A brief period of introspectivness

The program I work for told us in so many words that we had to write an essay/letter thing and submitt it.  Being true to my procrastinator roots I waited until the last minute to do it, but I sort of liked how it turned out.  It might appear a little aimless in the beggining, that is because I didn't really know what I was writing about, just sort of spitballing words around.  By the end it felt good to reflect a little bit on the journy and what the heck I am doing with my life.  I still don't know what I'm doing really, but what I do know is that I am enjoying the journey. 

Prelude to the Sypmhony



      I was going to Korea, this was a fact.  When I told people what I was doing I got the same three questions asked to me…  Why?, Do you know Korean?, & Are you going to get a girlfriend/When is the wedding?.  The questions would always be in that exact order, and I would always answer them from back to front…  “I'm not moving 6000 miles away to find a girlfriend, there are websites for that stuff, I don't know why I am your friend.”.  “No, I don't know any Korean”.  Usually, they would stop me there and be appalled that I wasn't fluent in Korean (I'm Polish and Finnish, they shouldn't be that surprised that I don't know Korean.) and I was going to be living there, teaching the future leaders of tomorrow.  I never got around to giving my answer to “Why?”, this was probably a good thing because it was something that I was constantly asking myself. 
      “Why”.  It is such a short question with such an ambiguous, nebulous answer.  During some of my more introspective moments I would spin up something like this…  I am finally graduating college, I've spent the last 7 years working towards this elusive thing called my Bachelor Degree (some of you might think this is a typo and I really meant “Masters”.  It is not, and you should all be jealous that I found ways to avoid real life for so long.).  For the longest time this “Degree” and “Real Life” seemed like something that was as mystical and intangible as a leprechaun riding a unicorn over a double rainbow.  It just never happened, but I let my guard down for two seconds and the University shoves a degree down my throat and says, “don't let the door hit you on the way out”.  Well shoot, now I have to do something with myself, unless I can avoid this “real life”.
      What happened next is something that could only be chalked up to Fate pulling a fast one.  I was having this aforementioned crisis of me getting my degree and teaching certificate, being thrust out into the cruel world and being told to make something of myself when I received the email.  It was a perfect match, an opportunity to teach abroad, AND get paid to do it!  It seemed right, like dating a girl who is fun, cute, and likes watching football while knocking back a cold one on Sundays.  It only took a moment to decide that I wanted to go, it took a month to find the perfect time to tell my parents that I was leaving the country for a while.  I told them and they gave me high fives and talked about finally renting out my room at home.  I blinked in May and woke up on a Korean Air flight in August, the rest has been a blur.
      Even while writing this I've avoided giving a conclusive answer to why I chose to take part in the TaLK program, and I don't think I need one.  Since being here I have taken a bit of  “Dynamic Korea” to heart…
      There is only so much that one can be in control of, I've always found easier to roll with the punches rather than try and block each one.  I can fight the forces that be and change nothing, or I can throw caution to the wind and get on that bus going somewhere new and exciting.  I can smile at anyone, even though I am scared out of my wits, and lost beyond belief.  I can laugh at my mistakes when I should be crying and calling home to mom.  I can smile and nod to that old Korean dude with zero English that just talked my ear off for the last hour when I was waiting for the train.  I can do all of that because it so easy to play it safe, to stagnate in what I know and what is familiar to me.  That is easy, that is safe, and I hate that.  I did not come to Korea to be comfortable, I came here to throw myself into new situations.  I came here to fall flat on my face, and learn from it.  I came here to experience & embrace a culture that has roots running thousands of years deeper than my own.  I came here to teach, but I wonder if I am more a student.  I came here to avoid “real life”, but I am finding my life is more real than I would have ever imagined. 

"All things must change to something new, to something strange"

No, it is not Halloween, it is Chuseok.  Chuseok is a holiday in Korea when relatives travel across the country to visit each other, eat and exchange food gifts, it is a lot like American Thanksgiving (except no football).  For us waygook (foreigner) teachers in Korea it is a long weekend that allows us to travel and see Korea.  I will admit the placement for Chuseok this year (holiday is based on the Lunar calendar) was right after our first full week of teaching and was essentially a 5 day holiday, Sat-Wed.  The logical choice of destination was Busan, so we started to think about planning a trip.  A group of us had briefly thought about traveling down to Busan during a long weekend at orientation, that plan ultimately fell through but just as well because it would had been a 5 hour train ride each way.  Orientation was up north, and I am placed in the southern half of Korea (in between Gumi and Daegu).  Long story short, Busan is less than two hours away now.

If you have never heard of Busan before, or don't know its location is Korea go educate yourself by google-ing it.  Busan is a coastal City, 2nd largest City in Korea, famous for its beaches, resorts, and things of that nature.

We had a group of 8 people, 2 hotel rooms, tickets to a Baseball game, and an otherwise blank schedule. ..We also had a tropical depression heading towards Korea that had just blitzed Japan as a hurricane the week before, lets go to the ocean!

On friday I hopped a train to Gumi (I am super glad Gumi is only 15 minutes away) to have dinner with some of the people that I was going to Busan with, they had traveled to Gumi to crash the night because they don't have a train station near by, bus station, etc.  We had a nice dinner at a Korean-Italian place that was decorated in 15 shades of pink.  I enjoy Korean cuisine, but it is nice to have something else once in a while.  After dinner the group was going to go back to the train station to meet up with another person...This waiting for people thing gets pretty old when the group gets passed, say, three people.  I have a limited quota available for waiting per week, it gets used up pretty fast.  Fully knowing that I was going to have to do a fair bit of waiting during the coming weekend I took initiative and told the group that it was going to be a better time for me if I didn't wait with them at the train station and went straight to the bar instead.  As I had predicted I was not the only person who thought this, so the select genius group of Davey-Dave, Meeker, and Myself went to go have fun, and left the lame people to go wait for the next hour and half at the train station.  If you are keeping score... Team fun decisions: 1, Team waiting: -100.  What happened next is a repeating occurrence, 80% on me, 20% to the people who I choose to be friends with...  I had every intention of taking the 12:30 train back to Waegwan because I had no interest in sharing a one room apartment that has tile floors with 5 other people, unless I was guaranteed a spot on the bed, no me gusta.  I am always one to have a contingency plan, so before leaving, I checked what the next available train was (in case of some unforeseen event that required me to miss the one I originally was planning to leave on).  2:30am.  Not the latest train I've taken, but at least I knew it was there.  Apparently having fun fall under the category "acceptable reasons to take a later train".  This will bite me one day, but not today.  Besides, in my defense, by the time the rest of the group made it to the bar it was nearer to 11:30 anyways.  In retrospect this should have been a foreboding event to take note of.  Fast forward...Dancing, soju slurpees, and a trip to the norebang and it was 2:15!  Time to go and find my way to the train station.  My friends were sad to see me go, I was thinking "I am going to see you in Busan is literally 12 hours, everything is fine".  Then Sam let it slip... "If you go back now, who will cook us breakfast like last time?", everything makes sense now.  I told them they had peanut butter and oreos in their cupboard and they could figure it out.  Adios!  I found my way to Gumi station and did my best to conceal the fact that I had broke a pretty decent sweat hucking my way back to the station (it was raining so this helped).  At 2:31 I had my tunes going, riding a train back to my apt.  Pretty decent friday night, after all I had planned on doing laundry and drinking tea.  On to BUSAN!

Busan, summarized in a haiku 

Busan by the coast.

Late night odd clothes, Haeundae!

Sunburn, baseball, fun.

The first day we were there we got our hotel, and eventually wandered our way from the center of downtown to one of three Lotte department stores.  We walked around, had diner and headed back to the hotel by subway to change out of exploring clothes and into going out clothes.  Somewhere along the way we decided that it would be the best idea to buy heinous looking clothes and go out in them...  I was the last person to be informed of this, but all 8 of us were involved and, thus the newest K-Pop group "8PM" was formed (this is a play on the already popular Korean Pop group 2PM).  This picture explains the night pretty accurately...

I think any questions you might have right now can best be answered with a simple "yes", whatever they may be.

Not everyone in the picture is dressed up (8PM group), just the people that look like they did it in the dark... using the dress up clothes from when they were children.  

Later that night I used perfect Korean to get us a cab back to our hotel, I believe it was something like this, "Anyeounghaseyo Busanyuk joo-sey-yo, gamsa habnidda".  I say it was perfect Korean because no sooner than 3 out of 4 doors were shut we were on a roller coaster ride over Busan.  Red lights meant nothing, speed limits meant nothing, and any concern I had left for the personal well-being of myself and others meant nothing.  I think we arrived before we left as a result of the fold in the space-time continuum the cab driver made when he peeled out of Haeundae.  Yo Yo Ma.  No sooner had we gotten back to the room before I was in the deepest sleep I have had since back in Michigan.  

The next day was the baseball game!  I was sort of defacto travel guide and leader person because I had gotten the most sleep, I knew how to get there on the subway, and I wasn't cranking back soju like it was going out of style, before too long I felt like I needed three child leashes that you see parents tie to their kids (my friend lauren said she had one when she was a kid so I know they are a real thing).  We made it there with zero problems and got the tickets with zero problems, yay!  It is a smaller stadium (25,000 people) than Comerica park, but it was very cool none the less.  Going to the game made me miss Tigers baseball a little bit, this was augmented by the fact that for once we are not collapsing in September and I am going to miss being in Detroit for MLB playoffs.  It is okay, I am having enough fun here in Korea to kind of make up for it.  One of the oddities of the Busan Lotte Giants is that in the 8th inning instead putting on your rally caps, doing the chicken dance, or singing take me out to the ball game they pass out orange plastic bags that you put on your head.  So close your eyes and imagine 25,000 people with bags on their head... I know it sounds like some sort of mass cult suicide, but at a baseball game in Korea it is just a normal 8th inning...

Later that game another TaLK scholar came down and said hi, we asked him how he found us.  His reply, "we saw you trying to start the wave".  Yeah.  We were all pretty wiped out after the game but somebody had the idea of meeting up with the other people and doing this and that and whatnot.  We were all meeting in front of the stadium and leaving, so I left early and bought my super cool Lotte Giants jersey and proceeded to find them.  They were not hard to miss, the group waiting was probably close to 16 or 17 people.  Ugh.  I love my people, but that group is too big to walk in anywhere and get anything done (subway train, deciding where to go, fitting into a single restaurant, waiting for everyone to use the bathroom before we leave.  I was about to just split the group and meet up at the hotel later when Meeker said, "I am getting pizza from across the street".  Get out your scorecards kids! Team Fun Decisions: 2, Team waiting and getting nothing done: -500.  Somebody noticed us leave and asked where we were going, we said "Food.  We'll figure it out and meet up with you later".  This was a good decision, two people do dinner better than 20.  People were pretty tired so we stayed in Sunday and rested up for the beach on monday!

The weather was smiling on us today!  No sign of rain or clouds, just bright sunshine and a light breeze. We bought a frisbee and a volleyball and spent the next 4 hours at the beach and in the ocean.  We played volleyball and for some reason attracted a decent sized crowd.  A few people who were exchange student came and hung out with us for a while, they were from Finland, France and Portugal!  

We had yummy chicken for dinner, went back, changed into regular going out clothes, paid entirely too much to get into a club, waited, got over waiting and took a cab back with 1/2 a group and hit the pillow.  The next day we took the most crowded smelly train back with standing room only tickets.  Got back to Waegwan, took a fantastic 2 hour nap, made dinner and went to bed.  

It is Wednesday as I finish this post, I have two days of teaching before I have another weekend, spoiled I know.  I got invited to have lunch at one of the teachers homes this weekend sometime, I am looking forward to that!  Judging how my plans expand exponentially when the weekend approaches I am sure I will have more adventure updates too!  

Not in Kansas anymore, at least I have my laptop, oh wait.

So here is what you missed last time on the Michael show...Blacked out van, chicken noms, adventure things, kickin' in the Joch', and we touched the surface of laptop destination fail.

Here is the play by play,

Three weeks of orientation at Korea University in Jochiwan are coming to a close, people are saying their goodbye's to each other, franticly packing, loading up the provincial busses and luggage trucks.  I was pretty happy to be going onto the next part of my journey, while the last 3 weeks had been filled with fun, adventure, and making friends I was ready to let myself go a little deeper into authentic Korea and not see the same 300 people each day acting like college freshmen (I never lived in the dorms at EMU and I am now glad of it).
We were being bussed to our regional orientation site, so instead of 300 TaLK people we were now 70 scholars all being placed in Gyungbuk-do.  Our bus was the last to leave so I loaded my luggage on the truck and decided it would be a good idea to put my laptop bag under the bus so I would not have to carry it around for the next 2 hours, I see some girls throwing their purses under the bus so I follow suit and any concern for the whereabouts of my laptop disappear into the distance.  Now, hindsight is 20/20 but like all my more humorous learning experiences I choose to blatantly disregard the warning signs, here is what I should have seen...  The girls putting purses under the bus, not in group 1, so not going where I am going.  Nobody else in group 1 going on or off the bus.  And finally, the sign on the front of the bus said Chungnam, I just saw that is was the "blue" bus, which was mine (in my mind).  The Gyungbuk busses were parked behind the luggage trucks, not in front of it.  Whoops.
"Tangent"...  Before starting the 2nd stage of orientation at a beautiful mountain resort we were going to a temple stay at this Buddhist temple at a national park somewhere along the way.  It was pretty interesting, the monks were all very happy and smiled all the time.  I respect their devotion to what they believe in.  I was in need of a solid night's worth of sleep and some pancakes, there was neither at the temple.  Korean food can be pretty spicy at times and they generally don't serve water until after the meal, drinking during a meal is a western practice.  This temple food was some of the most eye watering, nose running food I have ever eaten.  I felt extra obligated to finish all the food because traditional Buddhist practice has monks beg for their bowl of rice each day.  It was rough, but I am over trying to look cool eating Korean food.   Things we did at the temple include wearing super trendy monk robes, make paper lotus candle flower things, sleep on the floor like a boss, wake up at 4am for meditation, go on a painful barefoot walk through the forest and have a friend feet washing session all before 7am.  In a moment of serious introspection I can say this, while I don't identify with any religion.  I enjoy the simple parts of Buddhism, there is much time for thought and the petty issues in life are dismissed as quickly as a breeze comes and goes.  Perhaps most to my acceptance is the fact that Buddhism does not appear to have an agenda.  Just good people smiling, being kind.
By lunch time the next day I was ready for an ice cream cone (tangent #2)...  I should dedicate a post to my ice cream endeavors.  As people who are close to me know, I am quite fond of ice cream.  Say what you will, I believe ice cream tempers friendships and brings people closer together regardless of distance or background.  True story, back in Livonia I have a few of my dearest and closest friends.  We don't get together as often as we would prefer, but more times than not we meet up for ice cream, there is an association with them, ice cream, laughing and general good times.  In Korea I am truly glad to have found friends to share ice cream time with, it has been my saving grace a few times when I am glum or stressed, it is a little piece of home and comfort to remind me of my friends far away, and to share the same camaraderie with new friends!  (I know I got a little bit emotional there but James Blunt came up on my itunes, and some things you just need to get out).
So back on the bus to orientation sleepytime ensues, we arrive at the hotel and I go to grab my laptop bag.  No dice.  Through the grace of the Korean coordinators they track it down within a matter of 5 min, I really didn't have time to freak out about losing it.  I knew that I would get it back eventually, hopefully sooner than later...This is when I heard no less than 15 different updates on the whereabouts of my laptop, ranging from getting it by Saturday (this was thursday), I'll get it on Tuesday, it will be waiting at my school for me on Tues.  Things degraded to me leaving orientation to my apt and being told they haven't shipped it yet.  If any of you are thinking that a laptop is one of the cooler things to have the first week of living on your own in a new city, in a foreign country, you would be right.  Thank goodness for my ipod touch, I would have gone bonkers without it.  I did feel like a junky having to bum charges off of random peoples usb ports, standing outside coffee shops using Wifi where I could get it.  I finally got my laptop back 8 days after I realized I lost it, I felt naked and inadequate without it.  Not one of the smartest things I've done in Korea, but in the words of my mom from when I was young "it's not the end of the world", profoundly simple and calming words.

Throughout that last debacle I was thrust from essentially being a tourist to being a expat living in South Korea.  I was too exhausted to be worried or stressed about too much so after exploded my luggage all over my apt I went exploring.  My city is Waegwan, nothing too exciting going on here.  An army base, market, train station.  All the essentials I guess.  I am very happy to be a 5 minute walk from my school and ~10 minutes from the train station.  Another EMU talk person lives on the other side of town which is nice and a few more EMU peeps live in Gumi (2$ 10min train ride away).  I am beginning to settle in finally.  The staff at my school seems very nice, I think the office staff gossips about me, but in a good way.  The 1st three questions I got from them were, where is your girlfriend?  How old are you?  and who I thought was the youngest person out of all of them was.  I think there would have been more but they found out that I play saxophone and they just erupted in Korean giggle-laughter.  Game over.  I start teaching tomorrow (monday), and I am nervously excited about it.  I am sure that I'll have a few stories to share about it all.
I could tell you all about my weekend spent in Gumi and Daegu.  But I have to leave you curious about something.  I'll tell you this, it was my intent to have a relaxing hangout with my Gumi peeps.  This turned into very us staying out way past our bedtimes both friday and saturday.  Good times had by all.
The Korean holiday of Chusok is next week so I have a 5 day weekend, very excited to go to Busan and have some fun times there!

"The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page"

In the U.S. motorcycles are cool and tough. In Korea, they are what you get your pizza delivered on.

Final week at Korea university in Jochiwan,  I am very much looking forward to getting out of the dorms and to my regional orientation in Gyungsangbuk-do.  Life since the last update has been more of the same, lame lectures, terrible cafeteria food, and being a world traveler.  Of the more exciting parts of being a world traveler I can't not share with you a few things...Adventure food, friend soup, the cultural differences and implications of getting into a blacked out delivery van in 'merica and Korea.  Oh, and teaching children  (what I actually came here to do).

Part of the orientation program had us going to an english camp to teach kids of 1/2 a day.  It was nervous and exciting being thrust into this with minimal prep and minimal teaching supplies.  At the end though, it was a good experience and a reaffirmation of my choice to be a teacher and leave my comfort zone to have unique and life changing experiences.  Now, on to the main event...

Food is something that is both unique and ubiquitous to every culture around the globe, it is the reason we are so different and similar at the same time.  While I am kicking myself for not getting Taco Bell as my last meal in the states, I don't dislike Korean cuisine but the cafeteria food they have been serving us here leaves something to be desired.  As a result of this our group of friends coined the phrase "adventure food".  This is because we walk around and try to find a suitable looking restaurant for us to eat at with minimal chance of failure, adventure food.  Adventure food has taken us to places with funkyleaf, a whole chicken mixed with woodchips, e-coli risks, free ice cream, and 90 year old owners serving us while wearing leopard print pants from the 80's.  The most notable adventure food trip had us going to this restaurant which was supposed to have great chicken.  Not really an adventure, it was down the street, we knew where it was, and we knew they served chicken.  It was almost to good to be true...  As we walk up to the entrance of the building we notice that there are no light on inside (it is 7:00 pm so prime dinner time).  We think this is odd, so we try the door (unlocked), and poke our heads in.  Silent.  At this moment a black van with tinted windows rolls by, stops 20 feet past us and starts to back up.  What should have been going though our heads was "run!", but generally speaking Koreans are exceedingly nice people...and we were really hungry, REALLY hungry.  The window rolls down and a guy asks, "You people looking for a restaurant?", the content of the discussion is less important than the context and what happened next... we got into the van.  Wut.  To just add a little bit more implausibility to the story the guy's grandma and sister were in the back seat so naturally, he made them ride in the trunk.  Yup.  We got our fill of yummy chicken and he even gave us free ice cream AND a ride back to campus.  Adventure Food.

This post sort of completes the Jochiwan orientation, and in a terrible segue to the next post I will list a few seemingly random facts, and a small gem of advice.

1.  Jochiwan will now be affectionately known as "The Joch'".
2.  The Joch', while having a soft spot in my heart for the city is, in fact, super lame.

Michael's random advice column,

If you put your laptop bag under a bus going to Chungnam instead of Gyungbuk it will not be in Gyungbuk when you want it to be.  So, don't do that.  It is a dumb thing to do.