Last Night in Korea

And all of a sudden, it's my last night in Korea. Wait, what? In twelve hours, I'll be on my way to Incheon Airport with two suitcases and a backpack, and in twenty-four, I'll be landing in San Francisco. I'll be home so very soon.

I haven't gotten around to blogging as much as I'd intended to this past week, so here are a few quick updates:

1. After bumming around in Seoul for a few days, I went to Goesan for Fulbright Orientation where I led four workshops over a few days. Two workshops were for discussing identity: one to support LGBTQ-identifying ETAs and another to support Asian-Americans. The next workshop was to introduce different methods and resources for people who want to continue studying Korean on their own throughout the year. Many ETAs showed up to this talk, which was very encouraging. The last workshop was for all fifty secondary school ETAs; it was a crash course on how to plan a unit. Honestly, if there's one thing I can say about teaching, it's that one hour-long lesson isn't nearly enough for any topic in education. But just as important as preparation is practice, plain and simple. I've been pretty encouraged by the enthusiasm and earnestness I've seen in the new ETA class. I'm confident that they'll do a great job this coming year.

Katelyn, Tracey, Seijin, and Jemarley taking a break from Fulbright duties to play Bananagrams at a local makkeoli bar!

Judith's and my unknown reunion!

And I know I've already said this, but I'm especially excited about the teacher who will replace me at CSHS, Courtney, because she is determined to be exactly the kind of teacher I think is most effective: passionate, accessible, and involved in students' lives.

Unrelated: to my great surprise, one of the new ETAs, Judith, is actually a family friend! Her parents have been good friends with my parents ever since my family lived in Philadelphia (nearly thirty years ago)! And, awkwardly enough, we've even met. Four years ago, our parents' church had a reunion in Philadelphia, both Judith and I attended. So we met, took photos, and even played Bananagrams together! We obviously didn't leave very lasting impressions on each other, since both of us thought we were meeting for the first time last week. I think it's hilarious! The world of Taiwanese-Americans can be very small, indeed.

2. During the weekend, a typhoon was sweeping by Korea, and it brought a lot of rain with it. I'd planned to go hiking with a friend, but instead, we went to Cheongju, a smallish-city with not too much to do. However, it was still bigger than rural Goesan. (Aside from a new cafe/jam space on the outskirts of town, where I karaoke-d for hours on Friday night with new friends, there's nothing to do in Goesan.) Katelyn and I watched a movie, ate great 칼국수 and 빙수 and explored Cheongju's own "mural village", Suamgol, in the midst of a drizzle. It wasn't the most exciting thing to do, but after being cooped up in the marble halls of Jungwon University for four days, it was excellent.

Katelyn and me in the colorful Suamgol, Cheongju. Brownie points if you can spot what's wrong with this picture...

4. I spent a good chunk of my last full day in Seoul running errands, and it was more than a little frustrating. I had to cancel my phone contract and my bank account. Long story short, it was more of a hassle than I'd expected, mostly because I had to do almost every transaction in Korean! I'd thought that big branches of phone stores and banks would have some competent English speakers in the capital city, but that was not the case. Even the resident English speaker at the bank tried explaining the procedure to me for about five minutes before switching back to Korean. Ugh, Koreal life. I managed to get these two simple tasks done in three hours, and in the meantime I picked up a few useful vocabulary words, such as 계좌 ("account") and 해지하다 ("to cancel"). Whew.

Catan! Photo taken by Katelyn

5. And as for my last night in South Korea? I hung out in Hongdae and played Settlers of Catan with my friends (역시... I mean, what else? It's what I did on my "last night" in the US two years ago.). Ooh, we also got dessert from Ben's Cookies. Their milk chocolate-orange cookies are amazing!

It was a chill and really enjoyable evening. There's nothing else I'd have rather done!

Hm... so how do I feel? In all honesty, this night doesn't feel at all different from any other night I've spent hanging out with friends in Seoul. I have a feeling that the reality of leaving won't hit me until I'm en route to the airport, or maybe not even until I've boarded the plane. Nostalgia doesn't kick in as early for me as it seems to for other people. But that's not to say I'm not cherishing every last moment I have here. Even though those moments are dwindling, why waste any of them dwelling on the very fact that they are? Too meta and unproductive for me.

Next time you hear from me, I'll either be at the airport or at home.

안녕하세요!

A Day Off with Friends

초코칩쿠키즈!

I love to bake, and when friends come to visit Changwon, I all but drag them to my apartment so we can make cookies or pies or something delicious and cavity-inducing. Today's all about the chocolate chip cookies, but I'm also waiting for a chocolate cake to cool as I type. Tomorrow morning, it will become an American flag cake to celebrate the Fourth of July! :)

Hana and Yoobin visited me today! There's a convoluted story behind our relationship, which I am going to describe whether you're interested or not, so listen up: Hana and Yoobin met in the States while Yoobin was studying abroad in Pennsylvania, where Hana is from. Hana and I then kind-of met in college because we went to the same church. I knew her as one of the women on the worship team, though I didn't really consider us friends... But then, during our Senior spring, I heard that she was going to go to Korea on a Fulbright, and realized that we were going to be in the same program! Unfortunately, we were separated by our placements, because Hana was sent to Naju, and I went to Changwon. But, surprise surprise, it turns out Yoobin is from Changwon! So Hana got us connected, and Yoobin and I hung out for all of one day, before he left for China to study abroad for a year. Then Hana finished her grant year and returned to the US, and I was all alone...

... But Hana came back to Korea last April, and then Yoobin returned from China, which he claimed was too smelly for his liking, and today, the three of us finally had a reunion! It mostly consisted of eating patbingsu, eating yukgaejang, and (baking and) eating cookies. Oh, and we also taught Yoobin how to play Bananagrams.

Bananagrams at Sulbing! Two of my favorite things. And two of my favorite people! ;) Also, I am going to not-so-subtly point out that I had the letters to play "polyandry" in this round.

Year 2 시작하자!

Let's start year two of this Fulbright thing! Woohoo!

Some updates: I have not been blogging regularly for the past month because I have been on vacation. I spent four weeks in the US, attended two weddings, did some grad school research, caught up with old friends and made some new ones, and didn't think about Korea at all. (Well, that's not strictly true. I kept up with Korean news and wrote regularly in my Korean blog. But I didn't study Korean or watch any K-dramas, as I had planned to. I also didn't eat any Korean food, plentiful as it is in the Bay Area.)

About three days ago, I packed my bags and hopped on a plane from San Francisco to Seoul. A nice old 아줌마 sitting next to me decided that I would be her conversation partner for the final two hours of the flight. She thought that I was a Korean-American and first asked me where in Korea my parents were from. Later, she talked to me about her life. A Korean teacher in Osh, Kyrgyzstan who hails from Gwangju, she rambled about her experiences during the Gwangju Democratization Movement and the Kyrgyz Revolution of 2010, and I understood about 50% of what she was saying. I've gotten good at nodding and smiling at the right times when someone is speaking to me in Korean on the assumption that I know what they are saying. That said, it was an interesting conversation.

From the airport in Incheon, I took a bus to Cheongju and then another bus to Goesan, where the forty second- or third-year Fulbright ETAs joined this academic year's new crop of teachers (numbering eighty, for a total of 120) at the tail end of their six-week Orientation. I got to know a handful of them, although between their packed schedule and my travel fatigue, not much socialization was to be had. However, I did spend a lot of time catching up with ETAs from my year, and we played lots of Bananagrams and Contact. (All of the new ETAs now know me as the guy who loves word games, since I was the answer to one of the questions -- "This second-year ETA loves word games such as Bananagrams and Contact" -- during Quiz Night. I am okay with this.)

After about a day and a half of this bite-sized Orientation, it was time for Departure Day. Everything ran exactly the same as last year's D-Day, only this year it was blazing hot instead of raining buckets. Also, this year I didn't even bother to say too many goodbyes, knowing that it isn't really goodbye, because it's so easy to visit my friends in other cities. I guess the real farewells were for some members of this year's Orientation Committee who are not renewing their contracts. Leslie, Ashlee, and Anthony are going back to the US, and I'll miss them a lot! But for everyone else, it was just, "Hope your apartment's nice, and see you soon!"

Speaking of which, my apartment is really nice! It's small, to be sure, but has basically everything I need. I've got a fridge, a two-burner stove, a desk, a bed, a closet, and a kitchen table in two rooms, plus a bathroom and a laundry room with my own washing machine. Also, my school provided me with a lot of appliances and living essentials, so I don't have to buy very much! I already have utensils, cookware, a rice cooker, hangers, and more toilet paper than I think I'll ever need. They even got me a freaking convection oven! It's so big it takes up more than half of the kitchen table. I know those cookies I baked for everyone last semester had something to do with this exorbitant investment...

I'm really, really thankful that my school has taken such good care of me. They definitely didn't need to buy me an oven! But they do have money, and they apparently like me enough to spend it on me. Rent is 500,000KRW a month, which is about $450. It's a bit above average for a place like this, but I'm not complaining -- my school is taking care of the rent. I'm responsible for utilities -- gas, water, and electricity. There's no Internet, so I'm using my phone as a WiFi hotspot and tethering my laptop to it. I'll have to check to make sure this doesn't cause me to go over my monthly data plan. And lastly, the apartment building is a mere five minutes' walk away from my school.

Good deal all around. I'm fortunate and happy.

So, what's next? I will spend the weekend preparing for my first classes on Monday and catching up with some friends in the city. I also haven't quite finished unpacking, and there are some household items I still have to buy, like a fan and a laundry hamper. And food. Food would be nice. In fact, it's 2:30pm and I haven't even eaten lunch yet. I think I'll do that now. Bye!

Reunion: Fall Conference 2012 (pt. 2)

You could also call this the Group Photo Post. Last weekend's conference was a fantastic time of reuniting with all of our friends after seven weeks of being apart. Of course, I've traveled to other cities and I've seen tons of other Fulbrighters; I may be the only one in my city, but I'm not as isolated as that. Nevertheless, for everyone to get back together was really something. When we were all gathered in the main conference room, I was taken aback at our numbers. In one large room were represented dozens of cities and over one hundred and twenty different schools, families, and experiences. This amounted to thousands of stories to share.

Contacting the night away! Left to right: Ashley, Sarah, Thomas, Kelly, Sara, and Erin.

On the first evening, a bunch of folks decided to walk around the Bomun Lake (보문호수), the large reservoir central to the tourist resort area where our conference was held. We got drinks and chocolate and, braving the nighttime autumn chill, sat on a pier by the lake and talked and played games. Contact -- my favorite game ever -- was the order of the evening. I love a good two hours of Contact. I mean, not even that, I love a good two hours of speaking quickly and fluently in English with my friends. A nice break from the Korean and intermediate-level English that surrounds me in the classroom every day. And on top of that, a word game that gives your language faculty a run for its money! Kelly perhaps described it best when she said that it felt like her brain was being massaged.

한우, Korean beef grilled over charcoal. The cuts were twice as thick as what I usually see at barbecue restaurants!

On Saturday evening, a group of us got adventurous and went out to get Korean barbecue. Fortunately -- or unfortunately, depending on how you view the situation -- we chanced across a nice-looking restaurant: 강산한우. I wasn't aware of this when we walked in, but 한우 (hanwoo) means Korean beef. Korean beef is really, really expensive. And sure enough, this restaurant turned out to be a wallet breaker. But was it worth it? The small cuts of meat that we got (10,000₩ per 100g) were delicious; juicy steak grilled over pure charcoal, along with tons of garlic, mushrooms (as much as we wanted), and a variety of 반찬. Mhm, there's no denying that it was an excellent meal, surpassing the quality of most of what I eat these days. On the other hand, I've also been stuffed to satisfaction at barbecue joints to the tune of 5,000₩, whereas this tourist trap restaurant, which charged extra for rice and even for setting up our table and grill (who does that?!), landed us with a bill of 20,000₩ per person. I'd pay $18 for that in the States, no sweat, but in Korea? Hmph. I'll say it was worth it, but I don't think I'll be treating myself to 한우 again soon...

The adventurous group that shelled out for some mad-expensive and supremely delicious Korean beef barbecue. Left to right: Kelly, Ashley, Jason, Katelyn, Ben, Tsu, Nina, Elaine, and me. (taken by Neal)

After the meal, everyone was stuffed -- almost uncomfortably so -- which called for a night-time stroll around the lake. I took photos and played with long exposure...

Katelyn, Ashley, Ben, Kelly, and Jason at Bomun Lake in Gyeongju. Jason likes his ice cream.

And that evening ended in a great Bananagrams and Pirate Scrabble marathon, during which I continued to fend off Ashley's attacks on my claim as Bananagrams Boss and Pirate Scrabble Captain and generally had a blast.

What I liked the most about this reunion was that all of us Fulbrighters could basically pick up exactly where we left off at the end of Orientation, which strangely seems like it was simultaneously very long ago and just yesterday. Only now in addition to our crazy antics and long chats about our lives back home, we have stories to tell of our students' crazy antics and long chats about our lives right now. Over all the meals, throughout all those long hours just chilling, between games of Bananagrams, the conversation continued unbroken, and, well, I guess it was telling of just how wonderful it was to be together again.

The wonderful 인터미디엇 (촣아, 촣아, 촣아!) class reunion photo. Left to right: me, Lizzie, Tracy, Jaeyeon, Susie, Amber, Soon, Monica, and Kyla. Missing: Kelly, Megan, and Ashley, who wandered off early :(