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.

This blog has been discontinued, if you have any questions, please email me at olsenh24@gmail.com