Indian adventure

No, not mine - yet. Mine for the moment is contained to the modest Indian/Pakistani district we cruise on weekends seeking an escape from kimchi. For a much more interesting account, click on over to my friend Megan's blog ... she's a buddy from MU journalism, we worked in Washington together and then she was in Denver at The Associated Press for a time while I was in the Springs. For the past year she's been working for Stars and Stripes in Okinawa, Japan, including a stint of several weeks in Baghdad. Now she's off on a new adventure of six months of travel and freelancing (and blogging!) in Asia, starting in New Delhi.

Check out her new blog here: The Gypsy Scribbler (http://gypsyscribbler.blogspot.com).

Happy reading, everyone, and happy travels, Meg!

smelly, sweaty Westerners

Yes, this is a post all about sweat. Oh ye delicate of sensibilities, surf on now.

So Daegu is hot. How hot? Well, the hottest city in Korea, for starters. The heat just seems to pool in the valley where Daegu lies, and if hot rains aren't fizzling down, the steamy river's evaporating up. Temperatures regularly climb into the 90s (Fahrenheit) in August, and it doesn't cool down too terribly much at nights. Which means Daegu is always pretty much hot as Hades - a swampy, steamy, stagnant Hades. No need to go to one of those famous saunas ... though clothing unfortunately is required on the streets.

Most buildings are air-conditioned, but only by room, and sometimes only certain rooms. And you usually have to start the air when you go in those rooms, meaning a good half hour of steaming while it cools down. And then there are necessary errands pretty much every day that require walking the blazing streets, and of course playing tourist on weekends ... so pretty much entire days running around outside.

Which of course means sweat ... at least for us Westerners.

Med school friends correct me if I'm wrong, but from reading and various other sources, I understand that Asians (at least in the Far East) generally have less sweat production (tied to less body hair on the whole) than Westerners - black or white. At any rate, it's quite obvious walking around the steamy Korean peninsula that the average Jin here looks a whole lot cooler than his dripping, smelly average-Joe counterpart. I'm pretty sure I work up more of a sweat brushing my teeth than a Korean does hiking a mountain. And you don't begin to notice body odor here the way you do in say, Western Europe.

Subsequently, deodorant just isn't a big thing in Korea ... at a major store you might find half a dozen or so products, and you could probably get caviar cheaper per ounce (antiperspirant is about $5 for a small container). So as you can imagine, there's a whole black market for the stuff among expats - you can find posts in English-language classifieds. Maybe that's what I'll do if my condo doesn't rent out soon, start a career in the burgeoning world of illicit deodorant trade.

The good(?) news: I've heard that Daegu also holds the distinction of being one of Korea's coldest cities in winter.

adjectives of emancipation

Copy eds, this one's for you. Everyone else, you probably want to move on before you're totally geekified.

One of the best parts of moving out of the career of words was the freedom to take back my language and the authority to use it any old way I please - by whim or by reason. I can't claim that all my grammatical faux pas will be statements: I'm still quite prone to ignorance and typos. However, to keep some shred of my former desk dignity (quiet, you snickerers! ... and keep fighting the good fight, copyeds!), I am compelled to document that at least some of my deviations are intentional.

Just for y'all's information (yesseree bob, I sure did just use the possessive form of that), you will see the false plural used for gender-neutral singular pronouns. I may use those verboten words like "lure" and "mull," and I may say "like" when it by standard grammar should be "such as." Oh and by the way, I'm just gonna use "may" for "might" - quite frequently. Deal with it.

I'll split my infinitives, call this a "website" and use "dork" with complete abandon. And if "healthcare" is good enough for Webster's, who am I to argue? But then again, I'll use a whole smathering of words Webster's has never heard of.

I'll probably talk about "healthy" food, break off a lot of prefixes that AP has no qualm with, dangle prepositions and put my "only"s any old place I please. I'm going to also use "blonde" as an adjective on principle. On the other hand, I'll likely as not talk about "manmade" things ... in fact, I'm pretty sure I've already gone and done it (ditto on "healthy").

I will definitely use "failed to" on more than one occasion - probably "in order to," as well - and I'm quite the fan of a good quaint "ain't" every now and again. I see no reason why "headquartered" can't be a verb, and I stand firm that there's a good many uses for passive voice.

The list goes on, but I think I've solidified my ridiculousness quite enough for one post. :)

Feel free to add your own grammatical rebellions in the comments!

3 bucks to see the doc

So this week's big adventure was a trip to the hospital. Don't worry - in Korea's socialized medicine system, the hospital is just a one-stop shop for healthcare, not reserved for urgent or serious procedures.

Anyway, a whole troupe of us teachers went to the local general hospital to get prescriptions rewritten, vaccinations and take care of other minor issues - thankfully herded along by our ebullient fashion-plate of a Korean facilitator. It was like a little family, shuttling everyone to respective locations and waiting around for translation help, and let's just say we all know way more about each other than I'm used to with co-workers. But that's OK - just see "Step 4" below.

We were quite the sight, as usual, scurrying along corridors and lounging about in waiting rooms. And being as sick people - and people waiting for sick people - have very little to do but gawk at such spectacles, it was definitely their day's entertainment, compliments of America.

There was a particularly hilarious scene in which an elevator wouldn't move loaded as it was with giant Westerners, and there was some ferocious Korean going on about who was going to get off ... with our shepherd (definitely skeptical of his charges' ability to cope if left behind) surely waging what amounted to a cultural war by asking seniors in age and rank to exit. Apparently the responses included "I'm a doctor with a patient!" and "I'm old!" Unable to argue with that, he herded us off the elevator and we waited another five minutes for the next and squeezed on before any Koreans had a chance. Ding ... one floor. One floor. Maybe Koreans don't believe in stairs in hospitals, being full of sick people and all.

Oh, and in another elevator trip, I discovered that if the people behind you don't think you're moving quite fast enough, they aren't shy about giving you a two-handed push on the back to propel you out the door. Or maybe that's just reserved for incommunicado foreigners ... I don't know.

So compare this with the States:

Step 1: Walk in the lobby and take a number. It's filled with row seats and quite resembles a bus station.
Step 2: When your number comes up (fairly quickly), pay a one-time registration fee of about $8 bucks - or $12 to see a highly experienced specialist.
Step 3: Go to the appropriate department, check in and wait to see the doctor (times seemed to vary drastically - some people were out in minutes, others languished for hours).
Step 4: See the doctor (most speak some English, but usually only select medical phrases, so it's a heck of a lot better to have a translator with you just in case). Oh, and it's highly possible you'll have to share a session with other members of your party, or that the next patient will come in halfway through your consult and patiently wait in the seat next to you ... the concept of HIPPA hasn't quite reached Korea, to say the least.
Step 5: Take your paperwork down to the lobby again and repeat the number process to check out. You'll probably pay $3 to $20 for the visit.
Step 6: Take your prescription to any pharmacy. Most medications cost $3 to $6 per box/bottle, but specific Western imports can be much higher.

Oh and that registration fee is only for large hospitals - go to a small hospital and you'll probably only pay $3 total to see the doctor.

survey of scenes

Just got back from spending the day cruising through a big market in town (think tailors' shops, knickknacks, cages of chickens, and all sorts of strange-looking meats/sea things out collecting flies) and then to the major upscale department store downtown (nine-plus floors of overwhelmingness) and then to a more everyday department store on a mission to find blank CDs to record a class project. Everything seems so complicated at first when you move to a foreign country - move anywhere, to some extent. The simple act of taking an elevator can be a whole different system: At the upscale department store, it appears that you watch all the banks to see where each elevator is and which direction it's going, then place your bets by pressing the button next to the one you think will arrive soonest, then crowd around that doorway.

It was interesting seeing what I assume to be the evolution of shopping, all in one day - first the traditional open-air market - and part of that has become an enclosed, air-conditioned structure. Then the ritzy place where everything comes together with pristine pizazz for a whopping price, then something closer (but not near the same as) your Target or Wal-Mart, for example - value and convenience driven by the rise of the middle-class dollar (or won). It was also interesting to see the differences in how commerce is structured here from the States: For example, department stores here are also kind of like malls in themselves - they usually seem to feature a food court and perhaps some other restaurants, a photo studio, a hair salon, even a movie theater, but they're standalone stores.

Last night was also a tour of scenes - but entertainment venues this time. Started at a noraebang, or karaoke room: Karaoke isn't done at bars here, but instead you get a group of people and rent a room by the hour and pay for drinks. It's quite the setup - disco lights, strange electronic-sounding music (which I guess makes it easier to modify by tempo and key - all at the click of a button), microphones, a fairly decent selection of American tunes amid the Korean music, and a big screen with the words popping up erratically and often hilariously wrong (Lennon and McCartney are credited with these fine lyrics: "I'm not half the moon I used to be, there's a shadow hanging over me ..."), plastered over pictures of Korean landscapes. The only way to do it is to embrace the cheese factor, fill up your soju (rice wine) glass, pick up that tambourine sitting on the table, and just go with it. It was quite the experience. Then we moved downtown, first to a low-key expat bar (notably sans expats at the time), then to a GI club where the American hip-hop spirit was alive and well, and finally to a typical Korean club, where wannabe B-boys greeted us at the door and the dance floor was filled with stiff-shouldered swaying.

Oh, and I've now eaten some sort of larvae often served at soju joints here - half-dried worm-type things with soft shells. Not so good.

Hope you all are well!

Thursday reflections

A couple days ago I got news of a great-uncle's death back in the States. It wasn't someone I was particularly close with, but it's still sad tidings and a stark reminder of how disconnected I am from the everyday lives of family and friends back there, and how much will have changed by the time I get back. Sometimes it seems so selfish to live a world away, adventuring for the heck of it, spending money on travel and a degree I'm not even sure I'll truly use. And it is - selfish - but it also seems the right thing to do, all things considered.

Meanwhile, life marches on here, too. Tomorrow is the final day of us teaching these summer classes at the college, and it's amazing to see how much the students have progressed - the heartwarming factor of teaching really shows up quickly. Course I still have plenty of heartburn, too (I get ridiculous about any new job - times ten for a major career change), but overall, things are going really well and it's been a great introduction to education. Next week we do sessions more similar to what will be in the Village (basically teaching amid movie-like sets to place kids in situations like they will find in the real world, and using hardly any bookwork), and we also start doing planning of schedules, curricula and logistics for the Village.

Yesterday was a national holiday (one of what I understand to be four Korean independence days), but one without much ceremony aside from flags popping out on shops and in neighborhoods. Four of us hopped a bus to Gyeong-ju, a historic city about an hour east of here, not quite to the Eastern Sea. The place is absolutely packed with sites - we were making plans on the fly and still managed to hit about five places in a few hours - and some of the cooler ones were parks filled with tombs of ancient rulers, like in the (handout) picture below. They're not quite as colossal as Egypt's pyramids, but serve the same function. The biggest one is seven stories tall, and there's one that's been excavated and now houses a display of the tomb structure and artifacts found there.

In the same area are beautiful gardens and other landscapes, a former palace grounds and man-made lake, and a museum housing many of the artifacts found in the area. One display in particular made me smile: Apparently, in the dawn of A.D. as Buddhism spread through the Shilla Kingdom of this region, people began making increasingly artistic and personalized funeral urns to commemorate the dead. Which is all well and good, but it threw a whole new light on this article (click here), which I remember reading a few months ago at The Gazette. There really is nothing new under the sun.

And in other news of the odd, I've become quite the model since arriving in Asia - the whole group has. It seems to be quite the thing to have Americans in your promotional photos, so we get stopped everywhere to get photographed checking out a business or area. In fact, the manager at the local Costco said he'd hold a party for us if we just took a picture at the store. The latest episode was being flagged down at the palace "ruins" at Gyeong-ju for "City Hall propaganda!" as a bespectacled gent put it, emphasizing his point with wild gesticulations at an oversized camera. It's so bizarre that looking like a tourist - an AMERICAN tourist in particular - is actually a good thing. Of course I can't read all this stuff they print with our pictures ... maybe it's more along the lines of "Come see our latest attraction! Buffoons straight from America! You never know what ludicrous stunt they'll pull next!"

I have Skype!

So I finally got set with Skype, meaning that any of y'all with an account, or who get an account (go to Skype.com to check it out - it's free to download, but you'll need to make sure you have a microphone on your computer), can talk to me for free, and that I can call all the rest of you for a couple cents a minute. I've still got to work out some sound quality issues, but it works! My Skype ID is kristinkmarsh - if you have an account, look me up or e-mail me your ID and we'll be in touch. Now if only this fantastic service could do something about that pesky time difference to the States ...

I also have a cell phone number, but I'm not going to post that here - just e-mail me if you want it. It doesn't cost me to receive calls on that phone, but I won't be calling internationally from there short of some emergency.

One more thing down ... on a list of about 100. But life here is finally settling into something of a routine, and it's nice to finally be able to focus on changes in smaller portions, rather than feeling like every moment brings something unexpected. During the week we have long days of classes, meetings, lesson planning and shuttling around to various errands ... at the end of the day there's just time to scratch out an e-mail or two while watching whatever cheesy English-language program might happen to be on TV or scrub a few clothes in the tub if the one washing machine in the basement is taken (it usually is, and apparently there aren't laundromats here like in the States ... some people are checking into a laundry send-out service, but I'll let them be the guinea pigs). During the weekends, we inflict ourselves upon the largely amused and partly annoyed neighborhood, taking over the tiny diner and getting impromptu Korean lessons at the 7-Eleven across the street, and we venture downtown and to various city attractions - which really means wandering around on the hot streets for hours like a herd of lost cattle, following a series of misunderstood or misgiven directions. Evenings - weekends, anyway - may mean a beer in the bar down the street, or a trip downtown to the expat hangouts or clubs.

Even meals don't seem so exotic anymore. It doesn't seem so out of the ordinary to eat french fries with ketchup or salad for breakfast (I think that first dish is some enterprising soul's idea of creating a Western spread at the hotel for us Americans) amid the more traditional hard-boiled eggs, Spam (or something like it), toast and cereal. Lunch and dinner are typically at the college cafeteria, where the staples of rice and kimchi (spicy, pickled cabbage) are accompanied by at least five other dishes, a bowl of soup and a piece of fruit. There are generally no drinks and never any desserts, and everything's eaten with chopsticks and spoons. Lotus roots are a big thing, pickled vegetables are all the rage, and I've quite gotten used to tentacles on my plate or in my bowl. It's hard to generalize the cooking, though, other than to say there's a notable variety of veggies and meats/seafood used in each meal. When I get a camera in a month or two, I'll do a more thorough post on some of the dishes. In the classic "weird stuff I've eaten" list of those traveling abroad, though, I've added tiny octopus, tiny fried crabs (both in entirety) and kelp - "You know, that stuff we feed our fish" as a co-worker put it. There may have been other items of note considering the amount of unknown dishes crossing my plate in recent days. Some of the other teachers were somewhere grubs were served, and another ate dog. Doubt I'll be seeking out either one of those anytime soon.

Friday we had a formal ceremony with the college president to receive our letters of appointment, starting with a half-hour dress rehearsal of how to meet a person of such high status (don't drink until he tells you to!), how to accept the letter (with two hands!) and how to bow (left hand on your stomach or elbow!) and shake hands (the ceremony was somewhat Westernized in an overture by the president, who proved to be a warm, gracious gentleman ... I wouldn't have been surprised by a pompous ogre after all the fuss, but that's the culture). The only people in the room, however, were our group, a handful of Korean academics and staff, and the president, which made me realize that in the States we generally reserve our ceremony for mass gatherings - here there's no need for an audience to make something a sacred event.

Then we spent the evening with the dean (son of the president) at a Western-style restaurant in the mountains - good food but not quite spot-on: The baked potatoes were loaded with whip cream instead of sour cream, for example. The dean was also quite anxious to see our Texans (in suits and boots) two-step, apparently, but the music selection was more of a techno club sort, so there were a couple awkward hours of people standing around, bobbing their heads in a "trying to go with the flow but not bust a move in front of an important boss" sort of way. A good time was had by all, though, a staggering bill tallied and an auspicious start made to a cross-cultural project of mammoth proportions ... which was the point, I think.

technical difficulties

Fabulous. I managed to delete my "About me" box and just seem to be messing things up more screwing around with the Korean buttons to put it back ... I may just run anonymously a couple months until I'm back on an English-language network here ...

Week 1 of teaching is going pretty smoothly, which really isn't saying much considering the situation. I'm co-teaching with a new master's grad in linguistics, and there are two teachers' aides AND a Korean translator in the classroom - yes, five adults for 12 students. The Village will be more like one or two adults for 15 students, but this summer camp is a way for the college to use all of us milling about, waiting for the Village to open.

Still, it's something of an accomplishment to have created lesson plans, adapted things on the spur of the moment and kept a dozen youngsters fairly engaged for three hours when you've never done that before. I now feel at least a little more legitimate using that title of "teacher" that I've co-opted for a few weeks now.

One of the boys - "Harry" (Sidenote: it's amazing what a bestselling series can do for a name's popularity. Apparently there are downright scuffles to get dibs on that moniker in each class - there's always one - and the kids all chant "Haahh-reee Poh-teh!" anytime the little guy gets a turn at the board or a game) ... anyway, our Harry brought us new teachers candy this morning, which may be quite perfunctory but still totally made my day.

I'm in a class of kids who are theoretically 10 to 13, but the way Koreans count age makes things a little hinky. As I understand it, Korean children are born being 1 year old, and they all have their "birthdays" Jan. 1, so a child born Dec. 28 could be "two" just four days later. Hence we've got tiny little "June," with the quiet stare and barely audible whisper, and tall, gangly "Ann," with all the markings of teen awkwardness and angst. And I thought I had it tough being the youngest in my class, desperately waiting for my driver's license a mere few months after my classmates ...

On a final note of the day, check out the animated "tour" of the Village by clicking here. Of course it still looks pretty much nothing like that, but the bones are there, and it'll get fleshed out eventually.

Later, gators.

party in 516

I have Internet!!! Finally connected to the world again ... Twenty teachers have been sharing two old-school computers with the rest of the hotel for e-mailing and lesson planning, so you can imagine how fantastic it is to finally get my own connection.

So ... where to start?

The flight from L.A. to Seoul was fairly uneventful - unlike my last trip abroad, my neighbor was a quiet, considerate person fond of sleeping. She knew about 50 more words of English than the handful I knew of Korean, and at the end of the 12 hours I pulled out a pack of gum in an attempt attack some of the travel grime before starting the next leg of the journey. I brandished the half-eaten package of spearmint Orbitz at my schoolteacher neighbor in polite American style to offer her a piece, and she appeared shocked with gratitude, asking/pantomiming "For me?" twice. I nodded, slightly perplexed. She promptly took the whole package and put it in her purse, then with great regret indicated that she had nothing for me. I assured her it was OK. As I tell you this story, she's probably telling her friends about the quacky American on the plane who pushed a half-devoured package of gum on her.

But that was really only the beginning of that day's adventure. The five of us program teachers who had been on that flight (sitting separately) hustled out of the plane to start the waiting processes - first at immigration, then on the luggage, then on the lost-luggage paperwork (my two arrived just fine - thankfully!), then on customs ... and with a mere 20 minutes to catch our connecting flight to Daegu, our fully loaded posse set out to find where to check in. Our pulse rates spiked when an airport official said we needed to take a shuttle to the domestic-flights area, but a cabdriver promised us he had space for five giants and their mammoth luggage, so we were off. And let me tell you, the Army could not have done a drill so smoothly as our impromptu operation headed by the champion efforts of the slight-yet-surprisingly-strong driver, Mr. Kim, and we crammed into that yellow van tighter than circus clowns. Which is pretty much what we felt like about 10 minutes down the road when it became clear that we weren't simply shuttling to another area of the airport, but to an different airport altogether - and most definitely the wrong one. Apparently we didn't even need to leave the building for our transfer.

Chaos ensued, but it was tempered by a surprising amount of laughter, hurtling down those metropolitan highways, trying to figure out our next move. People were called, schedules were checked, plans rearranged - thanks largely to the animated negotiations on our behalf and solid cell phone service of Mr. Kim, and eventually we settled on a plan to catch an express train - all this set to an eclectic soundtrack of Western throwbacks. I think Louie Armstrong's "Wonderful World" will be forevermore tied in my mind to that ride, two Texans (boots and all), a sassy junior high teacher, a bubbly new education grad, Mr. Kim and me squashed together, all singing along in total abandon.

There was another flurry of activity at the train station, where Mr. Kim actually booked our tickets for us, a seemingly endless but quite comfortable train ride down, another shuffle involving multiple runs in tiny cars at the other end, and here we were, a few hundred dollars later, finally in Daegu.

Fast-forward a week. We're living in a hotel a couple subway stops from downtown, and of course, things here have also not gone quite as planned, but this time they mostly worked out in my favor. We were originally booked for double-occupancy Western rooms, but somewhere along the way a handful of those changed into single Korean-style rooms (with bed mats on the floor), and I had a shockingly hard time convincing people it REALLY wasn't a noble gesture to volunteer for one of the latter. I could sleep on the floor all year, no problem, especially for the perk of having my own space away from the people I live, work and socialize with, no matter how great they are - but apparently I'm the odd one out.

Word is we'll be here in town for a month, but after seeing the village today the general consensus is that it could realistically be Thanksgiving before we actually get up there (we've actually got a pool going on the date). On the bright side, it's obvious it'll be one heck of a place when it's finished, and at least for this first month we have classes to teach at Yeungjin College, half the partnership that founded the village program - and we'll be getting paid no matter what the situation. Plus we get to get more acquainted with the city before moving to the rather remote spot 20 minutes from a suburb of Daegu.

On the downside, the hotel is not really up to traditional Western standards in terms of facilities and cleanliness - I'm not sure whether it's up to Korean standards - so that's been wearing on the group, but things seem to be getting slowly worked out one way or another. And it doesn't seem horrible, just expectations change when you plan to be in a place for months rather than a night.

As for the rest, in the words of the heralded Indigo Montoya, "Let me explain ... No, there is too much - let me sum up."

We've had packed schedules of orientations, paperwork, introductions and easing into taking over summer classes at Yeungjin College. It's been long, hot days (I'll get to the heat later) but it's really awesome just to be this excited about a job again - it's probably the honeymoon phase, despite everything, but I just can't believe I'm getting paid to hang out with kids and teach them things in a fun way. And such well-behaved, sweet kids! (Kids are kids, but the culture here - which has its downsides, more on that later, too - really supports successful classes, and Yeungjin also funds English classes really well, so the teacher-to-student ratio here is something American teachers could only dream about).

The food is a major departure from American cuisine, but cheap and quite healthy (yes, Linda, if you read this, I'm totally flouting traditional grammar ;) and I'm still finding it fun to not know what's on my plate half the time. At the Korean version of fast-food, which is more what we think of as diners - definitely no drive-throughs here, you can get a roll of "Korean sushi" (not fish - cooked ham and veggies), a bowl of broth soup, kimchi and another pickled vegetable for about a dollar. Yes, you read that right. A nice meal can be had for about four or five bucks. But that's only food - consumer items here seem to be comparable to, if not more expensive than American counterparts.

My Korean is coming along painfully slowly, but I seem to get around OK anyway, and the people here (like heroic Mr. Kim) are ridiculously nice and go out of their way to help idiot tourists. I'd heard about how welcomed Americans are here and I guess I really didn't believe it until now, but it's awesome.

Anyway, I guess that's the semi-rambling version of recent days' events, so you're mostly caught up. We officially take over classes Monday - wahoo!

i'm here

Hi all - I've still got really limited computer access, but just wanted to post something to say I've made it and have much to tell ... I hope to spend some time in an Internet cafe this weekend, so a more detailed report to come. For now, suffice to say that I arrived (with a few detours on the way) and the group is overall pretty cool but we're dealing with some major changes of plan (on top of jet lag and culture shock and logistics problems) because construction on the village is so delayed, so tensions are running high. Definitely quite the adventure, but that's what I signed up for, and after getting into classes, I'm pretty sure teaching is my dream job ... for now anyway.

Catch ya later!