As-ssa!

is the Korean word for "oh yeah," as in the phrase you utter when you do something completely awesome, or things fall into place just perfectly.

The other night, I was down in Busan (Southeastern coast) visiting some friends. After an evening of eating, drinking, hanging out on the beach, swimming, frisbee, and hula-hooping until midnight, we were getting a taxi home. I was on interpreter duty:

Friends: Tell him to go to Busan National University.
Me: (convey to driver)
Driver: Shall I take the highway or the surface streets.
Me: (convey to friends)
Friends: No idea.
Me: They don't know. And I don't know because I'm not from around here. Just take us whichever way is fastest and easiest.
Driver: Ok.
(a few minutes pass)
Driver: So you're from Daegu, eh?
Me: Huh? Yeah. Wait, did I tell you that? Didn't I just tell you I wasn't from around here?
Driver: Yeah, but you seem like you're from Daegu.
Me: You mean my pronunciation?
Driver: No, not that. Just a feeling.

Total as-ssa moment, right?

On the other hand, it makes me realize: I'm ten weeks away from having been here for five years.

My Bread and Butter

Alright, let's recommence with the food posts!

I will commence commencing by commenting that the food that American Airlines and Japan Airlines on the way back from LA was nothing short of atrocious. I think I would have preferred a ten dollar discount on each flight.

For example,

A salad made with about 90% iceberg lettuce and a few carrot shavings, and a main consisting of steamed carrots, cauliflower, beans, and white rice. No sauce, no nothin. I just mashed in the mini stick of butter and some of the salt and pepper. It was edible, but given how much effort it looks like the airlines are putting into their standard meals (e.g. personal pan pizzas!), I sort of felt like I got the short end of the stick.

Thankfully, the salad did come with a bit of dressing. A whole four-tenths of an ounce of it, inside of a glass bottle that itself probably weighed four ounces. Where is the sense in that? I realize it's ridiculous to complain about such minuscule details when the practice of flying itself is so environmentally rapacious, but come on. The plane is already loaded with bottles of cola, juice, tea, and so forth; why not have one for salad dressing, too?

A vegan cookie that pissed me off because the area of the section devoted to listing the ingredients was about 80% of the size of the cookie.

More ridiculous pita action. One with tomatoes and cucumbers, no sauce. One with...sliced kiwis and strips of red bell pepper? I felt like there was a kindergarten class in the back assembling my meals.

But enough with the griping! As soon as I got back home, things improved drastically. For instance,

Mixed black rice with kimchi, an awesome sweet-savory eggplant/zucchini/pepper side dish that Chris made for me, and braised* tofu and peppers in perilla powder.

Looks artsier this way.

Then, Monday afternoon, my CSA box came in. (I have been meaning to do a post about that business, by the way.)

And then, the crown jewel!

I haven't gone shopping yet, since I want to maintain fidelity to my favorite organic shops, which I only visit on Mondays while I'm out on other bidness. Thus, I've been mostly scrounging by at the school cafeteria, which on Wednesday night meant I ate only a bowl of seaweed soup. Everything else on the buffet was meatly.

A few hours after getting home, as my belly grew rumbly and I contemplated making popcorn (again, no fruit in the house yet), my doorbell rang. It was my neighbor Mathan. It bothers me that he prefers using the doorbell, which makes all sorts of noise and activates a peephole camera and takes about 2 seconds to turn itself of, rather than knocking, but I'm not going to let that come between me and authentic Tamil food.

I opened the door to find him holding a bowl, the contents of which were obscured by a tissue. Pushing it towards my face, Mathan told me that he and his wife Deepa had whipped a little something up and wanted me to try it. I sniffed through the paper, and despite not having had it in more than a year and a half, identified the smell of Poori in under a second!

Poori is a deep-fried south Indian bread. Oily, light, crispy, and usually served with a spicy, saucy potato dish - somehow the fatty crisps and the spicy mush complement each other just right.

Instead of potatoes, though:

Deep-fried tofu! Tough on the outside, creamy on the inside, permeated by a sauce that was so good I no longer remember what it tasted like.

In an effort to be a kind and gracious neighbor, I washed the bowl, headed over to Mathan's, invited myself in, and helped myself to thirds and fourths. Deeeee-licious.

Anyone else ever received surprise deliveries of amazing food? I'm thinking it should be a trend. I am thinking of exacting some very hummusy revenge on them in the next few days...

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*also, expired. 10 days past the date. A little stinky, fetid even, but probably good for the digestion.

Idealism in action!

I realize I write much more about the theoretical aspects of teaching than about what actually goes on in my own classroom. There is something a little absurd in the out-there-ness of my beliefs about what education ought to look like, and the shenanigans that go on daily at my school.

Example 1, from a class of 13 nurses-in-training: After a getting-to-know-you interview game in which the students ask each other question's I've prepared, I split them into teams, asking each team to make up two questions for me.

Student 1: Why is your hair long?
Student 2: Why you come Korea?
Student 3: Out of all the students in this room, who has the prettiest face?

Example 2, from a class of 12 engineers in training: Same situation (yes, I do the same thing with each class.

Student 1: Where you come Korea?
Me: You mean "when?" When did I come to Korea?
Student 1: Yes, yes, when you come Korea?
Me: In 2006. About five years ago. First I lived in Chilgok for two years, then I went traveling. Then I came to YJ about two years ago.
Student 1: Ok.
Student 2: Where your first kiss?
Me: (only dirty thoughts)


Example 3: (Background: it's trendy to have weird or even nonsensical English written on your shirt. The trendiness and level of nonsense may even be proportional.) The following was written on one guy's shirt today.

MEN DRESS

alike all over the world

At first, I thought this was pretty bland. A bit of funny (if intentional) irony, in that the shirt points towards the uniformity of Korean shirt culture while at the same time entirely participating in it. Also interesting from an international perspective, as it made me reflect on how women in India have been slower than men to adopt western styles, and how even the Indian women I know here in Korea often wear saris around, though their husbands generally wear khakis and dress shirts.

Then, during an activity (running dictation, to be specific) in which the kids were all standing up and darting to and fro, I saw the back of the shirt:

-----------
they dress to be annoying to other men

Ba-dum-ding!

Actually, though, I liked the shirt. It made me think and laugh much more than it annoyed me, which means it didn't serve its purpose. Self-aware and yet self-defeating. Iiiiiiinteresting....

Hooray for minor linguistic successes!

Clearly, I spent a great amount of time on my the'Merican sojourn not speaking Korean. I did manage to show off in front of friends and family members a few times (in Korean supermarkets and bars), but for the most part my summer language training regimen consisted of listening to Kim Kwang-seok*, writing about** ten postcards, and an occasional Facebook chat. So, naturally, I have been curious as to the amount of drop-off my Korean level has suffered.

Thus, I kept my ears peeled on the flight to Narita. There happened to be a pair of Korean teenagers sitting behind me, and I understood most everything they were saying. So well, in fact, that I picked up a new word! They were talking about time changes and jet lags and all of a sudden said the words for "date," "change," and "line" back to back to back. I realized: I totally just learned how to say "International Date Line." 날짜 변경선.

My mind is a freak, sometimes.

A pudgy little Korean kid is currently watching me (here in the Tokyo airport) as I write this, surreptitiously sneaking glances at my screen.*** I just turned to him and said in Korean "Wanna look?" Totally stupefied. He ran off and sent his older brother, who is also just a little kid and who sits down next to me without saying anything. I explain to him that I'm writing a blog. I am pretty sure that he can't read that I just wrote that they're pudgy. We talk for a minute or two. They're 8 and 12, in the first and fifth grades. From Gumi, a city an hour west of Daegu. Cute kids. The older one asks me: Can you speak Korean? I try to communicate that I have been speaking with him in Korean for the past five minutes, but I guess I'm not quite good enough at it to be a successful smartass. They asked my seat number and said that they used to be in that row, but then switched seats so they sit together with their parents. Their mom just came by. Apparently she'd been on a walk looking for ice cream, but couldn't find any. Maybe she'll come back with a snack?

Upcoming post: American Air has the least satisfying vegetarian meals imaginable.

*Author of such fantastically uplifting tunes as "Love that hurts too much isn't really love," "Oh misery," "the first time I saw her cry," "a story about an old couple in their sixties," "a letter to the overcast fall sky" and "I loved you, but..."

**Clearly, I mean writing approximately ten posctards, and not writing on the subject of ten postcards.

***Clearly, it is he and not I that is glancing surreptitiously. I am obviously staring obviously at it. What a mess of a pair of sentences. [I fear I may never get Wittgenstein's Mistress out of my head.]

Hello Pencils, Hello Books

Well well. I am writing to you from the airport in LA. My trip is over. I can’t believe how much I managed to cram into this summer:

7 States (and one district)

13 cities (counting LA’s Korea town)

12 close friends (including two phone calls)

Several new ones

2 grandparents

3 parents

8ish friends of parents

5 Aunts

4 Uncles

2 parent’s cousins

9 cousins, 8 cousin-in-laws

15 cousins’ kids

25+ used book / thrift shops

10+ farmer’s markets

11 books (read)

6 buffets (devastated)

5 pounds

3 card games learned

4 cribbage opponents

3 dishes propagated

1 mountain scaled

1 day at the beach

5 plane rides

2 train rides

3 bike rides

4 public transportation uses

2 hitchhikes

1 couchsurf

1 identity theft incident

8 hour spent on the phone resolving it

1 bank account terminated

0 dollars not refunded

1 pair of shorts

Countless (and constant) meals, snacks, feasts, outings, innings, walks, talks, sits, chats, discussions, common interests discovered, BS sessions, debates, catchings-up, reminiscences, what-ifses, and plans.

And, as much as it weirds me out to say it, I felt almost the whole time that a strange series of Karmic alignments was taking place. Friends from far away visiting the same town I’d already be in; other guests departing just before I’d arrive; holes in schedules opening up; vegan restaurants around the corner; farmers’ markets on weekday afternoons; books turning up, and places turning up in them; deja vu concerning beets; and too many others to list. It doesn’t seem possible to explain – someone would have to know every relevant intangible about my path and my hopes in order to decide whether any one event would qualify as extraordinarily improbable or not. Not to mention that a long enough string of slightly improbable events is itself extraordinarily impossible. I am pretty sure that I've stopped making sense.

(Apropos of which, I highly recommend the book "Wittgenstein's Mistress," which David Foster Wallace called the best work of experimental fiction of the 20th century. Having read them all, I concur.)

Back to what it was that I was talking about: It seems to me that the possibilities are: 1] these events are indeed karmic; or 2] the events are not karmic, but I’m more inclined than I used to be to interpret them as such (and to ignore ones that don’t fit the pattern); or, most interestingly, 3] somehow I’ve become better at making things feel meaningful.

Anyway, it feels a bit redundant to be going on about this, given that if you are reading this right now, you are likely one of the people referenced above and don’t need to read up on exactly what you and I did on the trip. But, I assure you, whoever you are and whatever we got up to, it was excellent and I thank you for it.

I would say I’ll be back to do it again next summer, but chances are I’ll be heading to Pyeongyang! Yeah! See you in another couple years. Unless, that is, you’re in the market for some good old South Korean hospitality...

I've also noticed that my blog posts have been few and far between this year, despite/because of/most-likely-due-to how much more intellectually and socially active I've been. I've got a lot I'd like to do this semester - get back into studying Korean, do a little more exercise, work harder on the other enviro blog - but blogging here more is also definitely near the top of the list, thanks mostly to lots of kind words and encouragement from friends and family and friends of friends and friends of family %c.

I will go ahead and suppose that that just about wraps it up.

PS There's a giant mystery rodent marauding about the California countryside.

Finally, congratulations, Andy and Chrissy!