Living in Korea

It's a beautiful ride, and you gotta walk hard.  

It's hard to keep up with a blog sometimes... 
I leave Korea for spell in 9 days.  kinda scary.  Another big adventure awaits.  I'm not saying my goodbye's just yet, but the past few weeks it's felt like everything was the last time, for a while.  I think part of me wants to go home just to see how things are... to see if that is really where I to go.  kind of a litmus or acid test if you will.  Gonna go back to csun and finish my credential, gonna hang out with friends I've not seen in a year, gonna ride my bike around and get back in shape!!  yeesh, I've been not taking care of myself very well lately, but indulging in food here is so easy since it's really all so good. 
There is a school festival going on.  Really cool stuff, today was a bunch of games and races for all the classes.  Games like, tug of war, dodgeball, football, mass jump roping, many others, and this game that was totally awesome.  only the 1st graders did it, because they are still pretty small, but the classes line up and one person is chosen to walk on the backs of the others across and back the playground.  the kids in the class all bend over and create a path for the person walking and as soon as they have been used, they run to the front and continue the bridge.  it was really fun to watch.  i've got the photos from the day up at my flickr website.  here's the link to the set.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/scvdan/sets/72157602664383852/

i'll tag em and bag em when i get the chance.  tomorrow has all the performances, singing, dancing, samulnori, kayagum, and all that good stuff.  and friday, i head on out to Asan with the 1st and 3rd graders to see this monument to Admiral Yi Soon Shin,  it'll be great.

Tuesday is my Demo lesson for the school board, a dog and pony show i'm effectively thumbing my nose at by doing a really crazy fun lesson of mock shopping, which hopefully will be just a blast with the class i've chosen to do it with.  thursday is my last day of work, friday i clean out my bank account and pack all my stuff up, and saturday i fly home.  I love the fact that I am leaving Seoul at 7:30pm on saturday, and I arrive in Los Angeles at 2:30pm, saturday.  getting back that day I lost comin over here. 

one moment of sentiment, when i first came here, i entered a sea of kids of whom I could barely tell apart from each other, and now I know who i'm looking at when I see them from a distance, or from behind, uniform and same haircut and all.  cool.

More posts before i leave to come,

oh man, it's like someone hit the cold button.  In one weekend it seriously dropped like 10-15 C.  It's frackin freezing today.  haha.  It's just in time too.  I arrived during the cold season last November; reminds me it's time to go home. 
I spend my lunches now walking around the school talking to kids and seeing how they play.  I'm jealous.  Korean middle schoolers have some awesome games.  I think it's more the fact that they are easily amused by the simple things.  My favorite game, I should learn the name, is where one person covers their face with their sweater so they can't see and tries to tag someone else who can.  It sounds a bit silly, but it's really fun because the game is how close you can get to the blinded kid without getting caught.  여기!여기여기여기!!!  here! here here here! 저기.  there.  haha.  It's a blast.  I bet if any of the other teachers saw me playing I'd get some seriously weird looks.  The kids were really surprised when I asked them how to play. Good times.

I've been trying to get back into playing my horn, but the medication i'm on for my skin makes my lips really dry.  that means they get all crackly and split and I refuse to become hooked on dct or blistex again.  I need some burtsbees desperately.  haha.  I've then taken a lot of time for workin on dexterity instead just playing softly and calmly.  and i'm sure my neighbors are glad of that. 

Well, no grandiose thoughts on social issues, no soap box speeches, epiphanies, doggerel, or other assorted semi-pretentious nonsense for today.  just be. 

oh yeah, and will friends of mine stop getting engaged gorramit.  fallin from our noble bachelor/bachelorette ranks and what not :p  i am so happy for you guys and gals.  seriously, you're makin me look bad!  stop it! 하지마!!  haha.  I shall see you all soon to congratulate you in person. 

until later

It's coming up on that time to leave a place I've called home once again.  I must admit that as glad as I'll be to go home, I am really going to miss some things here.  I have been taking the time to enjoy as much as I can, all the little things.  I walked around my school yesterday during school.  The kids are all preparing for their midterms.  It's funny, they all still wave to me and can tell right away when I walk past their classrooms, even when I try my hardest to walk very softly.  I've lost count of the number of notes that students have given me, most of which plead as best they can in English to not go back to the US.  they also come up to me in the halls and say, 안돼.  don't.  haha.  it's really cute in that heart wrenching way.  그러지마.  하지 말 것.  I really hope many of them can keep in touch.  I do know that I will return here.  But I don't know when.  미국에 조아해.  대한민국도.  aw well.  c'est la vie. 

Praying?

Not in the sense you mean it, but yes.

You mind if I join you?  What does the candle represent?

Life.

Who's life?

All life.  Every life.  We're all born as molecules... in the hearts of a billion stars.  Molecules that do not understand politics or policies or differences.  And for a billion years, we foolish molecules forget who we are and where we came from, desperate acts of ego; we give ourselves names, fight over lines and maps, and pretend that our light is better than everyone else's.  The flame reminds us of the beasts of those stars, that lives on inside us.  The spark that tells us, "you should know better."  The flame also reminds us that life is precious, as each flame is unique.  When it goes out, it's gone forever... and there will never be another, quite like it.   so many candles will go out tonight. I wonder some days if we can see anything at all....

...and as a result, we spend too much time trying to be serious, as if that proved than we were more enlightened!!  Better than everyone else.  But we can’t be free until we learn to laugh at ourselves.  Once you look in the mirror and see just how foolish we can be, laughter is inevitable.  And from laughter comes wisdom. Next question.

 

What is truth and what is god?

 

You don't really want an answer to that question

 

Yes I do, please.

 

If I take a lamp and shine it toward the wall, a bright spot will appear on the wall. The lamp is our search for truth, for understanding.  Too often we assume that the light on the wall is God.  But the light is not the goal of the search; it is the result of the search.  The more intense the search, the brighter the light on the wall.  The brighter the light on the wall, the greater the sense of revelation upon seeing it.  Similarly, someone who does not search, and does not bring a lantern with him, sees nothing.  What we perceive as God is the byproduct of our search for God.  It may simply be an appreciation of the light, pure and unblemished, not understanding that it comes from us.  Sometimes we stand in front of the light and assume that we are the center of the universe.  God looks astonishingly like we do.  Or we turn to look at our shadow and assume that all is darkness.  If we allow ourselves to get in the way, we defeat the purpose; which is to use the light of our search to illuminate the wall in all its beauty.... and in all its flaws.  And in so doing, better understand the world around us.

 

Ahhhh yes, but, what is truth and what is God?

 

Sigh.....truth is a river.

 

Ahhh ....and what is god?

 

God is, the mouth of the river.

 

Ooohhhh....

Sigh......

-Meditations from the Abyss.     Episode 14.  Season 5 J. Michael Straczynski.

Now I know that some may argue, the liberal bastion of Hollywood is biased and prejudiced.  so.... what...

i wrote this a few weeks ago, thought i should share it...

I've thought about it all day. I started today watching the Dodgers beat the Nationals 10 to 9 in the 12th inning on espn.com. I was happy and excited, though a little late to school, but I didn't teach until 2nd period. I hadn't finished my lesson completely and still had to finish the worksheet. I knew I had the time at work to do it. So I began my 15 minute walk to school. I took a look back down the street to see if there was a taxi on its way but, of course, there was none. I was listening to some Ani on my mp3 player when I looked at the road. It is a 6 lane road that passes right through the middle of Osan. A bird leapt up from the sidewalk as I passed by and flew on to the far right lane.

It looked funny, like it was tired or really hungry, probably a bit of both. I turned my head back and saw a truck quickly approaching. I felt this need to yell out at the bird but somehow my voice was silent.

I watched as the truck passed by. It flew away. I saw the truck continue on as if nothing had been in its path. I looked again but I was wrong. The bird was lying on it's back on the road. It looked stunned and confused. It began to flap it's wings but to no avail. I squelched a cry to it and nearly jumped into the road to pull it to safely, however, I saw the next approaching car. A white Hyundai. I know that driver never saw the bird. I never saw the driver. The bird frantically flopped about perhaps sensing it's impending doom, but that was in my head. It writhed and struggled and I thought, the car will miss, it will pass right by and miss the bird and it will find it's way back to safety and I can run out and grab it. The car drove on.

I'll never forget that heart-wrenching sound, the softest of snaps revealing the awful truth of life. I wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn't. I saw the splatter of red streaked a few inches where the life just was.

It was just a bird. They die everyday. Today was cold; perhaps it wasn't able to eat enough and was exhausted from the trials of the hunt. I don't know why I have fixated so on this.

I walked a little slower to school.

now for something much more poetic and infinitely so...

#328

A BIRD came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.
And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.
He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,—
They looked like frightened beads, I thought
He stirred his velvet head
Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home
Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim. Emily Dickinson

I have been a bit of a hermit lately, in a way, but I have spent some time out with the teachers from my school. Last friday was a fantastic night out with the guys, conversations that just could never be explained... especially with the curiosity of working in two languages. Let me just say that Koreans know how to party. All the teachers at my school are very great people. All my time spent with them recently has been colored by the fact that in less than two months, I will be leaving. I will miss them all very dearly. Though they don't always show it all the time, they have made me feel at home, when home is so far away.

home... where is that anyways?

I have been watching "From the Earth to the Moon." Yeah, it's a bit corny and cheesy, and a bit jingoistic in a way, it is about the American space program afterall, but it moves me. I, like many young boys, had aspirations of growing up to be an astronaut. That show reminds me why. as is said, there is fine line between recklessness and courage, and those men back then traversed that line inspirationally.

I heard someone once say, what marks the end of childhood is the loss of innocence. It's another one of those crazy dualities or multiplicities that make up our lives. You strive to be smarter, and stronger, and better than you are, and in the path you risk your innocence. You risk your curiosity, your hope, and your dreams. But nothing worth having comes without risk, and the greater the risk, the greater the profit. at what cost? what do you give up by doing so? what other avenues are left by the wayside? the taoist ideal of the childlike mind, the open book, the uncarved block, seems quite the impossibility, but one worth striving for in my opinion. some may argue, it's silly to aspire to be innocent, isn't that a contradiction? to aspire to not know? learn to be an idiot?

perhaps so. but it is the simple things in life that bring us the most joy. I'll admit, i do like this fancy new computer from my school and will have a difficult time returning it before i leave. i like political satire and commentary, mostly hot air blown back at more hot air. I enjoy great musicians and their music. I really miss driving my car. none of those are particularly simple in nature. some lead to bad habits and more grief.

is there some greater message in what i've written today? hell if i know. probably not. i'm sure a few of you who read this will consider this my usual over-philosophizing, my pretentious babble that I like to spout out because I have the time, my purely silly musings where I attempt to use big words and sound smart somehow. yeah, i can see that.

but remembering something as outlandish as going to the moon, something that was pretty damn stupid if you really come down to earth and think about it, it gives me inspiration. it makes me wonder, what can i do?

some men see things as they are and say why. i dream things that never were and say why not. - Robert Kennedy

So I figured, I can wait on the photos for a little, and upload them vids i took. 

here they are

Here I am on my last day in Thailand, doing a fun dive at Phi Phi Ley, and this was just a quick look around the bay we stopped at to get lunch and let some of the nitrogen out of our bodies.

This was on Koh Samui.  Now, I know some may not be too hip on trained animals, but Thai's have been doing this forever and it is actually pretty darn cool to watch. 

So right down the street from our hotel in Chaweng on Koh Samui was this cabaret show, but seeing as it's Thailand, all the performers were either once are still are guys.  They had a great Tina Turner, but I ran out of video.  This is Arirang, a korean folk tune that just made me really laugh when they did it.

This is on Muuido with my friend Juliet.  We found these things, and lord knows what they are.  There is some PG-13 language due to oozing, but it's still cool to see.

I know you can't really tell, but this ferry from Koh Pan Ngan to Koh Samui was absolutely horrid.  I loved it!!!!  Sooo many waves it was like it's own ride!  Unfortunately for Jenny, she had imbibed a little too much the night before and she was turning rather green.

Here is Claire, my friend from Wales, showing off her drink at a bar in Chaweng.  I swear to god I was aiming the camera at the drink.

 

So, before I left for Thailand, I had 2 weeks of English camp, and one of my favorite warm up was draw one thing.  I pass out paper and ask the student to draw one thing and then they pass the paper along.  It's a precursor to write one word and other fun things to do in English class.  But the boys decided to be boys and draw not so appropriate things on the paper so I filmed them having a good time.

And here is a great new friend I made in Thailand wondering if I knew about Monty Python.  Of course I do. She's obviously not Thai, and the accent is from "international schools" as she puts it. 

Thailand, otherwise known as where I want to live now, was my holiday destination this year.  And, being that I still feel like being on a beach, or scuba diving, or getting really good food for cheap, I've uploaded all my photos to my flickr webpage and have yet to put them up here.  Fret not, the link is easy http://www.flickr.com/photos/scvdan  c'est simple, non?  I will eventually put many of them here with full on descriptions and silly or poignant anecdotes when I awaken from the dream like state I am currently in.  Until then, they speak for themselves.  Now it's back to the "rock" as Juliet calls it, and school days.
Until later...