therefore, wander!: Orientating

Weeks like this make me question my ability to actually put down on paper real life experience. Even this lame, midnight attempt will be something so far from perfect it seems ridiculous to even try. But, I will…for the sake of my own shabby memory and whoever might be interested.

Korea so far has been...vibrant, sensory, somehow amazingly familiar, and expansive. I've spent so much time in this little teensy microcosm of one teensy part of Seoul and yet it feels so huge in and of itself. I guess new places often feel neverending.

Insa-dong

Really this week has felt as though my adult self has been thrown back into this strange summer camp along with adult versions of everyone who went to summer camp with me. The girls I hated still seem somehow more mature and beautiful than me; the hodgepodge group of girls I would have befriended still sit together at lunch and dinner, I still cling to them for confidence and reassurance. And of course, the guys I would have been too intimidated to talk to are here. But the “adult version” part is my saving grace: I care less about the “popular girls”, feel closer to the girls I fit quite perfectly with, and I’m not intimidated by the opposite sex anymore (well, most of the time). I've also learned that excitingly bad decisions aren't usually fun later on, which was a lesson that my college self learned early on, thank goodness. I wish I could show this image to my young summer camp-self…to that little girl who used to worry endlessly over who she’d sit with at lunch and what the counselors thought of her. I wish I could tell her, “Give it 10 years and a few thousand miles. Give it time.”

I’m trying to tell that to my current self who worries about what next week will bring…next week when we leave these dormitories we've been sleeping in, with a safety net of hundreds of other English speakers and the big city foreign amiability of Seoul. When we leave to actually try and teach 40 students; when we leave to start our real lives with no roommates and no phone. “Give it time.”

My view for most of the week...

The week has been jam packed full of lectures, classes, activities…things designed to help us adapt to life in Korea, and life in the classroom. The first few days were helpful, but after a few more days of 6 hours of class, things got so jammed up in my brain I couldn’t hold anymore. They’re there somewhere, I’m sure…and I’m sure I’ll pull from them when I need them, but at the time being it is just too much to handle. My Korean is progressing slowly (HA, what an exaggeration)…but the things that are making my days are these: fall foliage, strange small cafes run by expat Frenchmen with eyebrow tattoos, timid giggling Korean high school girls asking for pictures and life advice, nights out at Hofs with soju and a big pitcher, Korean performance art festivals stumbled upon quite unexpectedly, and shared moments celebrating the Giants wins with random other Northern Californians. I hope…no, I know these things will continue somehow, someway. Life will go on, even when I’m trapped in my small apartment with no friends yet…

Yesterday when I forced myself, a bit hungover, to get up at 6 and go for a jog, I found myself repeating to myself: “sometimes the things we want to do the least are the most important things to do anyway.” It seemed really profound at 6am this morning.

As a kind of reward for surviving the week full of classes, we took a "cultural field trip" (aka, camp field trip with alcohol) to Insa-dong and took a cruise down the Han River. Insa-Dong is a neighborhood in Seoul that is well-known for being a traditional cultural center of Korea. There are stalls set up all along the main road selling a variety of traditional handmade goods, and a number of smaller alleys and side streets that branch off into quieter parts of the neighborhood. We were let loose for a few hours to look around and have dinner before meeting back at the buses and a few girls and I decided to branch off on our own and try to find somewhere to eat. It seems like an easy enough task until you stop and look around and realize you have no idea what the word "Restaurant" looks like in hangul...or sounds like for that matter! Most restaurants have pictures of the menu outside, but being the adventurous girls that we are, we wanted to find something small and local and not catered to waygooks. We walked down a side alley and found a small upstairs [whatweassumedwasa] restaurant. A tiny old Korean woman greeted us at the door and all 4 people in the restaurant stared as we sat down...we spent a few moments pretending like we could all figure out what was on the handwritten menu before the ajima finally pointed to something and smiled and gestured that we would like it. We agreed and ordered four of it. After a teary-eyed experiment with her kimchi (which I'm sure she "toned down" for the foreigners), we received and impossible big, impossibly delicious bowl of seafood noodle soup. Now, if you know me, you know I'm not a huge seafood fan...but Korea might convert me yet. And as much as I don't like it when my food can look me in the eye...I shelled my first shrimp and pulled it's head off. I prefer not to think about that part, but the actual shrimp eating was quite worth it.

Bellies full and warm, we spedwalked back to the bus and eventually boarded a cruise down the han river, which was spent sharing soju among friends and meeting even more of the teachers who will soon be spread across Korea. A fine end to a fine week, I should say.

And some pictures (these are not really in chronological order...just a variety from the week: