A Quiet Day of First Times

It started as an almost boring day, if you can call boring the morning panic when you find out that you haven't finished your homework. Luckily I woke up at six, so I had plenty of time to do it and also to rehearse the last lesson. But there was not enough time to make pancakes. Another attack of panic - well, not really panic but more a sort of "angst" to come at her door emptyhanded. Should I just put few apples and pears in the basket? No way, I have to make something original. With my hands. Something quick and with ingredients I have. So I came up with pears and caramel, with a dash of cinnamon. Did it for the first time ever. They came out un-fucking-believeably tasty.

After the lesson she asked me if I have time to help her on her rice field for the harvest. Are you kidding me? Harvesting rice in the traditional way? No machinery involved, handcutting and so on? It will be a pleasure! In fact I've never been in a rice field yet. Near it, yes. In it, no. My first rice harvesting!
On the way to the field we met a little chap, riding his bamboo stick. Just after we passed the house of his parents who were looking for him .



It was only yesterday that the little chap aknowledged that he likes me much. We had dinner together, a bunch of people, and he said that he likes "the uncle". After dinner I took him in my arms and went my way home. His parents were amused as he really didn't care about it. It only missed that he waved them goodbye... but it's too dark to my home and I really didn't want to scare him (but maybe he wouldn't be scared at all) so I eventually turned back till we were still in the light zone and returned him to his daddy.
This morning no time to play. First get a better technique with the 낫,
the Korean sickle, till now I used it only for weeding. And enjoy in the beauty mudpack for my feet. Tying the bundles was more troublesome, at last for me. 미정씨 taught me in a minute but I found out that my thumb, which is very important in the process, is quite bigger then hers and thus useless. It's too complicated to explain in words, you just have to take my word for it that I was funny using my index finger instead.



After lunch I had a sort of pleasant-unpleasant experience. Another first time, of course. 미정씨, she is the younger sister of my teacher, took care of my knees. You see, I still have troubles while sitting crosslegged. Not that my legs are stiff or the kind, it's that both my knees were badly injured at some points of my life. I can walk miles, but put on the floor and after ten minutes I'm uncomfortable. After twenty I'm in pain and after thirty I just can't do it more. So she came out with some nasty looking needles and fluffs of moxa. I was ready for my first moxibustion. (Also acupuncture, when it comes to that) The needles went in my knees smoothly (five points on each), but burning the moxa (mugwort) was... well, it was burning the fluffed moxa on the points where the needles were stuck. But that was not the unpleasant part of the experience. The point is that at the end of the session my left knee started to hurt. Badly. It's better now and we may have found out where's the problem so we should retry tomorrow.
When we went back to the field I was bitten by a Korean dog. For the first time. And then I had to build some bamboo scaffolding to hang the rice bundles - guess what, I did for the first time!


For dinner I was invited - again, not for the first time. This time I overdid my caramel pears, adding also apples, for it was a dinner for me and four ladies.

They laugh when I refer to them as ladies and they show their humble farmer's clothes and callous hands. I laugh back even louder since to me each one of them is worth more than millions of empty headed beauties from a big city.

Quiet Life... My Ass!

There are things that are supposed to never happen to people who live a quiet life. But they do happen, often and merrily, to those who just claim to have one.
This week I went to Seoul and Gangwon do, to collect my winter clothes as I intend to stay here. Mainly it was an excuse, I wanted to visit my princess. The trip went smooth and as planned. Too much beer in Seoul, then shopping. Some "exotic" spices and food at the Shinsaege to bring back to Hapcheon and presents for my princess at the Kyobo. A pink diary, a pink hairpin, stuff like that. Cute useless crap. If she likes it, be it. First thing when I arrived she asked me how long will I stay. Instantly I realized that her English improved again in this month since my last visit. Could be happy to say the same for my Korean... but at least I managed to answer her, in Korean, that I'll be leaving next day in the morning. Most of our conversation went on like that, she in English, me in stuttering Korean.
When I bought the diary I didn't even notice that it has a padlock to keep it's content secret. It was the first thing she saw when she opened the box with it. As it always comes with the padlocks, it had two keys. To my great amazement - and delight - she took one and gave me the other. If I was to put it in a poetic way I'd say that now I have the key to a child's secrets. The key to a child's heart. But I suppose I've already had one for a long long time, since the first second we met. For sure it's true the other way.

As always I asked her if I should make spaghetti for dinner, sure that, as always, she'll be delighted. To my surprise she declined my offer and went to make dinner herself. I know well how lazy and lousy she can be at times, but she did wash the rice properly, all three times, before cooking it. If you didn't know it yet, rice has to be washed in cold water three times, not two, not four, but three. Believe it or not, it makes the final result much better.

Maybe an hour after I came the postman visited. With a parcel coming from Slobenia. Addressed to Hae In. She gave a puzzled look, asking if I sent this. I laughed, of course not, I haven't been there for a long time (and I won't be there for a long time, I do hope so). She opened it and found it full of chocolate. She looked accusingly at me and said, It was you! I explained her that this was a gift for her from my friend. Man or woman, she wanted to know. Man. What's the name? Robert. Please tell Robert very good man. I know that. All his friends know that, now a little Korean girl knows it, too.
Next morning was sad, with goodbyes, hugs, kisses, promises to come back and invites to come here to visit me for holidays. The long trip back started.



After changing buses and subways I was in Jinju in the evening, just to find out that I missed the last bus to Gahwe. Tomorrow morning, was what I was told at the ticket office and a dark despair rose in me. Clever as I am I didn't have any phone numbers with me to call anyone to pick me there. I was too sure I could make it by myself. And so I would! First, let's find a way to get out of the city. That is always the most difficult thing when you go hitchhiking - escape the gravity of big cities. I got lost two or three times and eventually found my way out. By the time it was pitch dark so I tried my luck for a minute or two, then decided against it. Darkness is a bad companion for hitchers. So I took a long walk. Too long. Got lost in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of rice pads and woody hills. With something like 30 kg of various crap in my backpack and flip flops on my feet. Luckily the rain had stopped. I stopped too, after something that seemed to me like 20 km. It was actually 27, but I realized that the next morning. Luckily most of the crap in my backpack were warm clothes and a coat to wrap myself in under a tree, where the ground seemed almost dry. I kept telling myself that I could do it, that I stopped just because I was lost and I should wait for morning to get a better orientation or to eventually ask someone for directions. Truth was I was exhausted. I'm no more in shape for crap like this. But I was ready to go on in the first morning gray. Eventually I managed to find Wonji and caught the first morning bus to Gahwe from there. And then there was the last part of the way home that I should have done on feet anyway, but it happened as I hoped, no, as I expected. A pickup stopped, a smiling greeting, bows and I had a ride. The wet night was replaced by a splendid shiny morning and I really felt like going back home. It was hard to leave my princess, but it was a pleasure to come back. Even if I became the laughstock because of this adventure. If I only had some phone numbers with me.. Sang Pyeong was in Jinju exactly at the time I arrived there!
Now I have to do something that people who live a quiet life never do. I have to go to the Jinju bus station and punch in the face the bitch who told me I missed the last bus. I didn't.

Quiet Life

Yes, a quiet life it is. At least here. My greatest challenge these days is studying Korean. Three times a week, after breakfast, I re-check my homework, take my books and notebooks and walk downhill to our nearest neighbour. Most of the times I take with me some still hot pancakes, tufahija or any other sweet delight I invent that morning. For my teacher, of course. She is giving me lessons for free, so I try my best to repay her with work. In the garden. Repairing the road to her house. Fix her computer. It all comes easy. I'd rather build her a new house than study. I've come to a point where the learning process is just humiliating for my ego. Not her fault, for sure. I've never been so patient as a teacher. Learning new words is a piece of cake - but what to do with them? She asks me a question. I understand every single word but I simply have no idea what would it mean and I give her my blank moronic look. But I will not give up, not until she is willing not to give up on me. Not only her, everyone is supporting me in this. Even Guryun, the little boy with the long braid, is doing his best to help me and teach me.
Even if it's a quiet life, it's in no way boring. Not only that there's always something to do since here everybody helps everybody, literally, but because we have fun almost all the time. Believe it or not, I am considered as a most serious person - but that's only because I'm so shy.
Maybe because of my seriousness I was asked, few days ago, to take care of some kids. We went in the village for dinner and after dinner the folks had some meeting. Since the kids were in the way, i was with them on the school playground and we had some great time (if we don't count some nasty spanking I had to do with one). Tiger was with me but he was bored all the time. Oh, yes, Tigar Sungbae is another friend I've made. We've met at a dinner and he introduced himself as Tiger. Simple as that. So I introduced myself as Chicken, you know, Tak meaning chicken, even if written slightly different than my name but pronounced almost the same. Two days later we worked together and during the first break he announced that he should change his nickname to Cat. I call him simply Hello Kitty. I hope it will not piss him off even if he considers me stronger than him. I saw when three students pissed him off when we were at the Lantern Festival in Jinju.



Another day Andrzej, a friend from Poland who is studying korean in Daegu, came to visit me here and stayed two days. He wanted to see "the end of the world" as he calls the view from the top over our house. And he saw it, we climbed it at sunrise, not for any particular romantic reason but because at eight I had my lesson.

Later he helped us with planting garlic and was rewarded with a delicious lunch at the feet of the Mosan.



The lady on my right is my teacher.
Some friends of Sang Pyeong (Guryun's father) live quite far away, but we help them anyway. One lives near the Jirisan and has just finished his new house so we were there as a cleanup team. No real work, it was another excuse for social gathering and we had all the afternoon for one of the Jirisan valleys.





And last weekend in Jinju was held the Korean Pansori Festival. On Saturday I declined the invitation to join them with my troubled stomach as excuse, on Sunday I just couldn't do it again for I might seem rude. I'm not sure that they believed me that I really do know pansori, but I've heard my fair share of it two years ago in Gangwon do. Boring as hell when you don't understand a single word. I managed to resist some time, mostly because I had two kids to play with, but eventually I just left. And caught a nice shot of the moon over the gate of Jinju Palace.






I want to stay here. I'm ready to listen pansori for the whole evening if it comes to that.

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes

This morning I ate rice with hot curry for breakfast, brushed my teeth and put the textbooks, CDs, notebook and pencils in my schoolbag, waved goodbye to my hosts, shouting that I'm going to school and they replied that I have to study hard. But let's start at the beginning, two evenings ago...
The dinner was a success. Well, everybody said so and if they are just being polite, well, next time they'll eat the same, like it or not. I told them, I was very explicit about it, not to praise my cooking too much; saying that it was nothing special would have been the best option because for the next dinner I would perform culinary miracles to make it taste better.
I love people that don't complicate things. At the end there were ten people for dinner. We barely fit in my room, but it was funny. The scary part was when I realized (when the guests were already taking their places on the floor) that I have only a midget table for one person. I borrowed some dishes from my hosts, also a bucket to cook the spaghetti, but no table. Even if I wanted I couldn't, they don't have such a big one. The clever and practical mind of Korean women is simply the best. They just found an old newspaper and spread it on the floor - as I've seen in many occasions - even if this was supposed to be a special dinner, who cares! And that's the way I like it!

And they all brought presents - be it socks (many of them), cookies (absolutely delicious), boiled chestnuts, a bag of rice and... a Korean textbook. Immediately I had an awkward feeling receiving the gift and thanking for it. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. I was right. The lady who gave it to me just asked, "So, do you wish to have lessons every day? And do we start tomorrow?"
Now, of course I wish to have lessons every day and learn as much as possible as fast as I can. What I don't wish is to pass for a moron. I quite pride myself about language skills, but with Korean I'm at a loss. The pronunciation still remains a mistery to me. Oh, I get words pretty fast, but to put a sentence together is harder than load a ten ton truck with radish.
At the end I survived the lesson. A little bit reassured about my pronunciation, she's evidently a good teacher, but still feeling stupid. You see, there's a guy here, who speaks just no English, with whom I talk in Japanese. I don't want to say that I learned so much Japanese, no way, is to say how awful is my Korean!
Luckily yesterday we worked all day so I had enough time to set my mind to be a student again. Because working together with all these nice people made me craving for knowledge of Korean!


Yesterday's work, planting cabagge and broccoli, maybe more than 5000 seeds.
Break time

The Japanese speaking guy

My pretty coworkers, don't mind the grimaces, they are pretty!

My pretty coworkers drinking beer during the first morning break


View on our house from the nearby peak


Some surroundings

This one left me speechless at the local store

A new home?

In the rice fields the green color is loosing it's battle against the yellow. Autumn is here, my first Korean autumn it will be.
It's more than a week that I'm here, in another almost anonymous Korean village in the southern part, and I have still mixed feelings about me being here. All the feelings are positive, no worry about that. It's a place that could be called almost weird, but calling it that way would be probably offensive for the folk living here, so let's call it amazing. How did I find it? I didn't. I came here through a friend of a friend, I've never met her before but she was willing to help me finding a place to stay and to work. That was the first weir.. ahem, sorry, amazing thing. The second w.. amazing thing was that she told me that here folks are mostly engaged in organic farming. I was used to Korean "organic" farming, but it seems that here they take it seriously. To continue, she is vegetarian. Next, the fields landscape is not ruined by tons of vynil and other garbage. The nearest supermarket is 40 km away. But the most amazing of all is the family she found to host me. I just couldn't believe my ears when she told me that they have a ten years old son who doesn't go to school. I have to admit that for a short moment I tought of a total moron, unable to walk and speak... shame on me. No, they don't send him to school because they don't believe in this educational system. Which is cool. I couldn't agree more. I will never forget an article of a family in Slovenia that doesn't send their kids to school because "..in schools kids have to read stories about dragons and we won't let our children learn about that Satan's creatures...", as the mother said. Of course she had also other arguments, all concerning Satan and God. And that is just stupid.
So I moved on a mountain to live with this great folks and their son, one of the brightest kids I've met. Well behaved, friendly, curious, with a good taste. He likes my cooking. Above all he likes my laptop. Not that he hasn't his own copmuter, but on mine he found the complete Evangerion series and now he is daily struggling through the Japanese audio and the English subtitles.



Actually I live "on my own", in a small building near the main house.

And this is the view from my window. And it's the same all around, but I have only this window.

Through the same window, but from the outside, it looks like this.

With my own kitchen and fireplace for floor heating. Yes, I'm already using it. During the day the temperatures are autumnly nice, sometimes even hot, but the nights are already chilly.

I started working immediately. Different works. Building a toilet. Finishing a porch roof. Field work. And, surprise surprise, making a floor heating system. With my host as boss, of course, not alone. The best part was that we had to dismantle the old one, almost 100 years old, to make a new one. I can't tell you how much more you learn from this rather than from just making one. And I also learned a few new tips and tricks, that aren't used in the northern mountains. Clearly I will not write about them, they are our trade secrets, you know.
But I could write novels about the people living here. I didn't manage to eat a single dinner at home because I'm invited somewhere every day. Sometimes it's related to work, sometimes to pleasure. In two days I'm having more than ten people here for dinner, I promised a Mediterranean menu and I fear I will have to borrow my hosts kitchen and dinning room. Yes, I had to go to that 40 km away supermarket to buy spaghetti, but it's worth to entertain those who were filling my fridge with food in the first days, when I was still a bit lost. Yes, I had to pay quite a lot but I just can't believe that I actually earn more here than with slavery work. In a relative way, because here I'm working less. Mostly I have troubles because everyone here is so cooled and relaxed. They just keep telling me to slow down. One I had to be unpluged to leave the tools and have a break. I only have to learn Korean to realize how easy is making friends here.
The day I arrived I was jokingly told that they'll do their best to settle me down here. I laughed with them. Now I'm not laughing anymore, I just hope this dream can become true. Even if I miss my princess, she can come here for any holidays!

On kigo, again

Kigo, 季語, the season word is used to associate a season with just one particular word (or phrase) in Japanese poetry, be it renga, renku or haiku. Few years ago I found out why one of the kigo for spring is kawazu, although I heard them in Korea.
古池や
かわずとびこむ
水の音
(http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-frog.htm)
This summer I realized the kigo semi. I remember that I found them a bit annoying in the 新世紀エヴァンゲリオン (Neon Genesis Evangelion) series, chirping all the time over Tokyo-3, but still pleased that the makers used this poetic way to show the change of global climate after the Second Impact. (By the way, did you know that you can find haiku written even in Klingon? I didn't, since few minutes ago.)
静けさや
岩に滲み入る
蝉の声
(松尾 芭蕉, again: http://carlsensei.com/classical/index.php/author/view/1)
Well, this year the cicadas are driving me crazy. I know cicadas for all my life. Their sound is the kigo of the Mediterranean summer, yet I knew only them, the Mediterranean ones. I don't know the Japanese, no summer there so far, but the Korean 매미 are enough. They are so loud that it's hard to believe. In the countryside it can be literally painful for the ears.
The loudest sound is from only one sucker, you can see it on the branch when zoomed on.

cicada by dagkleva

A censored post

South Koreans are among those working the longest number of hours in industrialised countries, averaging 2,256 a year compared with 1,647 in the UK or 1,778 in the US, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development. But despite being extremely hardworking, their productivity measured among the lowest of the OECD's members. (OECD 2010 average annual hours)
To me it seems normal that it's so. You just can't be efficient and productive in a long working day. But that doesn't bother anyone here. Long working hours are the sign of your devotion to work and it absolutely doesn't matter if you're just wasting your time in the office. Two years ago I met a genetist from Switzerland and we had a conversation about Japan. I told him of my experiences on Tokunoshima, where we spent a lot of time just pretending to be busy. He couldn't believe it, in his eyes the Japanese are extremely hardworking and to make an example he told me about two Japanese scientist that worked for a year at the same institute in Geneva as him. He started talking how the two were always first at the institute and the last to leave and then he fell silent for a moment. And recalled that while the two were always there, he can't really remember to have seen them working a lot of times.
Another example of Confucian historical burden in Asia is the educational system. In Korea they spend insane ammount of time and money studying English. They have a set of exames to pass and when I saw some books I tought that I could hardly pass such an exam. Yet the results are very poor (but still a bit better than in Japan) and they have hard times to make a decent conversation. Of course nobody dares to point out that it's the fault of the system, how could you possibly have tought of that, no, it's the students that don't work hard enough so now they invented a way to solve this conversational deficit: they are adding to the already demanding exams an oral test. I'm almost positive that it's gonna be just a huge amount of text to memorize and repeat like a parrot in front of the commission.
Another sign of this very well organised disorganisation is present also in the slavery I do now. Near the house where we live there are some huge radish fields. Do you think that we do them? Don't be naive, it would be too simple. They drove teams here by bus to do the work. And few days later we went to work something like 150km away, just on the border with North Korea, near the DMZ. Just being near the DMZ was unpleasant enough, with guardposts every few hundred meters and all that barbwire. When I was shown a sign near the field I felt even more uncomfortable - we were working near a mine field. I was warned not to make stupid jokes like throwing radish on that side. And then came a moment when I became worried. Well, to tell the truth, I was scared. It was cloudy, but it wasn't thunder what I heard. I really don't understand how anybody can mistake artillery fire for thunder. And when it went on and the locals were still cool I understood it's just manouvres but the bad feeling remained. At least we had some great sightseeing on the way back, we passed near the Seorak mountains.








The second part of tis entry was censored. By myself. It was long, raging and full of violence and hate speech. But now I'm all so soft and tender that I'm almost disgusting. It will be clear at the end. To make it short and simple, without rabid raving - someone stole my money. It was an insider job, some Chinese. Don't start shouting about my racism - there were only and only Chinese around me. I was almost done there, had enough money and then this blow. It left me speechless. I could only scream in frustration because there was 10 people in the house and I will never know who did this. So I prolonged my slavery till today, made my money again and for the last two weeks lived like a paranoid - sleeping with my wallet and passport. And today I packed and left - for Jinbu. With a big bag full of different Korean cakes - it's chuseok and my princes first bowed to me than jumped in my hug and kissed me. Home sweet home.