up dropping us off nowhere near our house...i don't think i've ever been so happy to see my apartment as i was that morning :)
second, all the craziness at school.
when we returned from break, we began at a new building closer to the center of seoul. it's a beautiful facility that is in a nice area, although we now have to bus to work because it's too far to walk. things have been fine with teaching; the kids seem to have made the transition fairly well and so have the teachers. however, two situations within the past two weeks have made things a bit ridiculous at school. one was expected, one was not.
the first is that sebastian, the co-worker with whom we traveled to vietnam, was accused by parents of inappropriately touching their daughter. he did not, but the parents wanted a spoken apology and a signed confession stating what he had done. he refused, the parents became more angry, and within about four hours on that friday, sebastian was no longer teaching at our school.
the second is a situation that's been gradually building over the past two months. a teacher joined us in the beginning of december from japan. she is married to a japanese man and has spent the past nine years teaching in thailand, taiwan, and japan. i got a bad feeling from her almost immediately but hoped i was wrong. unfortunately, i wasn't. i won't go into detail, but basically she a) has some issues, b) refused all help anyone offered, and c) made life miserable for everyone at work. she gave two months notice just before christmas but, after a situation that was apparently the last straw last friday, was asked to clear her things out of her apartment and not come back.
it was hard seeing sebastian leave, especially because it could have happened to any of us. as far as the other teacher, no one's sad to see her go. but this means that now we're down to three foreign teachers when there should be five.
so there's all that's been going on here! i'll post the second part soon with my thoughts and reflections on everything, but in the meantime here are links to recent photos :)
december (more added since i included the link with my last post):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011190&l=6f921&id=148800130
vacation (two albums):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011557&l=25693&id=148800130
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011559&l=509a4&id=148800130
january (will probably add a few more within the week):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2011837&l=4409b&id=148800130
hope everyone's holidays were good time spent with family and friends...love and miss you all lots!
peace,
heather
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