It’s over, I’m done. With work anyway. Today at 3:05 pm CST I officially finished my summer employment, teaching my last class and saying goodbye to all those kids. Some were genuinely sad, and enough of them wished me well that it was a genuinely nice parting. I gave them all my email address (all 200 of the fifth graders that is) and said they could email with any questions any time. I fully expect to get an email 10 years from now asking for help with college admissions. In fact, I’ll be disappointed if I don’t get one.
We had a cold stretch last week, and over the weekend especially, but the weather’s back to above freezing. Pretty balmy actually. Still, today it was 71 and sunny in Hanoi, and that’s pretty hard to complain about.
Now it’s the weekend, and time for all those last’s people talk about, last dinners, last concerts, last waltz’s. Lasts. Many of them (the dinner and concert specifically) will be tomorrow, just hours before I head south. The concert should be good. A bunch of my favorite punk bands (punk in Beijing?) are playing, and the crowd is fun and friendly. Should be a good way to say a temporary goodbye to the city.
Thing is, I’ll be back in less than a month (though for about 40 hours it looks like) to get my stuff in order, pack my bags and officially head back stateside. After that…who knows. I’ll be back, sure, though when and for how long I don’t know. I certainly find that I am much less enamored of Beijing than I was last summer. That happens, I guess, described best by a friend of a friend as Getting Over it. I’m so over Beijing, he said, and while I may not be there quite yet, perhaps I’ll end up there one day.
It’s a fun town, dynamic and historic at the same time, interesting to live in, full of events and people of interest, but there are a lot of other cities in the world, and I don’t think I’d mind giving another one or two a run for their money. Why not?
And so, I’ll leave off here, heading out to Hanukah services on the east side of town, looking at all the lights go by, and thinking of red dirt roads lined by trees greener than green. That’s where I’m heading in 35 hours or so, and I’ve got the keys to the highway.
Happy Holidays.
Martin.
December 22, 2006
December 14, 2006
Catchin' Up
I’m so friggin urban right now. Metropolitan even. Really. I’m sitting in a café, with my laptop, wearing banana republic pants, a landsend shirt, and a tie. I kid you not. In my defense, I will say that the pants were purchased at salvation army this summer in New York, so I could attend a swanky upper west side cocktail party. And the shirt is hand-me-down. And the tie has sheep on it. And I’m not wearing my scarf inside. I have it over the back of my chair, along with my svelte, minimalist, llbean fleece. It’s still ridiculous. I’m a far cry from the scruffy, carhartt wearing moxie that many of you know and tolerate, if not love. The reason? I got to school an hour and a half early, having misremembered the instructions my office gave me. I thought I might…it seemed early, but I figured better safe than sorry, and I can always go to the café. They don’t have daylight savings in China. That would be too easy. Instead, they changed the time that school starts in the afternoon last week. It’s 20 minutes earlier now, so it’s not quite dark out when we finish around 5. Makes sense, right? Hardly. Out west, in Xingjian, they have to get up at 3 or 4 in the morning to get to school. I think it’s rather silly, and pigheaded of Beijing. It’s not even like they’re backward. They USED to have daylight savings time, and then decided they didn’t need it anymore, presumably because it was bourgeois or something like that. Bourgeois like wearing banana republic pants with a pale green landsend shirt. You can tell I’m a little sensitive about this.
I realize that in the past paragraph, I’ve referred to school at least 3 times. What school you may be saying? Didn’t you work for the TV station, that pinnacle of journalism, China Central Television? Yes I did. But when I returned from my seouljourn (a combination of sojourn and soul journey—the last pun on the city, I promise) I found my schedule drastically reduced. I’d always been part time. But part time used to mean 4-6 shifts a week. As of November 11th, it meant 1-3. This was not enough. So, when I ran into folks I knew at a concert that night, I asked if they knew of any teachers who had just quit their jobs. I had a job on Monday morning, and it was in my neighborhood. That’s the way Beijing works, that’s one of the reasons I love it.
So, whom do I teach? I teach about 250 kids altogether. 5 sections of 5th grade, an after school classes of 4th graders and 2nd graders, 3 classes of 1st graders a week, and an hour and a half with some 8th graders to top it off. It’s a lot of kids, and though I know their names in the context of where they sit, beyond that I’m pretty lost.
It’s great fun though, really. I think I talk too much and don’t play enough games, but it’s really fun to have a captive audience. They’re also, most of them, really sweet kids. I’ve gotten a couple presents already, and, were I to tell them I was leaving before the day of, would probably get many more. Some of them figured it out already, when I brought my camera in to school, but they were mollified when I said I wasn’t leaving just yet, and that I promised to tell them before they did. Their former teacher, a woman named Sarah, did not. Though I never met her (she left the day before I got my job after all) this lowers my opinion of her fairly extensively.
I must admit that I like my fifth graders best. They’re old enough to sit reasonably still and pay attention…but still young enough that school is cool. My 4th graders I like the least, they’re brats, and the fact that class is on Friday afternoon doesn’t help. The first graders are highly cute…but generally don’t have a clue. We jump around a lot to try to keep things simple. H was a fun letter. Put your hand on your head. Put your hand on your heart. Take off your hat. Hop. Hide. Hop. Hand on your hair. Hair on your heart. And so on. The junior high kids are fun too. Their English is really good actually, so we mostly just hang out, talking vaguely about figuring the grammar exercises out together. It was pretty embarrassing when I had to teach them modals…and didn’t actually know what a modal was. But we have a good time, and they make fun of my cell phone a lot.
Which brings me to another aspect of life as an urban 20something. Text messages (called SMS outside the confines of our great nation) now make up a large part of my social planning, surpassing email by at least a time and a half, and the actual act of speaking by, well, lets not even talk about that. That said, I still haven’t mastered the art of SMS speak, so I tend to spend a lot of time laboriously typing things out. This is made harder by the fact that my lcd no longer lights up (the kids make fun of the phone with good reason) but makes me feel better about myself, as if I were that guy who insisted that using a typewriter was better than using a computer on moral grounds.
What social planning, one might wonder. Are you not a social recluse, doomed to stay in and watch pirated DVD’s? No more. I wouldn’t call myself the must invite member of every party. But I do know people, and end up meeting up for dinner or at some happening with regular irregularity. Last spring, when faced with the prospect of a fake college cocktail party, I ran downstairs, hid in my basement, and called my friend from New York. She told me how to dress, what to talk about, and even offered to make me a fake New England prep school identity. I thought that was a little much, but taking the clothing and conversation advice to heart, went up and didn’t make a complete ass of myself. Now, I do ok, and even picked up a Chinese cell phone stalker last weekend. I talked to her for a while, and though slightly confused when she asked for my number, gave it to her. Since then, she has send me three messages, the latest of which, I quote forthwith:
yes, if you are free, you call me, have a good time
It’s rather flattering…but I don’t want to encourage it…especially because I thought she was kind of snooty at the time anyway. And, to top it off, some chick was hitting on me in the subway on Tuesday. Her opening line was pretty good, I’ll admit. I was sitting there, reading my anthropology book about the English, when she slid over, saying “excuse me, I see that you are reading…. I wonder, what do you do when you find a word that you don’t know?” Slightly taken aback, I responded, “well, I know most of them and the ones I don’t I generally pick up from context. But, I dunno, if one catches my eye I might go home and look it up later.” Things went on fairly mundanely from that point, until, apropos of nothing, she came out with, “I think you are cute, yes?” and while I tried to look politely thankful for the comment, continued on, “but I think you are too young” and got off the subway. Go figure.
This has, in essence, been my life of late. My folks were around for thanksgiving, which was good fun. I got kicked out of my bed onto the couch, but having automatic company for dinner was a nice change. It’s also the principal reason it took me so long to get caught up. Specific stories elude me at the moment, so we will leave at that, and the month of November will be considered closed, unless I remember something truly worth telling. I’ve updated the blog a bit, thanks to the google partnered beta, so now you can look at my photos without clicking on the link, though I think they would be easier to navigate on the flickr page if one wanted to browse extensively. I’ve got a little over a week left in the Big Dumpling, before I head south for most of January. And then, it’s back to the kid’s table, going to school in midland Maine.
I realize that in the past paragraph, I’ve referred to school at least 3 times. What school you may be saying? Didn’t you work for the TV station, that pinnacle of journalism, China Central Television? Yes I did. But when I returned from my seouljourn (a combination of sojourn and soul journey—the last pun on the city, I promise) I found my schedule drastically reduced. I’d always been part time. But part time used to mean 4-6 shifts a week. As of November 11th, it meant 1-3. This was not enough. So, when I ran into folks I knew at a concert that night, I asked if they knew of any teachers who had just quit their jobs. I had a job on Monday morning, and it was in my neighborhood. That’s the way Beijing works, that’s one of the reasons I love it.
So, whom do I teach? I teach about 250 kids altogether. 5 sections of 5th grade, an after school classes of 4th graders and 2nd graders, 3 classes of 1st graders a week, and an hour and a half with some 8th graders to top it off. It’s a lot of kids, and though I know their names in the context of where they sit, beyond that I’m pretty lost.
It’s great fun though, really. I think I talk too much and don’t play enough games, but it’s really fun to have a captive audience. They’re also, most of them, really sweet kids. I’ve gotten a couple presents already, and, were I to tell them I was leaving before the day of, would probably get many more. Some of them figured it out already, when I brought my camera in to school, but they were mollified when I said I wasn’t leaving just yet, and that I promised to tell them before they did. Their former teacher, a woman named Sarah, did not. Though I never met her (she left the day before I got my job after all) this lowers my opinion of her fairly extensively.
I must admit that I like my fifth graders best. They’re old enough to sit reasonably still and pay attention…but still young enough that school is cool. My 4th graders I like the least, they’re brats, and the fact that class is on Friday afternoon doesn’t help. The first graders are highly cute…but generally don’t have a clue. We jump around a lot to try to keep things simple. H was a fun letter. Put your hand on your head. Put your hand on your heart. Take off your hat. Hop. Hide. Hop. Hand on your hair. Hair on your heart. And so on. The junior high kids are fun too. Their English is really good actually, so we mostly just hang out, talking vaguely about figuring the grammar exercises out together. It was pretty embarrassing when I had to teach them modals…and didn’t actually know what a modal was. But we have a good time, and they make fun of my cell phone a lot.
Which brings me to another aspect of life as an urban 20something. Text messages (called SMS outside the confines of our great nation) now make up a large part of my social planning, surpassing email by at least a time and a half, and the actual act of speaking by, well, lets not even talk about that. That said, I still haven’t mastered the art of SMS speak, so I tend to spend a lot of time laboriously typing things out. This is made harder by the fact that my lcd no longer lights up (the kids make fun of the phone with good reason) but makes me feel better about myself, as if I were that guy who insisted that using a typewriter was better than using a computer on moral grounds.
What social planning, one might wonder. Are you not a social recluse, doomed to stay in and watch pirated DVD’s? No more. I wouldn’t call myself the must invite member of every party. But I do know people, and end up meeting up for dinner or at some happening with regular irregularity. Last spring, when faced with the prospect of a fake college cocktail party, I ran downstairs, hid in my basement, and called my friend from New York. She told me how to dress, what to talk about, and even offered to make me a fake New England prep school identity. I thought that was a little much, but taking the clothing and conversation advice to heart, went up and didn’t make a complete ass of myself. Now, I do ok, and even picked up a Chinese cell phone stalker last weekend. I talked to her for a while, and though slightly confused when she asked for my number, gave it to her. Since then, she has send me three messages, the latest of which, I quote forthwith:
yes, if you are free, you call me, have a good time
It’s rather flattering…but I don’t want to encourage it…especially because I thought she was kind of snooty at the time anyway. And, to top it off, some chick was hitting on me in the subway on Tuesday. Her opening line was pretty good, I’ll admit. I was sitting there, reading my anthropology book about the English, when she slid over, saying “excuse me, I see that you are reading…. I wonder, what do you do when you find a word that you don’t know?” Slightly taken aback, I responded, “well, I know most of them and the ones I don’t I generally pick up from context. But, I dunno, if one catches my eye I might go home and look it up later.” Things went on fairly mundanely from that point, until, apropos of nothing, she came out with, “I think you are cute, yes?” and while I tried to look politely thankful for the comment, continued on, “but I think you are too young” and got off the subway. Go figure.
This has, in essence, been my life of late. My folks were around for thanksgiving, which was good fun. I got kicked out of my bed onto the couch, but having automatic company for dinner was a nice change. It’s also the principal reason it took me so long to get caught up. Specific stories elude me at the moment, so we will leave at that, and the month of November will be considered closed, unless I remember something truly worth telling. I’ve updated the blog a bit, thanks to the google partnered beta, so now you can look at my photos without clicking on the link, though I think they would be easier to navigate on the flickr page if one wanted to browse extensively. I’ve got a little over a week left in the Big Dumpling, before I head south for most of January. And then, it’s back to the kid’s table, going to school in midland Maine.
December 11, 2006
In Which Martin Makes it Back to Beijing
Nothing much of not happened between my evening out and my trip home. Sure I walked around, saw some temples and palaces, breathed deep of the Korean air, and generally got my fill of Seoul. But not much of it is really newsworthy. I mean, I guess it depends on perspective. Back then I probably could have written a nice essay about it, but here in Beijing, a month or so on, it has faded into the happy mists of a good, if quiet, time had.
That’s not quite true. There was one fine event, the evening before I left, that is worth noting. I was walking back to the hostel, enjoying the rather brisk evening, seeing what there was to be seen, and I came upon a strange sight. The street I was walking along was split by a river (once an open sewer, now a delightful urban waterpark) and in the middle, on a platform over the water, were 20 women dressed in bright colors, moving in formation and beating drums. In the middle, and seeming to run the show was a pompous looking man with a small gong. I had no idea what was going on, but it seemed worth finding out.
Eventually the drumming and shuffling stopped, and an mc stoop up on a temporary stage. He jabbered for a while, and then introduced a singer, who began singing (as, I’ve found, singers tend to do) while all this was going on, there was a bustle of activity on the bridge. Lights had been strung up across the space, ironically between two lighting fixture stores on each side of the river, and the drumming women had put down mats on which to sit. The guests of honor, distinguishable by their dark green suits and impressive breast pocket floral arrangements, stood around and looked awkward, and then suddenly, as if my slight of hand, there was an enormous buffet spread out, and all the onlookers that had gathered swooped down upon it like so many hungry ducks at the Boston commons.
I opted to take photos instead of fighting my way into the fray, but everything worked out well in the end, as an elderly couple, noticing my lack of food, made a big deal of feeding me what they had taken (two heaping plates), and offering me a healthy swallow of soju to wash it all down. It pretty much made my night.
Next day, I took the ferry back to china. The ferry was, admittedly, one of my reasons for going. It’d been on one international ferry before (the one between Denmark and sweeten), but that was small potatoes compared to this. The trip took about 16 hours altogether, but I must admit, I spent a good number of those reading the DaVinci Code and sleeping. In that order. There were two other foreigners on the boat, one English and the other Canadian. Both were fairly unsavory in the way that middle-aged foreign guys living in Asia and keeping a woman often are. So I mostly sat on the couch, and inhaled the delicious ridiculousness that was Dan Brown. A tipsy Korean businessman on vacation came over and sat down on my couch (only wrinkling his nose slightly—I’d been wearing the same clothes for a week at this point, socks included) and introduced the 35-year-old women in his tour group. They didn’t speak any English or Chinese, but he assured me they thought I was cute. I wasn’t cute. I was smelly, scruffy, and greasy, but I smiled magnanimously, and said well thank you very much. Then they all left to go sing Karaoke and I finished my book and went to bed.
An attempted dawn awakening did not work by virtue of personal slumber, so I didn’t get out on the deck till we were well within sight of Qinqdao harbor. It was still a laborious 2 hours in, and then somewhat laughable customs later; I was back in china, home, where I could talk to people.
After an afternoon spent wandering around Qingdao, and an interminable 7-hour train ride back to Beijing, I really was home, and so were my brothers and my Da.
We'll get caught up one of these days.
That’s not quite true. There was one fine event, the evening before I left, that is worth noting. I was walking back to the hostel, enjoying the rather brisk evening, seeing what there was to be seen, and I came upon a strange sight. The street I was walking along was split by a river (once an open sewer, now a delightful urban waterpark) and in the middle, on a platform over the water, were 20 women dressed in bright colors, moving in formation and beating drums. In the middle, and seeming to run the show was a pompous looking man with a small gong. I had no idea what was going on, but it seemed worth finding out.
Eventually the drumming and shuffling stopped, and an mc stoop up on a temporary stage. He jabbered for a while, and then introduced a singer, who began singing (as, I’ve found, singers tend to do) while all this was going on, there was a bustle of activity on the bridge. Lights had been strung up across the space, ironically between two lighting fixture stores on each side of the river, and the drumming women had put down mats on which to sit. The guests of honor, distinguishable by their dark green suits and impressive breast pocket floral arrangements, stood around and looked awkward, and then suddenly, as if my slight of hand, there was an enormous buffet spread out, and all the onlookers that had gathered swooped down upon it like so many hungry ducks at the Boston commons.
I opted to take photos instead of fighting my way into the fray, but everything worked out well in the end, as an elderly couple, noticing my lack of food, made a big deal of feeding me what they had taken (two heaping plates), and offering me a healthy swallow of soju to wash it all down. It pretty much made my night.
Next day, I took the ferry back to china. The ferry was, admittedly, one of my reasons for going. It’d been on one international ferry before (the one between Denmark and sweeten), but that was small potatoes compared to this. The trip took about 16 hours altogether, but I must admit, I spent a good number of those reading the DaVinci Code and sleeping. In that order. There were two other foreigners on the boat, one English and the other Canadian. Both were fairly unsavory in the way that middle-aged foreign guys living in Asia and keeping a woman often are. So I mostly sat on the couch, and inhaled the delicious ridiculousness that was Dan Brown. A tipsy Korean businessman on vacation came over and sat down on my couch (only wrinkling his nose slightly—I’d been wearing the same clothes for a week at this point, socks included) and introduced the 35-year-old women in his tour group. They didn’t speak any English or Chinese, but he assured me they thought I was cute. I wasn’t cute. I was smelly, scruffy, and greasy, but I smiled magnanimously, and said well thank you very much. Then they all left to go sing Karaoke and I finished my book and went to bed.
An attempted dawn awakening did not work by virtue of personal slumber, so I didn’t get out on the deck till we were well within sight of Qinqdao harbor. It was still a laborious 2 hours in, and then somewhat laughable customs later; I was back in china, home, where I could talk to people.
After an afternoon spent wandering around Qingdao, and an interminable 7-hour train ride back to Beijing, I really was home, and so were my brothers and my Da.
We'll get caught up one of these days.
December 07, 2006
More Seoul-searching (oy)
Sunday morning was Seonyudo Park, a former water treatment facility turned into an urban park. Think post-apocalyptic Zen garden. It was super cool, and for this reason, seemed to be the favorite haunt of amateur seoulite photographers, who pooled their money and got a model for the morning. There were groups of these men all over the park, taking pictures of women in western clothing, in animae inspired costumes, and dressed as catholic school girls. It was highly strange. I wandered that afternoon, trying to get a feel for the city.
Seoul is odd in that it’s probably the best signed city I’ve ever been to, with bi and trilingual signs everywhere, and big maps every 500 meters or so. These maps would be incredibly useful, except that each one has a different orientation, so that the streets shown look more orderly. I’ve mostly gotten over a childhood handicap of directional challenge, and I can read a map as well as the next guy, but forgive me for asking that be oriented on a north south axis. These maps, each one different, were oriented south-southwest, or northeast, or, I don’t know, something else. They were almost completely useless.
Monday was taken up almost wholly by the bureaucratic bullshit for which I’d gone to Korea in the first place. I went to the Chinese embassy, or rather, where it had formerly been. A very friendly but not really useful desk person told me it had moved, and gave me the new address in Korean. This was not helpful. I asked some questions, got a subway stop out of her, and left after she told me to get off the subway and buy cable car tickets. Turns out, the embassy was next to the cable car ticket office, so she wasn’t completely off her head. Waited in line, handed them my paperwork and scampered.
Back on the subway I spent more than an hour heading out back to Incheon, to secure a ferry ticket home. There were two international ferry stations, and obviously my taxi driver took me to the wrong one. The mistake was easily corrected by a 45 minute bus ride, which was actually quite interesting, as we passed all manner of things you see in an industrial port, and then I got everything figured out, and headed back to the subway.
Sunday had been gorgeous and warm, t-shirt weather pretty much. Monday night as I got off the subway to see the fish market (open 24 hours apparently) it started snowing. Crazy weather, and the fish market was mostly shut down, but still rather cool looking. Took some pictures and headed back to my hostel to make friends.
Tuesday I spent wandering more, seeing museums and generally trying to soak up as much Seoul as I could. That was easy to do, given that it rained intermittently all day, though it got nicer in the evening. That evening. I went back to the hostel early, in a move calculated to get me an invitation to dinner with the Europeans I had met the previous night. A Hungarian manager named Zita, a Belgian sax player named Bruno, and a Basque dancer who went by Laida (with the emphasis on the i). They were part of a dance troupe who’d flown over for some festival or other, and were generally friendly and out to have a good time. We started with dinner, along with two of their Korean contacts, and then wandered out into the night to decide our plan of attack. It was decided (by my suggestion actually) that we head to the university district, which was rife with bars, pubs, clubs, and of course, KTV parlors. There we met Max, the Moroccan brake dancer, and his Korean friends, ate some, drank some, and moseyed on to Karaoke. They made us take out shoes off there, but made up for it by giving us free ice cream. It was all very Lost in Translation, and I loved every minute of it. We got back to the hostel around 5, and they went to catch 40 winks before a 7:30 departure, and I settled in for a good sleep.
Hang in there, I’ll get back to Beijing one of these days.
Seoul is odd in that it’s probably the best signed city I’ve ever been to, with bi and trilingual signs everywhere, and big maps every 500 meters or so. These maps would be incredibly useful, except that each one has a different orientation, so that the streets shown look more orderly. I’ve mostly gotten over a childhood handicap of directional challenge, and I can read a map as well as the next guy, but forgive me for asking that be oriented on a north south axis. These maps, each one different, were oriented south-southwest, or northeast, or, I don’t know, something else. They were almost completely useless.
Monday was taken up almost wholly by the bureaucratic bullshit for which I’d gone to Korea in the first place. I went to the Chinese embassy, or rather, where it had formerly been. A very friendly but not really useful desk person told me it had moved, and gave me the new address in Korean. This was not helpful. I asked some questions, got a subway stop out of her, and left after she told me to get off the subway and buy cable car tickets. Turns out, the embassy was next to the cable car ticket office, so she wasn’t completely off her head. Waited in line, handed them my paperwork and scampered.
Back on the subway I spent more than an hour heading out back to Incheon, to secure a ferry ticket home. There were two international ferry stations, and obviously my taxi driver took me to the wrong one. The mistake was easily corrected by a 45 minute bus ride, which was actually quite interesting, as we passed all manner of things you see in an industrial port, and then I got everything figured out, and headed back to the subway.
Sunday had been gorgeous and warm, t-shirt weather pretty much. Monday night as I got off the subway to see the fish market (open 24 hours apparently) it started snowing. Crazy weather, and the fish market was mostly shut down, but still rather cool looking. Took some pictures and headed back to my hostel to make friends.
Tuesday I spent wandering more, seeing museums and generally trying to soak up as much Seoul as I could. That was easy to do, given that it rained intermittently all day, though it got nicer in the evening. That evening. I went back to the hostel early, in a move calculated to get me an invitation to dinner with the Europeans I had met the previous night. A Hungarian manager named Zita, a Belgian sax player named Bruno, and a Basque dancer who went by Laida (with the emphasis on the i). They were part of a dance troupe who’d flown over for some festival or other, and were generally friendly and out to have a good time. We started with dinner, along with two of their Korean contacts, and then wandered out into the night to decide our plan of attack. It was decided (by my suggestion actually) that we head to the university district, which was rife with bars, pubs, clubs, and of course, KTV parlors. There we met Max, the Moroccan brake dancer, and his Korean friends, ate some, drank some, and moseyed on to Karaoke. They made us take out shoes off there, but made up for it by giving us free ice cream. It was all very Lost in Translation, and I loved every minute of it. We got back to the hostel around 5, and they went to catch 40 winks before a 7:30 departure, and I settled in for a good sleep.
Hang in there, I’ll get back to Beijing one of these days.
December 04, 2006
Back in Action
So, I’ve been slacking with these posts. I have excuses, naturally, but they’re mostly of the I’ve been ungodly busy variety, so really they don’t count. In the next few weeks I’ll try to bring everything up to speed, posting short pieces every few days, just in time to go silent again while I take the mother of all road trips through Vietnam. But that’s getting way ahead of myself.
I left you, if I remember correctly, on my way out to the door to that strange and pun ridden place called Seoul. I was going because I’d never been, and to get a new visa. The visa part was the official reason for the trip, naturally, but it only played a fairly minor role. Unlike previous posts, which have featured blow by blow descriptions of various ridiculousness, I’m going to try something different here, and go with representational vignettes. We’ll see if it works.
I will say that the actual travel to Korea went something like this. Night train, transfer to bus, taxi from the bus station to the ferry ticket office, taxi from the ticket office to the airport, getting stranded at the airport because of my own stupidity, 40 minute flight into Incheon international airport. The bus ride took about twice as long as it should have, since for the first couple hours I was the sole passenger, passed out in the back seat. They just didn’t move and looked around for some more people who wanted to go from Qingdao to Weihai. I had taken the train to qingdao, and wanted to take the Weihai ferry. I could have taken the train to Weihai, or the ferry from Qingdao, but my planning had happened about 3 days before leaving and that way seemed to make sense. The ferry had changed schedules, as I’d feared it might have, but the plane ticket was only 10 percent more. That was no worries, nor was I late. The plane was though, and so I didn’t feel the need to clear customs. When I got curious about where I’d eventually have to go around 4:30 (for a formerly 5pm flight) I found customs completely shut down. Thus, I missed my plane despite the fact that it hadn’t even arrived yet. I spent 24 hours in a little nothing place, 40 kilometers outside of Weihai (itself pretty small and boring). Complete and utter boneheadedness.
Fast forward to my first night in Seoul. I’d gotten into town, made contact with my aunt and plans for getting together the next day, and found my hostel. After the obligatory email and facebook check, I set out to find some dinner, fairly hungry which I suppose was quite natural given that it was around 11 at night. That night, more than any other really, Seoul in all its new differentness looked pretty much identical to the city in Bladerunner, all alleys and neon and puddles, completely incomprehensible and overstimulating. I walked down dark alleys till I found bright ones, and then along those until I found food. The first restaurant I entered wouldn’t give me food. They didn’t serve single people apparently. I found this rather discriminatory, but pushed on, shrugging, determined to eat heartily before returning to home and sleep. The next place I tried has delighted to have me, but the two women up front very quickly realized we didn’t have an ounce of language in common. It’s ok I said, all smiles and nods, and we made it work. I asked for bim bim bap, the only dish I knew, and they shook their heads. But, they said, we do have this, and pointed up and a blurry picture menu above the kitchen. Ok said I, and gave them the thumbs up. It turned out that I’d ok’d what was probably more than a pound of deliciously marinated beef. I tried to cook it on the griddle, taking my cues from the other tables, but the two women apparently thought me incapable (as often happens) and insisted on cooking it for me. I ate all of it, wrapping the meat and kimchee in lettuce with random mystery sauces. It was great. I was very full, and very garlicy when I got back to the hostel, and went very peacefully to sleep.
More in a day or two. Peace and Love from the Big Dumpling.
I left you, if I remember correctly, on my way out to the door to that strange and pun ridden place called Seoul. I was going because I’d never been, and to get a new visa. The visa part was the official reason for the trip, naturally, but it only played a fairly minor role. Unlike previous posts, which have featured blow by blow descriptions of various ridiculousness, I’m going to try something different here, and go with representational vignettes. We’ll see if it works.
I will say that the actual travel to Korea went something like this. Night train, transfer to bus, taxi from the bus station to the ferry ticket office, taxi from the ticket office to the airport, getting stranded at the airport because of my own stupidity, 40 minute flight into Incheon international airport. The bus ride took about twice as long as it should have, since for the first couple hours I was the sole passenger, passed out in the back seat. They just didn’t move and looked around for some more people who wanted to go from Qingdao to Weihai. I had taken the train to qingdao, and wanted to take the Weihai ferry. I could have taken the train to Weihai, or the ferry from Qingdao, but my planning had happened about 3 days before leaving and that way seemed to make sense. The ferry had changed schedules, as I’d feared it might have, but the plane ticket was only 10 percent more. That was no worries, nor was I late. The plane was though, and so I didn’t feel the need to clear customs. When I got curious about where I’d eventually have to go around 4:30 (for a formerly 5pm flight) I found customs completely shut down. Thus, I missed my plane despite the fact that it hadn’t even arrived yet. I spent 24 hours in a little nothing place, 40 kilometers outside of Weihai (itself pretty small and boring). Complete and utter boneheadedness.
Fast forward to my first night in Seoul. I’d gotten into town, made contact with my aunt and plans for getting together the next day, and found my hostel. After the obligatory email and facebook check, I set out to find some dinner, fairly hungry which I suppose was quite natural given that it was around 11 at night. That night, more than any other really, Seoul in all its new differentness looked pretty much identical to the city in Bladerunner, all alleys and neon and puddles, completely incomprehensible and overstimulating. I walked down dark alleys till I found bright ones, and then along those until I found food. The first restaurant I entered wouldn’t give me food. They didn’t serve single people apparently. I found this rather discriminatory, but pushed on, shrugging, determined to eat heartily before returning to home and sleep. The next place I tried has delighted to have me, but the two women up front very quickly realized we didn’t have an ounce of language in common. It’s ok I said, all smiles and nods, and we made it work. I asked for bim bim bap, the only dish I knew, and they shook their heads. But, they said, we do have this, and pointed up and a blurry picture menu above the kitchen. Ok said I, and gave them the thumbs up. It turned out that I’d ok’d what was probably more than a pound of deliciously marinated beef. I tried to cook it on the griddle, taking my cues from the other tables, but the two women apparently thought me incapable (as often happens) and insisted on cooking it for me. I ate all of it, wrapping the meat and kimchee in lettuce with random mystery sauces. It was great. I was very full, and very garlicy when I got back to the hostel, and went very peacefully to sleep.
More in a day or two. Peace and Love from the Big Dumpling.
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