Heart-Warming Video of the Day

As much as I gripe about the daily grind of teaching, it's still one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had.

Katie (승아) is one of the brightest students I have. Recently, she's been coming in for about half an hour every day after school to talk to me. We started watching (school appropriate) music videos for English songs, and she decided she wanted to learn this one. I hope the finished product warms your heart as much as it warmed mine.

Side note: You can see from the state of my hair that Seoul is just a humid bowl of soup these days. On the bright side, my skin is super soft.

Learning to Be Slow, Part 2

This is part 2 of my account of life in a Buddhist temple. To read part 1, please go here.

One thing about Buddhist monastic life is that it's not for the lazy. Following an early bedtime, we were awoken at the ungodly hour of 4:30am, for the pre-dawn bell ringing ceremony. I'm not sure if we had to get up so early because it's high summer and the sun rises early, or if that's just the norm. I'd like to think the monks get to sleep in a bit in the wintertime, but for some reason, I doubt it.

 Even though I'm not a morning person (understatment of the century for those who know me), I found the early start to be strangely pleasant. I think it was because I wasn't expected to speak or interact with anybody else.

Pre-dawn at the temple is almost otherworldly. There are no sounds save the soft shuffle of rubber slippers on stone as the monks and nuns sweep the temple and make morning offerings.

We were lead up to the bell tower, legs increasingly complaining from yesterday's prostrations. There, we stood patiently for our chance to ring the giant metal bell.  I would imagine local residents don't love hearing it every morning at zero dark thirty.

After that, it was time for morning meditation. The previous day's 15-minute session was just a warm up. This was the real deal. We had to sit absolutely still for half an hour under the watchful eye of the Zen Master. Intimidating? Absolutely. However, maybe it was the early morning, or maybe it was the temple atmosphere starting to affect my brain, but I found it much easier to sink into a semi-conscious state that morning. I didn't count, as I had the previous session. It sort of felt like my brain was floating in warm, dark water. I don't remember much of what I thought about, but when the Zen Master clapped the bamboo sticks to signal the end of meditation, I had the sensation of surfacing from a deep pool.

To awaken our stiff, sleepy limbs (which were increasingly sore from the aforementioned prostrations), we were then led in a brisk walking session around the temple courtyard.

  

As the sun came up, we got a better view of the neighborhood surrounding our temple. It's truly an oasis in the middle of chaotic city life.

After that was breakfast, then we headed back to the main hall to have a traditional Buddhist tea ceremony. Our leader detailed health properties of green tea, and said that with their rigourous daily routines, even monks and nuns need caffeine! I took this to mean that I shouldn't let anybody shame me for my crippling coffee addiction. Even Buddhist monks think caffeine is ok.

The tea was delicious, refreshing, and a much-needed source of energy. While we were drinking our tea, our leader offered to analyze our characters. She is a student of Buddhist philosophy, and says she can tell a lot about a person just by observing them and knowing their name.

This was a laugh. As she went around the circle, telling us things about ourselves with varying degrees of accuracy, it was entertaining to watch people get uncomfortable. Some of the things she said were eerily accurate. Each of us were a different sort of object in nature. For example, she said I am a big tree. I (apparently) cast a large shadow, and people seek shelter in my shade. One of my friends was a torch who sheds light and guides the people around her, and my other friend was a river who accepts everything that comes to her, good and bad, and is good at navigating a variety of situations.

Here's a picture of our wise leader:

On that fun and enlightening note, we wrapped up our little program. Even though I'd only been in the temple for 24 hours, it felt strange to put on my regular clothes, turn on my cell phone, and go back out into the world. I found the serenity of temple life to be a much-needed break from the hectic, often stressful life of a teacher. If they offered a week-long program, I would gladly sign up.

So to anybody in Korea thinking about doing a temple stay, I absolutely suggest you do. It's a wonderfully refreshing way to take a time out from the 'balli balli' of Korean life, so you can learn to be slow.

Notes from a Korean Staff Trip

I just returned from an overnight staff retreat with the rest of the teachers at my school. It was probably one of the most classically Korean 24 hours of my life. Also, just to clear up any ambiguity in the tone of this post, I had a blast. My colleagues are hilarious and fun to hang out with, despite the fact that we communicate mostly through pantomime and broken Konglish. 

Friday
 5:30pm
Have been on the bus for 2.5 hours. Vice Principal has been talking into a mic up front for 2.49 hours. Coworker and I have taken one nap each and secretly watched half an episode of New Girl with K-subs on her phone.

6:00pm 
VP just handed out presents to the staff. They were all variations of this: 

6:45pm 

Arrived at our hotel. Sharing the 3-bedroom suite with 11 women. Let the bathroom wars commence.

7:00 

Eating dinner. It's raw fish. Have already taken multiple shots with my colleages of what can only be described as Korean berry manischewitz. Principal is making the rounds with the bottle. 

8:00 

Still eating. More importantly, still drinking. 

8:30 

Joined the other young female teachers for some air and and a quick selca session.  

9:30 

Heading to noraebang with my principal and fellow staff members, because Korea.

10:00 

Just completed a killer rendition of Hard Day's Night...solo, of course, as I was the only English speaker in the room. Principal was impressed. 

11:00 

Still singing.

11:30

Back at the hotel. Watching colleagues throw each other into the pool. 

12:30 

Soaking wet. Was thrown into pool. Used the opportunity to shout a lot of bad words in English because nobody could understand me. 

1:00am

Bedtime.

Saturday

6:00am  

Wondering why in God's name is everyone else in the room awake when breakfast isn't until 8.

8:00am 

Breakfast. Beginning to understand why everyone woke up so early. Wishing I'd been awake longer before I had to face this guy.  Principal just cracked open a bottle of soju.

8:45am

Back on the bus. I believe we're going hiking. Or to a river. Either way, VP has reclaimed her spot at the front with the mic. 

9:30am

Apparently we're going hiking. 

11:00am

Back from hiking. Consisted of walking to a river and playing in it for a while before turning around. Alarmed my coworkers by walking in the sunlight instead of avoiding it. Told them I want my hair to get lighter. They said I have magic hair. 

12:00pm

Lunch time. Maekgeolli is flowing.

2:00pm

Visited some sort of museum to a writer. It's in a very pretty spot. 

2:30pm

Eating again. Pajeon and makgeolli. Am in utter awe of my colleague's drinking abilities.

4:00pm 

On the bus back to Seoul. Coworkers have discovered that the bus is equipped for noraebang, which they are now participating in with great enthusiasm. 

6:00pm

Home.

Learning to Be Slow, Part 1

Life in Seoul is hectic. The unofficial motto of modern Korean society is "balli, balli", or "hurry, hurry." Everything is just fast.

 The need to be fast is always something I've struggled with. I always have to be the first one. I like to joke that I'm not competitive, I just always win.

So when I signed up to do a temple stay at a local Buddhist temple, I was interested to see how I would react to such forced "slowness."

I arrived at the temple midafternoon on Saturday. There were seven people in the temple stay program that weekend, two of them being my friends "P" and "R." We were shown to our room and given our temple uniforms, then told to wait for the rest of the program participants to arrive. We were told we could either wait in our room or enjoy the small library across the hall. Obviously, I made a beeline for the library.

I could already feel the serene atmosphere of the temple affecting me. I love nothing more than curling up with a book and vanishing from the world, so I happily found a comfy patch of floor and delved into a Peet family favorite.

 

After about half an hour, we were summoned to the main hall where our program would take place. In true Korean fashion, we were given cushions to sit on. Our program leader was this tiny woman who was the embodiment of a happy boddhisatva.  Her kind, smiling face and relaxed demeanor immediately put me at ease.

 She gave us a quick overview of Buddhist philosophy. She said, "Buddhism believes that we have 3 "poison minds": Greedy Mind, Angry Mind, and Foolish Mind. We can sink into Greedy Mind from five things: greed for money, greed for love, greed for food, greed for sleep, and greed for power. All of our angry or foolish feelings stem from our greedy feelings, and all of our greedy feelings come from wanting one of those five things. The three poison minds keep us from accessing our Buddha Mind, which is calm and serene." She said, "Buddhists believe we have poison thoughts 108 times a day, and to make up for it, we must do 108 prostrations."

A prostration is also known as a full bow. You start in a standing position with your hands pressed together in front of you, sink to your kneeds, put your hands and head on the ground, turn your hands palm-up to the ceiling, put them back on the ground, and stand back up. 

Our leader explained that we would do 108 prostrations, and to keep track we would string Buddhist prayer beads as we did it. One prostration=one bead. But, she said, "Prostrations can be hard for beginners. Many foreigners opt to add 2 or 3 beads for one prostration, and that's ok."

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

As we started the prostrations, we were told to focus on clearing our minds of poison thoughts. As you might imagine, this is easier said than done. My biggest challenge when I try to clear my mind is turning off the narration in my head. Whenever I'm doing something remotely story-worthy, I have a voice in my head instantly taking what's happening and putting it into past tense for future storytelling.

 I tried a few different things to achieve a clear mind. Like every good cradle Catholic with a string of beads in front of her, my first reaction was to start cranking out some Hail Marys. It's like the Catholic version of a mantra.  That worked for a little while, but I couldn't get the cadence of the prayer to match the cadence of my prostrations. Instead, I tried to focus all my mind power on what I was doing. Stand, kneel, head, hands, take a bead, string it, stand up. Repeat. I kept glancing around me to see the progress others had made on their bead strings. Some were ahead of me, some were not. I decided that I wouldn't try to win. I would just finish at my own pace and not worry about who was first. I ended up finishing last, but I didn't care. I had done every single of the 108 prostrations, and felt good. I was making progress.

We were all a bit wiped after the prostrations.

After the prostrations came 15 minutes of meditation. We had to sit perfectly still with our legs crossed, back straight, eyes half closed, hands forming a circle in our lap. No movement allowed. This was a different kind of challenge. Stillness is surprisingly difficult for me to achieve, considering how lazy I am. I kept thinking about my legs, which were slowly falling asleep. I decided to start counting my breaths. I could hear the ticking of our instructors little clock, so I focused on breathing in for 2 ticks, then out for 2 ticks. I ended up counting to 300. It wasn't exactly achieving nirvana, but, again, I was making progress.

We were pretty wiped after the meditation.

 

 Evening bell ringing followed that. We each got to ring the giant bell one time with the resident nun. Standing next to that gargantuan thing when it was reverberating felt like what I imagine standing next to an alien spaceship would feel like.

 

After bell ringing, it was dinner time! The temple food was amazing, and completely meat-free. As a former vegetarian, it was wonderfully refreshing to eat such a delicious vegetable-based meal. 

After dinner,we got a little tour of the temple, followed by bedtime. We had about an hour and a half of downtime before bed, which we used to unwind and read our books. We had to have an early lights-out to prepare for our 4:30am wakeup call!

 

 This post is getting long, so I'll talk about the next day in part 2. In the meantime, please enjoy these pictures of the temple in the evening.

Grocery Delivery, part 2

THEY'RE HERE!! I can finally make my ramyeon (ramen) dinner.

 You may be thinking, "Uhhh...Meg...there's no ramyeon in that bag..." You're right, but this bag has all the goodies I add to the ramyeon. But that's a whole different post. Stay tuned. 

Grocery Delivery, part 1

Today on my way home from school, I stopped by the little grocer by my house to pick some stuff up. I finally worked up the courage to ask for it to be delivered. Gave them my address, everything seemed fine. I don't know how long it takes, but knowing Korea, it shouldn't take too long.

That being said, it's been almost 2 hours. I'm getting hangry*.

*hangry (adj): when someone is so hungry they get angry.

Korean Baseball-- exactly the same, only totally different.

Ahhh, summer. The heat is upon us here in the land of the morning calm. Most of the time, that means endless hours of lamenting the fact that a "sunny day" in Seoul really means that the sky is just a lighter shade of gray than normal, sweltering in my poorly ventilated classroom and mentally raging at the Korean concept of "saving energy" by turning off the aircon and promptly OPENING ALL THE WINDOWS. Seriously, how does this make sense?

But summer also means baseball.  Having spent the past 6 years of my life in Boston, it is hard-wired into my brain that the two go hand in hand. So, to ring in the first official day of summer last Friday, I took my English friend, "R", to a Korean baseball game.

When I got out of the subway in front of the stadium and beheld the scores of vendors selling everything from dried squid to boxes of fried chicken that you could have delivered to your seat, I knew that this would be very different from American baseball.

We didn't get to the stadium until the top of the 4th inning (clearly, the actual game was pretty low on our priorities). We also hadn't gotten tickets in advance. Instead, we just walked up to the ticket counter and bought two seats in the second-cheapest section for about 9 bucks each.

If you're a Red Sox fan, please take this moment to pick your jaw up off the floor.

Tickets in hand, R and I set about gathering supplies. In another profound difference from American baseball, K-baseball games are BYOB. We bought 4 beers from a seller out front, who put the beers into a little tinfoil bag and filled it with ice. They think of everything here.

Next, we stopped to get some snacks. We could have gone for kimbap rolls or dried squid, but I opted for a corn dog instead. What can I say, I'm a traditionalist.

We took our goodies to our seats and settled in for the game. As I mentioned, we arrived at the top of the 4th, so the game was already well underway. Seeing as this was R's first exposure to America's pastime, I had to give her a crash course in the rules of baseball. Anyone who knows my general attitude towards and knowledge of American sports will probably find this hilarious. I know.

As we started watching, my suspicious were confirmed. This was not American baseball. We were not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

First of all, I hate to say it, but the baseball just was not very good. Even I'd seen enough American baseball to realize this. However, this had a weird effect of making the crowd even more excited than an American baseball crowd. For example, when the home team batter hit a pop fly to left field, the home team crowd went crazy!! It was like they weren't even sure the fielder would catch it.

I was so confused. I kept thinking, "I'm sorry, is this not a sure thing? Is there actually a chance that this guy won't catch this ball that is literally coming straight down at him?"

Sure enough, he caught it, the batter was out, and that was the end of the inning.

But this brings me to the fans. Oh, god, the fans. They were enthusiastic and coordinated in a way that I have never seen. There was actually a guy on a platform in the first row who was in charge of leading all the songs and cheers. Each player had a special song that had been composed just for him, each song had specific hand movements that fans enacted with their identical white thunder sticks, and each point of the game seemed to have a special cheer or chant.  Please enjoy these videos.





One thing I failed to capture was the cheerleaders. Yep. Korean baseball has cheerleaders. And they're shockingly scantily clad, considering how modest Korean society is as a whole.

The other weird thing was that the fans would keep singing and chanting even when their player was up to bat! I ended up missing a lot of the plays by watching the singing and dancing because I (falsely) assumed that they would stop to let the pitcher throw the pitch.

Despite all of this, I enjoyed myself immensely. As I explained to R, baseball games are not always about the game. It's about the atmosphere. The quality of baseball may have been lacking, but Koreans sure know how to create a fun game atmosphere. Those four beers certainly helped, too.