Island Getaway

This weekend my boss invited me to her house on Jeju Island. I was a little nervous because I had NO idea what to expect. There was a little bit of miscommunication about our departure time. Mrs. Kim told me, "We'll leave at 12:40." I thought that meant we'd leave the school at 12:40, since my last class wasn't over until 12:10 - she meant our flight left at 12:40. Long story short, there was a wedding at the airport hotel and we couldn't make it through traffic in time. Although if we'd been just 10 minutes earlier they would have held the flight since the Kims fly there once or twice a week. We left at 2:20.

What can I say, the island was . . . beautiful. It reminded me of a lusher version of central Oregon. Lots of fields, lots of tree farms. The Kims took me by two of their houses (one at their tree farm and one at their fish farm). We ended up staying the night at the fish farm house, which was right across the street from the beach. They have an English class at their home on Sunday evenings, so I got to hear all the students' speeches and judge a contest. You should've seen the students faces when they first saw me. (Apparently there aren't a lot of foreigners who live there.) Anyway, after the competition the students and I went for a walk up a big hill ('mountain') near the Kim's house and then one of the mom's dropped me back off at the house. It was amazing. The air was clean, and it was just before sunset. I could look out at all the farmland neatly packaged in hand-made rock walls. It was really fun and I enjoyed wearing the students out before sending them back to their parents.

When I got back to the house I sat up for a bit and talked to Mr. Kim. (Mrs. Kim had flown back that evening to teach a class Monday morning.) Among the many things I learned from the conversation I discovered that arranged marriages are still popular in Korea and that Mr. Kim was a baseball player in his young life.

The next day Mr. Kim drove me back to the airport and sent me inside. It was very confusing. He stood outside looking expectantly for about 40 minutes and then came inside and said a car was coming to take me to the tour. What wound up happening is that I was driven in a cab(?) to the tour bus and then told I had one hour to look around where we were. So . . . it turns out the first stop was a glass museum. In advance I just want to say that this day was fun and a very interesting experience. I was driven from stop to stop and then told how much time I had to look around and be back at the bus. (Because I really didn't want to be left behind I was usually the first one on.) More than once during the day people started at seeing me. It's funny, in the states I blend in so well, there's nothing about me that's really striking or exceptional, but here . . . nope. It's funny. Anyway, here are my trip highlights:

Glass Museum: There was this sculpture of a woman collapsed on the ground with her legs tucked under her. Something about her position gave the impression of pain. The glass was clear except for a layer of opaque burgundy along the front of her body. You could see the light falling through her. It was very beautiful. Most of the pieces there were just imitations of real things (golf clubs and balls, glass swords, fish, instruments or flowers) which seems pointless to me. I can appreciate the skill required to create something like that, but it's not art, because the conveyance of these ideas has no relation to its media. If you just like fish, I can see why you'd think glass ones were cool, but it's still not really what I would consider art.

Chinese acrobats: This was fine, I met a girl and her mother who also live in Daegu. The girl said she was going to university in Seoul. They drove 4 motorcycles around in a wire cage that kind of resembled a hamster ball.

Orange/Mushroom Place: This one is difficult to describe. An older lady who was sitting in front of me and had scolded me a couple of times in Korean took my hand as we were getting out of the bus and led me along with the group. She was zealous for my care and made sure I was always in a position to see what the guide was talking about. *sigh* Which would've been a lot more helpful if I'd had ANY idea what they were saying at all. Ironically, it just kept me from being able to look around. Anyway, they took us into a little shed-like building with benches and someone came in and talked to us about oranges and mushrooms (the girl from Daegu told me they were mushrooms, they look like the dark yellow kind of foam that they use in construction sometimes) for about half an hour. Approximately ten minutes in I realized that this wouldn't be over anytime soon and started making up a script for myself about all the magical properties of these mushrooms, their misinterpretation by people from other parts of the world and the genetic properties of those raised on Jeju Island and why they were superior to any others. The audience clapped periodically, so I guess my information seemed compelling. (c: Finally we were ushered out of that building and into another, larger one. Here the man introduced us to his lovely assistant and the sales pitch began. Anyway, we sat there for another 15 minutes or so and the woman showed us the powder they make from the insulation mushrooms and how they put gold paper around the jars so that you know it's really good for you. In the end they brought us all some mushroom-drink (which the sweet old woman who was still holding my hand urged down my throat- I've had worse, although when they offered me some of the plain powder to just put in my mouth I played the confused foreigner card and got out of it). While they were making us drink our mushroom tea a bunch of other women came in and started convincing everyone to buy jars of the powder and a little girl (8 years old) who told me to call her 'Sally' explained that it was for good health. I didn't buy any.

Then we were taken to lunch, which was okay. I ate Korean food at the same table as Sally and her parents. There was some kind of spicy soup with chilies, zucchini and tofu, and they gave me a little container of rice. Not bad on the whole. I steered clear of the pork and fish that was sitting around, as well as the many sauce options, but the soup wasn't (on the whole) bad.

Boat trip: As soon as I got off the bus at the next stop Sally ran up to me and asked if we could go together (she was really cute) so she took my hand and led me down to a boat, we got on and waited for about 20 minutes until it was really full and then it took us up and down the island and out to one of the big rocks offshore to see the caves. On our way back to the dock they started doing karaoke downstairs and it was broadcast over the loudspeakers. There was a woman standing near me who just started laughing and asked if I could hear it, I told her, "Yes." And she said, "I'm sorry." It was really funny, we just laughed together for a minute and I told her it could've been worse.

When we got back on the bus the tour guide gave me a couple of "Korean vitamin C" to take. (???)

Waterfall: We stopped at what (for me) seemed like a really small waterfall and walked around for a few minutes. I read something about nymphs coming down to bathe there and a dragon statue (which I didn't find). Sally lost her parents, but we got pineapple on a stick and walked around until we found them.

The last stop: *sigh* I had never known how deprived my life was until I realized I had never seen live performing monkeys before. Wow. To see a monkey walk on stilts! There were also seals who balanced balls on their noses and dolphins who caught rings. What else can I say? The magic was there.

Finally the bus headed back to the main town and started dropping people at their hotels. I got to wave goodbye to Sally's parents (she'd fallen asleep on the way). The woman who'd held my hand at the orange farm said something to me as she left and I told her, "Pangapsamnida," which means, "Nice to meet you." She smiled. When the bus was about two-thirds empty the bus stopped and the guide told me to come with her. I was taken to a van and driven back to the airport. Mr. Kim met me there about 45 minutes later. We got on the 8:10 plane and flew home. At this point, I'm just smiling and shaking my head. It was a fun couple of days.

On another note, last night I gave a presentation to the TOEFL kids about World War I art. It was really fun, and I was excited to do it. I told them they didn't have to write an essay, but they had to write a response paper. A couple of boys asked if they could write poems instead - I'll be very interested to see what they come up with.