Ko Tao, Thailand
bus to Seoul International from Gwangju
flight to Beijing to Bangkok (one night in Bangkok on Koh San Road)
train to Chumphon
boat to Ko Tao
first 3 nights on Sairee Beach
next 8 night to remote bay Thian Og Bay
I decided on Ko Tao so long ago that I don’t remember making the decision, but it had something to with the words: island, small, can walk around in a day if you set out early, diving, beautiful colorful fish, least commercial of all the islands in the Gulf of Thailand, natural beauty and undeveloped.
In some ways if I hadn’t forced myself to finally buy a plane ticket, I may have spent my entire vacation in Korea choosing a new yoga pose to focus on in February, chatting online and reading everything I could get my hands on by Haruki Murakami. I haven’t been outside much this winter, but I recently made a few new friends in a couple art classes I am taking and I expect the warmer weather will bring us all outdoors soon to draw.
One of my goals for 2010 was to have less fear of heart-openers, so I have done 28 upward facing bows (one for each day in January). It is amazing how far you can come with something you promise yourself to do every day. I’ve decided to extend this practice into February, but havent decided on the task just yet. Maybe the 85 degree temperatures on Ko Tao will bring back the urge to run.
Sorry for the newsy post. I am really pretty much out the door and have only left myself a small window (Jen says “too small”) for getting on the plane in Seoul tomorrow. We will see.
Pilson and the Adventure of the Broken Watch
I know you cant see him well, but this is Pilson…I have only the one photo.
We’ve started reading The Little Prince at school and have designated the last half hour to playing games. Today during a memory game, I caught my watch on the edge of the desk and it flew off my arm. The students told me where to go to have it fixed: hong kum dong. I had it in both English and Hangul, but when I finally couldn’t find the shop, I stopped by Pilson’s motorbike repair shop to ask him.
Without saying a word, Pilson left his shop (without locking it) to lead me down a long alleyway to the watch repairwoman. On the wall of her shop were many ticking clocks, only one was motionless as I pointed out to Pilson so I could practice my new Korean word for broken, a word I have since forgotten. It took the woman less than a minute to fix and Pilson wouldn’t let me pay for it.
When we returned to his shop, his mother was stoking the wood stove with small sheets of corrugated cardboard. At least it wasnt plastic. She giggled at me and said I was very tall. When I motioned to leave, Pilson took me outside. I could tell he wanted to say something to me. He was mumbling to himself in Korean as if incanting or urging the words in English.
“What are you doing Saturday?”
“I am going to Gwangju.”
“What about next week? My wife wants to have you to dinner at our house”
“I am going to Thailand.”
“Oh, you must be very happy.”
“Yes, indeed (and you have no idea). I will come and see you when I return and my skin is brown from the sun. Thank you for fixing my watch Pilson.”
“You are welcome. It was my pleasure. See you tomorrow.”
“No, not tomorrow, but soon.”
I like this absence or vacancy of language. It helps us to let go of formality and get to the heart of the matter. I like him. He likes me and this may have just been the sweetest encounter each of us will be afforded on this day. These are not the things I question: Why I find pleasure in the smallest details, it’s what lies opposite those moments that gives me great trouble. It’s the days when I don’t meet a Pilson, or my watch stays firmly attached to my wrist, or no little old ladies giggle in my direction. But, here’s the thing; the thing that I can’t quite seem to remember, yesterday when someone cut in front of me in line and I looked directly at him and said “well, you are very pushy aren’t you? He just smiled a big broad smile, because I wasnt standing close enough to the person in front of me for him to understand that I, too, was waiting in line and also because it doesn’t matter to him and he had no idea what I was even saying. The point is, so much depends on your point of view and to a Korean, who is accustomed to standing 2 inches behind the person in front of them, I am invisible. And the thing that I can’t quite seem to remember, is that, I am not here to change them. They have all been spitting on the streets (and everywhere else) and pusing to the front of the line long before I stepped foot onto their soil. Why should they care how it offends me?
Pilson could have been that person who pushed ahead of me in line, but he wasn’t. And he wasnt for two reasons. Pilson had already forged a friendship with someone who has since gone home to the US. Someone he liked and recalls through me. And secondly, Pilson and I see each other most days on my walks to and from school. If I had asked Pilson on the first day I saw him to help me find the watch repair, he may have walked me there, as he did today, but he probably would not have paid to have my watch fixed. We manage our friendship slowly and in small doses and I am learning about Korea in a way that helps me to ease into it and out of the shock I have been living in for too long, because Pilson and I have made a silent agreement to allow ourselves to be changed by the other.
Warming Up
It’s 6 PM in Okgwa and its 56 degrees. It has gotten warmer all week and I find myself feeling more energetic and happier. Tomorrow will be back to the high 30s, but I needed a jump-start and this warming really helped. It’s 76 on Ko Tao and I’m sure I’ll want to stay…but for now, it’s week 2 of “my compromise to deskwarming.”
I didn’t know what to expect this morning, but I knew I would be getting a new group of students for the second vacation session of English. As it turns out, I have 8 very energetic male 5th graders for 1.5 hours each morning. I made a sign. One side reads “Korean OK,” the other side reads “English Only.” I then wrote each of their 8 names on the board and gave them 5 points to begin. I kept the sign on the English Only side, but I taught them to say “may I speak Korean, please?” If they ask, I give them a point, but my response each time has been “No.” When they speak Korean I subtract a point. One boy lost 2 points straight away and started to cry. Nobody made fun of him, though and he didn’t speak Korean again the rest of the period. I kept the sign on the “English Only” side the entire 1.5 hours. Even if they don’t speak much English, at least it is quiet.
I asked them why they were there (they don’t have to be…it is their vacation afterall) and they said “to speak English.”
“Good,” I replied, “and what do you want to do?”
“Play games.”
“And which games would you like to play?”
“We don’t know.”
“Oh, so I have to make the games? I don’t think so.”
“Bingo, we want to play Bingo.”
“Good then, we’ll make a Bingo game. How about food? You give me a list of food and then we’ll make the game.”
Their penmanship was awful and the pictures they made were nothing like the careful sketches made by the 4th grade girls, but we made a crude Bingo game and played. I was hoping to have some nice materials for kindergarten, but it looks as though I’ll have to make those myself. Each time the game was over, they shouted “Again!” So we played again and again giving everyone a chance to win.
When they run out of games, I’ll give them a reading assignment.
Happy New Years Eve.
Today was day 4 of the Winter Camp and it snowed all night; it was perfect because today’s lesson was winter Haiku. Jen introduced me to the Korean version Sijo (she jo), but we stuck to traditional Japanese structure for its shorter lines. I introduced them to the Japanese master Basho. We went for a silent meditation walk to take in the sights, sounds, smells, and texture of the fresh snow. The girls wanted to be close to me (perhaps for warmth) but holding hands and weaving arms was really nice. I felt a closeness for my students that I have not felt before. While we were gone, the office of education in Gokseong dropped off pastries and chocolate milk.
Here are a few Haiku they wrote:
A freezing river
many people are dancing
on the ice
Everything is white
mountains are covered in snow
wind has no color
A freezing river
a child slides down its center
while fish are watching
I have been reading The Koreans by Michael Breen (thanks to Jen again) and feeling a change coming. Breen writes that they (the Koreans) refer to us (he means the Brits) as gentlemen and it’s much nicer than they way we have been talking about them and I feel a tinge of shame. I have a sense that beside the antipathy I presently feel for this place, lies a possibility that love for its poeple will reveal itself to me in the new year. It was the students who gave me that hope today.
Feeling my way through Darkness–Winter Solstice
the view from my bed at night–I will miss this more than anything here
I dont believe in accidents. I believe that things, indeed, happen for a reason, not in a cosmic, out of this world, inexplicable way, but that our actions and thoughts are responsible, ultimately, for delivering us to our own doorsteps. It is no accident that I find myself here in the worst place and maybe mental space, I have possibly ever been.
On Saturday I went to Gwangju to meet Boram. Boram promised to take me to a Hagwon (private academy) to inquire about taking some drawing lessons. We had actually never met; she had answered an inquiry I posted on Facebook about drawing classes. Boram and I planned to meet at 6:00 so I had some time to look for the Seventh Day Adventist store I had been told that might have some whole grain bread. Unfortunately, Saturday is the religious day for Seventh Day Adventist, so the store was closed. There were also many ex-pats in Gwangju staying at the Windmill motel, and I was invited to spend some time with them.
We (the other ex-pats and I) were walking around Kumnamno (pedestrian street in Gwangju) talking, shopping, looking for a place to eat and this guy from Kansas was asking me all kinds of questions about my degrees etc and I was trying to answer these questions when I realized, in that heart-stopping, slap-in-the-face sort of way that some realizations happen, that it just sounded like bullshit to my own ears and I should just stop talking…that most of the things I had done in my life were just excuses NOT to do something else and that I had never really, seriously applied myself in a committed way to any of those things I was explaining to him that I had done or been (with the possible exception of a yoga instructor–which, curiously, I did not even mention). Korea was, yet, another decision made on a whim and I realized in that moment that I probably wasn’t going to feel fulfilled until I figure out a way either to integrate all the various things I had “studied” or masqueraded, or to seriously commit to making time and space for the creative pursuits I kept putting off in order “to make a living.” I left the group early to meet Boram feeling, honestly, like a real loser, a fake, a has-been, but also knowing that I could not run from this realization–that it had caught me almost mid-sentence in my own untruth.
Within the first two minutes of our meeting Boram asked me , “Can I ask you something? Why do you want to take drawing lessons? I think you can already draw.” Had she seen my paintings on the website? “No,” she answered, “It’s just a feeling I have about you.” Those words, that sentiment, uttered by Boram (a 22-year-old girl I had just met), was exactly the thing I had been missing in Korea. There was something so fine and so special about her, and it wasn’t the correctness of her supposition that moved me (afterall there was a part of me that felt “if this girl thinks I can draw, well than I can”), it was the confidence she displayed in her own intuition.
At the Hagwon she negotiated everything for me including the price and I walked away with 10 drawing lessons for $100 and felt really good about it. For the past 25 years, I have taken so many roads around what I been inclined towards. And here, again, I find myself in Korea focused, mostly, on darkness, afraid to trade it for what is right and what is light. Studying drawing here seems less like a decision made by default and more like a step down a path with heart. I suddenly feel an obligation to myself to honor the need in me to express myself in creative ways and to stop waiting for affirmation or permission from others to do so.
I am not sure I will see Boram again, but something tells me that I will. And even if I do not, I don’t think I will forget the moments I spent with her and the otherworldly affection I felt for her. If the right person told me she was an angel, I would believe them, but not because our encounter was planned by the heavens, but because she seemed to have materialized from my own image at precisely the moment I needed her. I couldn’t have invented her more perfectly. And only she knows, though I would be curious to discover, what significance it holds for her.
Solstice Poem
Solstice Poem
When the light around you lessens
And your thoughts darken until
Your body feels fear turn
Cold as a stone inside,
When you find yourself bereft
Of any belief in yourself
And all you unknowingly
Leaned on has fallen,
When one voice commands
Your whole heart
And it is raven dark,
Steady yourself and see
That it is your own thinking
That darkens your world,
Search and you will find
A diamond-thought of light,
Know that you are not alone
And that this darkness has purpose;
Gradually it will school your eyes
To find the one gift your life requires
Hidden within this night corner.
Invoke the learning
Of every suffering
You have suffered.
Close your eyes.
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark.
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear.
A new confidence will come alive
To urge you toward higher ground
Where your imagination
Will learn to engage difficulty
As its most rewarding threshold!
– John O’Donohue
To Bless the Space Between Us
체면 Chae Myeon–”saving face”.
Chick Peas are Popping in the Night Kitchen
I polled my friends on Facebook with this proposition “is it possible that I am really just a negative person?” It wasn’t exactly fishing for compliments, but I was hoping they would say, “no” and “that doesn’t sound like you.” Sally called me Pollyanna and Haleh said I was a quintessential optimist…and that got me thinking…maybe my over-inflated expectations got me into trouble…The other day when Pilson came running over to me I was almost certain he was going to ask me to dinner. He, instead, asked me if I had an umbrella. And remember the apartment owner? He told me his wife was a traditional Korean painter and that she wanted to make a study with me, and I falsely assumed she wanted to paint me when what she wanted was an English lesson. Could it be somehow that my supositions are out of whack with this culture and that my optimism creates certain anticipated delights?
Today, I arrived at school expecting to teach 6 English classes, wondering why my classroom heat had not been turned on (again) and when I inquired, found out there was an all-school festival and all my classes had been cancelled. Maybe I should have been thankful, except teaching them would be much better than what was now expected of me, which was to sit in my 25 degree classroom all day in front of a space heater freezing, or, maybe even to attend the festival which seemed a little awkward considering they didn’t invite me or have the foresight to tell me that my classes had been cancelled. Did they wish for me to attend the festival? I had no idea. But it seemed awkward at best, and downright inconsiderate and rude at least.
Maybe I should have been pleased and grateful that I was able to travel to Gokseong (I left a note on my desk saying I had gone to the bank and came back later to trade it for “went home–am freezing”), afterall, I had been hoping for another wall Calender and the girl at the bank gave me one. But, I just really don’t know what to think. My co-teacher, Ms Kim, couldn’t have just forgotten to tell me. Maybe it is somehow related to the strange notion of saving face, not addressing a difficulty, hoping and pretending it doesn’t exist. Maybe it has something to do with Confucian hierarchy and the notion that all relationships are not equal and that strangers are non-entities who cannot be put into the system. Maybe I am like that stranger…I dont know. What I do know is that after I endured an afternoon of freezing at my desk, I came home to cook because cooking nourishes my soul.
But, today I broke the coffee press. I wasn’t even using it to make coffee, which is probably why it broke, because I was cooking and the green tea was steeping, and I didn’t really want that green tea anyway, which is probably why I forgot about it and when I swung around to add potatoes to the soup, my arm knocked the thing off the table…glass and green tea in my workspace…but I just kept working…saving face…chopping the thyme and rosemary from my kitchen plants recalling how they corrected my contemplative work at Pierce Street Coffee Works last summer (when I was looking forward to coming here)…because I was pulling each rosemary leaf off, one by one, until someone came over and showed me how it was done in one fell swoop…and then I had that memory in my kitchen with onion smells and green tea and glass underfoot and I no longer felt so awkward and out of place…and now I am just wondering, not why Koreans fail to regard me, but how I’m going to make coffee in the morning.
The Last 5 Google Searches
I just want to be happy
Negativity
Is coffee good for the liver?
Teaching English in Italy
Yoga retreats Thailand
That about sums up my life right now.
Wait Lolly, Wait!
Today was the last day I will see the kids at Gokseong kindergarten until after February, so I tried to look cute for them. I’ve been cutting the back of my hair and letting the front go. There are so few opportunities to get “dressed up” especially now that I have to dress for the cold at all times of day. The warmest place I have found is the bus and, by luck, the heater is under the 3rd seat; the one I claimed from the beginning. I brought Sam (guy from New Zealand) to my school today and the students wanted to know if he was my husband. He, of course, because he is too young to know better, asked “how old do you think I am?” Sam, they don’t think you are old….they think I am much younger than I am! Oh well, at least Pilson knows better. Our conversation today went like this (and if you are wondering why I am recording my conversations with Pilson, its to keep my attention on the little positive I encounter):
Pilson: Lollie
Me: Hi Pilson!
Pilson: Oh, Lollie, Lollie, wait (he says while running towards me). Do you have an umbrella?
Me: An umbrella, why yes Pilson, I do.
Pilson: Oh
Me: Were you going to give me an umbrella Pilson? Well, that is really nice of you. Have a good evening. Bye!
Pilson: Bye Lollie.
A Homemade Nostalgia in an Imitation Culture
In the orange chair
Seriously, I sit in this chair a lot–reading, writing, watching movies, surfing the net and staring at the wall. The only way I can justify my sedentary lifestyle is by running, so now that my school has purchased a space heater for my long hours of deskwarming, I am not freezing all day and can bear the thought of running outside. So, again, I begin and I feel so much more myself. There are two things I know about myself, I require movement and meaningful, creative work.
Its not easy for someone who has been blessed with the fruits of consistently being considered special to live in a culture where foreigners are an inferior species. No one here thinks I am special, at least not in a positive way. Two weeks ago I screamed in the administrative office at my school. I was so fed up with not being taken seriously that I screamed and when I told Carol about it and how compliant my administrators were as a result, but how awful I felt because no one acts like that here, really, they are are all so cheerful, she said “Laurie, no one acts like that, because people are not supposed to act like that.” I knew she was right and I don’t know what was lost by my behavior, but I knew that I no longer cared and I was going to have to act on a realization I made a long time ago about my time here. But that was going to require a great deal of effort on my part. I was going to have to, as I stated in an earlier post, no. 1 start laughing, and no. 2 concentrate on a creative project because I would never feel fulfilled in my job nor would I be happy to waste an unfortunate degree of time warming my desk as so many ex pats are required to do. Krista suggested that if the students are disinterested or unruly to simply sketch or write and if they interrupt me to say “Oh what, sorry I didn’t hear you; I was doing something important.” It’s an excellent reminder to apply myself in ways that hold meaning for me.
My Saturday session with Juyeon was really interesting. It was her birthday and because I brought her a small gift she felt compelled to gift something back, so she ran downstairs to buy some “hot bread” from a street vendor. They are actually these deep fried fish-shaped breads with bean paste centers. I have been meaning to try them. Something she said also sparked an interesting conversation and I felt that for once I was able to tell a Korean something about their own country that they had not considered.
A few weeks ago she remarked that my wallet was old and worn and she thought I needed a new one. I tried to explain to her that I loved that wallet, that my mom had bought it for me years ago and now the leather was soft and beautiful to me and that a paperclip worked well in the place where the zipper was broken. She thought it absurd. So Saturday, it was my earrings she noticed, how they were old fashioned “not beautiful” like hers. Hers were big hoops with a man-made stone heart threaded through. I noticed them the last time I was there and considered giving her one of the 8 pair I brought with me. Fortunately, I gave her a t-shirt instead.
I removed my earring and asked what it was that she did not like about it. She explained that it belonged to an older time and it was just the opportunity I needed to explain how having older things requires that you care for them. I picked up my leather backpack with the oil stain and explained that I have had it for over 20 years and I that I love it in the same way I love the wallet. I then drew a picture of the street in front of my school and the candy store beside and how each day the children visiting this store threw their wrappers on the ground and how I wanted to tell the principal that he should make an announcement asking for them not to do this and also how I want to arrange a field trip with all of the students to pick up the trash they have made. How the school was only 5 years old, but not well maintained at all and even how the stairs and halls in her own building were not clean. I also explained how the things in my apartment were imitation and would not last long and would need to be replaced much more quickly than if they were made from wood. She said she felt ashamed and I did not mean to shame her as she did not mean to shame me about having “old” things; its just a difference, a fundamental one, between us. I did not tell her that I have cultivated these notions over many many years however and as a result of having people in my life who have helped me to gain this understanding. This fundamental difference is, however, what makes Korea, ultimately, a very difficult place for me. That, and not being special…but I am learning what if feels like to be most people and it is a good lesson for me, but a difficult one.
