THE BATHHOUSE!

So last weekend a group of us ETAs decided to check out one of the Korean-style bathhouses here in Chuncheon. As it turned out, there were maybe 12 girls in on this trip, and ... me. Hey, I love getting naked. The adventure began when I actually had to take a different elevator up to the baths from the lobby. A few of the girls could speak passable Korean, and I ... can talk about going to the store and say things like "I am hungry", which I don't think would have helped me much. ;) So I get up to the men's floor and the man in charge ushers me around, gives me a key to a locker for my shoes and my clothes, and then disappears. I get changed into the little tshirt and shorts they give you, and I go wandering around ... the plan is to meet up in the co-ed sauna area, so I start to explore. I actually almost tripped over a few people, even though there are amazing leather chairs and tree benches all over the place, there are middle-aged women sprawled out all over the floor everywhere, watching TV or just staring into space. I can't find anyone right off the bat, so I decide to go one floor down ... and as my foot touches the first step, a group of old women by a pillar start yelling and waving their hands at me ... apparently it's bad form for a wayward young man to go wandering down into the women's area. ;) So I went back up to the men's section and after swallowing my American modesty, joined Koreans young and old in the naked hot tubs. Surprisingly, the most popular age was late teens. It would certainly be weird for a bunch of high school guys to go to the bath together after school, but these guys were dunking each other in the pools, chilling out and just having a great time. We haven't been swimming the whole time we've been here and its been beastly hot, so the cold tub (maybe like 3 feet in depth) was great to swim around in, and it had a mini waterfall in it as well which felt amazing. Eventually found the girls in the co-ed section, but that initial time to decompress on my own turned out to be exactly what I needed. Downstairs they had a bunch of different rooms with different heat settings, including one that both looked and felt like the brick ovens they cook pizza in at Bertucci's. Oh my god. My favorite were the leather massage chairs (best massage received in my life so far, for the equivalent of US$1 for 8 minutes!) and this really crazy belt massager in the gym area. You would have had to be there for that one. Can't wait to go back, what a relaxing day. :)

Sometimes the simplest things just make your day. We've been having some nasty heat waves here in Chuncheon, and today the weather broke in a downpower in late afternoon. Much to the horror of onlooking Koreans, I was totally that American guy who went jumping and skipping in the rain. A couple of Korean girls muscled me under their umbrella for a while, and then we ended up talking for a while. And then they helped me with my Korean homework. :D And then one of them sent me an email.

"Hi!~ henry.
I am very pleased to know you.
You are very kind and humorous.
Really, I want to go to Boston.
If is gone to Boston, with you, I want to spend a time.
I was pleased because can help your homework.
If I learn English to you, may be glad.
Friday, go together to eat sherbet.
Will desire that you become nice teacher.

Good-night."

I heart Korea.

Hey everyone. :)

Well, it's been two weeks since I arrived here in Chuncheon. I thought it would be a good idea to give it a little time before I cracked open the ol' blog. I feel like I've lived a year in the past two weeks, and writing about everything would have probably taken most of my time. Anyhow.

Korea is, in a word, amazing. I'm having a terrific time so far. I'm living in a dormitory with 59 other English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) and we've been attending language classes and otherwise absorbing the culture of the city of Chuncheon, which is a moderately sized city (but huge by my standards). We're living in Kangwon National University, in a dorm right next to the dining hall. Thank god. Yeah, you guys know that's the first thing I'm going to write about.

The first week here we had language classes for 5 hours a day. It's down to 3 in the morning now, but we still get about 2 hours of homework every day and now we're starting cultural workshops and teaching workshops that take the whole afternoon. We're all learning Korean like mad - right now we've already past the mid-semester's point of knowledge if this were a college class. We've also been paired up with members of the English club on campus here, and they've been showing us around the city and helping us with our hangul (Korean characters) and conversation. They're also super cool people, and a lot of fun to hang out with. :D

This past weekend the Fulbright program, led by the illustrious Mrs. Shim (a really sweet old lady who already learned my name[?!] and who likes to send the ETAs buckets of watermelons) took us to Songnisan, a mountain resort town in the center of the peninsula. It's the home of Beopjusa, one of the largest templexes in the country, which was built back in 553 AD and has one of the largest Buddhas ("bool" in Korean) in the world. I could literally talk about this place for days ... I got to meditate in one of the monks' buildings for a while, watched the drumming ceremony, and then the next day hiked up to the top of the surrounding peaks and visited some of the hermitages on the side of the mountains. There were little gardens everywhere, and fresh spring wells for weary backpackers. One monk met us at the entrance to his hermitage and showed us his meditation platform in the clouds, and a stone cave grotto with one big Buddha in the center and hundreds of smaller "children of the Buddha" from floor to ceiling on the sides. I've never seen anything like it. I'm actually glad my camera ran out of batteries at that point, I felt like I could enjoy it instead of just trying to set up the perfect shot. I can't wait to arrange a temple stay ... it's a popular pseudo-tourist / meditation retreat in Korea, and it sounds like it would be easy enough to arrange.

Everything in Korea is super cheap. The exchange rate is roughly 1,000 won to a dollar - you can get ice cream for 800 won, patbingsu (fresh fruit, sweet beans, ice, and soft serve ice cream mixed in a big bowl) for maybe 1,500 won per person, and a gigantic pitcher of beer for 10,000 won that would fill maybe 7 or 8 cups. The local drink here is so-ju, which is a 50 proof almost-vodka-tasting rice drink that's served from a bottle into little cups (and the Koreans will say "ONE-SHOT!" and just down it). My personal favorite so far is the macicola, a creamy rice wine served from a cauldron with plates and plates in the Korean traditional pubs for what seems like pennies. We all feel like we're cheating when we go out at night, but being poor post-college students, we really appreciate it. ;)


Right now the big question on everyone's minds is our placement for the year. We're not guaranteed to get what we request, but everyone's got preferences in terms of rurual/sub/urban, geographical location, high/middle school, coastal/inland, etc. etc. My only requirement really is that I'm close to the coast and close to a Buddhist temple, but I think I'd prefer rural to anything else. I'm considering being placed on the subtropical Jeju-do island, which has some of the best hiking and beaches and local culture in Korea, but is also a little isolated. We'll see, I'll let you guys know how that turns out.

Korean food is, by my standards, absolutely brilliant. We eat kimchi (spicy pepper cabbage) and rice 3 meals a day. There is no cheese and no cereal I think, in the whole country. I haven't seen one sandwich yet. (I'm in heaven.) Korean food contains a lot of unidentifiable mushrooms and roots, and sometimes it's a guessing game (is this ... squid? no no, that's a radish. you sure?!) We had these little baby octopuses the first day, that pretty much set the tone for everything after. My favorite food so far is spicy kimchi soup with sausage, needless to say any inclinations toward vegetarianism have been dismissed as utterly foolish. The consciousness around that sort of thing is so different here, group mentality is a lot more important, and expressing one's ethics apart from the group is considered anti-social and undue deviation from the standard. My own jury's still out on the more radical bits of neo-Confucian culture here (repression of women's voice, corporal punishment in school, etc.) - we're encouraged to be as open-minded as possible as this is a cultural exchange, and I'm making a concerted effort to do just that.

Let's see, what else. There's a small cute lil dog that lives outside the dormitory that my friends here and I have named Friend. He looks a lot like Ein from Cowboy Bebop. Korea seems to be under attack by large squadrons of dragonflies, we see swarms of them high in the air over the dining hall, and on top of the peak in Songnisan there were literally hundreds. I've been playing a lot of sports over here - last week I placed basketball with some Koreans and learned how to say "good game" like maybe 5 times (I still couldn't tell you what it is), and over the last few days we've gotten a bunch of pickup soccer games that have lasted into the night. I was going to join the gym over here but there's really no need. We have two 10-minute breaks during our morning language classes and a group of us rushes out to play hacky sack with a fervor in sharp constrast to our bleary-eyed hangul studies. I've made some really really good friends already. :)

OH! Tea! But of course. Coffee is a lot more popular in this country unfortunately, but yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a tea ceremony demonstration by some of the former ETAs from 2004. She gave us all a taste of loose leaf green tea, which was delicate and delicious. I forgot how much I'd missed it over the last two weeks. Hahah, just kidding. I bought some green tea from what looks like the most popular Korean tea distributor, but I'll be looking arond for some loose leaf and a tea pot as soon as I can - I think one of the 2004 ETAs is going to lead a little tea expedition next week. We also learned a little about the tea plantation culture here in Korea, apparently there are some good spots for touring in the southwest and on Jeju-do.

I just posted some new pictures on my Flickr account, so check those out if you're so inclined. Thanks to all of you who emailed me in the past two weeks, it's been really nice to hear from you and to come back to something familiar at the end of the day. To those of you who I haven't responded to, don't worry, I haven't forgotten!! I'm sorry for the long post, I know I hate reading things of this length online, and I'll try to post in shorter bits from now on. Anyway, be well and know that I love and miss you all. :)

(CUP COUNT:1)
My journey begins now.

I'm sitting here at my dad's Powerbook G4 at the kitchen table, my luggage is in the car ready to go, and yes - I'm drinking a cup of tea. The tea is Numi Monkey King Jasimine Green Tea, and it's delicious. I don't think I know enough tea-drinkin words to describe the subtleties, but it makes me feel like a monkey king, wooping around the forest, swinging from trees and making a monkey-king crown out of leafy greens and banana peels. I think Korea will be something like that. ;)

Anyway, it's time to head out, so the next time I post in here I'll be in KOREA !! I just want to say - thank you all for being so amazing these past few weeks. It's been harder than I thought to pack up and go, and I'll miss you all very very much. Expect some kitschy Korean souveniers in the mail as soon as I can get to a post office. Talk to all'ya'll soon ! :D

Today I missed the morning. I woke up to soft breeze, and the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was blue sky. My bed is right next to the window, and after the clouds we've had for the last week, it was the greatest gift I could have imagined.

Three ... days ... !!

Every night after dinner, if I go outside, I can hear what sounds like Italian opera from my neighbor's backyard. Tonight I was finishing up some landscaping in the yard for my parents, and I felt myself getting lost in it, this strange anti-suburban melody mixing up my after-dinner routines and throwing me headlong into the crescendo of a dramatic movie.  


My emotions have been all over the place these past few days, and I think most of my problem is that in being home, I can't see anything past my own nose. I need something as simple as incomprehensible opera to drag me out of my own head. I've been doing nothing but making packing lists and saying goodbye (annyonghi kyeseyo! ^_^) to everyone, and I don't really stop to realize why I'm doing all of this. I'm going to Korea in 5 days. And when I really think about it, there's nothing else I'd rather be doing, for real. Those words hold a power I've never felt before in my life. I'm doing exactly what I'd like to do, if I could do anything in the world. :) 


I've been drinking a tea called Bija, and I'm too lazy to google it right now, it's almost time for bed. ;) But I'll say this - it's the only tea that I need to take the teabag out after a few minutes. I like my tea strong, and this one's the richest I've ever tasted. Here's to richness! Anyhow, hope you guys like that one of Kristin, the Pink Crusader. That's me and Becca, and Elisabeth (those are prescription, believe it or not!) ... thanks again for an awesome party last weekend, guys :)  

Me and Cait went to the beach yesterday! This was supposed to be a video post, unfortunately I couldn't fool Picasa into posting the .wmv file, and it turned out as an image instead. Still not too bad, and I'm currently looking into getting some video hosting for the blog. Any ideas? :) (EDIT!) Got the video post working!! Just click on the picture for a little video clip. :)  

From a Yogi Tea bag: "Travel light, live light, spread the light, be the light." Yeah. :)

two weeks ...

That's right, two weeks from today I'll be sitting on a cramped plane just heading out over LAX airport toward Seoul. I'll be living with a host family somewhere in South Korea on a Fulbright, teaching English and doing a little side research on Buddhist values in Korean sustainable communities. Yeah, I'm a little scared of the culture shock (and the fact that I speak no Korean, shhhhh!), but mostly I'm itching get back on the road again. :)

My friend Jennifer and I had the idea to do some travel writing when she comes out to travel in the winter months, and we decided to center it around the experience of tea - drinking, sharing, smelling, tossing hot cups on would-be thieves, and the like. Offering a cup of tea to a stranger seems to be aquintessential act of hospitality - it's something that takes the focus away from making small talk about the weather, it's a shared sense experience that can bring people together. Plus it's damn tasty. I't similar I guess to sharing a pint, but with alcohol there's sometimes the assumption of sexual interest, where tea is definitely neutral. Neither of us are tea coinosseurs by any means, and I think that will make this project even more interesting. At least we won't be snooty! We did however make a vow to try the most exotic types of tea we can find, starting in our own houses and grocery stores. My current favorite's still Earl Gray (in honor of Capt. Picard) but I'm sure might change.

Anyway, since this blog *is* called the tea diaries, I thought I'd start off the first post with an actual diary entry, about tea. This is from the little black book I carry around with me, from about a week ago. I went to my favorite cafe, The Trident Bookstore, on Newbury Street. Here goes:

"Monday, June 13th
Boston, MA 2:51 PM
Gen Mai Cha (green tea)
I'm trying to place the smell - it's a food small. I want to say faintly of seaweed - sushi seaweed? But subtle, not overpowering. SESAME. that's it. I'm sitting at the 'bar' here at Trident, waiting for Becca and reading Utne Reader. It's a little slow so it's been comfy and I've been talking to the waitress a bit. The customers here never seem rushed, everyone just soaks the feel of the place in. Definitely a great spot to chill out (and they have free WiFi!)."

So that's the general format, though I'm sure I'll deviate quite a bit. I'm planning on throwing as many pictures and movies up here as I can as well, you know ... MULTIMEDIA! Seems like that's what all the cool kids are doing these days ;)

I also learned from the bottom of a Snapple bottle cap that the term "tsiology" means anything written about tea. So I guess this is a tsiology. It's not a very well-known word, in fact it's not in the dictionary but if you google it you'll find something. I didn't make it up, I swear.