things i can’t stop revisiting: the fantastic atlantic, and thank you for your attempts to put an end to the 50s.
Death of a Quarter Century March 19, 2010
Now that I’m sort of alive again, I must report that I am also a quarter-century-dead.
Unfortunate, I know, but it feels like a much nicer, squarer number than 24. It’s sharp, it’s bright, it’s grassy. There’s no fun in a number that isn’t a landmark.
Also, I’m hoping that my own personal quarter life crisis is at last coming to an end. Goodbye, fears and regrets. Hello…? NY? LA? Time will soon tell.
As it happened: For my birthday, John organized a photo scavenger hunt. We met up with about 15 other people downtown at 2:30 pm.
For the record, at this time on Saturday I was not yet 25. I was born (I believe) around 15:30 in Aurora, CO. That meant I wouldn’t turn until roughly 8:00 on the 14th here. I think. Saturday I confused myself and was thinking 19:30 on Saturday. ydlsxeai si ahdr.
Anyway it was a fairly warm, clear day (Wednesday had brought us a freak snowstorm which rendered my students wild slush monsters) so we were all excited to run around in the good weather. John handed out the targets before going over the rules (big no-no teach-ah!) and we were off.
A Day in the Life March 16, 2010
I want to let you all in on a typical day in the life of Dani Teacher.
About an hour ago, as I was downloading pics of (English-speaking countries’) flags to adorn my classroom, I got a phone call. It was Pak Ki-yoel, the dude in the copy room. “Dani. Copy Room. Comman.” Roughly translated: “Dani, please come to the copy room. I have something to show you.”
At this point, I usually whine ”Pak, I’m busy. Ten minutes. Ship bun.” I am quite over dropping everything and running when he calls. But this time, I simply said “OK.” I finished downloading about ten flags, and signed out of gmail. I took my time walking down the hall, across the concrete quad (if you can call it that), and down to the first floor.
I slid open the copy room door to find Ki-yoel and one of the admin staffers squatted on the ground. In front of them lay a giant pink government-issued trash bag, flat and unopened. on it lay the biggest pile of seaweed I’d ever seen. The big pale green kind with the long, flat, alternating leaves. To its left, a smaller pile of the kind of seaweed that looks more like a large-leafed moss. Tiny little mats of bushy seaweed with tiny little leaves. Also involved in the sea-drenched mess were a large number of mini sea urchins, and a big blob of what looked to be a spotted black placenta.
They were sorting.
On Pak’s table was a puddle of sea, another black placenta, and a tiny stow-away shrimp the size of a child’s fingernail. It was wriggling around in the puddle, trying to stay submerged. A pot was boiling on a portable stove, and Pak was excited. “Dani, lunchtime, sea, chop!” Pak had gone down to the beach and harvested seaweed. Because that’s what he does.
“Pak, what IS that?” I said, pointing to the spotted blob. “Ahhh, delicious!” said he. Of course. “But WHAT?” “Goon-soo” he says. All right. Let’s look it up later.
An hour and lots of Naver-searching later, the admin office, principal, and I discover that “Goon-soo” is really “Goon-so”. This makes more sense, as “Goon-soo” had been translated as various military terms. “Goon-so”, on the other hand, turned out to be a “Sea Hare”. Now, I had tried ‘sea slug’, ‘sea cucumber’, ‘jellyfish’, and a number of other weird, blobby-looking creatures on them…and they had assured me that this placenta was neither a placenta nor any of these things. I assured them I hadn’t the faintest clue as to what a ‘sea hare’ was. The fact that it had the name ‘hare’ in it completely confused me. As a child, I prided myself in my knowledge of the animal kingdom. Since coming to Korea, I’ve been put in my place. I’ve realized how little I know about the edible marine animal world, let alone any of the creatures humans rarely come in contact with.
Turns out, a ‘sea hare’ is actually a type of ‘sea slug’. So I had been kinda right all along. ‘Sea slug’ had been my first guess. But since I didn’t know for sure…couldn’t recognize it on the spot (well, at least not a dead one laying on a person’s desk…weird), and since I had never heard of this specific type, let’s say I’ve been humbled.
They rinsed the fresh seaweeds, they chopped the fresh sea urchins in halves, and they boiled the sea hares. We dipped the different seaweeds in gochujang, this red chili paste that borders on thick ketchup that they like to dip all their hway (raw fish) in. We sucked the insides outta the urchins. The sliced the slugs up and we dipped those in gochujang, too.
My opinions? Fresh seaweed is way awesomer than store-bought. Tho I still may prefer the dried, salted kind that comes in delicately thin sheets. Fresh, it’s crunchy and bright and delicious. Sea urchins really are gross. I would like to try them at a fancy restaurant, and I would also like to try one of the big hand-sized ones. But these little guys tasted like a concoction of sand, rock salt, earth, and maybe a bit of shellfish (actual meat). I felt like I’d just sucked up a bunch of wet sand, and only had a slightly pleasant experience because of the strong salty aftertaste. So I’ll skip the little guys next time. The sea hare was good, but a little overcooked. Kinda chewy, but tastes like chicken.
So now I know why dudes puked after they ate sea urchin on Lost.
I took pics with my phone–not sure if I can upload them or not. Will try to figure it out. In the meantime, enjoy these photos I found on the web. They’re similar to what I had (fresh out of the Hyundai dumping bay–mm!).
ours were a little darker…but otherwise, same-same.
ours didn’t have as many spots, and were a little more iridescent-looking. kinda pretty, actually. I’m sure they also had three eyes.
and of course, since it wasn’t moving, I couldn’t see a head or antennae. it literally just looked like a blob of sea poop.
There are some other random things you should know about my daily life here. For instance, I’ve been meaning to let you all know that every time you hear the song “On Broadway“, you should think of me. Imagine the seven notes leading up to the three to which ‘on broadway’ is sung. You know, the notes that go with “they say the neon lights are bright…” Well, the first four sound out loud and clear every time I open my apartment door. That’s my door’s keypad ringtone. Not because keypads have ringtones, but because keypads have tones like phone pads do, and the combination of tones that my keypad sounds when the door is locking or unlocking just happens to be those four notes. I don’t know if this makes sense to you, but if it does, God bless you.
Explained March 10, 2010
“Last Post Explained” or,
“Here Are Lots of Pictures” or, in any case,
“Parti di’Un Viaggio: Bangkok”.
Suvarnabhumi Airport is quite pretty-looks like Lotuses-and seems to want to say "Welcome to Paradise"...
Okay, so I didn’t know what to expect from Thailand, other than everyone I knew who had gone had loved it. And let me also preface by saying that living in a place and visiting a place are two very different experiences. Keep in mind that I have been trying my best to be as respectful of Korean culture as possible for the six months leading up to our trip when I was suddenly dropped into a major city where I didn’t even know how to say “thank you” in the local language.
We started out
by searching for and failing to find a proper Lunar New Year celebration. We did, however, find Chinatown, and had ourselves a lovely street meal of giant prawns, grilled fish, and other delights. And thanks to Andrew and his proficiency in Mandarin, our server seemed to like us. I believe John and Andrew were also wearing bow ties, which may have affected any of the above events.
The boys in bowties in Bangkok...John, coincidentally, is also a rockstar now.
We discovered that Andrew had a connection in Pattaya, the infamous epicenter of Thai sex tourism. John and I had never heard of it, let alone thought of visiting it, but plans to make a detour soon evolved (When would we again have the chance to be escorted around Pattaya by an expat in-the-know?). Before high-tailing it out of Bangkok, we got drinks at Vertigo at the Banyan Tree. Vertigo is a restaurant on top of a skyscraper and is quite breathtaking. My experience was a little soured by having to borrow weird clogs from the Maitre d’, but the view was spactacular and the air was cool and refreshing. Here are a few pics I found online:
We also rode up and down Chao Phraya, the river running through Bangkok. I’m not sure how to pronounce that–don’t ask me about the Romanization of the Thai language–I think it is said CHOW PREE-yah. Or CHOW PRI-yah. But Thai is also tonal, so I’m not sure about the tones one should use. Anyway, Bangkok is (or was) the Venice of Asia, and I could have spent a lot more time exploring the canals. We only had time to run up and down the river on a cheap river taxi, talking and observing the different wats (temples).
Chess on a Wat.
We got out at a sort of secluded temple and the boys played chess in the yard.
I could get used to getting around by boat.
Next in a series: Chiang Mai.
‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore March 6, 2010
If Korea is a wounded country who refuses to let anyone into her heart, Thailand is a proud land who whores herself out to anyone–at the right price.
I only have experience with three (okay four) Asian countries at this point, and of Thailand I have merely a tourist’s knowledge. But I will try my best to explain my impressions of the three based on my limited knowledge.
Korea has been invaded, raped, pillaged, and colonized for about as long as she can remember. She clings to her alphabet for lack of any other uniquely Korean cultural trait. Of the rest of her attributes, she can’t quite tell what is Japanese, what is Chinese, and what is her own. She knows she can thank the U.S. for her greed to consume. She grasps for straws of her identity and licks her wounds, and teaches herself not to be fooled again. She won’t take another lover if it kills her…even if it means keeping out a Canadian born of Korean parents who has done his best to establish a life here. He can never be a part of her, no matter how hard he tries.
Thailand boasts that she was never colonized by a European power. For this reason, her culture is relatively well-preserved. Everywhere you go in Thailand, you can find shrines in people’s homes and businesses, cave temples, giant Buddhas, and great cuisine. Nobody here is crying over Japan’s or Spain’s burning of her books and temples. She did, however, lose pieces of herself to the French and British colonists, a side effect of the position she took as buffer state between their territories. Later, during the second WW, she allowed Japan free access to her lands, rather than suffer his wrath…only to emerge at the end of the war allied with the U.S. It seems that the great Kingdom of Thai is quite the opportunist, or at best, a fair-weather friend. From my entry into old Siam until my moment of departure, I felt that the land of smiles was really more of a land of bared teeth. Teeth bared in frustration, teeth bared at expatriates, teeth bared at tourists, at developers, at each other, at the sky.
India, a nation I romanticize to a fault and who has plenty of her own problems, seems to strike some happier balance in the world. She was colonized, but not destroyed. Her people seem to have been made stronger for the test, and they fiercely hold onto their culture and thrust it forth ahead of them into the future. They are ambitious: they are working quickly to achieve world-power status and India makes her mark in industries as widely varied as engineering and the arts. Yet she is open and indulgent. She wants to let you in, to make friends. She’ll make you feel you are her best friend, and 90% of the time, you will be. Where Thailand lacks in industry, Korea lacks in culture and congeniality. India seems to lack nothing.
Let me explain.
I didn’t know what to expect. I’d never planned to go to Thailand: we went because John’s dad generously gifted us with a week at a fabulous Phuket resort. Once we had decided to go to Thailand for our vacation, I had zero time to do a bit of research via tour guides or the internet. And we made the mistake of downloading LP to John’s kindle—BIG mistake. We love our kindles, but a word of advice: don’t try to use one for reference books. It’s a premiumly silly idea.
To Be Continued…
Everything’s Coming Up Andrew February 12, 2010
Best Day Ever.
Almost four months ago, Dani, John, and Andrew went on a trip to Busan. They arrived on Thursday night and checked into a love motel near the beach. It had an enormous flatscreen TV, both a queen and a double bed, neon blue lights, and a frosted glass bathroom. Andrew shared his bottle of Talisker with the happy couple, they toasted, and they all played cards and had a good time. Andrew even delighted them with a few magic tricks.
When they woke up Friday morning, Andrew checked his e-mail. He found out that he passed the Bar exam! Dani and John were very happy for Andrew. They went out and got spicy noodles and coffee at the market to celebrate. After breakfast, they walked down the beach. The forecast had been for lots of rain all day Friday, but it was clear and sunny instead! Dani wished she had her sunglasses. They couldn’t believe their good luck. After their walk down the beach, the three of them got on the subway to go to Sajik Stadium. They got out of the subway and asked for directions. All of the nice Koreans told them to go straight up the road. When they got close, but could not see the stadium, they asked a family where to go. Just then, another family pulled up in a van alongside them and told them to jump in. The friendly family in the van drove them right to the stadium!
By the time they got to Sajik, it was already the fifth inning. Some fans were leaving, and they gave Andrew their three tickets! Dani, Andrew, and John entered the stadium and realized that the tickets were very good. They got to sit on the third baseline, only a few rows away from the field! The men sitting behind them gave them beer and dried fish to eat. The Lotte Giants were losing, but they didn’t mind. They cheered along, put orange plastic bags on their heads, and chanted “Garcia!” when it was his turn to bat. They saw two home runs, and one of them was Garcia’s! At the end of the game, the nice Korean man sitting behind them went and got them a game ball. He showed them the mark on the ball from being hit by the bat. Then he wrote “Garcia” on it and signed his own name before giving it to Dani. The three friends could not believe their lucky day!
After a quick dinner of noodles and dumplings, the friends decided to explore Haeundae Beach a little more. They wandered into the Casino and bet a few dollars on the Roulette table. On their third try, Andrew’s number hit! They won $50! To celebrate, they decided to have fish and beer on the beach. But first they visited Sea Land and looked at all of the strange and fascinating creatures in the water tanks. All were for sale and could be cooked on the spot! Then they drunkenly drove musical, coin-operated bumper cars for awhile, and finally they tried their luck at a carnival game. They had to throw darts at balloons to win a prize. Andrew hit two balloons and won a seashell keychain. Dani hit three balloons and won a cow stuffed animal keychain. John hit five out of five balloons and won a Winnie the Pooh stuffed toy. Their luck didn’t seem to have a limit. They finished their lovely evening and lucky day by having grilled fish with lots of side dishes at a restaurant overlooking the ocean.
This was an article I wrote many moons ago, and a post I came close to posting on October 25.
Why is it so cheesy? Because it was originally meant to be used in class as an article for the kiddies to read and then comprehend. I would ask them to give me the who/what/where/why/hows of the article, and they would be happy to learn something about my private life. Obviously, that version didn’t include mentions of the love motel or Scotch, and it contained way fewer adjectives and adverbs.
Why now? Welp, because A) I am finally coming up for air after two long months in the dark with no posts for you fine people to read (more on that later). And B) After almost four months since that magical day in Busan, John and I will be embarking on an all-new adventure with one Mr. Andrew.
Yes, one can be sure of only two things: that luck and giggles will be had. Whatever else fate casts upon us is yet to be beheld, and I like it that way. Bangkok or bust.
Happy New Year! January 1, 2010
It’s already 2010 here, but it’s still 2009 at home. So this post is officially on 12/31/09. So there.
Happy New Year!
Cutsie Boy November 27, 2009
If life is an emotional roller coaster, life in Korea is a taller, twistier, much more wicked one. Or perhaps an older, more rickety wooden classic that gives you as much whiplash as thrill. Like The Beast at King’s Island, rather than the Millenium Force at Cedar Point.
Nerdy amusement Park references aside, I have major downer days and major upper days, without much in between. Yesterday? Tears at my desk with the lights out. Tuesday? Total awesomeness. Look what I found on my (other) desk in the teachers’ office at the end of the workday:
Things that keep me going #1: Love Notes.
Now, I think this kid’s teacher confused me with Bri, the last teacher here, and wrote that on the card. But I don’t care. The student who drew this beautiful little card for me is a disabled kid who I don’t even have in class. He just loves me and always runs after me to say hello in the halls and at lunch. Apparently, his written English is quite good (almost as good as his ability to draw Sesame Street characters, seals, and penguins):
He has better English than a lot of my regular kids. Not sure what he wants to say about his mother and sister, though...
I think he was worried about me when I was sick. And he likes art and English and the outdoors. He spent a lot of money on these cookies called Peppero he gave me. And he is “a king of the Korea”. Yes you are, buddy, in my book.
Who doesn't love doting in the form of treats?
“Elvis has left the vista.” or, “My computer is jenky?” November 19, 2009
I can’t listen to Elvis.
That’s not because I don’t love Elvis. I physically cannot listen to The Essential Elvis Presley at the moment.
Every week, iTunes chooses one album to ban from my audial pleasure. The program politely, but ever so sternly informs me that the album I have chosen to listen to has files whose originals cannot be located. When I open the album, each track has a fat, juicy exclamation mark preceding it (I have come to view exclamation marks as harbingers of certain doom).
This week, iTunes has chosen Elvis (I have also come to regard iTunes as a physical entity with abnormally high intelligence and unfairly elevated hostility directed toward my person).
So each week, I am held back from doing something more productive by the task of reloading whatever album iTunes has blocked from me from the backups I transfer via thumb drive.
As you can imagine, this can be quite tedious. I have begun a decent into a small bout of paranoia, in which my arch nemesis is this computer program, personified. I imagine him wearing a pleathery cape and one of those really dumb masks that only covers the area around your eyes and makes you look like a raccoon. You know, like the one Robin wears .
Still with me?
I am not sure, but I think my problems may be stemming from the fact that my computer is a little bit jenky. By jenky I mean that I think my school pirated the operating system on my PC. Not only did they pirate my OPERATING SYSTEM–effectively, my whole computer–they pirated Windows Vista. Vista.
H1N1 2.0 – Upgrade with the Expansion Pack! November 15, 2009
WHERE HAVE I BEEN?
Well, since I last wrote you, I…
fell ill of a sore throat. I stayed home from school for one day and watched Atomic Train on TV. I heart Rob Lowe and John and I have been watching a lot of Sex and the City lately, so it was neat to see Kristin Davis in a B movie with an F- plot. It was special. The next day I kept my talking to a minimum in class and trekked it out to a friend’s house party for Halloween. Sore throat and all, I sucked it up because A) this friend has a HOUSE. to have a house party IN. B) I’d invited a teacher from school and he was really excited about it. AND C) John and I had spent a few bucks on our first-ever couples costume: pig masks, face masks, pink shirts, and angel wings. Swine Flew. Get it? ahhhhh…
Dani, John, and Kim Tae-young
Needless to say, the cocktail of pills the doc had given me for my cold didn’t do much damage. So when I ran out that Monday, I went back for heavier ammo, explaining that it was most likely my Autumnal Sinusitus Visit.
Monday and Tuesday were miserable at school, because low and behold, winter happened to South Korea. Saturday the 31st had been BEAU-tee-ful. Monday brought bone chill like I haven’t felt since driving through snow drifts to get from Hamilton to Oneida. And apparently, Koreans don’t believe in turning on heaters until it is officially winter. So sick little sinusitus sally had to wrap herself up in her winter coat and leave her desk only to instruct chillun (literally, it seemed) and use the ladies’ room. Praise the Lord, one friend brought me a little space heater, and others in the teacher’s office gave me lots of tea and warm things to drink. So it’s not like no one took pity on me. But the fact that Engtopia’s hallway is lined with un-insulated windows meant that my room and of course hallway seemed colder than the Great Outdoors.
Thankfully, the cold spell soon passed, and the new pharmaceutical cocktail seemed to work some magic, and by Friday the 6th, I was flying high. I had a great day at school (thanks, I think, to a midnight run executed by a Native Teacher in another part of town), the weather was feeling almost warm enough to go without a jacket, I was finally catching up on my Korean lessons, and the weekend was upon us.
Stupidly, I took advantage of this encouraging smile from above, and took one innocent little scooter ride to the nearby beach and lighthouse park…sans coat.
That was Saturday.
Sunday night, I woke up every two to three hours in a pool of sweat, confused and haunted by fever dreams. Monday, I took a trip to the local hospital that lasted all afternoon. I had the cheap preliminary flu test done and demanded a test for mono. The real flu test was more than 3x the price. After hours of waiting alternatively in a cold trailer in the hospital parking lot and just inside the always-sliding ER doors, I was informed that I probably had shin jong flu.
It was REEALLLLY hard not to laugh.
I found it hysterical…of COURSE I had swine flu! God was smiting me for having a sense of humor. “I have a pretty good sense of humor, too” he says with a cynical snigger. What a punk.
Now, the test results for the cheap test aren’t super accurate, but it didn’t really matter to me. I only got the test to prove to my school that I was actually sick. I knew I was sick, and I knew I needed to stay home. But too many foreigners have called in sick with hangovers, ruining it for the rest of us…so I have to bring in a note from the hospital like I’m 4.
The last week has been strange. I never really had a bad fever again after the first night or two, and I basically just slept A LOT. I’d get up with John, eat some cereal, and read long enough to take my morning cocktail. This cocktail had fewer pills than the previous two: just an anti-viral pill (Tamiflu), a painkiller, a decongestant, and something to protect my stomach lining from all of these pills. Anyway, after my morning cocktail, I’d go back to sleep for another 4 hours and get up for a light lunch, some more reading, my afternoon cocktail, and some more reading and another nap. I’d get up in time for dinner with John and my longest stretch of waking time, when we’d watch lots of The Wire, Sex and the City, Lost, some movie, CNN, or what have you. Then it was nighttime cocktail and bedtime. Sounds like an old person, right? Well, call me Opal.
It was an eerie week. Everything tasted like medicine, thanks, I think, to the little pill that is supposed to keep my stomach from eating itself. But who really knows. Also, the weather apparently got really nasty this week, so I’d wake up from my crazy dreams to howling winds, dark skies, and rattling doors and windows. When I woke, I would read more from this great scifi novel about a terrifying black sheep of a dragon who is supposed to be helping save the world from Armageddon. That of course fed my dreams, and well, there you have it. I was feeling kinda trippy and congested for a good five days straight.
I ventured outside this afternoon for the first time since Monday’s jaunt to the hospital. John and I spent the morning 1) successfully ordering pizza delivery in Korean to our Korean address. This was a big step. 2) we watched Inglorious Basterds (hey, that’s how it’s spelled on IMDB), thanks to John’s recent obsession with downloads. Then we met up with two friends for a few rounds of bowling, then I came home to incubate some more. Slefdawg is currently out on the town with weiguks.
This is probably my first alone-time I’ve spent not passing out in weeks. It’s kinda fabulous. Let’s hope this healthy feeling sticks.
What have I learned? I’ve learned that Koreans will always prescribe a pill to ”protect my stomach” from all of the other pills they’re giving me. I guess this is a good thing, because who wants an ulcer? But I am wary, because I have also learned that one of Korea’s top killers is Stomach Cancer. Korea and Japan are apparently infamous for their stomach cancer rates. I am convinced that this has something to do with the persistent use of organochlorides (nasty pesticides like DDT that we stopped using 40 years ago) in spite of the fact that Korea supposedly banned their use in 1980. India, China, and North Korea still produce and export DDT, and production is supposedly on the rise. Yikes-zar.
I have also learned that the health system here isn’t especially nice to foreigners, especially if you ________. I’m not sure what goes in the blank. Let me explain. I met (and kept meeting) a Russian woman (very pretty, blond, but older) and her very young son at the hospital. They’d been there since 11 AM, I got there at 1 PM. They waited MUCH longer than me at every stop. When I left the doctor’s little test result briefing room just of the ER waiting area (final stop), she was still there, and furious. Her poor little boy hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink all day, and now it was getting on to about 5 PM. I tried to talk to her a bit, but I couldn’t really offer much advice aside from “be pushy”. And I had a feeling she’d already been being pushy all day. I found out that she didn’t have Korean health insurance, and all of the prices were 3x higher for her than they were for me. I sympathized: “Korea isn’t all that easy on foreigners” I offered. “Yeah” she tsked back. I left her waiting to barge in on the doctor, unsolicited. I hope they helped her out.
So I’m not sure why they ushered me around more, especially since I didn’t have a small child with me. As it was, I still sat around for 4 hours, ran out of kleen-ex (forced to just sneeze in my medical mask–GROSS), thirsty as hell. Was it because I was sneezing five times per second and she didn’t even have a tissue out? Or did my nationality raise my priority? Or was it my Korean health insurance that got me past Go?
I suspect a combination of the three. And I wonder, how would we treat two similar foreigners in a major University hospital in, say, Boulder?
Part Deux: Like I said before, it’s just different here, but still illogical. They’re terrified of each new strain of flu. But it’s the 1950s here and everybody works 6 days a week, 15 hours per day. So if you catch a cold, they slap a face mask on you and shove some steroids in your hand and send you back to work. Can’t lose productivity on account of YOUR health. Swine Flu? QUARANTINE! You’re a walking plague, and we want nothing to do with you. This is serious stuff, life and death now, you hear? C’est la vie.
It is late. We are meeting John’s cutie-pie co-teacher for cha (tea) tomorrow. And this was my first full day awake. I have some Z’s to catch. Gute nacht. And don’t let the Persistent Organic Pollutants bite.
