WARNING: Please Refroin

I think this speaks for itself?

Taken at the beach in Gangneung. Korea has some beautiful beaches, but almost all of them are also military zones, especially in the Gangwon-do province, which is in northern South Korea. At least this beach didn't have barbed wire fences!

The RTW Bug...

...has bitten me. Hard.


(Yes, that is my real passport. Yes, the white spots are mold. I spent monsoon season in Thailand in 2006, give me a break!)


I mean, I've been planning to do an RTW for a long time. Ever since I did my backpacking trip through Europe almost 4 years ago. But at this point, I'd been thinking it would happen years in the future; I have to finish my time in Korea first, and then there would be 2 years in Peace Corps. I was thinking that maybe, instead of going all around the world in a year or two, I could circumnavigate the globe in more like 7 or 8 years, taking teaching jobs for a year in different countries on different continents.

This still isn't a bad idea, but... once Kat and I started talking about it, I really want to do the full, backpack-on-my-back, sleeping in hostels or couchsurfing (or in train stations), each-week-in-a-different-city Round the World Trip.

If my dreams come true and Peace Corps medically clears me next month, then it will be almost three years before I can seriously consider this trip.

I don't want it just to be something I yearn for my whole life... I want it to happen.

I'm putting it down in my Life Plan. In ink, not pencil.

Winter 2009-Winter 2010: Teaching in Korea
Winter/Spring 2010-Spring 2012: Peace Corps
Spring 2012: Begin RTW!

Sound good, Kat?

The Shopping Mime

If the international aid thing doesn't work out (and if the interstellar diplomacy thing doesn't either), then at least my time in Korea is excellent for preparing me to make my living as a mime.

And in casual life, I shall rock at charades.

I've gotten quite adept at expressing to salesmen in local stores exactly what I want without using a single spoken word. (Though, I'm pretty sure that one thing I want-- soap for my floor-- doesn't actually exist in Korea.) I just walk into a store and start gesturing, and most of the time, they take me to exactly what I need.

So when I walked into the kitchen supply store, and I rounded my arms like a huge bowl, then made mixing motions...

...the woman behind the counter asked "Mixing bowl?" and I nearly fell over.

It was such an extreme revelation that the person behind the counter actually knew the word in English of what I was looking for (and, as an aside, honestly: why should they?). I was giddy, like, "Yes! Yes! Mixing bowl! Yes!" and was in general waaaaaay too enthusiastic. It kind of made my evening.

I suppose when your evening is made happy by the fact that a store clerk knew what a "mixing bowl" is, you are truly learning to appreciate the small pleasures of life.

Liftoff

Short story written at the request and prompt of Kat.

Danielle didn't tell anybody before she left, because after all, she was trying to disappear. And it's not very well a disappearance if everybody already knows, now, is it?

When the idea had first occurred to her, she'd wanted to take off now, now, now. But then she'd probably have to just come back after a month or two, because she hadn't planned; and returning from a mysterious disappearance after anything less than a year behind her seemed a bitter defeat, slinking back with her tail between her legs. No, this was going to be a triumph, and for that she had to plan. No, to scheme.

Soon the wait had become fun, because she was keeping this delicious secret, adding all the time to her strategy. First she decided, in order to get to that all-important one year mark, to get a job, so she did not find herself running out of funds. Of course, moving to another country just to start more monotonous work wasn't quite the idea, even if doing so when nobody knew you were leaving and nobody knew where you were did have a certain charm to it. But mostly it was a start, a warm-up, and it was insurance.

She'd taken almost a full year to work everything out. She wasn't sure how she felt about this. On the one hand, it took away much of the whimsy, the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants spontaneity.

On the other hand, she'd kept the secret all that time, letting on to nobody, not to her brother, not to her best friend, that she would soon dissolve into thin air.

And now she was boarding the plane.

.

Four weeks ago she'd taken a little trip to the airport and bought a ticket with cash. At 10 o'clock that morning, her lease had been up, though nobody else knew it besides her landlord, as they'd all assumed she'd renewed. And thirty minutes ago, as she sat in the terminal waiting for the plane to come, munching on the McDonald's which she bought only when she was in an airport, but every single time that happened, she sent an email to everybody in her address book:

Hi everyone.
I'm safe. I'm just taking off for a while. Don't worry about me.
I'll see you when I see you!
--Danielle

It would satisfy nobody, but nonetheless they would not be panicky. She'd have rather not tell anybody she was leaving, but she also didn't want anybody to worry too much, so she had to strike some sort of compromise between the two.

And now, she was standing in line, waiting for her seat (section B, row 37) to be called over the loudspeaker.

Excitement welled up within her. It was happening! She had been planning this moment for nearly a year, and finally, finally it was here!

It took most of her willpower to keep herself from skipping to her seat when it was called.

She had a window seat, which she loved. She stowed her backpack (filled with everything she would need; she had a suitcase in checked luggage as well, but it held nothing essential, for she knew eventually she would be leaving it behind, somewhere or other) in the overhead compartment, and sat back in her seat, watching everybody else file in and get situated.

"I'm free," she whispered, and in that moment she truly felt it. Years of anxiety, of expectations, of monotony and domestication, felt as though they were just falling away from her, and she was shedding the weight of her stressful life and all that was left, as she lifted into the air, was herself, pure and unburdened.

The plane lifted, and her heart lifted, and the way she felt, she was not inside of a man-made metal contraption, able to fly through the application of science and engineering.

No, she had been so filled with joy that the buoyancy lifted her right into the air, and twirling and laughing in sheer exhilaration, she was now dancing her way across the sky.

Bong-Rae English Experience Center

A couple of weeks ago, I was given a camera, and was set the task of taking pictures of the Bong-Rae English Experience Center (which is where I work) for our brochure. BREEC, as we call it, is still very new-- just opened up December 2008-- and our hope is that in the future other elementary schools in the Yeongwol area will send their students to our facility for a one or two day intensive.

So I thought, who knows, maybe some of you out there are interested to see where an English teacher in Korea is working. Maybe even some of you would get a kick out of seeing where I work. So I decided to post a few of the pictures for you!

First, the outside of the building (inside which, in fact, I am at this very moment):






Come up the stairs:



To our front door!




Inside, we've got a lot of goodies for visiting students (and for the students at Bong-Rae elementary, for that matter). First there's the library:






Then we've got tons of stations where students can, in essence, play make-believe in English. We give them dialogues, and they pretend to be doing many different everyday things, in semi-realistic surroundings. This could be, for instance, a hospital:




Or maybe airport security:




A produce store:




Or a hotel:




There are plenty of other stations, as well. We hand out realistic-looking passports (for the Republic of BREEC) to each class who comes through, which come complete with suggested dialogue. Once a student completes the dialogue (or, for younger grades, a simplified version) in the mock-up, we give them a stamp on that page of their passport.


Next is the Multimedia Room, where students can be on big-screen TV, and actually, by waving their hands around in the air, interact with the things on the screen!

I can't figure out how to convert the format of those pictures (which I didn't take, as they involve students actually interacting with the system). If there is any interest whatsoever expressed, I'll try harder to post some of these. :)


And there you have it: the workplace of a foreign English teacher at a small English Experience Center in rural Korea. I'm in Gangwon-do, the least developed province of South Korea... imagine how snazzy these places must be in other areas!

I didn't get to do much this weekend, as I've been sick. Mostly just resting and cleaning my apartment (it's actually presentable now! Yay!). But last weekend I took the train to Gangneung, a city on the shores of the Sea of Japan, or as it is known in South Korea, the East Sea. The train ride is 3 1/2 hours long but oh, so scenic; the train ride itself was an adventure, a joy, as opposed to something you just try to get through. I took some shots out the window:








I was in Gangneung partially for the Cherry Blossom Festival, and partially to visit a friend of mine, Carolyn, who I met at Orientation. The cherry blossoms, while not yet fully in blossom, were nonetheless breathtaking.






There was one road we walked around, it's quite famous, both sides are lined with cherry trees. Apparently people come from all over to see that street, and I was no different.

As well as seeing the cherry blossoms, there were plenty of other festivities. Plus, of course, there was a beach. It was only about 60 degrees Fahrenheit, so we didn't get into the sea deeper than our ankles (and even that was so cold that it made my feet ache!). Still, relaxing on the beach with friends was a welcome chance from isolated, mountainous Yeongwol.

Then we went out clubbing-- Western alcohol! Rum and coke! Vodka and cranberry! You have no idea what this means to me. Soju, the liquor of choice in Korea, is vile. Disgusting. But it's the only thing available in Yeongwol. That, and bad beer, and if you go to the supermarket, inexplicably, 15 different kinds of Scotch. (However, you can't get the scotch at the bar.) Meeting people from Western countries whom I don't know is getting to be quite a thrill for me. In Yeongwol, if I see a Westerner I know him or her. Period. So meeting some new native English speakers was quite nice.

We also got to see a few Korean pop concerts, which was an adventure in itself. If I tell you about that, though, it would merit its own blog post. Well, we'll see. :)

Guinsa, Labyrinthine and Escher-esque

Today I went to a Buddhist temple, or rather a temple complex, because there wasn't just one, there were tons of them, all over the place. It was labyrinthine paths and Escher-esque staircases nestled into the mountains, going up, up, up.





Each section seemed like the whole, because you couldn't see anything else but the buildings towering above you almost as much as the mountains were. But then you glimpse this little hidden staircase and keep climbing and discover yet another level of the complex, brightly painted temples and footbridges all around.





Next you find a little courtyard balcony: it's below everything yet to come, but offers a view from above of everything through which you've just walked. So you look back, and discover that hidden staircase was one of many, a myriad of winding routes all leading to the same place... eventually.




Words truly cannot describe what it felt like, or the aching beauty of it.