The Couples Factory

Phew.  Well, we leave for Vietnam early tomorrow morning.  We're packed (aside from a bit of drying laundry), have all our travel docs and foreign currency in order, and the name of the hotel we'll be staying at the first night.  We haven't lost anything since we packed, and I minimized my gear to a manageable weight.  Got some stylish new Merrell hikers for my birthday and we're off to a month of adventure.

But not too much adventure, I promise, mom.  And no street food. The last thing we want is a Shanghai repeat. Honestly.

The lead-up to this trip has been hectic: one hour off during business hours each day, and lots to get ready because ... yes, we left it all to the last.  Some things, however, were out of our control. A wedding date, for instance ...

A British teacher at The School invited us to her Korean wedding with Ja-in. (A second wedding, the British version for her family, will take place in the spring. Coworkers replaced family for the Korean version and Ja'in's family dominated attendance 200:8)  Jon wasn't able to make it because he was working, meaning that he missed quite an experience.

Now, let me explain what I've heard about Korean weddings.  See, I've only been to a couple of weddings in my life; former employees of my parents, my uncle Jeff and aunt Alison's wedding, and the dozens of less significant weddings I 'attended' as a banquet server. (Thank you to the Glen Cairn golf course for invaluable serving experience - I wouldn't have understood the commercial side to a wedding without you.  My goodness those bills were big.)

But Canada's wedding scene doesn't compare to the assembly-line weddings I've learned about from my students.  I expected to be one of 600 guests at Gemma's wedding, which, students told me, would probably last only a few hours.  As I was cautioned by other teachers who have been invited to the weddings of their students, I heard the next wedding party in the hallway while the ceremony was taking place.  Here, it seems, wedding halls are more like couple factories.  

And you thought package deals in Canada were predictable ...

Exhibit A: Wedding invitations.  Straight from the wedding hall in an easy-to-reprint format.

Exhibit B: Wedding photos.  They are taken weeks, sometimes months in advance, and the bride does not wear her own dress, but the studio's dress.  She also uses the studio's makeup, unless, as Gemma said, 'it sucks' and the bride-to-be is already a Lancome/Chanel/M.A.C. shopper (as many Korean women are ...).  For the real event, the dress is rented. (OK, sentimental value of the dress aside, renting a dress is genius - but how many times can a Vera Wang be resized?)  Not sure if Gemma rented or bought her dress.

Shortly after taking pictures of these wedding pictures (yes, ridiculous, I know), they were whisked away by a wedding hall employee and replaced with the next couple's photos.  This is while the bride and groom were still having their photos taken in the hall.  Oh, the hall.  It's exhibit C.  It was artfully neutral and, as one person has commented, quite 'futuristic' when compared to a church.  Character?  Maybe.  Warmth?  Sort of.  High fashion runway?  Check.  If it wasn't for the fact that this room had no doors to close off noise (i.e. chatty wedding-goers, both inside and out), I'd probably prefer it to a regular church wedding.

This brings us to Exhibit D: gifts.  Everyone gives money.  Now, I knew this early and ran around like crazy the morning of trying to find any store open before 10am that also sold cards.  I had to settle on GS25 (a convenience store chain).  I should have just waited.  Everybody I saw used the same white envelope.  You know, like the kind you get at a bank.  In order to get your buffet ticket, you were required to sign the registry and (if you were to follow everyone else around you ... and avoid dirty looks and nasty whispers from many) hand over that cash in a given envelope with your name on it. This is the kind of pressure I could never live with.

Despite all these differences, the wedding was short and sweet. Zoe, a coworker, worked at 2 in the afternoon and was still able to stay through the ceremony (which lasted far less than 1 hour - more like 30 minutes for the marriage itself!) and even eat lunch if she had wanted to. I was able to get a pair of hikers and a travel purse and get home by 4pm.  Overall, it was far less cumbersome than many weddings I experienced, and the ceremony was no less meaningful (again, apart from the gabbers in the back).  And Gemma, for all her indifference before the wedding (I seem to recall her saying something like 'I couldn't care less about this bloody wedding' when I asked her about the dress code at work) smiled ecstatically for over two hours - probably longer.

The final stage of the wedding - after visiting the bride; after the ceremony; after photos; and after the buffet - was what I'd come for.  Gemma in her hanbok (traditional Korean dress) and ceremonial wedding attire.  What I had thought would be a very Asian ornate hairpiece turned out to be just part of her headdress; Ja'in's rather plain blue top and pink "jazz pants" were replaced with embroidered versions.  And Gemma's red lips were matched with rouge like I've never seen rouge done before; one big round dot on each cheek to ward off evil.

All in all, I couldn't have asked for a better birthday: new cultural experiences, time with friends, a teeny-tiny bit of shopping for really fun and useful stuff ... and an ice cream waffle delight from Hagen Daaz to top it all off.  Feed the mind and the body, isn't that what the Olympians did?

Soft Power For the (Still) Fairer Sex

"I felt more like an advice columnist than a secretary of state."

- Hilary Clinton, quoted from the NY Times.

It looks as though only the most beautiful Korean students were chosen to stand behind America's Secretary of State.  Note the double eyelids everywhere - 'eyelid surgery' is often a high school graduation gift from parents.

She reenergized many of The School's female student body with her visit to EWHA Woman's University during its orientation for new students (OT, as the students all it).

But what she said, or advised, exactly is not entirely clear.  Sure, her goal was to create future leaders in a social climate that still doesn't fully accept powerful women.  Yes, our school's CEO is a woman, but many female students openly dream of marriage or plastic surgery, not power.  As cute as it might seem at first, I suspect this is why a young Korean woman asked Mrs. Secretary of State how she met her husband.  Ambitious young thing, trying to peg a future president early on. (Here's a hint: go to a co-ed university.  As far as I know, that's where Bill and Hilary met).

My question is, however: in what language did Hilary give her speech?  Was it given only in English, to be understood only by the linguistically gifted or daughters of families rich enough to pay for years of extra English lessons?  Or did the organizers choose that cumbersome translation format, where everything is heard twice: once in English, then again in Korean, just like our staff parties? (Lucky for EWHA's students, the content would have been undoubtedly more stimulating than a staff meeting).

I tried to ask a few students what Mrs. Clinton had actually talked about.  You know, the question all students dread being asked by their teacher: "So, what was the main argument?" 

One lower-level student gave me a short answer with lots of enthusiasm, something predictable like, 'She talk about empower women and make me feel excited for university'.  An intermediate-level student gave me some vocabulary words in no particular order but using the stress and intonation that could have helped it pass for a full sentence: 'She said women empowerment important for ... uh, oppression ... uh, future empowerment women.'

The title of the speech was 'Women's Empowerment'.

But maybe I'm coming across a bit too harsh on these students.  I don't mind that they can't communicate the details of the speech to me or that their sentences sometimes just aren't.  I just hope the message wasn't totally lost on these women.  Some of them need all the non-surgeried, non-male-and-family-dependent inspiration they can get.

Propaganda South of the DPRK

Well, we survived.  We did what so many E-2 visa holders before us have done and travelled with a group of teachers to the demilititarized zone (DMZ) early on the morning of December 20.  A Korean friend rented a van for the seven of us, and drove us to the border a short distance but long time away.  Korea's so small, you see, that highways are not as common as red lights through residential and commercial areas.  The 50-odd kilometer trip took over an hour with a fast driver.

Once we arrived and bought our tickets (less than 10,000 won) we had to kill a bit of time on the South Korean side.  Near the ticket booth and close to a few small souvenir stands - those vendors brave some really cold days! - was the Bridge of Freedom, a bridge built to exchange 12,773 prisoners during the Korean War in 1953 (or so says my little tourist brochure).  At the end of the ROK's side of the bridge was this fence covered with messages to loved ones still in the North.

Predictably, we had to board a tour bus to visit the few sites along the border we were allowed to see.  We were the only big group of Western foreigners, but two tour guides gave information in English (first), in Chinese (second) and in Korean only after each stop's visit was over.

First stop was a military base on the South Korean side of the border, 2km from the country's boundary (part of the agreement the countries signed when creating the DMZ included a 2km retreat from the border).  "You are lucky," our sweet Korean tour guide told us in English.  "It is a clear day today.  It is normally much cloudier."  Although there were inexpensive pay-to-view public binoculars to peer across the border with, it was a foggy day.  I could barely see the big building in the North Korean 'city' across the DMZ that was supposed to represent industry and big business.  "There are 17 factories in this city," our tour guide said.  Even accounting for the fact that the DMZ is a veritable conservation area, I, for one, saw no sign of life.

Admission: this photo has been doctored using the massively sophisticated program iPhoto (note: not a sophisticated program) to try and show you more of the landscape.  I just wish it was also able to show you the beautifully reddish-orange sky to the right of the camera's view.

After taking a few pictures in front of the yellow line (gasp!) drawn on the pavement to mark the photography 'safe zone', we hopped back on the bus to our next stop; a tourist information centre.  Ooooh!

Here, we were ushered through the small information centre filled with billboards of information, maps and 'interactive' sceneries explaining the Zone.  Most interesting to me was a series of four billboards that described four underground tunnels that had been discovered since the 1960s, if memory serves.  The billboards claimed that the tunnels had been dug by North Korean forces before, during or after the war (I can't recall which).  Apparently, the North continues to deny that it was responsible for these tunnels.

After a short, sad video set to loud rock music, we were ushered out of the building and across the parking lot to a souvenir store (not our last, by any means).  Here, we were instructed to put all our belongings in free lockers - cameras in particular - and then proceed down the hallway to pick up a yellow hard hat.

Hard hat?

The hallway led to a long, bouncy ramp down into one of the tunnels that had been discovered by the South.  At the base of the ramp, our guide showed us holes drilled into the granite cave.  About 3cm in diameter and drilled deep into the surface, the holes were drilled upwards at maybe a 30 degree angle.  These were dynamite holes, our guide told us.  Because of the angle at which they were drilled, we know that the North excavated the tunnel, she said.  They also lied about the reason for drilling the tunnel.  Even though the cave was drilled into granite, the North claimed they made the tunnel to excavate coal.  They painted the cave with thick black paint to try and fool the South.  Look, she said, and she wiped thick, wet black stuff from the walls of the cave, revealing sparkling pink granite.

Right.  This, only three days after this BBC news story explaining how the North has accused the South of trying to assassinate Dear Leader.

Sure enough, when we started walking to the end of the tunnel, about 1.3km from the base of the ramp, we noticed that the wet black stuff lined the humid cave right to the end.  Black paint and holes in granite weren't the only reasons we'd walked so far down into this tunnel (remember, we had to walk back up, too).  After ten minutes of ducking steel poles, hitting our hard hatted heads on the pointy granite ceiling and shuffling past incoming visitors who had already been to the end of the tunnel, we reached the end and waited in line for our turn.  It wasn't until I was at the front of the line that I realized what it was I was going to be looking at.

Barbed wire kept me fifteen feet back from the mail slot-sized hole in a plywood wall.  I lunged to the left, into a puddle, to get a better view through the rectangle.  The bright light above me, meant to improve the sight of the permanent security camera behind me, made it difficult to see through to the next wall and beyond it.  There were three walls, and nobody should pass through all three of them to get to the DPRK, we'd been told at the top of the ramp.  South Korean military had used to be stationed between the first and second walls.  But the danger was between the second and third walls, which enclosed a space filled with land mines.  I was 170m from North Korea, hundreds of metres beneath the DMZ.

The eerie feeling lasted only a few seconds, because by then someone else had shuffled in behind me to take their turn.

So we shuffled back to the bright end of the tunnel, a little less carefully this time.  Many head bumps later, we were in bright artificial light and hiking up the steep ramp and onto the bus.  Not before we hit up the souvenir shop, though.  Although I was tempted to get some ginseng jelly candy made in North Korea (ginseng is Korea's national pride - both in the South and the North, as our tour guide would have us believe), Jon had a better idea.

For 4,000 won, about the same price as the watery Southern stuff, this beer was great.  More like Heineken, I think, although I have a hard time believing that North Koreans actually drink the stuff.  Is one allowed to drink beer in a country whose authorities claim that its civilians must consider "adhering to the national grain regulations and preserving army rations as the top priority"?

Onto the next stop: a bathroom and another souvenir shop.  Next?

The train to nowhere.  Opened in 2002 by South Korea's then-President and George W. Bush (there's a picture in the station of Bush holding a pen upside down while signing a rail tie) I don't believe the sation has seen any passengers pass through its doors.  Officially, it is known as the ROK's first stop until it opens for travel to Pyeongyang.  Its grand opening date is unknown, but it has been staffed for years despite the fact that it is almost entirely empty.  An awfully boring place for a poor Korean man doing his mandatory military service to be stationed.  I felt badly for the two soldiers who must guard the unmoving escalator day in and day out.

Then it was back on the bus to warm our frozen toes, to return to our vehicle and to head out of the little town that must depend on tourism until the train station opens for business.  Judging by recent North-South relations, they'll need to man the arcade for a few years yet.

Alive and Kickin'

We've just finished another month of classes (3 down, 9 left) and another 3-day weekend. We've been busy, too, so it's time for an update.

Jon ran in a 10k race on Sunday - first race in years! - with some of our coworkers. Did marvelously. Ran it in under 40 minutes - can you believe it? The field was capped at an enormous 10,000 runners, walkers and joggers, from kids about 10 years old and upwards. The field had a small majority of men, according to the race results page, outnumbering women by 500. Jon, of course, ranked in the top two percent, only one second behind the man in 60th place. He ran it so fast that I missed his finish entirely and have no pictures to show. Will keep searching online for professional photos that I can post instead.

He had taken the place of Richard King, our coworker, neighbour and furniture hunter extraordinaire, who didn't know he'd been signed up for the race until he received his race package - race tee, timing chip, etc. Jon and I had missed the signup because we had expected to be out of the country during a 5-day holiday (this is the one that was shortened after the fire - construction on the blasted 7th floor continues). So Jon was able to take Richard's place and I went along for the ride. The 7am Sunday ride.

To view captions of this slideshow, hover your mouse over the bottom of the image and then click the word bubble at the bottom left of its window.

The race took place outside of the city, at a rowing club without enough parking (but of course). We arrived at the less than ten minutes before the race began, drove past the noisy, crowded starting line and away, away into the depths of the club to find a parking spot. Jon and the the other racers from the School got a nice warmup jogging to the start line and they sqeezed into the side of the throng of red-shirted racers only 30 seconds or so before the race began. Close call!

Trying to take a picture of Jon during the race, I jogged to the first curve of the course about 400m from the starting line. Weighed down by one gym bag on each shoulder, a jacket and water bottle in one hand and the camera and its case in the other, I was too slow to beat Jon or any other teacher to it. I must have spent about 15 minutes standing at the curb, watching all the runners (I wouldn't call all of them athletes, especially after the first few hundred competitors had passed), absolutely mesmerized by all the red Adidas shirts that had been included in the race package. Snapping out of it, I moved to the finish line to catch them at their best/worst ... and ran into the same problem. I must have seen over 5,000 finishers cross the line ... eyes peeled, darting from one racer to the next ... I must have blinked - slowly. Actually, I missed everyone from The School, so I must have had my eyes closed or lost in a daydream.

The School provided all with a nutritious post-race meal: deep-fried Chinese food and beer. At 10am. A glorious finish and home for a rest!

We finished the day the same way we had started it: near the water. The day of the race was also the day of Seoul's International Fireworks Festival, which is held on the Hangang (Also known as the Han river; 'gang' is Korean for 'river'). Actually an international fireworks competition, this Festival offered 30-minute-long explosive perfomances to the hundreds of thousands of spectators crowded on blankets and newspaper at the river's edge. Throngs of people swarmed the path from subway station to park, stopping traffic and taking over roadways. But the crowds didn't start there: as soon as we'd gotten on the subway we realized that it was going to be incredibly busy. I imagine it was similar to Tokyo's subway traffic: Ali, care to comment?

Once we arrived at the park, the crowds weren't much better. Chris, a coworker from Detroit, led our way through the crowds while the fireworks boomed.

Even though the subway was a sardine tin of spectators, most families, it seemed, had come early and prepared. Blankets, cardboard and newspaper had been spread on the ground creating a semblance of personal space in the crowd of over 100,000. It made no difference. Latecomers like us wove their way between the patches, migrating towards the best view of the fireworks, the edge of the river. It was worth the extra wait to get there.

(What was NOT worth it: the two hour walk away from the park in search of a way home! They had closed the subway station for safety reasons, the buses jam-packed and taxis all taken. Ah, if only I'd listened to my students, who warned me about the difficult trip home and who had mentioned that it was likely the reason they wouldn't attend the festival.)

The Scream

Ah, the beauty of Korean cafes ... macchiatos, cappucinos and lattes cost the same as a regular cup o' joe, water is free and seating is plentiful.

On the other hand, you could also say that a regular coffee is far overpriced at above 3,000won (US$3), that the cost of water must be included in this price, and that far too many young people receive an extravagant allowance they spend frivolously on expensive food and caffeinated drinks. Either way, cafes in Gangnam are plentiful and busy, especially in the evenings and on weekends.  South Korea's Paris Croissant (silly maybe, but great pastries) America's Starbucks, and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, and Italy's Cafe Pascucci are the big names in coffee here, beating out the smaller Korean cafes that can only afford moderately overpriced real estate, like Cafe Ediya, Coffee n Kiss, and others I've yet to pass by.

The School has its own cafe on the 11th floor, a spacious room with a projection TV, English magazines, cards, board games and study space.  Students often want to visit this cafe on the final day of classes, when School policy allows teachers to hold classes outside of our little cubicle rooms, because the coffee is half the price of other cafes and the no-Korean policy helps ease the anxieties of those too embarrassed to speak English outside of The School.  (This, of course, makes you wonder whether they'll ever use English outside of The School)

Now, teaching seven classes per month means that many classes want to go to this upper-floor cafe (which, admittedly, has a much better view than other cafes).  It's horribly boring for us teachers, who would love to get out of the workplace for a break - while getting paid! no less - and are just tired of the long-Friday feeling that two consecutive "Last Day of Classes" events brings our way.  So I often give students the choice, and when they (often) can't decide I suggest a nearby cafe to keep costs down and to keep from stuffing myself with food for two days.

At the end of August, I led a lower-level class to Cafe Pascucci, less than one block from The School, for a mid-afternoon coffee and easy two-hour chat.  We arranged a few tables together on the second floor, went back down to the first to order our lattes, iced caramel macchiatos and iced mochas, then returned to the second floor to chat.  And what a yelling match it was.

With about 80 or so young people on the same floor, all excited about Friday, the beginning of classes - which means rekindled friendships more than anything else, of course - and just hanging out in trendy Gangnam, all five of my students had to lean forward to hear anything said at our table.  Some gave up and engaged in private conversation at either side of me.  One had never really comprehended English anyways - and only answered with nods, a slow "yes," "no" or a confused glance and a desperate plea for translation aimed at another student throughout the class - just chatted away in Korean until somebody else spoke enough for her to listen silently.

Needless to say, we all had to concentrate very hard to hear each other.  That must have been one reason we were so surprised when we heard a terrifying blood-curdling scream come from a few tables away.

All 160 eyes shot towards the source of the scream.  A young woman in a pretty light pink dress was all I saw from my seat, her head held high and face aimed at her boyfriend, who held his own head low, very low.  Call me melodramatic, but I just looked for blood - a lost finger, a gash on a forehead, a nail in a foot, anything.  But no fabric was stained, and no other coffee drinkers make a move towards the troubled couple.  A nearby woman had leaned back in her chair, gripping its back and the table for balance and looking as though she'd been physically pushed into her chair by the power of the scream.  All jaws were dropped, nobody talked, and the chest of the young woman heaved after its incredible exertion.  The silence continued for a full 10 seconds, at least, my heart raced, and Gangnam experienced a rare moment of absolute silence in a very public place.

I'd been told about domestic disputes in Korea after my arrival - been advised not to interfere with a couple shouting and crying in public and to expect conservative gender roles to dominate.  Social divisions based on gender/income, and age especially, have been maybe less apparent to me in classes than they are in the rest of Korea.  But this was a wake up call: not only was this 'domestic' very public, but nobody intervened.  Myself included.  Maybe that's what surprised me most.

The room slowly, quietly restarted their conversation - many talking about the couple who continued to hold their positions, frozen in tableau - until the ripple of murmurs grew into first quiet, then normal-volume conversation.  It didn't reach its initial volume while we were there.

One student of mine, who had just broken up with her boyfriend, took the opportunity to voice concern for the distraught couple, who, she said, "we should understand," or sympathize with.  I turned the conversation to the possibility of depression and the prevalence of such diagnoses in Korea.  Misunderstandings took this conversation into the realm of sleeping pills, and we ended the class 45 minutes after the scream talking about exercise, activity and sports.

It wasn't until I described the incident to other teachers that a third possibility came to mind: could this have been a case of a bratty Korean girl challenging her boyfriend to disobey - or else?  She had left the cafe first, snatching her oversized purse from the chair beside her and walking at a good clip with him only a few steps behind (still hanging his head low, very low).  Although it's all speculation, several senior teachers - both Korean and non-Korean - nodded agreement when I proposed this cause.

So, domestic dispute or temper tantrum?  Either way, I'll never forget the terror she delivered into our minds with a scream that really should be reserved for emergencies.  Isn't there a Korean version of Aesop's 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf'?