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We've Moved.

2007-04-28T19:35:00.000-04:00

Smitty and SuperE has moved. We will no longer be posting here.

You can find our new and improved blog HERE.

Enjoy.

Wherein Spring Bestows its Beauties

2007-04-21T04:58:00.000-04:00

THEM FLOWERS [James Whitcomb Riley]

Take a feller 'at's sick and laid up on the shelf,
All shaky, and ga'nted, and pore--
Jes all so knocked out he can't handle hisself
With a stiff upper-lip any more;
Shet him up all alone in the gloom of a room
As dark as the tomb, and as grim,
And then take and send him some roses in bloom,
And you can have fun out o' him!

You've ketched him 'fore now--when his liver was sound
And his appetite notched like a saw--
A-mockin' you, mayby, fer romancin' round
With a big posy-bunch in yer paw;
But you ketch him, say, when his health is away,
And he's flat on his back in distress,
And _then_ you kin trot out yer little bokay
And not be insulted, I guess!

You see, it's like this, what his weaknesses is,--
Them flowers makes him think of the days
Of his innocent youth, and that mother o' his,
And the roses that _she_ us't to raise:--
So here, all alone with the roses you send--
Bein' sick and all trimbly and faint,--
My eyes is--my eyes is--my eyes is--old friend--
Is a-leakin'--I'm blamed ef they ain't!

Wherein April is the Cruelest Month, Cruelest Month . . . .

2007-04-18T05:57:00.000-04:00

April isn't really the cruelest month, but I wanted the chance to reference both T.S. Eliot and The Simpsons in the same post title. In fact April is a delightful month, aside from the following:

These were both taken a few weeks ago from our 9th story window. The lens is not dirty. There was no glass or screen in front of the camera. I didn't add any tinting or special effects. That's just straight up yellow dust, and the pictures don't do it justice. Apparently this has been the worst 황색 먼지 they've ever had. And with the increasing spread of the Gobi desert to the west (spurred on by deforestation and overgrazing and intensified by industrial pollution), every Spring for some time into the future will probably be able to claim that distinction.

But back to the delight, of which there is still plenty. Elisa's job has come to involve regular excursions with her students (occaisionally I get to tag along). One of her classes recently took her to Asan, the city just south of Cheonan, for a look at the Cherry Blossoms. She got some nice photos out of the deal. (Recall last year's pictures of the blossoms we're fortunate enough to have right here on campus.)

This last Sunday we'd planned on hiking in Wonju with Dan & Angela, but Elisa was down with a cold, and the weather wasn't looking too hot anyway, so we decided to stay home. However, since we really wanted to go on a little hike, and since we'd already let them know we wouldn't be at church, we ended up spending Sabaath morning with some books and a packed lunch up on the little mountain across the road. You might remember some pictures from this same mountain that were posted last year, when we were just discovering the conveniently situated escape it provides from all the endless asphalt and sun-obscuring apartment towers.

Today brought a very rare and special sort of delight when I took a bite of the fresh bread that SuperE made in our little oven with the yeast that finally appeared on the shelves of Lotte Mart. I believe I was immediately transported to heaven, where for a time I communed blissfully with St. Home-Cooked-Goodness, patron to all those starving Americans stuck in countries where words like "cake" and "bread" have yet to be fully linked to words like "delicious" and "soul-satisfying," and are instead stuck with adjectives like "bland" and "blah" and "how did you ruin this?" and "who puts cherry tomatoes on a birthday cake?!"

A Very Special Announcement*

2007-04-17T18:45:00.000-04:00

We have a very special announcement to make. After much pleading and conjoling and promising of gold and diamonds, Elisa Ruth Sutherland has agreed to my proposal of marriage. We're engaged! Particulars as to time and place and dessert menu will be forthcoming as we determine what they are. You're all invited, of course, and we hope you'll be able to come and share our happiness when the big day arrives.

Congratulations to us!!!!

*You're listening to the Best of Smitty & SuperE (from April 17, 2005). This is a prerecorded post. Please do not try to call in.

Easter Sunday

2007-04-08T04:50:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago we were asked to plan this year's Easter Sunday service. The result is what you see below. I think it went pretty well (though since I was at the piano, I couldn't experience it from the congregation's perspective). The text is my own, though obviously it incorporates or flat-out quotes a lot of scripture. Images are from various artists. (Unfortunately many of them are missing, because I negelcted to save them, and searching the internet for them all over again doesn't appeal to me. Originally there was an image for each story.) There was a lot of music as well, including Sufjan Stevens' "For the Widows in Paradise," with Betsy on guitar, Houston on violin, Robb on vocals, and Smitty on piano. That was pretty exciting.

--------------------

On the morning of the first of days, before the dawn that was to come, Mary Magdalene went down to his tomb. With a small and doubtful hope, she and her friends brought spices for his broken body. Between him and them there lay a stone they could not move, for their arms were weak, and they had no tools. They knew no way around this rock, yet still they came, treading the deep dark of a graveyard with no certainty that they would find anything but a sealed and guarded sepulchre, home to a dead messiah.

But when they came to the place, and the first light fell across the grass, they saw that no tools were needed, that no strength would help them - the rock had rolled away. With what they had brought they entered the cave - but there they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. They were very perplexed, not knowing how to explain it. And then two men appeared, shining white while morning broke the last of darkness.

Mary stood crying in their presence, and through her sorrow and confusion heard a voice asking,

“Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word created the heavens and the earth. For in the Word was life, and the life was light in the darkness, though the darkness did not comprehend it. In the light of the first days of the world, all things came into being through the Word - skies and seas, fields and forests, suns and stars, fish and fowl, cattle and creeping things, men and women and children. And the Word saw all that was made, and behold, it was very good.

2000 years ago a little boy was born into this same good world, a world of blue skies and deep forests and a blazing sun warming the skins of all people, just and unjust alike. But it was also a terribly different world, and in a cattle stall his memory of its good beginning met the moment of its present suffering. Now the earth was corrupt in his sight, and filled with violence, for all had
corrupted their way upon the earth. Floods and babel towers, murders and
betrayals, rapes and assassinations, wars and endless conquests, infanticides and dismemberments, tortures and destructions, exhiles and genocides, lust and adulteries, greed and injustices, fanatic exclusivity and desperate idolatry - all were afflicted, all were victims, all were culprits, and the whole creation was groaning, and we ourselves were groaning within ourselves, grasping like Mary Magdalene at small and desperate hopes.

In those days, when Mary and Joseph took shelter in a Bethlehem barn and saw all our hopes fulfilled, Caesar Augustus was lord of the earth. His armies flooded all the lands and silenced babbling foreign tongues with swords and crucifixions. From Rome there came a decree that all the world should be taxed - accounted for, registered with the system, officially reminded of who was master. All were made to return to their city of origin, even Mary, who was great with child. And so she went, and found no room in the inn, and gave birth to baby Jesus - the Lord of the earth. He would be called wonderful, counselor, the prince of peace, the mighty God, the everlasting father. He came to save us from our sin. He came eating and drinking, healing lepers, lame and blind men, casting demons from their victims, befriending prostitutes and Ceasar’s hated tax collectors, exposing pharisees, telling stories, dividing brothers from
fathers and mothers from daughters and inviting all of us to walk with him in his good kingdom.

This Jesus then is the one you seek, you weeping beside an empty tomb for all the sorrows of your world. He believed against all evidence that the kingdom of our world had and would become the kingdom of our God, and he died to make it true. He called friends from out of fishing boats and taxing booths to live with him in this hope. They left everything behind, and got up and began to
follow him.

These are some of the things they heard him say and saw him do - this is how they learned from Jesus to live their lives anew, and to make the world anew, in the Way of the Kingdom of God. This is the mind of Christ and the gospel of the kingdom; let it be in you.

Jesus had begun to travel his country, inviting people to become disciples of the way of the kingdom. Andrew heard and followed, and brought his brother Peter. Philip heard and followed, and brought his friend Nathanael. This is how it was to be; all who heard him tell of the kingdom went right away to their friends and neighbors and invited them to listen, too. Whenever they came, he asked them “What do you seek?” He knew they sought the kingdom, as all of us do, and so he gave a hard and simple promise: “Come, and you will see.” And as he walked through Palestine, long occupied by Caesar’s law, he would gather more and more, showing them signs of life in the midst of death, taking
health to the sickly crowds, and offering all a cup of living water, water that flowed like deep red wine from a bottomless cask.

Three days after he began this long, long walk, he and his friends were invited to a wedding in a town called Cana. They were all enjoying themselves, but too soon the wine ran out. Jesus’ mother, who had helped plan the party and wanted very much for all the guests to be happy, was distraught. She told her son about the problem, and though he seemed reluctant, she had hope enough to believe he would help with even this little lacking of abundance. She said to the servants, “Whatever he says to you, do it.”

Nearby there were six stone waterpots, set aside for the guests to use in their purification rituals. Jesus told the servants to fill these pots with water. So they filled them to the brim, wondering how this would give them what they needed. Without explaining anything, he told them to draw a drink from one of the pots and take it to the head waiter.

When the head waiter tasted the water, which had become wine, and did not know where it came from, he called the bridegroom and said “Every man serves the good wine first, and when the people have drunk freely and won’t know the difference, then he serves the poorer wine; but you have kept the good wine for last!”

This - a little overflowing of abundance, a little miracle for the simple sake of joy and celebration - this was the beginning of his signs and wonders. This was the first of many parables of the kingdom, signs tracing its shape in the world, wonders setting its print on the earth - restorations of the “very good” of God, as it was in the beginning and will be in the future.

Jesus was in the middle of a long journey. To reach his destination, he had to pass through a country called Samaria. Jews hated Samaria, and they had no dealings with Samaritans, whose ancestors had mixed themselves with
heathens. Samaritans defiled the true religion and sought God on the
mountains, instead of obediently attending the temple of Jerusalem, as the law of God prescribed.

After a dusty day of walking, Jesus the Jew sat resting beside an ancient well in this little land of heretics and half-breeds. He was thirsty, but had nothing with which to draw the water, and so he was very glad to see a woman coming with her pots and pails. Jesus said to her, “give me a drink!”

The woman said to him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?” Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who asks you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

She responded, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do you get that living water? Jesus answered:

“Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give her shall never thirst; but the water that I will give her will become in her a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.” But Jesus did not give her the water right away. He first told her to go and call her husband. Cautiously the woman explained that she had no husband. “You are being honest,” Jesus said, “since you have actually had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your
husband.”

The woman was startled to hear the truth about herself. She perceived that he was a prophet, and she wanted to know more. So she asked this teller of secret truths and giver of living water about the hatred between their peoples, about her fathers worshiping in the mountain the Jews worshiping in the temple. And then he said a beautiful thing:

“Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the father. You worship what you do no know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth; for such people the father seeks to be his worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

The woman said to him, “what I know is that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when that one comes, he will declare all things to us.”

And Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you - I who turn your secrets into truth - I am that one.”

A lawyer, a good Jew who loved the law, stood up and asked Jesus about eternal life. Jesus asked him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” The lawyer answered, “You shall love the lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength and with all your mind; and you shall love you neighbor as yourself.” Jesus rejoiced and said “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live!”

But the lawyer knew it was more complicated than this, and so he asked Jesus, “who is my neighbor?” And in reply, Jesus told him a beautiful story, a story about another Samaritan, the people hated by Jews who loved the law.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. An by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day he took out two danarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, “Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.

Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?” The lawyer answered, “The one who showed mercy toward him - the Samaritan.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.”

Jesus had been saying bold things, offering from out of his own abundant life cups of living water to anyone who was thirsty. Some called him a prophet, but the Pharisees, the lovers of God’s law, sent men to seize him. But their men came back in silence, empty-handed. “Why did you not bring Him?!” they
demanded. The men answered, “Never has a man spoken the way this man speaks.” Disgusted, the pharisees wondered that even their own people had been led astray. “No one of the rulers or Pharisees has believed in Him, has he? But this crowd which does not know the Law is accursed.” And so, afraid for the purity of their religion and for all the straying souls, the lovers of God’s law went to their homes.

But Jesus went up to the Mount of Olives and spent the night alone. Early in the morning he came back down to the temple. When he arrived he found many people coming to him, so he sat down and told them more about the kingdom of God.

While he was talking, the Pharisees came back. They brought with them a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court, they said to him:

“Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act.
Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what
then do You say?”

They were saying this, testing him, so that they might have grounds for
accusing him. But Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground.
When they persisted in asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”

Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. When they heard his, they began to leave, one by one, beginning with the older ones, and he was finally left alone with the woman in the center of the court. Straightening up, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And quietly Jesus said, “Then I do not condemn you, either. Go, and from now on, sin no more.”

Crowds of adulterous people - crowds of prostitutes, tax collectors,
drunkards, addicts, Samaritans, and criminals, along with zealots and
centurions and a few conflicted pharisees - went everywhere with Jesus. He ate heartily in their homes and seemed suspiciously comfortable in their company. Those who love the law of God and feared the stain of sin complained about his offensive lack of moral boundaries and religious scruples.

In response he told these grumblers a gospel story that made them brothers with the sinful crowd they loved so much to hate. It went like this:

"A man had two sons. "The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me ' So he divided his wealth between them.
"And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living.

"Now when he had spent everything, a severe famine occurred in that country, and he began to be impoverished. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would have gladly filled his stomach with the pods that the swine were
eating, and no one was giving anything to him.

But when he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have more than enough bread, but I am dying here with hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men."

So he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and (C)embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his slaves, 'Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.' And they began to celebrate.

Now his older son was in the field, and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. And he summoned one of the servants and began inquiring what these things could be. And he said to him, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has received him back safe and sound.' But he became angry and was not willing to go in; and his father came out and began pleading with him. But he answered and said to his father, 'Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends; but when this son of yours came, who has devoured your wealth with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him.' And he said to him, 'Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found.'"

These stories we have heard, stories from Jesus and about Jesus, are the stuff of the gospel. They show the shape of the kingdom of God, the reality and the hope in which we are invited to live our lives. And there are many other stories, stories we did not tell today, stories that were never told, and stories that are yet to happen - stories that will unfold as we make Christ’s mind our own, by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, uniting in the same spirit, intent on the same purpose.

Doing nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind
regarding one another as more important than ourselves. Not looking out merely for our own interests, but also for the interests of others. Believing what Jesus said on a mountaintop one day, when he spoke to crowds of sinners about the kingdom that was theirs, saying:

Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of
righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you, because of me. Rejoice and be glad!

For saying these things on that mountaintop - for turning water into wine, for speaking with Samaritans, for loving his neighbor, for rescuing adulterers from the law, for forgiving prodigal sons and killing the fatted calf - for saying and doing all these things, for showing joy to the world, he was killed. He was betrayed by the fickle mob, condemned by the murderous priests and stiff-necked scribes and pharisees, and crucified by the imperial indifference of the empire’s weary executioners. He cried in his pain for God, but God too had forsaken him, and for a time the world became in fact as dark as it was in truth.

And then it was finished. The story was over. The dream was shattered. The kingdom of God was betrayed, and the kingdom of Roman rule and Jewish law and zealous revolutions was empowered by the point of the spear that pierced his side.

Did his friends look up and see him finding life in losing it? Did they see
abundant living water pouring from his wounds? Or did they see failure,
the vindication of the law, the righteous punishment of a blasphemer, the
invincibility of the powers that be?

His body broken, his blood shed, he looked up and spoke one last time about the kingdom he was making up there upon the cross:

“Remember my commandment, that you love one another? Greater love has no man than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. I have called you friends, brothers, sisters, mothers, sons, and daughters. Who is my mother and who are my brothers?” And then looking round at his unsteady disciples, all afraid and in despair, he said “behold, you are my mother and my brothers!” And to his weeping mother Mary and his beloved companion John, he said “Mother, this is your son! John, this is your mother! You are what I leave
behind; your love for each other is the only boundary of the kingdom of God. I did everything for you - that is the kingdom. Go and do the same.”

So Mary through her tears heard a voice asking “Woman, why are you
weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing the man to be a gardener, she pleaded “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

And then Jesus - risen, resurrected, alive and living Jesus - said to her, “Mary!”

After that she came announcing the good news to the other disciples. And in the evening, when the disciples had gathered behind closed doors for fear of those who had put him on the cross, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you; as the father has sent me, I also send you.
Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been
forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they will be retained. Go now into all the world, loving your neighbor and sharing the gospel of the kingdom, looking for God’s very good everywhere you go, and living in the hope that in love, all things work together for good.”

He is not here now, for he is risen. But he left us with a feast, a shared meal eaten in remembrance of him and in celebration of the kingdom. All are invited, so if you will, come now and receive together the bread and wine of Christ, who did everything for us, and shows us how to do the same for each other.

--------------------------

For communion, I gave Josh a prayer from John Crysostom, the patriarch of ancient Constantinople. He said:

Let all pious men and all lovers of God rejoice in the splendor of this feast; let the wise servants blissfully enter into the joy of their Lord; let those who have borne the burden of Lent now receive their pay, and those who have toiled since the first hour, let them now receive their due reward; let any who came after the third hour be grateful to join in the feast, and those who may have come after the sixth, let them not be afraid of being too late; for the Lord is gracious and He receives the last even as the first. He gives rest to him who comes on the eleventh hour as well as to him who has toiled since the first: yes, He has pity on the last and He serves the first; He rewards the one and praises the effort.

Come you all: enter into the joy of your Lord. You the first and you the last, receive alike your reward; you rich and you poor, dance together; you sober and you weaklings, celebrate the day; you who have kept the fast and you who have not, rejoice today. The table is richly loaded: enjoy its royal banquet. The calf is a fatted one: let no one go away hungry. All of you enjoy the banquet of faith; all of you receive the riches of his goodness. Let no one grieve over his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed; let no one weep over his sins, for pardon has shone from the grave; let no one fear death, for the death of our Saviour has set us free: He has destroyed it by enduring it, He has despoiled Hades by going down into its kingdom, He has angered it by allowing it to taste of his flesh.

When Isaias foresaw all this, he cried out: "O Hades, you have been angered by encountering Him in the nether world." Hades is angered because frustrated, it is angered because it has been mocked, it is angered because it has been destroyed, it is angered because it has been reduced to naught, it is angered because it is now captive. It seized a body, and, lo! it encountered heaven; it seized the visible, and was overcome by the invisible.

O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory? Christ is risen and you are abolished. Christ is risen and the demons are cast down. Christ is risen and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen and life is freed. Christ is risen and the tomb is emptied of the dead: for Christ, being risen from the dead, has become the Leader and Reviver of those who had fallen asleep. To Him be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.

Wherein Smitty and SuperE make a few feeble attempts to revive their wanderlusty reputations.

2007-03-26T07:19:00.000-04:00

With our traveling companions gone, our weather less than ideal, and our motivation subsequently lacking, we've not done much outside of Cheonan since returning from Christmas vacation. Last Sunday we went to Songtan with Josh and Sarah and Emma, and had an amazing lunch at the Thai buffet (the chicken coconut milk curry thingy was . . . wow). After stocking up on oatmeal and stopping by the Coffee Tree for Korea' best cappucino, we came back to our little apartment and contentedly watched some House episodes. We've not done much more in the way of traveling besides - no overnight stays, nothing further than an hour or so on the train.

This weekend we did make a small effort to reassure ourselves and our many fans that we actually do like traveling and coming back with good stories and nice pictures - that we're not a couple of boring old people who like nothing better than relaxing together in their living room (though we're beginning to suspect that might be the truth, and that it's not half bad!). After SuperE's three-hour morning class, we went to the KTX station and got a train to Seoul, where we had booked a room at the Koreana Hotel. Our plan was to enjoy the hotel, visit a palace and a museum or two, and come back the next afternoon.

Cheonan on Friday was gorgeous, warm and sunny and enjoying relatively clear air - the best day in a long while. The train we wanted to take had been cancelled, so we had to wait an hour later than had been planned, but we relished the chance to sit on the outside steps drinking in the sun and some iced coffees. We were in high spirits and excited about our weekend getaway.

The train ride took unusually long, and we both fell asleep. Just before coming into Seoul we actually got stuck for a while in a tunnel. When we emerged from our naps and from the tunnel, the nice weather and clear air were gone, replaced with nasty clammy cold grey skies and some really terrible air pollution. It was a bit deflating, and would only get more so as we came up from the short subway hop and walked around in the haze looking for our hotel. Here are a few shots from our window, up on the fifteenth floor.

While the noisy, crowded city and its blighted sky may have rained on our parade, the hotel itself was quite nice. The surrounding area offered a nice "Italian" restaurant (which in turn offered some very non-Italian decor) called (what else?) Sorento's, where we had our evening meal, as well as a deceptively-named Gelatteria, which we thought would have the amazing gelatto ice cream, but instead had the unamazing freezer-burned frozen yogurt and bland Korean cake.

The evening was beautifully salvaged by a post-dinner walk through Deoksugong (Palace), next door to the Koreana. At 8:00 in the evening it was dark, nearly deserted, silent except for some surprisingly tasteful music playing quitely from well-placed speakers, and lit like a glowing candle. The darkness concealed the oppressive grey air, and a few raindrops were even starting to fall, promising to eventually clear out the dirt and at least bring a good clean grey to replace the mangy pseudo-color. It was an oasis in the urban waste, and made us glad again that we'd come, and almost glad again to be in Korea (where we've lately been feeling a whole new kind of homesickness).

The next morning we got up and enjoyed the rare treat of a real breakfast - ham, bacon, sausage, pancakes, and eggs. The Koreana offers a breakfast buffet, pricey but worth it, and that was the main reason we chose to stay there. Sometime we may go back again, with friends, just for breakfast. The food wasn't even that great, but the fact that it's breakfast food - i.e., not kimchi and rice - is enough in and of itself. After checking we out had a small lunch at an Evil Starbuck's, where SuperE noticed to her delight that the butter was from Wisconsin.

After our coffee and bagel we headed back onto the grounds of Deoksugung and toward the art gallery at the back. We spent a few hours with the Marino Marini sculpture exhibit, bought a great little Korean novel with both Korean and English text, and left footsore and hungry. After that we got a nice long walking tour of downtown Seoul, (where we dicovered this patch of real green grass!) which was something new as we've always taken taxis or the subway. We ate non-cajun "cajun chicken salad" at a restaurant near the big gate, walked through Dongdaemun Market, checked out an exhibit at the Bank of Korea Museum but decided against staying around, ate some spun honey candy (mmm) and tried some street sausage (blech), and eventually made our way back (after searching in vain for the Metropolitan Museum) to the KTX station. And from there, home sweet home, another episode of House, another bowl of cereal, another early night, and church the next morning.

Here are a few shots of Dongdaemun Market. What look like jars of aliens petrified in amber are actually jars of ginseng root.

The Machine (II)

2007-03-05T01:02:00.000-05:00

Friends, just less than one year ago we acquired The Machine. Last week we traded Jack for Robb's nano (also christened Jack) and purchased a second (which we named Jill, of course) at Costco. All of this in anticipation of the arrival from Indiana of our Nike+iPod sensor chips and shoe pouchs. The Nike+iPod program is genious. A chip in a pouch attached to your shoe connects with a sensor attached to your iPod nano. The chip keeps a record of your run - speed, distance, pace, everything - and records it on the nano. The nano gives you verbal feedback in the middle of your music. When you get back home and hook up your nano, the info gets sent to the Nike+iPod website, where you have an account. You can watch yourself run the graph of your latest workout, challenge other runners, keep track of your progress, create maps - the possibilities created by this marriage of healthy living and cool technology are endless.

But to take full advantage of these possibilities requires some decent computing power. My laptop has been dead for some time, and SuperE's has all but kicked the bucket - it's nearly impossible to watch movies without the video getting stuck behind the audio every ten seconds or so. What to do?

Or, more precisely, what to do when some extra work has left you with some extra money? Why, buy a MacBook, of course! Two weeks ago, after a particularly frustrating attempt to watch the latest episode of House, we found ourselves visiting the well-appointed rooms of Houston Wanier. There in the middle of his bedroom/living room floor sat his black beauty of a computing device, and behold, it was awesome. Programs started with the greatest of ease. Internet pages loaded without crashing the universe. Music responded to the commands of a remote control! And so we were convinced.

It took some figuring, some searching, some hopeful efforts to discover whether this wonder was even for sale in the Land of the Morning Calm. Eventually we made our way to the COEX mall and the newly reopened Apple reseller, found the apparently lesser white version (the color makes a $200 difference?!) of our prize, and forked over the cash.

And now I'm writing to you on Jane (in keeping with our 'j' theme), which is breezily running seven different programs at the same time without even a hiccup. We watch movies now without fear of the terribly inopportune freezup, the maddening pause just before the killer's face is revealed. We listen to music while writing an email. We surf the net while skyping with our parents. Wonderful!

Jackie's $100/month Challenge

2007-02-28T01:56:00.000-05:00

Jackie has started a "$100/month challenge," designed to get friends and family and whoever else to commit to donating $100 a month (or, for those of us in Korea, the much more impressive-sounding W100,000/month) to some charitable cause seeking "a better world for all." If you've got some extra money lying around (and of course you do), why not find some way to make it work for your neighbors near and far? Send her an email and let her know where you're sending your cash. SuperE and I have been sponsoring an Indian kid named Satendra for quite a while now, and this month we sent the rest of our new $100 committment to a project installing solar panels on low-income housing back in the States (check out GlobalGiving for more of this and other kinds of projects in need of funding).

The Sky Outside My Window

2007-02-26T23:57:00.000-05:00

Today the sky is not clear. By “today” I don’t mean “these days,” something abstract and only vaguely threatening. I mean today, February 27, 2007, another day of dirty sky. The threat is concrete. I can see the sky outside my window, as I’m writing this. There is a hill at eye level to my ninth floor apartment, and on days like this the bushy edge where the trees of that hill meet the sky is a subtle, creeping, thoroughgoing grey blur. On good days the edge is sharp, especially when the sky is brilliant blue and cloudless. Then it looks almost like a painting (but those days are rare and easily remembered). Today, the trees and the grey melt into each other. The feeling is one of resignation, acquiescence. If a sound accompanied this picture, it would be something like a long, muffled sigh.

The grey of this sky is not the grey of a cloudy day, or the grey of rain, or the grey of dusk, or even the grey of those “blah” days when the clouds are not distinct shapes but rather the name for the whole sky. It is something different altogether. At least it feels like that to me. I've always liked looking at skies, noting the differences between summer and winter skies, marking the various colors and tones and the way sound travels differently in different air. I know this sky is different. It’s a deep, brooding depression.

Even deserts, stark and barren and uninviting, have color. I call this sky ‘grey,” but that’s somehow wrong. “Colorless” would be more appropriate. Except for when the yellow dust comes in force, which could happen any day now. Then the sky will be yellow. Not yellow like the sun, or like a daffodil, or a banana, or whatever. A yellow that is somehow not yellow, empty of color but full of foreign desert and mixed with chemical death. It is all vague, without reality, and it’s all very, very real.

Whenever people back home hear the word “pollution,” they don’t really know what to think about. Maybe people in larger cities with bad air like Los Angeles have some idea, but most people don’t live in Los Angeles. They live in suburbs or in small towns or in big cities on windy plains. When people tell them the planet is in trouble, they often assume the problem – if it exists at all – is being exaggerated in order to promote some other agenda, which is to increase government regulation. They can’t see it, so it’s a “problem” in the same way that malaria in Africa is a problem. Here, in my ninth story apartment in Cheonan, South Korea, pollution is a “problem” in the same way that my getting malaria would be a problem.

Of course there are plenty of things that people back home could see if they looked hard enough, or if they knew what they were looking for. But most of those things – and that are exceptions that for short periods of time grab our attention – are not so in-your-face as the skies I’m looking at right now. In America we have good air and lots of open land and green grass on our lawns and enormous fields that stretch as far as the eye can see (I’m speaking as a midwesterner now). Encroaching urban sprawl is a problem, but its only immediate effect is on our sense of beauty. We don’t see lost forests and farmland, and it’s hard to see the danger if as a result some animals are forced into extinction. We have huge national parks, decent air quality laws, and large clean-up projects that promise solutions to those problems we do recognize. So when we hear people pressing for more laws to restrict environmental degradation, we see only a call for more regulation, without seeing clearly the problems they think justify that regulation.

I don’t care right now what you think about government regulation. I don’t like it any more than you do. Certainly it can’t solve all the problems I’m talking about. What I care about is getting more people to see the problems that the people recommending increased regulation are talking about. I want you to see the problem like I see it, circulating outside my window, keeping me indoors praying for a fast wind or a good rain and remembering the sky of yesterday, which was blue and clear enough that for once I could actually smell the straggling pine trees as I walked past them on the street. I want you to see the piles of trash clogging the pitiful little creeks that run through Cheonan, and the litter strewn about the dumpster-less sidewalks. I want you to breath in the exhaust of a million cars on the main road into the city as you try to run the jogging path that lines its southern side. I want you to remember your childhood spent playing in the woods and fields of your family farm in Indiana, and wonder when it will be turned into a housing development designed by and for commuters who, because they can’t see the immediate effects of development and traffic jams and foreign oil and coal-burning power plants and landfills filled with worthless wasted crap made from trees and ripped from mines and leached from rivers and hauled from oceans and slaughtered by the millions on factory farms nourished by chemicals destined for your Big Mac, can’t imagine why anyone would want to curtail their freedom to make money and live comfortably.

I don’t care whether you believe the best solutions are public or private. I only care whether you recognize the problem and sense its urgency in your own lives. If you then want to tell me why a conservative approach to keeping our environment from collapsing and taking us and our money with it is better than a liberal approach that emphasizes government, then I would love to hear about it, because I personally would like to keep our government as small as possible. But please recognize that something has to be done; doing nothing is not an option. If you say that the government shouldn’t require recycling, then you’d better be recycling your stuff on your own initiative. If you say that the government shouldn’t prevent people from driving their cars into crowded cities, then you’d better be putting your entrepreneureal brains to work and coming up with innovative plans for encouraging people to take public transportation, or for providing good public transit where its missing. You should be walking, not commuting, to the store. You should be coming up with ways to turn Amtrak into a popular and profitable enterprise. You should be supporting private companies investing in alternative energies, buying your electricity from them, encouraging them to set up shop in your own area, installing solar panels on your roof, etc. etc. If you don’t want the government to make laws designed to keep us all from ruining our environment, then you’d better do whatever it takes to keep yourself from contributing your share to that ruin. I don’t see that happening. I see the same people who oppose government regulation ridiculing those who take private initiative to address these problems. I see the same people who oppose government regulation dismissing the fact – a fact that I can see for myself right outside my window – that there actually is a problem. I wish these people would change their minds and get on the ball. Certainly that is the best “solution” to these problems. But if you won’t change your minds, something still has to be done. Perhaps this is why others push for government regulation. Not because they have some ulterior agenda – though certainly those motives exist – but because they see a terrible problem that threatens everyone, not just in the future, but here and now (again – it’s actually unsafe for me to walk outside today). If you don’t like their solution, then what’s yours?

Since Christmas

2007-02-23T01:37:00.000-05:00

We haven't written since Christmas, because nothing much has happened. SuperE has been working hard (heh) at her new job, teaching English to rich businessmen and bored housewives. Smitty, while actually on his winter break, has nevertheless been keeping busy (sort of) with English camp, a special daily class for scholarship students, and a few other projects. With our traveling companions gone and our schedules undemanding, we've been reading up a storm, going to the gym, watching tv shows on our laptop, and pretty much relaxing through the winter (which for the past two weeks has been hardly winter at all). A few short jaunts, downtown visits, trips to the dentist, and culinary discoveries have been the only accents to this beautiful routine. Now that a few months have passed, there might just be enough material to justify a post.

Just before we left, KNU surprised the international professors with some new ovens (our apartment only has a small range for frying). Once we deciphered all the buttons we got straight to work on pot pies, muffins (no sugar, of course), cookies, casseroles, and all sorts of wonderful things perfectly suited to diversifying our steady diet of oatmeal (breakfast), vegetable stir-fry (lunch), left-over vegetable stir-fry (supper) and cereal (night-time snack). Whole worlds have opened up! Here's one the pot pies so artfully concocted by SuperE.

We've continued to lead our bible study. The membership has changed a bit, with the loss of Mark & Naomi and Kairen & John and the addition of some others. We're using a different text as well - The Secret Message of Jesus, by Brian McLaren. Good times are had by all. Here are Robb and Houston, apparently planning some sort of crime. Perhaps the theft of Chris's tangerine.

In the past month or so, SuperE has found a good friend in her student So-Young. So-Young was even kind enough to make an appointment with and accompany us to the dentist. I had been feeling like my wisdom teeth were coming in, and since neither of us had had a checkup in a long while anyway, we were keen on making the trip, especially since we had a Korean-speaker who could help translate. It turned out that my problems were all in my head. My wisdom teeth are coming in perfectly straight and with lots of room. We had our cleanings (or, as they much more intimidatingly call them in Korea, "scalings") and were out of there.

The next weekend, though, SuperE's teeth started bothering her, and it was obvious that in her case it wasn't all in her head. Unfortunately it was not only the weekend, but the Chinese New Year, so we couldn't get to the dentist until Tuesday. Her teeth were killing her from Saturday until Monday, and she was hopped up on enough ibuprofrin to keep an elephant happy. On Tuesday So-Young again kindly took us to the dentist, where SuperE discovered that the problem was not her wisdom teeth, but her gums, which apparently had some kind of infection. They gave her some medicine, and soon she was feeling a lot better than she looks in this picture. As you can see, I was feeling fine.

Last weekend, instead of having class, So-Young and her two classmates came over to our house and cooked a big Korean meal, complete with seafood pancakes, bulgogi, bokumbap, and assorted other goodies. Delicious!

A Smitty & SuperE Christmas - Part 2

2007-01-29T00:10:00.000-05:00

Apologies for the long break between this post and the last. Herein I cover the last three days of our Christmas trip to America, which we spent on the road to and from Lake Chautauqua, New York, where stayed at a Bed & Breakfast with Mark and Naomi. Good times were had by all.

Having procured a brand new car from the kind and generous Papa Sutherland, we set out on Wednesday morning of our second week, heading east on the open road, and coincidentally retracing much of the route we took on our honeymoon, (not) so long ago. We enjoyed immensely all the special accoutraments of any great Smitty & SuperE-brand road trip - a jug of water on the back seat floorboard, a new book read aloud, hit-and-miss searches for local NPR stations, cups of coffee and hot tea, and of course, the ubiquitous stop at Cracker Barrel. Having been in Korea without a car (or any desire for one), the feeling of independence, movement, coziness, and the sheer space of roads and fields stretching out for endless miles hit us with particular intensity. Everyone of the nearly eight hours seemed like a special pleasure.

Of course we were still thrilled when we finally finished our trip and arrived in semi-darkness at Lake Chautauqua and the Brasted House Bed and Breakfast, where we'd reserved rooms for ourselves and our northern friends. Mark and Naomi had pulled in only a few minutes before, and there was a happy reunion before the quick tour of the place and a little settling in to our comfy quarters - the Gladys Viola for the Canadians, and the Emma Stark for ourselves.

Later we walked over to the little Italian restaurant next door to the Brasted, highly recommended by our hosts Joyce and Scott, and enjoyed a nice supper together, catching up on the month since Mark and Naomi had left Korea and moved back to Ottawa.

After our meal we had a nice long conversation with Scott and Joyce, who were full of interesting stories about Chautauqua, and whose bookshelves were filled with all sorts of good stuff.

The next morning Joyce made us a wonderful late breakfast, with homemade granola, pancakes, yogurt and fruit, juice and more coffee (we'd already a cup from the pot they brought upstairs for us before breakfast - a nice touch!). After eating, we set out walking down the road, intending to spend a few hours walking around the grounds of the Chautauqua Institution, which we'd heard so much about the previous night.

The Chautauqua Institution was founded in 1874 as a summer conference and education center for Sunday school teachers looking to increase their knowledge and improve their teaching skills. Since then it has become a rather peculiar institution that offers summer programs and classes in arts, literature, religion, etc. It draws speakers as prominant and diverse as Al Gore and Michael Medved. The institution's grounds support a little village largely empty in the winter but bustling with thousands in the summer. We took a little walk to see what we could see.

After following the central streets and admiring the large wooden hotel, the lecture hall, many churches, and beautiful Victorian homes, we came upon the Hall of Philosophy. Here is Socrates with his pupils, and Jonathan Edwards dropping sinners into the hands of an angry God.

Back in the day, some of the Chautauqua people thought it would be cool to create a geographical replica of the land of Palestine, with Lake Chautauqua standing in for the Mediterranean Sea, and the rest of the map set up on the surrounding shore. Weird. Here, apparently, is the Dead Sea, surrounded by stones marking Biblical cities, and to the north of which is the model Mt. Hermon on which we all took our stand.

After our morning walking tour, we drove a little ways north and had lunch at the Cafe Barista, also recommended by our hosts. There we found not only an excellent bowl of chili, but used books available for purchase. Inevitably, loaded up, adding more to our already large stack of reading material waiting to be packed up and flown back to Korea.

From Cafe Barista we headed to the delightful "Sugar Shack," a little shop and restaurant run featuring the most amazing fruit syrups I've ever tasted. There are several dozen kinds, and you get a taste of each kind served with a dollop of vanilla ice cream. The flavors are almost unbelievably rich and intense - "perfect" is probably the right word. Apple somehow tastes exactly like apple pie, cherry like cherry pie, elderberry like - well, elderberry, I suppose, whatever elderberry is. Alas, we came away with none for ourselves, since we were already breaking our no-sugar resolutions just by tasting the stuff, but we did bring back some goodies for our parents.

After a few more stops at other places of local interest, we had supper at a restaurant called Olive, closing out the day with good food and more good conversation.

Later that night we went back to the shore of the lake and sat at a picnic table in the dark, talking and reliving old times. The conversation continued back at the Brasted House late into the night, until finally and reluctantly we had to go to sleep. The next morning we had another fantastic breakfast, this time featuring "eggs in the clouds," which look like this:

And then that was it. We said our goodbyes at about 11:00, and drove off toward Indiana through a heavy rain that lasted all day long, making for extremely unpleasant driving. When we finally got back to Lafayette, it was about 8:30. We had to leave at 4:00 in the morning in order to make our 8:00 flight from O'hare, which meant we had to spend the entire night packing. We'll spare all the frustrating details; suffice it to say that we were extremely tired, so tired that Elisa said she'd never known I could be quite so unpleasant. The advantage of being so tired, of course, was that when we finally got into our seats and flew away, we had no trouble sleeping for most of the 26 hours it took to get back to Seoul. Then it was just a short hop - on a nearly empty bus with the whole back seat to ourselves - back to Cheonan, and home sweet far away home. Of course, the relief of arriving was a bit marred by the absence of all FOUR of our suitcases, which United Airlines had kindly misplaced. They straggled in, one by one, over the next four days. By then we were already into our daily schedules: English camp started for me the very next morning, and Elisa taught her first classes at the Adult Education center.

And so it goes. Hopefully we'll be seeing more of Mark and Naomi sometime in the near future - perhaps as neighbors somewhere in the great city of Toronto?

A Smitty & SuperE Christmas - Part 1

2007-01-15T06:28:00.000-05:00

Herein, Smitty and SuperE fly home for Christmas, make the holiday rounds with friends and family galore, visit Mark and Naomi on Lake Chautauqua, and fly back to Korea, where another year begins, as the "sun comes up and we start again."

1. After my three 'lisa-less days of lonely last-minute grading and playing with legos, I hopped a bus to Seoul and flew out of Incheon for Chicago. When at around 5:00PM the next (and still the same) day I finally cleared the final phalanx of over/under-empowered security guards at O'Hare, my father and lovely wife were there waiting for me. Strange how familiar things long absent quickly become familiar again; the drive down Interstate 65, made so many times back in college, felt exactly the same. We stopped at a Cracker Barrel for my first taste of good, [relatively] wholesome American fare, with biscuits and gravy at center stage. Then on to Lafayette, where mom and my sisters were waiting.

The next day after church, the Christmas circuit began in earnest. First up was the extended Smith family Christmas at Ed & Maryanna's. It was good to see Grandma Smith, the Selvidge clans, including Brian and his boys, John & Sharon and Tyler and John III, and the rest of the gang. We had some good sugar cream pie and a half-game of Risk. SuperE and I were pretty wiped from the jet lag, and later in the afternoon, after the gift exchange, we went home and relaxed for a while. As we've been doing for several years now, at 10:00 Bethany and I went to Maryanna and Ed's church and played for the Christmas Eve service.

The next day, we spent Christmas morning at the Smith house, where one of our gifts was the nice new camera that we used to take all the pictures you'll see in this post (thanks mom and dad Smith!). Mom made an amazing breakfast, with biscuits and gravy and omelettes and coffee cake (way too much - which would be an oft-repeated theme for most of our vacation).

Funny-girl Bethany tries on a Korean mask and a new scarf

Cool and collected college girl Courtney, with her man Jason

Mom & Dad Smith

Willoughby, "The Dog with a Name from a Jane Austen Novel"

After the biscuit-eating and coffee drinking and present-giving, we showered up and ran over to the hospital, where our friends Karen and Kevin had the previous night become proud parents to a little girl, Abigail. I got to hold her for a while. Pretty sweet - maybe we'll get one some day.

From there it was on to Grandma & Grandpa Wright's and the traditional pre-Christmas get-together. Here the new camera was really put to use. Here's Grandpa Wright in sepiatone:

And here is Dad Sutherland, Playing Santa, along with Abel the Wrestler

Nathan & Eve, Brother Nathan

And finally, the whole family

The next morning was Wright Christmas proper, with breakfast and gift-giving, followed by lunch at a local buffet. Here are Grandma and Grandpa with presents from Korea - a vase from Icheon and Jeju Chocolates.

Uncle Johnny with brand new baby Marina, and Marina with Great-Grandma

Johnny & Doris with Mandy & Maui, SuperE Laughing

Later in the evening we retired to Mom and Dad Sutherlands for family Christmas, where I came away with the same totally awesome battery powered tarantula that you see cousin Jason holding here.

We also got our very own copy of our favorite game, Settlers of Catan. Afterward we went and got the expansion sets, and for the rest of our vacation we had several chances to teach our families the ins and outs of trade and settlement, roads and cities, and all manner of other exceedingly nerdy activities.

One day we went with both sets of parents to a Korean restaurant over on the west side of the city, run by a really nice Korean-American who helpfully obliged our wish to introduce them to the delights of bulgogi and galbi and dulsat bibimbap. Not quite as spicy as what we're used to, but really delicious and definitely authentic.

We had one more Christmas celebration to go, this time with Mom Smith's extended family, which is crammed full of energetic little kids. Here are Mackayla & Sarah, Isaac and Bethany.

On New Year's Eve, per the Sutherland tradition, we went over to the Selvey's house for several rounds of Mafia, which is my very favorite game in the whole world. On New Year's Day itself I made a solo trip to Indianapolis to have lunch with good ol' Mark Miller, Man-of-the-World Larry Allen, and long-time-no-see Bethany [Robinson] Mendenhall. Here we are at Rock Bottom.
And, as we have for the past few years, we spent the evening (though a day late for New Year's Eve) with Kelly and Titus, who made a fondu dinner that was both delicious and a lot of fun.

The next day we finally had a chance to spend some time together, taking advantage of some gift cards to buy a load of new books from Border's and plenty of hard-to-find health stuff from Nature's Pharm. We had supper at the Sutherlands, then came home and played Settler's at the Smiths, before finally packing some things up in preparation for the next morning's road trip to New York, where we had plans to meet Mark and Naomi in Chautauqua.

I like the coke.

2006-12-22T11:24:00.000-05:00

I like the coke.
I drink coke after studying, and I really enjoy the taste of it.
It can solve when we thirst in Summer time.

So, I want to talk about my favorite beverage, coke to you.
Coke appeared 120 years ago.
John Pemberton doctor invented Coca-Cola in the 1880s.

Design of Coca-Cola's bottle is devised by Rude. He applied it to design contest to solve of his difficult family finance. At that time, design needed to satisfy this condition; "pretty shape of bottle', small contain for little amount of coke, function that does not slide even if wet in water"

Rode was agonizing for 6 months. He look of girl friend who wears dress that emphasizes line of body and associated design of the bottle with that her looks.

This shape can get a effect of having a small amount of coke at the same time.

In fact, it was a pharmacy where coke have sold first.

1886, that John Pemberton doctor mixed medicines to soda and sold it instead of digestive. That was a coke justly.

But it is not so good for health.

You can get toothache and over weight.

My friend dislikes it so much because of these fact.

So, I promised not to drink coke with him, but I used to break it oftenly.

Of course, the fact is true. But I want to tell you like this; there is nothing to eat. I think a half of the foods what we have are not good. I desire the days that the friend can drink coke freely with recognition of its saftey as quickly as possible.

Barbarian Ship!

2006-12-21T01:14:00.000-05:00

SuperE left me some presents to open during her absence, one for each day we're apart. I opened the first package today, and boy, was I pumped to find a LEGO SET!!!!! I felt like a kid again. Here's my barbarian ship, attacking an outpost of the Knight's Kingdom. Pretty Awesome. I feel like a kid again - which is exactly how you're supposed to feel at Christmas.

And now, another storyboard, from the studios of Smitty & SuperE:

1. Hidden in early morning darkness, the barbarian fleet approaches the Knight's Kingdom

2. Grappling Hook!

3. Defenders Awake! Battlestations!

4. Taste my Spear, Landlubber!

Smitty's Students

2006-12-20T13:28:00.000-05:00

Here are two of the ten classes I taught this semester:

And here, for posterity, is a much better picture of our wonderful Christmas tree, taken by the talented Houston Wanier:

Wherein Smitty and SuperE Return to Icheon, and Play in the Snow

2006-12-20T12:40:00.000-05:00

Last Friday we returned to Icheon (our third visit), this time with Josh and Sarah and their daughter Emma. Josh wanted to find some communion vessels and a bowl for baptism, and we wanted to pick up a few more Christmas presents. We made all our usual stops, including rooms at the Chereville Motel and supper at the restaurant, though we were disappointed to discover that the bathhouse closes at 10:00 on weekdays, which meant we only got an hour to soak.

We were also delighted to find this single public trash can, sitting proud in its lonely austerity.

Here are a few more photos:

When we got back to Cheonan on Saturday, we hung out at Starbucks for a few hours until heading over to Outback for Kairen & John's going away dinner. Someone had given us a gift certificate after my concert a few weeks ago, so we put it to use and had a nice meal.

The next day, after church, Robb and Houston and Blaine came over and hung out until we'd had a chance to say goodbye to John and Kairen, who were leaving that afternoon, and then we all went to Songtan. While we waited, before eating lunch, the five of us had a grand old time in the snow, quite a lot of which made it indoors and melted all over the hallways as we pelted each other with snowballs. Also, SuperE shot me in the face with the airsoft shotgun. That wasn't so great.

KNU's Winter Wonderland

Ready for Battle (picture courtesy of Houston)

White Elephants on Parade

2006-12-18T18:37:00.000-05:00

Last Wednesday we hosted a white elephant gift exchange for our discussion group and sundry other invited guests from far and wide. It was a smashing success. Conversation was enlivened by tall glasses of homemade eggnogg, plenty of good and terribly unhealthy food, and some fantastic gifts (including the sawed-off airsoft shotgun that's now proudly mounted on my chamber door - our very own bust of Pallus). People lingered till the wee hour of 2:00AM, at which point we kicked them out, swept up the chocolate and wrapping paper that littered our floor, and went to bed.

Here are some photos.

Young-ju & Jolie, Kairen & John

Prepare to Dive

Charlie's Angels, Version 1.0, 2.0

Kairen Gets a Calender

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And Now, Smitty & SuperE Present
ROBB: Real Ultimate Power!!!!

1. Shotgun Versus Ninja!

2. Gunman Goes Down! La Femme Fatale Joins the Fight!

3. What's This?! More Enemies Approaching!

4. The Bash Brothers! Whop! Shazam!

5. No One Can Defeat My REAL ULTIMATE POWER!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Produced by Smitty & SuperE

Starring:
ROBB - Robb Schuneman
Shotgun Man - Adam Smith
Femme Fatale - Jolie Lee
Bash Brothers - Jason Zimmerman & Eric Godfrey

Mr. Schuneman's wardrobe courtesy of Naomi Orvis

Christmas Time Is Here . . .

2006-12-10T00:49:00.000-05:00

Happiness and cheer . . . fun for all, that children call, their favorite time of year.

That best of times has arrived. In two weeks, we'll be home for Christmas. Visions of sugar cream pies are dancing in my head (let nothing you dismay, SuperE!). In the meantime, we've been doing our best here in Korea, including a makeshift tree imbued with all the best of the Charlie Brown spirit. On Friday they were trimming the pine trees around campus, and on a whim I picked up a branch and took it home. We put it in King Sejeong, and while it looked sufficiently forlorn, it wasn't quite sturdy enough to last into the night. So later I went back and got some more branches, tied them together with electrical tape, and stuck them in our water pitcher. We cut out paper snowflakes and bought lights at Lottemart (the cool new LED kind), and voila. Our camera couldn't get a decent shot of the blinking action, so here are two different photos. Put them together and you might have some idea of what we're dealing with.

Last night our church had a big Christmas dinner for the whole community. It was a nice time, with lots of new faces showing for turkey and talk. The turkey, however, was stuck in traffic until about an hour and a half after we'd all finished with the rest of the food, so it felt a bit like two Christmas dinners (reminded me of holidays at the Smith house, actually).

In the past year we've come to really like and appreciate our church. It's grown quite a bit, especially in terms of younger members, and every Sunday my respect for Josh and his thoughtful, reflective sermonizing increases even more. I imagine it's one of the things we'll miss most whenever we go back home for good.

Here are some pics from the dinner:

Brett, Emma, & Ian

SuperE & Smitty

Jackie & SuperE

Blaine, Eric, Houston, & the back of Robb's head

Jolie Byron

John, Smitty, Robb

Wherein Smitty and SuperE Give Thanks (again), Discuss (more of) James, Play (a lot of) Music, and (finally) Say Goodbye

2006-12-01T01:09:00.000-05:00

1. Thanksgiving II

Thanks to Julene's thoughtful planning, last Saturday we enjoyed with our fellow Americans (and various honorary citizens) a second Thanksgiving dinner over at the Owens building. Tables lined the hallway of the third floor, and every room was occupied by people cooking or warming up their offerings of stuffing, turkey, rolls, pies (including the amazing no-bake pumpkin from Jeannie Martin) and other holiday trimmings.

At one point our normally stress-free marriage came under some pressure after SuperE smashed whipped cream into my face, and I retaliated with a can of ReadiWhip, forcing her to change clothes. Fortunately love won out, and we eventually agreed to kiss and make up.

After a few platefulls of home-cooked goodness, Mark and I ducked out for a game of chess back at Smitty and SuperE headquarters. In the past few weeks we've been making good use of the board SuperE got from Itaewon for my birthday. The games last for quite a long time, and tonights was no exception. Later when the girls came to retrieve us for the trip to Yawoori, where we were planning to see The Departed, we were barely half finished. They went ahead while we played to a stalemate, then rushed out for a taxi. We concluded the evening with the movie, which was excellent.

2. Discussions
With Mark and Naomi (themselves soon to be "the departed") set to leave, and their apartment packed up and furnitureless, on Wednesday we hosted of their small group meetings at our place, where it will be from now on. Since the first meeting several months ago, discussion has improved considerably, and we're looking forward to finishing James and then delving into something new. Here are a few pictures. Yes, I tend to pontificate a bit, as Blaine has been so kind to point out.

3. Concert
On Thursday I played a little concert at Patch Hall. By the time Cathy, another of the foreign profs, had finished organizing the event, it included several specials by other professors and a bakesale fundraiser for the church missions trip. It last for about two hours and was well-received. I played four sections of 10 or 15 minutes apiece. Some personal highlights were dedicating the Moonlight Sonata to my grandpa and having my little student Brett Willey play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" with me.

This part of the world has the pleasant custom of giving flowers to a performer after the concert. Hanna and her mother gave me a beautiful boquet, and Shani (a member of my Korean class) gave me some very nice lillies. Someone also thought to bring flowers for Brett. He was so excited about the whole thing, and so thoughtful himself, that he raced up in the middle of the concert and gave them to me (he didn't know I was going to get flowers, too). What a nice guy. We gave them back later, though - this was his first recital, and he should have something to remember it by!

4. Goodbyes, and other Weekend Events
Friday evening was reserved for goodbyes. We went with Josh and Sarah to the sundubu restaurant near the Buddha for a farewell dinner with Mark and Naomi, and stayed talking and laughing until we closed the place out. Afterward Josh and Sarah went home (their daughter Emma was at the babysitter) and the four of us went on to The Rooster, where another group of well-wishers were meeting for a final send-off.

Since we hate goodbyes, we had several days ago figured out a way to avoid any tearful hugging and promises to keep in touch, or at least to put it off for a month or so. If all goes well, we'll take a little road trip over Christmas break and meet them at a Bed & Breakfast somewhere in New York State. (That's a hint that we need to borrow someone's car when we get back to Indiana. Maybe you - whoever "you" turns out to be - could consider it your Christmas gift to us.)

The next morning (Saturday) we took one last walk to Gudanji, building 414, apartment # 1402, and pillaged the leftovers from the Canadian's packing frenzy. We left their place at around 10:00, and they left Cheonan a little while after that. So ended our year in Korea with Mark Groleau and Naomi Orvis, two of the best friends we've ever had, and truly great people. We wish them well in all future endeavors, especially as they go on to California and back to school for the next few years.

That night, sans Canadiens, we went to Seoul with Robb and Houston and John & Kairen (who themselves are leaving in a few weeks). The four of us guys visited a big music store packed with various dealers of musical instruments, where Houston was looking to buy a violin. After an hour or so he hadn't found anything good for the right price. Robb, on the other hand, had discovered a banjo, which (with a well-placed kkaka chuseyo) he bought on a whim for a really great price. In no time, I'm sure, he'll be a master picker, and I'll jam with him on the guitar that John and Kairen just gave me.

Later we met Elisa and Kairen, who had gone shopping at the COEX, at the coffee shop beside the Blue Moon in Apgujeong. After dinner at TGI Friday's, we went to the Blue Moon for an hour or so of jazz (it seems every time we go they play for an hour, then take an extremely long break, by which time we have to catch the subway back to Seoul Station).

Getting home was quite the adventure. The six of us split up into two cabs, with Robb and the Britons ahead and we with Houston behind. Traffic was terrible, and because we'd stayed too long at the Blue Moon we were in a hurry. When SuperE and Houston and I got to the subway station and didn't see the other three, we assumed that, since they'd been in the cab ahead of us, they had already caught the train, so we got onboard right away and started off to Seoul Station, where Kairen had (so we thought) reserved tickets to Choenan for 11:10.

A few minutes later Kairen (who was the only one with minutes on her phone, making communication difficult) called from the station asking where we were. Apparently they hadn't gotten on the subway yet, so now they were several minutes behind us with very few minutes to spare. We got to Seoul Station with plenty of time before the 11:10 train was supposed to leave, and went to the window to claim the tickets. It was then that we discovered that the reservations were actually from Yongsan, several stations away, and the the last train leaving for Cheonan from Seoul Station was at 11:00, just five minutes away. The other three were still nowhere in sight, and didn't know that we were at the wrong station. All we could do was to buy tickets for everyone and wait as long as we dared. In the end, since I had to play piano for church the next morning, we had to leave without them.

They eventually walked in unaware of the mix-up, found that the train had already left, and stood around for quite a while before deciding to take the subway for as far as they could before it stopped running, at which point they got a taxi and went by car all the way back to Cheonan.

The moral of the story being, always keep minutes on your cell phone.

Church the next morning felt a bit empty without our friends sitting down the row from us, without people to razz for their Sunday lunches at the Evil Golden Arches, without Mark on the bass or drums, without plans for an evening game of chess or settlers, without so many of the things that made this past year so memorable.

SuperE spent a few hours in the afternoon helping Jackie decorate for next weekend's christmas dinner, and then we went over to Owen's for some excellent, 10,000 won-a-bowl fundraising chili, courtesy of Eric and Patricia and the other missions trip people. I had way too much.

It was a good, sad week. We learned just how much we appreciate our friends, and how much we'll miss them.

Thanksgivings

2006-11-24T06:18:00.000-05:00

A final stretch is now at hand. Only a few weeks of classes remain, then SuperE and I will board transpacific jets and fly, against the very grain of time, to that city of the broad shoulders on the great lake Michigan, and then on through the perfect winter spread of Indiana fields until we come home to Lafayette.

In the meantime, we've kept ourselves busy with our friends. Mark and Naomi prepared wonderful heaping piles of pancakes for breakfast last Saturday, and all morning we all reveled in the taste of home and maple syrup (along with the impossibly delicious bacon rolls). On Tuesday we went to bookstore in Seoul and finally used the gift certificates that Kairen and John gave me for my birthday in August.

Next Thursday I'm doing a little concert, along with some of the other English professors. I'll do some Christmas, some jazz, and a miscellany of other things. There's a bake sale to raise money for a missions trip, and a local gift shop is giving away door prizes. I'd like to see if I can record some of the show and send it to you all.

Last night our neighbors, Cathy and Terril, invited us to join them and some of their Korean friends for Thanksgiving dinner. They had everything - turkey, cranberry salad, sweet potato casserole, pumpkin pie - and there was plenty to go around. We had good conversation with the Korean family. The son spoke excellent English and served as translator for his father and mother and younger sister, and there was a lot of humorously delayed laughter.

For all this and more we feel thankful. Life seems grand, and "all the world's a heaven, if we would only see it." (Dostoyevsky) Maybe tomorrow we'll see it a bit more clearly, and the day after that, more clearly still.

Happy thanksgiving!

Wherein Races were Run, Jobs were Junked, Gyms were Joined, and Blogs were Neglected

2006-11-12T03:33:00.000-05:00

Our title cleverly incorporates into the traditional "wherein" an apology for this month's absence from the travelogosphere. Hopefully this delightful bit of wordsmithing will placate our famously demanding audience, and we can all move on into a future where regular updates once again satisfy the masses with their proverbial bread and circuses (or should we say, rice and fireworks).

Anyway . . .

Since our last post we've finished both a half and a full marathon, returned to Icheon for more pottery, joined a gym and a bible study, and reconnected with friends from Toronto. Elisa has also quit her job and found a different one, and we've had our first snow. Besides all that, most every night we've been hanging out with soon-to-depart compadres Mark & Naomi and Kairen & John, and dreaming of Christmas in Indiana, where according to a perky crow, there really is more than corn. Unfortunately we've negelected not only our blog, but also our camera, so these stories won't benefit from any visual aids. You can only imagine.

On October 15 we piled into a few cars with several others and headed to Independence Hall, which we had visited two weeks earlier with Kyung Hee and Hanna. SuperE and I were registered for the half-marathon, while Calvin, Helen, and Julene (of Tongyong Triathlon fame) and our new pal Jackie had entered the 10K. It was overcast and quite cool, and the crowd was large. The run was dedicated to Lee Bong Chang, an early 20th century resistance fighter whose (failed) attempt to assassinate the Japanese Emperor, and his subsequent execution in a Japanese prison, helped spur the Korean independence movement. Several speeches were given in his honor before the race began.

The half-marathon course was fairly gentle, with plenty of long gradual inclines but no steep climbs. The scenery was pleasantly rural, though the skies never really cleared up. I made good time, finishing at 1:32. SuperE, afflicted by a bum knee, came in ten minutes later. However, she most certainly would have made much better time had they actually had a reasonable number of water stations (she gets dehydrated a lot faster than I do). In US races they usually have water every mile or so. Here they had water at the beginning and the end, and only a few in between. We thought it might have been a fluke, but two weeks later at the full marathon we realized that it's the norm.

The marathon was held in Chuncheon, a city east of Seoul and famous for its beautiful lakes. We left Cheonan on a bus the day before, and had a predictably suffocating three-and-a-half hour ride that was redeemed only by our backrow seats, where the windows can be cracked open for a few precious breezes, and by the mountain scenery that gets better and better the further east you go. Chuncheon also happens to be home to Ronnie Shuker, an ICS comrade, and he was the consummate host - meeting us at the bus station, arranging a great hotel a block from the starting line, and taking us out for some excellent dakgalbi.

The race itself, which "began" at 10:00AM the next morning (this is Sunday, October 29), was not quite so much fun as catching up with our Canadian friend. Many thousands were crammed into a dilapidated sports stadium, divided into groups that each started at different times. Every group had to make its turn around the stadium track. The end result was that we didn't actually start running until 30 minutes after the gun went off. By this time our last trip to the bathroom had been 45 minutes ago, and now that things had started nature was calling again. Others apparently had the same problem, because dozens were frantically leaving the plodding herd and trying to find a bathroom before the throngs thinned sufficiently for racing to begin. Naturally I followed them, assuming they knew something I didn't about the stadium's bathroom facilities, and expecting to find urinals in the various rooms they were entering.

To my complete shock the rooms weren't bathrooms at all, and there were no toilets to be found. Instead, everyone was relieving themselves in the corners, marking piles of junk and pieces of furniture. This was beyond me; there was no way I was going to share in forcing some unlucky janitors to clean up human urine from the floors of a public building. We ran back into the crowd of runners and hoped to find a portapotty on the course somewhere (fortunately we soon came upon a visitor's center with a public bathroom).

Once on the road, things went fairly well for the first third or so of the distance. I had a few problems with sore feet, and both of us were annoyed at being forced yet grateful for having decided to carry water bottles in lieu of regular water stands, but SuperE's knee was mostly behaving itself. About 2/3 in, however, the knee trouble started again, and from then on it got progressively more excruciating. By the end she was switching from a run to a walk every thirty seconds, and the last few miles took an hour. Our finish time was four and a half hours, a full hour longer than SuperE's previous times (this was my first full marathon). It was a bit disappointing - not quite the fun experience we had anticipated in our comments to the Chosun Ilbo reporter who interviewed us before the race began.

Back in our hotel, we luxuriated in the hot shower for as long as we could before the desk called and asked us to hurry up with the checkout. We got a bus out of town for 5:30, and killed an hour at a kimbap place restoring some of our energy with big bowels of bibimbap. We expected a nice long sleep on the way back home.

That was not to be. There were many thousands of runners, plus their families and lookers-on, all trying to get back to Seoul. The roads were jammed for miles, and we were in stop-and-go traffic for two hours before we made any real progress. The bus was full as it was, and after an hour the driver stopped in some little roadside station and let about 30 more people on, who stood in the aisle, two abreast, from the front to the back, for the entire trip back to Cheonan. The body heat made it an oven and a claustrophobic's nightmare. I asked the driver once to turn on the air, which surprisingly he did - much to the frustration of the other passengers. Rationality lasted for just a few minutes before the suffocating heat favored by apparently all Koreans took over for the remainder of the trip. Later at a rest stop I told the bus driver I was sick and asked him for more air, but he just laughed and said something to the effect of "if you're sick, then you don't need air - you need heat!" I nearly punched him in the face. Thankfully he did turn it on a few times for a few minutes, and that was all that saved me from insanity.

When we finally arrived at Yawoori, we were hungry enough and sufficiently tired of moving vehicals that we went to pizza hut and had some supper. Eventually we made our way back to KNU and shuffled through our door, legs aching and bodies exhausted. Quite the weekend.

The next weekend we had sufficiently recovered to brave yet another bus (this one driven by a rare sane man who understood the importance of air movement) and trek back to Icheon for some more pottery. It was sort of a nostalgia trip, since our first trip with Mark and Naomi had been to Icheon, and they're leaving us in about a month (those jerks). Kairen and John couldn't come, but Robb did and had a great time discovering the wonders of the Korean sauna. The weather was beautifully brisk and unafflicted by the yellow dust that plagued our previous visit, and we came back laden with some wonderful pieces, both for ourselves and for various others who shall remain nameless. Robb stayed in Seoul to meet up with his friend Houston, who's just now moved to Cheonan. When we got back home we had supper at Donna Marco's - more in our ongoing attempt to squeeze every last second of facetime out of the Canadians before they vamos - and eventually made our way back to Smitty&SuperE HQ.

This last weekend we took a little day trip to Seoul, first to have lunch with the church worship team, and then to meet some other friends from Toronto, who moved to Korea just a few months ago. Dan and Angela are living in Wonju, south of Chuncheon. We met them in Itaewon and had coffee, poked around the antique stores, and went for supper at a nice Indian place behind the Hamilton Hotel. Also, we finally found the English bookstore (Whatthebook), which happens to be right next to a little foreign grocery shop that actually carries oatmeal. Again, it was fun to reminisce about the good ol' days in T.O., talking shop, and enjoying some good food. The only drawback was the freezing wind that insisted on blowing straight through us. But at least winter is finally here - we were beginning to wonder.

On that note, actually, we had our first snow last week. There was decent accumulation, and it even lasted well into the next day before melting. None has fallen since then, but real cold is finally here, though it will certainly get much colder as Siberian breezes flow down the peninsula.

Winter has seen us join a real gym-cum-sauna, which has been great. Our daily workouts are now followed by a nice soak. The bathhouse concept really needs to get past the stigmas and catch on in the US. I know we'll miss it once we leave Korea.

With winter has also come a major change for the better in SuperE's life. She had been considering whether to quit her job for some time, having grown tired of bratty kids and apprehensive about the changes that might come when the school was sold over to a franchise. This would mean breaking her contract, however, and things would have to fall into place if that were to be worthwhile. As usually seems to happen in Korea, they fell into place very quickly. John and Kairen's departure left John's job at KNU's adult education center open for next semester. Elisa applied, and against several other candidates got the job. She was worried about breaking the news to Mr. Lee, but he was fine with it, and found a replacement within a week. The replacement, however, had to start work in November, which meant Elisa had to quit much earlier than she had planned to. The end result, though, is that SuperE now has two months free from work, and that the job she'll start in January is here on campus, involves no children, and requires anywhere from six to 15 hours of work for only a little less pay. Plus, she gets a longer vacation, which means we'll be home for two weeks this Christmas instead of one.

Last month Mark and Naomi started a bible study on Wednesday nights, focused for now on the book of James. It has gotten progressivly better as the weeks wear on, and we've started having really interesting discussions that take us past the boring, Sunday school mantras that secure the comfort of so many who are no longer in Sunday school.

This week we built a mufraj in the unoccupied corner of our apartment, complete with big pillows and a low table. We feel like we're camping out, and that mom is going to come in any minute and make us clean up our mess.

In just over a month we'll be flying home for Christmas. SuperE leaves a few days before me, because I'll be finishing up some teaching and she needs some extra time to make sure her new visa gets processed. We're really excited to see our families, friends, and good old Indiana. I plan to have Star Wars and Lord of the Rings marathons, and to eat some sugar cream pies. I'm not sure if SuperE will be into that particular itinerary, but I'm sure we can work out a compromise.

Adios.

Rice Paddy Whack

2006-10-09T22:25:00.000-04:00

The last post was supposed to cover the rest of Chuseok week, but after finishing my rabbit trail on war, it somehow seemed inappropriate to move right into photos of our bike hike to Asan. Dictates of taste now satisfied, I'll do that now.

A few weeks ago we set out for one of our long training runs, and needed some new country to explore. Turning south at the sports complex, we found ourselves on the road to Asan, a nearby city separated from Cheonan, as we discovered, by miles of woods and rice paddies. Since they require lots of water, paddies are always in bowl-shaped fields, divided from one another by elevated pathways that are usually paved. They make for perfect biking trails, and having found a few good spots on our run, we now decided to return with Blue Lightning and Red Devil and explore further. It was a beautiful day, the last of a weekful of amazing weather (to be followed, of course, by the inevitable smog that now makes a dirty haze inthe lower reaches of the sky). Here are a few shots; from these you can get some idea of what we see on our runs.

Church and Rice Paddy

Hence the Asian Landscape Paintings

Cheonan in the Distance

The KTX Station

SuperE and the Red Devil

Proverbial Nestling Village

More Craggy Trees

Rice: Up Close and Personal

Fantastically Forlorn Fishing Chair

Development: Just as Ubiquitous as Rice

Interesting Flowers

Wherein Smitty and SuperE Celebrate Independence

2006-10-08T01:06:00.000-04:00

Thursday was Chuseok, a kind of Korean version of Thanksgiving. The entire country shuts down for at least that one day, and Smitty was fortunate enough to have the entire week off. SuperE's rather work-obsessed boss unfortunately elected to keep the hogwan open on Monday and Wednesday, but we at least had the four-day weekend all to ourselves. Tuesday was also free, and we were invited by one of my students to go with her and her family to Independence Hall, the big museum/memorial complex just outside of Cheonan. Despite having been here for about eight months, we hadn't yet paid the place a visit, so we were happy to accept.

We took the bus to the museum, and it was quite a long trip for such a short distance. I did enjoy seeing parts of the city I hadn't seen before, and it was a fine day with a nice breeze through the bus windows. Our friends had brought fried chicken and kimbap, so when we arrived we first found a picnic table and had lunch. The older woman is Park Hyung-hee, my student, and her daughter Hanna, who speaks excellent English and attends the KNU church with us. Mr. Park arrived midway through our meal. He had been playing in a golf tournament all morning, and was very tired. Quite pleasantly, he settled in and napped on the picnic table for the three hours it took us to walk through just three of the eight or nine exhibit buildings. When we finished, he drove us all back to Cheonan. Here are a few shots of Independence Hall and its grounds.

Main Entrance

House of the Korean People

Cool Sculpture inside House of the Korean People

The Girls in front of another Cool Sculpture

SuperE and I really enjoy museums. We like stopping at all the exhibits and reading the facts and figures, stories and legends and explanations for crazy, impressive things. At the War Memorial, I stood for about ten minutes in a round room surrounded by screens playing frenetic video footage of the Korean War, trying to imagine what real war must be like. Or perhaps simile is inadequate. I think my grandpa was right to prefer a metaphor, simple and direct, for describing the terrors of human conflict: "war is hell."

Independence Hall gave occasion for more reflections in this direction. Many of the displays were devoted to Japan's brutal occupation of Korea, and to the struggle for independence from the Japanese Empire. One exhibit demonstrated tortures applied to capture rebel leaders; others listed rules designed to force Koreans more firmly into their intended place in the Co-Prosperity Sphere, such as the ban on topknots (the traditional hairstyle for Korean men) and the mandatory substitution of Japanese for Korean names. At the end of Tuesday, it had become much easier to understand why the Koreans, along with the Chinese, find it so offensive when the Japanese Prime Minister insists on visiting a shrine that honors some of the people responsible for such things.

The oppression of one people by another is nothing new; it's a very thick, very bright thread in the fabric of human history. Places like the War Memorial and Independence Hall remind us of past evils and impress us with gratitude for the good fortune we enjoy as residents of a relatively peaceful (portion of) the world. But when I visit these places, or hear people decrying oppression and pledging themselves to its eradication, I often think that only half of the issue is being addressed. It is quite obvious that the things that happened under the Japanese occupation of Korea - or that happened in the Holocaust, or that happened in Pinochet's Chile, or that happened a hundred other times in a hundred other places - were terrible, evil, disgusting. That's the easy part; it takes no effort to understand it and condemn it.

The hard part comes when we wonder why these things happened. Usually we cut this question short with an answer that paints one side as the big bad guys, the other side as the little good guys. The Japanese were the bad guys, the Koreans were the good guys. The Nazis were the bad guys, the Jews were the good guys. Augusto Pinochet was the bad guy, the Chilean people were the good guys. This dichotomy is true as far as it goes, and were I living during the occupation or the holocaust or the military dictatorship, I would not hesitate to use it as a lens through which to understand and a basis on which to act.

But it leaves something out. How did the Japanese become imperialist oppressors? When did they decide it would be ok to put the legscrews to Korean peasants? When did the soldiers develop a stomach for such things?

When did Germans become Nazis? Germans, who produced Goethe and Beethoven and Kant and Mozart, who lived peaceably and profitably with Jews until, all of the sudden, they started thinking of Jews as animals to be exterminated, as rodent subjects for medical experiments, as suppliers of skins for the lampshades of wicked sadists? Germans, who gave us Martin Luther and the Protestant reformation and the printing press?

When did Augusto Pinochet become a violent dictator? What would Augusto's mother have said to him? What gave him the ability to sleep at night after "disappearing" a few dozen more people for dissenting, for speaking out, for demanding freedom and accountability?

We certainly can't say that the Japanese are an evil people, as a whole. Nor can we say that the Germans are an evil people, as a whole. I doubt we could go back and show that Augusto Pinochet, or Hitler, or the Japanese warmongers ever planned to become scourges of civilization. Nor did their people ever plan to put them in power, to become oppressors. How then did it happen? How do the people of one nation, people who themselves cherish freedom and prosperity, and except for brazen and debaucherous exceptions would never claim that oppression and holocaust and dictatorship are "just," - how do they come to be the oppressors of another people? What happens in their collective and individual minds that allows them to justify evil that, before the fact, they would have quickly recognized and condemned?

I don't have any psychological or sociological answers for this question, but that is not really the point. The point, the reason that this question is important (more important, I think, than the simple question "is oppression evil?"), is that we all tend to affirm, even if unconsciously, the naive assumption that it could never happen here.

Quite certainly the Japanese never considered themselves "the bad guys," and before it happened, I doubt they ever considered that they could ever become the bad guys. No doubt plenty of convincing reasons presented themselves or were offered by troublemaking nationalists pushing for expansion. Quite certainly the Germans never considered that they might elect - elect! - one of history's worst mass murderers as their chancellor, and I doubt German citizens ever thought they'd allow themselves to blame Jews for their nation's problems to such an extent that they could look the other way while they were being incinerated.

There are no natural bad guys, and there are no natural good guys. We tend to think of ourselves as the good guy, if not least because we've never been the bad guy. We hate the bad guys, we root for the underdog. When we visit war memorials and independence halls, we sympathize with the victims and wonder at the cruelty of the agressors.

We should not wonder. We should not retire from these places shaken but unmoved in our mistaken and dangerous confidence in the immunity of our countries from the lure of oppression, the lure of evil, the lure of power. We should not count on some natural ability to withstand the rhetoric of people who can offer up justifications for things that, when we encounter them on the stark walls of dark museums and in the dry pages of history books, seem so obviously opposite to everything we believe is right. We should not trust in some inherent power to discern signs of the times in our own societies, to tell good directions from bad without careful attention and painfully honest reflection. We should not wonder at "those" evil people; we should look sadly and understand, as thoroughly as we can, that "there but for the grace of God go I." There but for the grace of God go we. No one, and no one people, has special protection from those who play on fears, ambitions, prejudices, lapses in memory and judgment. Decades ago the Japanese came and wreaked a terrible havoc on the Korean penninsula. Few of the culprits are alive nowadays; those times have passed, and now there is peace and much prosperity. Yet Koreans - and look how justly, how rightly! - continue to despise Japan. Who knows but that that spite and lingering hatred might someday turn happy, normal, smiling people into sullen guards in torture chambers, snarling politicians in halls of power, soldiers eager to hunt down their enemies, opportunists disgusing sheer cruelty with the rhetoric of security, revenge, justice, freedom, liberty, prosperity, and all the other words used with similar effect to both condemn and justify what history always reveals as injustice.

Random Photo: ICS Convocation

2006-10-04T20:24:00.000-04:00

Here's a picture of my convocation cermony. Unfortunately we had already left for Korea when it was held, so I didn't get to participate. The mustachioed Englishman on the far left of the bottom row is my supervisor, Dr. Chaplin.

Wherein More of Seoul is Seen

2006-10-04T01:46:00.000-04:00

It was Jade's last weekend, and Robb had just returned, so the four of us went to Seoul on Saturday and took the city tour, hoping to see something new. The city tour is a decent idea - ten dollars gets you to all the must-see spots via one easy hop-on, hop-off bus ride - except that most of the sites take quite some time to experience properly. We only made it to three places, so it would have been cheaper and more convenient to take the subway and go exactly where we wanted.

Our first stop was the War Memorial, a large complex in the southern part of downtown. It showcases not just the Korean War, with which most of you are familiar, but the history of warfare in Korea from ancient times to the present. Still, we found the exhibits on the Korean War to be the most interesting.

Wicker Dragon Somewhere in Seoul

SuperE and a Sculpture outside the Memorial

Sergeant Robb

The Ubiquitous Turtle Ship

After an hour or so at the museum, we got back on the bus and rode to Dongdaemun, a famous shopping area. Some of us were starving and already a bit cranky (that would be me), so the absence of restaurants combined with the roiling mass of slow-moving shoppers and the pungent stink of bundigi proved less then pleasant. Eventually we sated our hunger with some bibimbap and bland bulgogi, up on a 9th floor food court where waiters from ten different restaurants with exactly the same menus tried to physically pull customers over to their respective tables. They seemed to be convinced that sufficiently coercive customer service can replace a rational business plan. After nourishing ourselves, we went down again to the crowded street and looked over the carts and stalls full of cheap brandname athletic gear. SuperE and I bought several nice winter running shirts for next to nothing.

Criminally potent bundigi

Crazy suped-up bicycle

After the messy bargain hunting of Dongdaemun, we found ourselves in Insadong, which could not be more different. Insadong is also shopping, but the goods are more tourist-oriented and the the atmosphere is clean and pleasant, with quiet shops, zero cars, and plenty of space to walk the brick streets. Robb found a really nice set of wall hangings, while on a whim I bought a little flute from a monk on the sidewalk. I've almost figured out how to make a sound. We also ran into the Caves, fellow English teachers from KNU, who were taking some visiting family members around the city.

At around 8:00, Robb and I said goodbye and walked over to the subway, which eventually took us home. Elisa and Jade had already found a love motel and booked a room, and the next day they planned to see more of the city by themselves. The rest of the pictures are from their tour of Gyeongbokgung.

Wherein Smitty, SuperE, and the Little Brown Girl Visit the Buddha

2006-09-29T03:26:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago, at the end of our birthday trip to Seoul, we met the Little Brown Girl at Incheon. She's been sleeping on our couch for the past several weeks, spending her afternoons teaching at SuperE's school and her free time experiencing a bit of Korea and our life here. Last Sunday after church, we drove over to Taejosan with Jolie and Young-ju for a hike and a meal at Ama Sundubu ("Mama's Handmade Tofu," more or less).

We did this hike a few weeks ago with Mark, Naomi, Robb, and Erin, but it's worth a second visit. And since we remembered our camera this time, we came away with some nice shots of the beautiful temple of Gagwonsa, its enormous sitting Buddha, the mountain trail and the view from its summit, and the tofu feast that followed.

The Leap of Death and the Lap of Luxury: A Birthday Celebration

2006-09-26T01:09:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago, on Saturday the 16th, we celebrated SuperE's birthday by jumping into a lake with a rope tied to our backs. The bungee tower in Seoul's Yuldong Park, standing 200 meters (657 feet) tall, played host to our daredevil festivities. Participants included myself (Smitty), Mark, and Naomi. At the last minute, SuperE's impressive fear of heights (this is the girl who screamed the whole length of the trip down Cadillac Mountain in Maine - and that was in a car) got the better of her equally impressive spirit of adventure, so she didn't take the plunge. But the Canadians and I had great fun. There's nothing quite like forcing yourself into pure action, freed from reflection and second-guessing. The minute you start considering what you're about to do, you'll lose the will to do it. That mental sensation, far more than the physical rush of falling, is exhilerating.

Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of my own jump, but the shots of Mark and Naomi are pretty great, and you'll at least get an idea of what I must have looked like.

Bungee jumping (or bungy jumping) is an activity in which a person jumps off from a high place (generally of several hundred meters/feet) with one end of an elastic cord attached to his/her body or ankles and the other end tied to the jumping-off point. When the person jumps, the cord will stretch to take up the energy of the fall, then the jumper will fly upwards as the cord snaps back. The jumper oscillates up and down until the initial energy of the jump is dissipated.

The Not - So -
Eager Beaver
<--------

------>
Till Death Do Us Part

Fortunately for SuperE, there was more to this birthday weekend than queasy stomachs and dangling ropes. After cheating death, we walked out of the park and found a nice terrace restaurant with trees and fountains, where we had some drinks and a pre-dinner snack. It was a pleasant place to unwind after our thrillingly close encounters with the grim reaper. After an hour or so we found our way back to the subway and went down to another part of the Bundang district, which as we discovered is every bit as posh as we were told. I'd found a great-looking vegetarian restaurant called Salem, which I knew SuperE would probably enjoy. After coffee and some interesting conversation at a local Starbucks, we started searching for the place. No luck. About an hour went by, including a few minutes on the phone to the restaurant itself, before we finally discovered that the place is closed on Friday and Saturday evenings. Who'd have expected such a thing? Disappointed, we settled on a Vietnamese place that nevertheless proved excellent (though not quite as good as our own Pho Behn, here in Cheonan).

After dinner we got back on the subway, and after a few stops the unAmericans (heh) headed off, while your heroes went on to the final stop on the birthday extravaganza - which I'd kept secret for the entire day from SuperE, despite Kairen's mischevious attempts to drag it out of me.

The Shilla Hotel is one of the best in Seoul. I got a good deal on our room, but it was still far pricier than anywhere we've ever stayed. I thought for a while, and later we discussed, whether it might be a bit indulgent to spend so much for just one night, but we realized that we honestly, thoroughly enjoy a great hotel, and that for us it's occaisionally worth it. And this hotel was definitely worth it all. Here are a few pictures. The first shows our room.

We had a great night, though the day's activities had been pretty tiring. (Traveling in Seoul is always a bit exhausting, even when bungee jumping isn't on the itinerary). The next morning, after a good "lie-in" (as our English friends would say), we went south to the COEX mall for one last birthday gift: a shopping spree for SuperE, with a commitment from her shopaphobic husband to cheerfully accompany her into every store. She put the afternoon to good use, and Smitty even got a few items out of the deal, including the most comfortable pair of shoes I've ever had. They're so comfortable, in fact, that in the future you might occaisionally see me in something besides sandals.

Our time at the mall ended when we hopped the airport bus (which conveniently leaves from the COEX) and went over to Incheon, where we met Elisa's friend Jade, fresh from her own 18 death-defying hours over the Pacific Ocean. Jumping off a 200 meter platform, after all, is pretty low-risk compared to some of the ways we like to transport ourselves all over the planet. Of course, that's a rational assessment. And rational assessments, as I said before, have no place on the bungee platform.

Happy Birthday, SuperE!

The Great Fire of 2006

2006-09-19T02:39:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, at about 2:00 in the morning, I (Smitty) was dreaming about vegetable trucks. Here in Cheonan, vegetable sellers drive around in little flatbeds filled with onions or carrots or some other produce, hawking their wares through loudspeakers that play prerecorded spiels, always at ridiculous volume levels. One of these trucks made it into my sleep that night, and unintelligable Korean phrases were blaring through my brain, over and over again. This was until I gradually woke up and realized that the yelling was still going on, that it was accompanied by a siren sound, and that it was actually the fire alarm.

I never knew how quickly you can snap from deeply asleep to fully alert. I rushed to the door, remembering to test the handle first to see if it was hot, and looked out into the hallway, where on the south end smoke was billowing in thick white clouds. I raced back in, grabbed our passports, laptop, and hard drive, and we ran out towards the stairwell, banging on everyone's doors to make sure they were leaving or else already gone. Most were still in their rooms, and as everyone slipped on robes and sandals, us foreigners started down the nine flights of stairs.

It should be mentioned at this point that when SuperE knocked on 904, where two of the older American profs live, she was a bit surprised to find Mrs. ---- rather unphased by the smoke, and in fact a bit annoyed at all the commotion. Considering our lives were obviously in danger, however, SuperE didn't think much of this at the time. We continued on to make our escape.

At every floor we passed by little knots of Korean girls (this was the girl's side of the dorm), poking their heads out of the doorways and wondering what was going on. We screamed at them to get out, which some of them haphazardly did, though without much more enthusiasm than you'd expect of unwilling fire-drill participants. This, we assumed, was why they were so non-chalant - they thought it was just a drill.

Later we discovered that this was not the case. Anyway . . . .

Having finally reached the bottom, we stood in the rain in our shorts, t-shirts, robes, and (for SuperE and myself) those few possessions we'd taken the time to grab. Students were tumbling out now, and before long there was a large crowd of girls who insisted on huddling under the overhang to keep off the rain, although this meant that most of them were still inside the lobby of the (ostensibly) burning building.

At this point we began to take better stock of the situation. While many girls had come down, several were still gazing lazily out their windows at all the excitement below, and on the other side only a few boys had made it downstairs. I even saw a few people using the elevators. Clearly this would not do. I ran back and forth in front of the dorm, yelling at the people in the windows to come down immediately. This had little effect, despite my very clear hand-gestures and the obvious fact that everyone else was standing out in the rain for some good reason.

We were getting more and more perplexed by the behavior of our students, but it got even more confusing when some girl came out and told everyone that it was ok to go back inside. As there was absolutely no way for her to know this, we immediately started yelling at everyone to stay outside anyway. The fire department had just arrived, and a single fireman strolled over to ask where the smoke was coming from. "9th floor," we told him, and he strolled back over to his friends for a little consultation. Eventually they made their way up to the top, and came back down with quite a confusing report.

The smoke, said the dorm manager (who had eventually arrived on the scene), came from one of the foreigner apartments - 904, to be precise. We argued that this made no sense, since we all saw the smoke at the south end of the hall, and 904 was near the north end, where there was hardly any smoke at all. But the dorm manager insisted, and the firemen were leaving, so we eventually made our way back upstairs.

I spent the next day or so in unabating amazement at the reaction of the students. There was neither panic nor orderly evacuation. There was smoke everywhere, but they apparently thought smoke had nothing necessarily to do with fire. They used the elevators. Most of the boys didn't even bother to leave their rooms. Later I found out that they had NEVER had a fire drill. I also learned that Koreans don't carry fire insurance, as they apparently think fires simply don't happen. This is the most extreme example yet of the curious Korean incapacity to recognize the possibility of real crises and make plans accordingly. "Plan ahead" and "be prepared" are unfamiliar concepts here.

But of course, you're wondering what actually happened. If there wasn't any fire, then where did all the smoke come from? The next morning we all got an email from the resident professor in 904 - the same one who reacted so strangely to SuperE's frantic knocking - explaining the whole thing. Apparently she'd put a chicken on the stove and forgot to shut off the burner before going to bed. By the time she woke up, her apartment was filled with smoke. She opened the door to let it out, not thinking about the smoke alarms. For some reason all the smoke ended up at the other end of the hall. When everyone woke up and came knocking on her door, she was so flustered and embarassed that instead of telling everyone what had happened, she simply froze.

I wrote back and said not to worry about it. After all, it provided yet another award-winning installment of The Adventures of Smitty and SuperE.

Wherein Smitty and SuperE Take the Highway to the Danger Zone, Scour Seoul for Supper, and (Finally) Get to the Blue Moon

2006-08-28T02:30:00.000-04:00

Some "tourist" destinations, normally despised by pretentious elitists like ourselves, are no less a must-see for their popularity with the masses. If you're in Korea, you just have to see the DMZ, even if "everyone else" sees it, too. Accordingly, we left Friday night at 10:00 for Seoul, where Jon and Kairen and Jon's parent's were waiting for us at the Rainbow Hotel. After a brief night of sleep, we set out at 7:00 the next morning on a bus bound for US military camp at Panmunjom.

There are loads of resources on the history and geography of the DMZ, so I'll stick mostly to pictures. Our first stop was Camp Bonifas, the famous outpost standing "In Front of Them All," where we got a lecture and slideshow with basic info on the sites we were about to see. Our lecturer and tour guide was a young, dry-witted U.S. Army officer who clearly enjoyed telling us, among other things, that if we touched the black-belt South Korean guards, we could expect "immediate physical reaction."

Most of our photos are from the Joint Security Area, and you'll have seen many of these shots from news reports and National Geographic articles. Here we are in the MAC (Military Armistice Commission) building, scene of numerous high-level negotiations. The guard behind us stands in front of a door that leads outside to North Korean territory.

Here's the door,
up close and personal.

Jon & Kairen posing with a guard

[Left] - the exact dividing line between North and South.

[Right] - one of the famous half-man guards. They stand half-way behind the wall to make it harder for NK soldiers to shoot them.

The blue structure on the left is the MAC building, the interior of which is shown in the first three photos. The large building in the background is on the North Korean side. It's where they bring their tours - on the rare occasions they allow for such a bourgeouis indulgence - and tell them how the people looking at them from the other side are staring with envy at their communist heaven. That, incidentally, is why we were strictly forbidden from pointing or gesturing in any way to the NK troops across the way. According to our guide, such gestures could conceivably end up in NK state newspapers, accompanied by captions like "Foreigners Wishing to Cross Over to Our Paradise." You can see here the guard on the steps of that building, standing next to an open window behind which another soldier is looking at us through binoculars.

The DMZ is a strange place. On the one hand, it's ostensibly one of the most dangerous places in the world, run through with 50-year-old tensions and modern-day fears of nuclear war. It separates great wealth and extensive freedoms from extreme poverty and a Stalinist totalitarianism reinforced by the terrors of one of history's most insidious personality cults.

On the other hand, it's a tourist attraction complete with a gift shop. Bus-loads of eager-beaver foreigners walk around snapping photos and getting their pictures taken with the stock-still guards, just like they do at Buckingham Palace.

This is the very same table at which generals and diplomats have met to make the agreements recorded in the history textbooks you read in high school. Yet here we were, on our $40 tour, gawking at it.

And here's the Bridge of No Return. Back when the original armistice was signed, it was used to transfer prisoners of war. The POWs were given the opportunity to cross the bridge to one side or the other, but once they crossed, they could never go back. It was also used to return the crew of the U.S.S. Pueblo, held captive by North Korea for 11 months in 1968. But here were were, just a few feet away, like it was any other old bridge in the middle of the woods, fallen into neglect and disrepair.

One of the most interesting sections of the tour came after the portion run by the US military. Many South Koreans also visit the DMZ, but they take a different tour, and our final stop was on that route. The main attraction was the famous 3rd tunnel, discovered back in 1978 after a tip from a North Korean defector. Before walking through it, however, we were treated to an emotional video on the history and current status of the DMZ, which amazingly concluded - complete with shots of a little girl running free through the grass to the strains of triumphant horn music - that the DMZ was "our place, a place of freedom and peace." This was just as baldly manipulative propaganda as anything cooked up by state papers in the north, and after seeing all the barbed wire and jack-booted guards and mementos of war on the UN tour (which South Korean tourists apparently don't see), it came off as especially cheesy.

Our tour ended at around 3:30, and we were bushed. There's something exhausting about a guided bus tour. Maybe it's the get-on, get-off, or the sense of constriction that comes from following someone else's schedule, eating what someone else chooses (in this case, a really awful bibimbop with some of the limpest, vilest-looking kimchi I've ever seen), and feeling generally less independant than you normally do. We were delightfully entertained, however, by our Korean guide, who was most definitely senile. Her English was bad in especially eccentric way; she put everything in the form of a question that might have been addressed to kindergarteners. ("Maybe wi will get off here? Yes, we will!") Before lunch she launched into an awkward preemptive apology for the quality of the food we were about to eat, which she concluded with this consoling little nugget of wisdom: "After all, you know hunger is the best side dish."

We went back to the hotel to clean up a bit in Jon's parents' room (they were staying another night, since they were to leave for the U.K. the next day). Listening to the four of them talk, in their nearly indecipherable accents, was like being in some little English village. I felt positively jammy to have had the experience.

We took the subway to Insadong, where we met Mark and Naomi and Robb and went to Eric's Steakhouse. We ended up leaving, however, when Kairen ordered the salmon and discovered it was out of stock. Since salmon was the only thing she could eat, we decided to try our luck elsewhere, and ended up at T.G.I. Friday's, where Elisa and I had another go at the fajitas.

After dinner we made our way down to Apgujeong and tried once more to get into the Blue Moon for some jazz. All properly dressed, this time we were successful. But it was late and busy by the time we arrived, so we were all stuck in the back of the balcony with no view whatsover of the band, and our table wasn't very conducive to conversation. Still, I felt some satisfaction at having gotten through the doors, and the music was decent (at least until they went off for a half-hour break, by the end of which we had to be leaving anyway).

Back at Seoul station we (minus SuperE) had some ice cream at Baskin Robbins, then boarded the 11:00 for Cheonan. We slept the whole way back, and in our stupor were particularly peeved to find the doors to our building locked again, forcing me to clamber through the window in a fit of fury (which fury was promptly transcribed in yet another pointed and apparently pointless email to the powers that be).

KNU's schoolyear has now started, so look for fewer adventure stories and more tales of quiet weekends in good old Cheonan and its near abroad. I have 10 classes this semester - busier times ahead.

En Que Smitty y SuperE Ferian Naciemiento y Matrimonio

2006-08-21T03:53:00.000-04:00

Lo siento por el Espanol, pero no quiero nuestros titulos a llegar a ser aburrido, y Coreano (had to look that one up - como se dice "Korean"?) es muy dificil todavia. Tambien, quiero a discubrir si lo olvido.

No olvido mucho.

Some things, however, are no trouble to remember, and last week's anniversary-cum-birthday is one of them. Sunday the 13th, as some may know, was both Smitty's birthday and the annivesary of the Marriage of the Century. I'm sure every husband wishes for a memory trick as effective as having your birthday fall on the same day as your wedding. Of course, every husband also wishes for a wife as unforgetable as mine, so hey, whadayagonnado.

Yes, one year ago from last Sunday we were married, on my 24th birthday. Now I'm a ripe old 25, with a full year under my belt. Without meaning to boast or horribly jinx myself, I'm happy to report that, majority's experience to the contrary, this year has been the best, not the worst, year of my life. I'm also happy to report that, in keeping with our wedding-day wish, we like hanging out with each other even more today than we did back then, and the forward march of marital bliss shows no signs of slowing.

The occasion itself, however, was unfortunately marked with sicknesses and setbacks of several varieties. On the preceding Friday I took a clandestine trip to Seoul in order to procure a few choice items for my lovely wife's comfort and amusement. Alas, after many a claustrophobic subway ride and several hours plodding the souless catacombs of the COEX, I returned empty-handed, and too late to keep the journey secret from SuperE. The Apple store was closed, and no fluffy robes were to be found, anywhere - this in one of the biggest malls in Asia. But not all was in vain. I had a nice capuccino while awaiting the train back home.

It was decided to keep the two occasions distinct, lest one overshadow the other, and so Saturday evening was set aside for birthday festivities. Elisa had planned a trip to Once Upon a Blue Moon in Seoul's Apgujong district, with a nice dinner beforehand. Mark and Naomi couldn't come, which was a bummer, but Robb would be there, along with Jon and Kairen, and I was looking forward to the music. Turns out the Brits couldn't make it for dinner, so Robb and Elisa and I went out for Italian at what turned out to be a mediocre place with no salad bar and a smelly entryway. Then, when we finally did get to the jazz club, they wouldn't let us in because Robb was wearing shorts and I was sporting sandals (even though we'd been there a week before and the sandals, along with my t-shirt and jeans, hand't been a problem).

After that we were at a bit of a loss. Robb thought about buying a pair of pants somewhere, but it was unlikely that any of the little boutiques in the surrounding streets would carry his size. Kairen hadn't eaten supper yet, so we decided to go for sushi at Raw. This turned out to be quite the culinary adventure. Kairen just had an allergy test, and has a whole list of foods she can no longer eat. I think they tried a total of three times to make her some edible food, much to her and their consternation, and much to our benefit - since we got to eat the extras for free.

We finished the evening with good ice cream at Haagen-Dazs. It was quite the birthday. Oh, and did I mention that Elisa was sick as a dog, down with a terribly persistent cold the whole day? Yet still she went all the way to Seoul to hang out with me! What a girl.

Sunday wasn't much better, as far as SuperE's sore throat was concerned (and now a killer headache was added to the mix). But it was still our anniversary, and some special celebration was in order. In the evening we went downtown to find the local Raw, but we had bad directions and ended up at TGI Friday's out of sheer desperation. I had no presents to give, thanks to Friday's fruitless excursion, though I had written the now-traditional poem. She could barely read it through her headache, though, and we left as soon as we'd eaten. It was an early night.

All that to say - I've had a great birthday, and a great anniversary! La celebracion itself may not have gone so well, but there's always time for another trip to the Blue Moon, another nice dinner with friends, another romantic evening. What makes it the great birthday/anniversary that it was is the fact that, one year later, we don't feel trapped, robbed, mistaken, cheated, regretful, or diminished in any way, as so many people seem to feel after they tie the knot or grow older. We feel freer, richer, rewarded, vindicated, and enhanced in a hundred ways. Life is good, despite the horror and sadness of the world, and we are grateful for it.

And I didn't even mention the presents! Kairen and Jon got me a gift certificate good at any bookstore in the land, which I will soon use to add even more pricey pounds to those ever-expanding boxes of books that we'll soon have to ship back to the states. Our bibliophilia knows no bounds. Robb - beautiful soul that he is - actually found a shisha pipe somewhere, and it's now sitting proudly in our living room. And my lovely wife bought me the wonderful antique chess set that I'd drooled over the last time we were in Itaewon. It's now the prize piece in my collection of wooden-boxes-from-foreign-lands.

Since I didn't get the robe and iPod Shuffle in time for Sunday, Elisa and I had time to discuss whether we might not want something different. We've been wanting bicycles for a long time, and since my other ideas fell through, we decided to make them presents to ourselves. They have great prices here, and I got a nice Blue Racer to compliment her Red Devil (we waste no time in naming our pets) without breaking the bank. My original plan didn't go completely to waste, however: this weekend at Costco, in addition to the blender that's now providing us with our dearly-missed fruit smoothies, we found the softest, fluffiest robes in the whole world, on sale just for us. And anytime now Elisa's gift to me should come in the mail - more cologne to replace the bottle that's lasted me several years now, but is finally coming to the end of its days.

No trips other than Seoul in the last two weeks, but this past Tuesday (a day off for all the hakwon teachers) we did take a hike out to the Big Buddha, which sits in the hills east of downtown. It's the largest sitting bronze Buddha in the world - right here in Cheonan, and we were here for almost six months before we visited it. The six of us (Mark and Naomi and their friend Erin, Smitty and SuperE, and Robb) had a great time clambering up to the ridge and stumbling down the slope that led to the Buddha. Afterward we had dinner at a tofu restaurant, where we were joined by a guy named (no joke) Azrel, who came with Mark after taking a look at Naomi's motorcycle (she's selling it). We spent the rest of the night at our place, oblvious to our collective b.o., playing Settlers of Catan. (Elisa won - again.)

Look next time for a report from the Demilitarized Zone. Now that should be a life-affirming trip - nuclear annihiliation staved off on one side by the mindlessly fiercesome stares of brainwashed borderguards, and on the other by incompetent diplomacy and misguided detentes from half-hearted democrats and would-be autocrats. Mmmmmm.

Wherein Smitty and SuperE Reacquaint Themselves with Sunlight

2006-08-07T05:25:00.000-04:00

Summer in Korea has been a dreary affair, what with the Pacific ocean falling daily on our heads, courtesy of the monsoon. Apparently this July was the wettest since 1973. In North Korea, hundreds (maybe even thousands) have been killed by floods, and dozens died here in the South, too.

So it was with fingers crossed that we decided to spend SuperE's break at the beach. Gyeongpoda e is near the city of Gangneung, on the East coast. We didn't really know anything about it except that we would be swimming in the East Sea/Sea of Japan, instead of the Yellow Sea, and that the former was supposed to be much better than the latter (better meaning cleaner, clearer, and blessed by nicer scenery). What we did know is that after endless weeks of gloom, we were more than a little excited by the prospect of five or six days in the sun, with a stack of good books at our side and a salty surf at our feet.

We were not to be disappointed. But, following weather reports and our own suspicion than nine whole days in a single place might be too much even for us desperate albinos, we had scheduled our first two days for shopping and sightseeing in Seoul.

Big spenders that we are, we hopped on the KTX for our northward journey to the capital. In the Chungmuro area we had rooms at the Hyundai Residence Hotel. The Hyundai is a nice hotel with a terrible location, back off the main road and surrounded by dirty alleys lined with dirtier shops, manned by still-dirtier clerks. After walking for 20 minutes in the wrong direction, sweat-soaked and weighed down by our huge backpacks, we finally found our way, navigating between motorcycle shops and pet stores until we came panting to the front door.

After settling in to our spare suite-style room (complete with kitchenette and washing machine), we took the subway over to the COEX shopping mall, intent on finally buying a Lonely Planet Korea. After acquiring our primary target, we did some more shopping and had a nice supper. Back in Chungmuro we stopped in at a theater and bought tickets for a movie starring Monica Belucci, which unbeknownst to us was in French. Many thanks to the thoughtful ticket-taker who decided we didn't look very French, and decided to warn us of our impending boredom. We returned the tickets and had coffee, before heading back to our hotel and calling it a day.

The next morning (it's now Sunday, July 30), we set out on what our new guidebook called the Palace Walk, which took up most of our afternoon. Having already seen Gyeongbokgung, we made our way through the streets separating that palace from Changdeokgung, which can apparently be seen only with a guided tour. The palace walk (or at least the walk we took, which led roughly from one palace to the other) took us past a slew of art galleries, one of which took our fancy and our 7,000 won entrance fee. There we saw, among many other interesting things, four life-size portraits of Robocop, The Terminator, Darth Vader, and Agent Smith from The Matrix. Afterward we visited a musty little Tibet museum, an organic grocery store (we bought prunes), and an organic coffee store (they had the best capuccino we've had in a long time).

Rebuffed by Changdeokgung, we walked a little further and came upon the equally impressive Changgyeonggung. It had extensive grounds, including a large pond with weeping willows and a century-old botanical glasshouse, and we spent about an hour walking its paths. SuperE was very gracious and pretended to enjoy it as much as Smitty did, but it was so hot that by the time we finished we were both ready to get back to the Hyundai and relax a bit.

This we did, and after we were sufficiently refreshed, we went to one of the city's posher streets (called, as in Korea they all are, "rodeo drive,") and had sushi, for which we are developing quite a fondness. Afterward we settled in at a jazz club, called Once in a Blue Moon, and chilled out till the subways threatened to close before we could get back home. Once there, we slept soundly till morning came and we were once more crushed beneath our overpacked bags, riding the subway to the bus terminal.

We got tickets for a few hours later in the afternoon, so we killed the time in a coffee shop with our recent book purchases: Eco's The Island of the Day Before for Smitty, and for SuperE, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. We had lunch at some knock-off Italian place, and boarded the bus for Gangneung at around 3:00.

We arrived in the late afternoon or early evening, got a taxi to the beach, and after some searching found a hotel just a few steps from the ocean with a decent room for a not-so-decent (but acceptable) price. Our second-floor window even had a view of the water! We walked along the beach in the dusk, then went to find some supper. The beachfront strip offered almost nothing but the unavoidable fish joints, which did not fit our mood, so when we wandered up the hill past the Hyundai Hotel (yes, same company) and found an outdoor restaurant on a grassy slope overlooking a concert shell, which was at the time sheltering a cheesy synthesizer-vocal solo duo, we decided to stay. The menu was sparse and the food wasn't great, but we were treated to a guest performance by two members of the German band that was seated a table just down the hill from ours. They sang in English. Afterward one of their number approached me and asked for a picture, explaining that his friend thought the two of us looked alike (his head was shaved). It was all a bit surreal.

The next day our vacation began in earnest, and since we did pretty much the same thing all day every day until Saturday - sat on the beach, read books, and swam - from now on it will be better to describe surroundings and highlights instead of reporting events in a step-by-step narrative.

First, the beach itself was gorgeous, every bit as superior to its west coast cousins as we'd been told. The water was clean and the beach was mostly clear of trash, and for most of the week a strong wind made for amazing waves. Just two feet out and it was up to your neck, so swimming was great fun. The sand extended for several miles in each direction, so while it was certainly crowded, it still managed to seem spacious. Of course the ubiquitous umbrellas stood in their unbreakable ranks, some reserved (as we discovered on the first day, when we moved four times before finding a free spot for our blanket) for the upscale hotels and their heliophobic patrons, others available to plebs like us (though we opted, crazy white people that we are, to spend our time in the sun instead of the shade).

On the opposite side of our hotel was Gyeongpo Lake. We ran and walked the beautiful trail encircling the lake several times, and on Friday morning explored the surrounding forests and rice paddies on rented bicycles. There was an island in the middle with a little pavilion or shrine, egrets skimmed the surface spying on fish, and ducks glided back and forth with their families in tow. Small sculptures decorated the outskirts and suggested to our minds the ancient warriors, monks, peasants, and scholars who lived and died here centuries ago. Modern-day lovers sprawled on heavy wooden benches or picnicked in the grass, enjoying the ready-made romance.

Early in the week we took a ride to town and stocked up on groceries, which saved us from the clams and cuttlefish hawked every night by restauranteurs who think waving a fan in your face as you pass will entice you to eat in their shop. One night we ordered a pizza, and twice we had galbi, but other than that it was PBJ, cold cereal, and carrots all week long (plus our morning coffee, provided without a smile by the local Sweet Buns).

On Friday night we met up with Mark and Naomi, on their way back from North Korea and Soraksan, and had a lovely time gulping galbi and dodging the evening fireworks. They left the next morning from their motel back in Gangneung, and after a few final hours on the beach, we too said goodbye to the East and headed back home.

The return trip was not uneventful (long lines at the ticket counter in a sweltering bus station), and neither was the arrival in Cheonan (we were greeted first with boiling water from our shower head, then no water at all for the next few days). But rather than dwell on frustrations, we'd like to leave off with confirmation that this was probably the best trip we've taken since our honeymoon in New England. If you could only see our skin, so dark and tanned by its old friend The Sun! Alas, we forgot to charge our camera before we left, so we have only a few pictures taken with a disposable. You'll just have to imagine our brown, smiling faces.

Wherein Smitty and SuperE Travel the Misty Mountains

2006-07-18T03:06:00.000-04:00

Saturday morning started out long weekend - Monday was South Korea's Constitution Day - and we set off around 8:30 in the morning for Busan, the second largest city in the country. We had waited too long before getting our KTX tickets, so had been obliged to pay for first class seats and to leave earlier than we might have liked. First class, we discovered, is not that much better than standard class, though there is considerably more leg room.

The two-and-a-half hour ride took us through the rain-soaked and fog-enshrouded countryside, which this time of year is all lush greens and muddy browns. Confronted with this sight all weekend (even in Busan - there the mountains interrupt the city with wonderful impunity), I got to viewing our landscape as a slightly less fantastic - but fanstically real - version of Tolkien's Misty Mountains.

We arrived in Busan at around a quarter to eleven, and after finding a city and subway map, we headed off in the general direction of our hotel. The hotel was another splurge. Normally our weekend accommodations are the ubiquitous "love motels," shabby affairs with mood lighting and weird decor where you're lucky to get sheets for the bed (if there's a bed). This time we had reservations at the Nongshim, a pricey place famous for its huge hotsprings bathhouse (which, oddly enough, we didn't get around to visiting). The bed had plenty of sheets, as well as four comfy pillows and a nice comforter, a minibar with all the fixin's, and cable tv with several English channels and some decent English movies. With rain settling in for the foreseeable future, we were glad to have a room nice enough that we could have fun even if we stayed inside.

We did not, however, stay inside. Busan is an international city with plenty to see and do, and while we aren't the sort who see any sense in that grueling idea of "tourism" that requires a 6:00AM wake-up call and awards points for Most Monuments Visted, there were a few places we wanted to go. After dropping our bags and washing off the humidity, we headed down to Hyundai Beach. (We soon discovered that the Nongshim trades location for its luxury; it's at least a half hour subway ride from everywhere.)

Hyundai is said to be the most popular beach in Korea. One would think that means it might also be the best beach, but it seemed pretty unspectacular. Of course we saw it under an overcast sky with wind and rain pouring in every so often, but still . . . There were quite a few people out, but hardly anyone was in the water. Mostly they just milled around, fully clothed, looking wistfully at the ocean. A few played games, but not many, and most weren't even talking to each other. It was mildly cultish. At least that girl gave us the peace sign.

After standing around with the zombie beach bums for a while, we went to sate our hunger at a nearby Bennigan's. There we split a platter of quesadillas and stared wide-eyed at the twelve-year-old chunk of fat one table over who munched through a full order of ribs and chicken, topped off without hesitation by ice cream and a brownie. Diabetes, anyone?

Afterward we crossed the street to the Aquarium, a big underground complex whose entrance sits at the back of the beach. I probably hadn't been to an aquarium since I was a kid, and as I walked past the sharks and jellyfish and spidercrabs, I felt like that kid again. The camer didn't work very with the low light and glass surfaces (it didn't work very well all weekend, in fact), but I did get a shot of this amazing Giant Spider Crab. The picture, of course, doesn't do it justice. Some of my other favorites were the Sea Dragons and the Lionfish.

After our inspiring little aquadventure, we went back across the street for coffee, to which we have unfortunately grown addicted in past few months. Our morning ritual - two cappucinos and an episode of whatever tv show we happen to be watching (currently the very weird Twin Peaks) - was postponed by our early departure from Cheonan, so by this time we were feeling the effects of caffeine deprivation. Starbucks revived us, and sent us back to the Nongshim relaxed and full of childhood dreams about becoming marine biologists. I went up to the gym and ran for a while (Elisa hadn't packed shoes). We had room service bring up a club sandwich, and we enjoyed supper in bed while watching a movie.

We got up around 9:00 the next morning, splurged again on room service (real pancakes!), and made our way through the rain to the subway station. We went north for three or four stops till we came to Beomeosa, a neighborhood named for the Buddhist temple we were going to see. A taxi took us up a winding road around Mt. Geumjeong, covered from both sides by trees stretching out of a dense forest. When we arrived we were faced with a path through the woods on one side, and a cobblestone road on the other. We chose the first - the rode less traveled, it would seem - and were gratified with a lovely, literal rain forest, soaked with the steady shower and coursing with rapid streams swollen by the monsoon.

Beomeosa Temple is famous for its beautiful wisteria, the climbing vines that wrap around trees and houses. Most wisteria are garden plants, and Beomeosa's large grove of natural vines, some of which are about 100 years old, is quite rare. The temple itself, which was further up the hill at the end of the cobblestones, was also quite beautiful. The woods had been empty, which made them twice as pleasant (we'd almost forgotten what it's like to be alone anywhere outside of your own apartment). The temple complex was full of visitors, both tourists and worshipers, the line between which is not so sharp. There were several buildings, each containing different statues of the Buddha or other figures, and two or three pagodas.

We spent a few hours at the temple, and after waiting a long time for the bus back to the subway station, we eventually made it back to the Nongshim. We decided to make lunch a cheap meal, and cheap it certainly was, with slimy kimchi and so-so bibimbap at a little Korean kimbap place. Showers were in order after our muddy morning, and then we went back to the beach area for a more indoor sort of adventure at the Busan Museum of Modern Art.

Coffee at the museum cafe got our afternoon juices flowing and put us in the mood to pontificate on the rusty scrap-iron pianos and giant toy cars littering the museum floor. There were only a few such exhibits, actually; the collection is quite good, especially the paintings. We fell in love with several landscapes by one artist in particular (the name escapes me), who favors black and white tinged with a rosy pink that somehow captures a Korean countryside in all four of its seasons. My favorite, though, was a sculpture. I've looked everywhere for a picture or a description, but with no luck. The form is human, and the material is chains, wrapped and soldered into the shape of a male torso with its head thrown back and its hands lifted in desperation, mouth wide open in a kind of scream. Below the torso, the chains unravel until at the bottom there is no shape, only a few strands of linked metal. The work puts together provocative and opposing ideas with tremendous effect: the man is made of chains; he is his own chain; he is breaking his chains; he is coming unraveled, but is it him or his chains that is unraveling? Is his iron face the face of ecstasy or despair? Is he holding on or letting go?

But enough criticism. After the museum closed, we took the subway to another beach, called Gwangalli, site of the Gwangan Bridge, which is the longest ocean bridge in Korea (and strikingly beautiful at night). Gwangalli is home to many restaurants and cafes, and for supper we chose a posh little sushi place. Afterward we strolled on the beach with (yes) more coffee, marveling at the bridge and stepping unhappily around the trash (mostly styrofoam) that washes up with the tides. Since we again had to leave on an early train for Cheonan (all the later ones were sold out, and first class was still all that was available), we made an early night of it, and returned to the Nongshim for one last night of luxury.

Wherein Nothing Happened.

2006-07-06T04:14:00.000-04:00

I see that our last post was put up on June 19, almost three weeks ago. My apologies for giving in to the slacker spirit of summer, but you'll be relieved to know that there is little to report. Smitty has been indulging his nerdy side (some might insist that "side" is a misleading understatement), playing (and so far losing) weekly Settlers of Catan contests. SuperE so far refuses to participate, opting instead for a spot on the sidelines, where she heckles to her heart's content. Her own free time is spent, more productively, curled up with books about food politics and novels by tear-jerking Canadians. Smitty's reading list has him catching up with political theory, though his reviving love for fiction continues to be nourished by stories like Byatt's A Whistling Woman.

Summer brings about three weeks of free time for the foreign profs at Korea Nazarene University, and now that all his paperwork is finished, Smitty has been spending it in his office, reading and writing as much as possible. SuperE, unfortunately, works through the summer, so there are no opportunities for traveling abroad or flying home. We'll use her one week of vacation to tour the Eastern part of Korea, which is supposed to be much less urbanized and much more beautiful. Until then, we're planning to be a bit more modest with our travels - which means there may also be fewer stories to tell.

Of course the weekend get-togethers and Sunday afternoon lunches haven't stopped, and we'll keep hanging out with our Canadian friends until they leave at the end of August. The Britons are busy with their parents, and many of the other foreigners have gone away for most of the summer. Fortunately for us and our social life, there's a new face in town. Smitty's college pal Robb Schuneman arrived last Thursday, and started his job at SuperE's hogwan on Monday. This former roomate and cheerful groomsman (he's the big guy on the far right) brings great times and lots of laughs with him wherever he goes, and I'm glad he made the move from dry, dusty Oklahoma to humid, rain-soaked South Korea.

And that's it. We'll be sure to let you know when something does happen.

Wherein Smitty & SuperE Hike to the Top, Relive Arabian Nights, and Wade in the Western Sea

2006-06-19T20:57:00.000-04:00

With two weeks to account for, there are three stories to tell. I wonder, by the way, if you enjoy the titles for these stories? For anyone who might be wondering, they were inspired by the chapter headings in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, which were of course inspired by the format favored by medieval chronicalers spinning their tall tales. Rest assured that ours are not tall tales, but I do hope you can read them as if they were. It makes things more interesting.

1. The Top
"The top" is the top of a mountain near Asan, a city not far from Cheonan. After dinner at their place the night before, we met Mark and Naomi on Tuesday morning (this is two weeks ago) and hopped on the back of their bikes for the 20 minute ride to the countryside. The journey got progressively prettier the further we got from the city, and as I watched the rice paddies and shaggy green mountains whiz by, the Asianness of it all really sunk in.

We wound our way up the mountain roads as far as the motorcycles would take us, then parked beside a forlorn little restaurant and a noisy set of dog kennels (do you wonder what the dogs were for?). From there we set out on foot.

It wasn't a terrible climb, though some sections were quite steep. I had unwisely decided to wear jeans, which were too heavy and not flexible enough for the constant knees-up motion. It was hot and humid, but the shade kept things tolerable. There were a few streams that splashed downhill towards civilization, and at several points the trees opened up into clearings where the sun fell with suprising brightness.

Of course this was not the wilderness. I'm not sure any such thing exists in Korea. Other hikers passed by every so often, Korean couples with matching outfits, sun visors, and plastic poles, everything you need to give the impression of competence. When we reached the top, we didn't find a grand and empty vista overlooking the lesser mountains and the distant cities. We found a knobby little knoll oozing with professional picnickers - people who had somehow brought tables and chairs and full dinner sets up with them, complete with the obligatory umbrella to keep off the much-despised sunlight (Koreans are no friends of the sun). And the view was predictably obscured by a thick layer of smog, which made it hard to see across to the next peak, let alone to cross the miles with our eyes as a climber expects to do upon reaching the top.

But I'm painting it all in depressing tones; sorry. None of this could really diminish the excitement of moving upward and onward (and then back downward) and the joy of leaving the city behind and having more than a few roadside pinetrees to remind me of what nature looks like (this little guy, which may have been something like the infamous Asian Longhorned Beetle, also helped us remember that there is life outside the city).

Nor could it take away from the fun of a day out with good friends. When we got back to the motorcycles, Mark and Naomi took us to a little "folk village" - sort of a country fair for Koreans - where they said there was a restaurant that was supposed to forever ruin our experience of any other Korean restaurant. They were right - it was so delicious that I've actually started to develop a real taste for kimchi. The seafood pancake was amazing, and the soup hit the spot after our three hour climb. We rode home tired and sweaty, with another Korean experience behind us.

2. Arabian Nights
Two weekends ago we went to Seoul with Jon & Kairen and Mark & Naomi, with the intention of bungee jumping in one of the city parks. Fortunately for our health and well-being, it rained hard all day long, so we decided to forgoe the plunge of death, and went shopping instead. After spending most of the afternoon at the huge Koex Mall (which is supposed to be the largest mall in Asia) and at Kyobo Bookstore (where we acquired Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart), we made our way to an obscure little restaurant in Itaewon called Ali Baba's. It was said to be the only real Middle Eastern restauarant in Korea, and despite the bad reveiws we read before going, it turned out to be a great little place. There was kosheri, falafel, shishtawook, Turkish coffee, and an Amr Diab album playing in the background. The owner was from Heliopolis, and I tried (vainly) to impress him with a few of the scattered Arabic words I remember. It felt like we'd stepped out of Korea and into a Cairo cafe, and I couldn't stop smiling as my mind ran through so many memories of my semester abroad. We caught the last train back to Cheonan, and with my body still in one piece and my stomach stuffed with schwarma, I was in heaven.

3. The Western Sea
With our feet still drying from our recent dip in Korea's southern sea, we spent this past weekend getting them wet on the western coast. Daecheon, about two hours by train from Cheonan, is home to a popular beach and a lively seaside culture where you can grill clams by the bucketfull at your own table. Later in the summer it hosts a famous mud festival, a thrilling prospect for mud-loving SuperE.

After a late start and some problems for Mark & Naomi at the ticket counter, we boarded the 10:00 train and headed out, swimsuits at the ready. After arriving and finding a bus to the beach area, we got rooms at a surprisingly nice hotel (graced with a Statue of Liberty and called the "Manhatten," it was quite inspiring for us exiled Americans), changed, and walked down to the beach.

It wasn't too crowded, but it wasn't deserted, either. There were families, college kids, and old ladies with pushcarts full of plastic beach toys, which they grudgingly moved further and further back as the tide crept forward. Almost all were fully dressed, which is the Korean way - "no sun shall sully my skin" is the national motto. We Westerners, on the other hand, let our lilly-white hides soak up as much of the precious stuff as we could stand, and more, as we would discover the next day when our sunburns bit with a vengeance. I played frisbee with Mark and Jon and, for a while, Naomi, and lost no fewer than three times when we started a game of HORSE, each time winning me a mandatory plunge into the ocean. We watched as a tractor came to the rescue of some especially smart guy who had decided to back his SUV into the sea in order to pull out his motorboat, and had promptly succumbed to the sand and the rising tide. I read Things Fall Apart, and Elisa worked on The Omnivore's Dilemma. And, crowning achievement, I swam out to the nearest buoy, determined to conquer a little more of my crippling fear of deep water. Little did I know I would also have to conquer the dehabilitating charlie horse that siezed my right leg about halfway out and threatened to feed my phobia instead of diminish it.

Frisbee games and muscle cramps aside, it was a great afternoon. After showering and resting a bit we went to one of the dozens of seafood restaurants for supper. This was to be an experience. We ordered all-you-can-eat shellfish for the six of us, and they brought out huge bowls of the things, as fresh as can be - by which I mean they were still alive. In the center of the tables there are built-in grills, onto which you throw whichever shellfish tickled your fancy. After the heat pries open the shells, you scoop out the meat with your chopsticks and pop it in your mouth. Some of them were absolutely delicious, some were a bit less appealing, and one kind had a slimy inner coating that made me think of the dripping extraterrestrial jaws in "Alien". I stayed away from that kind.

We also got an order of huge shrimp, still sporting heads and beady little eyes, which we also grilled at our table on a bed of seasalt. Now those were delicious, even if they are bottom-feeders. The meal took a nice long time to finish, and by the end I had a big pile of empty shells at my side. I kind of expected to get really sick, but my stomach held out, and I was able to enjoy the rest of the evening, which we spent eating some pizza (we needed another taste after all the shellfish) and sitting on the beach under the stars (such as they were - there may have been three, total).

And this is when we experienced yet another inexplicable protrusion of the Korean cultural edifice. Those same families and college kids were now out in force with their fireworks, which they might have bought from the pushcart ladies. Understand that there is was no special occaision, no holiday to be marked with colorful explosions. In Korea this is a regular thing, something to do at the beach, like swimming and vollyball. But it is not only a regular thing - it's also a weird, disconcerting thing. We had no sooner spread our blankets when a family of four walked down and planted themselves not ten feet from our spot. There was a girl of about six and a boy of about four, and both were handed roman candles by the father. There was no assistance, no warnings or cautions, no helping hand. The father handed out the fireworks, and the kids shot them off - vertically at first, but then more and more horizontally as their little arms got tired of holding them up. We cast amazed looks their way, but to no effect. Not until one of the candles exploded beside Elisa's head and left a weird tingling sensation in my feet did we actually start shouting at them. This too had no effect. We stuck it out a little while longer, until two middle aged men, probably a bit tipsy, came up behind us and started shooting off rockets of their own, which showered sparks down on our heads without mercy. Again, our shouting had no effect, and no apologies for almost murdering us were forthcoming. We decided it was time for bed.

But as we walked back, SuperE's eye caught the rise and fall of the big Viking Boat ride over in the carnival area, which was just across the street from our hotel. Her insistance won us over (minus Jon and Kairen, who sensibly opted for bed), and dutifully bought our tickets. Desipte my lack of enthusiasm for this sort of thing, it turned out to be a lot of fun, and along with the Canadians I was having a great time. SuperE, on the other hand, nearly hyperventilated. That was funny, seeing as it was her idea in the first place. Afterwards we had to calm down with a few rounds of Bumper Dog.
The next morning, your intrepid heroes woke up early and went to find some semblance of breakfast (meaning, not rice and kimchi). We found some cereal and yogurt in a convenience store, paid a visit to the coffee stand (such luck!), and went down to the beach to enjoy the morning breeze. Cinders from the murderous festitivities of the night before were strewn along the beach, along with loads of other trash, and there was just one old man to clean the whole place up. The rest, I assume, was allows to wash out to sea. Still, it was a relaxing way to start another relaxing day, and a walk along the beach is almost inevitably romantic, even when the beach is a bit cluttered.

After a while the others got up, and we all headed back to the beach with our books and blankets. It had grown warmer in the meantime, and by the time noon rolled around it was both very hot and very foggy - a wierd fog, too, extremely thick and almost like wet smoke. I finished Things Fall Apart, and we had a lot of great conversation. Lunch was pizza on the beach for the North Americans, and kimbop back in town for the English.

Around three o'clock we packed up and caught the bus back to the train station, where our train was scheduled to leave at a quarter to four. We hadn't bought tickets early enough to be assured of a seat, but as it turns out SuperE and I had two to ourselves until the last 10 minutes of the trip. We were very, very sunburned, and tired with that good tired you only get at the beach. After some blessedly cool showers at our apartment and many layers of aloe vera, we settled in for a few movies - Aeon Flux and The Machinis t. The Machinist is excellent.

Wherein Smitty and SuperE See the Southern Sea

2006-06-07T00:22:00.000-04:00

Last weekend saw our intrepid heroes enjoying the (just slightly polluted) waters near Busan, on the Southern coast of Korea. We were in the small town of Tongyeong for the Tongyeong Triathalon, in which SuperE was participating as part of a relay team. The trip was a gold mine of great stories, which we shall now relate to you in all their glorious detail.

Smitty was just along for the ride. SuperE was on team with Helen Cave, a swimmer and the daughter of the Kiwi profs (who were also along for the ride), and a Korean friend of ours called Calvin, who would be completing the cycling portion of the race. Julene, another KNU prof, was doing the full triathalon. The team's "coach" was an intense little Korean called John, a veteran racer who had won many top triathalons, but was taking a break on this one. He was also coaching about seven guys from the Cheonan triathalon club, most of whom were equally intense. One of them won second place in his age group.

On Saturday morning we boarded a bus with this rather interesting mix of people, and set out on the three-hour trip to Tongyeong. It was a luxury affair, with a flatscreen monitor up front on which we watch "Paycheck" for the first half of the trip. The driver made wonderfully frequent stops for snacks and bathroom breaks. Despite the awful traffic and the small size of their country, Koreans are avid travelers, and the highways are well-equipped with large rest stops. The one where we stopped for lunch was powered by an array of road-side solar panels, which was interesting to see.

We arrived in Tongyeong at around 12:30, and after a bit of driving came to the yogwan where we were staying. (A yogwan is more or less a youth hostel, very stripped down and simple.) Guys and girls were divided into seperate rooms. Elisa was in a big room with only four other girls, and had a bed to sleep in. I was in a room with about eight Korean guys plus Helen's father, whose presence would be my only sanity. We slept on the floor, stretched out on blankets (probably unwashed) from a big stack in the corner.

After getting settled in, we spent the afternoon watching the elite competition, which was pretty amazing. Athletes from all over the world were in attendance. Apparently Tongyeong's competition is a pretty major event; in 2003 it was voted one of the top triathalons in the world. Australia's Peter Robertson, ranked first, won by a large margin (Smitty's mom might be interested to know that one of his sponsors is Neways).

Later we walked around a bit, had coffee at the marina on the other side of the bay, and attended the info session (in Korean, but Calvin dutifully translated). We had some snacks from an outdoor stand, and for the first time I tried fried silkworms. Delicious - like really strong refried beans.

The info session went long and we missed dinner with the Cheonan racers, so we went later and had some bibimbop. By the time we finished, it was bed time.

And here is where I can start describing what it's like to travel and stay with a bunch of Koreans. We had already experienced some of it earlier that day, when we stopped for lunch and discovered that we were all expected to order the same thing (we had paid an up-front fee to the club, out of which they would pay for all our meals and lodging). Koreans have a very different attitude toward group experiences; they seem to think it's important for everyone in the group to have exactly the same experience. The idea that we were all supposed to order the same thing came up every time we sat down to eat with them, and I never really could understand why it would be a big deal for each person to order what he or she wanted, provided it was similarly priced.

But that was hardly annoying - just puzzling. The annoyances came later, when it was time for bed. Tired after getting just a few hours of sleep the night before (we had to wake up in time to meet the bus at 7:30 - though, predictably, we didn't leave until about 8:30), and without much else to do besides read, I was ready to sleep. The Cheonan Triathalon club was not. They stayed up, talking loudly, until around 11:00, when they all decided to go out for drinks (keep in mind that they're running a long hard race in the morning). That was fine, since I would finally be able to get to sleep.

Sleep didn't last long, though, because despite whatever late hour they must have finally gotten to sleep, they were all up promptly at 5:00AM (the race didn't start until 9:00, and it was just a few yards away from our yogwan). Elisa told me later that they came right over and banged on the door to the girls' room, demanding that the one Korean girl (the wife of one of the racers) come and make them breakfast. (Making breakfast consisted of pouring rice and water into the rice cooker and pushing the power button.) After breakfast they tromped back into the room and, with absolutely no regard for the two sleeping foreigners, loudly got ready for their day. It escalated to the point when John, the coach, was literally standing over me, looking out the window, and shouting across the room to his buddies about something or other, for around five minutes. A whole conversation carried out at the top of his lungs, at six in the morning, while I was trying to sleep. This did not put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.

The rest of the day was, however, a delight. The participants all had to put temporary number tattoos on their arms and legs to identify themselves, so to show my support I put them on both arms, with a big fat zero on the top of my bald head. Everyone, strangers included, got a big kick out of that.

The race began with the swimmers. Helen had tested the course the day before, so we had seen just how steady and strong she was. She did well - 1500 meters in about 27 minutes. It was fun to see so many swimmers, arms flailing in the crowded waters, vying for speed and space.

As soon as Helen finished, she ran to the bike area and handed the baton (an ankle strap) to Calvin, who was off in a flash on his $1500 bicycle - which Coach John and the others had derided as "junk" (their bikes were five, seven, even ten thousand dollar affairs). He did quite well for his first race, though at one point we saw him struggling to wake up a foot that had fallen asleep and got worried that he might not make it to the end.

As soon as Calvin came in to the bike park, Elisa took the baton and took off on her first race since moving to Korea. Her goal was to finish the 10 kilometers in 42 minutes, and she ended up meeting it exactly. She could have finished sooner if she had been able to determine how far she had run, but the course for some reason had no distance markers. If she had known how close she was to the end, she could have run much faster. All in all, it was an good finish for all three.
Our friend Julene and the Cheonan runners were still finishing the course when the relay team (which was of course faster, since each was fresh for their own event), so we watched the rest of the race and waited for them to come in. Julene looked strong toward the finish. One of the Cheonan guys came in second in his age group, an impressive achievement. Afterward it was pictures all around.

Post-race lunch was galbi (beef) soup at a nice little restaurant across the street. Then after showering and packing up our stuff, we got on the bus and headed back to Cheonan. Or, so we thought. We hadn't been driving for fifteen minutes when they suddenly decided to stop (we were still in Tongyeong) and have some raw fish, for which the area is apparently famous. We were flabbergasted. We'd eaten lunch just an hour before, and I expected everyone was tired and ready to get home. Not so. We parked beside the water and they all ventured off in search of sushi. We Westerners weren't very hungry, so we just walked along the waterfront for a while. Elisa and Helen and I ventured onto a floating dock and watched a fishing boat bring in a catch of some interesting, slug-like creatures, which were admired by a family that seemed to be out on an afternoon search for fresh seafood. Helen's Korean was insulted by an extremely rude old man who asked why she didn't speak the language any better after having been in the country for 5 years (her Korean is excellent). We had some chips and chocolate bars, killing time until we thought the Koreans might be back from their second meal. We found them having what they called a "garden party," spread out on cardboard in the middle of a barren parking lot, eating a picnic of sorts and drinking copious amounts of soju (Korean liquor). After a while they packed up and boarded the bus, all in extremely good moods.

The trip back - that was the best part of the whole weekend. Tired? You think these guys were tired? They were just getting warmed up. Out came the microphone, on came the onboard kareoke machine, and for the next three hours it was a loud and raucous party. In case you didn't know, kareoke is to Korean culture like, say, football is to American culture. There are no qualms, no inhibitions, and no emotional energy is spared when it's your turn to perform. Of course we couldn't avoid our turns, and I (yes I, Smitty), had sung, at the top of my lungs and with genuine enthusiasm, songs like "Happy Together" (duet with SuperE) and "House of the Rising Sun." But we were no match for our triathlete friends. Words cannot describe it, and still photos can't do it justice. But, here are a few anyway.

By the time we finally got back, we were exhausted, and not just physically. This was our first really intense, close-up experience of Korean culture, though I'm not sure we'd want to do it every weekend, we'll certainly never forget it.

The Last Three Weeks

2006-05-29T10:36:00.000-04:00

Friends and confidants, after the last marathon session of three consecutive posts, we've neglected to keep the story alive. Three weeks now have passed without a word from the Korea contingent. Fortunately, comparatively little has happened in that time, and no pictures were taken, so you need not fear another monster post.

We've continued to hang out with the Brits and Canadians. Three Saturdays ago, Kairen and John had us over to their place for a night of weird British TV. We caught most of a reality show called "The Carrot or the Stick," which pits one team of scrawny conscripts against another team of scrawny conscripts in a bootcamp-esque competition. The first team gets the "carrot" - rewards when they succeed. The second team gets the stick - punishments when they fail. That night, the carrots were winning.

Earlier that day we had taken an afternoon hike through the hills in the middle of the city, and gotten thoroughly lost. We've discovered that all the small mountain that run throughout Korean cities aren't just isolated peaks - they're extensive ranges with trails that run for miles and connect to other systems, so that you could walk through Cheonan and on into the countryside without ever hitting pavement. Benches, weightlifting equipment, and even streetlamps keep it from being anything close to "wilderness," but it's a wonderful escape. But, like I said, we got lost, and ended up in a part of the city we thought we'd never seen before (though eventually we realized we were just about a mile from our apartment).

On that note, we've also continued to hang out with our Canadian compadres, Mark & Naomi. The next day, after church, we joined them for lunch at a nearbye Chinese restaurant, and listened with envy to their tales of their trip to the DMZ, which would have included us if Elisa's passport hadn't been caught at the immigration office. We met them and some other people that evening for supper, too, at an excellent galbi joint near campus (galbi is Korean barbecue).

The next Saturday saw us touring the Korean Folk Village in Suwon with the other foreign professors. KNU takes the English profs on an outing every year. In previous years they've gone to Jeju Island (the Hawaii of Korea) and similarly posh destinations, but apparently cash was a bit shorter this time around. It was an enjoyable day nonetheless. Kairen and Jon were there to keep us company, and we spent much of the time with them, riding rides in the small amusement park. When we got back home we went with Mark & Naomi to a scenic spot along the same mountain trail that had so confused us on our hike, and had a nice evening picnic.

This last weekend, Elisa and I spent most of Saturday in Songtan, the U.S. military town, buying cell phones. We'd resisted them for as long as we could, but eventually we decided they were necessary. On our landline we couldn't even call off campus, let alone to the states, without paying an extra fee, and if we were going to pay we might as well pay for mobiles. While we were shopping we also found oatmeal (a rarity!) and a lot of lotions and such for Elisa.

When we got back to Cheonan, we were in a real rush to get ready for the progressive dinner that was scheduled to start at 6:00. We drew the main course, and had planned spaghetti. We had to run to LotteMart (the local grocery supermarket) and buy some things for the special sauce, and then do all the cooking, and get cleaned up. We made it, eventually, and the spaghetti was a big success. The evening started out with soup and salad down at Mark & Naomi's, moved to Jolie & Youn-ju's place for chips and salsa, then to our apartment for the spaghetti, and finally to Karen & Jon's for dessert.

Sunday afternoon, Adam went over to Josh Broward's place (Josh is the pastor of the international church) and played Settlers of Catan with Mark, Josh, and another guy named Jason. It was only his second time playing, and he lost badly. Elisa rode downtown with Naomi on her motorcycle, and they went shopping at Yawoori (Cheonan's ridiculously crowded mall). On Sunday night the husbands and wives met back at Mark & Naomi's to eat BLTs and finish off what was left of the Ceasar salad they made for the progressive dinner. We listened to music and talked for a few hours, and planned out some more weekend excursions. So stay tuned for stories from Itaewon, Taechon, and Asan in the weeks to come!

Smitty's Students

2006-05-09T07:06:00.000-04:00

This is theTuesday 6:30PM class - definitely my favorite.

Don't miss the last two posts, chronicaling our adventures in
Incheon, Korea and Fukuoka, Japan

Wherein our heroes travel to Incheon with the Britons and Canadians

2006-05-08T22:08:00.000-04:00

Dear readers, in your delight at receiving another update so soon after delighting in the story of our adventures in Japan, be not confused by the title of this latest installment, similar as it is to that of a previous post. For in Korea there is Icheon, and then there is Incheon, and never the twain shall meet. The former is a small town famed for its rice and pottery, settled in the countryside south of Seoul. The latter is a city of more than a million bordering Seoul to the west, home to Incheon International Airport, and home to a bustling Chinatown and a garish waterfront carnival. And now let commence the brief story of our experiences therein.

Friday was "Children's Day," which meant a break from teaching. We took an early afternoon bus directly to Incheon. Elisa and I entertained ourselves by watching on episode of Lost on the iPod. It wasn't too hot outside, and inside the bus it was quite comfortable.

When we arrived in Incheon, we spent a few minutes getting our bearings, and then took the subway to Chinatown. There we had an enormous seven-course meal at a Chinese restaurant, poked around the several stores selling odd bits of entertaining junk, and climbed up to a hilltop park where there is a large monument to US-Korean cooperation during the Korean War. (Incheon was the site of the Incheon Invasion, an important victory for the allies.)

After Chinatown we went to the harbor, where they have a big amusement park right on the water. I generally dislike the carnival atmosphere, but good friends can always turn it into a good time. We walked around for a bit, had ice cream and coffee, and then started to look for a hotel. By this time it was starting to rain, but Kairen pushed us on until we found the best room for the best price. We spent a fairly uncomfortable night, except we didn't know how to turn off the airconditioner in our room and there was only one blanket for the two of us.

We spent Saturday shopping at various stops along the subway route. The constant rain was a bother, but we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless. Our prizes included some new clothes and a nice wicker picnic basket. We opted out of the fresh fish from the many outdoor market stalls.

The trip home was long and hot, and we were soaked from our full day of playing in the rain. And of course, the driver didn't turn on the air conditioning - and it was a humid day indeed - until we were about ten minutes from home. Still, it was another fine excursion with our friends from the Commonwealth, and we look forward to next weekend, when we'll visit the DMZ with Mark and Naomi. Stay tuned!

Wherein Smitty & SuperE Develop a Taste for Japan

2006-05-02T19:44:00.000-04:00

On Friday morning we took the early bus from Cheonan to Incheon airport, west of Seoul, and boarded a 10AM flight to Fukuoka, Japan. Our official purpose was to get Elisa's visa, but since after applying on Friday it wouldn't be available until Monday, we planned to take full advantage of our four days and enjoy a trip to Korea's near abroad. Fukuoka, which is consistently ranked first place in the lists of Asia's best cities, turned out to be a beautiful place with plenty to see and do. Good times were had by all.

I. Friday
We touched down in Japan at about 11:00. Before leaving we had downloaded maps, directions, and cityguides to our iPod, and things went smoothly from the very start. We took a shuttle to the next terminal and found the subway line. After riding to the Tojinmachi station, it was a short walk north to the Korean consulate, a big castle-like building with a disproportionately small and unassuming visa office inside. We were in and out in five minutes.

While inside another foreigner had greeted us and asked what day it was. We informed him that it was Friday, and left. That was our first encounter with Mugu the Monk. Little did we know he was to haunt our steps for the rest of the day!

When we got back on the subway, which would take us back to Hakata station and most of Fukuoka's hotels, the stranger from the consulate turned up again, riding in the same car. Now let us describe the man in all his gangly glory:

He is tall, skinny, and long limbed (hence "gangly"). His face is sharp and angular, and his unfortunately lumpy head was shaved to the scalp. He wore velvet knickerbockers, a wool sweater, and a grey padded vest. Instead of luggage he slung a stick over his shoulder, Huck Finn style, with a cloth bag tied to the end. I do wish we had a picture, but words will have to do: before we had a chance to preserve him for posterity, he vanished in what I like to think was a misty cloud of ninja smokescreen.

But now we're back on the subway, and our friend is introducing himself. He is an American, from Berkely (here a snicker is permissible), a convert to Buddhism who after fifteen years of dabbling has come to Korea with his Zen master to become a monk. He studied photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, but dropped out before he finished his senior year. For a while he lived as a squatter in New York City. He is 44 years old (and never for a minute could we think of him as any older than ourselves). And now he suggests that we spend the weekend hanging out. Hmmm.

We aren't averse to making friends on the road, but we don't like having to coordinate our schedules with a perfect stranger. We like doing what we want, whenever we want, and we don't like negotiating about where to eat and what to visit. Still, we like to give new people and new experiences a chance, and this guy was certainly a new experience. He also seemed lonely and interesting. So, having arrived at a hotel that we decided on a bit more quickly than we otherwise would have if he hadn't been following us into every place we checked out, we arranged to meet him for supper later in the evening. We said our goodbyes, and he went back to his capsule hotel to study or do prostrations or something.

A word about the "capsule hotel," which I would certainly have chosen if I'd been traveling alone. They are exactly what they sound like: you sleep in little capsules, arranged in banks like the human battery fields in The Matrix. The rest of the place is a sauna and bathhouse, which is why people (men - no women allowed) go there. There's a common area with chairs and personal TVs should you want to relax without having to fend off your claustrophobia. Along with the cave hotels in Turkey's Cappadocia region, this is one of the most interesting kinds of accommodation I've ever come across.

We, however, opted for the Chisun Hotel, near Hakata Station (which, besides serving the subway system, is also waypoint for Japan's shinkansen). Room 906 was small but comfortable (although the window, which we kept open for a breeze, was unshaded and let in all the morning light as soon as the sun rose, along with the awful shrieking caws of the diabolical crows that infest Japan).

After settling in, we took the subway again (getting around would be expensive: for the two of us, it cost about 5 dollars per ride, and we rode everywhere). A few minutes later we arrived at Tenjin, a major shopping district, where we found our way to the local Apple store. The plan was only to buy a case for Jack so we could more easily run with our music, but Apple stores are seductive. We spent quite a while lusting after the laptops and the amazing iMacs, and for a while we seriously considered the iPod nano - better for running, and then we could each have one! - but in the end we were strong and left with no more than we came for. By then it was time to go back to the hotel, as we were meeting the monk at 6:00.

He knocked on our door promptly at six, and after a bit of a walk (which took us unexpectedly through a miniature red-light district - oops!), we found a little hole in the wall where they served (what we thought were) the famous Hakata ramen noodles. Later we had much better ramen in a much nicer shop, but for the moment we enjoyed the meal. Mugu - by now he had told us his Buddhist name (but not his English one, which we never learned) - was an interesting if awkward conversation partner. It was difficult to talk about anything but Buddhism and his own life history, as he never asked us about our own lives and was in any case a bit shy. It became quite clear, however, that his conversion to Buddhism and his decision to become a monk had a great deal to do with his bad luck with women, and with relationships in general. This prompted a lot of reflection on my part: what does religion - any religion - mean when it becomes a replacement for something else? But anyway, that wasn't really a question I wanted to pose to our friend Mugu.

Mugu lives in a monastery in southern Korea, up on a mountain. He goes to bed at 9:30 at night, and gets up at 2:30 in the morning. As a novice monk, he's responsible for setting up, cooking, cleaning, and the like. He does his prostrations and recites his mantras, and hopes for enlightenment. When we asked more probing questions about the nature of Buddhism, he says things like "well, it's just about being aware, you know?" Elisa asked what he exactly he was being aware of, and that proved a bit more difficult to answer. I suggested it might have something to do with viewing the world without the aid of concepts, and he thought that might be right, but that it was just about "sitting, maybe, and keeping yourself from thinking about things, and then maybe a breeze brushes your cheek, and you say 'mmm'."

Needless to say, we weren't in much danger of being converted.

We soon discovered how tired we were, having gotten up at 4:00 in the morning and gone to bed at 11:00 the night before. So, making our excuses, and rather reluctantly agreeing to meet again on Sunday for supper), we went back to the hotel (this time avoiding the red lights), ostensibly headed for bed.

Now free of Mugu, however, we felt like staying up a bit longer, so after a quick bite at the hotel we headed down to the canal than runs through the Hakata district. There beside the water are the wonderful yatai, outdoor foodstalls lit up with colorful lanterns and brimming with latenight conversation between all sorts of people: suits relaxing after the office workday with younger girls hanging on their shoulders, young lovers out for a night on the town, old men slurping noodles between grunts. We sat on a bench by the water for a while, enjoying the night breezes and the amazing quiet and calm of this city of more than a million people. It was a pleasant ending to our first day in Japan.

II. Saturday
On Saturday, after coffee and muffins, we set out early for the Ohori-koen area, where there is a large park and a ruined castle. Most of the daylight hours were spent walking the park and touring the ruins, and by 4:00 we were ready for a nap. Here are some pictures.

The park at Ohori-koen is
centered on a large lake,
home to many birds (such
as the large egrets that are
an emblem of Japan), which
is surrounded by a vareity
of lush trees. Today it was
busy with people who were
out cleaning up dead leaves
and other junk, in celebration
of Midori No Hi (Green Day).

The park is adjacent to the ruins of an ancient Japanese castle. Only a couple of the original gates remained, but the walls are extensive.

North of the park is a beautiuful Japanese garden,
with all the fixins: goldfish ponds, bonzai trees, and
pebbles raked patiently into pleasing patterns.

We spent most of the day on the park grounds, stopping only for lunch at a waterfront restaurant and an attempt to visit the art museum, where the impressionist exhibition proved too expensive for our tastes. By 3:00 we were exhausted, and started back toward the hotel. On the way we tried to find some of the Buddhist temples that were listed by our travel guide, but were only able to step into the outer courtyard of one. But we did happen upon a Buddhist wedding, which we tried to observe as unassumingly as we could.

Here are a few paragraphs describing
Buddhist wedding ceremonies.

After napping in our hotel room for a few hours, we got up and took the subway back to the same area of town we visited when we had first arrived and gone to the visa office. A bit north of the Korean consulate was the Fukuoka Tower, which is supposed to be the second tallest in Japan. It was quite a long walk from the subway stop, and both there and back we had some trouble with directions (i.e., we disagreed about which way to go; it may actually have been our first real fight!). But the tower itself was very nice, with lovely views of the nighttime skyline and a romantic restaurant with private boothes and big picture windows. When we finally found our way home, we went to sleep having had another great day in Japan.

III. Sunday
On Sunday we decided to limit our excursions to the area around our hotel. We spent time at Canal City, the beautiful shopping mall just a few blocks away, and also visited a Japanese garden and tea house and a Korean folk museum.

Canal City is so named because it is situated beside a small river running through this part of Fukuoka, and because a little canal runs through the middle of it. The building, divided into two parts, curves around this waterway and provides pleasant views from the balconies on each of the several stories. We bought a few things in its many shops and later had dinner in one of the restaurants.

The canal was filled with
floating flowerbeds. On
the right, you'll see a stage
for concerts and shows,
which the audience can
watch from all of the
surrounding balconies.

For lunch, as we were trying to find the folk museum (we eventually located it, but it turned out to be something of a disappointment), we came across a little ramen restaurant that served us the real Hakata ramen (as opposed to the stuff we mistook for the real thing on Friday night, with Mugu).

In the afternoon we visited an ancient tea house and garden that have been restored and now receive tourists. The garden wasn't quite as nice as the one we saw in the park, but the goldfish were a lot cooler, and we got to have tea in the Japanese ceremonial style (though a bit less complicated, no doubt).

We headed back to the hotel at around six, when we had agreed to meet Mugu, but to our frustration (and relief) he didn't show up. So we hopped back on the subway and went to find our own supper.

Having looked in vain for sushi (no sushi!? in Japan!?), we ended our last day with dinner in a Chinese restaurant in the very swank Tenjin district. Here are our tired, happy faces after a very expensive and delicious (but rather small) final meal in Japan.

Monday morning we picked up Elisa's visa, went to the airport, tried calling our families (with some success), and then flew back to Seoul. We walked in the door of our apartment at around 5:00, tired but full of new memories.

Wherein Smitty & SuperE Acquire an iPod

2006-04-23T21:34:00.000-04:00

This weekend, spurred by jealous admiration, we took the KTX to the town of Deajeon, south of Cheonan, and bought The Machine. The Machine, smaller than my wallet, has more storage space than either of our laptops. It holds up to 7500 songs. It holds pictures and videos, too. If we wanted, the machine could show us the next episode of 24, with crystal clarity. Even for me, no serious lover of gadgetry, it is a thing of beauty. And it is called, "iPod."

We've named him "Jack." This is his picture.

That was yesterday, after church. On Saturday we spent a pleasant evening with Mark & Naomi and Jolie & Young-ju, enjoying a "progressive dinner." Hors d'oeuvres were served at our place - the finest selection of LotteMart cheeses (they have two kinds - Koreans aren't big on cheese), vegetables, and fruit. Next door, Jolie & Young-ju had prepared curry chicken, which was delicious. And to top it off, Mark & Naomi had handwhipped cream and melted Hershy's kisses to compliment sweet strawberries and bananas. Plus coffee - real coffee, not the instant stuff that comes in the long tubular packaging and tastes like cancer-in-a-mug. We talked books and made fun of each others' home country. The War of 1812 was a sticking point; Canadians think they won, but we Americans know that if anybody but us "won" (which is preposterous, of course), it was the British. Anyway, Dolly Madison saved the paintings - that's all that matters.

These are some shots of us at Cheonan's KTX station.

And here, finally, is King Sejeon's new hairdo. He's decided on changing it every week. I think that's a bit obsessive, but hey, it's his head.

Kkot ("Flowers") and Munaw ("Octopus")

2006-04-16T04:41:00.000-04:00

This week has been pretty uneventful; the highlight was buying some flowers for our apartment, and eating octopus at a restaurant here in Cheonan. We've also been enjoying cherry blossom season, so to compliment the photos of our own plants I've included an upclose shot of the butgoat (not kdding - that's their Korean name) on KNU's campus.

King Sejeon gets a new hair-do.

Cherry Blossoms

Unfortunately we didn't have our camera when we had octopus for dinner on Saturday night, but I can give a short description. Since we hadn't gone anywhere all day, we decided to take the first bus that came and get off whenever we felt like, and see what new restaurants we could discover. We ended up at a traditional Korean seafood place, where you sit on the floor and every table has a gas burner where they cook the food in front of you. We ordered one of the more exotic-looking items - a big bowl of broth with a bunch of slimy unknown creatures poking their earstwhile heads and limbs up through the mix of vegetables.

They brought the bowl and set in on the burner without fanfare or explanation, and we waited for a while wondering when we were supposed to start eating. After a while the waitress came back with a pair of scissors, lifted the lid and grabbed the octopi, and started cutting them up into chopstick-manageable bites. Then, still without any explanation, she put the lid back on and left. The soup started to boil, and in addition to octopus we could see shrimp, crab and oysters, along with some other things we couldn't identify. As it got hotter the octopus meat turned from white to purple, and the bubbling made it look like it was still alive.

Finally she came back and indicated that we could start eating. I expected the octopus to be slippery, tough, and disgusting, but to my surprise it was delicious, and not at all fishy. Tough, yes, but tasty enough to be worth it. There were a few things that didn't win my approval - including something that popped unexpectedly in my mouth and sqirted something big and slimy down my throat. Mmmmmmm.

New Apartment

2006-04-11T04:24:00.000-04:00

Here, finally, are pictures of our new apartment.

Entrance, viewed from the living room.

Living room, viewed from the entrance.

Bedroom, viewed from the kitchen.

Kitchen, viewed from the living room.

Wherein our heroes travel to Icheon with the Britons and the Canadians

2006-04-10T02:35:00.000-04:00

Today the sky is grey, chilled and cloudy still from the rain that fell this morning. But it is by far the prettiest day we've seen since coming here. In Korea, you see the world through a dirty window, and I hadn't realized just how dirty it was until today's rain cleaned the air. The breeze smells like pine branches, which is how it should probably always smell, since the whole country seems to be one big mountainous pine forest. Despite the sun's absence, all the colors seem brighter and deeper. With advertisments all around Cheonan depicting new housing developments surrounded by conspicuously unrealistic landscaping, I'd almost forgotten what real green actually looks like.

I am especially struck by how fresh and good it feels because the first day of our trip to Icheon, which I'm about to describe to you, was shadowed by another attack of the Yellow Dust. At the moment I'm reading a book called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by a geographer named Jared Diamond. Combining sociology, history, and archeology, Diamond discusses the collapse of ancient societies like the Maya and draws parallels to certain trends in our own global society. In every case of collapse, environmental degredation was always a key factor, usually responsible for precipitating more proximate causes like war or disaster. The Polynesians of Easter Island, for example, destroyed themselves by cutting down all their trees. So did the Anisazi Indians of modern-day Arizona and New Mexico. Deforestation was a problem for the Maya, too, who also overfarmed and overgrazed their land to the point at which crops and livestock could no longer be raised.

And now this same problem resurfaces to affect my own life: the yellow dust, or at least its increasing severity and its dangerous mixture with pollution, is caused largely by deforestation, overgrazing, and overfarming in nearbye China.

But enough of this. Despite Saturday's man-made gloom, we had a great weekend in Icheon, which is famous for its pottery and ceramics, and also for its rice.

We left on a bus from Cheonan's downtown at around 11:30, and headed north to Seoul. On the map, this looks like an unnecessary detour, but the straight road to Icheon curves and climbs so much that it's actually faster to go north before you go south. Icheon is also a small village, to which buses don't run as frequently, so it's easier to get a ride from the big station in Seoul.

We discovered on this trip just how uncomfortable an intercity bus can be, and for no good reason. Apparently the drivers see no need to use the air conditioning until some unspecified point of time, when they turn it on for about 20 minutes before turning it right back off. There are only two small windows in the back, and you have no guarantee that you'll get them or that the Koreans who sit there will open them. It's hot and stuffy in the extreme. On Saturday the traffic was awful, and two 1 hour trips became two 3 hour trips. The trip back on Sunday was much better, because it was shorter and because the second bus driver actually made use of the air the whole time. This is just the latest pet peeve we've picked up here in Korea. Sometime I'll just let myself vent and list the others.

Our travel companions were Mark & Naomi, from Canada, and John & Kairen, from Britain. John and Kairen both teach English at KNU, while Mark and Naomi teach at a hagwan down the street. We had a great time getting to know them better.

The first thing we did when we got to Icheon was find a place to stay. Cheap Korean motels seem to be a bit sketchy and, shall we say, colorfully appointed, but quite clean and comfortable (though this was just our first experience with them). Our room even had a steam shower, with all sorts of fancy buttons and nozzels we couldn't figure out how to use. It was a lot better than several of the places we slept in on our honeymoon.

It was a lot like tourist spots in the US where you go to buy handicrafts and folk art and such (think of Shipshewana, for you Indiana readers). We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the shops and admiring the pieces, some of which cost several thousand dollars. Elisa and I contented ourselves with a set of figurines that caught our eye, and cost a bit less.

On Sunday we went to a ceramics museum, a big complex beautifully landscaped with more to see and more stuff to buy. There we picked up this little vase. I call him "King Sejong," after the ancient ruler who invented the Korean alphabet.

After the village we had supper at Pizza Hut, which tasted delicious. Kairen's trip to the salad bar introduced us to a new bit of cultural trivia. Whereas in America, everyone would get their own bowl for the salad bar, in Korea everyone shares one, and it isn't considered "cheating." This is one aspect of the Asian group ethic that I and my wallet can embrace.

While our main destination was the ceramics village, we had also planned to visit Icheon's bath house, which Naomi had visited on an earlier trip. We got there at around ten o'clock, and spent the next few hours soaking and talking. It was delightful.

Bath houses are an institution that Western countries would do well to adopt. In our culture they unfortunately have all sorts of negative conotations attached to them, but if we could get past them we'd be able to enjoy one of of the great pleasures of civilization. To sit in a warm pool for as long as you like, discussing whatever comes to mind, or to shock yourself into new vigor by moving quickly from hot to cold - I don't think there's any better way to relax and renew.

The next day, after sleeping in till ten, we headed to a nearby restaurant for some of Icheon's special rice. I'm not sure exactly why it's so special, but it did taste especially good. And the meal as a whole was one of the best I've eaten in Korea so far.

After lunch we caught a cab to the ceramics expo, where we picked up the vase pictured above. In stark contrast to the previous day, Sunday was beautiful, with clear skies and bright sun, and the expo grounds were wonderful, with a big lake at the front and wooded hills all around. We took most of our pictures here.

Elisa standing at the top of the hill, with the lake in the foreground

Adam, a little further up the hill

The expo grounds were dotted with wierd ceramic sculptures, like this typically cheesy
"I love you" heart.

Mark and Naomi performing (almost) I Korean gesture for "I love you": putting your arms over your head so they form the shape of a heart.

Elisa broke into the ceramic castle, but had a little trouble getting back out.

All of us together, from left to right: Naomi and Mark, Kairen and John, Elisa and Adam.

Update on the Update

2006-04-02T18:17:00.000-04:00

We've postponed this week's update until we can take pictures of our new digs. When we moved in on Saturday, we for some reason thought it would take a couple of hours tops to get settled. Unfortunately the previous tenant, a stereotypical bachelor, was not exactly the cleanest person in the world, and apparently saw no need to change his ways for our sake. We spent most of the day scrubbing, dusting, and pitching clutter. Yesterday afternoon we went shopping for some amenities. This place is a lot more willing to be made into a home than the other apartment, which was big and empty and entirely dorm-like: we had a stove in our bedroom, after all. Here it's much more cozy, so we're going to take advantage of it. We even bought picture frames and a little wooden shelf to go beside the desk.

All that to say - as soon as we're done setting it all up, we'll take some pictures and post them here.

This new apartment, by the way, is the kind we had been told we would be living in several months ago, before we arrived. There's a picture of one in a previous post.

Hope all is well wherever you are.

Gyeongbokgung

2006-03-25T08:03:00.000-05:00

This morning we boarded the KTX, Korea's super-fast express train, and made the short trip up to Seoul, where we spent the day touring a palace and buying English-language books. This was the first time we've had the chance to make use of our weekend and see something more of the country, and it was one of the most enjoyable days we've had since arriving.

Gyeongbok Palace is a large complex located in the heart of the city. The buildings are restorations of the original 14th-century structures from the Joseon Dynasty (which, by the way, was ridiculously long-lived, lasting from 1392 till 1910, when the Japanese turned Korea into an imperial colony.

Here are some selected photos:

[The Main Gate]

[Ceremonial Guard]

[Changing of the Guard]

[And to finish out the day, supper at Bennigan's. Ahh, globalization.]

Wow.

2006-03-24T08:15:00.000-05:00

One of my students left this note in my office. I'll give you a thousand won if you can figure out what he's trying to tell me.

----------------------------------------------

Professor it puts out and there is drill speech and like this me who [illegible] a great disaster is the enemy who the head the traffic accident comes out in school time and is injured and to be like that from that sesame of me which am the study highly or force tu uss ui bedspread Is like that and probably it is studies and neither the record rises and the stress is piled up, that bay Gass cyo! ! Is like that and study overlook the adolescence time which wanders step Naess cvo the le ten middle it listened to a shock end and it smacked lips work printed style of writing fortune the screw levs it came a tudy and well to the university the hour flows like that and it finishes a military service and under the luck crane it boils space-time department to a school and the place where it informs is not easy holds in the school and. to fell the necessity of English study now when the school is over. an English study it goes from ABCD foundation it learns Lecture it follows now and well! the force holds frankly but when from foundation it could be methodically, well! the now when it believes learns to foundation preparation review the many hour is not but the gap gap is doing from the house Now to be like this end single word the now when my oneself whom it cannot is shy the computer u it borrows a force though, when study the printed style of writing graduating eagerly, the features which changes will seem from the front of professor and it will give

shin-won-chel

View from the Top

2006-03-17T22:56:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, which started my weekend, I took a walk up to the top of the hill south of the city. Here are some of the pictures I took.

Part of the hill's lower reaches is occupied by gardens. You can buy the produce
from these gardens from old women who sell it on the streets.

Most of the hills around the city have these gravesites scattered around them.

Not sure if this is for any specific purpose, but it seems like a good spot for a picnic.

Views of Cheonan

In the picture below, you can see the building where Elisa teaches. In the group of three low structures in the foreground, her school is in the middle.

In this shot, the university is straight ahead (but hidden by the apartment buildings)

Yellow Dust

2006-03-17T20:45:00.000-05:00

Occaisionally I may put up some "informative" posts, where I'll focus more on a Korea itself than on our experience of this one small part of it. I figure some of you might be interested in learning a bit about the place, its history and geography and customs, and some of the problems it faces as an occupant of the Pacific Rim.

One problem, however, was brought to my attention precisely because last week it became part of our own Korean experience. The seasonal phenomenon called "yellow dust" struck Cheonan and the rest of the country on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday Elisa and I took a trip to another city to do some shopping, so we experienced quite a bit of the outdoors while it was blowing through. Being outside during the yellow dust storm makes you feel like the whole world is a dingy little hut, and you're locked inside it. In the middle of the day the sky is the blandest, ugliest color I've ever seen. It's dark, but not the deep, wet dark of a thunderstorm, which is exciting and beautiful. It's more like end-of-the-world dark - a dirty, gloomy twilight, unwilling to change with the time of day.

Yellow Dust comes from the Gobi and other deserts in Northern China. Spring winds bring it to South Korea and Japan in waves. By itself this wouldn’t be a big deal, and it’s actually been happening for centuries, ever since the Asian deserts have been around.

What makes it different now is that those deserts are getting bigger every year, so more dust is being blown eastward. And what makes it physically dangerous is that before it blows on by, the dust is thoroughly mixed with pollution from China’s too-rapidly growing cities.

Apparently, the Gobi desert is expanding southward, and is already just 75 km north of Beijing, the capital. One cause is overgrazing; China has a huge population of goats and sheep, which strip the ground bare of grass, leaving it unable to regenerate (and so leaving the farmers without land to continue grazing their animals). Another is firewood collection and overcultivation (the same thing that was largely responsible for the American Dust Bowl in the ‘30s). In response the government has been engaged in a massive tree-planting campaign – according to official sources, about 30 billion trees have been planted. But many argue that this is the wrong solution; grass must be planted first, so that the trees can take root in soil that is being replenished, and won’t be blowing away to Korea with the next Spring winds.

The same problems that are causing the catastrophic growth of the deserts – estimates say it costs China several billion dollars annually, not to mention its effect on the health of Chinese as well as other residents of the region ( like foreign English teachers in Cheonan City) – are mixing its winddriven sands with toxic pollution. China has adopted an economic policy that privilegs “growth” without really specifying what growth can mean. Right now it is growth at any cost – even at the cost of the country you’re trying to make rich. Cities must expand, transportation must rely on cars instead of trains, and all those billions of people need food from the farmlands. But the strain is too much, and the farmlands they rely on are mixing with the pollution from the factories and cars they equate with “growth”, and blowing away. How will growth continue if the place that’s "growing" is nothing but desolate rock and dirt?

Before we really knew what it was, Elisa made the mistake of walking to work while the yellow dust was still in the air. Since Wednesday she’s been very, very sick – she can hardly speak today, and she’s coughing up dark green stuff. Something like that brings the problem home to roost. When people can’t go outside the house for fear of incapacitating illness, you begin to wonder if the things that cause that illness – the twin idols of production and consumption – are really worth it.

Settling in to Our Routines

2006-03-10T17:52:00.000-05:00

Time moves fast here in Cheonan; already our third week in Korea, and it seems like we just arrived a few days ago. This week our time was spent settling into our routines.

Although neither of us has to be anywhere until after lunch (except for my 9:00 class on Tuesdays), we get up around 6:00 each morning. For breakfast we eat oatmeal (an elusive treasure here!) and drink hot tea. We read at the table; at the moment I’m halfway through Emerson’s essays, and almost done with Ben Franklin’s Autobiography, while Elisa has just finished a novel called The Time Traveler’s Wife, and is about to begin something new. Elisa runs after breakfast, while I prefer running at night. We use the gym in the basement of our building frequently. The treadmills there are all set at an incline, so thirty minutes feels like an hour on your legs. We didn’t understand why we were so tired after treadmill work until we went outside and found that we could go twice as far without feeling half as tired, which was a pleasant surprise.

After breakfast we sit at our big desk, with our two computers, and study together until lunch. I’m trying to take advantage of my considerable free time by doing a lot of reading and writing, and keeping more closely tuned into US politics. One goal is to turn a few sections of my thesis into publishable articles. Elisa works diligently on her nutrition therapy classes.

For lunch, we’ve fallen into eating mostly the same thing: vegetable stir-fry. Neither of us really minds, and we go out to eat often enough to keep it from becoming monotonous. One food we miss here is frozen fruit. Good strawberries are in abundance, though, and they also sell a strange pear for which this region is famous. It’s round like an apple, about twice the size of a normal pear, and crunchy instead of soft. They make a cold sweet juice from it that we often get for free while waiting for take-out from a porridge shop we’ve come to like.

Elisa works out with a couple of other girls on three mornings during the week. Each day one is in charge of teaching the other two about their preferred exercise; on Mondays they run, on Wednesdays they do pilates, and on Fridays they do Tae Kwon Do. I generally stick to running, but we’ve both signed up for a Tae Kwon Do class that meets for the first time this morning (it’s Saturday here).

I’ve now taught a full class (1 hour and 45 minutes), and I love it. The time flies by because I’m having so much fun, and the students seem to be enjoying themselves as well. I feel confident that teaching – though not necessarily ESL – is the job for me. The great reward is feeling the students’ delight when I get them to have fun with truly dull and boring exercises.

Elisa’s classes are a lot different from mine. Strange as it may sound, her younger students have a lot more English under their belt than my older ones. Teaching them is much the same as teaching children back home, because they use real English-language cirriculum, as opposed to English-as-a-second-language textbooks. The only difference is that she has to go a lot more slowly, and explain more as she goes along. But they understand a surprisingly large amount.

We still have yet to take a trip outside the region, but now that we’re more settled into our routines maybe we’ll be more able to plan for them. For now, we’re off to Tae Kwon Do. We hope all is going well wherever you might be, and wish you success in whatever you might be doing.

Until next week . . .

Teaching Begins

2006-03-03T20:26:00.000-05:00

As of Thursday, we've both started teaching, though my (Adam's) schedule starts in earnest next week. I had two classes Thursday, and only one student showed up for the first one, so it may end up geting cancelled. I kept the second for just half an hour, enough time to make introductions and go over the syllabus. My Friday class was also cancelled, so this week has been light. As of now my schedule keeps me busy on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, leaving me a five-day weekend. Unfortunatey, Elisa works all five days, so we can't really take advantage of my schedule and do as much traveling as we would like.

Elisa is really enjoying her new job, and happy to be working again. It's extremely laid back and requires little preparation. Most of the students know English quite well, and they all carry electronic translators to help with any lapses. Her fellow teacher is an Englishman named Simon, who has been very friendly and helpful, as has her boss, Mr. Lee. It's a brisk twenty-minute walk there and back, so the whole arrangement is quite convenient.
Characteristically Steep Steps
on the KNU Campus

I'm sure that next we'll have more stories to tell, many likely to do with all things "lost in translation" and funny faux pas from the classroom. For now, here are some more pictures.

Our Apartment Building

One of the Campus Buildings
Our Church is on the 4th Floor

Another Building on Campus

Building where Adam has his classes
and office

Adam in his office, striking professorial poses

Adam leaving for his first day of class

View from Campus of the Eastern end of Cheonan

Hill South of Cheonan

Dulsat Bibimbop (rice and stuff in a sizzling stone bowl)

Week One In Cheonan

2006-02-24T07:09:00.003-05:00

We've been in Cheonan for about a week now, so an update is in order. I doubt you're interested in logistics and the trivialities of travel, so I'll focus on the sights and sounds, and on what our jobs are going to be like.

Cheonan is a small city south of Seoul, which you can reach by bullet train in about 30 minutes. Around 500,000 people live here, tightly packed between low mountains. Traffic is bad; Korea boasts one of the highest automobile accident rates in the world. High-rise apartment buildings dominate the skyline, and new ones are in construction on just about every corner. Most buildings are covered from bottom to top with colorful signs, and things feel much more cluttered than in Western countries. But this might be due more to the confusion that comes from being unable to read Korean, so it all comes off as an unintelligible jumble.

A lot of the food is very different, and for me is harder to get used to than Middle Eastern fare. Very spicy, but the spices have wierd flavors; it's nothing like Mexican or even Indian "spicy." If you've tasted kimchi, you'll have an idea of what I'm talking about. There are a few dishes I like, such as dulsat bibimbop (rice, vegetables, and meat in a hot stone bowl) and yesterday we tried Korean porridge, which was really great. They eat a lot of fish. On Wednesday we went to a seafood place for lunch, and they brought out baked fish - unfilleted, of course, still sporting heads and eyes - which were the best thing I've eaten so far.

Earlier we posted a picture of what we thought was our apartment, but when we arrived we were shown into a different place altogether. It's actually two single apartments put together, so we have two kitchens, two bathrooms, and plenty of space all around (though it's still smaller than our place in Indiana). They even got a double bed for us, though we'd been planning on pushing together the two singles they told us to plan on.

The KNU campus is set up on a hill, and is quite nice, with two big pillared brick buildings and a number of others. There is, however, no heat or air conditioning. In the Winter they freeze and in the Summer they sweat. Apparently they've recently started providing modest heat and air on a room by room basis. But man is it cold in there; all concrete and little carpet.

Now, a bit about what we've been up to. I was in orientation meetings from Monday through Wednesday, which were very long days. At first I was a bit overwhelmed by the workload I'll be taking on, but as usual, I've come to realize that it will probably be a lot less challenging than they make it out to be. Not to say that there won't be a lot of work, but - people often make an official big deal out of what are in practice small things. So, while I have a great deal of preparation to do before I teach my first class this coming Thursday, I'm comfortable knowing that I'll just be learning everything as I go.

I have a total of eight classes. On Tuesdays I teach four of them, so that will be my heaviest day. I have one on Wednesday, two on Thursday, and another on Friday. Each class has from 10 - 15 students, sometimes more. We have textbooks to work from, but must make up about half of the coursework ourselves, because the books don't contain enough material.

Elisa, who came to Korea jobless, now has work, and great work at that. She starts teaching at a hogwan, an afterschool English program, on Wednesday. She'll actually be making more than me. This little venture is turning out to be an excellent financial situation for us, and we'll be able to pay off all of my student loans this year. If we stay more than a year, we'll have put together a very nice savings account. The only downside is that while I get two months of Summer vacation, Elisa only gets ten days, so we won't be able to do the kind of traveling we hoped to do, at least not yet. Weekend trips will have to do it. I want to take the ferry to Vladivostok sometime soon. Tomorrow, if Elisa feels well enough (she's come down with a bug), we'll take the bullet train to Seoul and visit some palaces and temples.

That will do it for now. If you have any specific questions, you can leave them in a comment, and we'll try to answer them in the next post. I think our plan is to try and update on Fridays, so look for more stories and pictures next week.

Update: Leavin' on a Jet Plane

2006-02-13T09:09:00.000-05:00

We haven't put up anything new in a while, so now seems as good a time as any to make a fresh start. We can't really call this our "wedding blog" anymore: today is our sixth month anniversary, and on Thursday we're leaving for a year or more in Korea. Soon the picrtures and stories willl be coming to you from the other side of the planet!

In the meantime we've been busy with preparations and goodbyes. Last Wednesday we went to Chicago to get our Korean visas (which have finally worked out - we go back and pick them up today). Here were are later that afternoon, when we met Jade for lunch.

On Thursday we made the long drive to Toronto. We got there in time for most of Jeffrey Stout's third Priestly lecture at U of T, where several ICS people were in the audience. Afterward we had supper at Rower's with Chris. He and Nicole were kind enough to put us up (they even gave us their own bed!), and good times were had by all.

Friday was The Big Day. The thesis defense was set for 10:00 AM. I (Adam) wasn't exactly "nervous," but I was completely unsure of what to expect - whether I was well or poorly prepared. Even after the hour and a half of questions I still didn't know how I had faired. But everything turned out very well, and now I officially have my masters! Here are the post-defense photos. From left to right: Ron Kuipers, Jonathan Chaplin (my "mentor" prof), me, Simone Chambers, and Lambert Zuidervaart.

Yesterday we went to church at Radnor for the last time, and the people there were characteristically and amazingly generous. We'll miss them. We went for Chinese with both sets of parents, then spent the afternoon doing our taxes in Kokomo (the government is also being rather generous to us this year!). In the evening we went to Mountain Jack's with Kelly and Titus - mmm, those might be the last good barbecued ribs I'll have in a while.

Our Apartment in Chonan, S. Korea

2005-12-24T03:13:00.000-05:00

Smitty and SuperE's First Christmas Tree

2005-12-07T23:11:00.000-05:00

Elisa with Ebenezer Scrooge (aka Brother/Brother-in-Law Nathan)

2005-12-07T23:08:00.000-05:00

Colorado Trip: The Youngest of the Coolest Kids in the World, with Her Grandma

2005-12-07T23:07:00.000-05:00

Colorado Trip: Elisa's Second Cousins - The Coolest Kids in the World

2005-12-07T23:05:00.000-05:00

Colorado Trip: Grandpa Sutherland Gets a Frost

2005-12-07T23:04:00.000-05:00

More from Pike's Peak

2005-12-07T23:02:00.001-05:00

Colorado Trip: On the Pike's Peak Trail

2005-12-07T23:02:00.000-05:00

Colorado Trip: View from [the bottom of] Pike's Peak

2005-12-07T23:00:00.000-05:00

Grandpa Wright Showing Adam How to Play the Guitar

2005-12-07T22:58:00.000-05:00

Just Before the Indy Half-Marathon

2005-12-07T22:56:00.000-05:00

The Big Move

2005-11-29T05:15:00.000-05:00

As of tonight we have confirmed our flight to Seoul for Thursday, February 16, 2004. We fly out of Chicago, layover in Tokyo, and arrive in Seoul on Friday evening. From there we'll go south to Cheonan and enter the next year of life. Should be a lot of fun!

2005-09-24T23:38:00.000-05:00

Since our "hiking gear" consisted of trail mix and a couple of sweaters, we decided to take the hint . . .

2005-09-24T23:36:00.000-05:00

Who says honeymoons have to be relaxing?

2005-09-24T23:33:00.000-05:00

Hiking the Appalachian Trail

2005-09-24T23:32:00.000-05:00

. . . and the Little Blue Cottage.

2005-09-24T23:31:00.000-05:00

We stayed in all kinds of places. The High Meadow Bed & Breakfast . . .

2005-09-24T23:30:00.000-05:00

More Big Sharp Rocks

2005-09-24T23:29:00.000-05:00

Big Sharp Rocks