Swimming Pool 101

Alrighty guys. Gonna make a quick post that I've been meaning to put up since last week.

This past week flew by since I started a new schedule at the hakwon for a short 6 week winter break program. It basically takes up my Tuesday and Thursday mornings, but still gives me time to make the 8:00-8:50 swimming schedule at the YMCA. Swim, shower, home, change, work til 9. Wednesday (work at 12:30, finish at 8:00, go tutor for 3 hours, go home and sleep) gets sandwiched by 8:00-9:00 Tuesday Thursdays. Don't get me wrong, it's worth the pocket money, but goodness I'm beat by Friday night.

So about that swimming pool.

First of all, swimming pool memberships are locked into time slots prepaid by the month. Basically these time slots are the times that are not being used by various other classes and programs. Generally, it's at the crack of dawn, lunch time, and again around 7 or 8. Most pools work this way.

Getting into the pool is quite different from what the American would be used to... i.e. getting publicly naked first. It's a fusion of pool and Korean sauna. Get your key, go to the locker room, strip down (essential to going to the showers as you will be stopped along the way by some ajumma before you have time to reach the shower floor in your bathing suit), go down stairs to the shower room, shower down with soap (rinsing is frowned upon), put your bathing suit on, and go straight from the shower room to the pool (you have to go through it to reach the pool).

I first experienced that when I was going to Korea University and I took a swimming class to finish off my credits while helping out with exercise at the same time. I lived right next door, so I saw no difference between rinsing down before and leaving my house with my bathing suit on under exercise clothes and making a B line for the pool--cause who wants to flaunt themselves to the local grandma population and fellow classmates? I was stopped many a time, but pulled the "I don't know, I'm a foreigner card" and they stopped bothering me. Bad Tessa, bad.

But as time goes on, you get used to the whole naked thing and just do it for the sake of efficiency and oddly enough avoiding interaction. That was the extent of my knowledge until I got to the YMCA for free swim...

It turns out there's an unspoken social dynamic in the 8:00 swim population.

You see, there's 6 lanes, two for each level: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. In the first week, I went with the intermediate level. And kept getting hit on the head by swimmers in the lane (there are usually about 5 people or more in each lane, just swimming laps). They were also really slow. I'm no competitive swimmer, but this was too much. Apparently "beginner" means "I can be in water by myself and not die" and intermediate means "I can reach the other side and come back without stopping midway." I couldn't get my heart rate up with this group taking up the lane, so I got some guts and went over to the advanced level.

I got fussed at by this woman for being too slow. As it turns out one of the advanced lanes (which had the least amount of people, the reason why I went there) is for this clique of swimmers that like to have leisurely laps and then suddenly sprint with butterflies and stuff. The next lane moved at my pace, or a little faster which pushes me to swim harder. Fine with me. But I had to be shamed first to get in. I always felt the disapproving eyes of that woman ever since--and you know she comes every day, as you will notice with most of the swimmers.

Though there are jolly and light hearted old women in the swimming "community" you can't help but feel the burn of those who seem to somehow be sitting at the top of the hierarchy. Going back to the shower, there are a lot of old women striking up conversation (some people try to talk in the pool but I promptly cut conversation with the point that I need to exercise. If I stop, it's cause I absolutely should breath before I go again if I don't want to drown.) but there are many whose lives revolve around making others follow rules.

Last week I had a bad day. I woke up a little late, and rushed to the pool. Started my laps. I made a lazy stretch with my arm as I was swimming and just slammed my middle and ring fingers into the plastic lane ropes. It's still bruised. But that put me off for the swim, thinking about whether it was worth it to stop and go ice it. I didn't. Somewhere along the way in deep thought, I realized my ear plug fell out (I've got sensitive ears). I stood up and looked around. It would be impossible to find the sky blue silicone plug in the turquoise water. As I was being hit by swimmers going past on both sides, the mean lady asked me if I lost something. Disheartened, I pointed to my remaining plug and said that it fell out. To get out of the way, I popped it back in my ear and I kept moving. For about 2 laps, I was thinking about where to get it and whether internet shopping would be worth the 2.50 shipping fee for something that only costs 7 dollars... but where would I find swimming gear nearby? etc etc etc. Back to the end of the lane, the woman was waiting for me with my ear plug in hand, and gave it back to me smiling.

At that point, I felt so relieved but also in a state of surprise and near confusion about my relationship with this woman. I realized then that she wasn't there to chastise me so much as to look after me. Though she has yet to compliment my swimming, she has accepted me as a "usual" member. There's a term for relationships between Koreans--jung. It's not quite love, but a bond that people have as humans to look out and care for one another. Ah, it's not social responsibility either. You have to feel it and then you know.

That morning, I realized that there's more kindness in that cold pool than I thought, and as cliche as it seems that bad days can and do get better.

That's as well as I can conclude this story, since I have to rush off to work. I spent the morning finding a laundromat that would clean my Uggs after I spilt board marker ink on them. They're now in the "hospital" for 3 weeks... Let's hope that bad thing will turn out nicely, too. Pleeeaaase?

Out of Retirement

It's been over four years since I came to Seoul. I honestly have no idea where most of the time went, but a lot has changed.

Looking at my old post, you could see that I was still into the k-pop scene, if at least interested. I can't say as much now. I honestly have no idea what's popular except for what I see on commercials, posters, and the occasional glance at the top 10 on Bugs (one of the main music streaming sites in Korea). Instead, I've been working and focusing on being a grown up in this giant metropolis. It's been more about cutthroat competition in the job market and education for me for the past few years.

Of course, that doesn't mean I haven't found time to go have a bit of fun here and there and meet up with my friends, who are now essentially only locals, as virtually all of my previous friends from study abroad have long gone home (except for those who have returned to teach). One day it occurred to me that I was the only foreigner in most of my circles of friends, and when people asked me about my foreign friends, I would have a really hard time thinking of more than five.

At that point, I knew something seemed different for my case as a foreigner in Korea. I have not reached the legacy of many of my mentors who have spent the past two decades in Korea, settling down with families and becoming fluent with the current events and language. I am certainly no longer the wide-eyed exchange student that I was a few years ago, either. During my time as a full time student, I had distanced myself from the "foreign community," mostly exchange students, short term English teachers, and military that come and go with such rotation that it just becomes emotionally draining to stay in that cycle (not to mention expensive to follow the Itaewon foodies). Somehow, I became that remaining 5% of long(er) term expats trying to make their way.

Though there are many expats in Seoul, Koreans are fascinated that I graduated from Korea University, worked in Korean companies, and prefer to speak with them in Korean rather than bothering with English (not to say that I'm fluent, but let's just say proficient. My grammar is still laughable and I definitely need to ask for a vocabulary next Christmas). I realized that my situation is far different from most here, and even I am still trying to place myself in this fast-changing society.

So before this becomes too much of an autobiography, I just wanted to let everyone know I'm back, after quite enough nudges to start recording my ramblings. I'll be keeping this blog as a commentary on my experiences, perspectives, and relationships here.

Let's do this.

Surprise Concert!

Okay guys. For the first time ever, I was taking pictures when my camera memory card filled up. All 8 gigs. That's about 3,000 pictures. The last thing I uploaded was from NYC... you guys can guess the extent of my flickr backup. I'm working on it, I promise!!

Anyway. Last week... what happened? I got to hang out with photo club some more. Met up with some friends here and there, getting dinner, coffee and such. Friday I finally went to immigration to get my second Alien Registration card (the first one got taken when I left the country... kinda pointless if you ask me). It took 2 hours of waiting. And there were still 150 people queued for the afternoon when I left. The lady treated me like an elementary student with a note pinned to my shirt. I had my document. My fee. My pictures. My passport(s). I had them stored in my classroom notes file folder that I take with me everywhere. The lady asks me for my folder... to check all my documents... I was like... "What?" She proceeds to thumb through all my personal notes and documents. The experience was a little humiliating, I do say so myself. I didn't even do anything wrong. She had all she needed in her hands to start with. Anyway I have to go back in a week to pick it up. Fun.

I then proceeded to Sinchon to hang out with my last standing foreigner friends: the Australians. They're still here because their school year works on the same Korean schedule: start in spring and end in winter. We went to get some Indian food. Decided then that we should noraebang for a few hours. And then we moved on to Adventure bar. I loved Adventure bar. It was big enough so that you don't stare at every group in the establishment, it's rather very private no matter where you are. Also, they have good anju (the food that you have to order with drinks). AND you can write on the walls. Sadly, the graffiti my fall 2009 friends so gracefully bestowed upon our favorite booths was swept away over the summer when they put up new wallpaper. [Sadface]. No worries. We started the process again. Always bring a sharpie around Seoul.

Saturday was lazy. Until it was time to go to a concert that my friends invited me to go to. They had an extra ticket and offered me to join. I got to see a slew of current pop artists including Jaebum and DJ Doc. It was great. Just like the last concerts, rather dangerous because of the crazed fans. They always present a safety hazard. But I left with all of my things in tact and about 400 pictures richer. I would have had more hadn't my memory card filled up. But honestly, I'm glad. I spent less time looking at my camera and more time looking at the stage. Good deal.

Today, I was supposed to meet with a friend. Because he needed some recovery time from a night out with his sonbaes (class seniors), it was rescheduled to Tuesday. Instead, I'm staying in my apartment catching up on some homework and eating some yang-nyeom chicken (almost like general tsao meets pad thai...) and watching tv movies and game shows. Today starts my search for an affordably good chicken place around my neighborhood. This review: $5 for a chicken, but there's too much sauce. Luckily there are about 4 shops along the main road, so hopefully one will be a hit.

Tomorrow? Class, I guess. A lot of classes are 'cancelled' due to ChuSeok (Korean Thanksgiving) which is on Wednesday, but Tuesday and Thursday are also considered part of the holiday. Two of my classes on Monday are rather optional, but I shall go ahead and go since I'll be on campus to drop off my homework. And because I love to go to class of course! Heh...

[Promise of pictures!] Actually, some are on Facebook, if you're aware of my facebook page. Go go go!

PS- Check this video out by EatYourKimchi. It shows what the supermarket looks like these days leading up to ChuSeok. Look at the large packages, and try and guess what's in them. They'relarge gift showcases of anything from shampoo to spam.

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KoYon Jun and Such.

This past weekend held the annual varsity competition between Korea University and Yonsei University. I covered the basics of it from last year. Notably, last year I was on the blue side of the stadium with Yonsei. This year, I got to see the world through a red lens of Korea University. It'd be a cute story to say that I had a newfound pride in my new university, that this time it was just like home, blah blah blah, but honestly I was a little nostalgic for Yonsei from start to finish. I know most of the cheers by heart and I knew so many faces. Korea, however, was a little foreign to me. Last year, it looked like an intimidating crowd, and this year it was the same... but closer. Haha.

I still had fun. I got to cheer with my friends at Yonsei, and I got to bond with my new ones at Korea University. It might be seen as a double allegiance, betrayal even, but it's all in good spirit. Oh, and Yonsei won.

Other than that, I guess I can summarize the major accomplishments this week. Classes are going well. We've been assigned to groups in most of the classes that have group projects. I wandered over to the student union building to find their photo club, HoYong Hui*. Between classes and these guys, I actually have a few recognizable faces on campus.

*HoYong Hui is YonYong Hui's (Yonsei Photo Club) arch rival. If you're interested in the name breakdown, here's how they go:

1. Yon (YONsei)
2. Yong (for the Chinese character, shadow, 影, pinyin: ying)
3. Hui (means group, meeting, 會, pinyin: hui)
4. HoYong Hui follows the same kind of pattern, but the exception is the first character isn't a shortened school name, but rather a reference to the mascot, a tiger (in Korean, horang-i), hence HOYong Hui.

Okay, Korean class dismissed. I guess pictures to be uploaded later. You guys have to nag me.

Korea Part II

Alas, I have found myself back in Korea. Study abroad went so well that I decided to come back as a regular student at Korea University, from where I should graduate in 2012. I wish I had been blogging through that decision and process, cause it was a crazy one. Basically up until now (the first week of school) everything has been last minute and by chance, despite my best attempts at organization. It's the nature of the Korean-foreigner relationship (jumping through hoops).

I promised a lot of people that I would keep up a blog this time around. I did a horrible job at doing one during study abroad. Things have been busy. I wanted to post as soon as I got to Korea, but amidst the craziness of trying to find an apartment (we took midnight rides with my friend's cousin's realtor friend to find some), the financial loops of phones, cards, and rent, and the madness of last minute registration for classes has exhausted my time for making coherent stories in writing.

But these days I'm feeling really good. I got everything worked out and I feel like for the first time in months, I can at least predict the upcoming week (which will include the YonKo Jun festival. excitement doesn't describe my anticipation enough. glee?). This weekend is pretty relaxed. The last bits of household needs are coming in: the stuff I left with my friend from my old apartment, a table for my oneroom, and a few odds and ends like a ricecooker and pots and pans so I can cook my own meals now. I can't wait. haha.

I was talking to a friend of mine from the first semester of study abroad. We came to the conclusion that this time around in Korea, things are completely different for me. I think that the objective is so much clearer to me. Independence might be the right word. This isn't school housing, this isn't a program, and for once I really have to live on my own. As scary as that sounds, it's a very motivating idea. I have the space I need, certainly all the opportunities I could ask for, and all the time in the world to make things happen.

Cheers to a new school year!

나무가 아픕니다

I've just settled in to the lobby of the Theology hall on campus. In about 40 minutes, I'll be in the first installment of the Doing Theology in Asia class. Yay! No, really. I'm excited about my classes this semester. They seem challenging (except one... but maybe I should keep it as a break). It's only the second day, so we'll see how this round goes.

Anyway on the way here, I was snooping around the club fair on the main road, trying to find the photography club I've been waiting to join since last semester (they only let new admits in when school starts... in spring). I only ended up joining film club and sitting in on a gospel concert, where I met a potentially promising youth group located in Guei (yeah, sounds like gooey).

Oh, Yonsei in the spring. It's pretty, and if I took pictures, it wouldn't do justice. And I'm not saying that its aesthetic doesn't convey in picture form, I'm saying you don't get to hear the loud overlapping music of the club advertisers nor can you smell the cow manure they use to get a jump start on a green campus. My favorite thing to see in Korean landscaping is the occasional "sick tree" signs (as quoted in the title of this post) accompanied with tree trunks stuck with IV needles. It's true. I saw more of them on the way to Theology Hall.

All in all, I still love it.

I got wind from the school that they're gonna let me transfer without having to cut off a limb. So I'm gonna have a bit of work cut out for me doing research on the application timelines as well as keeping up with classes.

And I know everyone's wondering what I could possibly have been doing all winter. And that's studying. I studied a whole semester's worth of Korean independently and took the placement test yesterday. The results will be posted in an hour and thirty minutes. Right after theology class. No time to waste. So yeah, though the winter's come and gone, I guess it might have been worth it. I came here to learn the language, after all. It saves money not going out all the time, and staying inside kept me from being sick all winter. It's alright. But I have to make up for the sightseeing and exploring this spring. Jeju-do, here I come!

"We're good students aren't we? We study during break. And party during the semester." -Alvin Cha

Don't judge. It's how things roll here.

DMZ Eco Tour!

I remember on the night of the meteor shower in November, my classmates and I had a hard time finding a place to go star gazing. In a city like Seoul, it's a rare sight to see, the stars. There's so much pollution in the air, sometimes it feels like there's a constantly grey-brown tint effect on the scenery. I took this picture from building 63 (right).

You can see a clear line in the atmosphere where the smog hovers above the city. Though the rainbow of colors you see is beautiful, it's depressing to know that it's from the pollution in the air. It's no wonder locals always look at their hometowns and the countryside with such fondness: chances are, it's cleaner and healthier. There are less people and fewer cars. More land and cleaner air. It's hard to imagine that only about an hour north of Seoul, there's the cleanest patch of land in the region: the DMZ. Because it has been marked as a no-man's land since the Korean War, no one has inhabited or disturbed the natural habitat that stretches 2 kilometers across the peninsula.

I recently took a eco-tour of the border where we were allowed to take photos of the landscape and the wildlife. Coming from the Lowcountry of South Carolina, I was curious to see how the wetlands of far east Asia would compare to home. I was looking forward to seeing wild animals again. And mostly, a landscape without three city blocks of apartments.

This eagle was the first thing to greet us at the observatory. There were quite a few when we got there, quite a treat. I had forgotten how long it had been since I saw a bird bigger than a crow. It brought me back to when we'd watch the eagles out in the back yard in the States. Later we found some herons. They were too far away to get a decent picture from the distance of the road.

At every location, we always found different animals. We spotted some geese feeding. Some ducks in the river. Some deer in the grass. And even some vultures in the fields. Strange as it seems, they feed them meat to scavenge off of.

I thought it was especially interesting to note that many of the animals we found at the DMZ are not native to this specific region, but have recently in the past five decades found refuge in the area because of its lack of human disturbance. Here's a shot of one of the more common birds of Korea. Did I mention deer? They're so cute.

Our tour guides worked together to explain a wide range of questions. They explained the migration patterns of geese, how the brackish water tides are what made some rivers' ice choppy and cracked while some were still frozen, the politics of the border, all the while identifying and searching for birds as they spoke. They even survived my quiz on the different kinds of tracking methods used on migrating birds (not my usual banter, but the curiosity that this trip brought out of me was surprising). It was as much of a treat for them to be outdoors looking for their winged friends as it was for us to see the place for the first time. On multiple occasions we were so fascinated by a formation of geese or trying to find a tag in a group of over thirty vultures that time nearly got away from us to continue on our trip.

The tour surpassed my expectations. Not only were the tour guides knowledgeable and passionate about the DMZ and its habitat, but the they brought us to areas that were previously impossible for the public to see. I hope that this tour will continue to run because this habitat deserves more respect and appreciation as a wildlife reserve. The DMZ never fails to bring a wide range of emotions. It's a source of historical value, political tension, and national hurt. Its juxtapositions are endless. The security always makes me feel vulnerable, yet safe. The museums are interesting, yet sad. The groups are always excited, but heavy-hearted. And in the middle of a war-torn country, the DMZ 2km is peaceful.

This last group of images is from our final stop at the top of a mountain. It overlooks most of the places we visited during our tour. All of the images can be found on my flickr site, and the tour was sponsored by Kyunggi Tourism Organization and hosted by Korea Marine Environment Management Corporation.