Come On, Teacher, Carve Your Niche

[Note: While this post was nominally meant as a summary of my experiences leaving Korea, due to time constraints it was not finished until well after I left left Korea.]

So the other day I remembered the Deftones did a song they named “Korea” for some reason, and I decided to give it a listen for the first time in a long time and see if I could figure out the connection between the song and the country, if any:

After listening, I’m still not sure if I get the connection, but I guess it does kind of remind me of a night out in Itaewon…

It seems to me like I’ve been seeing Korea show up a lot more in Western media in the last few years, and I don’t just mean that song with the dance and the guy in the sunglasses who was in literally every last advertisement the last time I went to a movie here. (I’m still here at the moment, in a hostel in Hongdae in Seoul, but I’ll probably be at Incheon Airport, or on the plane, or maybe even at my layover in San Francisco or home (home… what a problematic term…) in LA by the time I finish and post this.) Writers and artists often seem to look to foreign lands when they want to make a strange location seem more forbidding or exotic (or, dare I say, inscrutable? Or, perhaps even, oriental?) and when they seek that perfect mystery-shrouded locale halfway around the world their imaginations somehow almost always end up in the Far East. For years, I would say Japan probably had the most prominent place in the Western imagination when it came to oriental exoticism, but these days Japan seems a lot closer than it used to – after all, our kids grow up on Pokemon and Power Rangers, our baseball league has Ichiro and Matsui, there’s a Toyota in our garage and the local 7-Eleven is selling sushi and coffee in Domo coffee cups. So who is the new Empire of Strange and Far Away, now that we can’t depend on that far-away land on the edge of the world where people are descended from the sun? The Middle East is too dangerous, Eastern Europe is too European, South America is too colonized, Bangkok is a little to grimy, Hong Kong is soooo 1997, Bali a little too touristy and most people wouldn’t know which continent to start looking in to find Kuala Lumpur or Jakarta. Where do we turn? Shanghai, with its sexy new skyline, has definitely been making waves. But increasingly, it also seems like we’re imagining ourselves in the Land of the Morning Calm in order to get more lost than we’ve ever been.

I thought a little about this when I was watching “Cloud Atlas” in a Korean theater, since part of the movie takes place in a nearly-unrecognizable imagined Neo-Seoul. Usually I’m used to seeing the “Neo-“ tag stuck in front of some form of post-apocalypse Tokyo, and to be fair I think the filmmakers forgot which city they were in a couple times as well. (Tatami mats in the apartment? Really, production designer?) I kind of wondered how the Korean audience felt about getting stuck with the culpability for (spoilers abound) the future society of good-looking, pleasant, female slave-clone-drones rather than some other Neo-Corporate capital of the Neo-World. They chose a very colorful, East Asian type of pop look for the restaurant, but honestly other than the Korean obsession with appearances I didn’t see anything particularly East Asian about the type of sexism or wage slavery represented in that part of the film. Relations between the sexes and among workers may be a little different here, but let’s face it, sexism and worker exploitation exist all around the world with different faces. In terms of the story, I kind of felt like Seoul was plucked randomly from a short list of relatively wealthy, far-away places. It’s possible the audience in Korea never even felt any sort of connection with the Neo-Seoul represented in the movie. Koreans are probably used to seeing misrepresentations of Korea by now. (Vietnamese-style straw hats? Really, “Lost” production designers?) Plus they were probably too busy wondering why all the white people in Neo-Seoul had such weird-looking faces and odd accents. The only notable moments of shock I heard from the audience were for the man-on-man kiss (one guy, loudly) and the reveal at the end that Doona Bae had played the wrinkled older Mexican woman (all the girls, audibly).

Anyhow, I’ve been thinking about these things as I prepare to leave this inexorably unfamiliar place and return home to the United States. Is there a “Korea” inside of all of us – some far-away, alien place that we seek to discover, and maybe even live in, but know that we will never understand? What does that “Korea” have to do with the Korea that I’ve been living in almost every day for the last three years? Which one will I remember most strongly? Which one will I miss first?

Winter break and the winter session of school, which followed my trip to Thailand and Cambodia, were a little busier than I expected them to be. I learned a few days before the end of the school year that I would have an additional camp for incoming freshmen that I hadn’t anticipated, but I managed to pull together enough old summer camp activities to cover those classes. Then, during the winter session, by surprise, I had two weeks of classes spread over three weeks to do with the returning first-year students starting their second year of high school. This was a big surprise considering that in no past year had I ever been asked to teach anything during the short February session, not to mention that one of the previous middle school teachers had been given pretty much that entire time to pack up and leave, and the Lunar New Year holiday fell in the middle of that time. I suppose that previous teacher might have been given the time off because he was applying for a visa to move from South Africa to the United States to rejoin his wife, and, knowing what I know about US visa paperwork, he probably needed the time. [Note: Here in the blog (dammit, I can never get used to the immediacy of this medium) comes the time and space gap between being in Korea at the end of my contract and encountering Los Angeles, Buffalo, Los Angeles and most of a bottle of North Coast Sauvignon Blanc (I needed it to cook, I swear) on the way to the plastic folding table upon which I am now typing this.] So (oh god, I'm starting sentences with "so," I've been in Korea for too long) the process of leaving Korea was a little more compressed than I expected it to me. I remember that at some point, about a month before I was suppose to leave and after I had gotten home from Thailand, I suddenly realized, "Damn, all this time I've been so focused on how much I miss my friends and family back home and I never thought about how much I'm going to miss the people I'm leaving behind here." As I think I've mentioned before, I suppose that missing people and places is an inevitable consequence of traveling and exploring. But I have to wonder, in retrospect, how much of the time I spent in Korea was spent focused on what I was missing back home when I could have been focusing more on the good things going on around me.

Thankfully, due to the ending date of my contract I was able to squeeze in a couple days in Seoul before I left the country completely. I'm glad I was able to make the transition back to the United States in steps rather than doing it all at once—I felt a little bit like I was going through the same process as one of the pet fish I used to buy for my fish tank, which I would have to leave in their plastic bag from the pet store floating in the top of the tank for fifteen or so minutes before I could introduce them to the tank, so that the temperature would even out and they wouldn't die from the shock of suddenly being introduced to unfamiliar waters. I don't know how I would have handled it if I had gone straight from the emotional shock of rushing to catch a bus in Daegu to Incheon Airport and hurrying to say goodbye to my co-teacher, who was such a good friend to me over the course of the three years I was in Korea, and his family directly to boarding a plane to the United States and being launched headlong, fourteen hours later, in to the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles, California, USA. In Seoul, I got to spend one last night (or was it two?) out on the town with one of the teachers from my town and got to meet and hang out with a couple of friends of mine from film school back in America. Oh, and also I got to make a late night stop at Taco Bell which turned out to be a bad idea. One of my film school friends actually invited me to visit her on the set of a film shoot for a low-budget Korea movie. I think the idea was to get my blood pumping for being back in the world of film production. I have to say it worked, to an extent at least. I mean, I don't think I have the stomach or spine to back into freelance electric and grip work, but it sure would be nice to be a part of something creative again...

I managed to squeeze in a couple touristy things on my way out of Korea via Seoul, and one of them was finally visiting the Korean War Memorial in Seoul. The Korean War Memorial appears to be curated by the Korean military, and I was a bit surprised how militaristic the message was at a museum dedicated to something I always understood as being remembered as a time of great suffering and pain for the Korean people. I mean, yes, the segments dedicated to the actual Korean conflict were quite mournful, but most of the other sections were surprisingly upbeat about "The Glories of War!" (quotes are mine to denote a concept I voice facetiously rather than a quote from the actual museum), including probably the cheeriest summary of any country's involvement in the war in Vietnam that I've ever seen. One thing that really stuck with me, though, from the whole experience was seeing the inscription over the wall of the wing of the museum that enshrines the names of all the foreign soldiers who gave their lives during the Korean War. I can't recall who it's attributed to, although I think it's from the Korean War Memorial in Washington, DC. It reads, "Our nation honors her sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met." To me, the idea of traveling to a foreign land, and giving your life in a violent conflict there, without ever getting to know the country and never meeting the people is just horrifying. I'm glad to say that, no matter how I look at my experiences from the last three years, at least I can say that I got to know the country and met the people. How terrible to leave one's homeland to travel the world, and never get to know the world beyond your homeland!

Well, my days in Seoul ended all too quickly, and soon I was on a plane back to the United States. I spent a week in Los Angeles, where I was hoping to see friends and perhaps land a job interview or two, but managed to do not nearly enough of the former and none of the latter. I headed from Los Angeles to my parents' home in Buffalo, where I was planning to look for some temporary position that could help me save enough money to move back to Los Angeles comfortably and without worry of having to spend financial bounty from teaching in Korea (I may get brave enough to write a blog post on how to use your teaching job in Korea to get out of debt, but I'm not sure if I want to take on that much braggadocio at the moment) but soon learned that the temp market in Buffalo is, not surprisingly, rather barren. An opportunity to take on a room and a roommate in Los Angeles came about, and after scrambling to unload a treasure trove of childhood Lego sets onto several generous eBay buyers, I ended up back in Los Angeles a little sooner than I had imagined.

So that's where I am now –scribbling these words as I take care of an unfamiliar cat and wait for the newest episode of Mad Men to begin here in Los Angeles. It's been quite a journey from when I left three years ago to my return now, and it's a little strange to ponder the fact that the whole thing took me from here to halfway around the world and then back to a place a short trip up the 405 and down the 101 from where I began. Fate? I don't know. Trying to get anyone to take my résumé seriously in Buffalo taught me that, to some extent, you really never can go home, and to some extent to you have to continue following the path you've chosen to its end, no matter where it leads and no matter what byways you attempt to take along the way. I guess the only direction you can ever really move, no matter which direction you face on the map, is forward. What's that thing in The Great Gatsby, about those boats being inexorably dragged forward? Wait, no, that was about being borne into the past, wasn't it? Damn. I'm sure it'll come back to me when I see the Hollywood adaptation this summer. Perhaps I should avoid respected literature and stick to the pop music references. Well, at any rate, here I am, for better or for worse, home sweet home.

Hail to the King, Baby

Hey there. So even though this blog is nominally about teaching English, I usually post a long update about my vacation travels when I get back, because, let's face it, having the opportunity to travel around Asia is one of the big things that lures people into this job in the first place, myself being no exception. I had the bright idea this year, during my trip to Thailand and Cambodia, to write most of the posts on the road and email them to myself to save time and the effort of trying to remember all the details later. Of course I realized pretty quickly that I would rather enjoy my vacation while I was on it rather than using my vacation time to write about it, so must of what I sent to myself were rough outlines of blog updates which I fleshed out after the fact. So here it is, a recap of my trip to Thailand and Cambodia, recounted partially in the almost immediate aftermath. Enjoy!

Travel Blog Update 1 - Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 5:43 AM KST - Incheon Airport, South Korea

It's 5:20 AM and so far the trip is going splendidly, by which I mean I'm having breakfast at McDonalds at Incheon Airport because I have insomnia and I couldn't sleep. Trying to sleep in the airport jjimjilbang (it's normal to sleep in saunas in Korea, remember?) probably didn't help matters. Two things continue to amaze me: 1) Koreans can sleep anywhere, on any surface, in any light and noise level, under any circumstances. 2) Koreans don't seem to appreciate that other people may not have this skill, like when they speak with full voice or answer their fucking phones when a roomful of people are sleeping around them fer Christ's sake. I was excited to try the Incheon jjimjilbang just for novelty's sake, if anything, and I was hoping it might be as nice as a place like Siloam Sauna near Seoul Station, which is quite swank. No such luck. It's small and cramped and, like almost all jjimjilbangs, it's a good place to sleep only if you're dead drunk. Lesson learned.

I left my town yesterday afternoon so that I could be sure to get to the airport on time, and so that I could grab Mexican at one of the best Mexican joint in Korea, Los Amigos in Itaewon. Hey, I can get Korean food anywhere, but where else am I gonna find a decent mole sauce, amirite? Of course, not long before I left, I got a call from my co-teacher, who, a bit panicked, told me that I needed to come to school and complete my Korean tax return before I leave for my vacation because it's due at the end of January. Dynamic Korea strikes again. (It's not so much that it happened that bothers me as much as the fact that it happens all the time here.) Luckily, after running to school with a Christmas stocking stuffed with receipts (it was the container closest to my kitchen table pile of unorganized receipts) I managed to pull together, compile and sign enough documents that my co-teacher should be able to finish the return while I'm away. I guess I shouldn't complain too much - I'm very lucky that I have a dedicated, caring co-teacher to help me with these things. Some girl on Facebook was complaining that her co-teacher threw the form at her - in Korean - three days before she left on her vacation and basically told her, "Good luck, have fun."

Let's hope Bangkok goes a little better than the trip to the airport to get there...

Travel Blog Update 2 - Sun, Jan 20, 2013 at 8:50 PM KST - Sairee Beach, Koh Tao, Thailand

Day one in Bangkok. I kind of knew from experience that this one would mostly be a waste. Didn't get away from the airport until 3 or 3:30, didn't leave the hotel until almost 6. Ended up gawking at Bangkok's meccas of consumerism at Siam Square. Ate a bowl of some variety of tom yam that was not so much to my liking at a mall food court while a Thai cover band played U2 and The Rolling Stones.

Tourists are everywhere here, oddly gawking at everything as the Thai residents of this wild city calmly go about their business. I've been noticing that there's a variety of Tourist quite prevalent here that I have taxonomically classified as the "Bald Pudgy Short-Haired White Guy." Common variants of this species, when not spotted alone, are the BPSHWG With Thai Girlfriend, and the BPSHWG With Thai Hooker. I think what worries me the most about these BPSHWGs, speaking as a white, somewhat pudgy gentleman who trims with a #2 guard and haven't had a full head of hair since I was about nineteen, is the nagging question: How much do I have in common with these BPSHWGs? Am I already one of them? Am I merely in denial? Am I simply avoiding fate by not browsing those "Date Sexy Thai Women" websites that pop up in internet banner ads? (To be honest, the ones that I get usually say, "Date Sexy Korean Women!" but that's easier marketed than done.) What do these guys and their Thai girlfriends do when they're not together in Thailand? Do they remain in touch? Do the guys send money? Do the girlfriends send food? I thought I was just here to dive and see a few wats, not to witness a disturbing vision of a possible personal dystopian future.

I think I might start going to the gym again when I get back...

Travel Blog Update 3 - Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 9:13 AM KST - Kantiang Bay, Koh Lanta, Thailand

Hey there, my own email. Just finished my stint in Koh Tao and made it to Koh Lanta. Had a great time diving there, although my schedule there got a bit messed up as I seem to have failed to drink enough water and succeeded in drinking one too many G&T's on the first night, which messed up my first day of diving. Koh Lanta promises to be fun, though. Just wish I had more time to relax and explore here, since, as it stands, I've only got two days before I have to split for Siem Reap. So much to see, so little time...

One thing that surprised me about Koh Tao was how seemingly outnumbered the Thais and everyone else there seemed to be by the Westerners. I guess in most of my travels I haven't been to a lot of places that exist almost purely as tourist destinations. Even though it's difficult to meet and really get to know too many local people on a short trip like this, part of what interests me about travel is experiencing new cultures in other countries. In a place like Sairee Beach, that experience is mostly limited to the pleasantries exchanged in the midst of a commercial transaction. In fact, from what I hear, a lot of the clerks and shopkeepers here aren't even Thai, they're Burmese. You can spot the Burmese women pretty easily in the morning, as they use this special type of light-tan Burmese mud as a facial product that doesn't dry clear until later in the day. Almost all the people I've met here are white, twenty-something European tourists or white, forty-something European tourists. For Europeans, Thailand seems to be a bit like what Mexico is for Americans. The younger people come to party and the older people "just take pictures," as some scoffing younger traveler said on the night boat the other night as I was chatting with an older couple and holding my camera bag between my ankles. As a single guy in my mid-thirties, I feel like a bit of an awkward tween here - too old to go out and party every night but too young to talk about how my retirement investments are holding up. I guess I should be glad to have had the opportunity to do this trip while I still have a bit of perspective on both groups, even if I do sometimes feel a bit like the misfit in the high school lunchroom.

Originally I had planned to take a full day to travel from Koh Tao to Krabi and from there to Koh Lanta, but due to my little dehydration incident I ended up getting the night boat from Koh Tao in order to get to Koh Lanta in time for my scheduled dive. Apparently some night boats are nicer than others, but the one I was on was an interesting experience, to say the least. The assigned bed spaces are so narrow that I was worried I wouldn't be able to fit my shoulders within mine if I tried to lay my arms at my side while I slept. I hope the girl next to me wasn't too disturbed when I chatted with the guy on the other side about which one of them would scream louder if I accidentally rolled over in the middle of the night and spooned one of them. (The guy strongly insisted that he would be louder.) Luckily there was an empty bunk or two on the guy's side so we were able to spread out a few inches and not be quite so intimate. Still, it was better than the third-class ferry ride from Jeju to Busan in Korea, which is great if you like sleeping on a stiff, itchy carpet with no bedding other than a foam and vinyl brick for a pillow. I also met an interesting couple from Cincinnati on the boat ride. The husband of the couple is a landscape architect, so without much work to do in the winter they spend their winter months in Pattaya, a beach city not too far from Bangkok. Their reason for choosing Pattaya? The city's famed sex industry, indirectly. "Everything's so cheap because it's priced for the girls working there," they said. Ain't globalization grand?

I'm kind of glad I had run into this blog post about traveling from Koh Tao to Koh Lanta before I underwent the journey, because I was definitely a little less panic-prone after reading about what to expect. My trip was remarkably similar: truck to the night boat, night boat to a local taxi truck (which tore the shit out of my backpack and rain cover when they threw it on the roof), taxi truck to local Surat Thani travel agent, travel agent to bus, bus to another travel agent, truck from travel agent to a local Krabi guest house, van from the guest house to the Koh Lanta vehicle ferry (which is much more frequent than the passenger ferry, by the way), then a drop at completely the wrong end of Koh Lanta, a frantic call to the resort I had booked, a long wait for the guy who the people at the Krabi guest house had said they had called, and a free ride to the resort. Basically, after paying the travel desk at my resort in Koh Tao for the full fare, all the pieces were outsourced to outside contractors. But hey, I got to Koh Lanta in one piece. I trusted my resort in Koh Tao to value their good name so I was pretty sure I wasn't going to get ripped off or abandoned along the way, though. One stop along the way did do their best to sell accommodations in Koh Lanta to the travelers, but honestly they seemed fairly legit about it. I bought a ferry ticket back to Krabi from them and in the immediate aftermath I was suspicious that perhaps I had been shafted price-wise, but when I checked my guide book, the book quoted the exact same price that I had just paid. [The people at my resort in Koh Lanta were a little annoyed that I didn't buy the ferry ticket from them, but they still dropped me off at the passenger ferry when I needed to be there without incident.]

I try not to think of the touts pushing expensive taxis and guest houses at bus stations and ferry terminals as necessarily being out to rip off tourists; I like to think of them as trying to use better advertising to market a more poorly-positioned product at an inferior price. It aids my piece of mind regarding humanity. I mean there's nothing wrong with that, right? That's just basic capitalism. We all know there's no such thing as a perfect market with perfect information. Anyhow, if you undergo a trip like the one I made, don't necessarily accept the first offer of transportation you're given or believe everything (read: anything) that a taxi driver tells you, but try to be patient with all the secondary contractors you meet along the way. There was a couple in the waystation in Krabi who were terribly pissed off that the bus had stopped in Krabi proper to let off some girls who were traveling with a different agency, then taken them to the waystation instead of dropping them off when their final destination was Krabi. They were incensed that a cab from the waystation back to Krabi town would be the equivalent of $1.67. (Admittedly you can get a plate of noodles for not much more than that in Thailand, but I digress.) I'm fairly certain that it was probably just an issue of getting a receipt for that part of the journey for the people at the waystation, and it probably was the last link in a chain of unpleasant incidents for the couple that blew up at them, but things definitely got a bit tense before they decided in a huff to walk back to Krabi. Thai people are generally very nice, friendly and love to joke with people, but don't piss them off. If a Thai person feels like you've questioned their integrity or they've publicly lost face because of you, they may knock your ass down. And keep in mind that a few of these cats know muay thai.

Koh Lanta is a bit more peaceful and less developed than Koh Tao, but if I had known the island a little better I might have picked a different area to stay in. Kantiang Bay is beautiful and it's also the closest spot to the dive operator that I'm using, but it's quiet and almost all the way at the souther tip of the island, and Koh Lanta isn't an easy place to get around without your own wheels. [Later in the day that I wrote this, I tried to rent a scooter from the resort I was staying at to get around the island, and after a couple loops around the parking lot we agreed that it was a really bad idea for me to rent a scooter.] I had rented a bike in Koh Tao to check out a bit more of the island, but the hills (and my choice to drag around a big heavy manual camera) made it an exhausting and fairly short trip. It also took me a long time to find a place that rented decent bicycles, as most of the shops on the island that advertised "Bikes For Rent" were actually renting motorbikes or motor scooters.

By the way, as an aside, I definitely noticed while traveling that Thai people really love their king. There's pictures of him and the queen and shrines dedicated to the royals everywhere. It's a little strange to see pictures of a country's titular leader in so many different places - at least, in a country where I know they've been placed voluntarily. I hear he's a nice guy for a monarch - very much a "man of the people" type king. Probably won't run into him on this trip, though. I hear he's a photograper. I wonder what he would have to say about my Nikon FM2.

Also, today I had my first experience of walking around a corner and saying, "Holy shit! It's an elephant!" The little tyke was tied to a tree outside of a place advertising elephant treks up to a cave and some waterfalls, but when I first saw it I didn't see that it was tied to anything. Pretty shocking to suddenly see an elephant in the middle of civilization. [I asked one of the dive instructors later this day about that particular elephant trekking organization, and he had nothing good to say about the people running it or the way they treat their elephants, so I took a pass. I believe there are some better outfits running treks to the caves on Koh Lanta elsewhere on the island.]

Travel Blog Update 4 - Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 3:02 PM KST - Chiang Mai, Thailand

I'm currently on the sleeper train from Ayuthaya to Chiang Mai so I won't actually be able to mail this until later. The sleeper trains here are definitely better than the night boat from Koh Tao was. My bottom bunk is roomy and comfortable, although it could use a reading light and an electrical outlet. The bunk was already folded down when I arrived, so I didn't get to see what it looked like before it was converted from seating to a sleeping berth. [The next morning I got the chance to see the transformation; the crew converts all the sleeping berths back into seats between 8 and 9 in the morning, and then offers the opportunity to purchase breakfast. Also, later in the morning I realized that the reading light in the bottom berths is hidden behind the head rests, which weren't folded up in my berth.]

After an excellent day of diving and a quick trip to Old Town in Koh Lanta, I hopped a ferry the next morning and spent a brief morning and afternoon in Krabi, just to check out the city. There's not all that much that's interesting to see or do in Krabi itself (other than seeing the big crab statue on the waterfront... they kind of had to, don't you think?) but there's a few nice-looking guest houses there, and they have enough tours available to nearby areas that I would guess Krabi is probably a nice jumping-off point to see other attractions in the area if resort islands aren't your thing.

From Krabi I flew to Siem Reap to start my (wait for it...) holiday in Cambodia. (You have no idea how long I've been waiting to have a chance to type that.) Even before the plane landed I could tell I wasn't in Thailand anymore. I kept waiting for my late evening flight to breach the cloud line so I could see what was below, until I realized that we were below the cloud line and there were simply no lights below. There were lights by the time we got to Siem Reap, but outside the city it was a near-complete blanket of darkness - "real country dark," as a certain cultural commentator once said. Cambodia clearly isn't nearly as bad as it was in the days of Pol Pot and the Dead Kennedys, but it is still among the poorest countries in the world by most measurements. Almost all the countries I've lived in or visited here have been advanced economies (Korea, Taiwan, Japan) or middle income (Thailand, Malaysia) so other than my trip to the Philippines almost three years ago I haven't really traveled too much in poorer countries (and even the Philippines are still a few steps ahead of Cambodia by most indexes.) Of course, when you land in a city like Siem Reap that's a tourist destination, it's not immediately evident that you've stepped away from the world of easy money and economic security. The strip of road from the airport to the Night Market is girded on both sides by hotels that cater to bus tours from East Asia - there were definitely more than a few signs in Korean along the way, of course. And of course traveling in a poor country isn't quite like the poverty porn-type images you typically see in the West when we only tend to see less-developed countries in ads for charities or movies about terrorists. People who are poor don't live every day in misery any more than rich people live every moment in ecstacy, after all. But I'm in way over my head already in this discussion so let's drop it here. Suffice to say, prices were lower and hawkers were much more insistent than in Thailand. Still, Siem Reap is definitely a nice place to visit if you have the time. Just don't believe your cabbie if he tells you that the guest houses in the area you're headed to will all be full and he knows where you can get a room for three times the standard price. Do what I did and check it out for yourself first. You'll thank me.

When I got to Pub Street in Siem Reap I was a little surprised by the level of partying going on. I mean, I had seen plenty of it in Thailand, of course, but I had no idea that the backpacker party circuit would stray this far from the beaches and into a city that's mostly known for peaceful vibes and temple-spotting. I guess once you've got a good party going there's no reason to take a break just because you can't swim. It was also kind of fun to go somewhere with tourists from places other than North America and western Europe, although I got a little tired of having to push my way past the large, mostly Korean tour groups that seemed to have a knack for always parking themselves directly in doorways and narrow passages to listen to their tour guides explain things in their native language. I hate to admit this, but I was actually a little perturbed to be around Koreans again while touring Angkor Wat. I mean, don't get me wrong, after three years living here Koreans are like family to me, but on the other hand, while I love my family very dearly there's times when I really don't want to be around them - especially when I'm on vacation trying to get away from them for a little while. But really, Koreans, no offence meant. Just try to be wary of standing and mobbing where people want to walk when you're traveling, please. I suppose the language barrier probably makes it difficult for most Koreans to travel in anything but those large bus groups, and Koreans aren't known for being the most travel-savvy or interested in experiencing the local culture. (Pack your ramen and soju, everyone!) Then again, maybe some of the huddling together and fear of foreigners is justified - at lunch, my tuk-tuk driver (who was awesome, by the way - one of the most experienced in Siem Reap, had a lot of great stories) claimed that some tuk-tuk drivers, if they get a Korean passenger, will just take them out in the jungle, rob them and kill them. I didn't always undestand him very clearly with his accent, and I'm not sure to what extent he may have been exaggerating, but it was still a pretty chilling story.

Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples were fantastic. I wish I could have spent a lot more time in Cambodia, actually - much more than the one night and one day I had squeezed into my schedule. Some friends visited the country about a year ago and had nothing bad to say about it, and I was really grateful to get a little bit off the beaten track for a day or two after being on resort islands for a whole week. Maybe some day I'll have to come back and do the whole Burma/Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam/Laos circuit. One can hope.

Having returned to Bangkok. I almost decided to cancel my second day touring the city and book another night in the hotel to get some rest because the cough and cold I had started to develop in Koh Lanta were getting worse. (The guidebook had warned me that I would probably get sick at some point in the trip just because of the unfamiliar pathogens - I guess I should be glad it wasn't anything worse than a cough. I'm also glad I schedule all my diving for the first week of my trip - you're not supposed to dive if you're congested or taking cold medication.) Instead I delayed my start by an hour or so until a drug store opened, scored some Thai Robitussin (which is the same as regular Robitussin, by the way) and soldiered on. It was worth it. The Grand Palace, Wat Phra Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha) and Wat Pho (Temple of the Reclining Buddha) in Bangkok are - and I do not use this word lightly - un-fucking-believeable. The grandeur of the place is helped by the fact that Thais have a serious fetish for gold and no qualms against overkill. You'll notice in most Thai temples that there's not just one golden Buddha, there's usually a scrum of them, varying in size and splendor, all gathered on the same altar. I'm guessing the Thai Buddhist tradition of "merit-making," or donating to a temple in order to make up for past sins and shortcomings, probably contributes highly to the amount of bling you'll see in a popular Thai temple. Also, the teak- and gold-exporting days of Siam must have been heady days indeed. Color me impressed.

The rest of Bangkok would have to wait for another day. Around dinner time I hopped onto a commuter train and headed for Ayuthaya, the former Siamese capital prior to Bangkok. Today, it's mostly a far-flung semi-industrial suburb of Bangkok, and the palaces and temples there mostly fell into ruin after the capital was abandoned. [Had I known what whould happen later in the week (ooh, foreshadowing!) I might have skipped it to make time for Sukothai, but at least Ayuthaya was on the train line, which made traveling there a little easier.] I stayed in the small but friendly guest house district at one of those incredibly welcoming guest houses with no amenities and three generations living under one roof that just make you glad to be alive and traveling, and spent the next day touring the town by bicycle. I did get lost a couple times despite having a map, possibly because the red brick remains of the stupas and chedi in Ayuthaya can all start to look a bit the same after a while. Apparently I got turned around in my travels and somehow missed the best preserved temple, on the other side of the river that surrounds historic Ayuthaya. But all in all it was still a nice day.

Alright, so, as soon as this train arrives in Chiang Mai (likely at least an hour behind schedule) I need to find a place to drop my pack today and sleep tonight, a place to get my laundry done and a place to buy film. I'm not too worried about the former two but the latter quest may prove difficult. Hopefully Chiang Mai University still has a photo program that's shooting on silver. Wish me luck.

Travel Blog Update 5 - Weeks later - My desk at school

I got to Chiang Mai and discovered numerous really nice-looking guest houses, some of which were in traditional Thai-style teak houses, and all of which were booked full. The hotel/guest house were I stayed (I say "hotel" because it was built and operated like one and "guest house" because that was closer to the price and the quality of the service and amenities) was decent and the price wasn't too bad (I mean who am I kidding, compared to American or Korean prices it was a steal) but I would have tried to book something in advance with a little more character if I had known what I was doing. The night train from Ayuthaya, which was supposed to arrive around 9 AM, ended up rolling into town some time closer to noon, so I only had about a half day to explore the center of the old city, and after returning to my hotel/guest house I realized that I had missed half the highlighted spots listed in my guide book. I also realized at this point that my original plan - to leave Chiang Mai the next day in time to take a six-hour bus ride to Sukothai and still find accomodation somewhere - would basically wipe out any chance I had of seeing the sights in Chiang Mai or enjoying any of the special attractions offered there, like an elephant trek. There was a short mental debate, and the verdict was that Sukothai would be dropped from the itinerary in favor of an extra full day in Chiang Mai. I have no real regrets, considering how much I enjoyed Chiang Mai, but some colleagues of mine here had really talked up the marvels of Sukothai, another former Thai capital, and I likely would have skipped Ayuthaya for Sukothai if I had known how things were going to go down. Kind of unbelievable that, after more or less planning the trip for a year whenever I had deskwarming time at school, I somehow never figured out that the travel time from Chiang Mai to Sukothai would only give me two half days in Chiang Mai the way I had it scheduled. Oh well, hindsight is 20-20 I guess. I'll see it next time. (If there's a next time...)

By the way, I had no trouble finding a photo shop to develop and scan my film. 35mm lives on, brothers and sisters!

I chose Patara Elephant Farm to do my elephant trek. It was a bit expensive, but they were written up in the Lonely Planet guide as treating their elephants well while also allowing people to interact with the elephants and ride them, and I definitely wanted both out of my Chiang Mai elephant experience. When we started our day at Patara, one of the owners made it clear to us that while the elephant farm doesn't operate in strict term as a sanctuary for injured and abused elephants - and while he didn't want us to go home thinking that every other elephant show in Thailand is abusing their elephants - they work extra hard to keep their elephants healthy, treat them humanely and not train them to do silly things like kicking footballs or walking on their hind legs. Elephants in Thailand were used for hundreds or thousands of years as beasts of burden, but with the end of logging in Thailand and the advent of heavy machinery, more and more domesticated elephants ended up in those elephant shows with the football kicking, or simply going begging on the streets in Bangkok. (I never actually saw anyone begging with an elephant in Bangkok, but my guide book had a big story about it. It's possible that those days have ended.) So strictly speaking there's nothing unnatural or abusive about riding a trained, domesticated elephant. Patara does work to rescue some elephants from situations where the owners can no longer take care of them properly, but their main focus seems to be caring for their elephants in captivity and breeding them to preserve the species, which they've been quite successful in doing so far.

So what's it like riding an elephant? Awesome. Totally awesome. And a little scary. Kind of tough on the thighs as well. Just being around these giant eating and pooping machines up close is awesome. There's nothing quite like the feeling of being perched on an elephant's shoulders, looking down at a small ravine or path edge that's suddenly an extra six or eight feet farther below and thinking to yourself, "I really hope this guy is more nimble-footed than I would be with someone riding on my shoulders." We spent the morning learning how to do some basic care for the elephants and some basic mahoot (elephant trainer) commands, then we rode the elephants up a nearby forested hill, had lunch and rode them back down again. Lunch was a mostly vegetarian affair, and when we finished eating the elephants happily gobbled up the leftovers. After that it was time for a quick bath in a nearby river (for the elephants, not us), then a visit to another area where two of the baby elephants live. Let me tell you, nothing is cuter than a baby elephant, especially when it won't stop head-butting your guide. When I got the complimentary DVD of photos at the end of the trek and checked them out at home later, I couldn't help but marvel at the wide, completely non-ironical grin I had on my face in almost all of them. Awesome.

I spent my last day in Chiang Mai visiting Wat Suthep, which was duly impressive, and catching a bunch of the sites I had missed on day one when my guidebook was back at the hotel/guest house. By mid-afternoon I was feeling the effects of all the walking and days of travel, not to mention the residual effects of the cough and cold, and looking for something quiet to kill a few hours. That's when I recalled the Chiang Mai Women's Prison massage school. The Chiang Mai Women's Prison in downtown Chiang Mai is now closed, but they still maintain a cafe and massage school across the street from their former home to facilitate training some of the prisoners in careers other than whatever landed them in prison. And seriously, who doesn't want to say they got a Thai massage in a women's prison? No funny stuff at this place, obviously, but I was a little surprised by how much climbing on the table and wrestling with various limbs is involved in a Thai massage. I was tempted to ask one of the masseuses what they were in for ("Me? Prostitution in a massage parlor." "What about her?" "I killed a fucking tourist!") but I resisted the urge. It was a good story and quite a nice massage regardless, and it really helped out those spots where I had been clinging to an elephant's shoulders with my thighs the day before.

The last day, after an overnight ride on a fairly posh double-decker bus, I checked out a few last sites in Bangkok - the American silk trader Jim Thompson's house, the famed Wat Saket "Golden Mount" temple, and some sites around Bangkok's Chinatown district - before gathering my bags from the hotel and heading back to the airport. I can't tell you how much I would have loved to spend a month - or three months, or half a year - exploring more of Thailand, Cambodia and the rest of Southeast Asia. I have to admit that the thoughts of trying to find an English teaching job somewhere around one of the islands in the peninsula, or sticking around and trying to get trained as a scuba divemaster, or finding a job that would allow me to phone in my work to the US or Korea from Bangkok, were - are - all very tempting. As is usual for me on these vacations, I was feeling a bit bilulous regarding my imminent return to boring-old, stodgy, no-fun, elephant-free Korea while boarding the plane, but of course any place that you're just visiting is always more exotic and fun than the place you're returning to to go back to work. Hell, when I lived in LA even Buffalo looked a little bit nicer from afar at times.

In any case, I'd say this was the trip of a lifetime but I really hope this isn't my last opportunity to travel in Asia. It's a remarkable region and an exciting place to be, especially these days. On a train platform in Bangkok I briefly ran into an older couple from the United States. I mentioned that I was working in Korea but heading back to the United States, and they immediately implored, "Don't do it." It does seem a little hard to settle for the cold winters and increased expense of the world outside Thailand after being there for just a couple of weeks. Sometimes I play with the idea of coming back to Thailand (or somewhere else in Southeast Asia - Cambodia, Vietnam, or maybe the Philippines) in the distant future when I'm old enough to retire and looking for somewhere that I can stretch my money a little further and maybe even do some good by volunteering while I'm at it. But who knows, by the time I'm ready to retire, perhaps all those countries will be rich and in no need of the generosity of foreigners. Or they might all be underwater. That would suck. Either way, it was an amazing trip and I hope I can find a way to come back in the future. Not sure how that's gonna happen, given the student loans and the residency in a country with no mandatory vacation for workers. Oh well. Maybe it's time to start exploring the rest of the Western Hemisphere. I hear there's some good diving in Belize and Honduras...

A Light in the Black

Hey there. I'm hoping no one thought I was ill or incapacitated since I failed to post a long, navel-gazing blog update for New Year's Eve. I actually had a pretty good New Year's Eve this year, and even left the house to do it, believe it or not. My cousin came from Kitami in Hokkaido, Japan, where she also teaches English, for a visit to Busan. (She said she was hoping the Busan weather - which usually hovers in the -2 to 8 Celsius range in the winter - would be a welcome break from the frigid temperatures in Kitami, but during her visit we both voiced suspicions that she had somehow brought a bit of the Kitami weather with her.) We ended up going up to Yongdusan Park for the midnight bell ringing, which was fun, and involved a surprise visit from a remote-controlled flying dragon lantern just after midnight. It's amazing what they can do with those lightweight miniature remote helicopters these days.

Traveling with my cousin around Busan and Gyeongju, which one of my co-teachers was kind enough to take us to, was actually a really rewarding experience for me, since my cousin has an academic background in Japanese and religious studies so she knew a lot more than me about Korean and Japanese history and Buddhist iconography, among other topics. I think this was my third trip to Bulguksa in Gyeongju, but I was amazed at how many things I had failed to appreciate there as a complete naïf when it comes to Buddhism. ("Hey, you're right, that Buddha does have a thousand arms behind him/her. How did I never see that?") My co-teacher also pointed out to me that Bulguksa's renowned stone bridges are not the two small bridges near a pond and stream on the temple ground which I had thought were the special bridges, but actually were the large stone steps in front of the main temple building, as there had been a stream running under the steps in the past. Adequate English-language signage probably would have helped in that case. Nevertheless, I appreciated the correction.

Christmas was pretty mellow this year. I had gone out to Daegu the Saturday before to celebrate with some friends, so other than the traditional Christmas morn/Christmas eve trans-global Skype chat with my family back home, I didn't do too much to celebrate the actual date of the holiday. Another teacher in my town had organized a tour of a nearby temple with some students, but I had to bail on them because my Skype date ran over and catch up with them for dinner later at a local chicken shack. The only thing I did on Christmas Eve, besides work, was to buy a cake to bring to school on the 26th for the other teachers. I always feel compelled to do something to celebrate Christmas at school, and since it may have been the last time I would get all the teachers in the office at once before I leave, I figured I'd better take advantage of the opportunity to thank them for being so wonderful for the past three years. I don't think the counter girl at Paris Baguette, who couldn't have been much older than one of my students, understood my intentions for the cake, however. In Korea, Christmas has somehow become a holiday that's mostly for dating, as if Korea didn't have more than enough of those (Valentine's Day, White Day, and I suspect Pepero Day's true intentions) already. I'm guessing the girl at Paris Baguette who sold me the cake suspected I had a hot date and thought she had some piece of juicy schoolyard gossip about one of the foreign teachers, as when I paid for the cake, she slipped me one of the complimentary bottles of sparkling apple juice they had behind the counter in a very winking manner. I still have it in my fridge, actually. Not sure what I'm going to do with it. I was planning to drink it all alone on New Year's Eve but then my cousin came and I actually had fun. Maybe there'll be another special occasion between now and when I leave in forty-seven days...

We also recently had a presidential election in Korea, which was a special treat to witness since they only come along every five years. This one was especially interesting for several reasons. At first, a popular third-party candidate - Ahn Cheol-soo, a doctor, software developer and well-known political pundit - had been running along with the candidates from the major liberal and conservative parties, which threatened to throw a monkey wrench into the typically two-sided (and often largely one-sided) world of Korean politics, but he ended up dropping out before the election and offering tepid support to the liberal candidate. (His software company, AhnLab, provides the annoying security program that I need to use to access my bank's website, and I kind of wondered whether everyone's money would disappear the day after the election if he lost.) The other interesting factor in this election was that the conservative candidate, Park Geun-hye, in addition to being the first woman to have a serious chance at the Korean presidency, also happens to be the daughter of slain Korean president and dictator (or "strongman," as the Korean news seems to suddenly prefer) Park Chung-hee. Park Chung-hee has long been a divisive figure here - he's popular in southeastern Korea, where I live, but largely despised in the more liberal south and southwest. Conservatives revere him as the leader who started the economic programs that put Korea on a path to prosperity, while liberals remember him as the president who seized power with the military, ruled under a state of emergency and conducted ruthless crackdowns on democracy advocates. Needless to say, Park Geun-hye's candidacy was polarizing. (A friend of mine also compared her to recent US president George W. Bush, in that he considers her a politician who draws much more support from her family name than from her actual political acumen, which is apparently lacking. This would personally worry me more than her family history, but like I said I'm leaving in forty-seven days, so... Good luck, everyone!) What astounded me most about the election was that, despite bitter cold on Election Day, more than seventy-five percent of eligible voters participated in the election. That's a remarkable number, especially when compared to some recent elections in countries like the United States and United Kingdom. Some Americans these days like to talk and act like democracy is under siege in the United States when the issues at hand are actually some of the most banal functions of government, like taxation and social insurance. Yes, I know eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, yadda yadda yadda. But sometimes I wish some of these screaming yahoos actually had the experience of living in a country where democracy isn't a given and basic human rights really do require violent struggle, like Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall, or South Korea before around 1986. Americans talk a lot about liberty and justice, but don't seem to appreciate how easily we've been able to enjoy those gifts without struggle over the last half century or so. And we consistently seem ignorant of some of the allies we've had over the years who took it away from their own people. I guess it's very easy for a country to be politically nearsighted when there's oceans between you and everyone else...

Other than the above events, it's mostly been an unremarkable winter, other than it being unusually cold, and it hitting us with an uncommonly heavy snowfall about a week and a half ago. We do normally get some snowfall in the winter in this part of Korea, but people are usually able to sweep it off the sidewalk rather than having to shovel it. I saw a snow plow out on the highway during the storm, but snow removal in my small town has been haphazard at best, and definitely not done on an organized basis. Some citizens dutifully shoveled the walks outside their homes and businesses, but most of the six or so inches of snow we got stayed in place until it was packed down, partially melted and then froze again into rock-hard, solid ice slicks. Most of the sidewalks around town at least have ice-free paths cut into them at this point, and people have dumped sand or charcoal ash on many of the most traveled patches that are still icy and look like they could be until March given the thickness of the ice and the temperatures outside, but many of the streets are still pretty treacherous. Seriously, guys, we need to do something about this crazy weather...

I've had two winter camps for most of this week and they'll continue for most of next week, but they've been pretty laid back so far. And in another ten days I'll be toasting my buns somewhere in Thailand. In the meantime it's still pretty quiet and boring here, and becoming more so by the day. Some teachers have left for their vacations already, and most of the ones who are left are trying to save their money and energy for their upcoming travels, if they're not going stir-crazy from the increased free time and winter weather. I was, however, able to rouse a couple teachers at 6:30 AM last Sunday for breakfast burritos and beers to watch the Saturday round of the NFL's wild card round of playoffs, so this party's not completely dead. The other day I realized that it's now January and that means it's no longer too soon to start seriously looking for work and trying to plan my future, but then I realized I have a vacation coming in less than two weeks and I decided to blow the worrying and planning off until later. Frankly the whole moving back thing scares the shit out of me more and more as the days go on. I don't know what I want to do, I'm not confident of what I can do any more, or what anyone will hire me to do, I don't know where I want to be doing it, and I don't want to get stuck doing something other than what I want to do somewhere other than where I want to be doing it. Recreating yourself from scratch gets more and more tiresome as you get older. As much as I'm a compulsive planner and hate to put things off, I think a lot of the big decisions are actually going to have to happen after I get back and get a feeling for what life in the US is like again, and it what it feels like trying to live it in this day and age. There's just too many unknowns at this point. I probably should be taking better advantage of all this free time, but I suppose unrepentant sloth is also a valid type of time use. Besides, I need to finish The Beach before I get to Koh Tao. I'm under a deadline here...

Anyway, I do actually have work tomorrow afternoon so I should probably avoid going completely nocturnal and get to bed. As usual, I reserve the right to spell- and grammar-check this post in the morning and edit out the most scandalous stuff, so you've been warned. Forty-seven days and I'm coming hooooooooooooooome...

Stay Positive

Top Ten Best Songs About Crushing Incessant Boredom, In No Particular Order:

1. "I'm Bored" by Iggy Pop
2. "Dull" by Samiam
3. "I Wanna Be Sedated"/"I Just Wanna Have Something to Do" by the Ramones (tie)
5. "Bleach Boys" by the Dead Milkmen
6. "Longview" by Green Day
7. "Lurker II: Dark Son of Night" by Jawbreaker
8. "Bored to Death" by Government Issue
9. "Bored" by the Deftones
10. Meh, who cares anyway...

Twelve weeks and change to go. (Not counting the two weeks I'll be in Thailand, of course.) Ugh. I am so ready to get on a fucking plane and get out of here. Except I'm scared shitless about what I'm going to run into once I get home. I'll need to get a new job. I'll need to find a new place. I'll need to spend a bunch of the money I've been working so hard to save here. I'll need to make my résumé look like it's coming from someone employable. I'll probably need to stay with my parents in the Rust Belt for a little while, at the age of thirty-five. And I'll need to give up the only steady job I've had in twelve- or fifteen-odd years that was actually engaging and meaningful. That's probably the part that bothers me the most. Of course I could always come back if this all turns out to be some flight of whimsy and I'm destined to stay here (assuming the EPIK program is still around, that is). I am making sure to go out on good terms and not burn any bridges. Or burn the boats, if I may be so bold as to allude to a positive and negative conflagrant metaphor for the same situation. (Fire is cool. Huh-huh.) At times like this it seems like it'd be nice if life was completely cut-and-dry, and pursuing one opportunity never came at the cost of another. But in this case, I think it's time to risk the comfortable situation for the big money and the fabulous prizes behind door number two. Or in other words, as the great philosopher Randal Graves once stated, more succinctly and with some slightly greater degree of vulgarity, I need to shit or get off the pot.

But it's definitely time to go. It's a mistake to stay here too long. I've seen it too many times. People get into a negative space in their heads, every little thing about being here starts to drive them nuts, and they end up pushing an annoying ajusshi in front of a train or something. It's not pretty. There's nothing wrong with Korea per se, but being here can wear on you. Or at least it wears on a lot of people, myself included at this point. It's been a great experience overall, but as The Bard apparently did not say, all good things must come to an end. The unfortunate thing is, what's happening now is exactly what I said I did not want to happen months ago when I was contemplating my final year in Korea. (I thought I wrote a blog post about this at some point, but I can't seem to find it now.) The last thing I've been wanting to happen this year is for me to spending my final months counting the days until I can go home - which, incidentally, as I write this, currently number about ninety-two, give or take a few. Or seventy-eight if you discount the Thailand trip from the total. An experience like this is too unique to squander by counting the pages left to rip off the calendar every day. On the other hand, winter is not the most exciting time to be in Korea. The holidays and festivals are pretty much over until the end of February, it's freezing cold outside and often just as cold inside. (I'm not sure why Koreans still choose to eschew central heating - some sort of fear of duct work? - and I definitely don't understand the rationale behind their habit of routinely leaving windows open in winter because WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE, IT'S FUCKING COLD OUTSIDE.) Also, as I mentioned in my last post, the oddities of the Korean school year mean that I may have nothing constructive to do at school from approximately next week Monday until the day I leave, depending on winter camps. Still, there has to be a better use of the time than simply counting backwards to zero.

I've been trying to nurture some constructive hobbies this year to prepare for exactly this eventuality, but I'm at a bit of a loss at times to fully embrace any of them for various reasons. The list of shortcomings: they're too expensive (scuba diving, travel), dependent on better weather (hiking), too frustrating (guitar), too unhealthy (drinking), too infrequent (movies), pointless (Korean lessons), kind of boring (reading), require an activity partner (dating, rampant indiscriminate copulation), or I've grown out of them (video games). I have an NFL Game Pass subscription I'm splitting with another teacher, but otherwise there's not much to fill the evenings and even less to do at work in between classes. It's a little too early to start seriously looking for work (nobody hires between Thanksgiving and Christmas anyway) and I'm not in quite the right creative state of mind to carry through with my threat to write a screenplay right now. Ho hum.



I did recently cross one last item off of my Korean travel list - I finally went to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and Joint Security Area (JSA) between North and South Korea. Now that was a trip, in more ways than one. It's easy to forget when you live here that you're mere kilometers away from one of the most heavily-armed borders in the world, but there's no avoiding that fact when you're right there at the thirty-eighth parallel inches from the insanity. On the day that I visited, we weren't actually able to go into one of the blue buildings in the JSA (as seen in the movie JSA!), where you can take a few furtive steps into the North, because they were being painted. But we did get to see some of the soldiers who stand on the border at all hours in strategic positions so as to not get shot if suddenly somebody begins firing on them for no reason. (The guides at the JSA made it sound like kind of a shit detail, although those soldiers who are standing there are some of the ROK Army's finest.) We also got to see the monument where two members of the US Army were axe-murdered while trimming a tree (true story), the "Bridge of No Return" where former President "Wild" Bill Clinton almost got shot by North Korean guards (also a true story), and one of the secret North Korean invasion tunnels discovered by the South, which is now partially open for tours but still has a large dump tank attached to it so that it can be flooded at a moment's notice (presumably not necessarily before the tourists can evacuate) if the North suddenly decides to use it to try to invade. There's also a "train to nowhere" rail connection that was built during the "Sunshine Policy" period but was subsequently blown up on the North Korean side when things went sour, which now only travels back and forth between two stations on the South Korean side. I believe I saw a grand total of one North Korean - on guard at the JSA - during the whole tour, although who knows how many snipers were hidden in those woods...

On the southern side - the only side we were able to visit, of course - most of the media presented about the DMZ, excluding historical accounts of arboreal axe-murder insanity and defector fire-fights, is either about DMZ's status as a de facto protected - albeit heavily mined - natural wilderness ("The miracle of the DMZ!" exclaimed a poorly-translated video presented at the invasion tunnel, in reference to nothing specific) or a lot of incredibly optimistic and perky talk of eventual reunification. I think most Westerners who haven't been here don't really understand the relationship between North and South. Most Westerners (Americans, at least, in my experience) essentially see the conflict as one of two eternal enemies, one of which would invariably wipe out the other if given the chance. In actuality, the two countries are more like an old married couple with irreconcilable differences who have separated but refuse to carry through with the divorce, expecting the other spouse to crawl home and admit that they were the one who was wrong about everything at any moment. Koreans don't even really acknowledge that they live in two separate countries. In all my time here I've never seen a map of Korea that showed the South without the North, and they don't always bother to highlight that inconvenient line at the 38th parallel either. Koreans in South Korea almost never refer to "South Korea," or anything as "South Korean" - North Korea is "북한," literally "North Korea," but otherwise it's all simply Korean things in Korea. (Or "Corea," if you want to get ultra-nationalistic about it, but I'm not even going to get into that anti-Japanese silliness right now.) Unfortunately, I don't see how this attitude allows for any future in which the two Koreas could separately co-exist as peaceful equals, if, for example, the North suddenly stopped being run by insane people and running its economy into the ground through gross mismanagement and sanctions brought upon themselves due to their militarization and their nuclear program. Then again, stranger things have happened. On the other hand, I do really admire the patience of the South Korean people when it comes to how they deal with their crazy cousins to the North. Since I've been here, North Korea has torpedoed a South Korean ship and shelled a South Korean island - and those actions pale in comparison to some of the other skirmishes between the two Koreas since the armistice - and yet the two countries still exist right next to each other in relative peace, all things considered. It's hard for me to imagine the United States not bombing the crap out of any sovereign state that attacked a US warship or shelled US territory, especially after the last roughly thirteen years. But as much as North Korea is famous for its isolation and the DMZ seems like an intraversable boundary to normal relations, the country isn't nearly as cut off from the world as you might think. In fact, there's still even a road and a checkpoint linking the two countries, so that managers and commerce can still travel to the Kaesong Industrial Complex operating across the border from the South. (I'm not sure if the checkpoint was staffed when I saw it, and I definitely didn't see any vehicles cross, but the crossing was definitely in a passable state.) Part of the lack of even more hostility between North and South is clearly born from pure necessity - even the rosiest projections of a war between North and South involve a lot of civilian casualties, as Seoul is well within shelling distance of the North and more than half of South Korea's population lives in the metro area - but I think another big part of it comes from the natural abhorrence of the Korean people towards another war among brothers, like what happened in the Korean War. Things definitely didn't go so well the last time, after all. And technically, that war isn't even over yet...

Still, two things above and beyond all this were most shocking about the DMZ to me. The first is the thought that, just north of this imaginary - albeit heavily mined - line on the map, amid the bizarreness of the world's largest flagpole and flag rising from up from a completely false city built entirely for the benefit of binoculars on the southern side, hundreds of thousands or millions of people are starving, and it's all for no reason other than bad government. You could argue that it takes two sides in a conflict to create and enforce sanctions, but when it comes down to it, left to a state of nature (and barring warlords or some other governing party) the North Koreans would probably at least have rice to eat instead of having to subsist on grass and field mice while they sell heroin so they can build faulty rockets. The second is the question, "Wait, what are we doing here?" Don't get me wrong, I'm proud that the support of the US has allowed the Republic of Korea to blossom into a stalwart, thriving democracy and a center of new technology with an advanced economy. (There was some direct or tacit support of some fairly sketchy dictators along the way during that process, but hey, you can't make an omelette without occasionally purging a few hundred bad eggs.) At the same time, having reached the end of the bad ol' days when silly spats between capitalism and communism tore apart the world, it's hard for me to see our place in what's essentially a silly spat between Koreans and Koreans. To be honest our tour guides from the US Army didn't seem too excited about being at the DMZ, "miracle" notwithstanding, though they do serve proudly and bravely alongside the ROK Army nonetheless. But it's stuff like this and - to a much milder extent - silliness like the Dokdo thing between Korea and Japan that makes me wonder how it is that governments always seem to get embroiled in destructive pissing contests and hurting their own people when they're supposed to be helping people live together in better ways. Well, clearly that's a mystery I'm probably not going to work out on my own any time soon. Perhaps I'll have to leave those questions to roam free at the 38th parallel, not unlike all that ostensibly protected wildlife, unanswered. Watch out for mines...

So yeah, the final episodes of this long-running series of adventures seem like they're mostly going to be focused on me trying to keep myself entertained and constructively occupied while trying not to drive myself crazy with homesickness. Or me attempting not to waste all my money and destroy all my brain cells partying with other teachers who are also tired of being here, or looking for a few more good times before they leave, or who just plain like to party. I wasn't planning to go out this weekend, but then another teacher in town had a friend from back home visiting, and then the next night I ended up at an after-the-fact Thanksgiving celebration. Usually there's a married couple from the US here that organizes a Thanksgiving dinner for everyone in town, but they had to go back to the States at the last minute to handle a family emergency, so for most of the week I didn't think I was going to have much of a Turkey Day at all. On Thanksgiving night I managed to get together with a couple of the other Yanks in town, along with some teachers of other nationalities, and we split a couple pizzas, so before last night's celebration I thought that was going to be the extent of this year's Thanksgiving celebration. But I guess it's not so bad to miss a Thanksgiving here and there. Besides, in only ninety-two days I can finally come home...

--

Postscript: You know what? All this time I've been afraid of counting the days until I leave for fear of driving myself crazy with the waiting. But I've been thinking about it all wrong. I am going to count the days. But not so that I can imagine myself into a future time when I'm back on American soil. I'm going to count the days so that I can remind myself to make every last one of them worth it. I'm gonna download some calendar pages and get a big fat red marker and everything. Only ninety-two days left in Korea! Let's make it count, everyone!



[Addendum, 1/9/13: I mentioned in this post that, at the time of my visit to the DMZ, I had to wonder why the US is still so deeply involved in what I tend to see as a strictly Korean conflict. Well, a few weeks ago the DPRK was kind enough to remind me why we're still camped out in the Korean peninsula. The recent rocket launch appears to have been harmless in and of itself (personally I'm mostly just disappointed that they beat the South into space), but it was definitely a reminder that, in the modern age, regional conflicts can easily become global, and, like it or not, in many of these conflicts it will be the US Army that remains the cop that's there when we need them for years to come.]

밥 목하세요?

Hey there. So I've been threatening for some time to write some posts to summarize what I've learned in my nearly three years in Korea, as if that gives me some kind of vital perspective on living here. Then again, in EPIK terms, three years is a dog's age. Plus, the local office of education must think the time counts for something since they asked me to make a presentation for the other foreign teachers in town about my lessons today. It went okay overall, other than the fact that it was about twice as long as it was supposed to be - I basically just yanked all the games out of my PowerPoint presentations and showed them to people. You can never have too many games at your disposal as an ESL primary school teacher. Anyway, I thought I'd start with the easiest and least likely to be controversial topic: how to feed yourself in Korea. Read on!

While you may have anticipated a lot of ways that moving to a foreign country could be difficult, finding something to eat in a modern, industrialized country like South Korea might not have been one of them. After all, it's not like it's difficult to find food here. On the other hand, getting food out of a store or restaurant, into an edible form and into your stomach in a reasonable time frame is another issue entirely. Don't be surprised if there's some sort of heavily disorienting, deeply disheartening hour-long trip to the grocery store in your first weeks here. But have no fear! It happens to everyone, you'll get over it soon enough. But let the experiences of one who has gone before you be your guide to cushion the blow...

To start you on the path to enlightenment, let's start by identify what you don't know - what sort of essential culinary items you probably won't be able to find in Korea:

• English. This one you probably anticipated, but you may not have anticipated how profoundly it can affect your ability to buy groceries in a timely manner in your first weeks. You may assume that you can identify enough grocery items by sight that not being able to read the labels and signs in the aisles won't be a big issue, but you'd be surprised. For example, when I first arrived in Korea I couldn't find rice at the grocery store. This seems like it would be akin to not being able to find a hooker in Bangkok, but in Korea buying rice isn't nearly as easy as going to the rice aisle and choosing white, brown or Uncle Ben's. First off, you might not recognize it. Most of the rice in Korea is short-grain rice, so sometimes it looks more like coarse salt than than long-grain rice that's most common in North America. Most grocery stores also sell a bunch of shit that combines dry rice with other grains and seeds that looks more like something you would find in the birdseed section than something you would boil and eat yourself. On top of that, there's more types of rice here than white and brown (and almost no one here regularly eats brown rice, by the way). Ever heard of 참쌀, greenhorn? That's glutinous rice. It's mostly used for things like desserts and rice cake. If you're buying it with the expectation of dumping a serving of stir-fry on top of it, your in for a sticky, sweet surprise. Also, since Koreans eat white rice at literally every meal (at lunch I often see my co-teachers eat all their rice and throw away half the food, while I normally eat all the food and throw away half the rice - who the hell eats rice and spaghetti at the same time, anyway?) you often can't find white rice in anything smaller than a five kilo bag. Watch out for rice weevils if you're buying that much at one time for just yourself. (By the way, a blogger once advised me that you can sift rice weevils out of dry rice with a coarse colander, as long as you catch them before you soak the rice. Supposedly almost all rice has unhatched weevil eggs in it, so sifting out the weevils instead of throwing away the rice doesn't really make a big difference. Then again, not going back to the store for more rice may have mattered a lot more to this blogger.)
  
  Another issue with the lack of English is that not every item in the grocery store has a description of what it is written biggest on the label. Sadly, we do not live in the world of Repo Man or Lost where every product has a generic label. Even if you have a Korean dictionary or a phone with a translation program handy, what's on the label may not readily translate to the name you know something by back home. I encountered this problem in a big way trying to buy dry beans. Ever heard of fermented black soybeans? They're found in some Chinese dishes. They're also nearly impossible to distinguish visually from what anyone who lives in the US and eats Mexican food knows as black beans. If you buy one when you're trying to buy the other, however, you're going to end up with some very strange fusion cuisine. Unfortunately, if you feed "black beans" into Google Translate or a similar program, you'll most likely to get the Korean word for "black" and a list of terms for "beans" with no indication of what type of bean the Korean word actually refers to, and if you ask a Korean to help you find "black beans" they probably won't understand which type you mean since the only Mexican food you usually find here is "Mexican" fried chicken (which, as far as I can tell, is just fried chicken).
  
  By the way, through research and some trial and error I eventually figured out that "콩" refers only  to soybeans, and "흑태" and "서리태" both seemed to be passably similar to the black beans I used to get back home. (I know the level of detail in some of these remarks may seem tedious, but I'm hoping that some of the tidbits in this blog may be of help some day to some confused and desperate English teacher searching Google for clues as to how to survive here. I can't tell you, for example, how grateful I am to the blogger who posted an image of a translated Korean washing machine on his blog. Seriously, I could bear hug that guy.)



If only...

• Ovens. If you have a full-size oven in your apartment, you're either very rich or very, very lucky. For the most part, you're probably going to be doing all your cooking with a microwave, a rice cooker and a two-burner gas range. You may be able to find an electric toaster oven or convection oven, or a gas range with a small oven built into it, but they'll probably be tiny, expensive or both.
  
• Convenience Foods. Hey, remember those freezer aisles at the supermarket back home that just seemed to stretch to the horizon? The frozen pizzas, the pre-mixed stir-fry vegetables, the TV dinners, the Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches, the Steak-ums, the crappy, gooey store-brand panini, the Banquet pot pies with two tiny chunks of meat mixed in with all that gravy? Forget about it. Likewise, say goodbye to canned soups and chili, Hamburger Helper, Rice-a-Roni and just about anything other good staple of the lazy bachelor kitchen. The only things you'll find here that could be described as "instant" are ramen noodles and some crappy bland curry mixes. And speaking of convenience...
  
• A Korean Wife or Mother: Koreans are still very attached to the idea of the nuclear family, and it's still women who are expected to stay home and do most of the cooking. In my humble opinion, that's probably why so much Korean food is so labor-intensive. Your male co-teachers at school may not understand how you're able to survive at all without starving as the single head of a household, and occasionally ask quizzically, "In your home, what do you eat?" (They'll also be very amused if you tell them you eat cereal for breakfast. I guess cereal is something that's only for children and exhausted housewives on diets here.)
  
  By no means should you read the above as advising against getting a Korean wife (or mother), even if only for the sake of convenience. In fact, if you do start dating a Korean woman and she likes you, you may find that she begins arranging a wedding for you, possibly without bothering to consult with you or inform you beforehand.
  
  Also, if it makes you feel better the next time you're cutting carrots into matchsticks to make bibimbap or shredding green onions to make pajeon, remember that a lot of Korean wives are still expected to not only provide a main dish, but also freshly prepare half a dozen side dishes to go with the meal. These days a lot of homemakers are buying side dishes pre-made from the grocery store, but I hear there's a significant number of husbands out there who insist on having things the old-fashioned way. (Also, if you are making pajeon, don't buy the small green onions and try cutting them all in half one at a time. Buy a big green onion and get one of those fork-looking things to shred it. I certainly learned that the hard way.)
  
• Basically Any Foodstuff Not Involved in Korean or American Cooking. This may be the welcoming kick-to-the-nards for many of you who come from a country or region with an internationally diverse selection of cuisines. Koreans, for the most part, eat Korean food and not much else. The dishes that Koreans consider foreign, like "Chinese" black noodles (jjajangmyeon), will probably be unrecognizable to you. Of course, due to the global ubiquity of American food and a large amount of food aid during the Korean war (resulting in some marvelous fusion dishes like budae jjigae, better known as "hot dog soup"), you'll find a fair number of American classics with a Korean twist, such as pizza, spaghetti, and hamburgers, are widely available. On the other hand, you may be somewhat less likely to find, I don't know, for example, whatever it is that British people eat. What do British people eat, besides tea and biscuits? Do they have special English hamburgers or something? Like, do they use an English muffin for the bun, maybe?
  
  This also applies to other Asian cuisines, including Chinese and Japanese food. Don't assume that just because Korea is right next to these major influential world powers that you'll be able to get bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, edamame or other specialty ingredients found in other East Asian countries.
  
• Limes. Korea is known to have fairly restrictive agricultural tariffs due to the politically powerful farmers' unions, and rumor has it that by coincidence Korea doesn't import produce from any country that grows limes. Try to make do with lemons. If you can find them that is, because another thing you'll have trouble finding is...
  
• Any Produce that's Not in Season. Almost all the produce you'll find in Korea, especially if you live in a rural area, is grown in Korea. The good news is, if you're used to buying produce that's been picked green and shipped a thousand miles before it's artificially ripened, the produce in Korea is way more fresh and delicious than what you're getting back home. The bad news is, just because the grocery store has tomatoes or lemons or celery one week doesn't mean they'll still have it next week. A lot of fruits and vegetables can be grown in greenhouses out of season, so there's not as much variation with some items, but other things that you're used to getting flown in from South America or South Africa (or wherever South Africans get stuff from in the Northern Hemisphere) may not be available at all when they're not available from local growers.
  
• And Also This Stuff. Almost any spice other than hot pepper, black pepper, turmeric, and Schezwan pepper; any fresh herbs; lamb and mutton; Worcestershire sauce; Balsamic vinegar; any type of green beans or fresh peas; cauliflower; asparagus; Brussels sprouts; artichokes; okra... You get the idea.

And as if that wasn't enough, here's a bunch of stuff that's not easy to find:

• Meat in Cuts that You're Used to Working With. Know how to debone chicken? Or clean a fish? Or humanely kill a live fish? Time to study up on that. Also, you'll find that chicken is often chopped up in ways you won't be accustomed to, and beef and pork often come pre-sliced into thin strips meant for bulgogi or samgyeopsal, which may seriously screw with your plan to enjoy a nice thick, onion-smothered pork chop.

• Cheese. Cheese that doesn't suck, at any rate. Same goes for other specialty dairy products like heavy cream or sour cream.
  
• Decent Beer. All knowledgeable sources agree that Korean beer sucks. Also, apparently the major breweries have conspired to make microbreweries illegal. Not that it matters since all forms of alcohol are more or less a means to an end here rather than something to be savored and enjoyed.
  
• Decent Wine. The Korean palate is not acclimated so much to wine as it is to grape juice spiked with soju.
  
• Specialty Bread. Buns, rolls, etc. Oh, and try finding a baguette that's not stale, I dare you.
  
• Peanut Butter. And if you do find it, you're gonna pay an arm and a leg for it.
  
• Coffee. Koreans adore coffee. You can't walk two blocks in Korea in any decent-sized town without stumbling across a coffee shop. Unfortunately, Koreans don't generally make coffee at home. Automatic drip coffee makers are virtually unheard of. Unless you're ready to pay three bucks a cup for an espresso drink or buy it whole bean from the coffee shop, grind it and use a coffee press or hand-drip filter to prepare it, you're going to have to put up with the little individual tubes of the freeze-dried stuff. I'm not going to guarantee that the local grocery store has black tea, either.

So as you may have guessed, you're in for some adjustments here unless you already know how to prepare a lot of Korean food. But enough with the bad news. Here's some good news about what you can find:

• Costco! That list of stuff it's hard to find in Korea? That's pretty much my Costco shopping list. Costco in Korea is awesome - it's basically America in a big box. Every time I walk into Costco I feel like I've come home for a few hours. Ground beef? Gorgonzola? Tortillas and salsa? Parmesan cheese in the shaker bottle? Hamburger buns? Actual bacon? A quart of sour cream? Electronics that aren't made by Samsung or LG? Real actual sour dill pickles in a gallon jar? All at Costco. Plus, they have hot dogs and real, non-crazy pizza in the cafe! You may have to travel a ways to get to a major urban center with a Costco, but pretty much every major urban center in Korea has one. Make friends with someone with a membership and a car as soon as you can. Also, make sure you have cash; Costco in Korea only accepts the special Costco credit cards issued by Samsung (yes, Samsung and Hyundai do issue credit cards in Korea) and when I tried to apply for one they told me that only foreigners on record with the tax office (which generally means you've lived in Korea for at least two years) can apply for one.
  
  When you get home, you'll probably want to divide up a lot of the stuff you just bought into portions the right size for two to four meals and then freeze all of it that you're not using right away. This rule, however, does not work for sour cream. I learned that lesson the hard way as well...
  

  

  Heaven... I'm in heaven...

• Homeplus (Tesco) and E-Mart. For those of you not in the know: Tesco is the British version of Wal-Mart, Homeplus is the Korean affiliate of Tesco, and E-Mart is the Korean version of Homeplus. There's one or both of these discount stores in just about every good-sized urban center in Korean, and E-Mart and Homeplus (Homeplus especially, since it's owned by a European corporation) usually have a good number of hard-to-find foreign foods and beverages, such as imported beer, real wine, chicken bouillon, and a limited supply of baking goods and dairy products. Tesco also has one of my personal favorite products, those Asian Home Gourmet spice packets from Singapore that let you quickly and easily make things like Indian curry that actually tastes like Indian curry by adding meat and a few other simple ingredients.
  
  (Side note: Yesterday on my most recent trip to Homeplus, I tragically could not find any Asian Home Gourmet spice paste packets in stock. They did, however, have asparagus is the produce department, which was a minor miracle. Also, Tesco Corn Flakes were two giant boxes for W6,500. Yes, these are the things that are noteworthy and exciting when you teach in a small town.)
  
  If you can't find something at Homeplus or E-Mart, you could also try one of Korea's upscale department stores like Lotte or Shinsegae, which usually have a foreign foods section tucked away somewhere in the grocery section with "exotic" foreign goods like oregano, canned tomatoes and peanut butter. Be prepared to pay Gucci prices for this stuff if you buy it at a department store, though.

  

  Lotte Department Store - Home of the $8 Jar of Peanut Butter

• Specialty Shops and Websites. You wouldn't believe how happy I was when I stumbled across this blog with a piece about the specialty baking store in Daegu, just around the corner from Daegu Station. This place has everything - vanilla extract, balsamic vinegar, you name it.
  
  If you hunt around, there's also for specialty foreign foods shops around Korea that will ship items to you. I had been a big fan of The Underground Grocers in Gwangju (mostly because they were the only source I could find for corn tortillas in Korea) but apparently they've closed up shop and rolled the business into a restaurant called The First Alleyway. (I haven't bought any corn tortillas since Underground Grocers closed - my freezer is full of enough wheat tortillas from Costco to last for an extra contract - but this website also apparently has them. I can't vouch for it personally because I haven't used it, though.)
  
  Another source for hard-to-get foreign goods can be shops catering to guest factory workers and laborers in Korea. For example, if you go to the Bukbu bus terminal in Daegu you'll find several shops offering South Asian, Southeast Asian and South American goods. There's also a really kick-ass Pakistani restaurant there if you're craving a good curry. If you're looking for something specific, try to figure out what that item is called in Peru or Pakistan before you go in case the name is different where you're from.
  
  There's one more type of "specialty shop" you can try if you're really having difficulty finding something - the black market. Just because you can't get something imported here doesn't mean someone hasn't figured out how to avoid a couple import regulations and get their hands on it. I've never actually tried this method personally, but if you Google "Daegu black market" you get some pretty explicit instructions as to how to find them in Daegu.
  
• US Armed Forces. Make friends with someone at the local military installation and you can get just about any foodstuff from the US at a reasonable price. If you're not friendly with anyone on post, you may be able to find some goods that have been smuggled off-base available on the black market.
  
• Your Suitcase. If there's some spices you're certain that you'll miss from home - especially things like cumin, cilantro, basil and paprika, which are hard to get and/or expensive here - pack a bottle or two before you leave. I've brought several sealed bottles of spices here in my luggage and it's never presented a problem. I'm not sure how the TSA would feel about this stuff being in carry-on luggage, so consider sticking it in your checked baggage.
  
  If there's any fresh herbs that you think you might want, like cilantro or basil, consider bringing a packet of seeds with you and growing it yourself. Korea has strict import bans on meats, seedlings and a lot of other fresh food products, but as far as I know spices and seeds are okay. (Admittedly, when I brought cilantro seeds with me from the US, I slid them into the lining of my suitcase and didn't mention them to the customs officials.)
  
• Affordable Korean Food. Can't cook? Too busy for the grocery store? Luckily, you can get a relatively healthy hot meal in Korea pretty easily for less than 5,000 won. Then again, this option depends heavily on how much kimbap and ramen you can stand to eat in a week.

And while we're on the subject, let's talk about some foodstuffs that you can find all over in Korea, many of which are definitely worth trying while you're here (and some of which are good substitutes for stuff you can't find):

• Compressed Meat Products. Like I said, Korea received a lot of food aid from the United States during and after the Korean War, and I'm guessing this food aid included a lot of tinned meat, judging by Korea's continuing adoration of Spam. I haven't actually indulged in too much Spam since I've been here (just because it's popular doesn't mean it isn't still Spam), it's pretty tasty when it's prepared as jeon, a Korean dish where items like sliced Spam, zucchini and young pumpkin are dipped in an egg and flour batter and fried in oil.
  
  In addition to Spam and all the various versions of it produced by Korean food manufacturers (some of it with clever brand names like 런천밋 - transliterated as "Luncheon Meat") you'll find many varieties of chopped pressed ham, hot dogs and sausages. Korean hot dogs and sausages really run the gamut in quality - I once bought a package of about twenty skinny franks for less than $2, but couldn't get rid of them fast enough as they all tasted like sawdust encased in plastic. There's some decent sausages out there, though, including some fairly good varieties of andouille and these sausage four packs that include some pretty good spicy green and neon-orange sausages and a couple of those curly Italian sausages.
  
  Another type of compressed meat product you can buy here is fish paste. It's the key ingredient in odeng (오뎅), those wiggly strips of white stuff you see impaled on skewers and available in a hot water bath at snack stands around Korea. I wouldn't exactly say it's a must-try delicacy or anything, but in a pinch you can use it as a substitute in Chinese recipes that call for sheets of compressed bean curd, assuming you're not too choosy about duplicating the flavor (the similarity is mostly in the texture) and you're not a vegetarian.
  
• Lotus Root. Lotus root is available either whole or pre-cut and soaked in water. It's white with a honeycomb appearance when it's pre-sliced, and the texture is crunchy and slightly starchy. Most of the time in Korea I only see it in a kimchi side dish where it's been soaked in soy sauce and sesame oil (or something like that), but if you boil it quickly in a little vinegared water it makes a reasonable substitute for water chestnuts in Chinese recipes. Oh, and speaking of...
  
• Sesame Oil. If you've been doing stir-fry at home and been wondering why it doesn't seem as good as the stuff from the takeout place around the corner, this may be what you're missing. Use it sparingly in Chinese recipes, and feel free to dump in a whole tablespoon if you're doing something Korean like japchae.
  
• Daikon Radish. I don't think you can eat a meal in Korea without finding some daikon radish in it somewhere. Daikon radish is bitter and a little starchy, but gets sweeter when you cook it. I have a recipe for a chicken and daikon radish stew that I really enjoy (mujorim, 무조림), although I don't think I've seen the same dish served in any restaurants here, so I don't know how authentic it is.
  
• Garlic Stems. Also sometimes referred to as "young garlic" or "fresh garlic," these are the stalks of garlic plants before they mature. They can be a bit tough it they're harvested late, but they're fairly tender when boiled and good for adding something green and garlicky to a recipe when such a thing would be called for. I've also used them as a substitute for green beans occasionally, although I don't suggest doing this unless you really love garlic. (I really, really love garlic.)
  
• Young Pumpkin. This is essentially a long, light green variety of squash, similar in shape and size to a zucchini or a cucumber. I think they may actually grow these by taking a standard pumpkin and putting it into a tight tube of plastic when it's young, so that it grows long and thin instead of round. It's a bit like a cross between a pumpkin and a zucchini or a yellow squash. As I said above, they're quite delicious when they're prepared as jeon (specifically, hobak jeon), and I substitute them into any recipe that calls for yellow squash, which I've never seen here.
  
• Sweet Potato. This is another foodstuff that you probably won't be able to aviod here, even if you try. Korean sweet potatoes are smaller than American yams, with a white or purple color and a texture closer to a standard potato. In fall, if you're lucky, you'll find people roasting and eating them whole. You'll also find sweet potato paste in everything from pizza crusts to sweet potato latte. (Yes, I'm not kidding, sweet potato latte.) Feel free to throw them into any recipe that calls for regular sweet potatoes or yams - I've had some pretty mean Korean sweet potato casserole around Thanksgiving here.
  
• Pizza. Okay, admittedly, this is not a food unique to Korea, and a lot of foreigners really hate what they do to pizza here, but I'm sure at some point when I'm back in the US I'll be ordering a pizza from Papa John's and thinking, "Man, I wish I could get a pizza here with green tea in the crust, a ring of sweet potato paste on the outside, corn, potatoes and bacon (or squid, shrimp, and clams!) as the toppings, and those lines of brown, yellow and white sauce that I think are probably teriyaki, honey mustard and either alfredo or mayonnaise criss-crossing the top, with a packet of hot sauce and a cup of sweet pickles on the side." (If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, Costco has normal pizza available by the slice and by the pie.)
  
• Mushrooms. I've gone through large portions of my life believing that I don't like mushrooms, but since coming to Korea I've discovered that a lot of that has to do with the type of mushroom, how fresh it is, and how it's prepared. Westerners are kind of behind-the-times when it comes to mushrooms. For example, did you realize that most of those fancy-schmantzy mushrooms that you buy at the grocery store are actually all varieties of the same mushroom? It's true. Moonlight mushrooms, brown mushrooms? Same mushroom, different color. Portobello mushrooms? Same mushroom, different maturity. Crimini mushrooms, champignon mushrooms? Same damn mushroom, different fancy foreign name. Wild mushrooms? Very possibly the same damn mushroom with different marketing. You provincial saps have been paying good money for the same fucking mushrooms under different names. And you thought you were cultured.
  
  Korea, on the other hand, actually has mushrooms other than the white and brown mushrooms that are pretty much the only variety widely available in the US. You're probably familiar with shiitake mushrooms (pyogo in Korean) from their use in Chinese and Japanese cooking. You may have also run into black mushrooms, also variously known as black fungus, wood ear mushrooms, cloud ear mushrooms, or, hilariously, according to one of my Korean cookbooks, Jew's ear mushrooms, in Chinese food - they're mogi in Korean. While you're in Korea, though, you should definitely try some of the varieties of mushrooms that you might not find fresh back home, like white, thin, thread-like enokitake mushrooms (paengi in Korean), button-like shimeji mushrooms (mattari in Korean), or - well, I don't think there's a proper description of them other than phallic - oyster mushrooms (saesongi in Korean). I find them all a little meatier than the standard Western mushroom, plus they don't get all mushy and slimy as quickly if you accidentally overcook them a little. All three are excellent on the grill with some bulgogi, by the way.
  
  (If you're familiar with Japanese, you may have noticed that most of those mushroooms are known by their Japanese names in the West. You'll find that's true for a lot of foodstuffs here. Be prepared, however, for Koreans to come up with some sort of crazy English name (like "laver") when you're talking about something that you know by the Japanese name (like nori dried seaweed - it's kim in Korea) and to look at you queerly with a vague air of insult if you insist on using the Japanese names for these things. "You call dubu 'tofu'? But my phone's dictionary says it's 'bean curd'! And you call ramyeon "ramen"? Ha ha ha, what a crazy, mixed-up world you Japan-loving round-eyes come from!")

Above all, my advice to you, when you first come to Korea, is the same advice offered by the front cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - "Don't Panic." Your first foray into the grocery store in Korea may be a confusing and alienating journey ending in hunger and despair, but eventually you'll find ways to get around missing ingredients and kitchen implements and find something to eat, even if you're not much of a cook.

To help cushion the transition, though, it's not a bad idea to consider familiarizing yourself with Korean cooking and see if you can learn a couple simple recipes before you get here. Before I got here I picked up Quick and Easy Korean Cooking for Everyone at a national chain bookstore in LA, but I was disappointed to realize when I arrived in Korea that the book uses a lot of Japanese ingredients and names for ingredients because the publishing company and the Korean-born author are both from Japan. My co-workers also turned up their noses at the idea of a Korean cookbook being from Japan, even if the author was born in Seoul. Nevertheless, I actually prefer some of the recipes in the book, since I enjoy the taste of a little wine in many of these dishes, and many recipes in the book incorporate a few spoonfuls of rice wine, which is not a common ingredient in Korean cooking. For more authentic recipes, a friend here recommended Lee Wade's Korean Cookery, which I would also recommend. (Sadly, that book seems to be out of print now, so you may have to hunt around for a used copy or find a different book.) The main difficulty you may find with Korean cooking is how labor-intensive it can be - most recipes involve a lot of chopping and shredding, which is all very time-consuming when you're coming home after a day at work and want to get dinner on the table as soon as possible. One pro tip I've found that will speed up a lot of Korean recipes: if a recipe calls for you to fry several ingredients separately, just fry the meat first and then throw all the vegetables in together second. A lot of Korean recipes do suffer tremendously if they're overcooked or prepared carelessly, but if you're just looking for sustenance you probably won't notice if one or two vegetables in your dish are a little over- or underdone.

I also brought a Chinese cookbook here - Chinese Cuisine from the Wei-Chuan's Cookbook series, alas, also possibly out of print - but that choice proved to be a little less fruitful. As I mentioned, a lot of ingredients common to Chinese recipes aren't available in Korea, or it's very difficult to figure out what the Korean equivalent to an ingredient is or what it's called. Still, you'll find that Chinese cooking methods and ingredients are similar enough to Korean ones to allow for a fairly simple translation of many Chinese recipes to the Korean kitchen, and there's a wide variety of recipes in this book. Parts of the book may seem a little dated, occasionally there's a confusing instruction (Three pieces of tofu? When was tofu sold in uniform pieces in the US?) and you may want to skip the recipes that call for ketchup, but you should get the hang of how to do a basic stir-fry after trying a couple of the simpler recipes.

Given some time and patience, you'll find yourself adapting more recipes that you know and discover to your new home-away-from-home in Korea. If I could summarize my experience learning to cook here, I would do it this way: 1) meat and vegetables; 2) fry, boil, nuke and stew. If you can do a recipe with only those ingredients and those cooking methods, it's probably doable in Korea. Start scanning your cookbook for anything that calls for a saute or a simmer and you should stay fairly well-fed here.

To give you some ideas to get started, I want to share a few of my favorite dishes to prepare at home. I'm not going to post entire recipes here, but hopefully some of these suggestions might give you some ideas of how to add some variety to your kitchen if you're living here. Bon appetit!

• Ramen: Fight the urge to get lazy and eat it every day if you care about your sodium intake, but if you drop a lightly beaten egg and a few dumplings into the hot water with the noodles and the soup base, you can make a fairly filling meal out of it.
  
• Stir-fry: Not sure what to eat tonight? Make some rice, toss some meat in a frying pan, brown it, and add chopped kimchi and green onion - bam! Instant kimchi bokkum. Kimchi is also good for spicing up a batch of fried rice if you're in the mood. If you've never done stir-fry, you can't go wrong with this basic guide: Chop your meat and add equal parts water and corn starch, with some soy sauce. You can pre-fry the meat after this step if you're feeling fancy. Fry up some finely chopped garlic, green onion, ginger root, Lee Kum Kee hot pepper sauce or what have you for less than a minute ("until fragrant" is how my cookbook likes to put it). Throw in the meat, and when the meat is about done throw in your favorite fresh vegetables. Don't overdo frying the veggies. If you want to get crazy, stir in some more soy sauce, vinegar, cooking wine, sugar and/or sesame oil with some water and corn starch at the end.
  
• Italian Food: You're probably not going to be able to pull of a lasagna here, but any dish that involves sauteing meat and vegetables and dumping it on pasta should be manageable. Here's some examples:
  
  Spaghetti: You should find the noodles and the sauce here just about everywhere, although it'll probably be a little more expensive than it was back home. If you want to add some extra sustenance, fry up some vegetables to add to the sauce, like some yellow onion or, if you want to adapt a popular Korean addition to the recipe, some kimchi. Sausage is also a good complement, and it's not too difficult to make meatballs if you've got the spices - you can find bread crumbs with the flour in the grocery store, they're used for breading deep-fried foods here.
  
  Shrimp Scampi: Costco has cleaned frozen shrimp at a very reasonable price, but if you're cheap and lazy like me you can just use seafood flakes (also known as mock crab, or sometimes "razor clam" in Korea) instead. My favorite recipe has shallots, which you can't get here, so I use a large green onion and throw away most of the green part which is too onion-y for this recipe. Mix equal parts olive oil and melted butter, throw in whatever white wine or rice wine you can find, fry up the onion, seafood flakes and lots of chopped or crushed garlic, add some ground hot pepper to give it a little kick, top it with Parmesan cheese from Homeplus or Costco and serve it over rice or spaghetti.
  
  Pasta Primavera: Take advantage of all those fresh vegetables in your grocery store in spring and summer and saute some onions, sweet peppers, zucchini and young pumpkin in olive oil, and serve over your favorite pasta tossed with a little more olive oil.
  
  Chicken Parmesan: If you can find boneless chicken breasts somewhere, you can get the spaghetti sauce, flour, eggs and bread crumbs at any grocery store, and most grocery stores will have shredded "pizza cheese" available in the dairy section. Homeplus and Costco have grated Parmesan. "But how do I make chicken parm without an oven?" you ask. Easy - find a recipe that calls for deep-frying the chicken in oil. Add the oil-fried chicken to a frying pan with a little sauce in the bottom. Smother the breasts with the cheese, add the rest of the sauce, slap a lid on it and simmer until the cheese melts. Voila!
  
• Jambilaya: The trickiest part of this recipe is finding chicken bouillon to use to make chicken stock. Unless, of course, you actually know how to make stock from scratch, in which case you are definitely one or two rungs above me on the cooking ladder. Fry up some andouille sausage with chicken or ham cubes, garlic, onion, and maybe a little celery if you can find it. Add chicken stock, white rice, ground hot pepper and canned tomatoes (try Homeplus or Costco for those). Simmer it until the rice is cooked. When you've got about seven or eight minutes of cooking left, you can throw in a little white wine and some chopped green pepper. Don't throw in the green pepper at the beginning or they'll disintegrate by the time the rice is done. See if your local grocery store has some cayenne hot pepper sauce if you want to add a little kick to it.
  
• Goulash: I'm talking about the Hungarian meat stew here, not the Middle America hamburger, cheese and pasta casserole of the same name. No oven, remember? Paprika costs a fucking fortune here, if you can find it, so you might want to bring a bag or a couple bottles from home. The recipe I have also calls for marjoram, which you can't get here, so I usually do a very white trash thing and use oregano instead. Also, small red and yellow sweet peppers are called "paprika" in Korean for some reason, even though they're completely unrelated to the pepper that paprika is made out of, so if you ask for paprika at the grocery store you may confuse the shit out of everyone. The key to a good goulash, as any Czech worth their salt will tell you, is to eschew red wine and pour a bottle of Pilsner Urquel or Budvar (proudly sold at Homeplus!) into that mess before you put it to simmer. I can't find egg noodles here and I'm too lazy to make dumplings so I usually serve it over buttered macaroni instead.
  
• Mexican Food: Korean hot peppers are actually very close to what we call an Anaheim pepper in the United States. (Interesting fact: most of the hot peppers in Asia were originally brought from the New World by Portuguese traders. How's that for globalization?) Thus, Korean hot peppers and Korean hot pepper powder are passable substitutes for the hot peppers and chili powder in many Mexican recipes. Your main obstacles in doing anything Mexican are going to be getting cheese, beans and tortillas. Also, tomatoes are somewhat seasonal here and as I said earlier you'll never, ever encounter a lime. I know, that sounds like I pretty much just wrote off most of the key ingredients in popular Mexican cooking. You can, however, get most of these ingredients with a little work. Costco has flour tortillas in stock regularly, and see the link in the "Specialty Shops and Websites" section above for a website that advertises corn tortillas, along with canned refried beans and jalapenos. Costco also routinely has salsa, canned crushed tomatoes, canned kidney beans and big blocks of yummy, delicious cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses. So once you've stocked up on that stuff, here's some Mexican stuff you can do:
  
  Chili: Too easy. Easy as pie. Easier than pie, actually. Much easier. Have you ever tried to make a pie? It's really difficult. But chili is super easy. Brown a pound of ground beef with a chopped onion, a chopped sweet pepper and a couple chopped hot peppers if you want it to have a bit of a kick. Add a can and a half of chopped tomatoes, followed by some cumin and ground red pepper powder. Dump in two cans of kidney beans. (1 1/2 to 2 cups of dried beans, soaked overnight and boiled for two hours, will do if you  can't get them canned.) Let it simmer for a little bit until the tomatoes are wilted and the beans are heated through. Sprinkle some cheddar cheese on top if it's too healthy for you.
  
  Enchiladas: For the sauce, brown some flour in oil, mix in a couple tablespoons of ground hot pepper, slowly stir in some water, add garlic and reduce it to the right consistency. Mix fried ground beef or stewed shredded chicken with some fresh chopped onion, roll it in a flour tortilla with some cheese, nuke it until the cheese melts and cover it with shredded lettuce. Personally, I prefer to do a stacked enchilada - quickly fry a corn tortilla, cover it in meat, onions, cheese and sauce, repeat with a second layer and cap it with another tortilla, cheese and sauce.
  
  Huevos Rancheros: You can buy refried beans by the can, or you can soak some black beans overnight, boil the shit out of them with a little oil for at least two hours and then mash them into a paste. For the sauce, fry some onion, garlic and chopped hot peppers, add some chopped tomatoes (I highly recommend using fresh tomatoes), cook them until they wilt, mix in some cumin, cilantro or oregano, and ground hot pepper to taste, and simmer it for another five or so minutes. Fry a corn tortilla or two, add beans, cheese and a fried egg, and top the whole mess with the sauce.
  
  Fajitas: Here's a fun way to do a fajita stir-fry - Brown strips of chicken or beef, add thinly slice sweet pepper, onions and hot peppers if you feel like giving it a kick, and just before you pull it out of the pan, throw in a shot of lemon juice mixed with ground red pepper, cumin and a little corn starch and stir it up until everything's coated.
  
  Calabacitas: This is a simplified version of a Mexican recipe I ran into while I was looking for a side dish to go with the fajitas. One chopped onion, one chopped sweet pepper, one chopped tomato, two finely chopped hot peppers, one large can of corn, one smallish zucchini, chili powder, cumin; mix and saute until cooked through.

In addition to keeping well-fed and healthy, learning to cook at home will also help you while away the hours without resorting to silliness like taekwondo lessons or heavy drinking if you live in a small town. So anyway, I hope some of this information is useful to you and I didn't just waste too much of the Internet's valuable bandwidth by committing all this to binary. Got comments? Or recipes you want to share? Please, feel free to leave some! I'm sure I've only scratched the surface of what's possible in a confused foreigner's Korean kitchen. Like I never touched on the popular subject of alternate uses for your rice cooker...

So as I was saying, I intend to post some more summary thoughts on life in Korea working for EPIK before I flee the country, including (in no particular order, with the assumption that I'll come back and put links here later) advice for aspiring EPIK teachers, my thoughts on what EPIK is doing right and what could be improved (I was going to make this an open letter, but I later realized that an open letter might be a bit presumptuous), and my top five favorite and least favorite things about living in Korea. So I hope you'll enjoy hearing my thoughts, and I hope none of them will get me fired before I can collect my pension reimbursement. Cheers!