Geojin au go-go

Mother Earth wrung out her Southeast Asian dishcloth over Korea during August, as vapor from the South China sea and Pacific condensed and fell in torrents and typhoons and created towering anvils of thunderheads sweeping across the landscape.  The thick, grey, stifling, amazonian weather has enveloped and smothered Korea every day since my arrival, like a sealed locker-room shower with all heads spraying hot, and steam so opaque that the exit was nowhere to be seen.  Droplets of perspiration exited my pores in vain, hoping to escape into an atmosphere of low relative humidity, only to find themselves desperately dripping on the ground, on my bicycle handlebars and saturating my t-shirts.  Indeed, over the last 2 weeks, I have come as close to the feeling of living inside a large damp sponge as is humanly possible.  However, the discomfort from the heat and humidity has been trivial compared to the disorienting effect of the unyieldingly grey, dimly-lit, homogeneous sky.  

In a new place, disorientation is common, but one mechanism that is wired into every human brain is solar orientation and wayfinding by sunlight and shadow direction.  As a person who prides himself on a sterling sense of direction, I was humbled by the absence of the sun and shadows guiding my way.  Especially in Seoul, with its non-orthogonal streets, winding alleyways, spaghetti-like subway system, and apparent lack of city center.   This disorientation abated upon arrival in my new home Geojin-ri in Ganseong county, set on the coast of the far northeast province of Gangwon-do.

Geojin, a small city with a metro area of about 10,000 people, is set on the East Sea, with a man-made harbor and fishing port.  In spite of its location, 15km from the DMZ, Geojin is a peaceful place, where honest fishermen catch squid and pollack, doors are left unlocked at night, and children play between the stalls in the open air market on every date that ends in the number "6".  Yesterday, 16 Sept, was my first market experience and I arrived late; just in time to watch the vendors pack up their bundles of cabbage, clothes, and boxes of pirated K-pop music.

Living on the coast instantly provides a sense of orientation, as every location can be judged relative to the water:  either one is headed away from or towards the water, or the water is on your left, or your right.  Easy enough.  I've felt anchored before in a similar way during my time living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during college, with the consistent, cool waters of Lake Michigan always laying in the East.  

The good news is that the monsoons have passed this week and the pumpkin and squash blossoms and radish sprouts are basking in glorious sunlight, and the red chili peppers are out on the ground for drying.  Mountains in the distance that I didn't know existed have stepped forward from behind their misty shroud as the hills are glowing in a vivid green against the blue sky.  My air conditioner has been silent, mornings are brisk, and Autumn is coming.

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Both front seats of the car were fully forward to fit my bicycle box in the backseat of her KIA,  pressing my knees against the dashboard, as we headed out of Chuncheon on the winding roads towards Geojin-ri.  금옥 성  (Seong Guemoc) asked me where else in the world I had traveled in simple, utilitarian English.  At first I guessed she perhaps wanted to live vicariously through my travel stories, but quickly realized that she wanted to see my "Paraguayan lizard eating story" and raise me a " trans-Siberian railway story".   Guemoc was not your everyday Korean 46-year old married rural school teacher.  She started telling me about her travels in Sri Lanka and India, and segued into her experience living in Seattle for 2 months,  and topped it off with her experience trekking around Burma.  Seriously?  What kind of typical Korean middle-aged, Confucious-fearing, husband-serving woman treks around Burma?!?  A very atypical, cool one, is my answer.  And this is my co-teacher, I thought.  Yeah... this is my co-teacher!

Geumoc and I hit it off like rock stars, and we have had each other in stitches ever since.  I was warned that culturally, Koreans don't get sarcasm, but Geumoc dishes out as much as she likes to take in.  I might go as far as to say she might even enjoy a "curb your enthusiasm" episode.  Humor and travel aside, she is a killer tennis player (kicked my ass twice), solo-stealth camps in Seoraksan national park, and swims 3-4 times a week. 

I'm working with Geumoc and two other co-teachers at the Geojin elementary school, a school of about 200 students and 15 teachers.  Geumoc has about 20 years of teaching experience, both as a homeroom teacher and as an English teacher.  She's worked with two other foreign GET's (Guest English Teachers) like myself, so she knows the drill.  The Korean Ministry of Education has a set English curriculum for all public schools, so there isn't much room for innovation, or pressure to prepare lesson plans.  It is all there in CD and hard-copy format.

Most classes start with an introduction from Guemoc, then I ask the kids how their weekend was, and try to coax new English words from them in their answers.  During the lessons, Guemoc runs the show, and I am used as a reference to dictate portions of the vocabulary as needed.  The job is incredibly easy, and I am happy to have a laid-back boss.  It is a stark contrast to the Architecture pressure-cooker/ stress pit I came from in the US.   I almost feel unchallenged or unworthy of my downtime, although I do work hard at preparing lesson plans for some extra English classes for visiting schools.  More in the next post!

Seoul searching and Gangwon-doing it

The Korean Air Boeing 747 raced the setting sun as I sped westward over the Pacific Ocean, as the light very slowly dimmed over the course of the 11-hour flight, in what seemed like an induced state of suspended animation.   The omnipresent hiss of varying pitches from the adjustable air jets above the seats was absent on this flight, as they had not been installed on this plane; presumably due to a Korean superstition about fan death.  This left me on the precipice of breaking a profuse sweat for most of the flight, as the cabin ventilation was insufficient to offset the heat from the computer screen in my seat back, which was playing "Shrek Forever After" to the kid behind me, baking my spine and blanching my kidneys in the process.  This discomfort was assuaged by the top-notch service from the beautiful Korean Air flight attendants, who operated with balletic grace and mathematical, robotic precision, sporting their Star Trek-inspired uniforms.

As we rolled into Incheon Airport in Seoul, it was 6:30pm on 22 August.  I had 3 days to explore Seoul, relax, and recover from jetlag before attending a job orientation in Chuncheon, the capitol of the Gangwon-do province in far northeast Korea, where I would be spending the next year teaching elementary school children the English language.

Seoul was oppressive in its scale, heat, humidity, and grey rainy weather.  I have since learned that Korea is a country of weather extremes; uninhabitable hot rainy summers, and harsh, Siberian-fueled winters.  My excitement lied in the fact that I was arriving just in time for the most beautiful time of the year in Korea:  Autumn.  Autumn in Korea, I have been told, is a time of deep sapphire skies, crisp, fresh air, and colorful, fiery hills and golden rice fields.  I have since learned that Koreans also harbor a reverence for nature and deep respect and deference to the seasons; there are no peaches to be found in the grocery store during winter, and each season is seen as having it's own bounty.  What a concept!

My 3 days in Seoul were a disorienting blur of practicing my new-found knowledge of hangul by pronouncing signs in the street, becoming acquainted with kimchi, learning to walk so the inside of my heat-rashed thighs didn't rub together, deciphering the subway system, and trying desperately to stay awake when all I wanted to do was fall asleep.  Napping is the #1 cardinal sin when trying to adjust to a new time zone.  My first purchases were a new umbrella, and a subway card... what more do you need, really?  The architecture in Seoul had me second-guessing my departure from my career as an architect.  The scale, innovation, and creative use of materials of some of the modern architecture in Seoul is really amazing.  Will post more pictures after my next visit!

On 25 August, I boarded a bus back from downtown to the airport to pick up my bicycle box and large backpack in storage, and boarded the express bus to Chuncheon in Gangwon-do province.  The buses here are amazing; plentiful, fast, well-marked and planned routes, and comfortable.  Same goes for any form of public transportation in Korea.  According to my recruiter, 7 other new teachers and myself were to stay at the Q motel in Chuncheon, and then meet at the Gangwon-do office of Education the next day to meet the director who hired us, attend a brief orientation, and meet our new Co-Teachers who would then promptly whisk us away to our new apartment in our assigned location.

The orientation was nothing more than a brief introduction and bits of advice from the director, whose English was perfect, followed by a rushed 'swearing-in' ceremony, at which we were all presented with nicely bound 'letters of appointment' and a half-withered red rose wrapped in cellophane.  

Then the moment of truth:  meeting our Co-Teachers.  In the EPIK program, the Korean Co-Teacher is your Korean parent, guardian angel, best friend, boss, Buddha, translator, bread baker, money maker, tent staker, and booty shaker.  The Co-Teacher is the person English teachers work with daily, rely on for help in day-to-day life, and their relationship with them can solely and entirely make or break your experience in Korea.  (No pressure, really...)

I was paired up with a friendly, middle-aged woman with good English.  We exchanged a bow and awkward greetings, piled my belongings in her KIA car, and headed east-northeast towards the town Geojin-ri in Ganseong county, in the far northeast corner of the Gangwon-do province.....

NEXT:  first weeks in Geojin