Life, No Peace. Only Adventure . (to Hong Kong and back)

Today I will have been in the rollicking rolling country for next to a month. I have learnt a lot except any conversational Korean (it extends to “hello, thank you and how much?”). Well looking around myself I realize how blessed I really have been in this place. As said before, Korea is a shock to the system and it’s busy and dirty and those stretching landscapes of space I still haven’t seen but people have been kind. So kind.

Visas are always a nightmare; especially as a South African I have been told (more than a few times) that in fact” you can’t go there because of where you were born.” Well this weekend was one of the first times in my life (besides when I watched my American friend forced to give the Mozambiquan border police R1000) that my passport gave me something. As I am South African I cannot go to Japan to procure me Korean visa and thus I was bought a ticket to the crazed monster of a city that is Hong Kong. Not that I don’t want to go to Japan, but it is down the road whereas Hong Kong is somewhere I never will go otherwise. (Strange blessings with the guise of closed doors. Fabulous) So on Wednesday I took a bus then a plane at 11pm to be deposited into Hong Kong at the glorious hour of 12.45. Now a week before I had remembered that an Australian I had met two and half years before in Italy told me he was in Hong kong these days. After a facebook message or two he told me that not only would he meet up with me for a drink in Hong Kong but I HAD TO stay at his house and he would come find me at the airport.

So at the hour of 1am, Seth and his Cantonese girlfriend Sheks met me at the airport to take something like an hour bus ride back to his apartment (thus their mission was something like 3hours for a near stranger) where I was lead to a happy mattress which opened up its arms to my tired eyes. The next morning I woke to the sound of my alarm but immediately dozed off only to wake up and look at the time to see 12 ‘o clock. I rocketed out of bed, grabbed my passport and hoody and ran out the door, down the street and onto the subway. My whole reason for being in the country was to get my visa and I was meant to be at the visa office at 9! Feeling grateful that I had had enough experience on a subway to figure out what is going on (yes it’s not that hard but I can be brainless often enough) I looked around and thought “WOW Hong kong hello” there were people, and people and people, I couldn’t get the first train, or the second or the third as there wasn’t enough space for more people to squish next to more people. At this point I had reached half-awake freak out mode until I snuck a peak at someone’s watch. It said 8.30am. Knowing that this was not right I did some other watch snooping. 8.35am. This definitely accounted for the people traffic and what exhilarated relief. I was not going to botch up my one responsibility that I was sent there for.

Sometime later I handed in my visa documents and helped myself to a generous R30 breakfast and coffee from a restaurant. As I sat there, calmly eating breakfast I looked out the giant windows at the bright sky, I was so warm I wish I could have taken my shoes. There was no litter on the streets, the sun was out, the sky was blue and I finally there was English, EVERYWHERE.

One thing one must know about Hong Kong, is that it is no horizontal city. Now that could be said about Seoul perhaps too and the rest of Korean cities to an extent. There are buildings on buildings as space is precious and you may walk up 7 floors before getting to your desired shop or restaurant. But Hong Kong is different, it is like a smog filled ocean, you walk through the subway into a mall, up a floor and an escalator then to a business district and more restaurants and the mall connects to the next mall and the next street. No longer are we walking on the ground but we are up down and around and everything is so connected, you go through a mall which connects you to a staircase which goes down a corridor and out a door, into a door, past some shops up an escalator and you are in your apartment. I followed my hosts around amazed at the connectedness of it all, hazy mind following my feet as I took in sights and smells and the ever changing crowds of walking people, walking after and around more walking people.

In Hong Kong people live in minuscule apartments. Mine in Korea is small, theirs are unbreathable. The space is enough for a single bed and one can walk next to the bed. People don’t have kitchens, there is no space for a kitchen. Even the Hong Kong harbor grows smaller every year as more land for more people becomes the need they concrete the sparkling water so more people can walk on more ground and buy more things. Living in tiny holes in the wall their life is outside where people rush around and get more money just to spend more money and then get more money to spend some more. In this, Hong Kong opens up yet another dialogue in my head about my greatest fear, that life can be described as simply an accumulation of getting things, money to get things and then more money to get more things. Circular Boring. Mindless. Madness.

Now I had some time to relax and Seth’s girlfriend decided to show me around with her friend. How blessed to have some real Cantonese people showing me their city. We went to this amazing restaurant that served us all sorts of things from Chinese omelets to sugary sweet yet savory buns. They laughed at my chopstick skill (something I thought I was getting quite impressive at) and expounded on the ways of the Chinese language. Now, I know that perhaps everyone knows this but me (well I do know now) but I had no idea that Chinese was only a written language. That a Cantonese person living in Hong Kong cannot communicate with someone who speaks Mandarin but if they needed to they could communicate perfectly through writing to each other as Chinese is the standardized written language. Neither did I know that Chinese had no alphabet and that it was simply a flow of ideas and every idea has their own symbol. This blew my mind. I asked them how they read out loud in school as the written words to not correspond to phonetics at all and the answer I got was that they simply constantly translate while they read. And later when we went to a bookshop I saw them reading and laughing together. But they weren’t even reading as I know it! These ways of language completely blew my mind and I felt this thick burning jealousy for the Chinese as something so natural to them was so unfathomable to me.

And then on to half price sushi (with orange fish eggs on them- not my favourite) and on to Chinese huge bowls of noodle soup (by huge bowl, think of a big bowl and then make it bigger and then bigger and then fill it with lots of food and eat it by yourself) and on to electronic madness. We went to the place in Hong Kong where they sell cellphone after cellphone after cellphone and every toy imaginable and computers and climbing clips (probably not the ones that’ll save you from death) and batteries (a pack for R4) and and. Madness.. tiring. Madness.

That night I was given a gift. I was taken past the culture hall and I expressed an interest in watching the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. Let’s be honest first before I say I absolutely loved it. Orchestra’s definitely bring back days of being 9 years old and told to keep quiet AND still while I watched another performance of my sisters playing in orchestras and trying desperately to count the pages of the conductor, hoping at this page turn it was actually the last. There were definitely moments when this contempt came back strongly BUT it was magnificent. The musicians were in such perfect synch and harmony together, the amount of violins were many and their bows looking like a machine, every up bow, every down bow, the same. The concert pianist was delightful, the flute players haunting, the man with the harp so peculiar. (How long I did think about the social implications of being a man with a harp and I wanted to know his story and what lead him there)

And then onto a bus and back to the airport. The Hong Kong airport confused me, it was 1am, I was tired, everyone was tired and I waited for my plane almost breaking down into tears when I went to the wrong terminal twice. Next to my seat was a coupon for a free starbucks. I got some free hot chocolate. What luck! I got on the plane, people were talking but I fell asleep and woke in Busan at 6am (South Coast of Korea) and found a quiet seat to rest my head and woke up at 10am. Then took a subway to the beach and waited a few minutes until Tiffany and my new friend Heather arrived (New friend at that moment that is). We then trawled the streets until we found a love motel named the WOW motel(these are exactly what they sound like but they are inexpensive) and we got a huge bed to share, mirrors on the ceiling and a HUMONGOUS bath (big enough to fit 3 people)

Well we grabbed some Soju (Korean rice spirit thing) and beer and went to the beach and enjoyed ah, the pure prettiness of the day, and the beginning of the Chinese New Year (why we were free of work). It was not cold, it was sunny, people were playing on the beach (bundled up playing) and we talked we laughed and we went home and had a colossal jacuzzi bath and giggled some more. Sometime later we found ourselves in a restaurant and then the plan was to go out later (they had straightened my hair and put makeup on me in the way that girl’s love to take me on as a project) but exhaustedly the plan failed and I went to sleep and woke up at the glorious hour of 9am.

We spent the next day on the tourist scene and Heather tour guided us to a Buddhist temple on the beach. Wow beauty, real, true Korean beauty. This temple sits on the blue ocean and looks out over pretty rocks and freedom. Space. Much needed space seeped into my body. There was a huge golden Buddha smiling happily, and weird little Buddha dolls with a huge dragon and happy pig statues grinning delightfully. And we continued on our “cultural” day to the modern art museum of Busan

Well what can anyone say about modern art? Except that well, it’s a bit sad and unamazing. Unless you are a sucker for concept or something. Perhaps I am not deep enough but we wondered around in a kind of stupor thinking “really? What? Why” and not in the good way. We entered a dark stall which was a sort of disco party, and then some circular curtains where we listened to people’s laughter (rather frightening) and some screens with 3 people of different ages dancing in unison and well... But until I read the blurb about what it was I kind of found something in it. Or I just liked the sentiments. As far as I understood it was about the state of man today, how everyone in their search for happiness in different ways never finds peace, only the seeking of adventure. In this constant money grabbing, working life happiness is seen as connected to economic success. This, in the context of Korea is very relevant. Korea has one of the highest (if not THE highest) suicide rates because no longer do people have to worry about simply eating but about being more successful than the next person. If you don’t make a success of yourself in this highly competitive society you are nothing and thus money and physical beauty is rated highly when it comes to true happiness.

I liked the sentiment. We moved on. More bubbles and bath time and a silly useless sappy movie that I loved. A rather disappointing supper (too little yum salad) followed by a bar and some new friends. We went to a noraebang which is where people go to karaoke, found out heather has a sing star voice while I croaked along and after some more friends later we watched a friend win 300 dollars at a casino and returned after fireworks on the beach at 6am. Glorious.

Well now I am back here. And there is so much more to talk about. How much time I have not had to talk about school and my student’s and about how I now go climbing 3 times a week, have met some beautiful people and perhaps I’m not overly ecstatic about Korea but I am loving how I am suddenly here and not really anywhere else. Life cannot be exciting and beautiful and easy all the time. My student’s do a fantastic job at not paying attention and being insanely annoying. And the Kindergarteners complain and cry and hit each other and say selfish thing. And there are so many buildings. And it’s a useless cold. But yes. I am so blessed for how my first month has unfolded.

Hello Korea! How can life be unfun with a panda hat ?

New adventures normally start in a whirl. This happens that happens, you are trying to find your feet and your feet are running away at some colossal speed beneath you with your body only barely hanging on. This adventure whirl was no different.

I suppose I figured that, even though Koreans spoke Korean and also had a different alphabet from me, there are so many English teachers here that everyone would know how to speak English. In fact my worry was that when I arrived I would have nothing to teach them as they had been learning the language since babyhood and would know the rules of English better than I could ever dream of.

Well, of course, I was wrong. Korea is the weirdest, strangest, out of my world country I have ever been to. At least when traveling north of South Africa and being the only white face for miles I can at least recognise what kind of food is being sold on the street. Meat, potatoes, koeksisters. It all makes sense. Here it is an abyss of the unknown.

I would love to expound on all they do for pages but I will attempt a little account of what has happened in the last 11 days and a few impressions. SO many impressions, there are so many things that people can do differently, and I am so used to my way that I have always presumed it to be the only way when really, ways in which to do things are seemingly endless.

I arrived in Korea at 4.30pm to be greeted by a man with a sign with my name on it. I’ve always wanted someone to greet me at an airport with fancy sign but it wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds. He couldn’t speak English, and after some hand signals I realized I was to sit tight for 2 hours until my bus came. So I waited looking around at all the faces around me, at the signs in funny writing, at the weird sport they were playing on the tv. I then took a bus to Pohang (where I now live) and got in at midnight where my Supervisor met me and took me to my apartment (a room with a kitchen and bathroom attached) and she said “See you on Monday”. It was Wednesday and I was alone in a strange country with no plan and no understanding of anything around me.

So I wrote a to do list for the next day that read: Kettle

Pot

Internet

Phone

Food

Bin

Hairbrush

Well I got a kettle and a pot and some bananas. I walked out of my house and found a book shop that said “book shop” happily in English. So I went inside to find ALL the English books that I figured was advertised by the sign being in English. Well these English books didn’t actually exist but the books store man seemed to take a liking to me and leant me his computer and then pointed me to the supermarket across the road which he followed me to and further, followed me down all the aisles. All I could find that looked somewhat normal was some bananas, a weird roll thing in a packet (loaf of bread? Does that exist?) and a mountain dew. He happily paid for my purchases and I went back to his shop to eat a banana with him and then continued on my way.

So with food kind of out of the way, I entered an electronic store and asked for a phone. Again no one spoke English so the store man kindly opened a google translate page on his computer and we typed a pretty hilarious conversation on google chat. Well. It doesn’t work. We said all sorts of things about phone and contract and how I didn’t want a contract but he kept on harping about a contract. And we kept on nodding and smiling and when I realized nothing was going to happen without my Korean resident card he said “I have no foreign friend. Will you be my friend?” This I actually understood and I agreed but luckily I wasn’t lying when I said I had no phone number.

So, tired of being misunderstood, I decided it was time to leave Pohang and go back to Seoul which I had come from 2 nights before and spend time with a friend that I had there and we could speak English and lament about how weird and confusing the world was together (which is way more fun than doing it alone). So after many public phones not working and phone numbers wrongly written down I jumped on a bus back to Seoul and found some friendly faces on the other side (after figuring out the mad and very intricate subway system of Seoul). I was SO happy to speak English again, my friend Shaun who I have known since early high school took me to a market which was full of Korean food (the smell of fish strong and rather off-putting everywhere and cutesy Korean clothes like animal hats and amazing fun socks and people shouting and music and smells and just madness. I was kind of hungry but buying food was so hard as I didn’t recognize what people were selling and when I DID realize what it was I wasn’t so enticed(things like dried squid chips and cabbage and deepfried sausage on a stick)

I found a motel that night and the next day Shaun and I made our way to a ski resort for a little frolic in the slopes. The snow was terrible, it was all machine made and on the other side of the mountain it was all brown and devoid of snow. We were skiing on ice and I was frightened to try anything too fancy (as fancy as I can be) but yes, of course, it was fun. 2 days in Korea and already I’m snowboarding! Although it wasn’t really what I call snowboarding. There were only 3 runs really and between the runs there was no snow so it was difficult to get too much into the authenticity of the environment. But I love a new experience and I loved the, once again, out of my normal world experience.

So after the resort was closed we decided to summon the courage to eat some Korean food and on the way to the restaurant we saw a group of people sitting around a cake digging into it with chopsticks. Well, this was a really strange sight but on thinking about it this idea really struck me as so intelligent- I mean you normally get too big a slice of cake, or too little a slice of cake resulting in being overfull or underfed. How intelligent, eating exactly the amount of cake that is right for you in a social environment (I am definitely doing this on my birthday). So we went on to our own supper where we just pointed at some unknown Korean word which resulted in some rice and a weird tofu soup thing (watery Korean soup, not my favourite) and some weird cabbage that looks like it’s drenched in blood called gimchi. Apparently this is something Koreans eat with every meal and sometimes I ask my students more often than necessary what they have for breakfast because they DO say gimchi and rice (for breakfast? Really?)

The next night was New years and we met up with some friends of Shaun in this party place in Seoul which is full of American soldiers. I was so excited when I saw “cheese fries” on the menu and ordered that only to realize that, once again, cheese isn’t really cheese in America, it is plastic gooey liquid cheese and though disappointing I was happy to eat something that made some sort of sense to me. After a few drinks and revelry we went on to some other place on the subway and had an amazing Korean meal. We were with two people who have been Korea for a while and thus know what is safe to ingest and they bought a whole bunch of communal food (salads and stews and soups) for 5 people that came to the equivalent of 28 dollars. Madly cheap for the feast we had. I wish I could describe how weird the food is but I don’t even know what I’m eating most of the time. Anyway we then went onwards to a mad Korean bar where we danced into the new year and at 6am we left and I made my way to my bus back to Pohang at 7am and fell asleep and woke up, 5 hours later in Pohang (they have reclining seats and foot rests and the journey only costs R140.)

Well after all this fun I hadn’t really had time to think of the gravity of my situation. That I had just committed to living in a strange country for a year, I don’t have any friends in my town and I wasn’t so sure if I even liked this place. I spent Sunday in a huge downward spiral of thinking I had possibly made the worst flash decision in my life and the repercussions that follow are a lot longer than I have ever had to deal with before.

So I woke up the next day and entered my school expecting about a week of training but instead I was given my schedule and told I was teaching in 30 minutes. After a rather depressing New Year’s Day this news almost brought me to tears. But after a bit of a firm talking to myself about just being brave and that it’s just teaching children, I went into my classes unprepared bu it turned out alright.However, the next day, I hurtled back down to outer freak out mode as on Tuesday’s I go to another school 30 minutes away and have 7 hours straight conversation class. When I got home at 9pm I was trying to figure out ways to get out of my contract and then I had to, once again tell myself that I need to give things a chance before I go into sincere panic mode.

Not only was teaching a deep fear but also, where I live is quite ugly. There are lots filled with litter, the buildings reach sky high and all the grass is yellow and the trees are bare. But I am assured that this is simply the heart of winter and it gets better .For when I go on my journey to the other school I teach at we drive past some rather large pretty mountain-hill things and along a very beautiful ocean.

However, as the week continued I realized that in fact things are going to be ok. My coworker, Tiffany, invited me to dinner on Friday and after a meal of sitting on cushions on the floor and sharing a big pan filled with yummy stew (they cook it right on your table in front of you) with lots of interesting nutty cabbagey salady things on the side. And afterwards we went on to an English club where Koreans and English people come together to talk English. It was actually really fun, we have discussion topics and afterwards it turns into a bit of party with wine and some sort of dancing.

So my weekend continued in a social aspect with discovering amazingly that a friend of mine from Cape Town is in Pohang right now and we had a great catch up session and ate some waffles and icecream from a street vendor and I bought some amazing fluffy socks with coloufrul hearts on them and a fluffy top with a sheep on it so in fact I AM a sheep when I wear it. There are so many amazing fun clothes to buy here and the socks are to die for. I have actually landed in the center of sock heaven.

So with a bit of social fun and realizing that teaching is actually quite fun and I will be ok I am quite happy to be here. I’m still rather culture shocked and over awed by everything but I’m so excited to learn and experience more Asian madness as the days go by.