A Light in the Black

Hey there. I'm hoping no one thought I was ill or incapacitated since I failed to post a long, navel-gazing blog update for New Year's Eve. I actually had a pretty good New Year's Eve this year, and even left the house to do it, believe it or not. My cousin came from Kitami in Hokkaido, Japan, where she also teaches English, for a visit to Busan. (She said she was hoping the Busan weather - which usually hovers in the -2 to 8 Celsius range in the winter - would be a welcome break from the frigid temperatures in Kitami, but during her visit we both voiced suspicions that she had somehow brought a bit of the Kitami weather with her.) We ended up going up to Yongdusan Park for the midnight bell ringing, which was fun, and involved a surprise visit from a remote-controlled flying dragon lantern just after midnight. It's amazing what they can do with those lightweight miniature remote helicopters these days.

Traveling with my cousin around Busan and Gyeongju, which one of my co-teachers was kind enough to take us to, was actually a really rewarding experience for me, since my cousin has an academic background in Japanese and religious studies so she knew a lot more than me about Korean and Japanese history and Buddhist iconography, among other topics. I think this was my third trip to Bulguksa in Gyeongju, but I was amazed at how many things I had failed to appreciate there as a complete naïf when it comes to Buddhism. ("Hey, you're right, that Buddha does have a thousand arms behind him/her. How did I never see that?") My co-teacher also pointed out to me that Bulguksa's renowned stone bridges are not the two small bridges near a pond and stream on the temple ground which I had thought were the special bridges, but actually were the large stone steps in front of the main temple building, as there had been a stream running under the steps in the past. Adequate English-language signage probably would have helped in that case. Nevertheless, I appreciated the correction.

Christmas was pretty mellow this year. I had gone out to Daegu the Saturday before to celebrate with some friends, so other than the traditional Christmas morn/Christmas eve trans-global Skype chat with my family back home, I didn't do too much to celebrate the actual date of the holiday. Another teacher in my town had organized a tour of a nearby temple with some students, but I had to bail on them because my Skype date ran over and catch up with them for dinner later at a local chicken shack. The only thing I did on Christmas Eve, besides work, was to buy a cake to bring to school on the 26th for the other teachers. I always feel compelled to do something to celebrate Christmas at school, and since it may have been the last time I would get all the teachers in the office at once before I leave, I figured I'd better take advantage of the opportunity to thank them for being so wonderful for the past three years. I don't think the counter girl at Paris Baguette, who couldn't have been much older than one of my students, understood my intentions for the cake, however. In Korea, Christmas has somehow become a holiday that's mostly for dating, as if Korea didn't have more than enough of those (Valentine's Day, White Day, and I suspect Pepero Day's true intentions) already. I'm guessing the girl at Paris Baguette who sold me the cake suspected I had a hot date and thought she had some piece of juicy schoolyard gossip about one of the foreign teachers, as when I paid for the cake, she slipped me one of the complimentary bottles of sparkling apple juice they had behind the counter in a very winking manner. I still have it in my fridge, actually. Not sure what I'm going to do with it. I was planning to drink it all alone on New Year's Eve but then my cousin came and I actually had fun. Maybe there'll be another special occasion between now and when I leave in forty-seven days...

We also recently had a presidential election in Korea, which was a special treat to witness since they only come along every five years. This one was especially interesting for several reasons. At first, a popular third-party candidate - Ahn Cheol-soo, a doctor, software developer and well-known political pundit - had been running along with the candidates from the major liberal and conservative parties, which threatened to throw a monkey wrench into the typically two-sided (and often largely one-sided) world of Korean politics, but he ended up dropping out before the election and offering tepid support to the liberal candidate. (His software company, AhnLab, provides the annoying security program that I need to use to access my bank's website, and I kind of wondered whether everyone's money would disappear the day after the election if he lost.) The other interesting factor in this election was that the conservative candidate, Park Geun-hye, in addition to being the first woman to have a serious chance at the Korean presidency, also happens to be the daughter of slain Korean president and dictator (or "strongman," as the Korean news seems to suddenly prefer) Park Chung-hee. Park Chung-hee has long been a divisive figure here - he's popular in southeastern Korea, where I live, but largely despised in the more liberal south and southwest. Conservatives revere him as the leader who started the economic programs that put Korea on a path to prosperity, while liberals remember him as the president who seized power with the military, ruled under a state of emergency and conducted ruthless crackdowns on democracy advocates. Needless to say, Park Geun-hye's candidacy was polarizing. (A friend of mine also compared her to recent US president George W. Bush, in that he considers her a politician who draws much more support from her family name than from her actual political acumen, which is apparently lacking. This would personally worry me more than her family history, but like I said I'm leaving in forty-seven days, so... Good luck, everyone!) What astounded me most about the election was that, despite bitter cold on Election Day, more than seventy-five percent of eligible voters participated in the election. That's a remarkable number, especially when compared to some recent elections in countries like the United States and United Kingdom. Some Americans these days like to talk and act like democracy is under siege in the United States when the issues at hand are actually some of the most banal functions of government, like taxation and social insurance. Yes, I know eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, yadda yadda yadda. But sometimes I wish some of these screaming yahoos actually had the experience of living in a country where democracy isn't a given and basic human rights really do require violent struggle, like Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall, or South Korea before around 1986. Americans talk a lot about liberty and justice, but don't seem to appreciate how easily we've been able to enjoy those gifts without struggle over the last half century or so. And we consistently seem ignorant of some of the allies we've had over the years who took it away from their own people. I guess it's very easy for a country to be politically nearsighted when there's oceans between you and everyone else...

Other than the above events, it's mostly been an unremarkable winter, other than it being unusually cold, and it hitting us with an uncommonly heavy snowfall about a week and a half ago. We do normally get some snowfall in the winter in this part of Korea, but people are usually able to sweep it off the sidewalk rather than having to shovel it. I saw a snow plow out on the highway during the storm, but snow removal in my small town has been haphazard at best, and definitely not done on an organized basis. Some citizens dutifully shoveled the walks outside their homes and businesses, but most of the six or so inches of snow we got stayed in place until it was packed down, partially melted and then froze again into rock-hard, solid ice slicks. Most of the sidewalks around town at least have ice-free paths cut into them at this point, and people have dumped sand or charcoal ash on many of the most traveled patches that are still icy and look like they could be until March given the thickness of the ice and the temperatures outside, but many of the streets are still pretty treacherous. Seriously, guys, we need to do something about this crazy weather...

I've had two winter camps for most of this week and they'll continue for most of next week, but they've been pretty laid back so far. And in another ten days I'll be toasting my buns somewhere in Thailand. In the meantime it's still pretty quiet and boring here, and becoming more so by the day. Some teachers have left for their vacations already, and most of the ones who are left are trying to save their money and energy for their upcoming travels, if they're not going stir-crazy from the increased free time and winter weather. I was, however, able to rouse a couple teachers at 6:30 AM last Sunday for breakfast burritos and beers to watch the Saturday round of the NFL's wild card round of playoffs, so this party's not completely dead. The other day I realized that it's now January and that means it's no longer too soon to start seriously looking for work and trying to plan my future, but then I realized I have a vacation coming in less than two weeks and I decided to blow the worrying and planning off until later. Frankly the whole moving back thing scares the shit out of me more and more as the days go on. I don't know what I want to do, I'm not confident of what I can do any more, or what anyone will hire me to do, I don't know where I want to be doing it, and I don't want to get stuck doing something other than what I want to do somewhere other than where I want to be doing it. Recreating yourself from scratch gets more and more tiresome as you get older. As much as I'm a compulsive planner and hate to put things off, I think a lot of the big decisions are actually going to have to happen after I get back and get a feeling for what life in the US is like again, and it what it feels like trying to live it in this day and age. There's just too many unknowns at this point. I probably should be taking better advantage of all this free time, but I suppose unrepentant sloth is also a valid type of time use. Besides, I need to finish The Beach before I get to Koh Tao. I'm under a deadline here...

Anyway, I do actually have work tomorrow afternoon so I should probably avoid going completely nocturnal and get to bed. As usual, I reserve the right to spell- and grammar-check this post in the morning and edit out the most scandalous stuff, so you've been warned. Forty-seven days and I'm coming hooooooooooooooome...