Why we have to leave the country

Ok, so some of you have been hearing/seeing random things about Jon and I and deportation, so I thought I should set the record straight.

Last year, right before we came here, we were having some issues with the visa because the Jeonju Reading Town wasn't finished with construction yet, so couldn't get a business liscence so couldn't sponser us. In order to get us here before the school started, Reading Town headquarters registered us under a Reading Town in Seoul. They told us they would change it as soon as we got here, and then we thought they had fixed it. They told us everything was ok with our visa etc. 

You might not think it's a big deal to be teaching with a different branch of the same school, but you need a visa from the CITY that you are working in also. We did NOT know that. It's not really something that comes up in casual conversation. We have our residents' cards like everyone else, only ours says "Immigration office of Seoul" in small letters at the bottom--we figured that everyone's went through Seoul, since it's the capital and general hub of activity. Nope. Everyone else's in Jeonju says "Immigration office of Jeonju." We find out after all of this.

Anyway, somehow (we're not really clear on this part) immigration in Jeonju found out that we'd been working illegally for the past 9 months. We went with our director to the immigration offices on Thursday and again on Friday to figure out basically how pissed they were at us and especially Mr. Lee, the director. 

To make a long story short, which I'm going to because I've told this story a million times in the past 5 days, they're ending our contracts and giving us 10 days to leave the country. Not technically deported, so we can come back, and it doesn't look bad on us. Jon's trying to wrangle some severance money out of headquarters since it's their fault, we have emails to prove it, and they're trying to blame it all on our director. 

So, that's the story. We're fine. Jon'll travel with me for a little, depending on how much he can get from headquarters....

The Great American Pasttime...Korean Style

I've been wanting to go to a baseball game here since before I came. But when we got here, we didn't know enough about what was going on, and we missed the end of the season. So, finally, the weekend before last, I made it to a game. 

Jon and I, and our friends Dan and Amanda, were planning on taking the train up to Daejeon (where the closest team is) on Saturday, going to the nearby zoo, then to the game and then to Costco for the bi-monthly stock-up. Well, on Thursday night we were at the Beer Cave, as is becoming usual, and we met a very friendly Korean man in an intense bicycling outfit. His name is Brad, and he turned out to be really cool. We talked to him a lot that night, and found out he is a certified SCUBA dive-master, loves to travel and loves trying different foods and beers (that is rare in Koreans). He was also quite funny. The conversation turned to Costco, and we mentioned we were going on Saturday. Brad professed his love for Costco, and volunteered to drive us there. We told him the plans for the day, and he got pretty excited. We exchanged phone numbers, and left unsure of whether he was actually going to go with us, and drive, so planning on keeping the original plan. 

Well, Friday night he called me and said he and a friend would drive us, that there were 2 others girls coming too, and that he'd pick us up at 9. Sweet! Going somewhere in an actual car is a luxury Jon and I have only had one other time in Korea, but it makes life much easier. 

Brad picked us up on time, and after taking the usual while to get out of town that comes standard with a road trip, we were on the way to Daejeon. Daejeon is about an hour away by car, and its a bigger city than I thought it was, having only been the two blocks from the train station to Costco. It has a population of 1.4 million, which is crazy since it's only the 5th largest city. There are at least 8 cities in Korea with more than a million people....and Korea's the size of Indiana!!  

The zoo was fun...there were beautiful leopards, tigers and panters, but also some small enclosures for other animals and a particularly sickly-looking polar bear. On the whole, average for Korean zoos. There were crowds of people throwing chips to the monkeys, who showed quite impressive catching skills while hanging onto the bars of the cage and sticking their skinny arms out. That can't be good for the monkeys. 

After the zoo, we headed to the baseball game. Outside the stadium, there were vendors selling boxes of fried chicken that came with sketchy-looking label-less plastic bottles of beer. And there was a Pizza Hut stand selling personal pan pizzas with sweet potato and chicken. And the ubiquitous stalls with dried squid and meat on a stick. And, of course, soju and beer. 

The inside of the stadium was a lot more like the baseball games I'm used to. Stands of people wearing jerseys, a fan section with lots of signs, little kids with baseball gloves, and tons of Thundersticks (the long, narrow plastic balloons used as noisemakers). There were kids on the field playing catch before the game, a ritual sometimes held after the game in the States, usually at minor-league parks. The players were warming up. There were cheerleaders on the field. Okay, maybe that part isn't the same as the games in the States. 

The game started, we passed around paper cups of that questionable beer, and I felt at home. True, there were more home runs than a usual MLB game (at least 6, probably 8). And the 7th inning stretch was not only moved to the 6th inning, but the players actually used it to get out on the field and stretch. And there were cheerleaders, and a man conducting synchronized cheers most of the game in the hard-core fan section. And there was dried squid and roasted squid but no hot dogs. But there was a pitcher, a catcher, fielders, a batter and runners. In short, it was baseball. Three strikes and you're out. Some things are sacred.

Oh, cherry blossoms

Think Asia, and you'll probably think about cherry blossoms in the first few seconds. They're right up there with samurais, tigers, tea and pagodas. So, in the spring in Korea, of course we had to go to a Cherry Blossom Festival.

First of all, I was thinking that cherry blossoms would be a bit over-rated. I mean, they're in everything...paintings, books, movies...talk about setting you up for disappointment. But cherry blossoms really are that awesome. Especially when they're on trees that line to road for miles, creating a canopy over the road. And when they line riverbanks. And when the wind blows, and it snows flower petals. Here there are a few varieties of beautiful blooming trees, with blossoms varying from pure white to bright pink. The white-flowered trees are my favorite, because the trees look like popcorn or cotton stuffing or I don't even know. They look comfy. 

Cherry trees had been blooming in Jeonju slowly for a few weeks, but they hadn't gotten to peak yet, where they take over the whole tree. It was still beautiful. When the weekend of the cherry blossom festival rolled around (the first weekend in April), they still hadn't quite peaked in Jeonju. Nonetheless, Jon, our friends Dan, Amanda, Ben, Talor, Helen, Ken and I boarded a train headed south for Hwagae, a little village at the foot of a huge mountain that boasted a festival that made the top 3 tourist activities of the Korean spring. 

After we got to the train station, we had to wander for awhile, trying to find the bus station. We eventually took a taxi to a small, old, dilapidated bus station that looked like an old school building, with old, dilapidated buses that could have been school buses in front. We bought our tickets for the bus that would take us to the festival, and waited around for it to get there. 

Once it did, and we were boarded along with everyone else going to the festival, the bus started along the road. It was supposed to be a 30 minute ride. After about 10, we ran into stop-and-go traffic that was more stop than go. It was backup from the festival. After an hour and a half crawling down a beautiful road along a river lined with cherry trees, we got out and walked, following the example of a Korean power-walked we'd been going at the same pace as for at least 30 minutes. We figured some fresh air was in order, and that walking would probably be more enjoyable anyway. 

It definitely was, and we walked the rest of the way. The festival grounds were a market in this tiny village. The market was apparently usually an attraction in itself, and it was sprawling, filled with fresh roots and mushrooms from the mountain, bags of tea leaves and pottery. The pottery was beautiful. Rustic jars, mugs and tea sets, delicate soju shot glasses and vases, all made of brown clay and decorated with white glaze, sometimes with a dash of pink or blue. I bought a nice, big, thick, heavy mug. I like my coffee or tea in something substantial. :) 

We spent the rest of the time wandering the market, then walking on a road justly labeled "scenic road of Korea." It was lined on both sides with cherry trees, which came together overhead. It would have been greater, had it not also been backed up with traffic. But we still enjoyed it, and walked until the sun started setting. 

We took a bus back to Jeonju. Getting on the first bus was an experience. We waited in an orderly line, which doesn't happen much in Korea. But then, when the bus came, everybody completely sprinted to the doors, pushing and shoving everyone else out of the way. I got pushed by a few scary old ladies, and elbowed by some guy with a little kid. Talor and I shoved along with them, and got seats, along with a couple other friends. 

When we got back to Jeonju, we had a nice big dinner of Dak Galbi. Cheesy, wonderful goodness.....that's something I'm gonna have to learn to make when I get home. Mmmmm.

The Great Outdoors

A few years back, I was taking a nice springtime walk on the preserve at Catawba, reflecting on my life, and I realized that almost all of my childhood memories took place outside. The more I tried to remember being indoors, the more I realized how much of my life I spent outside. For this, I have my parents, especially my mother, to thank. 

I grew up in a place that was especially outdoors-friendly-- Burlington, Vermont. Not only did my family take advantage of every opportunity to spend time outdoors at home, but every vacation we took revolved around the outdoors-- the ocean, lakes, woods. We had a good-sized backyard with a huge willow tree that I would climb and spend hours in, and a garden and a deck in the back that we spent most of the warm-weather days on. We went to the beach, to the park, to the woods, and to parks all over Vermont. At the time, I might not have always wanted to go, but looking back I'm thankful we did. I remember spring evenings playing catch, summer mornings at the beach, and fall days picking apples. 

So these days, I'm thinking about my connection to the outdoors more and more. Living in a city such as Jeonju, with a nice but small river, some small parks but nothing really big or nice makes me feel the need to get out of town every weekend. I'm used to nature. I need it. 

I always feel bad for people who don't have this strong connection to nature, to the outdoors. Although maybe it would make life in a city easier. But I think it's so important, especially for kids, to get out into nature. To get dirty. To explore. To hug a tree. :) Climb a mountain. Explore a tide pool. 

In spring, there's a certain time of day I feel like I need to be at softball practice. Not need to like I might get in trouble if I don't go. But need to like a part of me just needs to be outside, working hard, getting dirty and doing something active. (Man. Just writing about it makes me sad. I'd better find a rec team in DC next year.) 

More importantly, as I'm sitting in my office on this very warm spring day in Korea, sun coming in the window, I feel like I'm a student again on one of those spring days when everyone begs the teacher to hold class outside. And then I see my students, here from 3:45-7. Missing the best part of the day. They should be outside. Because I'm pretty sure I gained more from running around outside all afternoon than I would have in a classroom. But that's a concept that's yet to catch on here. In the meantime, I'll remain frustrated at the system. I'm thinking of letting my class outside for 10 minutes today, if we finish all our work, and I probably will. I'm just pretty sure I'll get told I can't do that anymore in a day or so. But I think it's worth it. If I wasn't already leaving in a few weeks, and therefore don't want to cause any more trouble, I'd have the whole class outside. Just once. Learn names of trees and plants. Play a playground game. But it won't happen. I just hope their parents take them places on the weekends. 

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for taking me places. 

Kai, Bai, BO!

"Kai, Bai, Bo" is the Korean version of rock, paper, scissors, and I am pretty sure that Koreans use that to decide everything from who will pay the check to the fate of the world. Well, maybe not that last one, but I'm not convinced they couldn't use it during unification.

Case in point. My students are highly competitive. Seriously. They will fight over nothing, and compete for who can finish their work first, and who gets the most answers right....etc. One of my classes assigns each other medals (gold, silver, bronze) in every exercise we do, and even created 3 more ranked categories since there are 6 people in the class. They started fighting over who finished first, seriously fighting, to the point of tears in some of them. So, after that episode, they started doing rock paper scissors to solve the disputes. This worked perfectly. No problem. They completely accept the outcome of this random game. It cracks me up. Something that used to make them fight to the death is now solved by rock paper scissors. 

Not only is RPS a way to solve disputes, but in Korea it's also a game by itself, with an added element. Whoever wins gets to flick the other one in the forehead. Hard. They practice. My students play it all the time. They've even gotten Jon to play with them, but I refuse to get flicked in the forehead. Or flick anyone else. But mostly get flicked. 

The best time I had playing this game...well I guess the only time I played...was waiting for the subway one night in Seoul. It was the night after Joe, Tara and Nate's first night in Korea, and we were heading back to the hostel. This drunk Korean guy came up to us and, after babbling something in Korean he started in with the rock paper scissors motion. So we got the point. So we all played a group game, and then the ones who lost got flicked in the head by, of course, the drunk guy, who, of course, won. We kept playing until the subway came, and getting flicked in the head. It was ... interesting. 

But my favorite RPS story has to be last week at this new bar we found. Our friend Carlos called us and told us where to meet him. The bar is this small dive in the basement of a random building only a few blocks from our apartment. Another foreigner discovered it a few weeks ago, and a week later there were tons of us. There is a lot of imported beer...rare in this city...and it's pretty cheap. The beer is just in fridges in the bar, and you just grab it and they add up the bottles. 

But there was an older Korean guy there with one of the foreigners, he was one of her students. He was really friendly, and bought us a round of drinks. Then, he was talking to the owner of the bar, and then he turned to us and said "Ok, this is the owner. We will play rock paper scissors. I win, he give this beer (shows us 5 bottles of $5 beer). I no win....uh...I will win." 

So they played. And he won. So we got free beer. And later we found out that all that happened if he lost was that he had to pay for the beer. 

I love rock paper scissors. It solves everything. :)  

The land before time...

This weekend, again part of my attempt to see everything worth seeing in Korea before I leave, Jon and I ventured south to find some dinosaur footprints. This is something I'd been wanting to do ever since I heard it was possible. I mean, how cool is that, seeing where dinosaurs walked around? So, we did the usual intense navigation of the only semi-helpful Korean tourism websites, and deciphered how to get there. And, as preparation the night before, we watched "The Land Before Time." Such a good movie. :) 

It took a looong time to get there. We took a bus from Jeonju to Jinju (haha), which took 3 1/2 hours of winding through the mountains. Let me tell you, for a country the size of Indiana, it can sure take a while to get though. Stupid mountains. :) Just kidding, I love the mountains. 

Once in Jinju, a bus to Goseong took about an hour, then came the annoying part. We were so ready to get there, and we just needed to take a local bus to the Dinosaur museum/fossil site. So we get on the local bus, and it starts going but the guy takes at least one wrong turn, and then picks up old ladies on the side of the street and goes out of his way to bring them to their houses, or at least their streets. I guarantee this happened, because he would drop them off, then we would back-track and take a different turn. So it took an hour to get there.

FINALLY we were greeted by giant statues of dinosaurs on a hilltop overlooking a beautiful coastline dotted with mountainous islands. ( Sidenote: If I didn't dislike Korea, I would live on the coast here. It's gorgeous, and the mix of mountains and sea I'm looking for.) After kind of deciphering the returning bus schedule (we would have to go to a different city but we were assured we would get back), we ate our lunch of tuna sandwiches and then ventured inside. At that point, we were like "This had better be freakin' amazing for all the time it took to get here!"

The museum was pretty cool, your generic dinosaur museum with skeletons, fossils and a cool animatronics exhibit of fighting dinosaurs. The statues were a bit disturbing, since almost all of the big dinosaurs had little dinosaurs ripping their flesh off in stunning life-like fashion. We actually saw one kid start crying after looking at one of the statues. It was disturbing. 

But the actual footprints were AWESOME! They were on the stone on the coast, which was gorgeous anyway, with rock cliffs and caves along the water's edge. You could see the footprints in a line, so it was like the dino had just walked by. At one place, you could step in them. Which of course, I did, and said "Hey! Look! I'm Litte Foot!" Good thing no one but Jon around me spoke English. I hope. 

  There were also lots of fossils in the space between the rocks, of those...oh, what are they called...things that look like beetles. I dunno. Anyway, let's call them prehistoric beetles. And there was a guy catching sea slugs and selling them (live) to people to eat. Sketch. Yuck. 

Then we walked along the coastline, sometimes on the rocks, exploring tide pools (my fav. pasttime) but then we were forced to walk on a wooden pathway because the other fossil area was protected. There were fossilized ripple marks from the water on the rocks, and more footprints. There was even part where the rock was all strangely bumpy and pitted, that was apparently from a whole bunch of footprints in one place, kind of like when it's muddy and you play soccer. Heehee, dinosaurs playing soccer. :) 

After seeing all the fossils this place had to offer, we made it back to the museum to wait for the bus. We got there 20 minutes before the bus was supposed to come, but after we waited for an hour in the spot the guys at the info booth told us to wait at, there was still no bus. In the meantime, we had been laughing at some policemen up the road who were directing traffic and very bored, because they were dancing to the music from the loudspeakers, and then making faces at/ saluting us. Jon finally asked the people at the info booth what was up, and they were equally confused. They told us to go wait at another bus stop down the road, so we went there. Waited for a while. No bus. Finally, one of the guys from the info booth, who was on his way home, picked us up. He was really nice, and he drove us to the bus station and went inside and helped us buy tickets. 

Of course, once we got to Jinju through the rush hour traffic, we had missed the last bus to Jeonju. So, we got on a bus to Namwon, which is on the way to Jeonju, hoping there'd be a bus from there. Which, luckily, there was. It just took a little time and a lot of buses. But it was worth it. Cuz I found Little Foot. Well, at least, his footprints. But if I follow the footprints......

Pagodas for Peace

This past Sunday, Jon and I ventured into the mist. It was a cloudy, rainy day, but we decided to go ahead with our plans to visit nearby Maisan. Maisan is a mountain, and a provincial park. It's actually one mountain with two very separate peaks. Either way, it was too cloudy to see them.

After about an hour bus ride, we ended up in Jinan, a small town across some mountains from Jeonju. We had driven through clouds to get there, but when we did, the rain had let up. Since it was an hour until the bus to the mountain, we wandered around the town. It was basically one street, full of mostly stores and hawkers selling ginseng, old women crouching over bags of dirt-crusted roots. Some roots were huge, some were small, some were strangely misshapen. But all were fresh ginseng, dug up from fields on the surrounding mountains. 

Other than ginseng, there were a few shabby restaurants, a small stream that wound through the town, and a dumpling shop. As Jon loves dumplings, we stopped in the latter for a snack. It was more or less someone's kitchen, with a big dining table in the middle and an old, dusty cooler with drinks inside. The couple working were kind, and the woman served us freshly-steamed kimchi dumplings (well, served Jon. I don't like kimchi dumplings). It was a nice, cozy snack stop, but after 15 minutes we were on our way.

Once I was warmed up by an instant cocoa from a convenience store, we went back to the bus terminal to wait. We sat on old, orange vinyl chairs surrounded by senior citizens, watching a baseball game between Korea and Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic. A long, long way from home, I was back in familiar surroundings, sitting inside on a rainy day watching a baseball game.

Well, the game ended and about 10 minutes later, our bus came. It was a rickety old local bus, empty but for one man who sat talking with the driver, but it got us to the mountain in about 15 minutes. From there, we started walking. There were surprisingly many people there, not too crowded but it wasn't empty. The rain was still holding off, and the mist that surrounded the mountains gave a mystical feeling to the day. 

The road up to the park was surrounded by quaint restaurants selling ribs. Grilled ribs, smoked ribs, cooked covered in pine needles. Chefs cooked on grills lining the walkway, trying to entice customers. Wooden smokehouse, smoke billowing out. Somehow, we made it past all of that without giving in to temptation. 

It was a simple walk, paved the whole way and only up rolling hills. This is how Korean trails usually start out, until it gets to the main temple, when more wooded trails branch off. This time, our only goal was the main temple, since the weather was bad and we Jon's ankle was bothering him from soccer the day before.

                              

The main temple, in this case, was special. It was tucked in between rock cliffs, tiny and cozy. Around it were 80 stone pagodas. In the early 1900s, a Buddhist hermit lived at the temple, and built about 120 pagodas of varying sizes as a meditation and prayer for peace. The pagodas are the stuff of legend in Korea, since there is nothing holding the pagodas together but balance and gravity, and they have made it through 100 years of windstorms, rain and ice. There is also the legend that if you place a bowl of pure, clean spring water by the temple in the winter, and pray with a pure heart, an icicle will form in the center of the bowl, going up like the pagodas. 

          

Whatever the legend, whatever the reason that the pagodas remain (the ones that have fallen are mostly the result of human interference), they are breath-taking. There is a pair behind the temple, called the Heaven and Earth Pagodas, that are about 2 stories tall. All the pillars look precarious, but one can see the work that went into them through the careful balance and the smaller stones surround the joints of larger stones. It reminds me that peace is a painstaking process, a never-ending process, and the working for peace requires balance, care and support, just like these pagodas. But also that sometimes, when all these elements are present, things can stabilize and withstand seemingly unsurrmountible pressures. 

Surrounded by mountains and mist, these spires seemed more mystical. It really was beautiful, especially with the echoing chanting and the eerie clinking of the wooden bells used in Buddhist meditation. Interrupted only at intervals by loud Korean hikers. 

The day got chillier, and it was started to get dark, so we headed back to wait for the bus. This time, the old, delapitated local bus took us all the way to Jeonju, through curvy mountain roads we could see this time around, and I'm not sure this increased vision was to my benefit. 

Arriving back in Jeonju, we met some friends for a dinner of dak galbi, wonderfully cheesy chicken, ramen noodles, rice cake and veggie skillet cooked right in front of you, of course smothered in hot sauce, and eaten wrapped in lettuce leaves. A nice, cozy end to a chilly, damp but inspiring day.