End of my hardest semester to date

Finals ended this past week. My first days wholly free of obligations and worry have been spent in blissful sleep, sunny beaches, and recovering from the social isolation that became necessary to complete my work. I owe all of you an update, not on the work, which has been challenging, if tedious, but on the brief moments this semester when I have actually done something worth sharing.

In mid-October, one of the few Korean students in my building asked me for help with a big international food festival they have for my dormitory. As our building has students from almost every country in Asia, it was going to be an impressive affair. While my friends who cooked for the American food delegation gave me a hard time about betraying my country and cooking for Korea (they ended up making chicken-fried steak, cinnamon apples, green beans, and tex-mex), I'm glad I had a chance to practice my Korean cuisine.



We were a pretty subdued bunch, especially compared with the Indonesians.



The dormitory, while more of a communal experience than I've had before in terms of housing, has been fun. I quickly discovered that when you are surrounded by people from countries you know embarrassingly little about, the best way to start a conversation is about the food they cook. Just tonight I spent an hour listening to an explanation of why Iraqis eat so many dates and the trouble of being a date farmer.

Thanksgiving was a series of fantastic potluck dinners, similar to the way I spent it last year with friends in Washington. With the few days I had free for the holiday, I also sneaked out of the computer lab to hike near my valley. Past a waterfall that is reputed to have been a favorite of Obama as a child and up Mount Tantalus is a view through the mountain range clear to the other side of Oahu.



You can just barely see the ocean over the wild coffee trees.

As lush as Hawaii is, I have sadly not been able to live out my dreams of eating nothing but tropical fruit. Since almost all of food is imported from the mainland or Asia, even the papayas and pineapples are actually more expensive than they were back in Connecticut. To bring a little local variety into what I eat, I started getting a weekly subscription of produce from a farm on the island. Below you can see one of my first delivery boxes, with basil, limes, eggplant, and green onions.



The only difficulty of getting the deliveries is identifying and finding out how to cook some of the randomized produce I receive.

With the arrival of the winter vacation, as paradoxically as it seems, I have finally started going to the beach. It is a balmy 75 degrees here most days, and the only reminder I have that it is cold on the East Coast is the change in cup designs at the Starbucks.

When I go to the beach, alongside the tourists from the mainland and the far more tan locals, (I'm still pale as can be) there are also many Japanese tourists. Areas of Waikiki feel more oriented toward the Japanese than to Americans. I realized the extent of this when I visited a beach near the heart of Honolulu, which was filled with honeymooning Japanese couples getting their vacation photos taken. I took this picture just as a group of schoolgirls from Japan had discovered a couple and moved into the shot.



It has been very interesting trying to make sense out of the diversity in Honolulu, it's completely different from anywhere else I have lived in America. Being in the minority once again also means that it will be very different readjusting to life in Connecticut when I go back this summer.

I will try to soon post the photos from my trip to Shanghai this past summer, (very very late, I know). Have a great winter everyone!

Views from Honolulu

Nighttime at my university.


A praying mantis flew into my dormitory one night, this guy was about three inches long. He just perched on the curtain and imitated a leaf by slowly swaying from side to side.


The dormitory where I live. I have a single room on the tenth floor with a great view of Diamond Head, an old crater right on the beach.


A hiking path I took up Makiki Valley recently. The event was a field trip with the rest of the people in my department and a few professors.


The flowers bloom all year here.


Another view from the path, the valley is a picture-perfect rainforest


The view from the top of one of the mountains in Makiki, you can see my campus on the left and the ocean way in the background.

Watermelon tastes better at the top

Double Rainbows

Grad school is another level of busy I only could have seen in my nightmares, but I'm optimistic.

Fortunately, Hawaii does its best to cheer me up whenever I venture outside of the library, showing me double rainbows and offering some great views.





This is a view from one of the valleys, I went out with some other students in my program during the orientation week to check out some taro farms.



Trees confuse me here. It seems like they grow about ten feet out of the ground, get confused and try to go back in the earth.

Life has settled into a routine, for good or worse. I burn the midnight oil six days a week, then escape during a weekend day and remember I live in paradise.

Welcome ceremony, the East-West Center

While I am at the University of Hawaii pursuing my M.A., I am also an affiliate member of an educational institute that is attached to the university, called the East-West Center. The center funds graduate students and lots of different cultural exchange programs. I have entered into a program of theirs that allows me to stay in a dormitory in their campus, along with about one hundred and fifty other graduate students from all over Asia and America.

The housing experience has been wild already. As prices are higher in Hawaii than anything I am used to, and as it is relatively convenient, I am cooking my meals with the other students in big communal kitchens built into each floor. Alongside my quasi-Korean dishes are pots of Thai soup, chicken being fried by some Iraqi Phds, along with a half a dozen other dishes I cannot recognize from Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Phillipines.

During the day, I have been going through orientation procedures with the other students. The organizers kicked off the official welcome with a hula ceremony. It was actually very nice, I lost any preconceptions I had of it being a hollow exercise for the sake of tourists.

Afterward, alumni from our program circulated through the audience and gave us lei's.





With my few hours free in the afternoon, I decided to tour around Honolulu and see a little bit more of the city where I will live for the next year. While the first thing I noticed was the unusual makeup of the city, which is composed primarily of Japanese, Hawaiians, Chinese, and Pacific Islanders. While I make the distinction of their origin, what was even more unusual for me was how Americanized it all was, despite the diverse origins.

In terms of the physical city, it reminds me of a tropical Stamford, with a clean if infrequent bus system, low buildings, and plenty of discount stores and bar and grills.

Arrived in Honolulu, backlog of memories

Hello,

I have been quite busy the past two weeks, as I traveled to Shanghai the day after my internship ended, spent a week exploring that city, then left for Honolulu just two days after I returned from Shanghai.

I will try to upload photos and stories as soon as possible, but I don't want to skip too much of the past few weeks, which were an exhausting, memorable time.

Visiting Suwon

I traveled thirty minutes south of Seoul by train three weekends ago, to visit a satellite city and the castle located in the middle of it. I have been to around a dozen Korean cities beforehand, but somehow I was surprised by how similar this one was to Seoul, Yeosu, Jeju-si, Mokpo, and the rest. Like always, the main streets were a hyperstimulating riot of pc bang, cafe, restaurant, and cell phone storefronts. Just out of the city center were the identical apartment blocks, their even rows evoking tombstones.



The one unusual feature of Suwon was that the city center was encircled by the remains of a fortress constructed about three hundred years ago. If you look closely on the left, you can see the green ring of grass and castle wall dividing the low-rise apartment buildings.



The fortress itself was great to see, quiet and cool because of the trees that had grown up around it.



This was a fantastic public restroom, one of many in Korea. I won't go in to too much detail, but the lighting and decorations made it look nicer than many apartments that I've stayed in. It even had a name, Azalea Flower Restroom.

While I have been too busy to do much sightseeing on this trip to Korea, traveling to Suwon reassured me that, for better or for worse, I haven't missed much. Put simply, all of the populated areas in Korea look very similar.

Commuting

I normally just drift off into a half-sleep during my commute, but in case it would be interesting to any of you, I've put together a short video of the way I take every morning and afternoon.

My school for 2011-2012

I also took a quick trip to my future university today. My M.A. program in Hawaii includes a year at Korea University (고려대), so I figured I should visit the campus and get a picture in my mind of where I'll be living. To my great relief, the campus is actually quite beautiful, quite different from other campuses I've visited here. True to form, I left my camera at home, so I will have to rely on a publicity shot.



Among the groups of faux-Ivy League buildings, there was an amusing set of banners accusing the government of misleading people as to the true cause of the sinking of the Cheonnan. Having heard every conspiracy theory, ranging from a Korean War mine to a warmongering America attacking with one of our own torpedoes, my only response to such shrill polemics is shaking my head.

Travels with Auntie

Differently from the last year when I was a student in Korea, my days are now kept busy with going to work and commuting. While it feels fine and dandy to finally be working 9 to 6, wearing a suit, and using Outlook, it means that I get little chance to travel or spend time with friends like I had last year. Instead, I end up spending the few hours each night between the gym, dinner, and sleep, watching Korean soap operas with my host mom and her sister. What I have lost in raucous exchange student revelry, I have gained in gossip and overacting. Both women are fun to talk to, and probably the best language teachers I have ever had, if only for their patience and constant willingness to answer my questions.

My host mother is actually suffering from some kind of pain in the nerves in her neck, (as well as a half a dozen other symptoms, I really don't know what to call her illness. She is also apparently supposed to avoid bread and milk, per order of her doctors) so she doesn't get out of the house very much. When I am finally free from work on the weekends, she decides its a fine time to go on trips. Most of the time, I tag along on her excursions.



She is literally the most high-spirited and outgoing Korean ladies I have ever met. It was a stroke of luck that I found her through a homestay website the first time that I came, and now she insists that I call her Imo, (이모) which means "the sister of my mother". The picture above is from when we went to park in the middle of the river that runs through Seoul. As you can tell from the massive sun visor she is wearing, as well as the parasol her sister is carrying in the background, they both share the Korean woman's primal fear of sunlight and getting a tan.



The above is a picture I took earlier today, when we went to visit her two younger brothers, (both married) at an apartment in the northeast of the city. Today is the day before Chobok, traditionally the beginning of the hottest period of the summer. In order to make it through this draining period of high humidity and higher temperatures, people normally eat chicken stew with their relatives. I was just glad they didn't ask me to dine on dog, another food that is supposed to restore energy.

In the picture, she was sitting with her family and playing games with the children on one of the flat wooden platforms that Korean use instead of picnic tables, or tables in general.

My host mother originally took care of her three younger siblings when they all moved into a boarding house in Seoul in order to go to a decent high school. Children living apart from their parents (who remain in the countryside) in a city in order to go to school isn't that unusual.



You probably know this scrub. I'm standing in front of a tomb of one of the Choson-era kings. The setting is quite nice, which is why my host mom's family chose to picnic in the area. The only interruption to the quiet forested tomb was the sound of gunfire from nearby, as it is adjacent to a military training camp. Bullets sound remarkably like firecrackers.

I'm in the midst of planning for a trip to Shanghai right now, I have about a week in between when my internship ends and when I have to report to Hawaii, so I want to see a little bit more of my neighborhood. If anyone has any specific suggestions for things to see in the city, let me know in the comments.

Donating to your Uncle

I found this link today, to a U.S. Treasury website that accepts donations to pay off the national debt. While there isn't much connection to Korea, it reminded me of the national drive here back in the final years of the 1990s to pay off the loan taken out from the IMF. Koreans remain very proud of having paid back the debt years before the scheduled date.

I hope you are all doing alright amid the current heat wave. It isn't much cooler here, my host family and I cope with a combination of half a dozen oscillating fans, cold watermelon, and cold showers.

Hi ho, Hi ho

I started working at a law firm here in Seoul almost one week ago, located in one of the central government areas. I would love to say that it is an interesting experience to be in a law firm in another country, but to be honest there has been a baffling lack of anything to do. I am learning more and more about the life of a lawyer though, all of the summer interns had a lunch with one of the attorneys here to find out what its like being an arbitrator for international cases. The work sounds interesting and the firm where we work is certainly impressive, but both the senior attorneys and older law students whom I have met seem to have no great love for their job.



The firm where I work employs around 750 people, so this building is only one of four in the area that belongs to them. This building, the headquarters, stands out from all the others for the identical black chauffered sedans that always park in the front. I came to this firm in particular to learn more about how the elite live in Korea live, in that respect I am learning a great deal.



On my way to work, I pass through an expanse of boulevard, dotted with statues of famous Korean icons.

I also pass by these two buildings, which I'm sure were the biggest around when they were first made. I had no idea that the U.S. Embassy (the builing on the right) was so close to the middle of Seoul.

I work at the law firm until the late afternoon, take a crowded subway home, and then have dinner with the rest of my homestay family. While it can sometime be a bit stressful to live in a place where I will feel like a guest for a whole month, it's still better than the alternative, bunking in an impersonal room alone in the city.

At night, I meet friends, many of whom I haven't talked to since I left Korea over a year ago. Sometimes it can be fun to see old faces, but the passage of time can also erode what little common ground we had. When I have nights free, I watch Korean soap operas with my host mom and her sister. From time to time she asks me questions about life in America, I appreciate the fact that she is still curious about where I live even after I have been with her for such a long time. While watching a soap opera this past Saturday, one that is famous in Korea for its first portrayal of gay men not as an oddity, but as a normal couple, she asked me "are there many gays in America?" (in Korean). I have come to realize that the word "many" is nearly useless in such conversations, and have to come up with other metrics to convey the reality in America. To me and perhaps to most Americans, "many" gay people is a term associated with Fire Island, Greenwich Village, and Dupont Circle. To my host family, any location with more than one gay individual would suffice to produce a similar impression.

Old picture

I just found this picture on the website of a research institute where I worked briefly during my last semester in Korea. I was helping out during a conference on international concepts of citizenship, run by the sociology department at my university. The professor who hosted the conference invited me on the trip to a nearby mountain afterward. This is a picture of me with a bunch of sociologists standing in the Eastern Sea, on the east side of the Korean peninsula.

Landfall

My flight touched down late on Saturday, I've spent the time since then trying to rid myself of jet lag and remember how to live in this country. My host family surprised me at the airport, which was great. As simple as it is, having somebody to wave hello when you get into a foreign country makes a big difference.

I'm living with the same family who took me in a year ago, in the same apartment in Daebnag, a neighborhood almost smack dab in the geographic center of Seoul. My host mother's sister returned from Vietnam, where she was working with the Korean version of the Peace Corps, so now there are five people living in the apartment. My host mother assures me that it's not a problem to have so many people living together, she grew up in a home that held her extended family, so she says it's something that she got used to.

After my stomach became a casualty during my first weeks in Korea, I have prepared myself for a diet that shares absolutely nothing in common with what I eat in America. Below you can see a picture of what constitutes my meals. There really is no way to overemphasize the amount of rice people eat here.



What you're looking at (from left to right) is a bowl of leafy greens,the little silver things are sauteed mini-anchovies, fish bologna, kimchi, spicy red pepper sauce, and a bowl of rice, I have rice for literally breakfast lunch and dinner.



a close-up of how you eat the spread, placing small portions of the rice, kimchi, and anchovies into a leaf of lettuce, one bite-size portion.

I walked around the city for a bit today, just to get reacquainted and find out how to get to my workplace later in the week. In case I couldn't pick out the name of my building among the other similar office towers in the neighborhood, it's the only one with a dozen identical black chauffered town cars out front. I'll just have to see how I fit in with the upper crust here.

If I missed sending this blog to anyone who would be interested, please feel free to email the address.

Hold your breath, I'm coming back

This blog will resume in the summer of 2010, more information coming soon.