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.