Art & Seoul

Living in Korea was a different time in my life.  Or at least, that's the best way to explain it that I can come up with at 6:30 on a Saturday morning, although it probably sounds pretty cliche.  I've been interested in art since I was very young, and up until that point it seems like I never passed up an opportunity to visit an art gallery.  In Korea, though, I was an expat for the first time, and an ESL teacher by trade. While it is true that my first solo excursion into Seoul was to see the Chagall exhibit at Seoul Museum of Art, and I often wandered into galleries when I was in Insadong, not to mention the fact that I loved getting off the metro at Gyeonbokgung for church because they often had displays of children's art, the fact remains that I didn't really art much in Korea.

That, of course, has changed.  Back when I went to Seoul for Tsagaan Sar I was looking for new things to do, and although I didn't actually do most of the things I came up with, I did visit Hyeri Art Village.  It is up by the DMZ in Paju, and the idea of an artists' community intrigued me, so after leaving Silloam Sauna bright and early on one of my last mornings there, I caught a bus heading north.

Did I mention not only the brightness but also the earliness of the morning?  I alighted at the Hyeri Village bus stop around 9:30 in the morning, possibly grumbling a little to myself because a Korean couple got off with me and were walking hand-in-hand all lovey-dovey down the street, and on an adventure such as this, I like to have the place to myself.  But as I walked on, away from the "crowd," past each closed cafe and gallery, I realized something.

It does you absolutely no bloody good to have the place to yourself if everything is closed.

I get a little fed up with tourists, it's true.  A month later, when Five and I were running around Osaka, I possibly lost my cool a couple of times because there were too damn many people, most of whom were not uber-polite natives.  I do understand (on some deep, shall-not-be-named level), that I'm one of those fat, stupid, loud tourists, and businesses exist to make money off us, but that doesn't change the fact that sometimes I just want to get away and be by myself.

If you ever have times like that, try Hyeri Art Village at 9:30 on a weekday morning.  Just make sure to pack a coke, or - better yet - a hot chocolate.

Anyways, from a shopping/cafe-sitting perspective, this jaunt was a bust.  However, it wasn't a total waste of time.  I wandered around the village for about an hour before I decided there were definitely more interesting things to get up to in Seoul, and got to see some interesting sculptures...this rhinoceros, for example, which made me think of the play I read in my AP Lit class as a senior in high school - I almost posted it to Drim's facebook page to ask for extra credit.

I'm honestly not much of a sculpture person and it took listening to Bill Lishman at the ACAMIS conference three years ago to help me appreciate the importance of public art.  Not that I'd explain the meaning of this one to you - I didn't really give it much thought because I was cold and caffeine-deprived - but, you know, I could talk to you about the use of the art elements and design principles, and the processes the artist might have used, and ask you some questions to help you construct your own meaning.  Because, hey!  Art teacher! ;-)  Although I won't, because I'm still caffeine-deprived, since I decided it was a good idea to drink my last coke at 10 last night and the shop's not open yet.

By far this was my choice for the most interesting work there.  When I was walking around and viewing it from a distance, it seemed to be just a bunch of mesh forms in a copse of trees.  When I got closer, though, I realized it was a colossal recumbent nude emerging from the earth.  (How's that for using some art jargon?)  There were holes in many of the pieces, allowing you to enter them - or at least, I'm pretty sure that was their purpose.  The thing about public art is, you're not going to be sitting there policing it, so if you don't want people interacting with it - climbing inside it, in this case - you can't put holes in it.

On the other end of the equation, though, is the fact that you may have a hard time getting people to interact with it in the way you want.  A few years back, when I attended the Summervision DC seminar, I took off my shoes and walked through a water feature in the courtyard of the National Portrait Gallery.  Then I looked up feeling childish and guilty, but the museum educator who was working with us that day encouraged me, saying that most visitors walk past it, ignoring the artist's invitation to play in favor of the sanctity of the art museum.

Date with the Devil

I spent all 3 years of my life in Korea living in a bedroom city.  This is basically a city developed as a place for people who commute to, let's say, Gangnam, to sleep.  Bundang was relatively new when I moved there thirteen years ago, and even though I love all that good culture shit and historic stuff, Bundang was a perfect place for me, to the point where I have a hard time imagining a life anywhere else.  

This is part of the reason why I haven't seriously pursued coming back to Korea - no matter how much I loved it, nothing would be the same about another go-round.  Knowing I was going back to Bundang to see my own beloved Dark Lord and Master, I headed down to Butterfinger Pancakes in Jeongja (aka, not the one I took Engrish to) and had breakfast.  Or brunch, because it was 10:30 by the time I had a seat.  I walked over to Sunae from there, stopping in the middle of the bridge over the Tancheon because it had stolen my breath, the memories of walks along the water, and one particular night when we decided at midnight to go play basketball further upstream after several hours drinking at the Family Mart.  In Sunae I got a haircut - not much of one, because I want to keep it as long as I can, but I also want to start getting rid of the damaged hair - before walking on to Samsung Plaza.  Which is now AK Plaza, but like I give a crap who actually owns the shopping center above Seohyeon Station.

This is the area around Samsung Plaza at night.  Although shops and restaurants come and go, to me it looks pretty much the same as it did when I first arrived thirteen years ago.  I approached it through a park that sits between the two stations, where I once partied with the degenerates many, many moons ago, sitting on big, stone balls (again, there's a joke to be made there, but I've still got three days to go).  When I got to the area we hung out in that night, I was a little surprised to realize how close it was to Seohyeon - for some reason, I thought it was in the middle - but everything in our lives gravitated toward this shopping area, so I guess it makes sense.  But when I sat down there yesterday, and looked at the former Samsung Plaza, I was able to see it with new eyes, and realized there are similar shopping districts all over Seoul.  It was the fact that this was ours that made Samsung Plaza special.  My friends that lived in Ilsan or Suji had their own special places...even if they weren't as good.

In Seohyeon I was planning to go to Kyobo Books, but it turned out to be the grand opening of the newly minted YP Books instead.  After close inspection I decided it was same-same, and noticing that it was already 1:30 decided to call up my Dark Lord and Master.  Because he's Korean, you don't invoke him with a pentagram and blood sacrifice...most of the time I use the payphone in the subway.  As I walked down the stairs, I realized how strange that would seem if anyone really looked at it - the same foreigner using the same payphone over the course of nine years to call the same ahjjusshi - like some sort of spy checking in.  The pentagram and blood would probably be less suspect.

As it turned out, he was already at his cafe, so I jumped on the Bundang line and headed back to Jeongja, wending my way across the Tancheon and up a block to Spera.  Where we talked.  And talked.  I brought up the fact that my mom remembers him fondly when I say I'm going to see him, and then laughed because it's essentially his fault that I have been overseas as long as I have.  If I'd gone to a different school, I might not have had as positive an experience, or felt as comfortable going back when poop hit the fan.  His wife and spawn showed up and joined the conversation...I can't believe Michelle has finished her first year of college!  When I first came to GDA, I walked into the staff room one day to see a midget cutting paper.  Being witty, I tried to make a Star Wars reference - Aren't you a little short to be a teacher? - and was informed by one of my coworkers that this was our boss' daughter.  She was in first grade at the time, and already capable of tearing people to shreds with a comment and a shrewd look.

That saying about apples and trees?  It's probably true.  And not just because she's evil too - while I was talking to the two of them they'd do the same dumbass actions in response to any given comment.  It was both endearing and hilarious.

They left to get Michelle a haircut and Evil Incarnate and I continued to talk.  One of the things I love about him is the fact that I can pitch crazy ideas - such as my retirement plan - at him and he talks through them insightfully and seriously.  At least until he realizes exactly what he's hearing.  "I'm sorry, that's hilarious.  You're a white girl from America, sewing plushies in Mongolia, based on Japanese anime characters, and using fabric from Korea.  You realize how messed up that is, right?"*

Eventually, he asked if I wanted to go get dinner, and made the mistake of asking if I wanted Korean or Western.  In the old days, if I was feeling generous, I would have said Western, because even though my Master is Korean, he's a New York boy at heart, and doesn't get to eat Western food much.  Instead, I said Korean without thinking about it, and since he knew where a dalkgalbi place was, it worked out.  I haven't had dalkgalbi - stir-fried spicy chicken - since I lived in Shanghai.  The place my chingus and I always went is long gone, and I haven't put forth the effort to find one since, because I haven't been in Korea long enough on any given trip.  The four of us sat there until we were picking the last remains of the bokkeum-bap - rice stir-fried with the last of the chicken and topped with cheese.  Michelle and I talked about traveling, although I didn't give her much sympathy for not traveling abroad - she's been all over the world, and by the time I was her age I'd only been to Canada.  

Two and a half of my five-days' vacation are over, and I really haven't done anything worth blogging about, but the thing about living in Korea is, it's your friends that really make it.  And I guess that's true wherever you live, but I'll take time with Azhaar and my Dark Lord and Master over wandering new places any day.  Seoul is always here for me.

*(Previously: "I'm watching an American belly dance in Korea at an Egyptian restaurant, who's been taught by an Australian.  I don't know what country I'm in.")

Village Idiots

Just one short day til I return to the land of my one true love...Belynda's cane!  There's really no reason to be as stoked about a short vacation as I am, and yet I am.  Between doing my current job and looking for another one, I'm pretty well past my tolerance for stress.  So tonight, one last flashback to a calmer, simpler time - my second stint in Korea.

It was during that era that Bronte and I became really good friends.  She'd already taught me how to make sundubu and given me a Korean name, but when I came back to pinch hit for five months, we got to know each other as more than just supervisor and staff.  I got to know that she was every bit as badass as I thought and way more goofy than I imagined - as evidenced by her demonstration for the bed-wetting thing that we saw pretty much as soon as we walked into Min-Seok-Cheon, the traditional folk village.  When she found out I'd never been, we decided a visit was in order, even though it was summer and destined to rain.

She, on the other hand, was discovering the depths of depravity a good little Mormon girl was capable of thinking.  Since this isn't a post about going to Seoraksan and the rest stop we visited on the way back, I'll leave it at that.  You've probably read enough of my posts at this point to know what I mean, anyways.

Min-Seok-Cheon is in Yongin-Si - close to Suji if I remember right, but even with my memory I couldn't find my way back there at this point.  Blame it on Bronte taking the lead...normally ten years wouldn't matter, I could do it blindfolded with one arm tied behind my back.  We're now living in the age of Google Maps, anyways, so my abilities aren't as necessary as they once were.

Anyways, we went out to the folk village in spite of rain, because it was the two of us on an adventure, and what's a little rain between friends?  Well, I'll tell you what it is - a terrible time to visit the folk village.  Normally there is all sorts of pageantry and stuff, with people wearing festival-level costumes.  Instead, we mostly had to amuse ourselves.

Which admittedly was not a problem.  We probably got a few dirty looks along the way - I'm not sure that you're actually supposed to climb on the great stone turtle - but I rarely let a little disapproval stop me.

One thing we did get to do was throw a pot.  Korea has a great ceramic tradition, and there was a little studio where you can use a potter's wheel and make a bowl.  Being a certified art teacher and all, I've done that before, and didn't feel like I really needed to do it again, but Bronte hadn't, so she tried it out.  When she was finished, the ahjjushi took it off the wheel and got her address so it could be delivered after it had been fired.  

Besides performances and the pottery, there were traditional houses and displays about traditional Korean life.  There were restaurants, too, but for some reason I don't think we ate there.  We did stop for tea before we left; I may have been getting over a cold, since I seem to think I got a citron tea.  Or maybe it was just because the rainy weather made me want a hot tea.

Walking around a soggy folk village may not seem that dreamy, but it was all about the company, and that was true of so much of my time in Korea.  It seems like there was always something going on in Seoul, but that wasn't what made it the experience that it was for me.  Instead, it was walks down the street and eating at kimbap shops and really, just spending time with friends.  I've got things to do when I'm there over the next five days, but it was those ordinary, everyday moments that made me love living there.

Take a Hike

Here is a lesson for you all, in a "Give a cat a cupcake" sort of way.  If you give an art teacher a primary lesson to teach on her so-called day of rest, she'll feel a little bitter.  If she feels a little bitter, she'll probably procrastinate actually preparing it.  If she procrastinates, she'll need something to do instead.  She might think about putting her laundry away.  If she looks in her closet, she will probably realize that she HASN'T EVEN STARTED PACKING TO GO TO SEOUL ON FRIDAY!!!*  That, of course, will make her realize she hasn't really thought too much about what she's going to do there (besides catching up with Belynda, her Dark Lord and Master, and shopping at the Dongdaemun Fabric Market).  She'll need to check out Atlas Obscura, since she lived in Seoul for three years already.  This will get her thinking about all the things she did when she lived in Seoul, that she didn't blog about because she didn't have a computer back then.  Knowing she didn't have a computer back then will make her feel lucky to have one now.  And if an art teacher feels lucky, she will probably sit down at her computer and procrastinate planning the primary lesson she's supposed to be teaching.

So a couple of weeks ago, when I, you know, had job prospects, I felt like there was a very real chance that I might be out of Asia next year.  (Now?  Who knows.)  This prompted me to crunch some numbers and decide that I should spend my last Tsagaan Sar not in Mongolia, but in Seoul, so I booked a flight for Friday.  I have waxed poetic on numerous occasions about how much I love Korea, but not actually written about most of the things I enjoyed there.  To get me in shape for the upcoming blog-a-thon, I'm writing about a few of those things this week.

Korea has some great hiking.  I was just about as lazy then as I am now, but the weather was nicer for more of the year, so I actually went on a few more hikes.  Smack dab in the middle of Seoul is a hill called Namsan, and one weekend my friend Anika and I decided we'd meet in Myeongdong and hike it.  Neither of us actually knew what the route was, but we figured if we kept heading uphill we'd get there by and by, and we did. 

It was a bright spring day, and we enjoyed the view at the top of the city.  After some cotton candy in the park around Seoul Tower, we decided to start hiking down the other side.  I loved being able to rely on chance like that when I lived there...just choosing a path and wandering along.  On this particular auspicious day, we ended up at the bottom of the hill where Noksapyeong Station sits, walking past a place called Chili Chili Taco, which stopped us in our tracks.  After our hike, we decided it was a perfect time for some food, and since neither of us had had Mexican in a long time, we stopped in and discovered their burritos, which I still consider to be one of my top five finds during all my years in Korea.

I loved this experience so much that when my mom came to visit me, right before I left Korea for the last time, I decided I would take her up Namsan.  Gracie is NOT much of a hiker, but when Anika and I hiked Namsan, I noticed the cable car, and decided it would be just fine. 

My mom did not agree with my assessment.  See, first you have to walk uphill a little ways to get to the cable car.  Then, of course, you have to ride the cable car up the hill.  Maybe this probably shows the self-centeredness of youth, but I wasn't actually aware that my mom was afraid of heights until she got panicky on the ride.  Oops.  But eventually we made it...to the exit.  Which was not, apparently, on the peak of the hill, so I heard a lot of complaining as we huffed and puffed our way up the last of the steps.  But we finally made it, and Gracie agreed that the view was very nice.

She hasn't visited me overseas since.  I wonder why...

*I've actually given more thought to the perfect wardrobe for me and Five's nerdy-nerdy Japan holiday than packing for Seoul.  It's how I roll.

Grub at Home: Korean (Part I)

I.  Love.  Korean food.  One of the best decisions I made when I lived in Korea was to ask Bronte to teach me how to cook some things.  Not only did the time we spent in her kitchen make us great friends, it means that in the five years since I've left I've still been able to cook some of my favorite dishes.  And I have quite a few recipes from her, so there will be future Korean posts, when I find all the ingredients I need.

 

One thing that Korea was great for was helping me grow up and eat my damn vegetables.  Instead of steaming them or cooking the flavor out of them, Koreans often pickle them, packing even more flavor into them and making them spicy, salty, sweet, and/or sour.  An easy pancheon, or side dish, that you can make is cucumber kimchi.  Here's how you make it:
Chop up a cucumber.
Chop up some green onion.
Mince in a small clove of garlic.
Add about a teaspoon of salt.
Add about a teaspoon of sugar (Bronte called this Korean candy).
Add about 2 teaspoons of red chili flakes.
Throw in a dash of pepper.

Taste it and see what you think.  You may prefer it saltier, or with more garlic.  Let it chill a little before you serve it - that's why I put this part at the beginning of this post.

Now that you've got your pancheon ready, you'll want a main course.  Among the simplest, yet tastiest, of all the dishes she taught me was...err, this one.  I don't think it really has a name.  It's kind of like bulgogi, because you make a marinade for your meat and stir fry it with some vegetables, but it's spicy, like dalkgalbi, yet doesn't have so many vegetables in it, and to add to the confusion, although she taught me to make it with pork, I haven't managed to actually do so even once.  If you need to call it something, go with gochu seogogi.  Spicy stir-fried beef.

You start with the marinade.  Bronte taught me that there are several ingredients that make up the base flavor of most Korean food.  Red pepper paste (gochu-jjang) and sesame oil are among them.  I started with about 100 grams of red pepper paste (sorry, I'm not sure what that is in standard measure - I bought the smallest package of paste and used half of it), 1.5 tablespoons of sesame oil, 3 tablespoons of sugar, and a bunch of green onions.  It should have a thick, paste consistency.  Mix all that up, and then add a pound or so of beef, or pork.  Mine was cubed beef, because that was what I found in the freezer, but it's better if it's sliced a little more thin.

Now for the vegetables.  Slice up a bunch of mushrooms, a green pepper and a red one (capsicums - I told you I use them for just about everything, didn't I? - not the small, spicier ones), and a small onion.  I suppose you could add some cabbage, if you wanted more roughage or a dish more like dalkgalbi,

You're also going to need to throw in several minced cloves of garlic, about half as much minced ginger, a dash of salt and a couple of pepper, and a sprinkling of sesame seeds.  After that, you just need to stir-fry until the meat is cooked.  The red of the pepper paste becomes more of an orange as it cooks.

Et voilà!  You have a reasonably healthy, incredibly delicious meal.  Regrettably, my presentation is not what it used to be.  During my final stint in Korea Bronte's influence resulted in my purchase of a really beautiful set of ceramic dishes.  Getting them home, however, was problematic, and the ones that made it there whole have stayed in my long-suffering parents' basement ever since.  I have not replaced them, buying only very cheap dishes if it was necessary.  Someday maybe I will be a real adult with a house and everything, and I'll crack out the good dishes.

Let Her Go - a flashback

I have been ridiculously ready for vacation.  It's less about needing to get away from the daily grind (which is, honestly, not that grinding) and more about being super stoked about where I'm going - Kyoto.  There is a veritable ton of festivals going on that week, there are about a hundred different workshops I want to do (although I'm only doing about five), and, oh yeah, I might actually get to see the Kawaii Kid, if the stars align.  He's promised to take me to Osaka's Denden Town, at any rate, which is the Kansai version of Akihabara.  If you don't know what that is, don't worry.  It just means you're not enough of a nerd, and that's okay - we can't all be.  I wasn't, two and a half years ago when I last visited Japan.  A month later I would watch my first episode of Fairy Tail, and eventually kick myself, because if I had seen it sooner, I might have visited anime's Mecca between festivals and Fuji.  Instead I was high on cherry blossoms and Japanese Kit Kats.

That time I shared a layover with Champ and Li'l Miss Catwalk. They'd heard me speak glowingly more than once about Korea, the home of my heart, and how much I loved to take layovers there on the way to wherever.  They were particularly interested in my waxings poetic about Butterfinger Pancakes, and I promised them, on this most auspicious of layovers, that I would take them there.

We spent a couple of hours in the Incheon arrivals hall snoozing while waiting for the first train into the city.  We may have talked a little then about what else to do in Seoul, or maybe it was prior to arriving; I'm not sure anymore.  I do remember them saying they weren't really interested in "touristy" things.  At the time, I couldn't - or wouldn't - formulate the thought that Seoul wasn't the kind of place that you could get to know in a few hours, and that "touristy things" were really the only thing we could experience in half a day.  But they were my friends, and I was determined to do what I could.

After breakfast, we started walking through Apgujeong toward Coex.  We saw a giant finger about to dong-chim King Kong, and a Barket - beer market - and eventually stumbled onto the Seongjeongneung royal tombs.  I never spent much time in Apgujeong, being neither a drinker nor friends with the drinkers who liked to go there, and it looked like something interesting to explore, so I convinced them to go with me.

It was only 500 or a thousand won to get in, and it was a nice, quiet place to explore.  Lil Miss Catwalk took on the role of tour guide, making up interesting facts about the tombs and their features.  We made friends with a Korean ghost, whom I dubbed Fred - if you taught at GDA with me my last year in Korea, you might recall an adorably chubby student with that English name, which was my inspiration.  We talked about hiding in fairly obvious places to scare people, doing the Asian ghost thing - hair in front of your face, hands clawing outward...like this:

We didn't actually do it.  We probably would have gotten ourselves kicked out of a UNESCO world heritage site if we had, and that in and of itself kind of seems like a reason you should (I mean, how many people have gotten kicked out of world heritage sites for anything less than defacing them???), but in the end, it was early Saturday morning and not really enough people around to mess with.  Instead, we wandered around for a while, made some jokes, and eventually made our way to Coex.  It was not a particularly eventful layover, but it was pleasant enough.


There's this totally bullshit saying about how friends are there for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.  Well, I think it's a bullshit saying, anyways.  Maybe this is because if I like someone enough to want them in my life at all, it pains me to lose them.  Take my life in Korea, for example.  Over the years, I've seen lots of my former coworkers from GDA, including Dougie-Poo, who has actually brought his family to Mongolia to work at my school.  Pretty much any of my friends from the last twelve years would be welcome in a heartbeat if they showed up at my door (Socrates being the exception, good riddance).  So it was a slap in the face when Champ stopped talking to me this spring.  I could try and break it down for you - without actually talking to her about it, I can't be 100% sure exactly what was up, although I have a pretty good idea - but I won't.  I'll merely say that I had a lot of respect and affection for both her and Lil Miss Catwalk during the three years we worked together, always tried to support them, and even if they believe I stabbed them in the back and hate me, I still wish them the best.

The layover coming back - visiting Jogyesa Temple in Jongno.

Here's the thing:  in spite of my efforts to preserve them, expat relationships do sort of come with an expiration date.  It's the nature of the beast.  For better or for worse, when you live outside your own culture, you become friends with people you wouldn't have chosen back home.  Champ was super-sporty, and Lil' Miss Catwalk, so introverted that she made me look like the life of the party.  I, on the other hand, am a consummate culture vulture.  Back home, I probably wouldn't have been close to them.  Maybe on good terms if we worked in the same school - I might have even said I liked them (which seems like that's not much, but as a fairly a-social person with a low tolerance for bullcrap in the workplace, this is a decent concession from me).  But I doubt we would have spent much time outside of work together.  We were too different.  Here, though, we went to dinner on a weekly basis.  I had them over for Korean; they invited me for crepes.  We were friends, and it makes me sad to lose that.  On the other hand, it also makes me appreciate the friendships that do last - those people I chat with and in some cases even call long after one or both of us have moved on, like my best chingu, Sara.  The friends whose cities I don't feel awkward showing up in, and who make time for me if I do - Dark Lord and Master, I'm looking at you.  Or, hell, even come back to time and time again - no matter how much I love tzatziki, it's not the primary reason I've traveled to Greece as much as I have.  That would be Bronte.

Here's to more friends like GDA friends.

Set the Wayback Machine to...2008

As I mentioned yesterday, I kept coming back to Korea because of the people, particularly Bronte and my Dark Lord and Master.  Well, you can't call yourself Evil Incarnate and not expect your Spawn to follow suit.  This is how he came to have a surprise party thrown for his 39th birthday.

We talked about the idea at school, and later I went to her mom's shop and we worked on the plan some more.  I was sure he was going to figure out what we were up to because that night his wife insisted I stay at the shop until my Dark Lord got there to give me a ride home.  Somehow, we got away with it.

The three of them picked me up at the park in the 'Dong across from GDA - the story was that we were going out for dinner to celebrate.  Instead, the Spawn and I ran off to the playground, and my Dark Lord and his wife got out of the car to follow us.  He got the shock of his life.

The party was a big school secret - all of the teachers were invited, as well as some of his friends that the Spawn had to get me contacts for.  Bronte had already moved on to Greece, but she provided the music by burning us a collection of her favorite tunes - one of the things she'd shared with our Dark Lord.

One of my favorite things about my time in Korea was belly dancing, and since my Dark Lord and his Spawn had been there for my first performance - a hafla that Azhaar put on just for me - it seemed fitting that I would dance at his birthday.  I had two choreographies I'd been working on at the time: Sonia's Art of the Drum Solo (with a few modifications by Azhaar), and the veil routine we'd put together to Massive Attack's "Teardrop" (which I'd first experienced another year in Korea, courtesy of another friend). 

Teaching at a hagwon brought together an eclectic bunch of 20-somethings from all walks of life every single time I did it.  It was absolutely crazy, and I loved most of them even though I often had little in common with them other than the black sheepishness that led us to move to the other side of the world in a career move that I've often thought of as Russian roulette.  There are really no guarantees that the school that you're signing a year of your life away to is going to follow through on its promises. 

But we got lucky.

I found belly dance.

Some people found love.

Others found a new career.  I can't tell you how many people I knew who went home and started working on a degree in education, because that year and those kids had that kind of impact.

But I think just about all of us found friends and shared a time that we'll always remember.  Especially those of us that were there that night, 'cause that shit got crazy.

Set the Wayback Machine to...2007

I've only got one photo to go along with this memory, but it's a doozy.  July 2007 saw me going back to Korea for round 3, and although the Powers that Be typically get underlings to fetch new teachers from the airport, the Powers that Be happened to be dear friends of mine, so they came to get me themselves.

When you accept an international gig, the person picking you up from the airport may not recognize you, and as a newbie, you're unlikely to know one squinty-eyed bastard from another, so the underling that fetches you will usually have a sign.  Well, even though I was guaranteed to recognize the people picking me up, my flight was delayed (it's a looooooong history, me and delayed flights), and so my Dark Lord, Bronte, and V decided to get creative while they waited.  They went scrounging in the nearest convenience store in Incheon's arrivals hall, and came up with a soju box, a permanent marker, and a highlighter.  When I walked through the door from customs and immigration, this is what greeted me.

English teaching was never my favorite thing in the world.  I worked my ass off when I was at GDA, and although I can't say I loved every minute of it, I kept coming back to it because of these people.  My time in Bahrain was challenging, to say the least, and coming back to Korea, while challenging in its own way, gave me the chance to relax amongst comfortable surroundings, with much-loved people, beginning from that first moment.

Every expat should be so lucky as to land in such a nest.

Ten Years, Ten Memories

 Next Tuesday marks the tenth anniversary of my arrival in Korea as a terrified greenie - a fact that astonished both myself and my Dark Lord and Master (who was the largest part of the reason I was terrified back in those days - it took me a while to realize he was just a big bunny rabbit) when we discussed it on my way through Seoul at the beginning of July.  To celebrate, I'm setting the Wayback Machine to count down a memory each day from each of those ten years to share with you....

The problem with doing one memory for each year you've lived abroad is that unless you moved at the beginning of January, you're really looking at 11 calendar years.  I've solved that problem by ringing in my first memory with the time we rang out 2004.  Another reason Korea was hard for me at first was because I didn't quite fit with the teachers who were at GDA when I got there.  One of the wonderful things about being Mormon, though, is you'll always have a second place to look for friends, and the Seoul English Branch is where I found my first friends overseas.  It was wonderful, because it had the eclectic mix of black sheep you expect to find teaching English in Korea, but with the added bonus of us all sharing the same standards.

We started our New Year's Eve at Bennigan's by Seoul Station, and then packed our way onto the subway to go to Jongno 3-ga.  It's an intersection in central Seoul that has a big bell tower named Bosingak, and that night it was packed with tons of people.  What would New Year's be without some fireworks, you may ask, and that's a great question - we obviously had some sparklers.  What the photo doesn't show you is that lots of people (including my friends) had Roman candles, which we were shooting into the air over this crowded intersection next to an old, wooden pavilion.

There was also swinging.  And swaying.  And music playing.  We were dancing in the street.  Over the three years I lived in Seoul I came to love their traditional drumming and dancing, and it was impossible to resist being swept up into the action.

How much do I love Korea?  SO much.  I've told you so many times you probably want to barf every time I start.  One of the many, MANY reasons is the fact that it's a night owl's paradise.  Not everything is open 24 hours, but it's damn close.  When everything finally ground to a halt in Jongno we went to Hongdae.  It's a university area and the only place I've really ever gone "clubbing."  We found a cafe and warmed up for a while before going to look for a DVDbang.  We picked out a couple of movies and split into the two rooms set up as personal home theaters.  Somehow most of us stayed awake - I remember the movie my group watched being really good.

We ended the night at the 63 building - a skyscraper in the financial district that has an observation deck.  We watched the first sunrise of 2005 from there, and I felt I was finally starting to feel at home in Korea. 

Hot Mess

The above is how I would categorize my trip to Hong Kong, a city that during my seven years as an expat in Asia has routinely been spoken of with hushed whispers of awe.  Expats LOVE Hong Kong.  Oh, the shopping, they say.  It's just like back home, they say, regardless of where back home may be for them.  My friends and colleagues over the last seven years had painted me a picture of an expat utopia, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Well, I'm here to debunk that myth.  It's possible that my assessment of Hong Kong won't be fair.  For starters, I just came from "back home."  The chiefest attraction of where I came from - namely, my family - isn't here, and everything else about the states that I will miss by the time I leave Mongolia again for Christmas (such as food) I haven't been away from long enough to have orgasms over (have I eaten breakfast at McDonald's every morning and stopped at Starbucks for a frappuccino two or three times a day?  Guilty as charged, but that has more to do with laziness and cooling off than my excitement and having them again).

Then there's the money aspect.  As a direct result of the fact that I just came back from the States, I'm not exactly flush with cash (although thanks to my Dad I had plenty to sightsee on), and so that limited how much I could spend.  While there are a lot of cool shops, I already did the shopping I needed last month, so I can't afford to go crazy buying new lenses (that I don't even need) in the camera shops strewn liberally across Kowloon, and the sum total of my Hong Kong shopping has been 10 frames from IKEA and a new case for my phone (because where else would I be able to buy a case that is pretty much a clone of the one that has finally fallen apart?)

Finally, there's the weather.  I realize that when I say it is "hot as balls" here that I am exaggerating.  I've lived in the Middle East, after all.  It hasn't even reached 90F this week, and trust me, I'm grateful.  I look around and I can see that nobody else is melting, but then, I'm guessing 99% of the people here didn't arrive from Mongolia on Monday.  When I turn in for the night I immediately take a cool shower.  I have to hang up my clothes because they are soaked with my sweat.  I may never be able to live in a hot climate again.

But apart from all those things, I just think Hong Kong is not my kind of city.  In some ways, it's too Chinese, even though you can see the traces of British rule in the double decker buses and the spontaneous joy on people's faces, or, more to the point, the people protesting across the street from me here.  In other ways, it's too cosmopolitan - all the nationalities clamoring together rob the city of a strong cultural identity, although I guess that could be considered its identity, if you want to get technical.  Either way it's a crowded megalopolis and I can't walk a block without being accosted by a tout.  Hong Kong is not without it's good points (which I'll get to eventually), but for my money give me Seoul.  I'll skip the odes about why I love it so much and assume you've read my blog enough to already know.

Sarang-heyo!

Due to illness and birthdays, our regularly scheduled Grub Club got cancelled tonight, and rather than leave you without anything to read, I thought I'd tell you about one of the things I love the most about Mongolia:

The fact that there's a shitload of Koreans here.

Now, I realize this was also why I loved my neighborhood in Shanghai (and why I was able to tolerate it there as well as I did).  Based on that experience, I also realize this is a helluva bad reason to live somewhere.  Fortunately in Mongolia there are a ton of other reasons why I'm happy here BUT the fact remains that I'm a little happier, a little more well-adjusted because "my people" are here.  So I'm going to wrap up what has apparently turned into Korea Love Week at Defying Gravity with some of the things I miss the most about Korea.

The Food

Oh, hells yes, the food.  It took me a while to get into Korean food, because everything was strange, I couldn't read the menu, and I was a lot less outgoing (and thus, less likely to look around the room until I saw someone eating something that looked appetizing to me and tell the waiter to bring me that), but eventually I got over that.  I've waxed poetic about the food - via Korean restaurants in UB - a lot here, so let me leave you with the dish I miss more than any other: dalkgalbi.  It's spicy stir-fried chicken and cabbage cooked right at your table, and it is my personal mission to find someplace that serves it for a grub club this year.

NORAEBANG!

Noraebang is a Korean word that means "singing room," and it's their way of doing karaoke.  Each group gets their own room to sing their (drunken...unless you go with the Mormon kids, and I often did) little hearts out in.  It may start with cheesy solos, but by the end of the night everyone will be dancing and screaming, "SO YOU THINK YOU CAN STOP ME AND SPIT IN MY EYE?" along with Freddie Mercury.  Noraebang is how send-offs for leaving teachers often ended (with the barbecued galbi pictured above being how they started), which is good, because it kept me from getting too soppy.  There are plenty of places to do karaoke in UB - the school even purchased a karaoke machine for the Commie Center - but alas, my friends these days aren't really that type (if I've underestimated you, friends, please feel free to set the record straight, and we'll make some Bohemian Rhapsody happen!)

The Sauna

My first couple of months in Korea I missed my bathtub.  Most apartments there don't have bathtubs, or hell, even a shower stall...they simply make everything in the bathroom water resistant and spray the water from a nozzle attached to the wall, making the whole room the shower.  My friend Ange (she's the Korean one in the photo above), invited all the singles in our congregation to go to the bathhouse with her one Friday night in October, and while I admit that it seems a little weird getting naked in front of women you don't know (and possibly even weirder in front of ones that you DO!) I went along.  Within 5 minutes in the sauna, it was not a big deal.  Yep, we were friends hanging out on a Friday night....naked.  The totally indulgent hot baths aren't the only reason I love the jjimjjilbang, though.  Most of them have a co-ed area, where you put on their uniforms and hang out in different hot and cold sauna rooms, oxygen rooms, and even have restaurants.  My favorite is a 5-story monster behind Seoul Station called Silloam Sauna, and the last time I stayed there they had sleeping rooms, karaoke, an internet cafe, not to mention wifi (although, c'mon - in Korea EVERYWHERE has wifi).  There are saunas in Mongolia, but they're far enough out of the way that I still haven't been to one.  However, the most promising one, in the Sunjin Hotel, is on the way into town from the orphanage, so maybe this is the weekend when I will finally give it a try...

Kids so ridiculously adorable it makes my heart hurt

One particular class of mine has started teasing/accusing me of having a favorite student.  I want to state unequivocally that I don't have A favorite student...they are ALL my favorites (as mentioned last fall).  However, three years with Korean kids has predispositioned me to like them.  Quite possibly a lot.  They are funny.  They are smart.  They like nerdy stuff.  And did I mention ridiculously adorable?  Since last year's (Korean) music teacher convinced most of the high school's Korean population that they are future K-Pop stars (with possibly some truth to it), you can understand how the single, solitary Korean kid in art class might seem to be singled out.  Right???

Belly Dancing

My Dark Lord and Master is always glad to point out how ass-backwardly I do things.  Most recently it was when I admitted I started liking sushi in Mongolia ("IN A LANDLOCKED COUNTRY?!?"), but the original moment came in a little restaurant on Itaewon's Homo Hill, when he said, "I'm in an Egyptian restaurant in Korea watching an American belly dance who's been taught by an Australian.  I don't know where the hell I am!"  Belly dancing has never been as kickass (in more ways than one) for me as it was when I was taking lessons from Azhaar.  She's an amazing teacher, and a pretty fantastic friend, too.  I get disgustingly jealous whenever I think about the girls in Korea taking lessons with her; I hope they know exactly how damned lucky they are.  As for me, I've found a couple of possibilities for classes here, but a.) my feet are problematic (long story) and b.) it just won't be the same.  If I get my feet straightened out, I'll let you know how it goes.

What really made Korea fantastic, though, were the people I knew there.  Some of them were really, truly crazy (like the guy who was my partner teacher for a week and a half, who smuggled pot into the country in his sock), but most of them really fun, hilarious people.  I wouldn't have met any of them if I'd never left the states, and if by chance I had, I probably wouldn't have liked most of them (my homegirl Sara being the exception...I like to think we would have been chingus no matter what).  But thanks to Korea, I did meet them, and I liked more of them than not, and while it's arguable whether or not I've been changed for the better, I DEFINITELY have been changed for good by knowing them.  And while those people are mostly gone from my life, with one or two exceptions. I feel a connection to people who shared that experience - it's one of the (many) reasons I loved Five so much.  Here's hoping I get to see a few of those people in DC this summer.

The Long Way Home

I'm not a nervous flier, but I AM a bitchy one.  I HATE being crammed into a tiny seat behind someone who feels justified in leaning their seat back into MY legroom.  I'm not a huge fan of putting my backpack under my seat, but I also hate not knowing exactly where my gear is.  And - so help me! - if you get in the way of me leaving the plane and getting to immigration AFTER all the homeslice whities who don't know how to fill out a bloody form, you're gonna have a bad time.

But I feel a lot better about putting up with all those things if I'm on Korean air.  For starters, the majority of people on the flight will be Korean, which means they're less likely to be morons, and even when they are, I'm more tolerant of it, because Koreans in general are about as cute as buttons. Another advantage is the long layovers in Korea.  Live there long enough, and eventually you'll know people who stay.  Live there long enough, and you'll be able to hop off a flight and take a jaunt into town without even needing a subway map.  Also, you'll know how to amuse yourself on your 20 hour layovers.

This is the same itinerary I had last year, and it made the process of repatriation so much more enjoyable that I had to do it again.  Getting this ticket at a decent price took some finagling, but by purchasing the UB-Chicago portion through Korean Air's website and the Chicago to Omaha part separately on Kayak, I ended up paying less than I did last year.  I was worried that I would have to pay to check my bags when I left Omaha, since it was a separate and domestic flight to begin with, but I managed to dodge that bullet, too.  Go me.

So the evening of December 14th found me abandoning Champ and Wallflower, who were also on my flight, before they could even get off the plane.  Azhaar was meeting me at the airport, and we were an hour late getting away from UB.  We didn't get to have doner kebab this year, but instead chowed down on Macca's while sitting on the train into town (like a homeless person).  She got a good laugh from the scare I gave a transit workman when I went up to the machine and said, "Yang-o, chuseyo!" (English, please).  Of course, that was about the time I realized I had to sleep on the floor with her devil rabbit, Doog.  She swears Doog's mellowed in her old age.  I don't believe it for a minute, and when I woke in the morning, I said a prayer of gratitude that the evil beast hadn't fluffocated me while I slept.

(What the heck does that mean?  It's a new word I made up - it's when you get suffocated by fluff, such as that of the adorable bunny wabbit pictured above.)

So I called my Dark Lord and Master when I got into town.  At first, I didn't get through, because some dumbass (ahem, me) reversed the first and second part of the number when she wrote it down - so I was a little confused when a Korean woman other than his wife answered the phone and told me I had the wrong number.  I was saved by the incredibly good wifi at Incheon, which allowed me to send a message to Diablo's spawn, who straightened me out.  Since he wouldn't be available for another 4 hours, I had some of the aforementioned time to kill.

I went to COEX because they used to have an On the Border Restaurant there, and while I had a shitload of Mexican food while I was home, Omaha, sadly, does not have an OtB. As I was wandering though, trying to figure out why nothing looked right, the realization that they were renovating the whole damn mall slowly dawned on me, and it sucked.  So instead, I went to Butterfinger Pancakes.  This was originally my plan for Sunday morning, but luckily for me, I can improvise.

I set out for their Apgujeong location in a taxi.  It was a balmy spring evening (by Mongolian standards) and if it weren't for the facts that a.) my back was absolutely KILLING ME (a combination of my way-too-soft bed and 13 hours on a plane) and b.) I was lugging Blondie's brand new cement MacBook in my carry-on, I would have hoofed it.  As it was, I had to scramble to remember the words for directions in Korean (eetzhezhou and chigadei flashed through my head before I finally remembered that chichin is "straight" in Korean).  But it was all worth it.  Butterfinger's gingerbread pecan pancakes have been the stuff of my dreams since I last went there with Dougie Poo, two years back.  Free refills on coke are nothing to sneeze at, either, especially considering they are an unheard-of thing, here in the hinterlands.

I killed a little more time at a coffee shop before heading down to Bundang to meet the devil himself.  I couldn't believe how grown up the little spawn was - she is the same age as my darling 11th graders, which pretty much blew my mind.  The best moment was when, in response to something Diablo said, all three of us simultaneously responded with his catch-phrase, "DETAILS, DETAILS!"  Being a Korean kid, she had to go home and study, but Diablo and I sat in the Jeongja Tom-n-Tom's and caught up til the wee small hours, when he dumped me at a jjimjjilbang, for a much needed hot bath and sleep on a piping hot floor, which pretty much made everything right with my back again.

People who know me wonder why I haven't gone back to Korea to live.  I talk about it a lot, and while most of the people who made it the amazing experience it was are gone, Diablo and Azhaar kind of keep the torch burning for me.  My Korean students are some of my favorites, and I could eat Korean nearly as often as I can eat Mexican.  I guess the truth is that I see Korea as a place to come back to after my wanderlust has run its course.  Until then, the world is a big place, and Korea is perfectly positioned between the States and Mongolia.

Grub Club: Seoul Galbi

 My grub club posts are getting later and later each week.  I should tell you how sorry I am and beg for your forgiveness, but considering I wrote 160-some report cards this week (and didn't half-ass it like some of my colleagues, who apparently think that comments are optional), you'll just have to suck it up.

So.  This week Geek redeemed herself a little by choosing a pretty good Korean place, Seoul Galbi.  What did we eat?  Daeji galbi (pork bbq), kimchi jjigae (kimchi stew), and dolsot bibimbap (stone hotpot with rice and veggies).  And lots and LOTS of pancheon.  One of the best thing about Korean restaurants (when they're done right, which is not always a guarantee outside of Korea) is the free, refillable side dishes, and Seoul Galbi had some good ones, let me tell you.  They had the little rolled up egg one, they had the pancakes (buchim), and they even had cucumber kimchi.  It was soooo good.

I do have a complaint, though - our server didn't come stand at our table and cook our food for us.  Luckily we had an experienced griller (this girl) at the table.  I would have preferred Coach do the honors, since he's the grillmaster extraordinaire and I just wanted to eat, but since he's been MIA for the last two dinners, I had to fill in.  Unfortunately, I didn't do the best job - I charred enough bits of meat to give a Korean cancer (that's an inside joke - my fellow weiguks should get it).

This is what was left as we were getting ready to depart.  We really cleaned up.  The kimchi jjigae was good, but I ran out of rice, and you really have to live in Korea to love it enough to clean that sucker out.  Squeaker ordered some sort of chicken stew thing, which is the other half-eaten dish you'll see.  I tried to warn her off it, since she'd never had Korean food, and I (in all my years in Korea) had never even heard of it, but it was half-hearted.  Grub Club is all about trying new things, after all.  Sometimes it's just a swing and a miss.

Seoul Galbi is just off Peace Avenue on the south side, between the Blue Sky building and the bridge you cross going east from there (closer to the bridge than Blue Sky), and pretty reasonably priced (a plate of daeji galbi cost 28,000 tugrugs, and was enough for three people).

North Question, South Answer

There is a Korean proverb I learned when I was living there my first year: tong mun, seo dap.  The literal translation is, "East question, west answer," and it means that the answer is unrelated to the question.  Looking back, a lot of times I think this describes the relationship between North and South Korea.  Nobody gets it.  Damned if the American media does - I don't.  And what the hell am I going to write that will add anything meaningful to the conversation?  If I were still in Korea, teaching my students about the purposes of writing, the primary purpose of my blogging would be to "entertain," with "inform" serving as a secondary goal.  And most of the entertaining I do comes from gratuitous swearing and the occasional lewd joke.  And as my mother will gladly tell you, North Korea is most certainly not entertaining (unless you are scrolling through Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things), especially when your daughter is working in their backyard. 

Well, I'm not sure what I'm going to write, but I feel like the time has come, especially since I'm doing this ghost posting thing for when I'm in Tibet, and it just so happens that Korea is in the news again.  Government officials are meeting.  The factory in Kaesong (that's in the DMZ) may reopen.  Who knows?  Geumgangsan tours might even resume.

I had my first taste of North Korea in fall of 2004, less than four months after I'd moved there.  The DMZ tour is one thing you must not miss if you're in Seoul.  This is one of those times when you want to live by the mandate, "Don't be a dumbass."  When they bring you to the middle of the Joint-Security Area (or JSA, which is a fantastic movie if you get the chance to watch it), the American officers escorting you (if you are on the USO's tour) warn you not to point at the North Koreans.  Not to make faces at the North Koreans.  Don't do anything to provoke them in any way, because they have orders to shoot you if they feel it is warranted.  Straddling no-man's land is a blue building in which talks used to happen in the good old days, when Kim, Jr. played the carrot-and-stick game like a boss.  Inside this building you can cross over and actually be on the North Korean side.  The South Korean soldiers are constantly at attention, holding a tae-kwon-do ready pose.  The air is thick with tension.

You get to see other things besides the JSA on the tour, though.  The bridge of no return is one of them.  According to our guide, this was the route that families took to switch sides as the war was finally coming to an end, and once you crossed over, there was no looking back.  Reunification is always held up as an ideal, is mentioned from time to time, but as time passes, I think it becomes less and less likely.  Not only would it cripple the South's economy to be rejoined with the North, but the rising generation does not have the emotional ties to the North that their parents and grandparents had; they are simply not as invested in the idea.

And since Kim, Jr's death in 2011, the atmosphere has taken a turn for the worse.  Projects like the railway to link the two countries seem hopelessly naive.  I was on the bus from Incheon into Seoul the first time I realized Kim Jong-Il had died; the tv was flashing his picture, a lot of Korean, and dates.  There wasn't a huge celebration or anything, but there was a slight feeling of hope.

For sure he was not the best neighbor, but the South never took his posturing as seriously as America did.  In the summer of 2006 the North launched its first missile test during the time that I was there.  The following weekend, Bronte, Curly Sue, and I visited - with only a little trepidation on the part of our Dark Lord and Master, and no trepidation at all from my mother, as I put this under the heading, "Things My Mom Will Needlessly Worry Over if She Knows About Before They Happen" - Geumgangsan, the "diamond mountain" where Hyundai Asan had established a tourist area (read: paid a crapload of money to Kim, Jr's government so Koreans from the South could visit).  Partly this was because the mountain has cultural significance to both sides of the peninsula - it has its own proverb, Geumgangsan do ku gyeong, or "Even Diamond Mountain should be seen after eating."  Partly it came from the philanthropic notion that family reunions could be held here, although I'm not sure that they ever were.

As with the DMZ, Geumgangsan came with warnings.  Do not so much as take your camera out of your bag while crossing the border.  There are North Korean soldiers stationed every - what, 100 meters? - to watch the convoy of tourist buses as you pass impoverished villages.  They don't want photos of children playing in the dirt, or the farmers working the fields by hand just as their great-grandparents did being published.  If they see a camera, they will stop the convoy and search the bus, to make sure no such pictures get taken.  We were told not to speak Korean.  At all.  Partly this is so non-native speakers don't cause a linguistic clusterfudge...Korean is a hierarchical language, and you can insult someone by not saying "-yo" when you're supposed to, or saying it when you're not.  We were told not to speak either Kims' names, since there was no way for the North Koreans surrounding us to know what the context was, since we were dutifully not speaking Korean.  Finally, we were instructed to give the military installment we came near at one point a wide berth.  Two years after our trip, the seriousness of this rule was made clear when a South Korean woman was shot after entering the military area.  Supposedly she was warned to stop and go back before she was killed; who knows if that is the truth, as a request for a joint inquiry by the South was denied.  Regardless, please see mandate #1: Don't.  Be.  A Dumbass!

Once you are at the resort, you're allowed to take all the photos you like.  Provided you don't give your camera to a friend, which is what I did...these last four are actually Curly Sue's photos, taken on my camera, while Bronte and I were exploring at a more sedate pace...aka, visiting the bathhouse.  Hitting the jjimjjilbang continues to be one of my favorite things to do in Korea, and the North is no different.  The Oncheonjang hot spring's waters are piped into the baths, which are sparkling clean.  Did it cure all my ills?  Well, no - I was 26 and as fit as I've ever been back then, and I didn't have a whole lot of ills to speak of.  It sure did feel good, though.  There was also a performance by the Moranbong Acrobatic Troupe,  and let me tell you, if anyone can do these things like the Chinese, it's their North Korean neighbors.  That night we went to a North Korean restaurant for dinner.  In Shanghai, I always liked to laugh at the so-called North Korean restaurants.  Just because you've got waitresses in hanbok serving bibimbap doesn't mean you're North Korean.  However, I have a feeling the restaurant IN Geumgangsan was a little more authentic.  We were served wild boar on a grill.  The skin of the meat still had bristles on it.  Curly Sue and Bronte I think both refused to eat it.  I tried some, and it tasted gamey, but was otherwise good.

One last thought I just remembered - our makeshift passport.  Curly Sue here is modeling the neckwear we were to have on at all times.  Rather than stamping our passports when we went through at immigration, we had identification cards that were stamped in lieu of it.  I was never entirely clear on why that was - possibly to save us some grief coming back into our home countries - but we had to present it on arrival and departure, and woe unto the person who lost it or got it wet.  Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, tours to Geumgangsan have been defunct for several years.  If you're really interested in visiting North Korea, try checking out Time Travel Turtle's blog.  And with that, I must go finish packing - it is creeping up on one in the morning and I fly out in about nine hours.  See you soon with tales from the roof of the world.