Well, aside from my deep satisfaction and this newfound love of Korean hairstylists, life in Mokpo is in a flux. The fall breeze is rolling in, whipping up that cold chill that'll bring about the cornucopia of colorful leaves in a few weeks. I don't necessarily have any heartfelt longing for America right now, but I guess it's this time of year that I start to feel a bit nostalgic for Autumn in Ohio. I mean, the winters suck, the summer is hot and humid--but the other two seasons, however long or short, never fail satisfy the craving for elementary perfection. I guess it didn't hurt that I went to "One fo the Prettiest Colleges in the World" according to some. Over on this side of the earth, though, I think Chuseok must have been some definitive turning point in the year--whether
openly acknowledged or not. It's like all of a sudden everyone started wearing long sleeves and pretending its cold outside. I was also wondering why the gym was so crowded on Monday and Tuesday--and one of my co-teachers enlightened me by explaining how much everyone eats over the holidays, then proceeds to the gym for two to three days after they start to feel fat. It may come a little bit earlier than back home, with or without the 'resolution' part, but I guess we're alike than more ways than I could have imagined. For lack of any midweek excitement, I thought I'd also mention how ridiculously fast everyone eats in Korea. I really don't want to generalize here, but it's not just my homestay family, or every single teacher and student at school, or when I go to the restaurants...OK, you get the point.
I'm just amazed at how whenever I eat it's like a race to stuff it all down and then pass into a food coma. The school lunch room goes from zero to 300mph then back to zero again in about 10 minutes. Usually I just watch and giggle to myself--but sometimes it's a matter of life and death. I mean, there's only so many quail eggs on the homestay table...which seem to be a hot commodity for whatever reason I cannot figure out. My little brother covets them like they're the only golden tickets to Willy Wonka pleasure-ville, so if I'm gonna get some protein I better bring the battle ax to the table and prepare for a pissing match. No, it's not actually that bad, but primal instincts do flair up every now and then.I'll leave it at that, and then go pass into haircut-pleasure coma for the rest of the evening.
forgotten how much fun kayaking can be, let alone on the open ocean. With the wind blowing and a hefty waves here and there—catch one just right and you can ‘sail’ for quite a ways or else find yourself diving head first into the ocean. These were open kayaks, of course, and the beach was all sand—so no death defying experiences just yet...those were saved for the next day when we rented scooters. 
Fifteen bucks, no signature, and a short lesson on how to turn the thing on—you’ve got yourself two wheels of insanity for the day. I mean, you can also rent cars and golf carts—but who doesn’t like the feeling of 100cc between your legs and a sea breeze through your hair? Dave by the way should be dead, or the bus should have a head-size dent in it—I don’t know which—but it was still fun as hell. Well, as of this writing I’m still alive and crawling my way through the washing machine known as the Jeju-Mokpo ferry. Next goal: rent scooters and drive across Korea; it can be done.
Naturally then it’s a pleasant surprise to spend time with a new family and get to know another set of holidays. This past week was Chuseok, one of two major holiday periods in Korea—I’m not sure what the other one is yet, but I’ll report back on that as soon as it rolls around. The Gods of Chuseok must have been looking out for me though when they scheduled it on a Tuesday-Thursday; meaning why bother go to work on a Friday? I.e. we get a 6 day weekend, time to eat, time to relax, and time to travel.
family, which means that all the festivities go down at our apartment. Tuesday morning rolls around and my host mom is frying, grilling, rolling her way to perfection alongside grandma and a few other relatives. Needless to say there’s a prescribed list of food to cook—kind of like a Thanksgiving turkey, green bean casserole, etc except that everyone in the country cooks pretty much the same thing. This includes an assortment of fruits, fried vegetables, raw and supposedly cooked poultry, beef, and pork, rice and a thousand different kimchi.
but old Jungang High School decided to throw down and have one tailored to fit me…so who am I to complain? I will wear it with pride. I mean, even in Korean people nowadays wear it at most twice a year (for each of the two holiday)—I’m sure I could make it work at least for Halloween parties and whatever random Korean ballroom galas I go to back home (wait, what?). In any case, I wore the getup a few hours Wednesday morning when the family bowed down in front of the food laid out on a bunch of tiny wooden platters. There are, apparently, two rounds of bowing, followed by some waiting, and then we finished with a quick round of eating. I’m actually a little surprised that we didn’t eat most of the food that was laid out—but I guess that was for the ancestors, not us. Damn, what was I thinking.
spent the rest of the day running all around the province, bowing in front of the ancestral gravesites and visiting relatives that I’m pretty sure my host family only sees one day a year. By that I mean I saround for most of the day, get in a few words of garbled conversation here and there with various country folk and eat whatever sort of sumptuous sustenance they put in front of me. By the end of it all, I’m ready for my trip to Jeju Island.
outside that comfort zone, try new things and bend my mind a little bit more. I don't mean just trying new foods and so forth, that seems to come with living in Korea whether I like it or not--the question is whether I settle into something I'm "used to" or instead keep bombarding myself with uncomfortable situations and newexperiences. It's a struggle, because now that I'm teaching almost every day and getting to know the homestay family, I actuallyhave the option to lay back, kick my feet up and coast through the year. The flip side is the dirt path, scenic route to the well-trodden highway of comfort. The dirt path is harder but the rewards are always greater. If I've learned one or two things in this regard--it's that I'm always comfortable with the easy route but happier, though often physically and emotionally exhausted, with the scenic route. That, and I've found the tried and true method of always finding the scenic route: "Yes." By that I mean, the answer is always yes. Yes I'll take that drink. Do you want to come to X this weekend? Yes. I can't read this menu, but do you want to try this one? Yes, Yes I do.
spending the first couple days with the (extended) homestay family--for which thoroughly expect excellent cooking, drunk relatives, and strangely colored traditional clothing. I'm actually pretty confident on that last one because, well, I'll be wearing some myself. For whatever generous and culturally magnanimous reason, the school decided to drop a dime and buy me a traditional Korean Hanbok. I don't have any pictures of it just yet, but you can Google "hanbok" and get a pretty good idea what I'm talking about. These suits aren't cheap, either, but I think the school had some special relationship with whatever seamstress I went to to have my measurements taken. I'll have to ask the FB office if I can wear the suit to the black tie 60th Anniversary Gala...I mean, it is a formal suit and all, but I don't know how that would go over.
than anything else, because I honestly had no idea what he was doing. Then as soon as he came running out what a candy bar of some sort, it was all painfully obvious. To be honest, I did nothing. I just watched. On one hand, I was a little shocked. But mostly I was just speechless. Let me emphasize that last part: I couldn't--and still can't--muster up even half the words in Korean to adequately describe what the boy did. I mean, these store clerks/owners eke out a pretty meager existence, so that's just shitty. But what could I do? I wanted to tell the clerk, maybe stop the boy and have him give it back--but really, imagine doing that using only hand gestures and dirty looks...Every day I have another source of motivation to learn this language.
