Orientation, Day 4

6 AM: We're going on a field trip to Seoul today. We'll be seeing a palace and a traditional Korean village and a few other cool tourist sites like that. The photographers among us are really excited about the photo opportunities.

In a few days, I'll present a 15-minute lesson on shopping with a teaching partner from my group. My partner is really good at lesson plans, and I like to make presentations, so I hope it goes well. Everyone says not to stress about this lesson but I am starting to worry, so I'm listening to praise and worship music right now as a countermeasure. The vastness of God's goodness makes my concerns about lesson planning seem insignificant, which is how I should see things.

And I have a funny---my Advanced Korean class that was held entirely in Korean on Tuesday was entirely in English by Wednesday. :-) Our teacher knew we weren't keeping up, so she changed it to a discussion class on Korean culture. I learned a few new things about bus/subway culture. I knew that if you were sitting down on a full bus and an elderly person came on, you should offer them your seat, but a Korean American guy in my discussion group says that if the elderly person refuses to take your seat, you're supposed to take them by the hand, draw them toward the seat and plead with them to sit. That's good to know! I have to hear from others where the line between polite and pushy is, and the line falls in unusual places sometimes.

Also, in Korea, the questions "have you eaten?" and "where are you going?" are exactly like the English phrase "how are you?" You're always supposed to answer, "Yes, I've eaten" and something generic like "I'm going over this way" rather than giving actual details like "well, I had a big breakfast and a yogurt for brunch, but I haven't eaten my sandwich yet" or "I'm going to the grocery store by the park, then to the post office". The questions are just polite verbal filler, and you should respond with polite verbal filler.

If you're praying for me, please pray that I'll be a blessing to my fellow teachers on the trip today. I think it's easy for me to confuse having good conversations with people as being good to people, and I want to be more than just an energetic, talkative person. I want to be genuinely helpful.
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7:00 PM: Back from Seoul! Good trip. more later.

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9:00 PM: Ate a bit of octopus for dinner, the cooked kind, not the live kind. Because eating live octopus does happen in Korea, they're just not going to serve it to us in the cafeteria. Drank something that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike coffee. Met a lovely Scottish couple at dinner, too. I feel like I meet several nice new people with every meal I eat in the cafeteria. When we leave, I'll miss the experience.

Our bus left at 9 this morning for Seoul, and it took close to 2 hours to get there.We went to a traditional Korean village first, but instead of walking around and looking at the village like everyone else, I sat on a bench by a little decorative pond and wrote poetry. It was really hot outside and although I had packed my own water and snacks, I didn't want to risk getting tired and fainting--I used to faint a lot in college, but I've since learned how to avoid that. Also, tours and museums are really not my thing. I don't usually like going around and looking at cool stuff, unless it's an art museum.

I did have a great time sitting by the little green pond, though. There was a breeze and my bench was comfortable, and I could watch the giant slow-moving orange fish in the water. It was delightful for me in a way that looking at buildings could not be.

Also, while sitting on my bench  at the Korean traditional village, looking at the pond and feeling poetic, a Chinese family came up and took pictures with me. The college-age son asked in clear English if I could take a picture with his mother, and at first I thought he meant take a picture of his mother, but no, it was with. I found out they were Chinese because as the mother sat down by me on the bench, I asked her, "hanguk saram?" (한국 사람?) or "are you Korean?" She answered in something that was clearly Mandarin, so I said, "Jungguk?" (중국?) forgetting that I was asking with the Korean word for Chinese, and I didn't know the Chinese word for Chinese. So, we were at a linguistic impasse. But they were a lovely family, and now I'm probably appearing in some Mandarin version of facebook, in my EPIK t-shirt and Alabama cap (Roll Tide!).

Next, we went to a theatre to see a performance of traditional Korean dancing and old-style musical instruments. I was very dazzled by the whole performance, especially the drum-playing.

Then we had lunch at a formal Korean restaurant, sitting on cushions on the floor, eating at low tables. Each person had a giant bowl of bibimbap (mixed rice), and about 6 side dishes called banchan (반찬) each. I could eat everything but the purple radish with the chemical taste, and I used metal chopsticks the whole time. I've now grown to expect the taste of kimchi to balance out every meal. The girls at my table had a great discussion about our respective city assignments, the merits of having siblings vs. being an only child, and how much we love Backstreet Boys songs, despite lyrics like "sadness is beautiful/loneliness is tragical".

Next we went to the museum of Contemporary Korean history, and I appreciated it on a technical level, but I'm just not a museum person. Fortunately, it wasn't a guided tour--we just wandered from floor to floor, seeing everything at our own pace. I bought an old-fashioned fold-up fan in the gift shop, which was an invaluable purchase because when we had to walk outdoors in the heat, it circulated some much-needed air.

Finally, we went to a Joseon-era palace which was another popular tourist site. The weather report today said that with the humidity it felt like 107 degrees outside at the hottest point, and that certainly matches what we were feeling. I'd love to go back to that palace in October, when I'd be free to just take in the sights.

And I do feel like I was truly helpful to people today. That's what I wanted, and that's how the Lord let things work out. :-)
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