Coming Home

One year can seem really long and sometimes it just flies by. I'm counting down the days until I say goodbye to Gwangju. I'm already thinking that I will visit in the future and see all the good folks who have made my time here possible. But for now, good bye Anna teacher! I finished my summer English camp (students go to school for half days during summer vacation), said good bye to the kids (I'm glad there weren't too many tears only one student cried -a secretly sensitive 5th grade boy). Now all that's left is to settle my affairs here, some packing and cleaning and catching up with this blog. Next stop a 9 day visit in Berkeley (starting August 27th) to see people and dogs and then I'm settling in for a year of Czech living while teaching English in Ceske Budejovice. Stay tuned for Dearest Ceske Budejovice, I hope to be more consistent in my writing.

GRE

I decided that in one year I will go back to school, so I took the GRE (graduate record examination). I haven't prepared for a test for years and the biggest challenge was just making a schedule to go ahead and study. But once I got going I remembered how much fun math can be, really. Taking the test in Korea means it's divided into two exams, which I think is actually helpful because a marathon exam can be really painful. The first portion is a written analytical essay and the test center is in Seoul at the Fulbright Commission (any reason to go to Seoul is a good one). The second exam (given one month later, at the public university in Gwangju) was the doozie, 4x30 minute bouts with concentration (why does the woman behind me have to constantly clear her throat). All in all I did just fine, hey I'm not a math major (yet). My next step is to send applications to schools in California!

These aren't my scores, just an image from the web :)

Gwangju Yoga

Gwangju Yoga is a group of people who get together to practice yoga on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The fearless leader and founder of the group puts so much love and care into making the practice challenging and good for a variety of abilities. She's not a certified teacher yet, after completing her English teaching contract here she will study for a hatha yoga teacher certification. I know she will do great!

Sometimes class only has 2 people sometimes there are 8. Our practice space is provided by the GIC (the international center) and in renting a room above a local foreigner run grocery store (The Underground Grocery)
If it wasn't for this group of people I know I would have had a really different experience in Gwangju. Thanks Andrea and Laurie!! And of course Jamie and Trevor too.

Teachers' retreat

The Gwangju Office of Education took all 160 native English speakers on a little retreat/ teacher workshop. We spent the day in a nice little fishing village.

Boseong Village and rice fields.
The next day we went to a green tea field, it was rainy and misty so everything looked extra lush and beautiful.

Ja Yun Kwa Hak Ko

Did I mention that I live across the street from a high school. The school week is Monday through Saturday (every other week a free Saturday) from 8am-10pm. That's a lot of teenager traffic, and those kids like to scream- I would too if I had to be in school 14 hours a day. The other weird thing is that the school has a loud speaker that begins to play "inspirational music" at 8am. I usually find the music choice really odd, favorites include Tchiakovsky and Stravinsky. The principal must have some grand idea behind this theme. The high school is a technical high school for agriculture (Ja Yun kwa hak ko), nutrition, and cooking (or should I say food science, I imagine the students learn how to use artificial flavoring).

Bike rentals

Bike riding is always a good time. The city lends bikes for free at the subway station. Just stop by the security booth, hand over your I.D. card, they give you the key to the lock and off you go.

There are many stations for stretching a playing along the river.

Bali

I went on a little trip to Bali. It's such a beautiful island, the plant and animal life is amazing, so many good smells and sounds. The people I met were so nice considering they have to put up with so many tourists.

penjor decorate the street for the holiday.
Lots of stray dogs, who are in the Bali Hindu religion thought to be reincarnated humans. The healthy dogs seem to have an ok life, but there are many with rabies and mange and worms that don't get any care- they just sun themselves and wander around looking for food.

Rice fields: brown rice, basmati, and red rice. Indonesian food is delicious with yummy ingredients like tempeh, tofu, coconut, greens, and peanuts.
Legong performance characterized by intricate finger movements with really expressive gestures and facial expressions, it's really interesting to watch all the detailed movement. Traditionally danced by girls before reaching puberty, the dancers would begin training at an early age. These days the performers are older and not necessarily going to be wed to a wealthy merchant or royalty.

Shadow puppet show. Lots of music playing in the background and some English jokes thrown in for the tourists, total entertainment.
A palm alter in front of a family home. I was in Bali for a month long holiday called Galungan. Every family weaves a palm alter and a really tall "penjor" to celebrate Galungan a time when the Balinese gods visit the Earth. Lots of daily ritual, the little palm baskets are made and put out a few times a day with offerings.

A temple with holy spring water.

I went to Bali to take part in a Iyengar yoga workshop. The teacher was great and I met some nice folks too. Our accommodations were in beautiful bungalows that were visited by geckos and frogs at night.

Mosquito netting can be so romantic.

Korean food

I think it's been a while since I've pointed out how amazing Korean food is. This is a photo of lunch for one person, rice and soybean stew are the main meal which is mixed with the bowl of fresh vegetables. The little plates are different sides of pickled vegetable and condiments. Lucky for me the city I live in is surrounded by farmland and the produce is good! I've been living on watermelon all summer, actually I've moved onto nectarines now...
This is the lunch we ordered for delivery at school, one of my favorites, a hot stone pot full of rice with vegetables. The amazing thing is that a man on a moped delivers all this food and then comes back an hour later to pick up the dishes. The only waste is wooden chopsticks and some paper and plastic wrap. I like the minimal use of packaging in this delivery, but unfortunately it's also popular to have ice cream delivered and that is packaged in a one time use styrofoam cooler. (Packaging and wasteful over packaging is a big issue here, combined with carefree littering it can get really ugly on the streets.)

Busan

Busan is on the coast, has lots of music venues, good restaurants, a subway system to easily get you from one part of the city to the next, and only 3.5 hours away from Gwangju so it's a fun weekend get away.

This boy on the beach was practicing his Taekwondo.

A little jam time.

Public bike rentals, use a credit card and it's yours for the taking.

Not only did we find delicious Indian food, we found dairy free coconut milk ice cream, and had sake. The waiter at the sake bar brought over a selection of sake cups to choose from, that was a tough decision. We sat at a corner table in the second floor window, where we had a great view of the street below and watched as Koreans (who typically drink too much too fast) stumbled out of bars and had all sorts of comic stumblings and swayings.

Unfortunately black out drunk is something you see a lot of here, there's even a blog devoted to photos of Koreans passed out in awkward places (it's called "black out korea" if you want the proof). I see it every week, somebody slumped in a planter, curled up on a bus bench, or passed out at the corner store's picnic table. I won't go into detail about the vomit everywhere, but I think that's a big motivation for removing shoes when you enter a building.

Saunas

Korean saunas or jimjilbang are wonderful. That is, if you like to sweat and lay around and then hop in a hot tub or cold tub. The sauna sections are co-ed and usually have a few rooms to choose from with different ambience or healing materials (salt, ochre, charcoal). Some saunas are open 24 hours so many travelers use them as a cheap place to spend the night (you can sleep/nap in the common lounge room). To use the sauna you are given an outfit of shorts and shirt to sweat through, which is great and comfortable. But eventually that strange odor of steam and sweat soaked cotton starts to kick like a old towel and that's a good sign you've had enough. The towel on the head is optional and this is the way to wear it, I usually do something more turban like.

I visited "spa land" in Busan, it's the largest jimjilbang in the country and caps the visit at 4 hours, but it was long enough and really great. The highlight was the outdoor hot springs. It's a fancy place, totally touristy, and if I'm in Busan I will go again.

Radio Fun

The cherry and plum blossoms were beautiful while they lasted. (That's the radio station building in the background).

So, an opportunity presented itself to me, and I took it. GFN, Gwangju Foreign Language Network the local English language radio station needed voices to fill some interview style segments. The past 2 months I've been chatting it up with the host Anne in a segment called Enjoy Korea- I talk about artsy things happening in Gwangju and Korea. I never get to hear the program because I'm always teaching at the time it airs. It's a short segment on Friday mornings from 11am to 11:20. You can listen here...

(That's Anne behind the mic)

The radio station is near a park that used to be a zoo, now the only animals you can see there are in the form of paintings or sculptures.

architecture

Walking around town most of the buildings are just rectangles. Grime coated concrete with lots of advertisement banners, LED displays, and inflatable ads. ...I'll take some photos to include in the near future.

There are very few neighborhoods with two story homes, most of the city lives in giant apartment building compounds. Sorry about the poor quality of this photo, it was taken through a window. A love motel here in Gwangju with the Statue of Liberty, actually there are two of these motels. This one is downtown next door to the motel with the giant windmill.

A slide out of the second floor window of a daycare.
My favorite thing about buildings in Gwangju, lots of weird antennae.

sex work

this guy is having a reading break while his co-worker who is a "coffee girl" is upstairs "making coffee for a customer"

the coffee girls are escorted to their customers sitting side saddle on the back of a moped (mini skirt, legs crossed, no helmet, and hiding their faces against the back of the driver). the moped has a booming sound system and is blasting pop music and sometimes has flashing lights, the whole thing is very showy and works as a advertisement. yes sex work is a big industry in south korea. unfortunately there is a big problem with deceptive international employment, there are companies that bring women from other asian countries to south korea with the promise of work, and in reality are bringing these women in as sex workers. to add further danger and unbalance to the situation there are few resources for women in the way of clinics and women's centers, especially for women who don't speak korean.

Free time

Koreans don’t loiter on the streets or in parks (unless they’re grandpas playing go-stop or chess then they're parkin' it) and they don’t hang out at home with their friends (since there’s little privacy with 3 generations living in house). A host has more responsibility for the guests here than in present day U.S. Maybe a few decades ago social conventions were followed by more people in the U.S. or maybe they still are and I just never paid attention to those things before. I’ll have to do some comparing when I return. The fun thing is, because of this it’s common to have places to go and hang out and socialize; the dvd-room, the song-room, the game-room, or a buffet.

$9 will get you entry into a buffet and unless you’re a food eating champion you can stay as long as you like. Popular buffet food is Korean “western food" like spaghetti with octopus - veggie options are few but quality in my book. Lots of seaweed, sprouts, braised greens, and rice. The one restaurants name is “Ashley a place for women and fillies”. My friend proposed that the name ‘ a place for women and fillies’ means they are trying to draw the house wife clientel. ...and what better place to meet your girls than at the buffet, belly up to a table and talk for a few hours.

There’s also a vegetarian buffet that we go to weekly, this place is great, all veggie, fake meat, and fruit for dessert. Lots of families go there as do the local monks.

Board game cafes. For the price of a coffee or beer you can sit for hours with your friends and get your game on. Because sometimes a little inconsequential competition can really bring a friendship together. I’ve been going to a place downtown to play scrabble. The drink service is really slow because the guys who work there are really into gaming and they get amped on other peoples games- and sometimes bring you props like wigs and masks and fake hands.

Happy New Year

Lunar new year, Seolnal, is the biggest holiday in Korea. This year falling on February 3^rd-5^th the actual holiday is on the day of the second new moon after winter solstice. Three days are taken so people can travel to their hometowns and to visit parents and grandparents. Kids dress up in colorful hanbok costumes, play traditional games, fly kites, and the special food to eat is Tteokguk (soup with rice cakes). The streets of Gwangju have been uncharacteristically calm because so many people are out of town.

To celebrate I joined some friends for dinner and drinks. In the festive food spirit my friends chose to eat at a Korean bbq restaurant. I don’t take part in this often because the meal is centered around meat. You sit at a table, there’s a burner in the center with a griddle and above this is a smoke vent. The griddle is slanted and has a pour spout so that the fat cooking off the meat can run down into a drip catch under the table. I love that it’s common to go to a restaurant and cook your own food. What a great idea. It’s better than a build your own sundae bar at the buffet, you actually get to make hot food. My dream would be a pressed sandwich place, where everyone sits around making perfect grilled cheese sandwiches. For the bbq you place thin slices of raw meat on the grill, cook to your liking, place on a lettuce leaf, apply condiments, and eat. My problem here is obviously in sitting at a table piling on meat. The smell is intense and it gets very smoky so much so that your clothes smell like a busy restaurant when you leave the meal. But for the sake of my meat eating friends I occasionally go to these restaurants. I end up with a questionably vegetarian meal, usually eating lots of rice and some kimchi and drinking watery beer. I am always amazed at the amount of meat that is brought out and somehow they are able to eat every last bit. The table is covered almost like a mosaic by little plates filled with sides, soup bowls, soup pots, baskets of lettuce, cups for water, glasses for beer, and of course chopsticks and a spoons. As a waitress I’m amazed at the amount of work that goes into that presentation.

(not my photo but I wanted to include an image of what the table spread typically looks like)

To continue on our new year’s celebration we headed to an arcade goofed around, played whack a mole, and explored the “norae-bang lockers” which are similar to a karaoke room, but these are small closets for one person -or two squooshed. The lockers line the room and if you stand in the middle you hear an eerie off key ambient howling of all the combined singing.

All in all we made a good lunar new year’s celebration. There was no champagne at midnight, but it did seem like a good occasion to splurge on a bottle of whisky.

fast food

Sorry boys only for ladies! Come on ladies eat more beef already, would ya!

Wintery

It's winter and the ice is stuck to the pavement. It doesn't seem to be thawing anytime soon. So I've developed a new homebody routine of figuring out how to crochet.

My new bamboo crochet hooks finally arrived today.
Taking daily walks in the snow is beautiful and sometimes cautiously slow. This temple (Daeheungsa) is about an hour and 1/2 from Gwangju. I was looking for a trail through the surrounding hills but instead just wandered around the temple grounds. I met a college student who told me all about his hitchhiking adventures. Thumbing it is completely common in villages and small towns. I can't wait to try it, but I think I'll wait for warmer weather.

Last week I had two teaching hours everyday, one hour of story time with 1st and 2nd graders and one hour of "free talking" with some older students. This week is my second English language camp- with 6th graders who if you forgot are 13 and 14 years old and full of it. And, next week is Seolnal (Lunar New Year) which means a week off from classes. Basically the last month and a half have been very relaxed.

A flea market at Kunsthalle. Crafts, used clothes, used games, food, drink, music, art, and fun.