Log38: Kathmandu, Arrived!

I've been here for one hour, and it has already been an unbelievable, inconceivably amazing experience; an hour!!!

The airport was a sight (or rather, lack thereof because it was so small?), the airport exit had a ton of people, I found my people and the car ride turned out to be something straight out of the movies--no street lights, bumpy dirt roads, driving practices impractical/unimaginable in a Western world, and buildings and homes like I'd never seen before.  And it's pitch black now, so imagine what it must be like in a few hours.

I lucked out with my place though; you can immediately tell just how poor this country really is, relative, at least, to the worlds I come from (no moral valuations being placed, mind you; poor in the strictest, fiscal sense, let's not get too philosophical about this).

Also, fortuitously my camera has begun to die.

Awesome.

Here's to an adventure...

Hope you're all well!

Log37: A Trip

I am at Incheon International Airport.  It seems like just yesterday when I sat here writing just before departing to the states.  Here I am now more than a month later, about to board a plane to go to Kathmandu, Nepal.

I plan to write a lot while I am there; free-hand.  I am not brining my computer and will likely have limited internet access.

If you are wondering why I chose Nepal of all places, I will tell you that it was always a destination of great interest to me.  I aimed on studying abroad either there or Africa somewhere, but opted to spend another semester in southern California.  Since being in Korea, what seemed once like a long-lost opportunity had fortuitously come back, and I decided to take it up this time.

It will be an entirely new world, and I am anxious to see what I will learn from and about not only the country and culture, but also myself.

I am excited for this trip, and look forward to an immensely rewarding and rejuvenating experience.

I hope you are all well.  Thanks for reading.

Stay in touch.

Log36: Welcome Back!

Here I am, Friday evening (by choice; really, it's not as sad as some of you young folk may think it sounds) back in the homestay, relaxing, reflecting and cleaning my room after having just completed my school's winter English camp this afternoon.

Before I tell you about my winter English camp, let me say a few words about being back in Korea.

Many colleagues told me that as much of the United States--in all of its individuality diversity liberty and brimming glory--as we might enjoy, there would come a time when we would return to Korea and arrive with a curious sense of...home.  There would be a sigh of relief, a smile of warmth, a gravity that settles us in the most relaxing way possible.

Sure, it varies and depends on the person.  Sure, it matters what kind of traveling and travel experiences you have before you arrive back in the land of the morning calm.  Sure all those other potential causes and explanations matter to some degree.

But I was willing to give credence where it was due.  And I have been happy to say that my arrival in Korea--nay, more specifically, Jeonju--did feel like a certain home to me.  I felt an ownership of the city, I felt I had come back to a community, I felt as if I had created a bond with the city itself; like I had been a dandelion seed that flew across the Pacific, landed in a more rural region of Korea, and began growing my nascent roots (or what might be barely conceived as roots).

This is not to say this is my new home, because home, to me, has always been where the family is.  And my family, right now, is in California.  That has been, is, and always will be, home; where the family is.*

*1) For this reason, I cannot recall a time in college when I called my dorm room my "home."  I would always go back to my "room," but it was a "home" in as much as any other space I occupied temporarily would have been a home; in as much as the dining hall, the basketball gym, the classrooms, the campus grill, would have been a home.  I became attached to the entire campus certainly, but shied from calling a single room my particular space, or home.  
2) Now my own home which I will come to occupy and own will have a different tincture to the title of home. The title will be imbued with a different color, respect, and meaning.  But the kind of home that I now refer to, where you know that even at your worst the home will remain imperturbable, adamant in its position to be your touchstone and guide, is a home that never yields to give you a sense of ease and comfort and confidence.


Now, one could argue that anything after a twelve-hour flight in a three-seater would look and feel like a home.  Trust me, I could not agree more.

Yet, I guess I have become familiar with the city to some capacity.  I have met different kinds of people in a variety of lifestyles here: I found my barbershop (beauty shop, really) where the Korean middle-aged women come to shoot the breeze about their children and nephews and husbands and they see me and urge me to eat one of the pastries they brought in; I work at a school whose teachers I spend time with daily and whose students I run into often and engage with smiles laughs and all; I attend orchestra rehearsals whose members come from all over the province and span jobs ranging from pediatrician to elementary school teacher; I frequent a coffee shop whose owners and workers I have become friends with; I often take taxi rides simply because 90% of the taxi drivers in this city are disproportionately kind, interesting, and engaging people who seem to actually care whether you have a nice day or not; I live in an apartment placed smack in the middle of all these different parts of the city, with a family who both abide by and repudiate the many stereotypes of a modern Korean family.

I have come to love this quaint city for all its peculiarities and idiosyncracies, a place visibly teetering between modernization and the old guard, between wanting to develop and holding on to its title as the immovable and eternal bastion of traditional, historic Korea.

This is what happens.  Dammit.

I'm too tired now to say something about English camp.

Next time...

Much love; thanks for reading.

Log35: A Flower

Log34: 2011

The Year of the Rabbit.

2011.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rFx6OFooCs&feature=related

I sincerely wish all of you the best.

Cheers.

Log33: A Year in Review

One of the nice things about being home is the opportunity to watch sports.*


*Two points potentially battle against my sentiments:
1) I have been in Korea for six months.  One could say, for as long as six months, or one could say, for only six months.  Grow up, it has only been six months.  Yet in doing so one potentially deprives the fullness of a moment, of a day, of a week and a month.  In any case however, this is point number one; I recognize this and accept it as a point of disagreement.  Six months can be eternal, or fleeting.  I understand that in the "broader scheme of things," six months really can fly by.  And they admittedly have; it's hard to believe that the new year has already arrived.   I recognize that to some, my bemoaning and protesting of the past six months illustrates an immaturity within me, a failure to disabuse myself from naive ennui. 
2) Sports, as a literal concept, of course exists in Korea.  Of course people know what basketball is, sure there is soccer, of course skiing and swimming are common.  Yet sports in Korea still has a distant vigor to it, a kind of veracity and immediacy with which children under ten approach going out and playing in the grass, a kind of strange remoteness that can be obfuscated in the commercialism of sports.  So much of American culture is significantly constituted by sports as a product.  Of course the major sports networks are foregone conclusions, but so also must be the ways we consider even the players--LBJ, Kobe, Favre, Strasburg-- basic human beings who too happen to have stories, worries, queries and concerns just as each of us does; they are products we consume, and love to live by as a source of comfort and reward.  I too, take them for granted, and have realized just how much I...frankly...missed it all.  In any case, the second point of disagreement is how I may not have given the sports culture in Korea enough credence.

As some of you may know, sports coverage love top 10 lists. 

So how else could I properly welcome the new year other than with an appropriate reflection of the top 10 moments of 2010 (NOTE: I deliberately stretch the meaning of the word "moment," extending it to a collection of moments that can amount to an entire day or two).

TOP 10 Moments of 2010 

(from My Little Snow Globe World, 

not the actual Real World that Matters, 

and ranked in a manner that is arbitrary and with meaning

only to the extent that they are memorable, 

but not to the extent that one is somehow significantly better than the other):

10. Snow (June & December)
I had not seen snow in fifteen years prior.  I saw it once in Colorado, and again in Korea.  Both experiences recalled my carefree and restless joys from childhood.  And its smiles.

9. Meeting the ETAs (July)

Six weeks in a marble-clad, Orwellian surveillance-wired, communistic/dictatorial university set in the boonies of Korea spending time with...highly intellectual, immensely diverse, incredibly interesting recent college-graduates from all over the United States?  Yeah.  It has been nothing short of great.


8. Seoul (December)
We went.  Had a great dinner, had great views, had a fabulous time.  Splendid.

7. Dancing in SF (June)

A night in the summer.  We went to San Francisco. Mesmerizing.


6. First day at school in Korea (August)

Send a kid to the disciplinarian, scream at a student, teach my first day lessons, get a written apology, have a butt-naked student in the back of the classroom.
How does this NOT make the top-ten list? Of the decade?


5. Student admitted to APU (October)

I help this kid prepare for an interview with Asia Pacific University (international university in Japan) for a week.  I'm scared because I'm not sure how much I can help him as he begins as a nervous wreck.  He seems much more confident the day before the interview.
I get a call from him Saturday afternoon.  The kid can barely breathe, but he's wavering between crying and laughing.  He tells me he got in.


Wonderful.


4. San Francisco Airport (June/July)
Many memories have been made here.  Much traveling has been made here, and many goodbyes had here.  One in particular; my older brother dropping me off at the airport...he was the last person I would see before my six months departure to Korea, and though I knew I would see my parents in Korea, I knew it would be a long time before I would see him again.  Seeing him get back in the car and drive away kinda sucked.  But it was a moment.  And an important one.  He's my rock.


3. Senior recital (April)
What a journey this was...from the hours I spent deciding what pieces I would play, to asking help from the various professors, to practicing into the wee hours of the night...to the moments I took my bows after each piece...to the moment I walked off the stage. Scrumptious.

2. Graduation (May)
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Not in the tone of Academy Awards (arrogant), not in the tone of the Queen of England (presumptuous), not in the tone of Kanye West who thinks he is the most deserving man in the world (condescending)...No, in the tone of a son, a brother, a friend who cannot seem to garner the right amount of words--nor the proper ones--to articulate just the sheer weight of gratitude and appreciation he has to the innumerable people who helped him get to such a point and without whom he would not be who he is today, this moment.

1. Fulbright (April)
This gets top spot because it was, unlike many of the others, an actual moment: a true instant in time when my life changed.  Greatly.  And it was one of those moments which so strongly remains with you that if you could, you could recreate every little molecule that you came in contact with and that you witnessed that very moment.

Story.  As a senior interviewer then working for the admissions office, I had been asked to have a nice lunch with parents of newly accepted students who were on a special visit with their achieving sons and daughters to learn about Pomona.  I sat down and had a great conversation with the parents with whom I had sat, telling them about the wonderful experiences I had at Pomona.  They inevitably asked me what I will be do following graduation, which I could not answer definitively.  I left, to go check my mail.
I saw that I had a large brown envelope.  It being lunch time, many students were in the mailroom.  I had been waiting for news for several months, and as soon as I saw that mailing address was from Korea, the nervousness overflowed from my mouth senselessly.  I began speaking gibberish as estranged and fearful eyes turned to watch me carefully.  I ripped open the envelope, saw "Congratulations," threw my hands up in front of strangers, explained to them to assuage their fears--"Sorry, I got Fulbright."--heard their congratulations, and set my phone ablaze with my furious fingers calling nearly everyone I knew.
I went back to the table from which I had departed not three minutes ago, and told them, "Okay, you know that question about what I'll be doing after graduation?  Well I have an answer for you.  I'll be on the Fulbright."  I hugged the fellow admissions officers who were there, called my parents, hugged my friends, and was in ecstasy for the next...week?

Honorable Mentions:

*USA: The fullness of unchilled Zinfadel from Napa Valley; the warmth of home; the juiciness of an organic apple in the middle of winter; the crunchiness of fresh lettuce; the unbending crispness of nachos; the thick, moist 2/3lb burger; the freedom of driving; the color green of grass and trees; English; ESPN; these are a few of my favorite things from the land of the free and the home of the brave.

*Grad Night: 
The last hurrah for departing seniors. Some friends were trashed, some friends were buzzed; some took glory in their success, some in their survival; some smiled with glee, some bawled in despair.  What a stir of emotions that evening proved to be.  What delight I did feel, and yet what fear, what gratitude...and what comfort in the arms of a friend.

*Final Mood Swing Party:
Ah, a cappella.  Ah, Mood Swing.  How I miss both oh so much.  And the partying shenanigans; how wonderful!  They were lovely times of a not-so-distant past.  

The above of course was by no means a comprehensive list.

This is about what I can do, for now, as I try to forge ahead in the new year...the year of the rabbit. :)

May Fortune smile upon all of us this year.

Log32: Home

Things I already like about home:

Cheese
Red wine (not chilled)
Driving
Bed
Space and high ceilings
My old flute
Family
Couches
Multiple rooms
Weather
Mexican food

List to be continued.