Emigration

I guess this is a long-overdue farewell to Seoul. I finished my last day of work on September 3rd and flew out of Incheon International on the morning of the 5th, starting my great journey homeward (to be chronicled in another blog: http://www.oostburgbound.blogspot.com/). All things considered, South Korea was pretty good to me for a solid twelve months. My last night was particularly enjoyable, and hopefully a good omen for my further travels: I played "aquatints" across two triple-word score tiles in Scrabble, getting the 7-letter bonus as well.

Over the course of the 2009-2010 school year I met some wonderful people, ate some amazing food (and discovered one of my top ten favorite flavor combinations: sesame oil, egg yolk and black coffee), and taught some astonishing kids. The honors students were a constant pleasure, and even the snottiest brats had their moments.

The IA gang, clockwise from top L: Sean, LC, Rebecca, Danger, Grace, Grace(y), Bobby, Inwoo. Not pictured: Jane, Susan, Grace(y) Ben(jamin), Zoe, Kim, Claire, Lauren, Jin, Verity, Chris, Robert, Irene, Christine.

The honors students: Chan, Hyun, Anders, Izzy, Jinny. The Sox cap is Anders's.

3.2A: Sean, Andy, Ashley, Sarah, Kevin

3.2B: Sarah, James, Alex, Jenny, Hannah

The first graders, from the back: Jeffrey, Stella, Harry, Alice, John, Brian

I didn't bring my camera for the last Tuesday/Thursday classes, which had dwindled considerably by the end of the semester (3.1 had one student, Angela, 4.1 was a whole new crop of kids with whom I hadn't really bonded by quitting time, except for Mary, easily the most vociferous student of my entire yearlong contract).

I hope I can manage to keep in touch with the students and coworkers I made friends with over my IA days, and as many of them plan to come or return to the states someday, that might not be such a tall order. Hell, if I can't find any work, I might even go back for another year.

I won't hold my breath, though; I met a trio of Argentines on a bus in Laos who said that they had found work in New Zealand easily, and that it was a wonderful experience. I've never been to New Zealand...

Thaw

Cherry blossoms bloomed this week, a hopeful marker of the end of winter hibernation. It's warm enough for tee shirts and sunny enough for shades. So, behold a weekend's adventures:

Thaw!

Northward Bound

Negotiating traffic in Phom Penh is the perfect way to learn how to ride a motorcycle, like how I've always assumed learning to drive stick in San Francisco would be: you'll either get it right or quickly destroy yourself. I actually executed a kickass wheelie pulling away from the rental place, my front wheel lifting no less than a foot and a half off the road. Knowing the exact soft spots of the throttle and clutch within twenty seconds of starting the motor, I figured I could continue learning at that pace and be backflipping across the Southeast Asian peninsula by bedtime.

Stop signs in the city are completely absent, so if your street reaches a main thoroughfare and there isn't a traffic light, the Khmer method for crossing is to inch forward, not unlike frogger but without the option of moving back, until people slow and let you through. If you're turning left and you don't feel like putting in the effort, you can just drive on the wrong side of the street until the opportunity to merge right shows itself. With streets clogged tighter than a Brando artery, the fact that this is possible seems to defy physics, but it happens literally millions of times a day and, presumably, there are few casualties: in my week abroad, I heard not a single tire screech.

Admittedly, I was relieved to find that traffic outside the city trickles down to a single two-lane highway with a lot more breathing room. And the relatively teensy number of vehicles belching out exhaust means you can actually breathe, which was also a nice change. 250ccs of well-maintained Honda is a lot more fun than my 1hp Moped was, and no-rules Cambodian highway is a lot more accommodating than the four miles of suburb streets I rode that shitty Yamaha on before it coughed its last cough, never to start again. I managed to keep both wheels on the ground as I hauled ass (and bungeed backpack) upcountry. Before the end of the trip I came within slapping distance of dogs, chickens, cows, monkeys and an elephant either crossing the road or eating the remains of something that failed to. The horn came in handy.

Having a late start and an uncertain timeframe, I stopped only for gas, but still didn't manage to make it to Siem Reap before sundown. The last hour of the trip I rode in near darkness, my headlight doing little to illuminate the asphalt. I reassured myself that the road had been almost immaculately paved for as long as it was visible, but quickly learned that the Cambodian country nights had much worse than potholes to throw at me. What my headlamp lacked in path-lighting it made up for tenfold with insect-popularity. The thwicks and thwecks of thorax and abdomen being rent in twain on Matilda's front grew to a steady rhythm. They grew louder as the swarms massed larger, striking my helmet, and then my face through the open slot where a visor would be if I'd rented from a place that charged more than $12 a day.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and I soon discovered that a 15 foot high bus throws off about ten feet of draft behind it. I spent the last half hour hugging the bumper of an orange tour coach out of Phnom Penh, stopping four or five times, watching mysterious sparks jump from the engine's loose cowling. At top speed I calculated that, though this bus completely blocked my view of the road ahead, its enormous weight would make it a much slower braker than my 500 net pounds of man and machine. Beyond that, the Khmer highway is a very hierarchical community, and busses are top of the pile. Seeing them force oncoming traffic off the road so they could pass a slower vehicle was a frighteningly common occurrence, and I, like a limpet clinging to a blue whale or one of those tooth-picker birds on a Nile alligator, finished out my ride in the secure shadow of my orange leviathan's unchallenged strength.

I rolled into Siem Reap at what must have been nine o'clock and cruised up and down the bit of highway that cut through town eyeing hostels. None of the cheaper looking places were lit or safe-looking for Matilda, who the renters would audaciously charge $19,000 (nineteen thousand, not a typo) for if I didn't bring her back, so I pulled into a fancy looking hotel and asked the guard the rates: $20 a night. I smiled and thanked him, found an equally fancy looking but smaller hotel, and booked two nights for $16 total. I threaded a chain and padlock through Matilda's spokes, locked the gascap, de-bungeed my pack and hauled my worn-out hide up the staircase to my plush room.

When I flipped on the bathroom light to work on extricating the bugs from my tear ducts I discovered why the desk clerks had been eyeing me so uncomfortably: wiping the bugs from my face had left a bandit's mask of motorcycle grease, and the wind and gnats had left my eyes dried and bloodshot. I scrubbed my mitts raw with the gentle hotel soap, plucked a particularly troublesome earwig (they fly in Cambodia, apparently) from its place wedged in my left eyelid, washed off the grease and returned to the front desk to show the clerks my undisguised humanity. And to ask where to get a beer.

Two minutes later I was marching back from the pharmacy next door with three cans of beer, an ice cream bar and a jar of Tiger Balm. Five minutes later I was in a hot bath with two cans of beer and a popsicle stick, and within an hour I was oozing into a thick, luxurious, king-sized sleep while visions of temples danced in my head.

The End of the Beginning

Korean elementary schools take the month of January off as winter vacation. Private education administrators view this with dollar-signs for pupils (pun intended) and capitalize by expanding academy hours from the usual 2:15-7:25 to 9:15-7:25. Retract those astonished gasps, readers; teachers are allotted a generous hour for free cafeteria lunch!

The resulting workweek elicits a steady stream of stress which has built itself up over the first month of 2010, but the dam has finally broken and the unpleasantness is already washing out to sea. I finally have the time and energy to blog again! This explanation does nothing to justify the absence of a December post, for which I have no excuse. Life can be monotonous in any hemisphere, it seems.

A quick recap of the YBM Gaepo International Academy's Winter Intensive Courses:

From 9:15 to 10:40 I taught five bright-eyed and bushy-tailed first graders a reading and discussion class. The twins Jake and Ryan, identical in genes and wardrobe (but not indistinguishable- Jakes glasses are light blue, Ryan's dark blue) needed constant attention. Amy was so tiny and sweet and adorable I kept watching the door expecting Angelina Jolie to burst in and adopt her.

From 10:45 to 12:10 I taught nine third graders writing and discussion, most of which we spent crafting whimsical topic sentences and learning about the Hubble space telescope with the library computer projector. If they were half as interested in LIGHT ECHO as I was, it should have been pretty cool.

From 12:10 to 2:15 we had lunch and planning, then the regular class load. The first week was augmented with extra extra make-up classes to account for the first day snow day, the second week discombobulated by assessment tests that were not factored into lesson plans.

So it's been a trying, tiring month. But it's over now, and so is the blogging about it, which brings us, dear readers, to the "good stuff":

At about ten o'clock Christmas eve, I hopped off a scooter in front of HOSTEL NOMADS in Phnom Penh, tiptoed into the darkened bunk-room, laid out on the low, squishy mattress, and grinned to sleep in the warm Khmer night. Christmas morning I found Matilda, my rusty trusty 250cc Honda, ate a bowl of curry to suffocate the fear welling up in my stomach, bought a map of Cambodia and set off 300 km north for Siem Reap and the temples of Angkor. More to come.

Eating Korean

Tell anyone you're planning on moving to Korea and kimchi is bound to come up. Probably the most well-known food of the country, and possibly one of its most distinguishing icons after Ban Ki-moon and the DMZ, the pickled cabbage dish is served in almost every eating establishment I've visited.

It's a daunting bit of food. Chili paste and pickled, sometimes fermented cabbage don't necessarily emit a "come hither" aroma for most Western noses. I was cowardly in the States, and the jar my father solicited from an elderly Korean lady went uneaten until mom got fed up with the smell leaking through the lid and threw it out. More than once I took the jar out, peered inside, swished the contents, prodded them with a fork, but never got any further.

Here on the peninsula, my courage was bolstered. At the orientation meals, I dutifully chowed down on any and every "ban-chan" (the many small side-dishes presented at most meals) in sight, most of them involving some combination of cabbage, chili paste, sprouts, radish, spinach, something that seemed like long stems of broccoli without the frilly bits, and all manner of indeterminate edibles. It was hit-or-miss, with the occasional big win; cold sauteed spinach with just a little vinegar and spice to it, or shaved radish slivers glazed, almost candied in a salty, sweet coating.

But I never anticipated my feelings for kimchi would grow as they have. My first good experience with it was at a sam-gyap-sal restaurant, where it's laid strategically on a tilted griddle, downhill from sizzling pork slices so that it absorbs the trickling grease as the cabbage becomes tender and sweet and the chili paste mellows. Awakened to its potential, my respect for the nation's staple and my willingness to endure it cold grew. I'll often add it to a bowl of soup or combine it with a chopstick full of some rice dish with usually favorable results.

Kimchi aside, the cuisine here is reliably spellbinding, and I find myself spending days devoting myself to a single dish. One particularly unhealthy span included three suppers of sam-gyap-sal in as many nights. Another week was dedicated to sundubu (lit: "soft tofu"), a spicy tofu and clam soup which I tried at three different restaurants and successfully made at home.

Other remarkable meals include:

Dduk mandu guk: a chicken broth soup with dduk (rice compressed into little dumplings) and mandu (dumplings stuffed with pork, vegetables or kimchi and seasoned with that distinctive spice I associate with Thai pot stickers- ginger?). Served piping hot in a huge bowl for a little under four dollars.

Bibimbap: a rice and vegetable dish served with a fried egg on top. The yolk, when broken and mixed with the ingredients, gives the rice a cohesiveness and helps the flavor of the sesame oil linger on the tongue.

Omer rice: fried rice with vegetables and a fried egg, served with sugary ketchup.

Street toast: many food vendors will ladle a spoonful of whipped egg and slivered cabbage, onion and carrot onto a liberally buttered griddle, add Spam and American cheese on request, and spatula the fried result into a toast sandwich that I've never paid more than a dollar for. Once, the vendor added ketchup and sugar from a large shaker. Stunning.

Subway waffles: a food stand in the subway station on the way to work sells waffles already made, reheated in the iron, then folded in half with buttercream and apple syrup in the middle, for eighty cents. One of these in the morning usually ensures that I'll have a good day at work.

I'm sure I haven't scratched the surface of the heartbreakingly good meals this country will offer me during my employment. It is an exciting chapter.

THE SUNDUBU ESCAPADE:

Ingredients: small clams, green onion, enoki mushrooms, uncurdled tofu, chili powder, an egg, garlic, salt, sesame oil, soy sauce, soybean oil

Enoki mushrooms clump together at the base. They get tender in the broth, but stay a little resistant, and give a little crunch to the soup

The uncurdled tofu- half of this 400 gram tube worked for one serving for me.

The packet of clams- rinsed and soaked before going in, full-shell. They give the broth a good, oily foundation.

Moving Forward, Moving On

Things are getting to be normal. I took a shower and had two hot dogs for dinner. Work was fine, a student gave me soap as a belated Chuseok present. Chuseok is Korean thanksgiving; it was last weekend. The developments are getting less and less exciting as I settle more and more into life:

-Someone put a sign up in my apartment building foyer, "Please close the door gently," which may be directed at me.

-I drew portraits of Alton Brown, Paula Deen, Anthony Bourdain and Cat Cora for my kitchen. I didn't draw Cat Cora's face because she's too pretty.

-I got an electric bill for about $20.00. I don't think my fridge is very efficient.

-I get a paycheck tomorrow. I was going to buy a Lonely Planet guide to the TransSiberian railroad, but I think I'll wing it and buy a plant instead.

-I got a library card at the National Assembly library. I read an article in Time about what bad shape Detroit is in and how fair-trade coffee doesn't pay growers enough, and got depressed and went home and ate ice cream.

This past weekend (Chuseok, remember?) I went to a fancy buffet dinner with some of the teachers, and went hiking on Mt. Bukhansan. At the buffet, a Korean grandpa singled me out (only white guy there) to tell about his son and granddaughter who lived in Madison. He introduced me to them, and I told the son my mother was from Oostburg, and he knew where it was. The granddaughter bowed and said hello very quietly. On the mountain the next day, I walked past a white guy in a UW shirt and said "badgers!" and we high-fived.

Pictures:

The Crew from R: Zoe, her husband Mark, their friend Kate

Foliage

A really big caterpillar I named "Squirmsley"

The black dots are mountain climbers

It's lonely at the top

Seoul (taken by Lou from Detroit who I traded pictures with)

Yours truly, by Lou

I think I'm going to go to an English book exchange this Sunday in Itaewon, the "foreigner neighborhood" where the U.S. army base is located.

Settling

I get groceries at a store three minutes from my house. The apples have been on sale. Zucchini is cheap, so are cherry tomatoes. Oranges from Chile. There are misty coolers full of leafy greens, long, slender radishes, things I don't recognize. I have to buy garlic either 20 bulbs at a time in a mesh orange sleeve, or peeled in a small tub of what looks like soy sauce. Tuna comes tinned with vegetables, and sharing the space turns it into a little tasty stew. Cardboard briefcases of Spam line the entry, gifts bosses give employees (hopefully) for Chusok. An employee mills around the store broadcasting the sale items on the P.A. through a Britney Spears headset microphone.

Down the road is a Crown bakery, a chain, I'm sure, where baguettes are cheap and good. Bread is inexpensive, and here is one of the few places where I've seen wheat. Bleached white flour goods abound.

Across from my apartment building is a mini-mart owned by a husband and wife whose English is endearing and guilt-inflicting. She referred me to a tiny bottle of something sugary and menthol flavored when I asked for antacids, which worked well. I buy drinking water in six-liter packs, and it pleases me to have them to patronize.

Gangnam is one of the more affluent commercial neighborhoods in Seoul. Twenty independent and chain convenience stores compete for a quarter of a square mile of business, and all seem to succeed. I can jump from the stoop of one coffee shop to the next and make it for blocks without having to touch sidewalk. Inexpensive sam gyap sal is everywhere, as are seafood restaurants with big, bubbling aquariums of clams and fish. Construction is omnipresent, crews working long into the night setting up new telecom outlets, clothing stores, offices. If anyone knows about the recession, they aren't letting on.

Kyobo tower, at the corner, reaches almost double the height of the surrounding buildings, its red brick facade a warm answer to the grimy white around it. In the lobby, thermal cameras hooked up to LCDs try to weed out the infirm as H1N1 infections climb: above-normal temperatures elicit a long, loud beep. This can be achieved by having a fever, or by vigorously rubbing your shirt cloth together. The displays read from cold to hot backward through the color spectrum (think Roy G. Biv, reversed). My face is a bright yellow-green. In the basement is a large bookstore with a decent English section, and an entire small shelf dedicated to Lonely Planet guides.

Home life is far from luxury but neither is it spartan. The shower is excellent and the mirror next to the head adds ten minutes of shampoo-mohawk modeling time to my washup. I shave and cut my hair in this mirror. The water heater is a tankless with a digital thermostat which I forget to turn off. The toilet seat is a plastic cushion. The washing machine spits suds out onto the tile floor, into the central drain it shares with the shower. To dry, articles are put on hangers on a knotted nylon rope stretched, sloping down across the bedroom.

In the kitchen, a mini fridge holds the last of a pint of cherry tomatoes, a tub of spicy bean paste, soy sauce, six brown eggs, butter, water, and milk. The cupboards hold a supply gradually reaching comprehensiveness: noodles, flour, oil, sugar, salt, baking powder, coffee, a packet of anchovy sauce mix powder and an onion. I have a gas double-burner range with a valve on the wall which I forget to turn off, and there is a VHS cassette-sized baking drawer I haven't tested yet. The last resident left a toaster which smells like melting plastic when turned on. I'm very pleased with my grocery-store knife and cutting board, but I need more prep space. If I had a workshop I'd build a small table to fit the bill, but I don't, so I'll have to improvise something.

The window screens are holy and don't fit right which lets the mosquitoes in which keeps me up at night. Otherwise, I watch TV online, eat breakfast, dinner and snacks, Skype and read sitting up in bed. The breeze flows through and it's usually cool enough. I'm happy here.