DISCO PANG PANG

I know I recently wrote a very long post, trying to bring this blog up to date after my summer lethargy. However! I couldn't wait a decent amount of time to tell you about Disco Pang Pang because it is just too good. Just listen to the name.

The first time I heard Disco Pang Pang I thought it was the least descriptive Konglish name I'd yet encountered. Actually, once you have seen a Disco Pang Pang you know that it is exactly as it sounds.

Disco Pang Pang is a phenomenon hidden in the alleys of every Korean city from the suburbs to the Seoul. An arcade hall filled a single heavily padded and colored amusement ride. Middle to High School girls flock here to pay 4,000W (about $4) to spend rather too long bouncing and spinning to everything from Disco to Kpop. It's a pretty traditional amusement ride except that there are no seat belts and the main job responsibility of the workers seems to be to tease the customers with witty (or not so witty) banter.

I swear all the workers were cackling as a large group of foreigners wandered into the Disco Pang Pang arena. The whole thing was hilarious and oddly fun. We sat on the couch-like seats along the edge of the circular Pang Pang and held on tightly to the surrounding railing as it spun and bounced. The name made a lot more sense as people went flying, pang! pang! pang! into the air. The ride conductor, almost definitely a high school student, kept stopping the ride to interview us — "Where are you from? What is your name? Very handsome." My name must have been easy to remember because I spent the rest of the ride listening to cries of "Josepin! I love you!" Probably one of the more bizarre experiences I have had so far. Of course that doesn't mean I'm not going back.

FALL HOLIDAYS

It's nice to check in after a long time. I've been enjoying the new semester at Dongdo Middle School and getting back into life in Korea. Living in an apartment has taken some getting used to, but after some time I now look forward to coming back to my home after school, turning on the rice cooker and settling down to do a little work or watch some tv.

We've had several holidays since I've been back at school. First in September we had Chuseok, a Korean harvest festival during which many Korean families perform ancestral rites and eat a lot of food together. Then last week we had a three day weekend and this week I haven't gone in to school at all due to a combination of midterm exams and vacation days. 

When Chuseok came around back in September I was in the middle of studying for the GRE subject test in literature. I had no spare brain space to make any plans for the long weekend and was, in fact, still unpacking some of my bags. Instead of making plans I sent my host mom a text message that Sunday asking her if there was some time I could come visit that week. I got the reply right away, "We are at home today! Come any time!" I hadn't been expecting to go quite so soon, but grabbed my purse and went straight to Dong Daegu train station. Chuseok is a notoriously bad time for traveling because everyone is trying to go see their families. However, the train station was not bad and after 40 minutes of loitering in the cafe car I found myself back in Gumi and catching the familiar bus to Shinpyeong. I spent the afternoon there with my host mom and sisters, watching tv, eating ceremonial food and peeling various vegetables. It was as if I had never left. I went home that evening, but they invited me back for a big lunch the next day. This time I was able to see my host cousins. Jun Hyun has started going to an English hagwon and his parents wanted to show off his new English skills. "Long time no see." He followed this up with a long litany of baseball teams and body parts: "Lions, Twins, Elbow, Eagles, Hand." I tried playing tag with the boys outside, but it was beastly hot and they talked me into buying ice cream instead. In the CU I wondered what the cashier thought as a random foreigner argued with two young boys in broken Korean. No, you have to choose one, the juice or the ice cream; no I am not buying you gum as well. It was sweet seeing them all again, seeing how sedately their lives go on.

The next three day weekend found me back in Gumi again, this time to see my friends. I had been meaning to get back to board game club for some time because I had a new game I wanted to try out "Resistance." Basically it sounded like a more intense version of mafia and great for a large group. In fact, it was both those things. However, it was also a terrible game to play with a highly competitive group of friends. After two rounds we really needed to unwind and finished the night by playing drinking games while watching The Room. I love cozy nights like this, surrounded by people I like. Nights like this can be hard to come by living alone in a foreign country, but I've been so lucky in all the people I've met here. 

I stayed over with my friends that night because the next day we were all going to the LG Dream Festival. As the name implies it's a celebration of LG including a local talent show ("Dreams do come true") and culminating in a big name KPop concert. We arrived at the stadium around 1pm in order to grab prime seats. It was a perfect day to be outside with a clear bright sun shining over the edge of the stadium walls. It was a real festival atmosphere with a booths selling fried foods, stilt walkers making balloon animals, carnival games to win packs of ramen and robot exhibitions by LG. We lounged our way through the afternoon performances which began at 4pm. Then began waiting anxiously for the Kpop to arrive. There was a long, patriotic rally for LG which promised to be interminable, except that the staff began handing out giant paper lanterns to members of the crowd to send into the sky. I've been wanting to send off one of these lanterns ever since I saw a picture of Taiwanese New Year's celebrations. One of my friends made a commotion and we soon got a lantern. It was about the size of a medium size suitcase, made of pale paper with a thin wire base where a piece of unburning paper provided the fuel. We held it together on all sides. It was much harder to do than I expected as the wind threatened to collapse the dome and sent sprays of hot fire licking around our hands. I saw smoke rising around the crowd and several people had their lanterns taken away in flames. However, as a gust of wind tugged the lantern we agreed "Let it go!" and sent it off into the air. We watched it rise up over the crowd, past the floodlights until it disappeared. My friend thought it crashed, but I think it just floated further than we could see. Hundreds of lanterns were still being raised around the stadium. One didn't catch a big enough burst of wind and went skimming over the heads of the crowd until one brave high schooler pushed it further up into the air. 

Later we saw Vixx, BAP, AOA and B2ST. Each group performed three or four of their most popular songs and did a short interview for the crowd. None of the groups were my favorite, but seeing them was still a lot of fun and the dancing was awesome. I knew somewhere in the crowd my host sister was going crazy. BAP is her favorite, favorite group and she got special tickets close to the stage just to see them. 

In a quick turnaround I met up with two of my Fulbright friends in Busan the day after the concert for the Busan International Film Festival. I missed this festival last year and knew I couldn't miss it again after hearing stories from my friends who had gone. Perhaps one of my favorite things about now living in Daegu, I was able to take the KTX (Korea's high speed train, 300km/hr) from Dong Daegu Station to Busan in just about 45 minutes. It took about another hour on the subway to meet my friends and then we bought tickets for that day: a Korean film called Venus Talk and a Vietnamese film called Gentle. Both movies were showing in the Shinsegae theater at Centum City, the largest shopping mall in Asia. Venus Talk turned out to be a Korean style Sex and the City following three middle aged women as they navigate their increasingly complicated sex lives. My friends and I loved it. After the showing the director and three main actresses came on stage for an interview and photo shoot. 

The second movie was darker and more experimental. The director was born in Vietnam, but raised all his life in America. When he was 26 he went back to visit Vietnam for the first time and since then has spent a great deal of time there. The movie we saw, Gentle, was his third film made in Vietnam. It was based on a short story by Dostoevsky in which a widower reminisces over his married life while sitting next to his wife's corpse. The wife has committed suicide and throughout the movie the widower reveals the ways in which his own arrogance and weakness led to her death. Like any good Dosteovesky story it is subtle and full of religion. Interestingly, the director told us that reading this story for the first time he had such a strong sense that it was a Vietnamese story that he had to make the film. 

After all the movies and interviews it was late enough for dinner. We went back to our hostel so I could drop off my backpack and got dinner at one of the nearby grill restaurants where we ate some mediocre beef. Then we hung out on the beach listening to the live music that must have been part of the festival. On the beach with the wind it was very cold. Eventually we met up with some other fulbrighters and talked for a long time before heading to bed. 

Our final day in Busan we checked out of the hostel and got tickets for one more movie: a Spanish film called Magical Girl which we hoped would be quirky and charming. It was anything but. Although it opened as promised with the daughter, dying of leukemia and her obsession with the Japanese anime character Yukiko, the relationship of father and daughter soon became a secondary concern of the film as the diegesis focused further and further on the bizarre woman Barbara who the father attempts to blackmail in order to buy his daughter a magical girl outfit. The plot which had sounded so goofy at first vacillated between implied sexual abuse, the corruptions of the spanish government, mental illness and prostitution. We left the theater feeling stunned and a bit trampled. 

To cure ourselves we went to Spaland, my favorite place in Busan, where we ate lunch at the spa restuarant, nearly fell asleep in the relaxtion rooms, soaked in the baths and received full body scrubs from professional ajummas in black lace lingerie. It was my first time getting the full body scrub and it. was. great. It was like getting a massage except at the same time I could see beads of dead skin rolling off of my body in great swirls. I can't tell if my skin is more glowing now, but it does feel marvelously smooth. After our scrubs we rinsed once again and parted ways.

The rest of this week has been wonderfully restful. On Monday I visited my old school in Gumi. I had a kalguksu lunch with Jung Nam Suk and my ajumma friends, practiced my Korean and gossiped over coffee. That evening I went back to Daegu for my first NKD meeting of the semester. Wednesday was Club Day for our school so I joined my coteacher, Hyeon Young, and her club class to make choco muffins. I worked with the third graders who were very silly. We ended the afternoon at Beomeo Library where I found a really wonderful collection of English books. I don't have a library card yet, but I sat down that afternoon and, with no classes Thursday or Friday, read The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. Looking forward to visiting that place much more often in the future. 

TAKE 2

Back in Korea I’ve moved into a new apartment and will start my teaching duties today. It’s been extremely busy since arriving in Korea, staying at Jungwon University to meet the new ETAs and yesterday traveling to Daegu with my co-teacher and principal. Just dashing out a quick note to say I’m back. I renewed my Fulbright grant at Dong-do Middle School, a highly ranked middle school in Daegu. Moving into a new apartment is harder than I remembered. Shopping on my own after getting the apartment code I was overwhelmed by the number of things needed to set up a life: bedding, dishes, cooking utensils (so many!). I didn’t even buy food in the end because I had exhausted myself agonizing over frying pans and the high prices of cotton bed sheets. 

Trials of living alone aside I have felt and feel almost ecstatic to be back in Korea and especially to be back in Korea with these people. This weekend I was so impressed and warmed by my class of renewees and the new ETAs. I was reminded in Goesan (the small town where orientation takes place) how breathtaking Korea is. It has been a raining, misty kind of week here. Monsoon season is supposed to be over, but no one told the weather. Walking outside the university we could watch as moisture seeped up from the ground and met the wetness in the sky. We watched the clouds get caught in the cups of mountains, lingering and growing to cover the entire valley in fog. Coming to Daegu, about a two and a half hour drive, we drove through three separate rain clouds, each one lasting only a few minutes. My co-teacher and principal both seem like kind people. On the way back we stopped at a roadside stand to by steamed corn, famous in the area. I am filled with the feeling that I am in the place where I should be.

FAMILY

I haven't checked in for quite a while and part of the reason behind this is that my family came to visit me in Korea. I was beyond thrilled and spent the better half of this semester masterminding a highly detailed 10 day itinerary for their trip.

I met them in Seoul on a Friday night and we stayed there until Sunday when we traveled to Gumi (my host city). In Seoul I mostly stuck to my favorite places — the National Museum, Insadong, Hongdae — but we also tried out a few new things. Best new discovery: the National Gugak Center (국립 국악원, gukrip gugakwon) has 1 hour live concerts of traditional Korean music every Saturday at 3pm. The best part? The tickets cost as little as 10,000 won. We saw court music, scholars music, a contemporary jazz piece composed for the Korean bamboo flute and an energetic drum dance. The only downside? No pictures allowed. 

Galbi (grilled marinated beef) dinner with my family and host family!
From left to right: My dad, host mom, Chaerin (host sister), Saeran (host sister), host aunt, host cousin, my brother, me, my mom, host grandma, host cousin

 We stayed in Gumi just two days as my family met my host family — a wonderful experience — and visited some of my classes. My students had to make questions for my parents. I can't decide which wins first prize: "Do you have a gun?" or "You're handsome, aren't you?" (directed to my father).

Busan night view, Haeundae beach, our first night

After Tuesday I was free for the week so we traveled to Busan, a nearby coastal city and also the second largest city in Korea. We stayed at Haeundae Beach, a popular tourist area, and took the City Tour Bus around to other landmarks like Taejongdae, Jagalchi Market and BIFF Square. If you've been to Busan, but haven't taken the City Tour I encourage you to do so. These double-decker buses (varying in quality from brand-new open-air to enclosed express bus style) will take you to every landmark in the city on a continuous figure-eight. For only 10,000 won you can get on and off as many times as you want, anywhere in the city all day. A great way to see a lot without struggling through a lot of subway or bus connections. 

Busan continued to drizzle, but we made the best of it

The other highlight of Busan has to be Spaland. We went to Spaland on the 7th day of our travels when everyone was starting to get grimy and correspondingly annoyed. I love jimjilbangs and have been to a couple that match Spaland for number of different relaxation rooms, saunas, and baths, but while including all these things, Spaland is far and away the most beautiful jimjilbang I have ever been to. The only drawback is the time limit of 4 hours (which can be extended to 6 if you spend at least 10,000 won inside the spa). I was a bit nervous how my family would feel about the totally naked baths (gender segregated of course), but they all loved it. In fact later in the trip whenever we were feeling tired, someone would always say, "Why don't we go to a jimjilbang?

Cheomseongdae, a Silla dynasty observatory, Gyeongju

After Busan we traveled on to Gyeongju, a much smaller town which is nonetheless a huge tourist destination for its multitude of historical landmarks. I'm not sure what we might have done if it rained, but thankfully the weather held out and we went walking, bicycling and hiking everyday there. We were staying in a traditional (hanok) style guesthouse and the cozy atmosphere was just right for the end of our trip. Almost too cozy as at first we couldn't even find the place. It wasn't until we took a taxi, walked in the rain with our suitcases and were picked up by a kind Korean man that we managed to find the place. In fact, I just asked this man for directions on the street because he looked friendly, but he took us into his stationary store where he read our map with a magnifying glass and then offered to drive us there in his car. Although it wasn't a situation you want to deal with when traveling I'm really glad my family got to see how kind Koreans can be. 

Bicycling in Gyeongju 

Visiting the remains of a fortress, burned by invaders

Hiking Namsan, known for numerous buddhist statues and cliff carvings

Since it was my birthday right before they arrived, my family brought my present with them — a new digital camera. My old camera was falling apart and the new one has some very cool functions including a hybrid video/photo mode. I used this hybrid mode to film some highlights from our trip and put them together to make the video below. Hope you enjoy it!

HANOI: Part II

Not too much has happened the last few weeks. My Korean class at the local English-language church ended and then this last weekend I went up to Seoul for our Infusion magazine meeting. Infusion is the literary magazine published by Fulbright Korea. I have been working as a staff editor for the magazine since this fall. Now my students are taking their midterm exams so I have a bit more free time. I want to take advantage of this lull to post the rest of my pictures from winter break and the gorgeous Vietnamese scenery.

Outside of Hanoi we took a ferry around Halong Bay, famous for its numerous rocky projections.

Throughout the bay are floating fishing villages. We stopped at one to rent kayaks and paddle around.

#kayakselfie

Another day we traveled a little north of Hanoi to an old capital of Vietnam. The area is described as the 'dry Halong bay' because it contains the same rocky formations.

Entrance to an old temple. This temple was unique in having been built entirely by the local population without regulation or support from any government or ruler.

Later in the day, at a different site, we rode row boats along the river.

I'm sure a large part of the local income comes from this tourism. The scenery was beautiful, but it was uncomfortable being rowed around by a woman older than my mother. 

In the last moments of our day we went bicycling  around the fields.

Mid-March Blues and Yellows

Today was the first day I felt well enough to go to yoga in two weeks. Today was a beautiful day, a mid-April day. How can it be mid-April already? The afternoons are so warm here now, sunny and breezy. When I looked at my calendar I almost cried because there is so little time left. I'm ecstatic to be healthy (or almost healthy) again and I plan to stay this way for the rest of the grant year (knock on wood).

A lot has happened since mid-March but most of it involved me coughing, sneezing and oozing. The highlights include: seeing Lee Seung Chul live in concert with my host sisters! Lee Seung Chul has been popular for ages. His most recent single and one of my favorite noraebang songs is My Love. When my host sisters found out he was coming to Gumi they booked our tickets immediately — my first time ever as a VVIP. We were maybe 15 rows away from the stage and had a great time singing, dancing and waving flashing wands. At the end of the concert several ajummas (ladies of a certain age) stood on their chairs and refused to leave the hall, yelling "Oppa! Oppa!"(Oppa is the word Korean women use for an older male friend. Literally translated its meaning is close to 'older brother', but the word is equally appropriate when used to address an older boyfriend.)

At the concert these flashing star wands are almost obligatory.

The week after the concert the cherry trees blossomed letting us know spring is finally here to stay. I visited the Geumosan trail with my host mom to admire the flowers and take some pictures.

Just as I was starting to feel better it was time to fly to Jeju for our Fulbright Spring Conference. Weather there was windy, cold and bright. It reminded me a lot of San Francisco. It was good to see all the other ETAs again, even people who I hadn't spoken to since the last conference, and we had a great time exploring Jeju island. Unfortunately our last evening I got food poisoning, so getting back to school after conference was quite difficult. 

View from Halla Mountain in Jeju.

Catching up with friends :)

It was extremely windy and cool all weekend.

After several doctor's visits I'm finally over everything except some lingering allergies. I had been feeling down, thinking how much time I wasted being sick. However, looking back now I can see how many fun moments I've had in the last month despite feeling under the weather. It's an important lesson to remember as this grant year rushes to a close, often we are doing more than we believe. It's also a good reason to keep recording, here on the blog or in my journal, because sometimes it provides a more honest perspective than my memory.

HANOI: City of colors

We arrived in Hanoi mid-afternoon on an early morning flight from Taipei. We had applied for visas on arrival, so after getting off the airplane we went to a separate immigration post to pick them up. The process took about 10 minutes and then we continued through the regular immigration checkpoint and on to get our luggage. The Hanoi airport is around 40 minutes from the city center so we took a taxi from the airport to our guesthouse in the Old Quarter.

Old Quarter Hanoi has become a hub for backpackers of all kinds, but despite that reputation it has not become overwhelmingly commercial. There are many travel agencies, restaurants and bars in the area that clearly cater to tourists, but these businesses co-exist within the city's particular character. Sometimes a place that caters to tourists can feel dry and lifeless — Hanoi's old quarter is anything but. Thinking of Hanoi I will always think of movement, that sea of motorbikes, and the bright red, green, yellow of the buddhist flags.

The Hanoi Guesthouse where we stayed was a little more expensive than some at $20 a night, however the price was well worth it for the delicious breakfast and kind staff. It is quite likely the friendliest hotel or guesthouse I have stayed at in any country. Each morning we had our choice of coffee, tea or fresh juice and crepes, cereal, pho or fried sticky rice. My favorite was the fried sticky rice, covered with crispy little onions; I ate it almost every day.

The view from our room at Hanoi Guesthouse.

Looking back I wouldn't have stayed anywhere but the Old Quarter. Its streets were always crowded with pedestrians and motorbikes, but it was the endless crowding of street upon street, cafe upon cafe and alley upon alley that made this tortuous neighborhood so invigorating. The tumult of people and buildings was punctuated by sudden moments of calm in the form of a courtyard full of birds or a vacant coffee shop sitting like a gaping mouth on the edge of the road.

The Old Quarter's ubiquitous motorbikes.

Old Quarter intersection: cafes on cafes.

I mentioned that Hanoi was a city of colors, but I didn't add that it was also one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Part of Hanoi's beauty came from the architecture itself which was a hodge podge of windows, balconies and unfinished arches. Coming from a place where the world is built inwards against winter it was lovely to see a whole city built to enjoy the breezes and open air. This image was reinforced in my mind by the habit of keeping birds about houses and stores. These songbirds added so many extra dimensions of loveliness to a building through their voices and through the simple fact of their being alive. I learned later that raising songbirds is a traditional art in Vietnam, generally practiced only by men. Thus, people say you can judge the character of a man by the health and care visible in his songbirds.

Old Quarter birdcage.

Birds in the courtyard of an Old Quarter craft house.

Many of the things I loved most in Hanoi I never meant to find. The birds were one and this craft house was another. An immensely peaceful building it was a communal craft house at a time when the Old Quarter was a hub for traditional handicrafts rather than tourists. The city's craft houses were repurposed during the French colonial period and many have now been reopened as showcases or temples.

View inside the craft house turned temple.

Other discoveries included: this man carrying a kumquat tree on the back of his motorbike,

students behind St. Joseph's Cathedral,

and this wall art depicting the legend of Hoan Kiem lake.

'Hoan Kiem' means 'heavenly sword' and Hoan Kiem in the past was said to be the home of giant turtles, one of four mythical animals. I love the strange suspension and animation between the waves, clouds and lotus blooms.

We happened to be in Hanoi about a week before the Lunar New Year and so, got to see a bit of Vietnamese tradition and culture firsthand. As in Taipei, markets here were preparing for the new year with effusive red and gold stalls, envelopes and candy. However, on our third day in Hanoi we saw something a little different. We were waiting in the lobby of our hotel to go on a day trip outside the city when a women arrived by motorbike delivering, not fruit or bread, but three bright red fish swimming in a plastic bag. The hotel staff explained to us that in Vietnamese tradition there are three spirits related to the home — one in the kitchen, one in the whole house and one in the local area. One day a year before the Lunar New Year these three spirits go to Heaven to report on the household. Each household or business then keeps three red fish outside their home on this day for the spirits to ride to Heaven.

If you can't tell already I was captivated by Hanoi and from the first day we arrived there to the last I felt like I had to return again.

On libraries, new beginnings, and eating alone

I have been trying to write about February. I wanted to tell you about this month that loomed so monumental in my mind while being in all other respects so minimal. February is a short month, an odd month, forced to change every now and then from 28 days to 29. It is the most abysmal month of winter in many places (I include Korea in that list) and the most difficult month to spell. Yet it is also the month of the Sochi Olympics, the month of Valentines day. February was the month of my middle school's graduation ceremony and the last month of our ample winter vacation. For me, this month had another meaning; for me this was the month to make it or break it.

I had a choice between living in Gumi with my host family for the month of February or living in Seoul, as many of my friends were doing. I chose, for a variety of reasons, to stay in Gumi and spend my time studying for the GRE and building relationships in my placement city. It was a difficult decision, no less because staying in Gumi meant self-managing my time, whereas in Seoul I would most likely have taken language classes. By staying in Gumi I wanted to test myself, to see how well I could sustain an energetic and productive life entirely on my own schedule.

Now, in early March I can say I did enjoy that time. I loved it. I had the freedom to study hard and the freedom to sleep. I had the time to visit friends and the time to read. I had the time to make new friends, to make new habits. Of course, not everything happens simply because you have enough time. Coming back to Korea from my visit to the States and my vacation in Taipei and Hanoi left me in the right mind to make the most of my time.

However, this time was not always pleasant. In the midst of my school's graduation, as I watched a performance of Apink's "No No No" and waved balloons for my favorite 3rd graders, my co-teacher leaned over and told me that 25 of our students were not at graduation. They had been banned for participating in the beating of several 2nd grade students just two days earlier. The news was both sad and shocking. Our school has always been rough around the edges, but I never expected something so intentionally brutal. At the same time I know that school gangs are a nation-wide problem in Korea and that for many students the choice might be between participating and suffering from bullying themselves. Over the next few days I discovered that, of the 2nd grade students, one had broken his collar bone, one had a ruptured ear drum and another had to have all his teeth moved back into place. In many ways, I became more anxious to return to school.

Saying goodbye to my other 3rd graders was sad in a very different way. I have about 245 students in the 3rd grade alone, so it's difficult to get to know any of them very well. I know I taught them only one semester and that only about 16 lessons. Of the few students who really shone and made my lessons exciting to teach, I had little belief that they would wish me a tearful goodbye and ask to stay in touch forever. Yet many students came over for a quick hug or a handshake. I was so touched that they wanted to say goodbye, especially those who told me they missed my class in the last few months.

Shortly after graduation I travelled to Seoul to visit my friends. I went twice in February. Once when I couldn't bear to study any longer and again as soon as I finished the GRE. Having a place to stay in Seoul was wonderful (thank you friends!) and as my friends were all taking classes or doing internships during the day I had a lot of time to do the touristy things in Seoul that I hadn't had time for on other weekend trips. I went twice to the National Museum of Korea, whose smoky paintings captured a facet of Korean life new to me. The museum is truly spectacular with three stories of art and artifacts from prehistory to the modern era and entirely free. In my two visits I have only conquered two of the three floors, but I was able to see the evolution of Korean calligraphy, Korean paintings — from portraits, to landscapes, to insect studies —, a re-created 'sarangbang' or Korean scholar's study and artifacts from every kingdom of Korea up to the Japanese occupation. I highly recommend a visit to anyone who will be in Seoul.

Beyond museums I spent time in cafes from the college areas of Hongdae and Idae to the tourist-turned-artistic-area of Insadong. Around Insadong I also visited the Hanok village, an area of Seoul where traditional Korean houses (circa. the Joseon Era I believe) have been preserved and are still lived in. It happened to be warm and sunny on this day, and the streets — which ask tourists to be quiet in respect for the residents — were full of screaming school children. Later I met some old friends for dinner in Myeongdong, a popular shopping neighborhood, and visited the new Seoul Museum of Modern Art, which was having a free night. Although it's not the same as living in the city, I was able to do a lot on my visits, so I now feel very comfortable in Seoul and have crossed a lot of items off my bucket list.

In Gumi school has started again. Some things are new, some are not, but the greatest change is in my confidence as a teacher. It has only been a week, but I feel that I have stepped up my game on all levels of teaching, from lesson planning to execution to classroom management to connecting with students outside of class. It has only been a week, but I have really good feelings for this semester. I again have about 700 students — 7 classes of 3rd graders, 7 classes of 2nd graders and 6 classes of 1st graders. My returning students have been surprisingly polite in class. Not sure if this is due to our continued rapport, my new classroom management plan, or some strain of first week shyness. The new 1st graders are a joy to teach. They are so eager to participate and several of the classes I've seen so far seem to be quite high level. I also have a new co-teacher for my 1st grade students who I like very much. She is both kind and efficient. I'm excited about what we can do with our classes for the rest of the semester.

I've made a few lifestyle changes for the new semester as well. I joined a gym halfway through February and have been going everyday when I can. I'm really enjoying the classes there. After a yoga class I always find my mood and motivation lifted. I've also decided to stop volunteering at the Hana Center in Daegu. This was a difficult decision to make since I really enjoyed working with my mentee and the community feeling of the center. However, commuting to Daegu once a week while working a full teaching schedule was a strain on my time and my relationships with my host family. This semester I am adding a club class to my teaching schedule, bringing my teaching hours up to 22 a week. With the added prep time and knowing my difficulty in commuting last semester I just couldn't commit to doing the program again in the spring. It would be unfair on everyone else involved for me to commit when I was unsure I could fully participate. If I stay in Korea another year, without the obligations of a host family, it is something I hope I would be able to return to.

However, whether I will be in Korea past this July is still undecided and as such I am suddenly pressed upon by the many things I have yet to do here. It's for this reason that I want to keep my weekends this semester free. If last semester I was committed to getting my bearings in Gumi, this semester I hope to roam more. I had an epiphany of sorts this February while visiting Seoul. As I said, I had a lot of alone time there as well as a lot of time in the evenings talking to my friends. But it was while I was sitting, eating alone in the restaurant of the National Museum of Korea, looking forward to drinking wine with my friends later in the evening when we were all done with our work, that I realized this is what I want to do with the rest of my semester. If during the week I am 100% committed to my school, during the weekends I want to commit myself 100% to teaching myself. I had such a feeling of comfort in my solitariness then — full of the pleasure of intellectual pursuit and the sure knowledge of my kind friends waiting for me later. We're always a bit alone in Korea, even and despite the ever present circles of host family, school family and Fulbright family. Yet there are some moments of clarity when you can turn that aloneness into something new — freedom, comfort, a new discovery. Those are the moments I will cultivate this semester and those are the lessons I want to learn.

TAIPEI PART III: the Maokong Mountains

By far, the best thing we did in Taiwan was our journey to the end of the MRT line and the gondola across the Maokong Mountains. It was our last day in Taipei and taking the gondola was a whim, a small dot at the end of the map next to the Taipei Zoo. I'm not sure I mentioned before, but the Taipei metro system is quite beautiful. The line to the zoo is elevated, much like the L in Chicago. As we sat on the train for the twenty minutes it took to reach the end of the line I felt so peaceful, tall houses and trees gliding by.

The last stop was full of small children and high school couples visiting the Zoo on a Saturday afternoon. We passed them by and continued three or four blocks to the gondola which was only 50 TWD each way (about $1.75). I had expected the gondola to go from the bottom to the top of a mountain. What we found instead was a trip across several mountain peaks traveling about 4 kilometers above the tree tops. It was a misty kind of afternoon, just cool enough to have us wearing sweaters, and the view from the gondola carriage was breathtaking. If I thought the train was peaceful, it was nothing to the meditative feel of riding the gondola. It was heading on to late afternoon by this time so that, as we rounded one peak the mountains would be suddenly suffused in gold.

We finally disembarked to find ourselves in a small cliffside village. Half-farming town, half carnival I wished we had had more time to spend there. Between fields and orchards were wedged numerous tea houses, hiking paths and sweets stalls. Feeling in the spirit I bought a large bag of cotton candy as we wandered along the only street in town.

Maokong Tea Houses

The fields, the foods and then the fall.

If we had brought stronger shoes and warmer clothes we might have wandered onto the hiking paths, leading off to more temples and tea houses, but the day was cooling quickly. As we walked further it felt like drifting into the realm of Spirited Away. Stairs disappearing into leaves led up and down in every direction and next to the road — rainboots in tree branches and overgrown motorbikes. If not Spirited Away then at least we saw something akin to Forster's India, whose jungle swallows everything with no thought of civilization.

Our final stop was a tea house, clutched at the bottom of a long stairwell. It was there we learned that we were in the town of Mucha and that this mountain, and all the others around it, is famous for green tea. All those fields we passed, along the road and in the gondola, were tea fields. At the cafe we were able to try hot tea, tea cakes, tea souffle and tea ice cream. The owner of the cafe is a baker whose dream is to bring the flavor of Mucha, his hometown, to the world. Sitting in the chill air of the cafe, sipping the scalding tea which made that small town famous will surely be one of my strongest memories of Taiwan.

The Mucha Tea House.

TAIPEI PART II: City Life

I've heard that no city can be truly beautiful unless it conjoins a body of water. This is why cities like Amsterdam, Paris, London, Venice, are said to stick in the minds of those who visit them. Taipei holds true to this saying, bounded on two sides by river banks, but for me the true beauty of Taipei stemmed from its mountain boundaries.

Our second or third day in Taipei we were able to get an amazing view of all the city from the top of Taipei 101. Taipei 101 is second tallest building in the world and, since it was built on an island, is designed to withstand hurricanes. It was interesting to learn just a modicum of the knowledge behind this physical feat when we visited the structure. You see, the Taipei 101 has inside it essentially a giant ball suspended by steel cords and struts. This ball or damper absorbs and distributes the movement generated when wind hits the tower, reducing the stress on the rest of the building. Inside the tower we got to see a short video of the damper's actual movement during a hurricane.

Taipei 101

It actually took us ages to get to the tower because we underestimated its size. We had gone to lunch at a dim sum place downtown and when we came outside we could see Taipei 101 on the horizon — maybe 3 or 4 blocks we thought, a quick walk, see the tower and we can find something else to do for the rest of the afternoon. 40 minutes later we were still walking and the tower didn't look closer. Deceptive building. Although finally we did get there of course.

Once in the building you can pay to take the high-speed elevator up to the 89th floor. There is of course, no other option for going up to the 89th floor and while the ticket is a little pricey it is money well spent. Once you are on the 89th floor you have a beautiful view of Taipei. They also have bathrooms, a cafe, a gift shop and access to the 88th floor, where you can learn about the building's construction, and the rooftop, with an even more stunning view of the city.

View from Taipei 101's 89th floor.

Sunset from Taipei 101.

Taipei was very urban and it showed in the intersections filled with motorbikes, in the plethora of suits and in the availability of things like 'the Spot' Cinema which daily shows art films from around the globe. I don't particularly see the charm of the big city myself — the medium or small city seems just fine to me — but going to 'the Spot' reminded me of the assets of the big city, the availability of things like an art cinema and the multicultural atmosphere. At 'the Spot' we saw the only English-language film available — Nebraska.

'The Spot'

Taipei Traffic

As much as I enjoyed this urban side of life, after three days of city walking I was ready to get out and see something beyond skyscrapers.

TAIPEI PART I: Monuments and Markets

We arrived in Taipei in the evening without light and quite tired. From the airport we took a shuttle bus to the central district where we were staying and pretty nearly collapsed into the hotel room, not forgetting, of course, to buy one of Taiwan's iconic bubble teas along the way.

Taipei Streets

Getting out of the hotel the next day and the next few days I was impressed and intrigued by Taipei's size and cleanliness, by its spacious parks and shuffling markets, by its peculiar newness and oldness. There is a strange disconnect in Taipei's gorgeous national theater, its awesome memorial to leader Chiang Kai Shek, its Palace Museum. These buildings are not old, but were built to carry something old, to bring something old to a new place, in the process creating something new. I know embarrassingly little about the politics of Taiwan and China, but I can appreciate the intricacies of cultural monuments in a country that claims two births.

Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall

National Concert Hall

Most of the time as we explored Taipei by foot or subway the city did not feel crowded. Built right into the mountain feet the air in Taipei was incredibly fresh, impressively so for a city of that size. I loved the airiness of the buildings there — not having a real winter so many restaurants, cafes, businesses opened onto the streets. All around the high rise apartments had sprouted trees and flowers from roofs and balconies. Even walls there wore vegetation.

Living wall on an office building

Taipei apartments: downtown

That airy quality only changed in the evenings, if you happened to stumble into one of Taipei's famous night markets — a feat we managed quite purposefully and frequently. The night markets are famous, they are ubiquitous, and they deserve every bit of praise they have every received. They literally transform the streets of Taipei, like some kind of architectural performance art. It was at night at the markets, more than in the day, that I felt I was seeing the full range and texture of Taipei's population. Imagine (you will have to imagine as I couldn't force myself to take pictures in that throng), imagine thirty or sixty streets tucked behind the main roads of Taipei. Imagine the movement of hundreds of people funneling north, south, east, west, stopping, being carried along. Imagine the slow and impenetrable rush of the central market and the sudden exhale, the giddiness of the side street where you find yourself — unbelievably — free. It was beautiful, overwhelming — I can't believe it goes on every day. And I haven't even told you about the food yet.

We ate steamed buns filled with meat, steamed buns filled with vegetables; pancakes with custard, pancakes with red bean; fried sweet potato, fried cabbage omelet — fried anything — and delicious syrup coated strawberries on a stick. We ate so much our first night at the market I can hardly remember. There is one food however, that I will never forget, despite not having tasted a bite; there is nothing like walking lazily through the market and suddenly catching a whiff of stinky tofu. It's smell is truly singular and while I believe that the taste might be worth it, I was not tempted to eat any myself.

Taipei Day Market

Though I failed to snap a picture of the night market, we were lucky enough to see two other types of Taipei markets during our stay. The first was a day market only a few blocks from our hotel. It offered fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, meats, and a few miscellaneous, but necessary, goods such as flowers and foot massages (yes, you can get a foot massage at the market, but no, I did not). The second market began around Taipei's City God Temple and traveled on for several streets selling candies, lanterns, nuts, dried fruit, dried fish, dried (I think) sea cucumber, chinese herbal medicine and brightly colored envelopes — everything and anything you could ever dream of needing to celebrate the lunar new year. Although I loved the night markets I think this market, with its red and gold, its atmosphere of festivity and anticipation, was my favorite.

City God Market

I'm now at home and my host family is preparing for the Lunar New Year. For Koreans also it is one of the biggest holidays of the year, more important, I was told, than Chuseok. So we are buying socks to give as gifts and Thursday my host mom will cook copious amounts of food for Friday's celebration. We even received a New Year's gift set as a valued customer at the local store — beautifully boxed and wrapped Spam. Happy New Year everyone!