Nightwalker

I wanted to do all the things, visiting Korea this holiday.  I really did.  I looked up performances I hadn't been to, sights I hadn't seen...but it turns out that what I really want from a visit to Korea is time with my homies, shopping, and walks down memory lane.  Yesterday, for example, I had one definite goal:   to cook Azhaar dinner that night.  (When I mentioned this to my Dark Lord and Master, he asked why.  Considering the number of times I made him dinner when we worked for GDA, he should have already known the answer, but I explained it for him anyways).  Before that, though, I had some free time, so I went back to Dongdaemun to find that fabric I needed.  When I finally located it, I grabbed lunch, and by the time I was finished, I decided that I had neither time to hike Namhansanseong or to go to Heyri Art Valley, so instead I caught a taxi to Itaewon to find ingredients.

So I made burritos, and they turned out well, but I wanted to do a little more with my night, so I told Azhaar that I was off to Siloam Sauna, straightened up my crap, and off I went.  Halfway to the bus stop, though, I started thinking that maybe I should go for a wander.  One of the things that I love about Korea is that you can feel perfectly safe walking around in the wee small hours of the morning, pretty much anywhere.   So when the bus stopped just on the other side of the tunnel, next to Namdaemun Market, I hopped off.

Namdaemun was one of the first places I went in Korea, although at this point I can't explain why.  Besides the shopping in the market itself, there are tons of arcades around the area, selling everything from craft supplies to antiques, and all sorts of cool-looking ties.  During the day it's great, but at night, Seoul really shines (see what I did there?)

Actually a fair number of shops were closed by the time I got there (8:30-ish), but it still had that feeling.  I've read articles about words we don't have in English, such as schadenfreude (taking joy in the misfortune of others), but one word I haven't heard of in any language would deal with a visceral feeling - that doesn't actually align with any of your senses - invoked when standing in a place of your memories. Places like Namdaemun or the fifth floor of the fabric market, have the same feeling to me - a guaranteed hope that you can find anything.The giddy excitement of the hunt.   I'd describe it as the way scents can take you back, except it's not about scent.

It was nice to see Namdaemun's actual gate again, as well.  Namdaemun and Dongdaemun were originally gates on the old Seoul city walls...the south and the east, respectively.  During my last stint in Korea, an old dude burnt Namdaemun down in protest, and I hadn't seen it since it was restored.  

I headed down into the arcade to keep on my way to Seoul Station - there's so much traffic in that area that you can't just walk across the street.  Being from a small, midwestern town, there were many things I hadn't really experienced til I came to Seoul - like Thai food, or homeless people in the subway.  When I used to meet friends to go to Siloam, it seems like they were always lying in the corners of Seoul station.  Last night, though, there was an entire camp in the arcade next to Namdaemun.  And I'm saying this not because I felt unsafe - uncomfortable, yes, but if you don't feel uncomfortable when you are face to face with the imbalance that results in others having very little when you have just about everything you could need, there's something wrong with you - it was one of those little myriad changes I picked up on - overall the topography of the city is the same, it's just the faces of the places that have changed.  Or in this case, I guess the face remains, but the geography has changed slightly.

I passed through Seoul Station, walking by where the Bennigan's we met up in used to be, and came to the top of my stairs.  Almost every time I go to Siloam, ever since the beginning, I've slid down the railing on these stairs.  It is the perfect width, the perfect angle - you can get a pretty good slide going but still have control of your speed.  I love it.  At the bottom, I walked forward a block, crossed over to Siloam, and spent the next several hours casting off my UB grime.  I even slept in the oxygen room.

These may not have been amazing new experiences, but to me it was the perfect way to end the day.

Happy Hunting Ground

I really, truly hate the phrase, "Getting there is half the fun."  It must be a relic of a bygone era, where travel meant something besides being crammed in with way too many idiots.  Take the journey from UB to Seoul, for instance.  When Enkhaa got me to the airport, the check-in line was probably the longest I've ever seen (in UB, at any rate).  Then the security line was long, and so was immigration...when  I got through I only had 40 minutes til we were scheduled to take off.  Incheon was no picnic, either - Azhaar estimated I was in the immigration line an hour, and THEN I got triggered by a bunch of people who were NOT MOVING to get through customs.  This meant that I didn't get on the train into town until 11:20, and fortunately I was second in line, or I might have spent the following hour on my feet, hating life, because it was packed.  

I hadn't actually thought much about the final leg of the trip - getting to Azhaar's flat - until I wheeled my little carry-on off the elevator above Noksapyeong.  This was when I realized that I'd just assumed I'd be able to find her apartment.  As I mentioned last time, I have a pretty badass memory, but I've only been to her place twice, both times following her up the hills after midnight, and I'd received a message from her while I was waiting in the never-ending immigration line telling me to let myself in because she had a headache and was going to bed.  So even though I'm pretty good at sweet-talking people into loaning me their phones when I can't use mine, I didn't want to wake her up unless I had to.  Well, my memory came through in the end.  At the bottom of Noksapyeong hill, I found my first landmark - kimchi pots - and then got to the noraebang (I thought it was a supermarket, but I recognized it when I saw it), and when I got to the 7-11 where we bought my coke the last time I visited, it became a matter of finding the place I thought was right, and confirming it by checking the wifi names.  Easy cheesy.

This morning Azhaar (in her bedroom) messaged me (in the living room, LOL) wanting to know what I wanted to do today.  #1 on my list was the fabric market (followed closely by a call to my Dark Lord and Master to figure out when I could see hiim).  After a quick shower our consultation led to us scurrying out the door to hit Macca's (I'm reverting to the Aussie slang for everyone's favorite burger joint for the next four years...Ronald &Co. shouldn't suffer the indignity of being associated with a despot) for breakfast before taking line 1 to Dongdaemun station (where we should have taken exit 9, but we got there in the end).  Back in my misspent young adulthood, I spent a lot of time trawling the aisles for the perfect sparkly bits to add to my belly dance cossies.  It's a little slice of paradise - if you know what you're looking for, you'll find it there.  If you don't, you'll find something anyways.

Well, I don't dance much anymore - maybe I'll dust off my bedleh someday - but I'm almost as enthusiastic about my newest hobby: designing and sewing chibi plushies.  This week saw the end of a month-long sewing frenzy brought on by a half-cooked whim regarding a booth at this summer's AnimeIowa (it was a short-lived whim...at some point I realized I probably ought to be able to use a sewing machine before I go into business).  The problem is, I'm no longer satisfied making simple characters with whatever material I have on hand.  When I started thinking of it as a business, I discarded my old personal obsessions and developed new professional ones (well, sort of, anyways.  I'm still only designing characters I like...but now I take into consideration what people might be willing to pay shit tons of money for.  Also, what would look cool AF).  

Azhaar suggested we go to the fifth floor first, and get fabric afterwards.  I thought this was genius, since it meant I wouldn't have to carry tons of fabric around with me while I was trying to squeeze past people who have absolutely no awareness of their surroundings.  Like many markets, you'd best approach DDM with a plan.  When we got to the fifth floor we chose a time-honored strategy - picking a corner and working our way up and down the aisles, stopping to pick up the things on my list:  ribbons, buttons, chain, buckles.  I was looking for very specific things, but as mentioned above, if you know what you want, you can probably find it.  If you're patient enough, anyways.  Raycie LaRaye taught me this strategy,  and it served me well - by 1:30 I'd found everything I needed, and helped Azhaar find a few things she didn't, but since she was having fun I didn't feel too bad.

After sitting down for a few minutes, I decided I wanted to pop down to the cloth floors to look for iridescent fabric...and if they had any colors of fleece I needed, it would probably manage to find its way home with me.  I stuck my LeSport duffel bag in my backpack for this exact purpose, but when I got to the fourth floor most of the stalls had rolled down their shutters.  Between the time we had walked past on our way to the beads and jewelry, it had become a ghost town, so maybe Azhaar's suggestion backfired a little.  An excuse to go back on Monday or Tuesday is not a bad thing.

Shopping doesn't seem like that strenuous activity, but we approached it with killing intent, so we were famished.  While we were at Macca's that morning, I noticed that they were now serving mozzarella cheese sticks.  This food has been haunting me for several months - in Osaka the Kawaii Kingpin suggested we stop into Lotteria for some when we got back to Kyoto, but neither of us actually remembered.  By the time something random dug the thought out of my head, I was back in UB, a million miles from anywhere that would serve them.  Over Christmas break considered trying them at the Lotteria in Incheon, or else possibly at Denny's back home, but neither actually happened, and the ones I found at a restaurant in UB were completely unsatisfying.  So when I pointed out the fact that Macca's had them, and she suggested Lotteria's were actually really awesome, I'd come full circle.  True to both of their words, they were amazing...but I was a little underwhelmed by the serving - two short sticks.  There's surely a joke to be made in there, but I've got four more days to make it, so I'll leave it there for now.

Hitting a Wall

Just three more days til I return to Korea and my one true love...dalkgalbi!

There comes a time in every expat adventure when you feel like you've seen it all.  (This is not to say that it's true...there is still lots more to experience, but the feeling remains.)  When that happens, the time has come to wander a little further afield.  It's been ten years since some of my homegirls and I decided we would hike the walls of Hwaseong, the fortress in Suwon, but I'm pretty sure that was our thought process.  Seoul was played out like snap bracelets, but Suwon had exciting possibilities.  Or at least one exciting possibility.

However, I think it took us two tries to actually do it.  The first time, the three of us came from different directions, and since none of us had been to Suwon before, I set the meeting place at Suwon Station, exit one.  If you're not sure what exit to meet at, I say go for exit 1.  If there are multiple exits, there will definitely be an exit 1, and if not, you'll find each other regardless.  The problem was that Suwon Station had both metro exits and KTX exits, and way back in 2005 the three of us were wandering Korea without cell phones.  People used to do that back then.  I promise.

Anyway, in this case, the second time proved to be the charm, and we met up and found our way to the walls.  Hwaseong is fantastic.  It's historic, but like I give much of a crap about that.  Ringing gigantic bells, on the other hand...  The hike itself is gorgeous, and the company - Heather and Jen - were the kind of friends that I could be myself with and not worry about them thinking that I was going to hell for every other thing that came out of my mouth.

Expat living: it attracts the black sheep.

This is true even amongst Mormons.  Jen and Heather were both church friends (as opposed to my degenerate GDA friends, who were also black sheep, just the kind that needed a few grown-up drinks to hit the noraebang...)  Well, here is a little bit of Mormon trivia for you - we are cheesy as...well, something that's extraordinarily cheesy.  As we passed one of the towers on the wall, one of us noted the similarity to this tower in the Book of Mormon called the rameumpton.  Basically the function of this tower was people would go up on it to pray about how much better they were than everyone else (FYI: these weren't the good guys).  So we decided that this would make an excellent photo op, and being the person who doesn't mind being slightly (or more) blasphemous for the sake of a good picture, I got tapped to climb up the tower and pretend to be a Zoramite.

It was a fairly clear day.  I was pretty sure I wasn't going to get struck by lightning...

On the way to the wall, we passed a variety of vendors and I was happy to find one that had these really cool, fold-up hats.  I bought two of them.  When we met up, it had actually been really sunny, so I was happy when the clouds gathered - I was pretty much as paranoid about skin cancer then as I am now.  I'm pretty sure my friends thought I looked like an idiot (or an ajjumma...possibly both), but they were good sports and had a high tolerance for dorkiness.

We didn't make it all the way around the walls...at some point - I believe around the time we decided to go wading in the stream - we decided we were hot and thirsty and needed melon bars.  We veered away from the wall into a market area, where old men were paying paduk or something, and wandered in and out of shops until we made our way back to the station.

People always ask if I'd go back to Seoul to work.  It's a complicated question.  I was a lot healthier then, and I love the fact that there's always something to do.  I really consider Seoul to be my second home...but like my first home, that life's moved on without me.  Most of the people I loved there are gone, and I don't know if I have the guts to go back to an empty house and build the thing up again.  That didn't stop me from applying to a job there when Belynda told me about an IB school that was advertising for an art teacher - although it did cut the disappointment when they wrote to tell me they'd just offered the job to someone else.  Thus, the search continues.

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.

Home!

After being in transit for entirely too long and in entirely too stressful circumstances (a tale to be told some other time), I made it to Korea. Stepping off the plane into Incheon airport was like coming home. I don't know how else to explain it - literally all became right with the world.

I'm here on vacation for our Chinese National Day holiday. This is the first of our holidays, and there was nowhere else I would have rather gone. Even if it hadn't been a cheap ticket, it's been two years since I've been back, and in the week before I left I was actually giddy at moments when I thought about seeing my Dark Lord, and dancing with Belynda again, and the food - OH, THE FOOD!

As I said, I felt at home when I had my feet on Korean soil again. Maybe this means I'm messed up, but I understand the way things work here. I know how to get around, I know what to do in an emergency, where to look for things. During the three years I lived in Bundang, I often had the impression that Seoul was just a big amusement park designed exclusively for me; that is how safe I felt here, and how much fun I had. I'm glad to say that I still get that feeling, and watching the city come into focus as I rode the airport bus through the middle of the city to where Mark and Emily are living was like going past all my favorite rides again (the 63 building, where we watched the first sunrise of 2005...Namsan tower, which Annika and I hiked up to, discovering Chili Chili Taco on our way down...the Han River...Gangnam Dae-ro...) But enough reflective prose. Let me tell you what I've been up to.

I got into Mark and Em's place after two yesterday, and spent a good long while chatting and catching up. We worked together my last year in Korea, and I gotta say, they are two of the coolest people I worked with at GDA. Mark is the most laid-back person I think I've ever know, and Emily is mad in the absolutely best way. We relived our glory days and caught up on gossip until I realized that if I didn't leave I was going to be late to meet Belynda and her students for dinner in Hongdae.

Hongdae is actually a pretty cool area that I've never spent much time in. It's basically a campustown, and as such, is home to THE club scene of Seoul (some people prefer Apgujeong, but it's "trendier" and thus, pricier). We ate dinner and then managed to find a Tom-n-Toms for coffee and dessert (honey butter bread...amazing that I remember this after two years and I only ate it the once right before leaving, but it was just. that. good.) So we caught up and I made plans with Bee to go to Samcheok later this week.

Samcheok is one of those crazy Korean destinations that I never made it to. I'll leave you to ponder why it's special til later this week.

Afterwards I came back here and crashed (and I DO mean crashed), but not before I got ahold of Jill and made plans to get together this afternoon. We met up at noon, talked, got lunch, talked, walked to COEX, talked, talked, talked. (We had a lot of catching up to do). We'll go to Dongdaemun to the bead market later this week. Maybe on Tuesday.

And tonight I got to see my Dark Lord and his family. As I took the Bundang line down and started to hear the old familiar names - Yatap! Imae! Seohyeon...SEOHYEON! - I started to feel nostalgic and a little emotional. Two years is a long time, and this place and this man were at the center of my world for a very long time before that. And yet it's a blink of the eye, and you realize that - oh damn, am I really going to say this cheesy line? - the heart remembers the way. The names of those places were like music to my ears, and the cafes of Jeongja, the neon lights of Samsung Plaza, like art to my eyes. And as for my Dark Lord? My gosh, I missed him, and his daughter (his wife...well, she's a little harder to get along with, but she didn't comment on my weight, so we're making progress). Michelle has gotten so freaking tall - I couldn't believe how old she is! - she gets the jokes that her dad and I make in English and can banter right back with us, she's just awesome. Unfortunately she has midterms on Tuesday, and dinner was just a break in the studying, so after dinner she and her mom went home, and Diablo and I went down to Samsung Plaza (supposedly AK Plaza now, but as he pointed out, nobody's gonna call it that for at least 10 years). He told me that the ahjjushi who ran the convenience store next to our school now owns one there, too, and I was really happy to see him and his wife when we stopped in. Then we sat in Starbucks and compared notes on our current jobs and just shot the breeze until they closed at 11 (I thought this was ideal, because if I left when they kicked us out I wouldn't miss the last train out of Bundang).

And now I'm caught up after lying here on the floor at Mark and Em's and it's past my bedtime, but Seoul doesn't sleep so why should I?