The Pyeongchon 10k

Ladies and gentlemen, as of today the Pensive Sophist would like to add a new bullet-point to his resume: runner of a 10K! Who’s got two thumbs and has run a 10K? This guy [me smugly pointing my two thumbs at myself]! It didn’t go down in quite the way I imagined it would, but still, I will go to bed tonight having completed the first long-distance race of any kind in my life.

As you know, a few weeks ago I was persuaded by my friend Anna to attempt a 10k with her this weekend. The plan was to run in the Nike Human Race, which is a 10k that Nike has organized in cities all around the world to try and get people to get out and run on a global scale. By the time we had heard about the race, the registration for the local one in Seoul had already been closed, but we were told that we could still run the race as long as we weren’t worried about timing ourselves (and not getting one of the cool Human Race t-shirts, as well). For me, that really wasn’t a big deal- honestly, my only concern was being able to finish the race all the way through without having to stop to walk, keel over, pass out, etc.

In the last week, I had been upping my workouts to try and push myself to run further, as evidenced by the gloat at the end of my last blog entry. I was feeling pretty good about the prospect of the race until yesterday, when I got a text message from Anna: the race was actually on Saturday (not Sunday) and was scheduled for 4:00 pm instead of the morning (I work on Saturday evenings). Needless to say, I was pretty bummed. I’d been getting myself amped up for the race in the last few days; we had a small contingent of friends who were going to go to cheer us on with signs, and had even made plans to make our own independently-designed matching t-shirts to wear on race day. The prospect of running with thousands of other people was a little daunting, but also exciting- I wanted to feel like I was really running in a race, not just exercising.

After getting the bad news, I took a little while to mull over my options. Skipping work to run the race would probably get me fired (or at least send me in that direction), so I ruled that out pretty quickly. I could just not run at all- after all, it had only been about two weeks since I decided to do it in the first place, and now I wouldn’t have to push myself. But that idea just didn’t sit right with me. I spent some time browsing the Nike website and saw how much they were encouraging anyone who wanted to go out and run the 10k that day, no matter whom they were with or where they were.

“Screw it!” I told myself. I am going to run this race, whether or not there is anyone there to watch me, cheer me on, or run alongside me. I went mapmyrun.com, a site I use to keep track of my workouts that I was introduced to over the summer by my friend Bentzi, who as a marathoner himself has been a big inspiration for me in the last couple of months (I wear the blue short-shorts he gave me from his marathon everyday when I run), and mapped out a route in my neighborhood: 6.23 miles, or 10 kilometers [http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/united-states/ma/worcester/256125628290026119]. I went on itunes and spent a fair amount of time picking out a playlist for the run, trying to organize it to give me some boosts of musical energy when I thought I would need them most.

And this morning, I woke up, got out of bed, stretched, slapped myself in the face a few times, and on my way out the door looked into the mirror and told myself, “Mark, the next time you see yourself you are going to have finished a 10k.” And I did.

The run went about as smoothly as I could have hoped for, at least physically; there were a couple of times when I wasn’t paying attention and accidently crossed the street when I didn’t have to, but really that was all. I tried to store up energy so I would make sure I’d be able to finish the race, but by the end I was still feeling strong, and definitely could have gone longer if I had wanted to. Before the race, I set a goal for myself to finish in 55 minutes, based on how fast I’ve been running recently (I usually average about an 8:40 mile). I finished the 10k in 54:42, which works out to an 8:48 mile, so I was very pleased with myself, especially considering how much energy I still had at the end.

As I came to a stop at the end of the race, there was no tape to break at the finish line, no crowd of screaming observers, no friends to cheer me on. I didn’t get a shirt to commemorate the day, and no one watching me running today probably even knew that I was running a 10k. Despite all that, do I still feel like I ran a race? Hell yes, I do! That was the Pyeongchon leg of the 2009 10k Human Race. And I did it.

Korean Zionists Say the Darndest Things

I continued my very newly formed routine of using my Wednesday off to go into Seoul and do a little exploring of the city yesterday. This time, though, I had an ulterior motive as well: to begin finding a solution to my whole “way too much free time, and not enough to do” problem. I met a group of friends in the city at what was basically a mall of musical instruments and equipment, and with the help of my friend Kevin (the resident expert) purchased myself a guitar! Teaching myself guitar has been one of those things that I’ve told myself I was going to do for a long, long time. When I was in high school, I bought myself a guidebook for lefties, but don’t think I ever opened it. At the beginning of this summer, I told myself again that I would try and teach myself on my brother’s mini guitar at home, but when I found it and realized it was very much out of tune, I basically gave up. It sat it my room until I left for Korea, haunting me as an unkept promise. So for 80,000 won, I figured, “Hell, learning guitar might be just what the doctor ordered for my Korean listlessness.” I guess we’ll have to wait and see if that is true or not.

What makes for a much better story, though, is what happened afterward. We left the mall and were heading toward a park, guitar in tow, when we were stopped by an old Korean man on the street. Any white person who’s been to Korea (and probably most other places in Asia, as well) knows that getting stopped, questioned, interrogated, or hassled on the street simply because you are, well, white, is a not-too-uncommon phenomenon. There is something strangely exciting about being a physical and visual oddity while walking down the street, as long as you’re able to absorb the unbelieving stares of children and the occasional scowl of an elderly woman or two without taking it too personally.

This particular man began the conversation by asking us where we were from. When we told him we were from the United States and Canada, he then explained to us that he was a person who “studies mankind,” and so wanted to know where our families were originally from. When I told him, “Eastern Europe,” he then asked if I was Jewish, to which I hesitantly replied, “Yes,” not quite sure but interested in what his reaction would be.

When the man heard those words, he basically erupted in excitement. “Jewish!” he said. “I love Jewish people!” With a huge smile on his face, he grabbed me hard by the shoulder and began explaining his deep affection for the Jewish people. He reached up to my face and put his fingers on the crest of my nose, examining its size and explaining to me and the others that I had what was according to him a classically-shaped Jewish nose (yes, apparently that stereotype is alive and well, even in Korea). He started singing Hava Nagila, at which point I really couldn’t help but join in for a few seconds.

The man was particularly interested in talking about Israel, though. “Israel and Korea are the same,” he told me, comparing their histories and each country’s relationship with its neighbors (Israel with the Arabs, Korea with the Chinese and Japanese) and explaining that both had to fight for their respective freedom. He told me that he very much admired Golda Meir for her strength and toughness. The man also said that the Hangul people (which is how you say “Korean” in Korean) and Jewish people were “one,” and then asked me how I thought he could help Israel in the best way. I was pretty taken aback by the question (and frankly by the whole interaction), but tried to think on my feet and told him that the best thing he could do would be to spread the word to his Korean friends about how good of a place Israel is (trying to explain Israel Bonds or the JNF just didn’t seem practical at that moment). Meanwhile, the man had grabbed hold of my arm and kept a firm grip for the length of the conversation. After a certain point, I could tell that my friends weren’t as intrigued by the interaction as I was, so I told the man it was nice to meet him and bid him goodbye.

It’s tough to say whether this was a more contemplative experience than doing Tashlich in the Han River, but it was definitely more surprising. Having a conversation in broken English about Judaism and Israel with an old, probably somewhat drunk Korean man is not something I really expected I’d do during my time in Korea, but then again, I think I’ve come to realize that expectations are not a necessarily useful tool in a place as foreign as Korea is to me.

As a final note, I went running tonight with the intention of getting my regular workout in, as well as officially beginning my short-term training for the unofficial 10k I’m pretty sure I’ll be running in a week and a half’s time. I wasn’t feeling particularly energetic when I left, but about a mile and a half or so into the run, I got a sudden burst of energy, and was able to run for just about the entire length of the Chili Peppers playlist on my ipod nano, which worked out to be a little more than 50 minutes and just over 5.5 miles. This is the longest I think I’ve ever run straight—without stopping or walking at some point in the middle—so that, coupled with the fact that I was tired but not completely dead at the end, made me pretty confident that I at least won’t have any trouble finishing the 10k. I’ve found that with running, I’m at the stage that I’m physically capable of more than I think I am, so it’s really just about putting mind over matter. And thus, I leave you with my self-indulgent shout-out for the day.

Smells like fish...I mean feet...I mean fish...

Hello out there! So, as seems to becoming a recurring trend, it’s been a while since I’ve written last, but I figured that my last quick spurt of posts would hold you over alright. Things here have been going pretty well for me. I’ve settled in nicely at work, so the teaching is getting to be pretty easy (if not a bit mundane). Two of the Interview classes that I teach (and honestly, probably my two favorites) have gotten cancelled, which means I’m down to teaching only five a week, or 15 hours. If you are saying to yourself, “wow, that isn’t very many hours, Mark must have a ton of free time!!” then you are absolutely right- it’s not, and I do.

I’ve still been struggling a bit with the whole quest to find something to fill my time. I was talking to a new friend the other day about running, and she told me that she was going to run a 10k in Seoul in the coming months, so I’m thinking about trying to work toward that. I’ve been running about 5 or 6 times a week pretty consistently since I’ve been here, so I feel like I’m in good shape to attempt a 10k, but I would need to start building up my distances; I usually only run a couple of miles, sometimes because I get tired but sometimes because I start to get a little bored and end up convincing myself I’m tired. I’m not sure how much the idea of running a race in the city smothered by thousands of Koreans really appeals to me, but at least it would give me something to work toward, and the first time I put my relatively new running routine to the test.

In any case, here is a story about another one of those, “Yeah, as it turns out I really am in Korea” moments: On Sunday, I was hanging out with a bunch of friends at their apartment in Seoul proper (the Seoulleong area) when we decided to head out for a visit to “Dr. Fish,” a place where you can go and soak your feet in tanks while dozens of little fish nibble at your dead skin. I’d heard about places like this from people who had already visited Korea before I left home, so it was definitely on my list of things to do. Based on descriptions from others and my own imagination, I had envisioned the place looking something like this: a bare, well lit room with steam coming up from the floor, soft Oriental music playing in the background, and a crew of traditionally dressed hajimas (older women) who would massage my shoulders as the fish took care of my feet.

Suffice it to say that I was a bit off. We got off the elevator and walked into the place to find…a coffee shop. And not just any coffee shop. A big, modernly designed coffee shop, packed with pastel colored fuzzy furniture, an all-you-can-drink coffee and all-you-can-eat bread buffet, and a menu of overly-priced drinks and gelato. The fish tanks were small and unassuming, pushed off to the side of the café and hardly noticeable if you weren’t looking for it. I was pretty shocked to realize that a fish-foot-massage parlor would be located inside a chic café, but I’ve come to learn that in Korea, the line between hip/modern and old-school/traditional is often hard to distinguish.

We ordered drinks (which we had to do to gain access to the buffet and the fish) and sat and talked for a while before heading over to the tanks. Once there, we disrobed (well, more like took our shoes off and rolled up our jeans, but I like that word a lot better) and were given 20 minutes to go at it. There were two different tanks, each of which was about six feet long, two feet wide, and a foot deep, and each containing two different sizes of fish: one with babies about an inch long, the other with slightly bigger ones, but still no more than a couple inches.

We started out at the bigger fish tank, and as soon as we dropped our feet into the water, the fish swarmed, going at the bottoms of our feet and between our toes with a ferocious tenacity. They especially liked my feet in particular, maybe because of their size but more likely because of the calluses I have on my toes and heels (Mmmm, tasty!). It took some getting used to for the first few minutes- definitely very ticklish, but actually pretty relaxing once I settled in. I can’t say the same for some of my friends who came with me, garnering some funny looks from the people sitting nearby because of their yelps and giggling from the fish-induced sensations. After about five minutes in the first tank, we moved to the baby-fish tank, which was pretty similar, although their biting felt more like a pins-and-needles effect than someone just trying to tickle your feet.

While I don’t think the fish really ate any of the skin off my feet, it was still a really interesting and surprisingly calming adventure, one that I promise to provide for anyone who decides to come visit me here (as if you needed any more incentive). To cap off the day in appropriate fashion, that night we headed to a huge wholesale fish market near the Jamsil area where we picked out a couple of large sole from a tank that were then cut up and prepared for us as sashimi and this ridiculously spicy (even for my quickly shifting standards) soup at a restaurant above the market. From fish to feet and back to fish; I guess it is true that what goes around comes around.

Midnight (or later...) Musings

Well, it is currently 2:01 in the AM standard Korean time, even though the timestamp on my blog will lie and try and convince you that it is some normal hour of a Tuesday afternoon. In the past couple of days, I have found myself eager to write, but not really sure what to write about. In actuality, the last couple of days I have started to realize just how much free time I have here. I’m only teaching 21 hours a week, and even with prep time for my classes, actual working hours work out to less than 30 hours. That leaves me with about 138 hours to kill every week (and yes, I did just do that math out in my head, just because I have the time) and only so many of those can be wasted lying around, wrapped in my floral-pattern blanket and pretending to sleep.

Basically, I realized, I need a hobby. I’ve been reading more in the last couple of weeks, which has been good, but just that hasn’t seemed to cut it. Then, there is the movies; I’ve been downloading at a torrid pace and have been watching something I haven’t seen from one of the thousands of top 100 lists out there on the internet (including The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Casino, Fargo, and 12 Angry Men, to name but a few). But again, while entertaining, watching a movie or TV show just isn’t the kind of stimulation that I’m looking for at the moment.

I’ve tried starting a short story or two, but keep getting stuck, maybe because I still don’t quite feel comfortable enough here to start writing about Korea like I really know the place. So tonight, I went back to my trusty political manifesto. After about an hour of writing and some real hard thinking, I realized that if I want to do it right, the project I originally envisioned is going to have to be a lot more involved. But maybe that’s a good thing- I do have the time, after all.

Well, the next episode of How I Met Your Mother just finished downloading, so I guess I should go try to fall asleep to that, but just a quick story before I sign off. I was teaching one of my Interview classes the other day and conducting a raucous discussion on the importance of physical appearance in Korean society. One of my students raised his hand and explained (in rather broken English) that people shouldn’t care about outward appearances, then told a fable to back up his opinion (good to hear, after spending 90% of the class reminding my students that all good opinions are built on a foundation of strong reasons!).

Now, this story might seem mundane or boring for my average reader, but here is where it gets interesting. The source of the story was…THE TALMUD!! That’s right! His explanation went a little like: “There is a story in the Talmud that says…” I nearly passed out right there in class. Of course, I couldn’t really understand either the moral of the story or what it was about, but I was pretty sure I’d heard the world “Talmud” right. When I asked the student where he’d seen or heard the story before, he looked at me like I was stupid. “What, Teacher? Everyone studies the Talmud here!” And just about all of his classmates started nodding their heads in agreement.

Apparently, the Talmud is as common a school book in Korea as The Great Gatsby is in America. “We all have a copy in our houses!” another student called out, holding her hands about six inches apart to demonstrate the thickness of the volume. It took me about 10 minutes to wipe the smile from my face. I’ve been telling this story to everyone that I can here, but because no one is Jewish they don’t seem to really understand the magnitude of this image of every little Korean boy and girl sitting curled up on a sofa with a mug of rice tea and a copy of the Talmud on their laps. I guess you learn something new every day.

Swine Flu Prophesies...

Well, I’d been in Korea for nearly a month and a half with little medical issues to speak of other than a little intestinal abnormalities, but anyone who has spent more than five minutes with me knows that is a pretty normal thing. Sooner or later, my luck was bound to run out, I guess, and it turned out to be sooner rather than later.

I woke up yesterday morning with a dry throat, but because I tend to sleep with my mouth open (a very arousing image, I imagine) that isn’t terribly uncommon for me. After going for my usual run and hitting the shower, I headed out for work. I only had one class to teach because my evening one was cancelled as a result of the middle school exam period this week, so I was looking forward to a relaxing evening. About an hour into my three hour lesson, my nose began to start running. Then, almost instantaneously, a headache kicked in. Before the end of class, I was thanking the gods that I would be done for the day after three hours, because I was beginning to feel downright crappy. After doing a little bit of post-class paperwork, I headed home, watched some online television, had a long-awaited Skype session with Lavi, and then went to bed. When I woke up this morning, the headache was still present in force, along with an increasingly runny nose, sore throat, body aches, and a general feeling of worsening crapiness.

Now before I go on, I should take a few moments and update you all on the current state of affairs at my school in regard to illness. Since I stepped foot in Korea, I don’t think I’ve gone a day without hearing or being told something about H1N1, the dreaded swine flu. Before even leaving the U.S., for a little while it looked like my plans for the year might have to be changed because of swine flu’s high level of contagion combined with Asian governments’ tendencies to over blow pandemic scares worse than your average 12 year old girl’s fear of spiders. One of the reasons I had to arrive in Korea so much earlier than I was scheduled to start teaching was because of the country’s mandatory 9-day quarantine period for all people entering its borders. Even around other new recruits, I was forced to wear a medical mask for the entire week of my training course.

And things haven’t gotten any better since then. At my school, all students are required to have their temperatures taken by this ridiculous heat-sensing machine that looks more than a little like the first-person view from the original Predator. All faculty (me, included, of course) are required to take our own temperatures upon our arrival at school each afternoon. Before class, we need to sign out a bag containing a hand-held thermometer and face-masks from the front office, and then in the middle of each of our classes we are expected to make rounds and take each students temperature for a second time. If anyone has a fever or looks sick, we have been given strict orders from the higher powers to send the student home immediately. If all of these details haven’t proven it to you already, they are taking the swine flu very seriously here; in my first few weeks on the job, I got more emails about H1N1 and temperature-taking policy than I did about teaching.

So you can imagine that when I woke up feeling just about the whole list of flu-like symptoms from the CDC homepage, I thought it might be a good idea to tell my school about it. Because today was supposed to be my off, I called my faculty manager and asked him what he thought I should do. He recommended I come into work to check my temperature and see if I had a fever, and then from there go see a doctor to get some medication. I couldn’t tell if it was just because we were speaking on the phone, but he didn’t sound all that concerned.

I met up with my friend Andy and biked to school, laboring much more than usual in my condition. At school, I went immediately to the faculty management office and took my temperature: 34.2° Celsius, which translates to roughly 93.5° Fahrenheit. Suspiciously low, but not abnormal for the not-a-so-good thermometer I was used to using there. The other faculty manager at school seemed to take the faulty thermometer’s word as gold, though, hurrying me out of the office and informing me that I didn’t have to worry about the flu. On my way to the stairs, I passed by the Predator thermometer, so figured I would try my luck with it to see how close of a reading it gave me to the first. When I put my face up to the meter, the temperature immediately shot up to 38.4° Celsius, or 101.1° Fahrenheit. The machine then began to beep loudly, and I almost hit the deck, assuming some kind of alien killing machine was going to come out from the supply closet and hunt me down like I was Carl Weathers. “Holy Crap!” I thought. “That isn’t such good news!”

It took a few minutes of conversation with one of the school staff members to figure out that apparently the machine wasn’t working right and had a habit of doing what it did to me. Phew.

Not quite sure about what my temperature was but at least relatively confident that it wasn’t as high as the Predator insisted, I headed down the street toward an area where I was told that there were a lot of medical offices, apparently some place I could find an internal MD. While the average person might not see a doctor for a common cold back home, they don’t sell any real medicine over the counter here, so you have to see a doctor, even for some Benadryl. Having not yet insured myself healthilogically, I was a bit concerned about what the cost of that procedure might be, but I was assured by some Canadians that it would be cheap, at least in comparison to the "ridiculously" high rates we pay in America (I guess that’s the price of freedom).

Using my newly acquired ability to actually read Korean, I located a medical office on the fifth floor of one of the buildings and went up to get seen. After an interesting and vague interaction with the women behind the front desk, I was seated and told that the price might be “very expensive…as much as 20,000 won! [$20]” and that I would have to wait 30 minutes. I happily agreed.

I sat down and waited. Everyone who was there in the room before me was seen. Then everyone who had come to sit and wait after I’d arrived was seen as well. It was becoming clear to me that my foreign status was acting as a roadblock for my chances of receiving some medical advice. Just as I was about to make a fuss, one of the nurses came over and told me I could go in to see the doctor.

I spent about 20 minutes sitting with the doctor in his office. From the beginning, he made it clear to me that he didn’t speak English very well (something he didn’t really have to tell me), and our conversation was certainly hampered by that fact. Still, he was a really nice guy and was clearly exerting a lot of effort to try and make sure he understood my symptoms and his recommendations, so I have to thank him sincerely for that. Basically, he told me that flu and the common cold have basically the same symptoms, so it would be hard for him to know if I really had the flu without me going to the local hospital to get a blood test. He prescribed me a two day dosage of five different medications and sent me on my way.

On my way out of the office, I stopped at the front desk to pay my bill. Based on the conversation I’d had originally with one of the nurses, I was expecting a tab of around 20,000 won. I took out my wallet, and the woman behind the counter said a number in Korean that I didn’t understand, then held up three fingers. 30,000? Okay, a little higher than she’d promised but still reasonable enough. I handed her my credit card and waited for the receipt. When she handed it to me and I looked at it, I almost fell over. The bill wasn’t 30,000 won; it was 3,000. As in roughly $2.50. For an uninsured visit to the doctor! I mean, how ridiculous is that? I’m not exactly sure what the pricetag would have been back home, but I have to imagine at least ten times that. I went across the hall and got my prescription filled for 5,600 won, bringing the grand total of my medical expenses for a rather nasty cold to…8,600 won. Wow. That is all I can say. Wowwy wowwy wow.

As it turns out, it probably is a good thing that they keep those cold drugs behind the counter; I’m not sure what exactly they gave me, but it took only three doses and about 12 hours for me to be feeling nearly symptom free from what I mentioned was a worse-than-average cold. Korea: the home of ridiculously cheap and potent healthcare services. Who knew?!

A very new year

This past weekend marked the beginning of the Jewish new year, and as a Jewish person I decided that I would do my best and celebrate the holiday as best as I could. Unfortunately, I work all day on both Fridays and Saturdays, so I was left to Sunday, the second day of the holiday, to do my celebrating.

To be completely honest, it wasn’t until a conversation with my parents a week or so ago that I even remembered that Rosh Hashanah was coming up. I guess this might provide some kind of hint as to the depth of my religious observance at the moment. In reality, though, I think the last year or so has represented the most dramatic change for my own personal religious involvement, and as a result has led to a serious change in the way that I look at Judaism and my relationship with it as a practical religion.

Despite those changes (and I imagine it’s probably fairly obvious in which direction those changes have pushed me on the observant<-->secular scale), I’ve felt a serious desire to reconnect Jewishly in the last week. I think part of that has a lot to do with the way that, at least for me, Judaism and especially the holidays has so much to do with family. The Jewish holidays are always a time that I love being home, with the familiar sounds of my brothers and sister arguing about something insignificant and the tantalizing smells of my mom’s chicken soup on the stove and brisket in the oven. And now, suddenly, I find myself thousands of miles away from all of that. Of course, being away at college the past four years meant that I wasn’t able to spend every holiday with my family, but even then there was definitely a different sense of distance.

For all these reasons, I was determined to find a Jewish service and meal somewhere in Korea. And who do you turn to when you’re a Jew somewhere very un-Jewish in the world? Chabad, of course! It took only a few minutes of browsing on the cyberweb to find out that there was indeed a Chabad House in Seoul, aka’ed as the JCC of Korea (swimming pool, workout facilities, and goyishe business ethic not included). When I read on their website that they would be hosting services and meals for both nights and days of the Rosh, I signed myself up for the second day.

Sunday morning rolled around, and I was up and out the door by 9 o’clock (very early for English-teacher-in-Korea-standard-time, mind you) to make the hour and a half trip up to Itaewon, where the Chabad House was located. Luckily, I had printed out every piece of map/direction information they gave on their website, because there was nothing resembling a sign or placard anywhere in the vicinity of the building. As I came up the stairs, I was welcomed by two white men standing outside wearing kippot, a sight whose strangeness is hard to explain to someone who has never lived in a place as different from their home as Korea is to mine.

While waiting for services to pick up again (as might be expected, a minyan is hard to come by around here), I got a couple of minutes to mingle with some of the people there- a bunch of other English teachers like me (we make up the majority of the Caucasian population in this country) as well as a couple of American army officers from the base nearby. After a few more stragglers made their way in, services began again, led by one of the rabbis present. The services, which lasted about two hours or so, weren’t particularly engaging, but nevertheless they gave me some time to think about the year that was, which had included some rather important life-changing experiences for me. In the end, that is really what Rosh Hashanah is all about, so I think I got what I had come for.

After services were over, we went inside and enjoyed a nice Jewish-style meal, complete with challah and honey, chicken, couscous, and even some chulent! I’d been craving some Hebrew cooking, so it definitely hit the spot, although also made me appreciate just how much better of a cook my grandmother is than about anyone else on the planet.

Once the meal was through, we went back outside for a quick Minchah service before heading out toward the water to take part in Tashlich (which is, for those terminologically-challenged, a tradition in which we throw bread into a body of running water to symbolize the throwing-away of our sins). That’s right: Tashlich on the Han River. It was a sight to see, as can be attested by the crowd of Korean passersby who watched on in amazement, one of whom even grabbing his cell phone and videotaping the entire event to bring home to his disbelieving wife.

On the walk back toward Itaewon and the subway station, I engaged one of the young rabbis there in a conversation about Judaism. Over the course of 30 minutes or so, we talked about a lot, but mostly focused on the subject of intermarriage and the position of orthodox Jews in the world, particularly in Israel. As you can probably imagine, we didn’t quite see eye-to-eye, and I left the conversation feeling rather unfulfilled and frustrated, the tell-tale signs of a classic Jewish debate. All in all, though, I accomplished what I had set out to do—have a Jewish experience in a genuinely non-Jewish place—and so in the words of one of the great Jewish scholars, Tupac Amaru Shakur, “I guess it was a good day.”

I had a day off yesterday, and with my new ride of a beat up used bike, I decided to explore town a little better and check out a swimming pool about a mile and a half from my place. I’d found it online a few weeks ago but hadn’t had the chance to get over there, but more recently I’ve been itching to get back into the water, so I figured, “Heckity heck, why the heckity not?!”

The bike ride took me about ten minutes, and then it took about another five to actually find where the swimming pool was (I only knew it was in a general vicinity, right next to the local basketball arena and ice hockey rink. Yes, that’s right- Koreans do play ice hockey). I went inside and spent a good fifteen minutes trying to figure out what the deal was at the pool—hours, price, stuff like that—with the woman behind the counter, who spoke just about no English. After a while, I realized that she was showing me the schedule for classes, so when I explained that I just wanted open-lap swim, she flipped the page and showed me the hours for that. This kind of experience has been pretty common for me, thus far; there aren’t very many people here who speak any English, so I’ve had to practice my speaking-with-my-hand skills.

I went into the locker room, changed, and went out to the pool. The pool was Olympic-sized, with half of the water set up with lane-lines going across the pool’s width, and the other half being used by a huge water aerobics class, being led by a woman on the deck who was screaming into a microphone as music played in the background. As I was making my way to get into the pool, I noticed that everyone swimming was wearing a bathing cap, and sure enough, before I could even stick my feet in one of the lifeguards came over and pointed to my head, as if to say, “What, you were planning on jumping in with nothing on your head?” When I explained to her (once again, with my hands) that I didn’t have a cap of my own, she led me to the pool office, where this young swim instructor who spoke fluent English and looked really excited to see a white guy around gave me a bathing cap to use. Which was bright, neon green. Needless to say I looked ridiculous; even they were laughing in my face, but I figured I was going to stand out so much already in a pool of all Koreans that the neon green cap wasn’t going to make too much of a difference.

I got in to swim, but found quickly that things were going to be a little difficult. The lanes of the pool were jam-packed, with about five or six people in each, so it was pretty hard to get up and down the length of the pool. I’m no Marc Spitz, but I also happened to faster than everyone else in my lane, but trying to pass people was nearly impossible with the congestion. After about 30 minutes of swimming, I got out, feeling like I’d gotten at least somewhat of a workout, but more frustrated than anything. The next time I go, I’m going to make a point to do it in the middle of the day when more people are at work, so hopefully that will make things a little better.

I got out of the pool, took a quick shower, and then went to my locker to change. I wasn’t sure whether or not the pool would have towels, and honestly I didn’t really have an extra one at home, so I basically just had to air-dry. Apparently I didn’t do such a good job of it, and as I was putting on my clothes a janitor came by, saw the puddle of water at my feet, and began lecturing me in Korean. It was pretty easy to tell why he was upset, but of course I didn’t actually understand anything he was saying. In any case, he seemed a little too angry for something that wasn’t a big deal (especially for a guy whose job it is to mop up the bathroom), so I just hurriedly put on the rest of my clothes and ran out of the locker room. As luck would have it, in my hurry I forgot to put back the locker key, so as I made my way out the door an alarm went off, and seconds later out came the janitor again, this time yelling at full volume. I realized my mistake, handed him the key, and scampered out of the building, a bit shaken but at least happy that I’d finally found a pool. I guess next time I’ll have to remember to bring a towel.