Further Into The Mountains

New Album for Free Download

2010-08-09T09:33:00.003+09:00

Finally the eagerly anticipated album I've been working on with some friends here in Korea is finished, and I thought it would be good to put some links up here on the blog for you fine people to be able to download the mp3s.

This recording was completed in about 2.5 sessions with the illustrious Kerey Smith from Calgary, Canada. This man is a champ and did a fantastic job with all the recording, mixing and mastering. We're extremely grateful for that guy. We recorded the whole thing live (except for mandolin and harmonica) in one to three takes per song using one high quality microphone for both of us to sing into. This wasn't exactly the plan, but it ended up working much better than we had expected.

The credits for the record are as follows:
- Paul Lundblad - vocals, acoustic guitar, mandolin, harmonica
- Ashley Gordon - vocals, motivational dance
- Kerey Smith - electric guitar, percussion, recording, mixing & mastering

Instructions for downloading: Click on the name of the song and you will be redirected to a page with another link (it'll say something like "Found Click the following ink to continue: [link]"). Right click that link and choose "Save Link As". You can then choose where you want to save the file, and begin downloading. I know there are probably easier ways to upload files for people to download, but after some searching this is the way I figured out. Let me know if there are any problems.

And so here are the tracks. Feel free to download, share the link with your friends, and comment below as to what you think!

1. Book of Love (Live) - by the Magnetic Fields, live on the Yongsan Military Base
2. Sylwia - by Paul Lundblad
3. Long Black Veil - by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin
4. Come Thou Fount - by Robert Robinson
5. The Secret - by Paul Lundblad
6. Kathy's Song - by Paul Simon
7. Isn't She Lovely - by Stevie Wonder
8. My Shepherd Will Supply My Need - by Isaac Watts
9. Let It Be Me - by Don and Phil Everly
10. Endless Love - by Lionel Richie
11. I'll Follow You Into The Dark (Live) - by Death Cab for Cutie, live on the Yongsan Military Base

Filling In The Gap

2010-07-17T11:38:00.009+09:00

I'm writing this little update in anticipation of the next one being my last chapter of Korea, so even though I don't have all that much to say this time (comparatively) I want to fill in the gap between my last post and the end of my time here.

Things have been rolling along with the standard mix of amusement, wonder, joy, and complicated frustration. Overall I'm still very much enjoying my time here and each day is filled with a quiet understanding that there is more of this place and this time that I will miss than I am currently aware. Then, almost in the same breath, something will happen that will get me counting days until my plane takes off.

I am still enjoying my students to a great degree although I must confess that in the past few months I can't really say I enjoy my job so much. I see a distinction between the hilarious and peculiar relationship I have with those little ragamuffins, which I see as being my main purpose for coming here, and the complicated, immensely frustrating, irrational happenings of the school system, which I won't go into too much detail about. I'm probably not alone in that feeling among teachers around the world, but those who have taught in Korea and any other country know that Korea is a kind of special situation. Regardless, I press on, and I'm convinced that the final month I'm here will be full of the most meaningful interactions with my students that I am yet to experience. Yesterday was my last full day in the office as it was the last day before summer vacation began for the students (yes they get out that late - it sucks). Now that their vacation has begun I will be teaching one week of English camp for three hours a day to a group of about 30 students, and by the grace of God somehow the proverbial Man's heart has been changed into letting me leave work at 12:30 instead of sitting around doing nothing all day. This change came about because I agreed to basically hold office hours for four hours a day through the rest of the summer vacation, making myself available for any student who decides to drop by and do whatever. I am actually rather pumped about that. Any kid who comes in during that time will be one of the kids I'll sorely miss and getting basically free chill time to do whatever with them will be immensely valuable.

So that wraps up the general picture of how work has gone until this point, and I will wrap it up for good in my final post next month (unless something particularly noteworthy happens before then). Otherwise, my other stalwart pleasure activities have met with some good and bad changes. The wrist and foot injuries I mentioned in my previous post haven't gone away yet, and I'm on my third kind of doctor to try to get it fixed up (I think the current one is the answer). So, unfortunately, I haven't been climbing since Bukhansan (previous post). It turns out the problem in my wrist is a weird mix of a bone being out of place which is pinching stuff that goes through there as well as some myofascial restrictions in the muscles due to repetitive heavy use over the years. In my foot, the doctor is pretty convinced I have what's called a Morton's Neuroma, which is a really sucky thing that entails a nerve becoming enlarged because of getting pressed up against other stuff in the foot and irritated by shoes being too tight (e.g. climbing shoes). Bummer. So, I've been icing both constantly, and have seen improvement in my foot but not so much in the wrist yet. I just continue to take the best care of it I can and pray that when I get back to the US I'll be all systems go. I'd appreciate others joining in on that prayer too, if you're so inclined.

Musically, things have continued to get better and better. My good friend Kerey has a sweet recording set up with his computer that he has agreed to record me and my other good friend Ashley with, so we've gotten nine songs recorded that I'm very excited about. When all the mixing is done on those, I'll be posting a link here on the blog to a zip folder you can download to get all the songs for free. In addition to recording, we've been doing a lot of performing, including a great gig on the military base in Seoul last night, and tonight will be my farewell concert at the coffee shop I've played at every month. Sure to be a very meaningful night.

I'll finish this post with two videos I've recently made about various adventures here, and one short story to explain one of the videos in better detail. What happened was my good friend Devin (from Altoona, PA!) and good friend Ashley (who I sing with) and I went on an excursion to a little town called Danyang about two hours south of where I am in Anyang. Danyang is a sleepy little town, but it's home to some really sweet huge caves, which we took some time to visit. These things were awesome. They have a little walk way going through the whole thing that you have to basically duck walk through at some points, comprising a 45 minute stroll through the depths of the earth (where I'm convinced little old Korean cave women live in the dark making evil noises with their throats). Totally awesome experience. From there we got on a ferry boat to cross the Chungju lake, arriving in Chungju two hours later so Ashley could show us around the little city she worked in last year.

That ferry ride was a trip and a half. We were the only foreigners on board, which out in the countryside of Korea is an even bigger marvel than in the city. We brought on a bottle of some Korean rice wine which totally amazed one of the crew workers on the boat who yelled out, "MAKGEOLLI!!??! WAAAAAH!!!!" ("waaah" = Korean for "wow"). He proceeded to follow us to the top deck and pour our glasses for us (a Korean sign of respect and good feeling), although he himself didn't drink any. So we hung out on this beautiful picturesque lake taking in the mountains all around us feeling like we were in a totally different country compared to crowded dirty Seoul. Ashley went down to the concessions booth to get something to drink at one point and came up with news that on the first deck they had some really lively karaoke going. How could we pass that up? So we went down, everyone was perplexed that foreigners would be into this sort of thing, and Ashley and I signed up to sing a song. Let's just say that the song was well received, as you can see for yourself in the video below. After being refused an encore, we stuck around to crazy-dance with the overly-imbibed Korean older men, which is always a really hilarious experience. During that time those who were really happy about our song gave us everything they could think of, including a huge cucumber each which we had to dip in some spicy sauce, touch them all together as if they were mugs of beer, and then eat or this guy would've been crushed. Hilarious. And so, after making a few rather inebriated friends, we arrived on the shore to take the next adventure that would come our way. We strolled around town, had coffee at this surreal little coffee shop in the woods, then finished it off with a meat feast at a Korean barbecue restaurant. Korea was playing in the World Cup that night so everyone we saw was quite festive. When we arrived back in Seoul the game was over, and everyone was elated with the victory the Korean Red Devils won for the motherland. Probably the most amusing episode in the trip back home was this girl who tried to sneakily take my picture standing two feet away from me in a super crowded subway train. I conceded, bemused, and went back to ignoring everyone in my personal bubble. I looked over my shoulder to see her camera up again (two feet from my face), but her hand in front of it as if I wouldn't know what she as doing if I couldn't see the camera. This is what life is like here for a white man, honestly. They all think we look like movie stars, and that we look like brothers. It's funny (sometimes) to be on the receiving end of such beliefs. It definitely adds to the specialness of this little country in a way that you'd have to experience to start to understand.

So anyway, there's my little story, and here are my videos to illustrate. The clock is ticking for me here, and I thoroughly anticipate the final month bringing with it some of the best times. So until next time...

Overdue Climbing Anecdotes

2010-06-11T14:38:00.001+09:00

As mentioned previously, through climbing club I've been hooked up which is led by the old vice principal of the school I'm working at here I've had a number of excellent climbing experiences that are worth relaying. The following are two semi-short stories of some outings we've had.

The first happened in April sometime. Our leader, Mr. Jeon, suggested that we go ice climbing in the northern part of Seoul in this indoor ice climbing gym. My friend Devin (from Altoona, PA!) and I went along expectant that this would be one of the classic "don't know what's going on but be patient, have fun, and trust big brother to take care of it and something somewhat enjoyable should happen" experiences that you get used to living in Korea. So Devin and I got picked up early on Saturday morning to head up to O2 (the name of the place), thankfully avoiding a two hour subway/bus adventure, and arrived at this place that's kind of an REI-esque outdoor gear store with a separate room you can see through windows in the store that is home to the world's tallest indoor ice climbing wall (65 feet 7 inches). Sweet. However, upon arriving, the staff there also let us know that that wall has been closed to the public for several months due to a lack of worthwhile profit and it would be closed indefinitely until probably bought by another company. The ice is still there because that much ice in a huge insulated room keeps itself frozen. Bummer, so close yet so far. So we traveled a good hour and a half to find that we were stuck. Great. However! Here he comes to save the day, Mr. Jeon happened to know the owner who came down and opened the wall for us to use. So, amazingly, six of us essentially got our own private ice climbing party at what is essentially now the world's tallest private ice climbing wall!

Devin and I borrowed spiky mountaineering boots, ice picks and helmets and attacked. Ice climbing is pretty sweet, but also tough in that it's very different from rock climbing. Your hands don't wear out the same way that they do when rock climbing because you're gripping the pick the whole time, but it is a serious forearm and shoulder work out as you have to slam it into the ice with each strategic move (with a man cry of course to convey how seriously you intend to make the ice submit to your whims). With your feet you're supposed to take little steps up and then widen out for better balance, but again, you have to kick (shank) the wall with each move and it takes a bit more force than I reckoned. Let's just say I was a sore man for many days later. Another variable is also the ice's desire to resist submission by releasing large chunks of itself when you dig your battle axe into its hide. One of said chunks nailed me in the chin at one point, the blood only increasing my resolve to conquer. Alright, I know that sounds like a bit much, but it's hard to not feel like a viking when you've got ice picks and ice to hit and your last name is Lundblad.

So after a few hours of that we grabbed victory dinner and headed out. I've been ice climbing. Awesome. That's my story. Now a month later we made a trip up to Bukhansan National Park, which is a big national park to the north of Seoul (right near the ice climbing place, actually), that contains a few impressive peaks and Buddhist mountain temples. Dobongsan is the name of one of the mountains, which I climbed in September when I arrived. That epic tale has been posted on the blog too. This time we were attacking Insubong, which is the highest peak in the park weighing in at a whopping 210 meters (~650 feet) from the base of the cliff to the summit, all of which must be climbed with ropes and harnesses, with a ~250 foot rappel at the end over the other side to get back to the trail. The plan was to take a group up a "beginner's course."

Unfortunately, this time I was unable to get a ride and my friend Devin couldn't make it, so I made the trek out myself at 7am Friday morning (it was Buddha's birthday, so we got the day off - thus the crowds) from Anyang to Suyu-dong. Upon arrival in Suyu I had to take a 20 minute bus ride on what was probably the most crowded experience of my life. This is a theme I've had to deal with all year and will make up a major part of this story, but Korean culture tends to hold strong belief in the nonexistence or at least irrelevance of personal space, often to the degree where it seems that the quantum physics theory of two objects being able to occupy the same space at the same time turns into an expectation for the happenings of daily life. The way that worked out on this bus was people actually shoving people on the bus so the doors would shut. It's hard to explain what that feels like. I never knew how much my personal space affected me until I moved here, let's just say.

I met up with our leader, Mr. Jeon, and Mrs. Gwan, one of the other club members who was there with a friend. The four of us began the 5 mile hike out to the base of the cliff together, and when we got to the cliff Mr. Jeon decided that he and I would separate and climb by ourselves and we'd see the other two next week. Now, Mr. Jeon's English is pretty good, as he's done a lot of traveling to Yosemite for climbing as well as the Himalayas three times, but explaining multi pitch climbing is a little bit outside his realm of conversation topics. Thankfully I've been around ropes and climbing gadgets before, but there was still a certain degree of confusion and apprehension. Multi pitch climbing means you tie the rope on your harness and your partner's, then one person climbs up to a certain point and the other belays them from below (works the gadget to keep them from falling) and then the other person belays from the top when they get there for the person on the bottom to come up and meet them. We repeated this about 10 times to get to the top, just to give you an idea of the size of this beast.

The climb wasn't too bad for most of it, but the tricky part came on the pitches that had nothing but a very narrow vertical crack to hold on to to get to the top. Not that easy to do. Furthermore, being that this was Buddha's birthday, this mountain was an anthill. Luckily we chose a route that wasn't as crowded as some others, but when we came across a larger, slower group in front of us Mr. Jeon decided that of course the right thing to do was to climb through them as opposed to around them or asking them to hop ahead of them ("play through" in golf terms). They didn't mind him climbing behind and basically through their group, lifting their rope as he climbed under it and set up an anchor point at the top. The trouble came when it was my turn to climb through people and I wasn't too keen on it. I waited until there was a gap in their line and the person on the wall was far enough out of the way that I wouldn't be making any extra dangerous situations, but the added pressure of the audience and their disapproval of the foreigner who doubts their cultural quantum physics beliefs was a bit oppressive.

Anyway, we made it to the top, where unfortunately our potential view of the DMZ was obscured by some serious smog. The feeling of being way high up is pretty cool though, and it definitely keeps me coming back to deal with the tough climb that is concluded with the mountain top glory. Worth thinking about. We did the rappel down in three stages because we'd need a super long rope to make it down in one pitch, and then hobbled out the 5 miles back to the start of the trail all the while soaking in the soundtrack of the monks chanting at the temple and Korean men exerting themselves (they make funny little diaphragm grunting noises when they're doing something tough). Pretty surreal.

And so there you have it. The list of adventures grows. Unfortunately, after climbing Insubong I've had some problems with tendinitis in my wrist and foot that's the result of too much of this climbing stuff. So I'm on a rest period right now, and doing physical therapy and acupuncture to take care of things. I know, acupuncture sounds mysterious and dubious, but from the reading I've done and people I've talked to here it happens to work, regardless of truth in the existence of channels of chi that flow through your body and get obstructed, causing physical injury that requires a rebalancing of chi brought about by little needles. Whatever it is it has a lower risk of negative effects than standard medicine and a peculiar success rate. At $5 per treatment I'll give it a shot while I'm still here (it's like $60-100 in the US). It's a weird numb tingly feeling in the limb they've got the needles in that's followed by a really relaxed, almost floating feeling when you leave, if you're wondering. We'll see how it works on me, either way though I'll be alright in a few weeks.

Things otherwise are pretty good, generally the standard mixture of frustration and endearment that makes up life in Korealand. Knowing where I'm headed after this has made it much harder to deal with the frustrations though, as my natural inclination is to count down days when tensions are high. I definitely still love it here though, and I'm sure I'll miss it much more than I'll be thankful to get out of the frustrations.

By the way, if you're wondering about what you're hearing on the news about tense situations in Korea in regard to the North's sinking of the South Korean ship, don't worry too much. One commonly misunderstood aspect of Korean culture is how they'll use highly inflated language to express emotion, and not necessarily intent. As Michael Breen says in his book The Koreans, "Koreans are only beginning to develop the democratic attitudes and institutions to resolve conflict. Hitherto it has been done by power. Hence the need to yell and make ridiculous demands." It may sound harsh, and the book was written around 1998, but it's a pretty accurate cultural description of certain situations, and if you figure that North Korea is still pretty medieval (or childish) in their ways of dealing with things, the shoe fits. Breen also quotes a Korean journalist who explains it like this: "'If I say I'll kill you to a stranger in English, he might take pre-emptive action,' . . . 'In Korea, you're just expressing a feeling. Korean is not a good language to argue in because there are so many shades of meaning. It is so easy to be misunderstood. English is a language for clarity and logic. It's a beautiful language to argue in. My wife and I switch to English when we want to resolve a disagreement.'" So that touches a bit on the cultural nuances the Western media doesn't necessarily pick up, let alone the great complexities and unknowns in the politics of it all between all involved nations. Bottom line - don't worry. Things will work themselves out, and in 70-some days I'll be homeward bound.

Decision 2010: Big News

2010-05-26T20:08:00.001+09:00

I have two good climbing stories to tell, but I interrupt that broadcast by the need to get out news regarding some big change about my future because I don't like keeping things on the DL for too long. I'll get the climbing stories up hopefully within the week, don't you worry. Hang in to the end of this story, cause it's a lot bigger than it seems.

So the big news is in September of this year I will be moving back to the rural paradise that is Manns Choice, Pennsylvania to work as the Youth Programs Assistant Director (YPA) at the White Sulphur Springs retreat/conference center. Those of you with connections there are probably thinking something like, "Oh, that figures." or "WHAT!!?!? YAY!!!" or some combination, and those of you who know that I was working there before I came to Korea are probably thinking I'm taking a step back after taking a year to adventure in Korea. Both of you are right in a way, but there's a lot more to it than that. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, that's cool too. Let me fill you in.

If I'm attentive to what I've learned this past year (and really since graduating university in general), I've learned that I love working with kids, working outside, leading people, and having a Higher Call to what I'm doing. I'm content with honestly acknowledging that I'd never be happy in some commercial business/"normal" job, and that to honestly follow my heart I need to be doing something that is straight-up intense ministry. As I look to wrap up my year in Korea, I'm ready and motivated to accept what I've learned about the calling God's placed in my life, own it, and step out and do it. With that in mind, I've had a strong passion for a long time for Sweden, it's language, and its people. I'm highly suspicious of the blend of gifts that I have and the inclusion of abilities with the Swedish language and undying passion for that place and its people. If I add that all up, the organization Youth With A Mission (YWAM or UMU in Swedish) has ministries in Sweden that focus on outdoor leading of youth - a perfect combination for me. To get going with those guys, you have to do what's called a "Discipleship Training Seminar" (DTS), which is a 6-9 month training program. There's a wilderness version in Norway that has my name all over it, and my (almost) only drawback from going for it right now is the hefty price tag that anything in Norway has. So at this point I'm set in belief that if that's what I'm supposed to be doing, it'll work out. "In his heart a man plans his course but the Lord determines his steps." (Proverbs 16:9).

"So wait a minute, I thought you were going back to White Sulphur Springs?", you might be asking. Yes! I am. I told you this story was bigger than it seemed. What happened was this:

I had to tell my school in Korea by the 31st of May if I would be staying on for a second year (well, really the 25th because if I were staying they'd need blood work done by that day - oh Korea). For the past few month's I'd been working off the assumption that a second year would be a good idea that I'd be happy doing, but this month as decision time got closer the above revelations became clearer and stronger, and I became conflicted. I did a lot of thinking and praying about what I should do for the next year, as any option I'd choose would be a big big change.

What do you know, out of nowhere, in the midst of all this, comes an email from the Center Director of White Sulphur Springs asking me to consider coming on staff as the YPA for the next year. I hadn't even considered that possibility and was pretty taken aback by the opportunity coming out of nowhere like that. Over the years I've learned to look out for such occurrences as they tend to be the answer to prayer we weren't looking for but really is the best thing for us at the time. White Sulphur Springs' youth programs have been close to my heart for many many years and I've had a good deal of experience with them during summer '06 and '09. They're getting ready to transition into a new hotel on the property and with it comes a lot of exciting new things on every level of their ministry, and currently the youth programs portion of that one man (a very, very capable one, but still only one). The job would involve (among other things), working with the management/admin/logistics of running an outdoor youth ministry year-round, which is exactly what I had decided a week before getting this email that I feel compelled to go do in Sweden. All things considered, as I've said, I decided to go with the surprise Plan C, and I'm very excited to see what comes about this current episode of divine intervention in my life. The training in Norway happens every year, so at this particular time it works out better than I could have ever arranged myself to spend the next year at White Sulphur Springs serving where I'm most needed and God willing I'll pursue the draw on my heart to Scandinavia the following year.

So there you have it. At its core, this move is the exciting completion of a season of soul searching and trusting God to come through and put me where He wants me to be. I really believe that we can't be going wrong if we carefully and prayerfully examine and follow the desires of our hearts, then remain attentive to the opportunities presented to us. For this coming year, that has led me to White Sulphur Springs, and I'm prepared to continue that process and keep my sails up, so to speak.

As I mentioned before, this is a big step in the direction of where I see myself being led in a call to ministry as a career. It's nice that I'm first being sent to a place that I'm familiar with and that I actually consider to be more like home than anywhere else, but it's still a decisive step out to heed the call given to me and see where it follows. As my friends and family (and even strangers I don't know), I need your prayers and encouragement. As many of you know, this kind of thing has a lot at stake of eternal significance with plenty standing in the way. To successfully do this I need a network of supporters that will commit to keeping me in prayer. Thankfully this position I'll be beginning in September is a paid one, but that's very much a rarity in this kind of field and there will come a time when as long as ministry is still what God wants me to do I'll have to rely on His provision through that network.

If God's placing it on your heart to commit to being part of this, please send me an email at paullundblad@gmail.com or comment on this post with your email address and I will add you to this list of people I will send detailed ministry updates to. Again, right now the need I have is prayer. Pray that I would finish this year in Korea strongly and safely, and that I'd go into this next season with a heart that is empowered to expand God's Kingdom where He's put me, with eyes fixed "not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" (2Cor. 4:18).

So thus ends my exciting life update. I promise to try to relay my climbing adventures here sometime later this week or next, as I'm sure both of you who read this blog are just dying to find out what happened. ;-) So until then, thank you, and take care.

-Paul

Musical Happenings: From Meager to Magnificent

2010-04-18T19:02:00.000+09:00

During the past few weeks I've been privileged to experience two vastly different musical experiences that are worth retelling. I've been very grateful to have had more opportunities to play music publicly than I probably ever have in my life, and luckily, as tends to be the trend with the adventurous, they've been some great times in a wide range of different settings. For an example in regard to the frequency of playing, I had a week in March when I played publicly 4 times in different places, and total for the month I played around 7 times. Awesome. So in this post my first story is of a performance I got to make myself, and the second is less of a story, but at least a concert I got to attend that's worth being part of the update.

The first one happened like this:

Sometime mid-March I was on my way to Seoul on the subway with my guitar slung over my shoulder to go practice for a performance that was coming up, when some middle aged Korean guy stopped me and asked if I was a musician. I told him yes, and he said that he owned a microbrewery (place that brews its own beer for those of you who don't know) out in the countryside and from time to time he'd do river cruises and brewery tours and he'd love to have some live music. Sweet! One of the nice things about Korea is you can generally trust people a lot more than you can random strangers in the States, and I tend to give random opportunities a shot because they usually end up to be stories.

What do you know, I was right. The guy gave me his card, I sent him an email when I got home, and he mentioned that he was going to be doing a brewery tour in the beginning of April and he'd love for me to play there. I talked to my friend Ashley about it, and she agreed to come sing with me. The plan for the trip was to take a bus from mid-Seoul about two hours outside of the city to an area called Gapyeong that is known for being a very beautiful place with mountains and lakes and the like, and then once at the brewery to get a tour of the brewery, as much beer as anyone would like, enjoy live music (us) outside by their outdoor stage, and then take the bus back to Seoul and get there by 9 PM. He said they had all the sound equipment they needed and all I needed to do would be to show up with my guitar. The trip would cost 50,000 Won (~$45) for transportation, the tour, food at the brewery, and all the beer one would desire - and we would go for free. Sounded great! We agreed to do it.

And then things diverged from the ideal in a way that is very typical for Korea and is why the US military here calls Korea the "Land of the Almost Right" and why any foreigner in Korea will tell you without the right sense of humor you will not like living here. It's all quite true, and it gives Korea a very unique charm.

We got to the subway station where the bus was waiting to pick up the passengers, and scoped out the demographics. There were 45 people on the list, but I think only about 30 came. There were about 10 "ajosshis" (middle-aged Korean men that tend to have a universal personality and mannerisms of being kind of gruff, friendly (sometimes overly so), and alcohol-loving), and about 15-20 foreigners who were more-or-less "typical" for the foreigners in Seoul. How so? Think frat boys/sorority girls from college who are still pursuing that lifestyle in a foreign land. Now that's certainly not everybody over here, but that type definitely exists and a lot of time makes up the Koreans' image of "typical foreigner," which is why the brewery owner arranged this trip knowing he'd make a bunch of money doing it. He was right, but actually made this particular tour free for everyone to see how it would go (that's right - no one paid anything. I didn't hear about it till we showed up).

The bus ride was a solid two hours long through winding mountain roads (that the bus driver took pretty fast, tell you what) around a big lake. Quite beautiful, but when the other foreigners ran out of "pre-game festivities" everyone was kind of antsy to get where we were going. We finally arrived at the place that looked pretty much like two houses with a courtyard between them that had a creek running by. Pretty much what the guy described, but the difference was the brewery was pretty much a 1-car garage with garage door and brewing vats inside. Not quite a big tour-worthy building. It was still before the break of spring so the trees all around were barren and it was around 50 degrees while the sun lasted. "Interesting," I thought, "It matches the description but is less than what I pictured." They were grilling Korean style meat and had a buffet table in the middle of the courtyard and a help-yourself beer station with four different varieties (quite tasty for Korea). Everything was ok, and looked like it had the possibility of being a good or slightly less-than-good time.

The stage was an elevated platform with a dirt/stone hill behind it. The owner showed me his "fully equipped sound system" on the stage, which consisted of a karaoke machine with two mics on stands going into a two input amp head, which basically means that two karaoke mics were the only possible things we could use to put anything through the speakers, which happened to be under the eaves of the building next to the one we were by, directing the sound where people weren't. Those speakers happened to be blaring American gangsta rap from the moment we got off the bus, by the way. My oh my. The place had the military's "almost right" description all over it. The owner had me describe to him what a real sound system consisted of, and told me that he "would prepare" for next time. So, to get the guitar and vocals to be audible in the speakers, we set one of the mics up in front of my guitar and one between the two of us to sing into. Not quite effective, to say the least, and a perfect setup for some wicked feedback.

Needless to say, that's what happened. After some food, a beer, and some practice we hit the stage and began to play our 45-minute set to a rather lively, loosened up crowd who definitely appreciated our playing despite the speakers on the neighboring building screaming in disapproval if I moved my guitar a half inch in the wrong direction. What do you know, being that we began to play about an hour and a half into the "tour," the sun was going down and it got to be pretty chilly, which my guitar and my fingers didn't quite like, adding to the list of distractions. Thankfully I wasn't performing alone, because if I were it would've been harder to keep positive about it. My friend Ashley has a fantastic voice and a sense of humor I can appreciate, so we finished playing and laughed as we added up the different levels ridiculousness to this trip.

We closed our set with "Let it be me" by the Everly Brothers which got the ajosshis screaming in approval, and as soon as we stepped off the stage they rushed it to do some karaoke. Following their display of joy came an American girl who could hoola hoop like you wouldn't believe (really), and then a bonfire. After a little bonfire warm up time we decided to go for a walk to see the surrounding countryside and tell you what, I could hardly believe I was in Korea anymore. In fact, the hills and streams and farmland felt a lot like Pennsylvania. I even saw some deer tracks in the mud! Up to that point I'd only seen a few squirrels and chipmunks as any signs of wildlife in this country.

(If you're hypersensitive about dogs skip this next paragraph.)

Well, it's no secret that dog meat is a delicacy in Korea. No, I haven't had it, but its existence had kind of remained kind of "theoretical" until this trip. As we walked down the road we noticed what seemed to be houses that families would live in with big yards (non-existent in the Korea we'd experienced), and we walked along to check them out. What do you know, the yards are full of big cages full of dogs. No, these aren't cute chihuahuas or golden retriever dogs, they're a special breed of Korean dog that are quite big and not that friendly looking. We walked past about three houses and by each one we saw big cages full of dogs and a few with chickens. They're definitely farm animals here, which I can understand, because there's a big difference between these big farm dogs and the little cutesy dignity-less creatures that people typically have in their apartments, so they might as well be totally different animals. Either way it's kind of sad I guess, but I guess there's some sense to the Korean philosophy that meat is meat, and these things are raised just like any other farm animal. But enough of that, that's not what this post is about. Let's just say this added to the day's experience.

We got back to the bus just as everyone was taking a beer for the road (really) and making a final pit stop before heading out. We were pretty tired after this "full" experience and ready to sleep for two hours on the bus ride back to Seoul - haha yeah like that was going to happen. The bus rolled out and what do you know - a wireless microphone appeared and a TV screen turned on - KARAOKE TIME! Yes, we had karaoke time all the way back to Seoul, and being that there was nothing we could do about it, we embraced the experience and sang along. The bus made one stop for a bathroom break, during which the bathroom goers managed to find a convenience store for more beer, and then we made the last stretch to get back to Seoul, where we went our separate ways.

So, to conclude that adventure, it was altogether an amusing day that we were glad we took part in. The brewery owner wants me to help him promote future "tours" and the like, but I'm not so sure that'll be happening. I wouldn't be against playing out there again, there would just have to be at least a vastly different sound system and better weather.

As a quick blurb about the other musical experience I mentioned, the week after the brewery trip Ashley and I and a group of some other friends went to Seoul's Olympic Hall to see the Swell Season play. Click here if you have no idea what I'm talking about, and then go get all their music. Surprisingly so, they are quite popular in Korea because the independent Irish movie "Once" that their Oscar-winning song "Falling Slowly" was in was quite popular here for whatever reason. It'd been a while since I'd gone to a big concert, so I figured it was worth spending the ~$80 for the ticket - it definitely was. They are a very engaging group when they play live, and they have a real knack for bringing all the elements of their band together in the right doses to make some great beauty without stepping on each other's toes. During their last song they got everyone to loop the main line of the song while they walked around the whole auditorium to get close to just about everyone in attendance (a few thousand). Definitely worth it.

So that's the gist of what's been going on here. In other news, I've been getting back into climbing regularly, because it turns out the old Vice Principal at my school who left right before I showed up is a climbing beast (Everest is on his wilderness resume) and actually leads a climbing club that meets to climb at a nearby technical high school every weekend. The head teacher in my office called him and asked if I could come along and he said sure, so now I and a friend of mine who's just starting into the hobby go climb there every weekend, and we'll be adding a climbing gym membership to that soon so that by the end of spring we'll be beastly enough to go along with these guys to some of their bigger deal mountain experiences. Next weekend we're going ice climbing at an indoor ice climbing gym in Seoul. Just you wait for the story about that, or at least some pictures.

Thus ends another long blog post. At least I'm only writing when it's worth it, right? That may or may not be true. Anyway, until next time...

Vietnam - It's this whole other country.

2010-03-04T13:08:00.001+09:00

In my last post, I wrote about a Swedish couple I met who contacted me via a Swedish travel/social networking website whom I became friends with when they came to Korea during leg 1 of their three month Asia tour as Sandra was meeting her biological mother for the first time (she was adopted from Korea to Sweden). Little did I know that morning about two months ago when I woke up and saw that I had a message from them asking if I had any tips about Korea that it would lead to a week of adventure with them in Vietnam a few months later. This whole story is testament to how little things can lead to much bigger ones, and we never really know what those things can be. The moral of the story? Be ready and make the most of every opportunity!

So it happened like this: In our parting in Seoul, Martin and Sandra mentioned that they were going to be in Vietnam for the entire month of February. I realized that my students would have Spring Break during the second half of that month, so I said I'd see what I could do about meeting up with them. Martin's last words to me before we parter were, "Paul, du KOMMER till Vietnam!" ("Paul, you're COMING to Vietnam!), which in a really unbelievable way turned out to be prophetic. So I checked on the details a week or so later, and got the word from a Korean travel agency that the only available tickets were waiting list only and they'd set me back around $600. Somewhat reasonable for tickets from Korea to Vietnam, but unlikely to come my way because apparently February is the high season for tourists in Vietnam because there's no rain and the seas are calm. I checked some other sites to find ways to get there and it turned out that the only available ticket for purchase was around $1000 and would have sent me through Russia or something ridiculous with 20 hours of travel time. Forget that. So, defeated, I sent my friend the message that it unfortunately wasn't going to happen, and they disappointedly accepted. Then, what do you know, when it's too late and nothing else will come through, something came through (Isn't that the case with the best stories? Suspicious...). My dad, who travels a lot for his job with IBM, gets a lot of frequent flier miles that add up. He checked with the frequent flier people and what do you know, the ONLY possible ticket I could get to Vietnam without dropping $1000 and traveling excessive amounts of time was a frequent flier ticket that because I'm already in Asia didn't end up being all that many miles. How about that? The only way I could make my way to that sunny (commie) paradise cost no money. I couldn't pay for it if I wanted to (mull that over for a while too...).

So, having all the signs of this trip being ordained to happen outside of my power to make it happen, I sent my friends the message that I was coming and that the next step would be figuring out ways to get to Phu Quoc Island, which is a little island off the coast of Cambodia that belongs to Vietnam, to stay in a beach bungalow for a few nights and seeing what adventure we might run into. What do you know though, being last minute and everything flights from Saigon to Phu Quoc ($45 each way) were disappearing fast, and I needed to book them while Martin and Sandra were on a 3 day motorcycle tour around the mainland, and the night before they left for that I didn't have enough information to buy their tickets and my credit card company didn't believe it was I who was buying the tickets so they didn't let the purchase go through. Yet again I conceded to the trip to Phu Quoc not happen, when thankfully I got the details I needed in an email right before they left and I booked some of that last available tickets after squaring away my well-intentioned credit card company and we were all systems go again. How about that? I felt like I was watching a Steelers game when Ben Roethlisberger's manning up. To add to it even more, there were only two places on the island that still had available housing. So there we have it, at the last minute, I had my tickets booked to Vietnam, our tickets booked to Phu Quoc, and housing reservations made at the well-rated Mai House resort in one of their "deluxe sea view bungalows." Awesome.

That's the back story. Now for what happened.

I got to the airport after a pretty much hassle-free trip from Seoul to Singapore then Singapore to Saigon, and then got to wait for an hour to get my "visa on arrival." VOA works by sending your info to a VOA company's website who then sends it to the Vietnamese immigration people who two days later send a "letter of confirmation" that you take to the airport with a picture of yourself and $25 and they give you your visa in "15 minutes, hassle free." Well, it turns out the ambiguity of that phrase turned out to not be in my favor, but luckily my friends waited for me and we had no problem.

We stayed in a guest house (of which there are hundreds) in Saigon that night, and my oh my is Saigon a trip. Whole families ride around on scooters with a stool right behind the handlebars for the baby, and the way you cross the street there is by walking right out into traffic slowly and decisively while they drive around you. If you go too fast you'll surprise someone and get nailed or if you wait for the crosswalk light (which I don't think exists) you'll never make it across. The guest house was a pretty alright place that was owned by a late 30's Vietnamese man who had really short deformed arms because of a meeting with Agent Orange at the tail end of the Vietnam war when he was a kid. There's a lot of that in Saigon that you'd never really hear about. The war is still alive there in the sense that most middle aged adults were kids at the time and their parents probably fought in it. I didn't really sense a lot of anti-American sentiment though, although no one really knew I was an American because I spoke Swedish the whole week. From what I hear though, the people and government want to put the past behind them and try to benefit from as much as they can from the US. More on that later.

We got to Phu Quoc the next morning to the smallest airport I've ever seen on a very exciting propeller plane ride and took a taxi from the airport to our resort on the island's very uneven dirt/gravel/stone/sand/stray cow roads (great fun) to our resort, which was at the end of a very narrow very very uneven road through the jungle. After all the time and steps taken to make this happen, the first view of the sea and the reassuring breeze was a fantastic feeling. We promptly left our stuff in our way cool bungalow and then grabbed lunch at the resort restaurant which was right on the beach, and spent the rest of the day soaking up the 90 degree heat (~31 Celsius), gawking at the sunset, and swimming in the sea out beyond the white breakers where a man can still be free (or a woman, if you are one). We had really arrived.

The next day we rented scooters and drove down the west coast of the island to the southern most point and then back up the east coast until we came to the main city in the middle and then drove back to our resort. Great time. Having owned a motorcycle in the States for a few years I felt pretty comfortable, but with really bad roads it was a bit to get used to. Plus, the rule of the road is if you're bigger you have the right of way, so if you hear a big horn beep at you that means "If you want to live you will get out of my way." Great times. We got our first taste for exactly how beautiful yet varied the landscape of the island was as well as how the Vietnamese lived. They're very cheerful people but they live in very small hand-made huts for the most part. Not quite Ho Chi Minh's utopia. We ate shark for dinner that night. $5. Fantastic.

The next day we beached for most of the day until we went out on a sunset/night squid fishing trip on a big boat. The tour was $15 and despite no one catching any squid (I think we were tricked into the wrong fishing methods so the tourists wouldn't deplete the locals' supply), I felt it was totally worth it to be on a boat going out into the sunset peacefully watching it get dark around you as you wait for bites on the line. It's like hunting. Getting something is a bonus. The reason you go out is to sit and be quiet and dangerous.

The next day was our final full day on the island, and it turned out to be probably the best. We rented motorcycles again intending to do barely a 3-hour tour to the northern part of the island, but you know how THOSE go (a 3-hour tour...a 3-hour tour...). It turned out finding the road to the north was a bit more complicated than we expected and it involved a few really small, rickety bridges over rivers and a lot of cows. We stopped by a pearl farm that was owned by a man from New Zealand who dives for clams and makes jewelry with the pearls. It was there that my greatest hope for this trip was satisfied - FRIENDLY MONKEYS. They had two as pets who were still too young to know to bite people, one about mid-sized and another really small one only about a month or so old whom the other monkey was protecting in very cute ways. Well what do you know, I walk over there half expecting to have to coax the thing and pick him up/hold him like a dog, but no way, he jumped on me and scurried up and down my upper body checking out my empty camera case and tee-shirt and whatever he could find while the baby one slowly made his way over to crawl up my leg. Words cannot express. When I tried to put him back on the tree they were hanging out on and walk away the bigger one just kept jumping back on me but when I finally got out of range of his leash I was free from monkey lovin'. For a while on the road we smelled this less-than-great smell which we eventually found out was a huge trash field. Talk about contrast. Sadly, people lived there in a little hut surrounded by trash. At the end of a long, narrow road that went along a beautiful empty beach we ended up at a resort that was owned by a Vietnamese man from Hanoi (the north) who fled to the US when the war broke out and became a lawyer and is now back in Vietnam as an American citizen and resort owner. He filled us in on a lot of fascinating and exciting information relating to the island and Vietnam. It turns out Phu Quoc is on the verge of exploding into a major tourist destination, as they will be building an international airport there as well as a big hospital, totally new roads and bigger bridges, much bigger fancier resorts, two casinos, and if this guy has his way, a university. His resort is on a beautiful piece of secluded property that he nabbed for something like $50,000, and has received offers for almost $1,000,000 for it already. He filled us in on the way you'd go about starting a resort there, and we left there with an hour before dark with big ideas in our heads. It could be totally feasible to start a bungalow resort for around $100,000 and make many times that in a few years. So who knows. Like anything else that's happened in my life, what ends up happening in unexplainable ways ends up being much better than anything I try to pursue myself, so if it so happens the opportunity arises to open a resort in Vietnam I would be mighty tempted but I'm content with being an exciting educational adventure at this point.

We rode back to our resort in the sunset just in time to see the big Vietnamese bats come out of their trees to roam the earth as well as a pretty intense spider that I almost ran over. It's still a very wild place. The next day we checked out (~$60 for all my food/beverage/motorcycle rentals for the week!), went back up to Saigon where we parted, my friends to go on a bus to Cambodia and me to go back to Korea. I hung out in Saigon by myself a while to check out the market (haggle city). I didn't get the chance to partake, but you see all over the place these bottles of "snake wine" which is usually a cobra and scorpion soaking in rice wine so that the venom seeps out and is neutralized by the alcohol, providing "good for the man" qualities. Just thought you'd like to know.

So that's more or less how it happened. I could have included a lot of other things, but to keep it succinct I will leave it at this. I couldn't help but think that I never could have believed on my first day of my Swedish 1 class in college in 2006 that it would lead to this, and to think that it was on the verge of not happening at all, I am very thankful and thoughtful of all that happened. Vietnam is a treasure in South East Asia that is still very cheap to travel in and on the verge of great change. Like many communist countries, it is realizing that it needs to let in some capitalism in order to function well, and that little seed is growing in ways that will lead to that country being very very different when the young generation takes charge some day. Ask me more about this in person. I only included a few pictures here, but if you'd like to see all of them you can check them out here.

I'm now back in the cold (comparatively) yet warming up country of South Korea at the beginning of a new school year with new young minds to mess with. So, until next time...

The Road goes ever on and on,

Down from the door where it began

And I will follow it, if I can

Pursuing with eager feet

Until way comes to way

And whither then?

I cannot say.
-J.R.R. Tolkien

And the Beat Goes On

2010-01-28T13:45:00.001+09:00

Well, my general aim to keep this blog a monthly endeavor has reached its first hiccup, possibly as a result of a lack of big story-worthy events, but more likely as a result of the daily rhythm of things in Korea becoming something along the lines of just "life" that has dulled my senses of exactly how story-worthy many things really area and I ought to try harder. Thankfully the truth that the story-worthy of life here really does exist and is worth telling does come to mind in spoken conversation, but unfortunately (maybe) for you it skips the cyber history books.

So to sum up the highlights since the last post, I will work backwards, and include the three big ones. The most recent thing that that's worth talking about was my trip to Japan to meet up with my dad and see what happens, and that's pretty much the extent of it. My students are on winter break right now, which means I'm "planning lessons" in the office instead of teaching, which makes for some incredibly boring days. I don't know how some people sit at a desk and work on a computer for their career. However, the nice thing about my students not being around is I'm allowed to take vacation days. So, for winter break I took 4 days to head out to Japan to meet my dad who was there on a business trip. He took a few days off to get there early before he had to start training the Japanese business men so that we could hang out. Thankfully leaving Korea was very uncomplicated and meeting up with my dad in the airport was no problem. We stayed at a hotel that was right by the Tokyo Disney World (we didn't know that), so we got a bunch of funny little kids to dodge on our way in and out of the hotel every day.

The first day of our trip we took at tour out to Mt. Fuji and a lake near there which was a good time. The weather was mid 50's the whole time we were there with sunny skies, which was a great break from Korean winter, albeit rather mild compared to Pittsburgh. Fuji is a truly impressive sight that sticks up out of the Japanese landscape and is visible from a large portion of the island. We saw it from afar and then the tour bus drove about half way up so we could see what that's like. Good stuff. The Japanese religion, Shintoism, is animistic and they still practice it (and blend it with Buddhism), so all over Japan you see these red gate-like things that mark the entrance to a shrine that belongs to the "deity" of whatever they felt was divine at the time. It's interesting to experience a people group that are so modernized but still present their new born babies to the deity who has jurisdiction over the area. Part of that is definitely to blame on the extremely strong importance they place on tradition, but there's something else to be said for a society as "advanced" and "modern" that still acknowledges that there might be things in control of their lives that they can't see and can't totally understand. Interesting.

Otherwise we spent most of the time walking around, sitting on trains, and looking for coffee. Everything's expensive in Japan, and we really didn't know what to do. We probably should have planning a longer trip and got rail passes (unlimited travel throughout the country), but with the time we had we made do. Otherwise we made it out to Kamakura (an old town with a bunch of shrines/temples and a big metal Buddha that is a national treasure of Japan). What was cool there was that my grandfather, presumably on his way back from the Korean war, got his picture taken in front of that Buddha, and so did we. Cool feeling.

It was so interesting experiencing all the differences between Korea and Japan. I half expected them to be very similar, but I was very wrong. Japanese people are much more subdued, much more publicly polite, and much more orderly than Korea. I hear (from Koreans) that the flip side to that facade is a cold heart, but I didn't quite experience anything that could test the truth of that. I mean, seriously, I was totally baffled to see people that said "Excuse me" (in Japanese) when they bumped in to you, that waited in line, that with great discipline would stand to the side of the escalator to let people walk by, and that generally walked in a straight line. Wow. Moreover, traffic laws are more than suggestions in Japan and no motorcycles drive on the sidewalk. Now, it's funny that I should be surprised at these things, but those of you who have been to Korea will understand what I mean. Otherwise, in general the country just felt older because of a much more refined, clean, classically Asian architectural and generally societal style. Unfortunately that may have something to do with everything being quite expensive. Although it was nice to experience this opposite Asian culture for a little while, I did feel that I missed the ability to travel and eat and experience that you get in Korea that would cost a fortune in Japan. Moreover, it seemed like Korea is just more set up for that kind of life than Japan, which is much more separated in its different kinds of districts. I was surprised that my dad and I had to walk a for a long time to find a restaurant to eat dinner at one night that A) wasn't crazy expensive and B) actually existed and didn't have a private party taking it all up. That would NEVER happen in Korea.

Anyway, experiencing those things and getting to spend time with my dad was a worthwhile endeavor. The trip back was a big drag, as for whatever reason (probably that I was an American and lived in Korea - two frowning points in Japan maybe), despite there being empty seats on the two earlier flights back to Seoul from Tokyo they absolutely wouldn't let me fly standby. I told them how common that is with every other airline I've flown, but I juts got the "So sorry!" smile and the offer to buy an incredibly expensive ticket if I wanted to get back two hours earlier. Give me a break. So, with a vow to never fly Asiana again (which I extend to you, my readers), I complied to sit for 7 hours and occupy myself. I'm immensely thankful that I have an iPod Touch I can read books on and also thankful that George MacDonald wrote so many books (as you should be too). So thus concluded my Japan trip, and I returned to Korea with a new level of "culturedness" and appreciation for the great things that go along with the Korean life that would be hard to get other places, and also an appreciation for exactly how funny Japanese people can sound when they verbally communicate.

Working backwards one more week, I got an email a while back from a Swedish couple who found me on a Swedish travel/social networking website who said that they were coming to Korea for the girl half of the couple to meet her biological mother, as she was adopted from Korea to the way far north of Sweden when she was a baby. It's wonderful how sometimes my passion for Sweden finds me. A bit before I got their message too I got another one from a Korean-Swedish adoptee who was actually moving to Korea for 7 months to take an internship at the Swedish embassy. What do you know, I met up with the couple for dinner, made fast friends with them, the other girl arrived the day after, and the following weekend we all met up and had a Swedish night with two adopted Korean-Swedish girls, a big Swedish guy from Norrland, and me, who ironically spoke the most Korean (or at least was the designated communicator, as the one girl spoke a little Korean but I don't know how much). It's really amazing how such things come together, and I'm pleased to say that it really did feel like I met up with old friends who were visiting from Sweden. Sandra and Martin (the couple) ended up coming to the monthly coffee shop concert that I play at (see three posts ago) and had a really authentic cultural experience that they say was the highlight of their trip. That coffee shop, by the way has been one of the most warm-hearted blessings I've had in this country, that 1 block away I have such a center for music and coffee and friends and all things bright and beautiful. That particular concert I ended up playing the first fruit of the songwriting effort I've recently taken up, which went tremendously well. My friend Jamie from church came and sang it with me, and it was very well received by all. Hang tight for a recording (but see video below for now).

The songwriting push has been the product of a conviction that the reason I so rarely end up with songs of my own that I like is because I'd been going about it all wrong. For those of you who care about such things, my new mindset has been so: I ought to approach songwriting and music in general maybe as if it all already exists, and that I must approach that realm with a still and receptive heart and attempt to let any music I play or words I write flow out of that ether into the semi-material side of reality that we can reproduce at will. If I do it right, I just might have music worth playing and listening to. Even if I do it right but come up with no product, then I have at least done it right, exercised that action, and actively been peaceful for a while. Not wasted time by my standards, at least, and thankfully such an endeavor has yielded one song so far that I can say I genuinely feel good about.

To stay on the theme of music, the last story-worthy event I have to relay happened toward the end of December. My school asked me to play two songs at an assembly that I couldn't really get any clear information about (like that's new), and to my great surprise and amusement it turned out to be a festival in a big gymnasium that all 1000 of my students and all 50ish of the teachers would be in attendance at. They had a big stage and intended for me to stand in the middle of it and perform for everyone - HA! Love it. So after carefully thinking it through, I ended up playing Elvis' "Hound Dog" and The Beatles' "Let it be." I wish I could've gotten the whole thing on film, but I can relay the gist of it here. So, I walked to the center of the stage with the curtain down, got in position, and two very excited 9th grade students announced to the crowd that Mr. Lundblad was going to play for them, and then they raised the curtain unveiling me with guitar, harmonica, and raised fist straight up in the air (wave of cheering). I said into the mic what I usually say at the beginning of every class I teach, "Hello students!!! Are you ready for English!?!?!?", which was met by a simultaneous and decisive "OH YEAH." from all 1000 of them. I then said, "Who remembers what I taught you about girls?", which was met with the answer "TROUBLE!!!!" by about 20% of the smart ones who were then joined by the other lemmings. "That's right," I said, "Don't you forget it. Now, this song is about trouble. I need to you to help me out." At that point I started clapping and got all 1000 of them to sync up. Once accomplished I broke out in a fast blues and harmonica solo to their beat and then jumped straight into, "YOU AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT A HOUND DOG!" (excessive cheering). Great fun. For the second song, I was pleased to learn that they all know "Let it be" by heart even if they don't know what it means, so they all sang along, which was really cool. I planned a twist at the end though - when I should have ended, I broke out with the song "Nobody" by the Wonder Girls (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRBagIPwU8g), who are a popular Korean pop group, which caused everyone to double take and then enthusiastically dancing and sing to. Great fun. The whole thing left an impression on the students who for about two weeks after would pretend to play guitar and sing whenever they saw me in the hallway and call me "Mr. Elvis", among their other crazy names for me. I do have a video of the "Let it be"/"Nobody" part, which you can see below. Speaking of, I've uploaded a few videos to youtube, all of which you can see here at my "channel" page: http://www.youtube.com/user/PaulLundblad.

So thus concludes the long awaited update. I'm well, I've managed to continue my success in dodging my Korean female suitors, I haven't frozen, and I haven't lost heart. Keep in touch, as I still miss people.

“As in all sweet music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although the deepest truth must be deepest joy.”

-George MacDonald, "Phantastes"

Life Thus Far

2009-11-29T21:38:00.000+09:00

NOTE: If you'd rather not read this whole post, skip to the bottom and watch the video. It's more entertaining. Leave comments :-)

I know it's been a while since I've updated this, but there hasn't necessarily been much that has struck me as worthy of going down in my someday-to-be-written anthology of my crazy unexaggerated stories. However, there have been some good noteworthy things that have happened, and as dear friends and family of mine I don't want to leave you in the dark. It's also good for me to get this stuff written down.

So anyway, the most noteworthy story I'd say of the last month happened when I was out to eat with a good friend of mine from university for his birthday and a bunch of other friends of ours including a few Korean friends. We had just sat down to eat when we noticed this Korean guy (~38 years old) at the table next to ours staring at us. Now, this is a totally normal occurrence in Korea. Foreigners are totally here to be stared at just in case we suddenly do something unexpected that the Koreans might miss otherwise or possibly after a while they see our souls and are confirmed that we are indeed weird and worthy of being stared at at a later date. That or they think we're handsome, which happens a lot too. I've started wiggling my eyebrows when that happens to throw an extra variable into the situation ;-)

Well, this guy won't let up, and he's leaning far into my personal bubble. So, my other foreign friends at my side of the table think it might be a good idea to stare back until he realizes that he's found out and leaves us alone out of shame. Well, that doesn't work here. We had a staring contest. Until, I decided that I'll at least humor him with a Korean "hello." He'd obviously had a whole lot more to drink than he should have, but at least he was friendly and funny. So I tried out all the Korean I could basically, with your standard hello, how are you, my name is, I'm a teacher, I work at _____, I'm from America. He thought that was great that I could say those things, and proceeded to stretch his English legs with us and talk about weird stuff for a while like us buying his shoes. Well, the question of "Why did you come to Korea?" finally came up. By this point we kind of wanted him to get the idea that he should leave us alone cause we were eating, so our answers were a lot shorter but far from impolite. Well, I didn't want to get into the whole conversation with him about my reasons, so I just said, "Korean women are very beautiful." He gave me a shocked look and said, "You want Korean wife?" and I said "I don't know." His answer was, "Korean wife - very bad. Korean girlfriend - veeeeeery gooooood ;-)" and he chuckled, and I chuckled, and said "Ok."

Well, my Korean friends started to tell him that he should let us eat, and he started to get upset about that. Not that we wanted to be left alone, au contraire bonjour, but he was upset for a far different very Korean middle aged man reason - I had threatened to pollute the purity of the Korean race.

Seriously.

He was in fact so upset about this that he asked if I wanted to talk about it outside, so my wonderful Korean friends upped the intensity of letting him know he should cool it and go away. Mind you, this guy had two friend with him who should have played the good buddies who realized that their friend should go to sleep, but they were actually themselves rather upset at the potential of me having impure children with their women. Really. The highlight of this scene was when this one fiery Korean girl at our table got in his face and told him to go away using the verb endings one uses with a child, which is the equivalent of any string of grave insults you could sling together in English. Languages with honorifics are way cooler than English. Anyway, the whole place was staring at him, but the waitresses and waiters were totally ignoring the situation.

Well, of course, the totally logical conclusion of such a threat to this guy's bloodline was to call the police to stop this crazy foreigner from what he undoubtedly was about to do. That's right, the police. THANKFULLY that much cheap Korean alcohol makes you mumble like a champ so the po-po knew that this guy was just being ridiculous and he should go. So he left, the police called back, and they were informed that everying was indeed totally ok and this guy was being..."too honest." So no, nothing really big came of it, but it did give me a big lesson about the way this country works. Not to say that that's what Korean people are like, FAR from it, but people do exist that have a very very skewed idea of reality and logic that can permeate into many levels of life, and it's that kind of stuff that makes this place at all hard to live in at times. Not to say that there are other things that severe, but for example, I was lucky that his age didn't put me in a big world of hurt because as a younger man I'm not in the right. That's the kind of area where cultural differences can be serious, and I know that more than 2 years tops here wouldn't be something I could do.

Now, that's not the summary story of my last month and a half since the last time I wrote. Far from it. Things have been quite good. I decided to go to a church in Seoul which has been a tremendously good thing for me. The people there come from a very wide background, from Africa to the North and South Americas to Asia and the UK. I actually met the ambassador of Papua New Guinea there today and I will probably be meeting him this week for dinner to talk about his country. A few small things have happened recently that have got me thinking about how long (or short) I'll wait before starting up with graduate training to get back in the linguisitcs track to the jungle. I'll leave that one vague. They've got me playing bass and mandolin in the band and it's been great to get to play music with big hearted people that love music and Jesus, so I don't mind at all the hour commute to get up to Seoul.

I'm getting much more comfortable teaching, and my relationship with my students gets better by the day. Now, I'm still beat when I get home and my voice takes a beating and I still get frustrated beyond all get out when the magical Korean "changee" (sometimes the worst word in the Korean langauge) happens and my life suddenly becomes more difficult, but that's been less common as of late. The big stink right now is how little sense the next few months make. So get this: they have final exams the week after this coming week, then there's two weeks of non-testable "learning" before a month-long winter break, then two weeks of "learning" before a two week spring break (in February) then the new school year starts. Yes. This guy has no idea how he'll handle that.

Anyway, the important part that might improve your day more than the rest of this blog entry: I have finished my epic video about my students. If you really want to know what my job/life is like in Korea, sit back for 8 minutes and 20 seconds and get the truth below. Please let me know what you think about it too, I appreciate comments :-)

Thanks for the support, I'd have a hard time over here without knowing that I'm being supported in the homefront in so many ways.

"I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." -Psalm 27:13

Seoraksan - Probably the most intense hike of my life so far.

2009-10-18T23:10:00.001+09:00

Well, as promised, my plan to do this hike produced a story like you wouldn't believe. Sitting here thinking about it the day after, I'm somewhat conflicted as to how to write about it, because if we just look at the facts I'd say it was about a 70% absolutely miserable day that I'm lucky to be healthy and in one piece after, with 30% clearly intense beauty. However, the line is skewed between the beauty and the misery when the day is viewed from different eyes. I think my conclusion is that when seen from the eyes of the whole story, even while enduring part without seeing the whole, no matter how miserable or beautiful, the day was awesome. It's interesting how that can ring so true in so many settings. You learn a lot when you go outside. So anyway, here's what happened and you can decide:

We left Seoul on our private minibus at 11pm, with the intension to get there around 3 AM and start hiking. It sounded like a crazy plan, but hey, it's an adventure and I'm always up for those. The first 45 minutes or hour on the bus was spent chatting among the newly-formed band of adventurers. getting to know the general idea of how much we're into this sort of "hiking stuff." Let's just say the answers were.."mixed." All in all the upper end of the amount of sleep anyone got on the bus was about an hour and a half, mostly due to this one girl with a big mouth. It's always their fault ;-).

As it turns out, we got to the head of the trail in Seorksan national park at 2 AM - one hour early. Well, what do you know, it was time to start the hike! As we wiped the sleep from our eyes we realized that this beginning would be more intense than we expected, due to the fact that it was raining and we were starting at the same time as literally hundreds of other Korean hikers who were getting off of their busses too. I couldn't believe that that many people would arrive and begin hiking at 2 AM. Totally incredible. I was one of 5 people in our group of 12 who actually brought a (moderately water resistant) rain jacket, so the rest of the crew bought ponchos from this little poncho stand at the start of the trail. That was a smart business man, there. As we hit the trail, all I could see ahead of me and behind me was a snaking line of headlamps - just like the "Fire Vurm" from the movie "The Thirteenth Warrior," if you know what I mean ;-). The hike up was dark, wet and cold - what do you know. To add to the fun, the first four hours of the hike were uphill the entire time. Koreans don't believe in switchbacks in their trails. It was just four hours of wet darkness up rock stairs and Korean wooden rubber-padded stairs. I spent a lot of time walking with this poor girl who swears she'd done a lot of hiking but she was dying going up this thing. Miraculously, I didn't have a hard time with the first leg of the journey at all. Now, I was well hydrated, carbo-loaded from a strategic dinner the night before, well-layered for the occasion, and in half-decent shape, but there's definitely a lot of credit to be given for the Direction and intent of my thoughts. At one point in my attempt to encourage this girl, she asked me, "How much longer are we going to be walking up hill?" as well as "How much longer do you think it's going to be raining?" My response to both was, "Forever. It's never going to stop raining and we will never stop walking up hill, ever. This is not about expecting the worst and hoping for the best - it's about doing what you have to do and being at peace with the situation." Well, I don't know how encouraging that was to her, but as the day went on that thought kept coming back to me in many ways.

Things moved to a different level of intensity when we reached the summit. For the last half hour or so before our arrival it had stopped raining and turned into a dense fog. Kind of cool, I thought. Once we broke through the tree line though and got to the bare rocks of the summit, 1708 meters (5,603 feet)
higher than when we started, I heard a ton of screaming farther ahead of me in line. I didn't really know what to think until I got up there and started screaming too - Why? Well, no one was hurt, thankfully. However, there were 60 mph freezing winds and sideways smack-you-in-the-face rain. People's hats and headlamps and raincovers on their backpacks were getting blown away and no one was together with the group they came with so everyone was yelling from the shock and discomfort of it as well as trying to find their friends. I couldn't see anyone I came up with, but knowing that I didn't know where I was going and that I was farther ahead than most of the people because I didn't stop on the way up, I hunkered down in a cleft between some rocks and faced down hill trying to conserve some heat and get to wear I could see my group members as they arrived. I finally saw some, including a Korean guy who was one of our leaders. He said there was a shelter about 500 meters off, and that was where we were headed. With some direction now in sight (we couldn't see it through the fog, but we knew the direction), we took off at a motivated pace but stopped along the way as we found one of our group standing hugging himself screaming because he only brought a t-shirt, sweat pants, BOAT SHOES, and a poncho... I had a hard time feeling bad for some of the guys who should have read online or at least thought for a second what this kind of hike might entail. Anyway, I firmly let him know that standing around in the wind yelling would do far less than running for the shelter, so we got going.

The shelter was something else. Highly Korean experience, in the category of "Wow, get me back to America before I throw one of these little people." Very very crowded, stand up snuggling all around just because of how packed it was. A big cultural struggle here is that Korean people regularly push and bump into people when they walk past you and don't think twice about it. So when that's happening all around and all you want to do is take your pack off to get breakfast out because you've been hiking for 4 hours in the rain and wind and didn't sleep more than an hour and a half the night before, let's just say it "tests" you. Our leader got some ramen noodles cooking, which was awesome. A lot of the Koreans were drinking. Yes. The line to the bathroom was outside in the elements and really was an every-man-for-himself situation. No fun. A few of us found the overnight shelter room in this place and found a few square feet to take a nap on before we took off at 8:30. That was a GOLDEN 30 minutes.

Before we took off I heard that they were selling thin gloves on the 2nd floor for around 85 cents (1000 won) - thank GOD I bought a set. I put on every bit of clothing I had (a wool base layer, thin fleece mid layer, semi-water resistant rain jacket, wind proof stalking cap, and cheap gloves), and we set out. Our group assembled, and just as we were about to walk out the door they announced that they had closed our intended trail due to high winds. Geeze, go figure. So, no big deal, we would take another one that was just as long but spent more time in the valley than on the ridgeline. It's not like we could see anything from the ridgeline anyway. I was pretty disappointed that arriving at the summit right at sunrise we didn't see anything. It just got lighter outside. Bummer. Well, we stepped outside and what do you know? The plot thickens. It was a total blizzard outside. Yes. We couldn't see more than 20 feet through violent sideways smack-you-in-the-face-and-tell-you-it-doesn't-like-you hard snow mixed in the 60 mph gusts of wind. There's something about something being so ridiculously intense that gets me giddy. Sure, it was horribly uncomfortable, but I laughed most of the way through it and yelled things and sang various songs, at least knowing that the faster we got among trees and down in elevation the temperature would rise greatly. My thoughts turned to AOX last summer and Heather Angolia crying out "I'LL NEVER BE WARM AGAIN!" when things got chilly. I think it rose some spirits on Seoraksan like it did then in Ohiopyle.

What do you know, it did get a lot better when we got a bit further down, and soon experiencing the first snow of the year anywhere in Korea for the year 2009 became kind of nice in that morbid kind of adventure-loving sense. There was still a lot of it and it was still cold, but at least it was coming straight down and it stopped beating me up in the face. About 1/3 of the way down the mountain the snow stopped and got under the clouds and that's when it hit us - gorgeous rocky crags all around us and trees that looked like they'd been set on fire with leaves. There's a different kind of joy that comes from seeing that after going through that kind of hardship. Interesting how that works? It was cool at that point to look back up the mountain and see that it was all white with the snow that covered it and then look down and see a totally different season. We reached a Buddhist temple about halfway down, then reached the start of a stream that we would follow the whole way out. The trail along the stream was absolutely gorgeous. There were waterfalls all over the place, trees of the brightest of fall colors, totally clear water with sunrays shining through it that illuminated the different colored leaves that floated in the water and rested at the bottom, multicolored rocky cliffs and crags with trees that came alive as the sun hit them, and even hilariously bold chipmunks that traveled in gangs. I'm glad I don't have to bear the shame that would come of them mugging me.

From there we hiked a good 10 km through the valley to where the shuttle buses were picking people up to head to the area where all the bigger separate busses were waiting. All in all we hiked at least 21km (13 miles) with about 2400 meters (~7,800 feet) from 2 AM to 3 PM. The last mile or so of the hike was just plain "get to the bus NOW" motivation as we were a wee bit tired from our nature walk. I slept the whole bus ride back and then another 12 hours that night. Waking up was kind of painful as my body yelled at me for doing what I did to it, as well as realizing that it had been about 19 hours since I had eaten last because we didn't stop for dinner on the way back being that everyone was sleeping.

So, you may be thinking, "How in the world could you even consider that to be a good time?" Well, as I've said, it's almost as if the beauty was completed by there being enough variety and extremity to make it a story worth telling. That, and when coming from intense, dreary, violent conditions and suddenly breaking into the ethereal, it makes you really aware of the power that created this world. To be taken aback by that and then have the fortune to wallow in the extraordinary grandeur is a privelege that has a lasting effect on the soul.

And so that's the story. Sorry it's a long one, but you know how I get with this sort of thing. The whole story is important. If you made it through to this part I applaud you and will do what I can go have another adventure to relay later.

It's days like today that make me glad I came to Korea.

2009-10-15T22:18:00.001+09:00

It's days like today that make me glad I came to Korea. I know it's been a long time since I've written anything, but as I said earlier, I'm not going to write anything unless it's really worth reading.

Today's adventures are worth reading about not because of their magnitude (like last time), but because of their unique warmth that best describes the small treasures of experiences that seem to wait around the corner if I'm ready to receive them. I really do like this job. Teaching has been a great experience that has proven to be something that my quirky personality, abilities, and perfectionist tendencies work well to accomplish. However, the great challenge this past month has been not letting the job take me over. I figure it's a valuable lesson to learn right now, as I have known a few who haven't taken that stand.

So this week has been midterm exams for the students, which means Thursday and Friday of this week I don't teach. "Great," says the worker bee inside me, "Let's get way ahead." - a worthy goal, I guess. However, thankfully today the Powers that Be in my school decided that the afternoon would be a teacher fun afternoon. I hoped for marginal amusement out of it, in an attempt to repress the inkling of annoyance at my ever-so-productive day being cut short. "Shut up and live," I told myself. It's usually a good motto.

So the afternoon started with a big lunch for all the teachers at a really old traditional restaurant at the base of one of the local mountains. It was quite nice, and as was kind of expected, the principal (a funny little old lady) picked up the tab. From there all the teachers did a hike together up the mountain we were next to (about a 30-40 minute hike up - not bad), and then we had a "treasure hunt" at the top which involved searching for little pieces of papers with prizes written on them. I found one, and they said they'd give me a Korean dictionary ;-). All in all the hike wasn't that eventful but it was just fun to see the other teachers out of their classrooms having a good time on a mountain. When we got to the bottom one of the head teachers offered to buy this traditional rice wine ("Dongdong-ju") for everyone back at the little restaurant. Korean teachers are funny when they're in great moods and rice wine is present. Thist stuff is served in big bowls with a little ladle to serve with. The funny part came when I was asked to do a toast in English, commenting on my experience on the mountain with them today. So I said my little sentimental schpiel, knowing that two people understood, which was met with a resounding "OK!" from everyone and then a big sip. Hilarious, I wish in writing it down you could understand this scene. I laughed for a long time. Anyway, we all had our moderate fill and headed out, a day of "work" done. It was on the way back that the impression of goodness from the day was really hitting me, especially as the little old lady principal said goodbye at the front door of the school by saying "I love Mr. Paul" and then giving me a strong high five. This was echoed by one of the head teachers who had been running the day - "Yes, Mr. Paul, I love you too!" - and then a resounding "OK!" by the other teachers around. So funny, so great.

As I walked home thinking that things are pretty good here, the feeling was fortified by a group of my students on the other side of the road who broke out in the standard "Mr. Lundblad!!! OH YEAH!!!" frenzie which is the typical greeting I've gotten used to. These "OH YEAH!" fits come from my chief teaching aid - the Kool Aid Man. He makes an appearance in all of my PowerPoint presentations and my students are trained to yell "OH YEAH!" as soon as they see him. It's a pretty great monster I've created. Anyway, seeing students that I know get a kick out of what I do and who I am is a really good feeling that I get to experience every day of work. It overpowers the "I WANT TO THROW YOU OUT A WINDOW." feeling that is the appropriate confucian "yang" to the "yin" of good feelings. I actually did pick a kid up in his chair this week and walk toward the window saying "I AM GOING TO THROW YOU OUT THIS WINDOW!" which everyone found hilarious and has turned into part of my "charm," I guess. This is one of the few countries left where beatings and physical threats are ok ;-). (DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT BEAT OR HURT STUDENTS EVER.)

Speaking of hitting students though, just as an aside, one of the more hilarious things my students have done happened this week when I had them make posters of a picture of the job they want in the future and then a description of why they'd be good at it using the expressions "I like ____," "I'm good at _____," and "I want to ______." The BEST one was "I like hitting. I'm good at hitting. I want to be a teacher. I LOVED IT and laughed for a long time while the Korean co-teacher got upset. Oh kids.

So anyway, then I got home, changed, and headed out to transfer $$ to pay for the adventure that begins tomorrow. I will be traveling to Seoraksan, which is one the largest and most beautifully scenic mountains in Korea for a 14 hour hiking day which will cover 13 miles (21 km). It should be pretty intense, and at this time of year it will be gorgeous. Be sure to expect an entry about it soon.

On the way back home the day got much better. There's a little coffeeshop in my small neighborhood that I'd been meaning to stop by for some time now, because there are lots of books and instruments inside (it's been closed when I've been by before). Well this time I stopped by and it was open. Looking in the window, there were four people present: a man playing an accordian, a man playing an alto saxophone, a woman singing, and a woman watching. I figured I might as well see what happens and walked in. They spoke some English and were impressed with my little Korean, and I told them they sounded good and that I played the guitar. Well, what do you know, out came a guitar and they asked me to join them. So within 30 seconds of stepping in the door I was playing old Korean folk songs I had never heard with Korean people I had never met. We played for a while, and the owner of the shop offered to make some coffee. So he made it, and we all had some. It was actually good coffee - a big rarity in Korea. We had coffee and they interrogated me for a while, then I listened to the accordian man and the singing lady play for a while while I marveled at how quickly I could have such an experience that I would only ever expect to have with few close friends that I've ever had. When they put the accordian away the owner announced "Now it is drinking time" and pulled out some of the same rice wine I had had earlier in the day - ha! One of the ladies there asked if I would get my mandolin since I lived so close, so I did, and when I came back there was Korean food out for us too. I played and sang some on the mando for them, which they greatly enjoyed, and we had some food and makoli (the drink - same family as Dongdong-ju). They explained to me that they do a little concert there once a month (because it's kind of a music cafe) and that I was welcome to play with them next month, which I certainly intend to do. The owner closed the shop and we all left after having hung out there for about two hours - I payed nothing. "We are friends now, Mr. Paul," they told me as I left.

Now, I know that none of these are really that eventful of experiences. The point behind them is that at the end of the day I have to sit down and think that in the end what is really valued here is not pushing hard to make money and get things done, although people are hard working, but rather they value warm experiences with well-meaning people. I like that a lot. I've definitely felt isolated and alone in this country, even though I've made foreign friends. These things don't change that, but at least it's great to know that despite living by myself (which I hope never to do again) and not speaking these people's language, they want to do everything they can to show that they appreciate and welcome me. That's pretty swell if you ask me.

So that's a sum up of life for the last month, more or less. The honeymoon is over, that's for sure. There are days here when I have to fight my tendency to get stressed and blame Korea and dwell on how little sense anything makes here even if you know their language, and there are some valid points for that, but then there are days when I throw my head back and laugh and smile at how charmingly kind and cute these people and this country are. It's a balance that is constantly moving. I guess the way I'd put the outcome of it is I'm glad I came, and I think this is and will be a great experience, but I know that this is definitely not a place I could stay for longer than two years - tops. We'll see what happens next year.

OH! Quick final story - HEALTH CARE. WOW. I tell you what, this was incredible. So I got sick this past week, enough so that I was suspicious of a sinus infection and figured I'd get checked out. My co-teachers told me to head to one of the many clinics that they have all over here, and look for the one that said the word for ENT doctor. They were surprised when I asked if I should go to a regular doctor first when I had a problem with my ears, nose and throat. American healthcare doesn't make sense I guess. So here's the magic - I walked there (about 10 minutes), every floor of this building connected to a bunch of commercial businesses (restaurants, etc) was a different medical office, and I went straight to the ENT one. They asked for my insurance card, told me to wait (2 minutes). I went in to see the doctor (who spoke enough English), he checked me out and told me to take the medicine he was prescribing (2 minutes), then I got some sort of weird red light shining experience into my mouth to make my throat better or something (final 2 minutes), and then I paid the lady the 3500 won the visit cost (~$3). On the first floor I stopped in the pharmacy that gave me my medicine (~5 minutes) and charged me 3700 won for it (~$3.50), then I walked the 10 minutes home. WOW. Straight to the specialist I needed, quick in and out, REALLY cheap co-pay, REALLY cheap prescription, home - for about $7 and 30 minutes. Done. A-mazing. If a country with 48,379,392 people in a space the size of Indiana can do it, what is the US' problem?

Ok, now I'm done. Until next time!

Dobongsan - Climbing, Hiking, Rappelling, Adventure.

2009-09-20T17:13:00.001+09:00

Yesterday I had one of the most intense outdoor experiences I have ever had. My suspicions are still confirmed that the bolder the decisions I make, the bigger the adventures. Sorry about the length of this, but it really has to be this long for you to get it.

This adventure involved a hiking/climbing trip at Dobongsan, a large mountain to the north of Seoul. As you know, I love these activities; so, when I found a "Hiking and Climbing in Korea" group on www.meetup.com (a social networking site designed to bring people with similar interests together) that was based in Seoul I thought, "Oh yes, an outlet for my passions and people that I'll probably like. Let's go." So, not knowing anyone, I decided to RSVP "Yes" for their next event - the climbing at Dobongsan (-san means "mountain"). To meet the group I had to be in the north western part of Seoul (opposite side of the city from Anyang) at 8:30 AM, which meant I was up at 5:30. As you may or may not know, I think the morning is purdy important and will therefore wake up at least an hour before I need to leave for anything to preserve that time. This morning I felt like I was going hunting or something. The alarm went off, I had been dream of a trip to the mountain, I had all my gear laid out, and boom boom boom I was set and fed and packed. It took me an hour to get to the station where everyone was meeting up, and then the group left the station and got on a bus for another 30 minutes. There were about 30 people in the group, which was pretty cool. Good chance to meet people. The trips for this group are led by some Korean mountain men who are a real hoot. The main leader is a guy named Mr. Kim (go figure) who has a great practical joke kind of sense of humor. Everybody loves him. The other main leader was a guy they called "Soju Man" because he's got quite a liking for the Korean alcoholic beverage called "Soju" and one time was witnessed drinking an entire bottle of this stuff in one swig (a bottle is about half a litre, 16 oz, and it's basically watered-down vodka with about a 20% ABV, so not as strong as regular vodka). Soju Man was hilarious. He's kind of this fat, happy, motivating-noise-making Korean guy who you'd never expect to be able to do this stuff but then he does it and you can't believe it.

So we all got to the mountain and started hiking up this trail. This trail was nicer than the previous mountain I had been on, as there were very few stairs at the beginning of the trail and the rest of it was pretty authentic woods with real trails. We started hiking at around 9:45 or 10 AM. Our whole group was together for the first 3 or 4 miles of hiking, and then we split up into two groups: one for hiking, one for climbing. I went along with the hiking group, itching to try my new climbing shoes out on some real Korean rock. There were about 8 foreigners in the climbing group and about 5 Korean older guys who were either helping lead or just along for the ride. Soju Man and Mr. Kim were with us and they had frame packs full of extra gear and three ropes and the works, so I knew this was going to be pretty intense. So we split the group, and the climbing group headed out on a smaller trail for the 5 peaks of Dobongsan.

It took us about 2 hours total (maybe a bit less) to get to the start of our climb from the base of the mountain with terrain that was pretty steep from time to time. I think the horizontal distance was something around 4-6 miles to get to the beginning of the climb. About 15 minutes before we got to the start of the climb we could see it from a distance - 5 peaks and 4 valleys at the top of this huge mountain, the valleys ranging from 30 to 80 feet. The plan, we then learned, was to come at the peaks in a line starting with the first one at the end of our trail, rappel down the valley, climb up the next peak, rappel down the next valley, climb the next one, etc. etc., until we got to the end and the rappel down the end of the mountain. Ah!!!! Crazy! This was definitely a new level of wilderness experience - I'm not on AO anymore ;-).

We started the climb at around noon and we all ate lunch as we could between climbs and rappels. At the beginning we suited ourselves up in harnesses, chalk, climbing shoes, and our day packs with our boots in them and whatever else. The first rappel was a pretty cool maybe 50-foot rappel that involved straddling a corner made by two huge rocks for a while and then a straight slab down. At all of these climbs and rappels there were already metal anchors bolted into the rock so we set up and tore down pretty quickly. A few people in the group had never rappelled before, and for our rappelling gear some people had figure 8's and some people had ATC's (two different devices used to slow yourself on a rope as you slide down it with your body weight). Mr. Kim didn't really have the English ability to explain this stuff, so he had me teach everyone how to rappel because he figured I knew that stuff somehow. (We hadn't talked about my relationship with the woods and rocks but he just grabbed me and said, "You explain.") So I felt like I was back out on AO explaining to everyone how to rappel using a figure-8 and how to not get your fingers, hair or clothes stuck in it. I explained, the went over. Someone else who knew this stuff too explained how to use the ATC. It was a great time. However, we were starting to learn that with this many people it was going to take a long time to get everybody through especially since a few of the ladies and a few of the dudes were going to have a harder time than some others.

We got everybody through, and went along to the next obstacle, which was a kind of scramble hike half way up the next peak and then a roped-in climb of this 20-foot wall with very very little to hold on to. Soju Man was at the top belaying (sp?) with a grigri (another belaying device like a figure 8 or ATC), kind of like a reverse rappel. I'd never seen that before. Pretty neat way to do it. I'll now skip some repetition and technical details for the sake of time and story. Anyway, the last climb was pretty cool because we all had to climb half way up (maybe 30 feet), and then they set up another rope for the second half of the climb, which was a much easier 40 foot climb to the top. So it was a kind of multi-pitch. Sweet. These climbs were quite tricky because they really lacked hand holds. You could kind of get your feet placed somewhere were they might not go anywhere, but where to hold on with your hands was the hard part. I do well with heights but what made this tricky was just the exposure. This was bare rock at the top of a mountain and seeing very little and a loooooooong way to the bottom of the mountain was something else.

It was after the last climb that things started to get rapidly more interesting. Because it was taking some time to get everyone through and we had a lot to do in addition to the time it takes get the ropes down and all the gear moved, it was now about 7:30PM and getting dark. We had a great view of Seoul so it was cool to see the sunset from up here and see the lights slowly start to turn on in Seoul. However, it was our last element here that was the really crazy part: a ~200 foot rappel. They set the anchors up at the top, got the rope set up, and Soju Man went over as the first guy who would then belay from the bottom. But!! He can only do that if there's actually enough rope to get him to the bottom. Apparently the distance wasn't right and we then had a 250 pound problem on our hands dangling about 100 feet off a cliff (I assume he must have been that far down based on how long it took to get him up and how far he must have been to realize that the rope wasn't touching the ground). The solution was to hook up a grigri (a belaying device that locks itself) at the top of the rope and then all man hands present had to haul this guy up the cliff. This took a long time, as you could imagine, and took every bit of the 6 or 7 of us hooked up to this rope to get him up to the top. Miraculously we made it, and then they had to take the rope out and set up TWO ropes. That's right, it took the entire length of these two ropes to get enough length for us to rappel down with a double rope's width to put through the figure-8. In simple, non-climbing terms, THAT'S A CRAZY BIG CLIFF. At this point, to add to the adventure, it was dark, and getting pretty chilly. The dark, cold, and lack of dinner was getting the girls into whining mode....yay. There was just enough ambient light from the city in the distance and whatever other general ambient light from the night sky so that we could still see the edge of the cliff around us, but going over that edge to rappel down was pretty blind. It took a long time to get everyone through because we had to go slow as to not heat up the gear too much. Going over this was awesome. For about the first 80 feet your feet are on the wall, then it overhangs and you're just dangling from a rope for another 80 feet or so before you meet rock again for the last 30-40 feet. You could see most of Seoul from up there, the cliff you can't see the top of bottom of, and silhouettes of mountains in the distance.

By the time everyone was done, we were leaving at 10:30 PM from that point, which was still about halfway up the mountain and a long way from our exit point. At this point things got an extra step crazier. We had about 5 headlamps between 13-15 people, making this hike down kind of treacherous. Especially so because the first 30 minutes of our hike out were VERY steep down over boulders and smaller rocks and trees and things - pretty hairy. We were doing ok until I hear girls scream from behind me and a bunch of tumbling noises - I was definitely fearing the worst. What ended up happening was Mr. Kim, our leader, had slipped, flew over the girl in front of him, landed hard on the rocks, and rolled down the mountain a few feet before he hit a little tree that stopped him - talk about scary. Miraculously he was ok. He was pretty sore, to be sure, and is going to get checked out today, but he was ok enough to make it out of there without us carrying him. So we handed his pack off and kept going, inching along to keep everyone safe and minimize the whining of a few people. The rest of the hike was a dark hour and a half. That's right, a two hour hike out, about 4-5 miles, everyone extremely tired from a 15 hour day on the mountain and a bit frazzled by circumstances. By the time we got out of the woods it was 12:30 AM.

Which presents a serious problem! The subways stop running here on the weekends at 11:30PM, and I was an hour and a half from home. I was rather amused by the solution. In Korea they have things called "Jinju Bang"s, which are public baths/spas/overnight shelters for people in my kind of situation. What was important for my purposes, was for about $6 (8,000 Won) I could stay someplace secure for the night and head back to Anyang in the morning. So I and two of the ladies did that because we were the three that lived outside of taxi range. This place was a trip and a half. The guys and the girls have separate big bath rooms with pools of different temperatures for people to bathe in as well as a bunch of showers (far too naked and Korean for this American guy), and then a few big rooms for different sleeping experiences. A few rooms were really hot for people who think sleeping in a sauna is cool, one was a room with ice on the walls, one was a room that they pump extra oxygen in, and the list goes on. The ladies and I decided on the biggest room with the least noise that had a bunch of people in it. Unlike most jinju bangs, this one didn't give you a sleeping pad or blanket, which was a bummer. They did give us pillow-like things though, which was nice. Other than that it was a hard wood floor for the weary. I'm pretty good at sleeping on uncomfortable things, so this was fine, but the problem was the whiny Korean lady who came with us from the mountain who has had very limited woods exposure in her life. I was amazed that she made it through the day. The trouble though was for whatever reason she would scream about every hour and half while sleeping and wake up and say her muscles hurt. Imagine that. Now, don't get me wrong, she was a very friendly lady who helped a lot with translating for us and it wasn't like she was constantly nagging us with wanting to leave, but like most Korean ladies she has some great intonation and noises to let out when she's upset. Thankfully for me and the other 20 people sleeping in this room she left at 5:00AM to get the first subway while the other girl and I stuck around until 8:30AM (leave me alone - nothing happened or will happen with this lady).

After some Dunkin' Donuts, we headed out on the subway and after a long train ride and bike ride I got home around noon. A tired end to a very crazy day and a half. Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Wow, that's terrible, what a horrible experience, XY and Z could have happened and you should probably sit at home and watch this stuff on TV." However, be assured that everyone knew what they were doing and any "changes in plan" were really fine. To be honest, this experience was so awesome BECAUSE of these unexpected experiences. I think it's really awesome how the day intensified in steps: early long subway ride by myself (1st time - intense), a 5 mile hike, rappel, climb, rappel, bigger climb (repeat etc), then hauling up Soju Man a long way up a cliff, rappelling down about 200 feet in the dark, a steep crazy descent and hike out for 2 hours in the dark, and then a REALLY bizarre overnight in a Korean public bath spa. Talk about an awesome day.

Anyway, I figure that's an experience worth relaying. Of all things I've done in the wilderness this definitely ranks among the most intense. If only there was a bear for me to rassle it would be #1 ;-) Otherwise, things are going pretty well. I'm getting into the swing of work, which is proving to be pretty difficult to this perfectionist, but the kids love me and the other teachers are impressed with what I'm doing so it's cool. If only I could convince them that working extra is not what I'm here for though... I also found another climbing gym which is 5 minutes from my house and has at least two people in it who speak English. I found a church with an English service who needs someone to play guitar and sing, and the list goes on. Soon I will have my alien registration card which will mean a cell phone and internet in my apartment, at which point I'll be much more connected to everyone and comfortable in this country.

More updates as interesting things happen. I won't waste your time with uneventful updates, so I'm sorry if it takes some time between posts.

D Day

2009-09-08T18:56:00.003+09:00

So today was the first day of school. Let's just say that no amount of warning could have prepared me. I showed up to work at 8:00 AM, after waking up at 5:00 AM because I couldn't sleep. Not jet lag this tome, but rather anticipation. I had spent many hours the day before trying to turn the text books and verbal advice I had received into managable, practical lessons - with not a whole lot of luck. The way it works here is each class is like a team that travels together to all their different classes, and each team only sees me either once a week or once every other week. Not a great recipe for learning English if you ask me, but that's what I get. During the day I teach between four and five 45-minute periods of the three different grade levels. So, essentially, I'm only teaching three lessons a week over and over again. That doesn't sound so bad, but the hard part begins with the less than stellar text books and reaches its climax with the greatest part of this story:

The students.

I had the shadow of the thought of "Oh man...middle school boys...watch out" before I left, but I over came it with misplaced trust in the Korean education system's ability to corporally punish the pre-teenager out of the boys. So, here's what happened. As I walked down the hall and students caught glimpses of me through the windows of their classrooms, shouts of "Hi!!! Hello! Yo yo yo dawg!" and the most prevalent "Oooooooo so handsome!!! so handsome!!! Movie star!!" came roaring down the hall as the seemingly biggest-deal-ever showed up to school...right. No amount of time will get me used to that much attention. Ha!

The teachers are quite nice. In addition to my Korean "co-teacher" (read: Korean life coordinator/teaching aid/swinger of the wooden stick), there are four other English teachers, one of which I can communicate without worrying that something very big has been lost in translation. The one teacher with really good English happens to be a tremendous blessing. As it turns out she's a Christian who is tremendously kind, accommodating, wants to maybe get into rock climbing, likes to shoot clay pigeons, and is married with twin 7-year-olds (so leave me alone readers, remember what I told you before I left). The rest of the teachers are English-less and highly highly amazed anytime I open my mouth and a Korean word comes out. At 8:30 this morning we had a faculty meeting and the vice principal introduced me and read my life story (seemingly) to them in Korean, and about every thirty seconds all the teachers erupted with an "Ooooooo!!!!" (Korean noise). Who knows what was actually said.

So then came the actual teaching. My first class was a first period 9th grade class, which was a wild group of excitable 14-year-olds. It felt pretty cool walking up to a chalk board and writing "Mr. Lundblad" in big letters, turning around, and teaching a group of 30 middle schoolers how to say my name. Mad me feel all old and stuff. Then I told them that I was from America ("oooo!!"), played guitar ("ooo!!!!"), and liked to hike and climb (no "oo" there). Then I opened the floor to them for questions. You'd think I was Mel Gibson coming to visit their school (three people here have said I look like Uncle Mel). What do you know, here's a sampling of their questions:

"Do you have girlfriend?" (To which I said, "No, class. Ok, eveybody repeat after me, 'TROUBLE'." The Korean teacher laughed.)

"Do you want girlfriend?" (Repeat, "TROUBLE.")

"What your hair style called?" ("Cool," I said.)

"How much you weigh?"

"You movie star?"

etc. etc. etc.

Pretty hilarous kids. For the first class I had all the classes make name cards with English names on them, write three things about themselves on the back, and a few of them introduced themselves. My conclusion thus far is that teaching English as a foreign language would be a challenge if the students wanted to learn and stayed quiet. When they're loud and half don't care and maybe half understand you, it becomes....something else. So anyway, I'm combing the internets and my child-like heart for games that I can twist into learning activities. So, PRAY.

(Just an aside, I'm sitting by some parking spaces on a bench in the busy-ish area near my apartment where this 70-something-year-old parking attendant has been badgering me periodically with some broken English he's wanting to show off and he just told me that when the Korean war broke out when he was 15 and UN forces came through where he was living in North Korea he ran away from home and followed the troops and has lived in Anyang ever since. Wow.)

Otherwise, there's not much to add about the school experience of the day. Pretty overwhelming, tons of ridiculous attention. After school the Christian English teacher (let's call her "Jackie") drove me to the only church in the area with a foreigner service. It's a pretty huge church with 5,000+ members, and five floors of auditoriums. Crazy stuff. Not what I'd go for in the States, but being the only English connection I've got to the Family of God in this part of the world I'll be going there this Sunday morn. I'll probably have an exprience worth writing about later.

Otherwise, within the last few days I've adjusted fairly nicely, and had some cool experiences. Last week I ended up finding that climbing gym after a few hours of walking around trying my best to interpret the stars to find this place, and when I finally did I found that only one guy spoke any English there, and by any I mean really really little. His name was "Don." He got off the wall and explained that I needed to get climbing shoes, but then some other guy who I assume works there came out with a pair for me to try. I put them on, they motioned for me to get on the wall, where I proceeded to hang out while they all instructed me loudly in Korean as to how to hang there properly. They moved my feet around, etc etc, then I hopped down because my grip gave out. Then the one guy managed to get out "5 minute, you on wall," so I climbed around for five minutes while they watched and critiqued in Korean. Anyway, I got down and followed their directions to where to buy climbing shoes, went there, found they didn't have shoes, came back, and Don got off the wall, put his shirt on, motioned for me to follow him. I followed him to a cab which he proceeded to climb into, and I followed. "Trust people, have adventures," I told myself. So in the cab ride he told me that I should call him "Hyeon," which means "Big brother" in Korean, and then he said that I was "Little brother" (I forget the word). We had a neat little friendly confusing conversation that I walked away from basically feeling like he was trying his best to be friendly and accomodating to a foreigner in his land. Excellent. So we got to the outdoor store, he talked to the salesman, I tried on some shoes, bought them, and we got in another cab back to the gym. Don paid. Pretty awesome. We went back up to the gym, he told everyone else that had showed up about me (I think), and we climbed for a little. Pretty cool stuff. I'm pretty sure I'll go back there and get a membership but I really want to get some English speakers to go with me....it's just more fun.

Otherwise, last experience, I climbed up this huge mountain out here on Sunday with my old friend Mike from college and his two Korean friends, Wade and Lee. This mountain was awesome, but it was pretty much Disney World. There were STEPS all the way to the top. Some rock, some wood, but all steps all the way. Crazy. It took us two hours to get to the top and we were totally beat. Near the top was a Buddhist temple that was pretty cool to see, and at the summit you could see many many miles in any direction. You could see about four different cities and the mountains the live in between them. I'll try to get a picture to work on here for you. The whole hike this was going through my head:

"And we^[b] rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. ³Not only so, but we^[c] also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. " Romans 5:2-5

I was joyfully commanding my legs to keep climbing the stairs, dripping with sweat and groaning in exhaustion, and it hit me. The hope of the glory of God is like this mountain. Every time I felt exhausted I had to yell out "Oh yes!! Come on!" to my companions, because that suffering was eventually leading to knowing that I would experience Glory when I got where I was going, and thankfully, I got quite a few glimpses of that along the way. It's just this kind of thing that reminds me even more:

^"20For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." Romans 1:20

I'm thrilled to experience exactly how real that is. This is not philosophical junk in a book - this is real. Strap on some boots, step on a mountain, and open your eyes. I love it.

Adventures at Woodstock

2009-09-04T14:52:00.000+09:00

So last night was a completely ridiculous experience. I went out with an old friend from college to the popular, foreigner- and bar-infested region of the city called "Beomgye Station." We went a trivia night thing at this place called Happidus and soon concluded that it wasn't a great time, so we went to a better place that my friend (Mike) knew of called Uncle Don's. We took a cab there (cheap) and arrived at this pleasant looking little bar called "Uncle Don's" with one customer inside, a Korean American named Roy. Roy is an interesting guy. He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from someplace in California and decided to come to Korea to find his mother.

You see, Roy was abandoned in an apartment in L.A. when he was 10 months old because his mother couldn't take care of him anymore after her half-korean half-black boyfriend/baby's-daddy left. He was found by the landlord who then adopted and raised him. The landlord died when Roy was about to finish college, thus prompting his desire to come to Korea to find his mother. He ended up finding her six days after he arrived, which he says was a very powerful experience. Apparently his mother denounced her American citizenship to go back to Korea and now realizes that that was a bad decision and wants her son to save up money working as a teacher here so that he can take her back to America. He's now in a tough place because he wants to save his money so that he can have a good head start when comes home for himself. That, or he wants to leave to make more money as an electrical engineer in the States, but he feels almost like that would be abandoning her like she abandoned him. It was a neat opportunity to talk to him some about purpose and meaningful opportunities in life relating to Something Larger being in control. He agreed and said he had never thought of it like that before. Great opportunity.

So the night got better as the really really nice/energetic bar tender/owner at Uncle Don's gave us some free food and told us all about her "Kissy room" in the basement of the building where for 4,000 won (~3 bucks) you can "have good conversation and kissy" with her lady employees...what a trip. (Quick aside, I just got a random free espresso refill because I told this coffee roaster who owns this shop that his coffee was good. Koreans are awesome.) Anyway, who knows what this lady's name was, but let's call her Sally for fun. So, Sally let us know that the free food was just because there were only four of is in her bar (I, Mike, Roy, and Mike's Korean friend Wade). Furthermore, she thought it'd be a much better idea to leave her place and go to a bar called "Woodstock" where she knew the owner. Woodstock is a hilarious little basement bar with a stage with full band setup (guitars, bass, drums, karaoke screen, and microphones), and a huge statue of Michael Jordan. Sally said everything was on her, so she ordered an array of anything you could think of including a bowl of dried minnows which are supposed to be the Korean beef jerky. Crazy. Mike told the owner that I play guitar and sing so what do you know, I get pushed to the stage and handed the owner's Gibson Les Paul that he has plugged into this huge Marshall amplifier. I play a little skoodily-doo, he makes the stereotypical Korean "ooooooo!!!" noise, puts on an A-minor blues on the karaoke machine and just has me solo for about 5 minutes. The whole place is very excited that there's a guitar player in the room, and so I didn't leave the stage for a good 30 minutes at least. Some way through my impromptu set two Korean guys came up to the stage and started playing drums and bass, while I sang and played guitar. We did some Led Zeppelin, Steppenwolf (they LOVED "Born to be Wild"), and a bunch of CCR. I got off the stage intending to just hang out the rest of the night, but the owner stood on the stage and motioned for me to come back up and keep playing, so I did. I picked up a bass and Sally started yelling "Michael Jackson!!!" So "Billy Jean" happened among who knows what else. Everybody in the bar (about 9 people) was dancing around having a good time then the owner came up to the microphone, pointed to me and said, "His name JIMI HENDRIX!", which is apparently how I am supposed to refer to myself whenever I come back, which he said I have to do. We left at 3:30AM after I was coaxed into playing "Hotel California" (I don't like the Eagles, Philadelphia or otherwise), then was permitted to leave with Mike to take a cab back to our neighborhood. As Mike said, "You're big in Korea, man." Ha!

Anyway, I woke up at noon today and just sat and marveled that that actually happened. It was one of those experiences that you have to stop and laugh in the middle of having because you know that it's ridiculous and it's something you have to pursue to its fullest so that you have the best story you can afterwards. I'm just glad that within two days of being here stuff like that was happening. I'm excited to keep pursuing that. Today's mission is to find a climbing gym and hopefully a church. We'll see how it goes.

They Cook Disorientation Into The Kimchi.

2009-09-02T20:23:00.000+09:00

Well, I made it, and my oh my has this been a trip.

Let's start at the airport. It turns out a knife for camping wasn't cool, so I got the full customs check, which luckily just involved them having me dig through my wilderness bag to get my knife out so they could see it, hum and mumble for a second, and say "That's ok. Bye bye." So, luckily customs officials in Korea are much kinder than in the states where they probably would have taken it, threatened me with a fine and promised to incinerate my knife. After leaving customs I proceed to search for an hour and a half for the man with a sign that "would be waiting for me outside the gate"...famous last words. After not finding him I tried to make a call to my emergency contact who had his cell phone turned off. Great. Eventually I ran into this frantic funny little Korean man with my name on a sign who couldn't say anything but "herro" in English while motioning to follow him. Nice guy.

We drove about an hour and a half to Anyang in some CRAZY Korean traffic. My oh my, I could imagine how the driving would be here, but I never could have prepared myself for experiencing it. Stopping in the middle of an intersection in traffic and getting out of the car to yell to someone on the sidewalk for instructions is totally cool...Yep. Well I lived and had a good time, despite being quite tired.

When we got to the school I met my co-teacher, who is a woman named Yeongin who will be my partner in crime while I teach. Basically my Korean lifeline and wooden-stick swinger in the inevitable event of distracted students (seriously). She took me to my apartment, which is on the top (4th) floor of a walk up apartment building. Good times. The apartment is growing on me, but didn't make a great first impression because the person who "cleaned very well" the morning before I showed up may not actually exist and it's just a very different kind of set up to what I'm used to. There's very little storage space, there are two layers of peculiar sliding doors to the kitchen that I still can't figure out, and no real shower. Well, there's a metal hose thing that comes out of the sink and mounts up on the wall in a shower-like manner but there's no separate space in the bathroom for it so you get water all over the bathroom and get to deal with it. I'm also a giant here, which is crazy, so I have to duck for my shower and mirrors. I get air conditioning though, which apparently means I'm living like a king in this land of rice and sand blowers.

Anyway, the fun part of last night was going out for traditional Korean dinner with Yeongin. She asked me if I wanted meat or vegetables, I was slightly confused, and gave the reflex man answer of "Meat. Mmmmm...." So we went to this place in the main part of my neighborhood where you had to take your shoes off when you come in, go to a short table with a small round charcoal-fueled grill in the middle and sit on the floor. Pretty cool. Then they bring out a few plates, one with raw meat, one with lettuce/sesame leaves, one with kimchi, one with sprouts, etc etc ad korean-food nauseum. You grill the meat on the table with some garlic and mushrooms then when it was done you put the meat with whatever arrangement of the extras on a piece of lettuce, fold the lettuce up, and put the whole thing in your mouth. It was pretty cool. I could never invent such a way of eating if they paid me. So we hung out and shot the proverbial kimchi and talked about the school and life in general until about 11:30 PM (10:30 AM your time/my body's time) then I headed "home" and crashed. It turns out I get the week to adjust before starting to teach on Tuesday. That was nice news. So, as I dozed off, I thought about what on earth I'd end up doing this week.

My first few minutes of today were kind of rough. I woke up at 7AM (6PM EST) and stumbled around for a little while trying to figure out what to do. I eventually decided that showering was a good idea, but was rather disappointed to experience the clear reality that Korean showers mean your entire bathroom is wet. Good times. After that I figured since nothing was open and I hadn't done it yet that I'd unpack, stow, and clean. That took me until about 2PM. Stuff was DIRTY. When I finally ventured out my first stop was to the PC-bang (pronounced "pee she bahng" real fast), which is a smoke-filled internet cafe where you pay 1300 won (~$1) to use one of their computers for an hour. Pretty cool. I just think PC-bang is a hilarious term. Experience 1(ish) of this being a very funny country. From their I explored and slowly expanded the map in my head of this strange city. I spent considerable time at the Lotte Mart wal-mart-ish establishment trying to gather things for my apartment and food. Today I learned that anyone who told me that people here understand enough English for basic interactions had a great sense of humor. I need to hop on learning this language ASAP. Good thing I'm a linguist or I'd be hosed. So, Korean grocery stores are something else. They're not too much different than ours, other than the fish/meat section is much larger and some of the fruits of the sea are still alive (crabs). However, the big difference is sales people everywhere yelling in Korean. This was a little hard to get used to. The best was the dried fruit lady I tried to interact with who more-or-less got that I didn't do Korean but continued to talk at me for a considerable period of time while I smiled and said "Ne" ("Yes" in Korean") over and over with shrugging gestures until I ended up with a bag of dried fruit containing a little extra for free with a wink and a smile. Fun times. I ended our time together with a hearty "Kamsahamnida (thank you), funny dried fruit lady" and a bow. Bowing regularly is an amusing way to interact with people, especially when you end up in a back and forth over and over again bowing situation. It happens.

On a side note, two columns of Korean soldiers happen to be walking past my coffee shop right now with full packs and rifles. Woah man. They don't look like they're headed for battle so I think I'm OK but this is somewhat exciting. There's a Korean base about two blocks from here so that makes this make more sense. They're not a very uniform bunch. They're probably headed for the mountains to train.

Well, I'm meeting up with an old friend from my Swedish classes in college tonight. He happens to be teaching in this city as well and has been since November, so he's overcome some of the confusion that I'm stuck in. This will be a good time. My key thought of the day is that I need to shut out all feelings of being overwhelmed or dismayed or alone and focus on the goodness of what's around and the surety that good things are awaiting me everywhere. When I spent some time thinking about that today my morning shock and less-than-good feeling shifted substantially. I'm pressing on into this week of freedom and adjustment and good things are going to happen.

¹³ I am still confident of this:
       I will see the goodness of the LORD
       in the land of the living.
¹⁴ Wait for the LORD;
       be strong and take heart
       and wait for the LORD.

Psalm 27:13-14

Beginnings

2009-08-27T22:58:00.003+09:00

On the 31st of August, 2009, I depart for a journey and adventure of considerable magnitude - I am moving to Anyang, South Korea to teach English for at least a year. My school is a public boy's middle school in the neighborhood of Pyeongchon. I have created this blog as a way to keep you updated on the many adventures that will certainly take place.

Those of you who know me know that I tend to attract a great deal of story-worth experiences, and being that I (probably) will not be seeing you anytime real soon to relay these anecdotes in person, I will be posting them here to keep you satiated until we meet again.

It is a difficult yet thrilling thing to leave, yet it seems that is the case with any transition in life. I've had a few, but not quite one of this level. It's hard, but for a reason as mysterious as the changing of the leaves it is a good and natural thing to leave one's home and experience new things, love new people, and fight new battles. It is precisely such experiences that remind us that our task on this earth is not complacency and familiarity, but rather adventure and purpose. And it is in such a manner, in a broad sense, that I leave home to a land full of unknowns to act out the gifts I have been given and continue to become who I was made to be, and do what I was made to do.

And so, I depart. If you care to keep up to date with whatever is happening with me, subscribe to this blog and prepare to be updated.

"And then, let us descend into the city and take the adventure that is sent us."
-C.S. Lewis, "The Silver Chair"