Memoirs of a Giant, Caucasian Tourist

I arrived back in Anyang a few days ago after a weeklong trip to Japan with Rira. I had an amazing time with her, as I usually do, but it was especially exciting to finally get to see Japan. It had been on my list basically since I left the States for Korea. We decided to contain our trip to the Kansai region, and ended up visiting Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe. Rather than provide a minute-by-minute account of the trip, I’ll fill you in on a few memorable moments that sum up my impressions of the Japanese Empire.

• Japan is expensive. I left for our trip with the sneaking suspicion that this was the case. And I was right. Unfortunately, our trip coincided with one of the worst exchange rates for either the dollar or won to yen in a long time, so both my American and Korean money were seriously disadvantaged. I have a knack for picking the worst times to be a tourist (Europe, 2008 being the other primary example). I guess I should just stick Southeast Asia, where my money will always be valuable. At least until China decides to collect from that multi-trillion dollar debt we owe them. But that isn’t going to happen, is it? Anyway, where was I? Right, things are expensive in Japan. Meals, hotels, tourist sites, transportation, just about everything. I don’t regret taking the trip at all, but a week in Japan cost me about the same as a month in Korea.

• Japanese people speak very little English. This was what Rira was telling me from the moment we arrived and struggled for about an hour to find our hotel. Being used to Korea and a lack of people who understand anything I say, I didn’t really notice at first. But as the week went on, I realized more and more that very few people spoke or even understood English. In Kyoto, which is a huge tourist destination, things were much better, but in Osaka and Kobe, we had a fair amount of trouble communicating with people. Apparently, this is a well known stereotype of Japan, but one I was unaware of before the trip.

• Japanese women freak me out. Obviously, not all Japanese women. Just the ones with bleach blonde hair, long fingernail extensions, and face make up that make them look like a strange cross between a cartoon character and the evil doll Chucky. Also, the ones who dress like they are working in a 19th century brothel. This might sound like a horrible and bigoted thing to say. Which is why I prefaced my description with the disclaimer that not all Japanese women look like this. Just about 96% of the ones between the ages of 15 and 45.

• Japan has a highly-advanced food service industry. Most Americans would be amazed at the fact that all tables at most restaurants have electronic bells that, when rung, bring the immediate service of a waiter or waitress. But that is old hat for me; it’s standard operating procedure in Korea, too. But Japan has raised the bar. Our first night in Osaka, we went to a restaurant to get some okonomiyaki, referred to as the Japanese version of the pancake or pizza, but in reality resembling neither in the slightest. Our waitress didn’t speak any English, and the menu was all in Japanese. But, each table was equipped with electronic pen that, when pointed at the menu, automatically ordered to the kitchen whatever you wanted to eat. Pretty awesome. But wait, there’s more! In Kyoto, we visited a popular sushi establishment known for its low prices (only 105 yen per plate). Plates of various types of sushi are placed on a rotating conveyor belt that travels around the restaurant, and patrons are welcome to pick up anything they’d like to eat as it passes by. Again, this isn’t that miraculous—they have these in Korea and in many other countries as well. But this place, in addition to the conveyor belt, has a personal computer screen (think international flights on nice airlines) for each customer, where you can order any type of sushi, appetizer, soup, or drink on the menu as well. But here is the catch: what you order isn’t delivered to you by a waiter. Instead, there is a separate conveyor belt above the normal one, on which rides a small train. When it’s ready for you, your personal order is placed on the train by the chefs in the kitchen, and then delivered directly to your seat, electronically. If this doesn’t sound cool, trust me, you don’t hear sound well. Or I’m bad at describing sushi delivery trains. I took a video of our own order in action, which I will post for your viewing pleasure.

• Kobe beef is ridiculously, miraculously awesome. Before leaving, I had my weekly skype session with my parents [insert appropriate amounts of “ooh’ing and ahh’ing” here]. When my Dad found out that we would be travelling to Kobe, he offered for us to enjoy a meal of the city’s renowned beef, on him. I was very happy to oblige this request. We picked out a restaurant that was listed in both my English and Rira’s Korean guidebook. It took us a while to find the building, and when we went in, we weren’t sure if it was still open; there were no other customers in the restaurant. Nonetheless, the hostess ushered us in and sat us at the main eating counter. At a traditional Kobe beef restaurant like this one, the food is prepared in front of you on a flat metal grill. Because we were the only ones in the whole place (and continued to be for the entire night), we were basically treated to a personalized, private dinner party. And as I mentioned, the food was ridiculously, miraculously awesome. Just watching the chef prepare the vegetables and grill the beef to perfection was a show in itself. But biting into that first piece of meat, I had to pinch myself to make sure I hadn’t died and gone to carnivore heaven. The meat melted in my mouth—I barely needed to chew it. There were a plethora of sauces and accoutrement spices to go with it, and the chef guided us on all the best combinations of soy sauce, garlic, pepper, and mustard. This was an amazing piece of beef, cooked by a guy who knew exactly what he was doing. I can’t imagine a better way to have experienced the legend of Kobe bovine.

• Seeing geishas in person was cooler than I thought it would be. Being the worldly and well-educated person that I am, the extent of my knowledge of Japanese culture basically consisted of anime and “Memoires of a Geisha.” In Kyoto, the neighborhood of Gion is well known as being the hot spot of geisha activity today, which has become an exceedingly rare and dying breed of woman. Luckily, we happened into the neighborhood right after sunset, when most geishas leave their homes and make their ways to their appointments for the evening. In the course of just a few minutes, we saw at least ten authentic geishas, walking alone, in small groups, or accompanied by a formally dressed man. It was pretty awesome, almost like stepping back into a different time. And despite the crowds of tourists literally stalking these women to get pictures with them, they continued on their way as if they were completely immune to the attention (which at this point, I imagine they are). One geisha even turned to me and bowed politely as I snapped a photo of her.

Overall, Japan was a really interesting place to visit, especially given my experience as a rather well seasoned expatriate in Korea at this point. I was worried that Japan would be very similar to Korea, but this was definitely not the case. It has a very unique style, attitude, and culture that is really nothing like Korea.

When I got up on Tuesday morning and got onto the subway for work, I was rather bluntly reminded of this. A subway car filled with sour businessmen and pushy ajumas greeted me unceremoniously, and I suddenly wished that I was back in Japan for just a little while longer. But then, at lunch that afternoon, I experienced one of those moments that made me happy to be right where I was. Eating budae-jigae (a spicy Korean stew of veggies, ramen noodles, and assorted processed meats) with a few of my coworkers, I happened to be sitting next to a pair of older Korean women. When one of the women noticed that neither my coworker or I were particularly adept at serving the stew, she leaned over my lap, grabbed the bowl and ladle from my hands, and proceeded to serve my lunch to me, all the while instructing me (in pure Korean, mind you) on the importance of getting just the right amount of meat, vegetables, and soup into my bowl. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. Where else would a random stranger at a restaurant decide it was her duty to serve you your lunch? Only in Korea.

A New Year's Resolution

Well, since I've spent the beginning of what seems like my last 300 or so blog posts lamenting my latest failure to post, I'm going to utilize a different strategy today. I'm going to pretend like there is nothing wrong with keeping a blog, and then not writing an entry in it for nearly half a year. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do...

Okay, moving on! I find myself lying on my bed in my apartment in Anyang, enjoying the end of a very lazy Sunday. It's cold and snowing outside, which means two things: 1) for all of you who thought Korea was a tropical peninsula, you've got another thing coming, and 2) my meals today consisted of pasta and a nice cream roll from Paris Baguette.

It does seem like it's been a long time since I've written. Part of this is a direct result of the fact that it has, indeed, been a long time since I've written. But I think that is also true because these last few months have really flown by. As I mentioned in my previous post, I am now working in the R&D department at Chungdahm, which means an office job at a computer. There are some definite drawbacks to this position in comparison to teaching, but overall, I think it suits me and my skill-set a lot better than teaching did. As it turns out, teaching can be really, really exhausting, especially when you are doing it for six hours at a time. So while my new schedule means that I go to bed around the same time as most grandparents, I do feel a lot less stressed out these days than I did when I was cramming kids for the iBT.

Other than the new job, not a great deal has changed in my life. Being in Korea has officially become normal, which actually feels really, really good. Just a couple weeks ago, I celebrated my 300 day "anniversary" with Rira (in Korea, relationships are counted by the days not months), which is pretty remarkable. I am still very, very happy with her, and realize that being with her has completely changed the way I think about Korea, Koreans, and Korean culture. Being in a relationship with someone from as different a culture and background as Jewish and Korean are is as good of a crash-course in cultural exchange as I can imagine. I would highly recommend it to anyone, assuming you go into it with good intentions and for the right reasons.

On the near horizon lies Lunar New Year. I will be travelling again, but this year I will have a partner, and will be crossing the ocean to Japan, which has been on my list of places to visit since I first arrived in Korea. I will have to let you know how that goes, either immediately after the trip is over or six months later, depending on the strength of my blogginess. As a new year's resolution, Rira and I have decided to try and read 100 books between the two of us in the coming year. So far, so good: I have nailed down three already (see below) via ebooks on my smartphone, and have just become the proud owner of a new Kindle. We can only hope that this voracious consumption of literature makes me a wiser, more entertaining blogger.

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.