A long time coming

A wise man once said: “To make them love you, you must make them wait.”

I’m not exactly sure who that wise man was, but it sounds pretty apropos at the moment for me. Over the course of the last year I’ve gone weeks, even months, without updating you on the adventure that has been my life since I left American ground on August 14, 2009. This most recent hiatus, I can say with certainty, has been the longest. I’d apologize, but that just doesn’t seem right.

Today, on August 17, 2010, just a little more than one full year since I’ve been abroad, I find myself sitting on my bed in the closet-sized room that my friend Lowell has very generously offered up to me in his apartment for the last couple of months. Tomorrow, I begin a new chapter of my life in Korea, something that, had you asked me one year or even 6 months ago about the possibility of happening, I probably would have laughed you off as a crazy person. And yet, here I am. So who is the crazy person now, huh?

In case you were wondering what I have been doing since the last time that I wrote to you, my faithful readers, I will spend a few moments updating you. No, I haven’t just been sitting here picking the lint out of my belly button and watching the most recent KPop releases. In fact, I have been what the Spanish call “muy busy.”

At the end of May, I finished my third term as a teacher at Pyeongchon, abandoned my place of residence for the decidedly more free closet of Lowell’s, and set off for Cape Town, South Africa, to meet the rest of my family (sans Papa Rudnick) for a three week vacation. My younger brother Howie had spent the semester studying at the University of Cape Town, and so we went down to meet up with him and explore the southern tip of the continent of Africa. The trip was great, and as it was the first time I’d seen any of my family since their visit to Korea in December, I enjoyed myself even more thoroughly.

We spent about a week touring around Cape Town before we headed north to Ngala Reserve near Kruger National Park for a four day safari. To say that the safari was amazing, spectacular, unbelievable, and stupefying would be an absolute understatement. If you ever want to really feel like you have seen a wild animal, go there. In the course of our short stay, we witnessed a pack of six male lions stalking a herd of water buffalo, a group of wilddogs that compromised about 1% of the species alive on the entire face of the planet, and four cheetahs feeding on an impala that they had just killed, faces bloodied and mouths watering. And that only begins to tell the story. I am telling you, no matter how difficult it is or how much money you spend, it will be worth it. You will never be able to visit a zoo in good conscience again. Check out my pictures on facebook if you don’t fully believe me.

After our safari, we said goodbye to mumsie and Johanna, and the three Rudnick brothers headed back to Capetown for the start of a little sporting event formally known as the World Cup. Going to a Celtics playoff game is one thing, but try standing in the Cape Town fanzone, watching the Cup’s first game between South Africa and Mexico surrounded by thousands of crazy South Africans. Or sitting in the stands with thousands of American fans somehow congregated halfway across the world to cheer on the Red, White, and Blue, after having spent the previous night watching your favorite basketball team lose in Game 7 of the NBA Finals to the Los Angeles Fakers while battling the initial onslaught of a rather horrific case of food poisoning. Once again, I can’t really do justice to our time spent there in the course of one blog entry, but check out the pictures and buy me a beer some time and I promise to tell you all about it.

On my return from South Africa, I spent the next month hanging out in Korea, enjoying the spicy weather, staying up way too late to watch World Cup games, playing basketball, and hanging out with friends and one particularly stunning Korean of the female variety. Just so I wouldn’t lose my edge, I threw in a little substitute teaching as well.

At the end of July, I left Korea for the beginning of my month-long excursion through Southeast Asia. I spent a week in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia with the Riranator, lying on the beach, snorkeling, hiking through the jungle, and eating a tremendous amount of delicious seafood. After saying goodbye to her, I flew to Singapore to meet Howie and Lavi for Rudnick Boys Extravaganza 3.0. We spent a couple days there, then headed up the eastern coast of peninsular Malaysia and into Thailand. In those three weeks, Lavi and I got certified to scuba dive, and once again we spent a great deal of time lounging, sunbathing, eating, and near the end, trying to figure out if every Thai person that walked by us was a man or a woman. Just as in the case of Africa, I can’t really adequately describe the awesomeness of the last month, so the invitation to recount and imbibe remains open.

Tomorrow, I begin a new job. No longer molding the minds of Korean youth through my savvy American whit, I will now be working in the research and development wing of the same company, writing material for an English-learning program aimed at young Korean professionals. I’ll be in an office behind a desk, no longer having to grade review tests, essays, or Critical Thinking Projects. Of course there is a lot about the teaching gig that I will miss, but I am very excited for the new position and think that I’ll be able to utilize my intelligence and creativity (not to mention my modesty) a bit more. Waking up at 7:15 a.m. doesn’t particularly tickly my fancy, but I guess that is what becoming a grown-up is all about: not getting your fancy tickled quite as much.

Aside from the new job, I also move in to a new apartment tomorrow with two of my good friends from school. I am pretty stoked to have roommates, and the place we landed is rather baller: kimchi fridge included.

As I reflect on the year that was, I can point to a lot of ups and a lot of downs, but in the end, they have all led me to where I am right now. I am happy, comfortable, and am sporting a great golden tan, so I’d have to say that life could get a lot worse.

The Devil in the Ee Hyu Ree Bottle

I was sitting in one of my iBT classes the other day grading essays when I came across a particularly jarring sentence that one of my students, Jane, had written. The task of the essay was for students to compare their way of life with that of their parents and decide which one would be more satisfying for future generations. Yes, a rather vague, not particularly well-devised question, but these are the things I’ve come to expect teaching this test. In any case, in her essay, Jane was talking about her parents’ way of life, explaining that she was impressed with their attention to detail. Then came this slap-to-the-face of a sentence: "For instance, even though my father is drunken, he puts his shoes right beside each other. Also, he brushes his teeth even though he can't even walk."

I’ve had numerous conversations with fellow teachers and friends about the kind of things that our students have to put up with from their parents: an intense, unspeakable amount of pressure to achieve academic success, physical and verbal abuse, and just as commonly, unpleasant behavior from a father who comes home after more than a bit too much drinking.

I’ve come to learn during my nine months here that, while some things about Korea remind me a lot about home, there is still a huge cultural divide that I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to. I understand that I can’t expect things to be the way that I am used to them being, and that people in different places and cultures have different ways of dealing with their problems.

Yet still, when I read a sentence like the one Jane wrote in her essay, I can’t help but feel more than just a little unsettled. The example she gave sounds like the kind of story I would tell my friends from a really rowdy night, not the kind of thing a 14 year old student should be casually writing in her iBT essay about her father, as if that were completely normal behavior for a parent.

The problem is (and yes, I am going to call it a problem, despite the possible outcries from you cultural relativists out there) that this is indeed rather common behavior for Koreans.

I know that I have mentioned in the past the degree to which alcohol is abused in this country, but now I feel like I finally need to devote a full post to an official rant against the soju-drinking, foul-smelling, bench-sleeping ajashi (read: adult man) population of this country.

I was riding the subway the other day, transferring from one line to another at Sadang station when I saw a man sleeping on one of the benches made for people waiting for the next train. This is a very, very common sight in Korea. I tried to explain to Rira the other day that if you see a person sleeping on a bench in the subway in America, you can almost guarantee that person is homeless. In Seoul, the people who frequent the subway benches as makeshift beds are almost exclusively men, between the ages of 30 and 60, all of whom are wearing full dress suits. Like I said, this is the kind of thing that when I first got to Korea I couldn’t really believe, but now I am almost surprised when I ride the subway after 8 p.m. and I don’t see an ajashi passed out somewhere. For some reason, though, when I saw the man the other day, I wanted to go over to him and kick him in the face. Something just clicked inside my head; I had had enough.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am no prude. I am of the opinion that a person should be allowed to do whatever he or she wants, so long as that behavior doesn’t harm other people. You want to get so drunk that you can’t stand under your own power? Go right ahead. You want to pound so much soju that you wake up the next morning feeling like someone has taken an electric drill to your skull and given you an enema with Tabasco sauce? Be my guest. But do it on your own damn time! I am getting pretty sick and tired of seeing guys passed out on benches, falling over on innocent people (myself included) on the subway, stumbling down the street, basically being carried by two other old men, with such intense Asian Glow that it looks like someone has taken a tomato to their faces.

I have to admit that these scenes have provided me and my friends here a fair amount of entertainment over the months. Watching these men go by is one of my favorite pastimes of a night out in Korea, and constantly reminds me that, no matter how much you drink, you can always be drunker than you are. But at the same time, though, the more and more I see of this kind of behavior, the sadder and sadder I get. Sure, it’s funny. But really, when you think about it (especially if you are sober), it reflects pretty poorly not just on these nameless, sloppy gentlemen in suits, but on the country as a whole. Honestly, guys, it’s just embarrassing.

Part of me feels pretty bad for these dudes. They work ridiculous hours at jobs they probably despise, only to invest most of their hard-earned money on their children’s hagwon educations. It is fairly obvious why so many of them drink so hard that they pass out in the middle of a 6-lane thoroughfare (yes, I have seen this before): it is their only escape from the intense, draining, workaholic lives that they live on an everyday basis. The Four Hour Rule for the sleep schedule of middle and high schoolers carries right over into the working life of the average Korean, but instead of staying up until 3 a.m. studying for exams, they are drinking themselves into oblivion.

As a student of drug policy, this situation really, really bugs me. The Korean legal system takes a ridiculously hard-line approach to drugs--considering marijuana and meth to be equally dangerous--and is willing to throw a foreigner in jail and deport him just for being in the same room where weed is being smoked. All of this while seeming to completely ignore the fact that a large percentage of their adult population regularly abuses a far more dangerous drug—alcohol—and publically, no less. Don’t get me wrong—I am by no means advocating for Koreans to go out and start using meth as an alternative to soju. I just think it is time for Koreans to take a serious look in the mirror and deal with what is clearly a serious problem. Maybe I’m just being a Debbie Downer, but for me, the line gets crossed when kids start to expect their dads to come home having lost the ability to stand up. Even if they can still brush their teeth.

An Epiphany of Sorts

Wow, it has been a long time since I’ve written. I’m not really sure what has gotten in to me these days; I’m thoroughly enjoying myself, going through what has been (at least socially) the best stretch of my year here in Korea, have done tons of interesting things in the last month and a half or so, and yet cannot work up the energy to sit down for an hour or two and write things out. I think part of me has completely lost the desire to write about what exactly I am doing.

Since I last blogged, so much has happened: I finally made it to Seoraksan to hike the most popular national park in the country. I finally made some relatively solid plans for how I am going to spend the next couple months of my life: going to SOUTH AFRICA for the WORLD CUP (damn, that feels good just writing it!), then chilling in Korea for a month or so before embarking on an epic tour of Southeast Asia. The Celtics have finally decided to play up to their potential, earning themselves a spot in the Eastern Conference Finals and leading to me experimenting with a playoff “beard” (back home, it would only pass for glorified scruff, but in Korea I’m already approaching mountain-man/hobo status). I finally, after nearly two years of on-again, mostly-off-again reading, finished Atlas Shrugged (and still feel like it would work better as a 30 page short story).

All this, and I’m still not sure what I should be writing about. A couple of weeks ago, I went out to Hongdae with some friends on a Saturday night and somehow ended up backstage at a monstrous, head-banging DJ festival on the Hangang. That was pretty sweet, and confirmed my long-held suspicions that if you are an assertive foreigner in this country not willing to take “no” (or more usually, a confused head shake) for an answer, you can literally get away with just about anything.

Just last night, I met Rira and some friends from work and went to the Seoul Lantern Festival, a celebration of Buddha’s upcoming birthday that featured plenty of traditional clothing, dancing, awesome lit-up floats, and hundreds upon hundreds of camera-toting foreigners. If I was being completely honest, I should really include myself in that category, yet something about the fact that I’ve been here for a while made me feel like I’m more at home than those other meeguks. Actually, in the last week or so, Rira has started to inadvertently slip into Korean when talking to me, a phenomena she is chalking up to the fact that I am becoming more and more Korean the longer she knows me.

I still have blue eyes, curly hair, and am a foot taller than most people in this country, but maybe she’s right. Maybe the reason I haven’t felt compelled to blog about all the things I’ve been doing has a lot more to do with the fact that, after living here for nine months and enduring the ups and downs of the life of an English teacher in Korea, I finally feel like I belong.

More Than Four Questions

On the eve of Passover, the Jewish holiday of redemption and freedom, I cannot think of a time that I have felt more like I am in exile. The last few days have witnessed some—how shall I say this—struggles with my job that have leaked over and become struggles with my Jewish identity.

Now that most of you are presumably thoroughly confused, let me take a few moments and explain. On Wednesday afternoon of last week, I sent an email to my faculty manager asking him if I could take off on this Tuesday to attend a Passover Seder. I explained to him that it was an important Jewish holiday, but I already knew him to be a seriously observant Christian who has many times expressed his delight with my Jewishness, so I didn’t expect to run into any trouble. Unfortunately, that is exactly what I got, in the form of a sternly-worded email that, in no uncertain terms, questioned my commitment to the company and my dedication to my students. I would be allowed to take Tuesday off, but in exchange, I would be forfeiting my right to the seven days of unpaid professional development (read: vacation) I had for the year of my contract.

To say that I was caught off guard would be an understatement. Granted, I did take a day off from work when my family was here visiting me in December, and I have missed three days because of illness, including one earlier this week. Having said that, I have taken my job very seriously and, at least in my opinion, have been doing pretty solid work as a teacher for the last 7 months. I know that the company I work for has extremely rigid policies, especially when it comes to taking days off, but I thought that I wouldn’t have trouble with a religious holiday.

I know that it probably wasn’t my boss’s personal choice to dock my vacation, and his explanation that “Korean companies aren’t like American companies” rings true— despite my limited experience with either, I have learned in the time I’ve been here that in a lot of ways, things just don’t operate the same way. It was one of those frustrating moments when I felt really powerless and pretty unappreciated, but I know that I can’t let that bring me down or affect my work or personal life.

In any case, I did my best to deal with the frustration over the weekend, and started to think about the coming week and the holiday. I’d been talking about Judaism a lot to Rira in the last few weeks, trying to explain my upbringing, the people and place I come from. I’ve also been telling her all about Passover, and invited her to come to the Seder with me to get her first Jewish experience, up-close and personal. It has been a long time since I’ve done anything Jewish (again, read: Rosh Hashanah), and the idea of participating in a Seder in Korea with a Korean was getting me pretty stoked.

I RSVP’d to Chabad earlier in the week that I would be joining them for the second night of the holiday and bringing a friend with me. Everything sounds good, right? Wrong. I got an email over the weekend from the Chabad Rabbi that he was excited to have me and my friend, as long as “he is Jewish.” Of course, I didn’t specify in my first email that the person I was bringing was a woman, not to mention the fact that she was my Korean non-Jewish girlfriend (I had a feeling those details were extraneous and would be better left unwritten).

Now I was in a pickle; I had a couple of options, none of which seemed particularly attractive. I could not respond to the email and just show up on Tuesday night with Rira in tow. I doubted they would turn us away at the door, but I didn’t want to expose her to the potential awkwardness of being the only non-Jew (and let’s face it, she doesn’t really look very Jewish—which is of course fine by me) there. My other option was to reply to the Rabbi and basically, well, lie. A number of elaborate stories were running through my head. I could say that her grandfather was an American GI and she had just recently found out that he was Jewish. I could claim that she descended from a long-hidden sect of Korean Jews, something like the lost tribe of the East.

In the end, I decided to tell the truth—well, at least not to lie; making Rira pretend to be someone she’s not for a room full of inquisitive Jews just didn’t seem fair. I emailed the Rabbi back and told him that my friend had “Jewish roots” (the vagueness of that term was entirely intentional) and was very interested in learning more about Judaism and the holiday.

The email I got back was as blunt as it was unpleasant: “if her mother is Jewish, she is Jewish. If her father is Jewish, she is not.”

I know halacha (Jewish law). I understand that Chabad is an orthodox organization, and respect their right to believe what they want to believe. But this email just did not sit right with me. The fact that they would turn away a person interested in learning more about Judaism on the most celebrated holiday of the Jewish calendar, a holiday built around asking questions and exploring identity, honestly made me sick to my stomach. Forget that Rira isn’t Jewish, or that she is Korean. What if she were American, had been practicing as a Jew her whole life, but had only a Jewish father? Does it even matter if her father is Jewish? What if she was Caucasian instead of Korean? What does it say that she’d be able to “pass” as Jewish in that case, but not the way she is now?

A hundred questions swirled through my head, all of them circling around the absurdity of this rule. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had some pretty serious changes in religious perspective over the last couple of years, leading me to question a lot of the laws of the religion I grew up in and still call my own. But this one, perhaps more than all the others, offends me on a deep level. To judge a person’s spiritual and religious identity on nothing but their blood brings to mind one terrible historical example, one that I generally hate when people make references or comparisons to (I think we all know what I’m referring to). I just don’t know how else to see it.

I returned the Rabbi’s email with one of my own, explaining in the best and most respectful way that I could what I felt of his policy, and informing him that if Rira was not welcomed at his Seder, then I would consider myself unwelcomed as well. He replied, explaining that there are a limited number of spots at the table and that he wanted to insure that all Jews have a place to go for the holiday. I get that, and it made me feel a little better. But it doesn’t change the way I feel about his policy in general. I was embarrassed to explain the situation to Rira, and told her that I hoped this wouldn’t shade her view of Jewish people as a whole. But honestly, how could it not?

People wonder why Jews have a less-than-positive reputation in some places around the world, and an incident like this takes a serious toll on my own relationship with the organized religion, even if Chabad isn’t a group that I would normally associate myself with.

So here I am, spending the first night of Passover in Korea with a serious philosophical dilemma on my hands. I am going to go to the Seder tomorrow night because I respect the Rabbi’s limitations and feel like it’s important to me to do something for the holiday. I imagined that this would be a chance for me to reconnect as a Jew, while at the same time sharing an important part of myself with someone that I care about and whose opinion matters to me. Now, our shared Passover experience will be relegated to letting her taste some matza that I bring home. I’m not sure how I’ll feel when I am sitting at the table. Probably a lot more like my ancestors than I have at any other Seders in the past. Apparently, I’m more in galut than I ever knew I was.

A Weekend Away

Hello my faithful readers. I know it’s been a little while since I’ve written last, and for that, I apologize. The last couple weeks have gone by in a blur, but have been some of my best so far in Korea, on account of a number of things, but especially the beginning of some (or really one in particular) new relationship in my life. Anyone who is friends with me on Facebook probably knows what I am referring to, and yes, I do realize that it’s a bit bold. But hey; I’m a happy man right now, so figure that I should share that with the digital world, as well.

In any case, my recent adventures were highlighted by a trip I took last weekend with Rira to the southern coast of the country. The only other place I’ve been outside of the greater Seoul area is Busan, so I was very excited to get some more legitimate travelling under my belt. I let Rira do all of the planning and organizing for the trip, first of all because she is really good at that sort of thing, but also because the fact that she is Korean (and can read and speak the language fluently) made figuring out logistics a lot easier for her than it would have been for me. In fact, I kept telling her over the weekend that I don’t think I would have been able to manage the trip we took without her expertise and travel-savvy, so I was very happy to have her with me (for that, among other reasons).

We left very early Saturday morning from Anyang to the bus terminal in Seoul, where we caught a 7:50 a.m. bus to Tongyeong-Si, a small port city on the southern coast of the country. While I was expecting the kind of tour bus typical in America—with narrow, stiff seats and no legroom for a big guy like me—I was thrilled to find that the bus was really nice, with big, wide leather seats that had plenty of legroom and reclined for easy sleeping.

Like I mentioned, Rira had made a detailed two-day schedule for us to see as much as we could in the area, but when we got off the bus, we found out that the places we had planned to go were shut down because of heavy winds in the area. Our plans shot, we headed for the ferry terminal and bought tickets to the one boat that was still in operation despite the wind.

The ferry ride to Hansan-do (Island) lasted about 45 minutes or so and took us along the coast. It was a beautiful day, but windy on the boat, so after taking some pictures we spent the rest of the ride in the indoor compartment, lying on the heated wooden floor, surrounded by a dozen or so ajumas who were giving us some funny looks, probably because I was white and we were both under the age of 60.

Getting off the boat at the island, we went to the ranger’s station and found, to our very pleasant surprise, that we could sign out bikes for free to use to tour around the island. So off we went, helmets on heads (though just barely for me, on account of my American –sized noggin) with our economical modes of transportation, ready to explore the island.

We spent the next couple of hours riding along the tiny two-lane road, heaving our way up hills and coasting our way along Hansan-do. The island was beautiful; very sparsely inhabited, with sporadic clusters of worn down buildings separated by large expanses of farms, bogs, and open fields. Because of my less-than-ideal work schedule, I haven’t really had the chance to get out and see the Korean countryside that I’ve heard so much about, but this was exactly that kind of a rural environment. The scenery, combined with the really temperate weather, made it a fantastically enjoyable bike ride. Even my standard amount of sweating didn’t deter us from having fun.

By the time we reached the other side of the island, we were both pretty tired, and as it turned out, we got very lucky with our timing—even though the normal ferry schedule told us that the last boat to leave the island was at 6:30, the company moved that three hours earlier on account of the windy weather. We happened to run into some friendly park rangers who informed Rira of this information and were nice enough to throw our bicycles into the trunk of their truck and return them for us, while we caught the last bus that would get us back to the ferry in time to make it off the island! We kept joking that we were going to get stuck there, but this place was pretty remote, so it’s definitely a good thing we managed to get out (especially considering Rira had already paid for the hotel room that night). The bus ride to the ferry took us through some treacherously narrow roads, too, so we were basically just happy to still be in one piece by the end.

When the ferry deposited us back on shore in Tongyeong, we were both incredibly hungry, having not eaten anything since a couple of Dunkin Donuts bagels (which aren’t quite as good here, if you ask me) back at the bus station in Seoul, so we asked a policeman in the ferry terminal to point us in the direction of a good seafood restaurant, which is the pride of coastal cities like this. We found a street lined with restaurants, so we picked one that looked good and went in to eat.

Our early dinner was a seafood feast extravaganza, the kind that legends are made of. We were served probably 25 different small dishes, each of which boasted a unique brand of seafood, from fried fish to squid, octopus, shrimp, and a dozen other creatures that I couldn’t tell you the names of. Being the brave and easy-to-please eater that I am, I tried everything on the table, to the delight and surprise of Rira (I guess she’s used to those foreigners who only eat white rice and pizza). After all the side dishes were served, they brought out the main course of sashimi, followed by a steaming soup made from the leftovers of the diced fishes. The food just kept coming and coming, and though the meal was a bit pricey, we certainly got what we paid for; I left the restaurant about as full as I’ve been in a long time.

After dinner, we took a bus back to the main terminal, then caught another bus and a long cab ride that eventually got us to Geoje-do, an island right off the coast, where we stayed for the night at a pension overlooking the ocean.

On Sunday morning, we left the pension and, after a bit of directional confusion, caught a bus to Dojangpo, one Geoje-do’s ports. It was a beautiful day again, and we enjoyed a delicious lunch of ramyun and onion rings, then walked down to Sinsundae, or “Wind Hill,” and took some awesome pictures with a backdrop of sharp rock cliffs and clear, blue water.

In the afternoon, we got on a little boat that took us around a bunch of the smaller islands right off the coast, large rocks rising from the ocean almost like the heads of giant sea creatures. The boat guided us past Haegeumgang (“Beautiful Rock Mountain,” as Rira kindly translated for me) and into this crevasse in one of the islands that gave the impression of travelling into an ocean cave, before landing at Oedo, another island that happens to be owned by one particular person who clearly invested a fair amount of money beautifying the place’s landscape in the mold of the Baha’i Gardens. The tour gave us an hour and a half to peruse the island, taking in the well-kept gardens and admiring the views of the ocean and surrounding islands. Oedo, with its sculpted bushes and miniature models of famous Greek and Roman statues, seemed a little out of place on a tour of Korea, but it was nonetheless a gorgeous and relaxing afternoon.

After catching the ferry back to Geoje-do, we headed for the main bus terminal and caught a ride back to Seoul that got us in just in time to catch the subway home. Though a short trip, I felt like I got to see and experience a lot of new things, from beautiful scenery to shellfish that I couldn’t tell you the names of if I tried. The people we met along our travelling were also particularly friendly and excited to see a foreigner—I got more than the usual number of greetings and gawks from random Korean children eager to show off their extensive English vocabularies of “hello.” Overall, it was a weekend to remember, for sure.

A little slice of the American Dream

For the last seven months or so, I have been living and working in South Korea. Doing that has led me to numerous interesting experiences and exciting events, many of which I’ve documented in this blog. There is one thing, however, that I’ve been dying to do basically since I landed in Asia: eat a deli sandwich.

This might seem like a rather mundane and altogether ordinary experience for those of you in the good ol’ U S of A, where the SUVS are built big and the deli meat flows like water after a pleasant spring rainfall. Here in Korea, though, the word “deli” does not exist. The closest thing I’ve eaten to a solid sandwich has come from Subway, and while I’m no enemy of Jared’s, after a while the three slices of meat you get there just don’t really cut it for me.

When my family came to visit me in December, they did so bearing with them bountiful amounts of dried dates and figs, all of which I was more than happy to take. But the one thing that I really wanted was a double-stuffed pastrami and tongue sandwich from Rubin’s, and unfortunately they didn’t think it would travel well on the 15 hour flight over here.

You might think I’m joking or exaggerating, but I have literally spent hours day-dreaming of reubens and coleslaw. This is serious business, people.

Last night I was out with some friends and ended up crashing on their couch, which I’ve been known to do on a rather regular basis. In the morning, I was about to head back to Pyeongchon when I heard an altogether unfamiliar and exciting word uttered in the apartment.

“Costco?” my friend asked. “Anyone feel like making a Costco run?”

Since coming here, I’d heard rumors from friends and acquaintances of the existence of the American mega-giant-super-store, but had never actually been myself. When my parents were here, they felt so bad for me and my American food deficiency that they offered to give up a day of sightseeing to take me there, but I felt too bad to let them do that. This was my first real opportunity to get access to a large variety of real American products in classic American-sized quantities.

“I’m down like Chinatown,” I said, probably a little too enthusiastically.

There are two Costco locations in the greater Seoul area, so we left for the one that is closest to my friends’ apartment—only a 6,000 won cab ride. As it turns out, there is actually a giant E-Mart right across the street, but apparently there are enough frugal-minded Korean shoppers to keep both in business.

Walking into Costco was kind of an eerie experience, almost like taking a step back into America, but not. In a lot of ways, the place resembled the Sam’s Club that I’m used to shopping at with my family back home in Worcester. A big, warehouse-style building with appliances and goods stacked dozens of feet to the ceiling. Greeters to welcome you into the establishment and check your receipts on the way out. Shopping wagons big enough to hold the grocery list for a small village.

At the same time, though, this Costco was very much Korean. To begin with, on a Sunday afternoon it was packed with Korean families doing their weekly, monthly, or yearly shopping (and I mean rush-hour-subway packed). If you thought it was hard to maneuver your way around a discount shopping center back home, try adding a few thousand people to the mix, all of whom seem to have very little sense for walking in any semblance of a straight line. Also, while the place was filled with many, many items that are almost impossible to find in any standard Korean supermarket (a 54-pack of rice crispy treats, for example), there were also plenty of Korean food staples in giant quantities as well—four pound packages of kimchi or giant containers of shelled oysters.

After grabbing a rather rushed lunch of giant pizza slices at the ridiculously crowded food court (a few Korean families stood hawk-eyed over us as we ate, waiting to snatch the table as soon as we were through, using their very hungry-looking children to guilt trip us into standing up quickly) we began our shopping spree. I made up my mind beforehand to only get those things I wouldn’t be able to find at my local E-Mart, and decided to go shopping cart-less to avoid any unnecessary purchases. In the end, my list of purchases was short but oh-so-sweet: a 3-lb. box of Honey Nut Cheerios, a 3-lb. bag of almonds, and the Holy Grail—an 8 oz. package of sliced turkey and a 2 lb. block of sharp cheddar cheese. Woooo! Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

A New Term

It’s Sunday night, and tomorrow marks the start of the new spring term, my third here in Korea. At this moment, I’m feeling a little bittersweet. On the one hand, I’m excited for the new term to start. I’m going to be teaching four upper level iBT classes, plus four lower-level regular classes, which should hopefully be a nice mix. Also, I’ve finally worked my way into getting Saturdays and Sundays off, so I’m going to have my first real weekend since I’ve been in Korea. That should give me some occasions to do a lot more travelling than I’ve gotten to so far, and with the weather turning in the right direction, that’ll hopefully make for some good times.

At the same time, though, I’m going to be a little sad to see this past term go. In the last month or so, I felt like I had really begun to make a solid connection with the students—in just about all of my classes—so it’s tough to know that I’m going to lose all of that and have to start over. I think one thing I’ve learned about teaching is that having a good relationship with your kids can go a long way, and at least for me, that takes time to build. I’m hoping that I will at least get some of the students I had this past term in my new classes, so that should help some in the adjusting period.

Before I go, I’ll leave you with a couple of funny “I’m in Korea” moments that I had this week:

1) On Tuesday, I had my day off, and because it was a beautiful day (60 degrees and sunny) I decided to take advantage of it and go to the zoo that is about 10 minutes away from Pyeongchon on the subway. I had a nice time walking around the park (although there were a bit too many bondaegi stands—those silkworm snacks—for my taste) and checking out the pretty impressive variety of animals they had. At one point, a young girl, probably 15 or 16, came up to me and asked me to take a picture. I smiled and told her, “Sure,” assuming that she was asking me to take one of her and her friend who was standing nearby. I soon realized, when got up close to me and handed the camera to her friend, that what she actually wanted was to take a picture with me. I’d heard of this phenomenon before, but it was still a bit strange to be approached for a picture by a random person whose sole purpose in asking me was so she could show the picture to her friends later and say, “Look at me with this white guy!” I felt a bit like the gorillas in the cage behind me.

2) On Thursday afternoon, I left my apartment and hailed a cab on the street outside for the ride to work. As soon as I got in, the cab driver turned around, noticed I was white, and got this huge smile on his face. Before I could even tell him where to go, he asked, “Hagwonga?” He was right, but I wasn’t that impressed with his prediction abilities, given that just about all white people in town work on the same street of hagwons as I do. As he pulled away, he started asking me questions about who I was and where I was from. Then, he did perhaps the strangest thing a cabbie has ever done to me in my life: he popped open the glove compartment, pulled out two clementines, and handed one to me. At first, I wasn’t really sure what to do—the ride to school is really only about 5 minutes from my place—but after a moment I regained my composure, took the fruit from him, and thanked him for his generosity. I didn’t know if it’d be rude to eat it in the car, but when he started peeling his, I did the same and ate it right there in the back of the cab. When we got to school, I had the urge to give him a little extra money in appreciation for the snack, but since the concept of tipping doesn’t really exist in this country, I wasn’t going to have much luck even if I wanted to.

Quote of the Week

While I was sitting at my desk the other day grading some essays in one of my iBT 2 Reading and Writing classes, I came across a sentence that made me laugh. Literally. At this point, I had the strong urge to save the quote so I could show it to someone else in the future. This has happened a number of times in my various classes before, either with something a student wrote or said, but I've never actually followed up on it.

So here I am, presenting the quote of the week from a student Kelly (since that’s her fake English name, I figure I’m preserving her anonymity enough). In essay about whether it’s better to learn a foreign language at home or in a native-speaking country abroad, Kelly wrote:

"However, if they visit to U.S.A. or other English-using country, may be the students can't understand lots of word, because they didn’t learn slang, joke or shorten word such as BFF (Best Friend Forever)."

And who said American culture never taught anyone anything?! Yeah. I’ll leave it at that.

On the Road

So as I mentioned in my last post, last weekend was the Lunar New Year, which for me meant a real four day vacation from my job dancing in front of classrooms full of Korean children. To take advantage of that, I booked myself a roundtrip train ticket and three nights at a hostel in Busan, which is Korea’s second biggest city at around 3.5 million people, and is situated on the Southeastern coastal tip of the country, about as far as you can get from Seoul without getting in the water or passing through a communist dictatorship.

On Sunday morning, tired and terribly sore from hiking the day before, I took the subway to Seoul station on boarded the KTX bound southward. This is Korea’s version of the “bullet train,” and apparently goes as fast as 300 km/hr, so it can get you places in a hurry. The train was very clean and pretty comfortable (although I could have used a little more leg room), and I slept most of the way there. As it turned out, I probably could have gotten away without paying for tickets in either direction; no one ever asked me to look at my ticket, but the train was pretty packed so having a seat reserved was worth it.

The first place I headed was my hostel, Zen Backpackers, to drop off my bag and get my bearings for the city a bit. The place was a little difficult to find, but located in Seoyeon, a very busy neighborhood downtown. There, I met June, the innkeeper of what was basically a converted apartment, and resident spiritual guide and horoscope reader.

I’d actually made up my mind earlier in the day that the first place I would visit in Busan was going to be Hoesimcheong, the biggest jimjilbang (Korean spa) in all of Asia, so that’s where I spent Sunday afternoon/evening. It was my second experience at one of these places, the first being with Howie while he was here visiting in Seoul. That experience was so relaxing that when I read about this place in my guidebook, I knew I had to check it out.

Hoesimcheong is five stories tall and includes in it a huge same-sex spa area with about ten different heated pools, multiple sauna rooms, and even an outdoor pool that I checked out but didn’t spend much time in, on account of the significant shrinkage. There is also a full restaurant, snack bar, work out area, and lounge with big-screen televisions. While the experience involved seeing more naked Korean men than one should ever have to face in a lifetime, it was really, really relaxing, especially for my aching body.

On my way back to the hostel, I stopped and walked around Seoyeon, which by that point in the night was a pretty happening place. I was hungry, so decided to grab some dinner at one of the many food stalls on “food street,” and ended up settling on a couple plates of sundae, which is not ice cream in any form but rather beef intestines stuffed with rice. It might not sound good, but served with a large spoonful of samchang (bean paste sauce) it was really quite delicious.

On Monday, I started out the morning by visiting Beomeosa Temple, which according to the guidebook was the tourist attraction. Afterward, I took the subway to Haeundae Beach, which is the largest and most popular in the city. I’ve seen pictures of the place during the summer, when it gets jammed packed with beach umbrellas and sun-crazed Koreans, but on this day (with the temperate around 40° Fahrenheit) it was much less crowded. I took about an hour and just walked up and down the beach, enjoying the fresh air, the views of the water, and the feel of the sand under my shoes.

At a certain point while I was walking, I stopped to listen to a group of older Korean men who had set up on the boardwalk with a guitar, microphone and speaker, and were singing what seemed to be some Korean classics (based on the old women standing, swaying, and singing along with them in a group nearby). As I did this, one of the men motioned to me, holding out a small paper cup of soju. Not wanting to disrespect him and interested in having a little adventure, I graciously accepted the shot from the man and sat down next to him.

Over the next hour or so, I proceeded to have a long conversation with the man while we drank, and drank, and drank some more. In the end, we’d each downed about a bottle of soju a piece, and our conversation had degraded to smiles, hand gestures, and head nods. The guy was already fairly drunk when I sat down, and while he spoke some English, me going shot for shot with him didn’t particularly assist his linguistic capabilities. Nevertheless, we were able to get along really well, and we spoke about a wide range of topics, from life in America to his time in the Korean army to subjects that I’ll keep reserved for less polite company. I’d say overall I understood about 60% of what he said, with that number dipping as the soju bottles were emptied and tossed to the ground. Still, it was a really enjoyable experience, and I now can finally say that I got drunk with some real ajashis, something I’ve been meaning to do basically since I got here and saw my first Korean man stumbling home in his well-pressed suit.

Su and I made quite the pair, I’d say. We even ended up exchanging numbers, and he called me later that night and was planning to take me out until before his wife got home and apparently ruined the fun. Instead, I grabbed dinner and a beer with Osman, a really nice Greek guy I’d met at the hostel the day before.

On Tuesday, I again went out to get in my last day of touring in Busan. I visited Jagalchi Market, which is a huge, multi-story seafood market right on the water, apparently the biggest in all of Korea. I spent some time watching shoppers haggle for fish and old women skinning sea snakes, then wandered around Gukje, a huge outdoor market just opposite Jagalchi. I even bought a pair of pants, about the second article of clothing I’ve found here that fits me (and that’s only somewhat of an overstatement). Afterward, I walked to Yongdusan Park and took the elevator up into Busan Tower, at the top of which I got a pretty awesome birds-eye view of the whole city.

In the late afternoon, I grabbed a bus from that area to Taejongdae, which is a big park right on the edge of the ocean with an observatory where I got some beautiful pictures of the sun setting behind the rock cliffs above the water. For dinner, I returned to Jagalchi determined to have at least one seafood meal before I left the city. I found a restaurant near the main market, hailed the woman working there, pointed at the tank of eels outside, and then went in to take my seat. I ended up with a sizable feast of vegetables cooked with the eel in a hot sauce that had me sweating profusely from the forehead, reminiscent of my first days in the country.

Before going back to the hostel, I capped off the night with a visit to Gwangalli, another one of the city’s famous beaches. By that time in the night it had gotten pretty cold, but the feeling of the wind on my face, the sound of the waves, and the sight of the city’s nightscape in the distance was a perfect way to bring my vacation to a close.

And there I was, on the KTX early the next morning and back in the classroom by the afternoon. Overall, it was a fantastic long weekend, my first real significant trip in Korea. Busan was a beautiful city, big but with a small town feel. I figured that I’d use this vacation as a feeler for how well I would do travelling on my own, and I think I realized (on the advice of Lorie) that as long as your open to meeting new people and trying new things, travelling on your own can be a really unique, really rewarding experience.

A Walk in the Woods

For those of you keeping Asian score, this weekend marked the beginning of the Lunar New Year. Now that might not mean much to you, but in Korea, it’s a pretty big deal; actually, it’s the most important holiday of the year (or so I’ve been told by the natives). As such, we had classes cancelled from Saturday through Monday, an unprecedented amount of time off for Chungdahm standards. Adding in the fact that one of my regularly scheduled days off is Tuesday, I had a four day weekend on my hands. It’s hard for me to express what that meant to me, but suffice it to say that it’d been a while since I really felt off from work.

Over the week or so before the holiday began, people at work and some other friends in Seoul had been sending emails and facebook messages about organizing some kind of getaway. Unfortunately for us, though, we didn’t find out about our short vacation until a little while ago, and the Lunar New Year’s standing as the most celebrated holiday of the year also happens to make this weekend the busiest travel time of the year. Because the holiday is celebrated with family in people’s hometowns, I was told that the traffic out of Seoul would be absolutely terrible—think Thanksgiving on some kind of hardcore drug. Of course, this meant that all of the buses and trains out of the city on Saturday and returning on Monday were booked, so that basically ruled out local traveling for most of my friends.

But like I said, this weekend was the vacation time that I’d been waiting for, and I wasn’t about to let that slip away because other people couldn’t travel. My long weekend made traveling much more flexible for me, so on Thursday night, I said, “to hell with everyone else and their indecision- I’m getting out of this damn city!” and proceeded to book train tickets to Busan—Korea’s second largest city on the Southeast coast—for Sunday through Wednesday morning.

That still left all of Saturday to do something fun and not at all related to teaching English, so I made plans with some friends to head to Bukhansan National Park, which is actually technically still in Seoul-proper, and go hiking for the day.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but hiking is an extremely popular pastime in Korea, probably the most popular recreational activity. If your ever here and ride the subway for even a short period of time, you are bound to see some older men or women decked out in full hiking gear: boots, pants, jackets and hats made by Northface or some cheap knockoff off (and there are a lot of those, including some funny ones like “Redface”), plus backpacks and always hiking poles. I’ve always found it mildly entertaining to watch these people; the first time I saw them back in August, I assumed they were some intense backpackers or something, but then the frequency of sightings made me realize that it was standard operating procedure. Koreans tend to take everything they do seriously, especially when that comes to sporting paraphernalia (the swim instructors at my pool wear full wet suits while teaching).

When we arrived at the park on Saturday morning, we were of course surrounded by hoards of Koreans of all shapes and sizes—well, mostly short and stout—completely equipped for some intense hiking. Of course, us North Americans (wow, look how politically correct I've become) were all dressed in jeans and tennis shoes, expecting the hike to be a gentle walk in the park. As we started up the trail, passing hiking gear stores and small shops selling snacks, soju, and makgeoli (Korean rice wine), we started to realize that the layer of snow which had build up the night before was making for some slippery going.

We stopped to get our bearings, and noticed that just about all the Koreans passing by us were wearing metal spikes on their shoes to give them better traction in the snow. Of course, I again chalked this up to the Korean tendency to take everything overboard where equipment is concerned, but when Andrew decided to take the plunge and bought a set of the spikes for only 5,000 won, the rest of us decided that it would probably make for a worthwhile investment to get a pair for ourselves.

And boy were we glad we did that; this was no gentle walk in the park. Apparently, Koreans don’t really believe in switchbacks, so while the trail was only about 4 kilometers from base to summit, it was basically all straight up hill. The icy, snowy weather made the trail infinitely more treacherous, but we were taking our time either way- all of us were very winded almost the entire way up. The hike up Baugundae Peak (at 836 meters, the highest point in the park), while strenuous, was well worth it; all along the way, we weaved through snow-covered forest that glistened in the afternoon sunlight- it was really a beautiful trail.

Near the top, the path got progressively steeper, more slippery, and significantly scarier. I’m not one to back away from a challenge, but for most of the last kilometer or so, we were basically hoisting ourselves up the mountain by metal cables installed along the trail, and the steepness of the mountain coupled with the weather conditions made slipping or falling an extremely undesirable outcome.

Finally, though, we made it to the summit—which was an area only about 20 square feet cordoned off by more metal cables—and enjoyed a breathtaking view of the mountains around us and the city below us. The nervousness in our guts and the burning in our calves and quads from the way up were all worth it.

In the end, I made a couple of worthwhile conclusions from the experience. First of all, I realized that I was not giving Koreans enough credit for the intensity of their hiking prowess. All along the trail behind and in front of us were little kids and older ajashis and ajumas, some of whom I really couldn’t understand how they’d made it up the mountain in one peace. I have a newfound respect for Koreans, their hiking, and their tendency to spare no expense when dressing for the occasion. We certainly wouldn’t have made it up the mountain without those metal spikes, so I have to tip my cap to them in that respect. Being outside in the fresh air out of the city (or at least what felt like it was out of the city) made me remember how much I like that sort of thing and made me promise myself I would try to do more outdoor activities while I’m in this country. Koreans love hiking for a reason- there is plenty of opportunity, even within a day trip of a mega-city like Seoul.

I still need to recount my adventures in Busan, but I will save that for my next blog entry, when I have a little more time and a little more energy to do some more writing.

The Rudnicks Do Korea

Yes, I know. Just when you thought I’d given up on blogging, or maybe just fallen asleep on the toilet for the last month, I come back in to woo you with another entry. I’ve been meaning to sit down and write for the last week or so, but every time I do, it just seems a lot easier to watch Arrested Development or The Sopranos instead, so here we are.

Another, slightly better excuse for part of my delay in writing is the fact that my family was here to visit me! That’s right, a Rudnick Reunion, albeit incomplete, in Anyang, South Korea. Probably couldn’t have predicted that one a year ago if I’d tried. In any case, my Mom, Dad, and Johanna arrived first, followed by little brother Howie, who came to join us about five days later. Having them here was great- it was the first time I’d seen my family since the beginning of August (other than through pixilated images on skype), and when I met them at their hotel in Indeogwon, I don’t think I’ve smiled so wide in a long time.

They arrived late on a Friday night (better known as Christmas Day, to most people), assisted from the airport by an outstandingly friendly cab driver—after he dropped them off that night, he called me on my cell just to make sure they got into the hotel room okay and to wish me a Merry Christmas—who they ended up using to get Howie from the airport later in the week, as well as on their return trip when they left.

After we dropped off their luggage (and there was a lot of it), our first official business in Korea was to go to the Baskin Robbins down the street for some late-night ice cream (something that probably wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows my family even a little, or at least taken a peek inside our freezer at home). Walking with my family on the streets of Korea gave me a very strange sensation. I guess I’d had these two worlds—home and Korea—a lot more separated in my head than I’d thought, so to see them interacting for the first time was odd, to say the least. It made me feel like I was in a foreign country again in a way I hadn’t experienced since my first few weeks here. I got used to it eventually, but those first few minutes were very disorienting.

I won’t bore you with the details of their whole itinerary, but suffice it to say that we had a pretty busy couple of weeks, mostly sightseeing (temples, palaces, museums, and markets), eating, shopping (probably a lot more than my Dad would have liked) and sipping hot drinks at coffee shops around the city to escape the blistering cold that coincided with their arrival. I did get them to try a bit of the local cuisine (both Mom and Dad became fans of bibimbap by the time they left, while Johanna preferred the kimbap and Howie mostly stuck to bulgogi), but I ate more Italian and Mexican food while they were here (Yeah, Mexican in Korea- it’s actually not that bad, assuming your standards aren’t too high) than I had in my whole five months prior in this country. It was a nice change of pace for me, and made me realize how used to Korean food I’ve gotten.

Like I said, just having them here was really, really nice- a great reminder that, yes, home does still exist somewhere out there. Even the arguments and slight bickering that comes with any Rudnick gathering had me smiling. Plus, part of their massive amount of luggage was an assortment of items for yours truly- an awesome Kendrick Perkins sweatshirt from Lavi (who was sorely missed, I should mention) for Chanukah, a couple of pairs of pants that actually fit me, and a large bulk of dried figs and dates that I’d been salivating over for months. I guess it’s funny what you miss when you’re away.

As a final note, I want to give a shout-out to my little brother and his brand-spanking new blog, hrudnick.blogspot.com, where he'll be accounting for his adventures and probably more than a few misadventures on his semester abroad in Cape Town, South Africa. While he probably could have been a tad more creative with the name, it's sure to be a hit. Plus, as the saying goes, "two Rudnicks traveling the world and writing about it is better than one."