Filed under: fondness for analogies, life in Chuncheon, music, orientation, poetry, reading, U S of A
I am sick, which will either limit or heighten the number of blog posts made, depending on the effort I choose to exert when I’m forced to do nothing. As it stands, I sound like a late-stage emphysema patient. People keep asking me how I am, since the uninformed dorm resident could easily assume that I’m dying. They also keep telling me to not talk and rest my voice, which is a little like telling Paris Hilton to stop getting arrested, or telling otters to stop being cute.* I.e. it’s not going to happen.
Today I went to E-Mart by myself to get ์ฝ , medicine, which is – almost unbelievably – pronounced “yahk.” Like yuck. After a certain amount of time around others I tend to get sort of antsy and need to explore by myself, so being sick was actually quite convenient: it allowed me to take a taxi on my own, describe my symptoms to the pharmacist (although, after she proceeded to ask me some questions in Korean and then saw my confused look, said pharmacist asked, “Do you want me to speak to you in English?”), ask questions regarding the location of plastic spoons. Etc. Also, now I have yogurt, and although my yogurt was strawberry, it came with two pomegranate yogurts free (“service,” as they say here). And sushi at E-Mart is sold a la carte for approximately $.60 per piece. I did choose to invest.
Tomorrow I’m going to this “traditional folk village,” aka Probably Korean Shakertown, but Gwi Ohk is so excited, and it’s hard to not feel the same way around her. Then Monday: DMZ. I’m performing in the talent show on Tuesday, so getting my voice back by then would be ideal.
I’ve started looking for some Vachel Lindsay online. Even though I seem to recall not liking him much before, I read a line in After Henry from him –
I brag and chant of Bryan Bryan Bryan
Candidate for President who sketched a silver Zion –
and it really made me want to read more, probably because I think I subconsciously miss America. And cheese. I talked to Candace the other day and started naming off foods I wanted and they all had cheese as a major ingredient. Soon I’ll be sitting around listening to nothing but Aaron Copland and dreaming of QDoba.
I’ve also been listening to Tegan and Sara’s “Walking with a Ghost” on repeat, but I don’t think that has anything to do with the U S of A.
*At the DMZ there’s apparently this Otter Research Center, since otters are the only mammals that can successfully pass from North to South Korea without getting blown up by land mines. I am not making this up. And I am so excited.
tonight’s dedications:
Momma, I got your package ๐ I will call you when my voice comes back.
Roommates, I love you both.
Filed under: crushes, Fulbright, how we roll, life in Chuncheon, music, okay seriously Korea, orientation, pictures, poetry, reading
Standard conversations with my teachers:
HILLARY Bang-teacher!
BANG-์ ์๋ (teacher) Yes?
HILLARY Doesn’t your last name mean “room” in Korean?
BANG-์ ์๋ You call me over for that? That is not question.
in Korean
KIM-์ ์๋ We talk about location. So right now I stand in front of the
HILLARY Oh! Blackboard!ย I know this one!
KIM-์ ์๋ Um…yes.
Note:ย we learned “blackboard” on the first day. I tend to get so excited when I recognize words, however, that I call them out regardless of their relevance.ย It should come as no surprise to anyone, then, that Bang-์ ์๋ had to reassure me repeatedly tonight that she does not think I am stupid.
Here is Bang-์ ์๋:
And here is Kim-์ ์๋, shown here with my friend Ariah:
And here is part of our class at a hof called 75 (or ์น ์ญ์ค , if you’re into that sort of thing):
This was, of course, pre-Korean haircut. On this night (Thursday), it was just our class. Apparently we are so well known for our poor performance that the advanced teachers actually make fun of our Bang and ask her how the dumb class is going, and she gets really heated on our behalf.
Friday was all the beginning classes’ party. This is post-Korean hair. Which is $8, so I highly recommend.
The club was called “STOP!” Our teachers reserved tables for us and set a cover charge. Note:ย In Korea, hugging is regarded as strange, but drinking with your teachers is totally acceptable. The above is an abstract depiction of noraebang.
Korean hair:
Something was funny, obviously. You can see the top of this Yoshitomo Nara shirt (also $8, incidentally) that says “mumps.”
These are the pitchers our teachers bought us. Lest you think “Oh, that’s not so big,” let me inform you that my friend Andy, who is shown above holding the aforementioned pitcher, is 6’8″.
The rest of the subjects I have mentioned in previous entries as needing discussion also require photo viewing, and I do not wish to overwhelm the reader, so I’ll deal with these topics incrementally. I will leave you, instead, with some lyrics to a song that I like. Also, I did not bring any books of poetry with me, so I am putting out an official request: blog readers, send me poems you like.
orange ball of peace - the mountain goats
they wanted me to be a lawyer. they wanted me to work in a machine shop. they wanted me to be a designer, but I came out on top. I'm a fire-man. I'm a fire-man. stand and watch the smoke. see the flames rise to the sky. I stand and watch the flames climb higher. I feel the smoke get in my eyes. I'm a fire-man. I'm a fire-man.
Filed under: how we roll, life in Chuncheon, lists, okay seriously Korea, orientation, poetry
Exciting news(es) first:
1. I’m being published! For real! Doubleplusgood. I received word a few days ago confirming that Mixed Up Productions, a group dedicated to publishing hapa art and work, has accepted a few of the photographs and poems I submitted for their latest chapbook. This is all thanks to my former poetry professor and total BFFL Patrick Rosal, who suggested that I submit to them. (And Kundiman, which didn’t work out quite as well. Better luck next year?) Part of me is afraid that I’m going to look back on this later and be like, “I asked them to publish that?” But for now I’m just trying to stay excited that someone besides a school I attend wants to accept my stuff.
1a. I think we’re going to try to start a writer’s group here? That would be fun. I’m trying to focus on nonfiction as of right now. I believe we’re having our first meeting Friday, over beer.
2. TheScoop08 has asked me to be its International Coordinator! This is akin to an editorial job, and I’m really excited to not only get further into journalism, but also to be working with this group. I strongly encourage you to check out their website, and to let me know if you’re interested in applying for a correspondent position.
3. Placement ceremony Wednesday. I don’t even care where I go anymore – a lot of my friends here requested Jeju-do, which is an island at the bottom of Korea that has a teddy bear museum (hm. Bradenton), and I did too, but at this point I just want to knoooooooow.
4. I have letters in progress to: Yigit Menguc, Shanna Sanders, Kia Brill, Annie Maggard. More are coming.
5. I got a birthday package from my sister and it is the BEST PACKAGE EVER, in that it contained a sketch of the manse being constructed next to us (I think it could also fairly go by “grange” or, my personal favorite, “the house of Usher”), a copy of Joan Didion’s We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, and an awesome letter. A quote:
I spent the last two days at Sam’s because we thought we were going to go to a “field party.” We didn’t. Instead, we went to see Transformers.
6. I bought pineapple and croissants at E-Mart.
Now. I’ve started and stopped this entry three or four times, so I’m just going to write, in hopes that I can document what I can remember now and then maybe start updating more frequently.
Context: Here is my daily schedule.
- 9 AM – 1 PM Korean language class
- I’m in the remedial class. This is not an exaggeration. We have to have special daily quizzes because we all keep failing our weekly tests.
- Ten minute breaks every hour for soda or coffee – I am partial to Demi-Soda Apple, which, according to the label, has 11% apple juice
- 1 PM – 2 PM lunch
- ick
- this is why I spend all my money, because I keep going out
- even though a good lunch (like kimbap, which is sort of sushi esque) is only 1000 won, or about a dollar
- 2 PM – 4 PM workshops, teaching at Camp Program, free time
- 5 PM – 6 PM tae kwon do
- 7 PM – 9 PM extracurriculars (cooking, paper art, etc.) or KEY Club
- 9 PM – bed, homework, or going out
SO. Today: extracurricular was a traditional tea ceremony. At most of our extra stuff, the people are generally understanding about our complete inability to function. At dado, however, the woman kept physically repositioning us, berated us for using the wrong “thank you” (I gave the general thank you, gamsa hamnida, instead of the more specific “thank you for helping us” thank you), and, in my personal favorite move, rotated the lid of the teapot, because apparently we had it on wrong, even though the lid itself is round and her move had no discernible effect except to make us feel bad. I did it with my friends Glypie and Megan; Megan has survived attempted terrorist attacks as a Peace Corps member in Bangladesh, and even she found herself challenged. Also, the handout they gave us (on the subject of the tea ceremony) spent about a paragraph dissing Japan, which I’m starting to suspect is pretty much par for the course.
Yesterday: I went to KEY Club and I ended up in a discussion group led by the one Korean student I really, actively do not like. KEY Club background: They hold it every night of the week, and the first forty minutes are devoted to a discussion on a given topic. Then a KEY Club member gives a speech in English on some other topic. (Past topics have included Edward Norton, Lucky Numbers, and How To Seem Taller.) Then, usually, people disperse for an hour and reconvene to go drink and do noraebang. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, whatever. Anyway: so I found myself with the one girl who is not nice, this girl who gives us really bizarre statements like “Chocolate is my reason for living.” She usually has a scrunchie (old school) sort of halfway down her hair, and her “American” name, inexplicably, is Eddie. So we had our discussion today, which was on “love deficiency syndrome” (or: why do people have problems with love? – which is a difficult question to discuss when English is your native tongue, so I don’t know what made the KEY Club think this was a good idea). I said something about it being a difficult (i.e. shitty) topic, and it turned out, of course, that Eddie had come up with it. Whatever. The only good things were that I ended up sitting next to my language partner Sunny, who is still pathologically shy but now writes me notes that say “I like you <3”, and that we acted out the term “wingman” for the benefit of the males in the group. Then this other girl gave a speech about how to overcome psychological complexes (again, why is this a good idea?), and during the Q&A that followed, Mean Girl was like, “So, what’s your worst memory? What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?” It was great, as long as the definition of great is “supremely uncomfortable.”
FINALLY for tonight: tae kwon do. This is the most cardio I’ve done in about eight years, in all seriousness. Perhaps some of you may remember my disastrous foray onto the Polo Fields swim team – I was the fourteen-year-old practicing with the fourth graders. I’m running laps every day. LAPS. Fortunately, I sweat a whole lot in the humidity regardless, so what I look like when I get there is more or less what I look like when I leave.
As always, for next time:
– placement, probably
– Kentucky friends
– pictures (I know I keep promising these)
– mountain livin’/convenience store friends
– Sarah Vowell
Also, check out GoldDigger’s post on Planet Hiltron. Then go thank Raabia, immediately.
So. I keep promising to update, like I actually have time, which I don’t. Oh well. But I will say that here are some topics I will be discussing in the future:
– monsoon season and its beginning or possibly end
–ย The Programย = summer camp, or: arts and crafts, and how much I hate heat and Korean bathrooms
– hangul, subheading: I will never learn this language
– drunken ex-presidents
– my birthday
– the politics of naming
– living with your professors/Charles in Charge
In the meantime I will leave you with this poem, which I have liked ever since Patrick Rosal introduced it to our class last winter. I’ve been having a sort of existential crisis lately, which is great when you’re in a foreign country – I’m not sure if it’s correlative, or causative, or just coincidental – but anyway, what this poem says about time and its passage, as well as a few other things, seems particularly relevant to me at this point in time. It has some adult imagery, however, so I’ll put it behind a cut. I get a weird sort of comfort out of repeating things like this, and out of sharing them. While you read it, I will be taking a shower, seeing “Harry Potter,” and sleeping.
Intrepid Girl Reporter 
