Gobble, Gobble, Go to...

Disclaimer: All cynicism and sardonic commentary in this blog were made purely in the holiday spirit of wit and dry sarcastic humor, like Santa Claus getting stuck in the chimney, or grandma getting run over by a reindeer, or a Thanksgiving turkey's futile plea for his life with a cheap painted cardboard sign that reads "Pleese dont Eet Me". In all these things we can find humor and joy, despite their tragic undertones. Thank you and enjoy your holidays.

2nd Disclaimer: No Santa Clauses, Grandmas or Turkeys were injured in the making of this blog. That's probably more than you all can say for YOUR Thanksgivings, Isn't it?!
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Thanksgiving in Korea:

So while all of you ooey-gooey sentimentalists were gathering together with your loved ones (or "tolerated ones" as I call them) and exchanging awkward hugs and crusty pumpkin pies and yams with those ridiculous itty-bitty marshmallows, I was having myself a fairly mundane Thursday here in Korea. So take that, all you Ameri-centric celebrants in your funny buckle hats!!

I'll tell you what I'M thankful for! I'm thankful that I avoided all those ethnically insensitive cartoons of the "Noble Native American" sharing his agricultural knowledge with those equally offensive images of the simpleton pilgrims and their ridiculous knee-socks!

I'm thankful I didn't have to endure the annual poultry genocide our country wages every year, shamefully veiled as a patriotic glorification of what, really?! Our impressive ability to create 5 story Garfield balloons and parade them down a major shopping boulevard? Our amazing gastronomic capacity that has already been recognized and ridiculed by every other global society? Or perhaps we are congratulating ourselves on our creativity in turning dried gords and expired produce into table decorations. A proud tradition.

I'm thankful I didn't have to smile, chew twice, and swallow through another sample of rhubarb pie- I'm mean what the HELL IS rhubarb anyway? I'm sure it wasn't one of the things the Native Americans brought to the table on the first Thanksgiving! Oh no, that was All the Pilgrims doing- they're responsible for the root based dessert. That's what you get for trying to survive a winter by foraging for nuts and berries.

I'm thankful I didn't have to stutter through the mispronunciation of "conicup-..., copicorn-... Horn 'o Plenty" or watch elementary school kids do crappy paperbag re-enactments of the Mayflower voyage and sing songs with lyrics like "Have a Gobble, gobble, Good Turkey Day"

And I'm certainly thankful I didn't have to listen to that disgusting squelching sound of cranberry sauce as it slowly oozes out of the can in one solid quivering mass, holding the form of the ribbed tin until it is properly mashed into an unsavory blob.

No, there was no red goo, nor dried gords adorning my Thanksgiving table. Here, Thanksgiving dinner included some fish and rice, a heaping portion of Kimchi, which is a cabbage that has been fermented in a hole in the ground for several weeks, then covered in chilies and a very spicy anchovy oil....mmmmm nothing says holidays like fermented cabbage.

So Happy Holidays to all of you and I hope that indigestion and bloating doesn't last until Christmas.
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ok seriously, I love and miss you all, and I wished really bad that I could have been there, but I'm coping with my separation anxiety through evasive and caustic humor...but really: love you, doing great, don't send prozac or any other anti-depressants...unless those anti-depressants happen to be Banana Runts and Juicy-pear JellyBellies !

Fukuoko You!

So you have exactly 4 1/2 hours to absorb and enjoy the Japanese culture- GO!

That was the experience of my co-workers and I this weekend as we had to make an emergency visa run to Fukuoko, Japan. I guess Koreans are particularly, um, particular about who works in their country- so in order to become law-abiding employees of the Seoul City Government and to avoid receiving 37 lashes at the border (42 if you happened to be Canadian) we had to leave Korea. The 8am flight took one hour and then we went straight to the Korean Consulate. It felt a bit strange leaving Korea and going all the way to Japan only to immediately run to Korean soil, kind of like an international hamster, scurrying from one plastic bubble to a slightly smaller version of the same plastic bubble. But I was told it was necessary, and it was paid for. done.

So yea, Japan. First thing about diving into a new culture is to make sure it's not too shallow, so we headed straight for the Tech 9 Wonder Park Video Arcade across from the consulate (I was with a group that was primarily male between the ages of 22-26...enough said) After basking in the neon glow of anime characters with seizure-inducing strobe light eyes we moved on to a much more important cultural experience, Lunch!

Remember those signs that said "no shoes, no service"-well to that Japan says, "HA!" We stowed our sneakers in the cubby lockers and slid "Risky Business" style across the smooth hard wood floors and snuggled down to one of the low floor tables with a hot griddle built right in. I recommend picking one up for all people who enjoy keeping their food hot, like flicking things on burners to watch them sizzle, or are trying to teach their kids to keep their elbows off the table.

We gathered around the table, giddy with shoeless delight, and were offered 3 choices: "shrimp, pork, seafood"...what the actual dish was was never explained, but it was sure to contain one of those three ingredients. I went with seafood. What arrived was something of a hybrid of a Spanish tortilla (omelet style) and a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut...with mayonnaise on top, and a few visible tentacles. If this dish doesn't sound savory to you...well, then you just weren't there...as most of you reading this understandably were not. My point being: it was quite yummy in its hot tentacle-y omelet goodness.

For the rest of the afternoon we walked all over the small city, and gazed upon gardens, and lakes and castle ruins. Some ruins, in fact, were so ruined you really couldn't tell there had been anything there in the first place, so we played frisbee. By 5:30 we all re-grouped at the Korean Consulate and boarded our bus back to Fukuoko International Airport. We had just enough time to blow some yen at Duty Free then got on the plane and re-entered Korea with our shiny new work visas!whoo hoo! No, really, they actually Are shiny! That makes three international visas for me, which now means the visas in my passport outnumber the visas in my wallet. cool.

Peaking Weekend

By the time Sunday rolled around, I was ready to roll out. In keeping with this "rolling" theme, I rolled out of bed, rolled up my thick socks and had a roll for breakfast (it would have been better if I'd been listening to Kieth Richards and Mick Jagger, but I'll desist). I then walked down the hall to rouse a couple of my more outdoorsey type buddies and we took off for a day of hiking. Destination: Dobongsan.

First, take everything you know about hiking and chuck it off a cliff. (I understand that for some of you, just imagining that cliff from which you are chucking all your knowledge of hiking indeed constitutes all your knowledge of hiking...but stick with me here) To begin, in Seoul you don't drive out in your beat up volvo or jeep, into the woods to find some trailhead next to the road. No, you first walk to the subway station. On the way we grabbed a hardy sustaining snack like any good hiker does pre-trail, but it wasn't the normal "GORP" (Good Ol' raisins and Peanuts to all you non-hikers, homo stationarious) Instead we had my favorite stall food, "Love Fish". They're these fried dough pastries shaped like fish and filled with hot sweet red bean. There's nothing better to warm you with ooey-gooey caloric goodness. And there is absolutely nothing "granola-esque" about them. In fact there is nothing granola-esque about Seoul in general...except maybe the granola they import from the States and sell at E-mart for $20. But what hippie could afford that?!

Hiking in Seoul is not just for hippies- no, no. It's the Northface clad executive businessman and weekend urban adventurers that hit the mountains here. One of the oddest, most incongruous experiences I've had yet was taking the underground to get to the mountain. It just didn't seem right. Me decked out in my hiking gear and daypack- trying to maintain that outdoorsey roughness while sitting on a subway car sandwiched between an old lady with a fruit basket and a 7 year old girl with a HelloKitty backpack and matching pink hat.

But by the time we'd reached our stop the car was mostly filled with Colombia coats and Northface hats and Lowe Alpine packs. Man, Koreans love their EMS (homo stationarious translation: "Expensive Mountain Shit" ...mother homo-stationarious translation: "Expensive Mountain Stuff") It seemed more like a fashion scene than natural scenery, more of a catwalk than a walk in the woods. At the base of the trail we weaved and bobbed through steamy ramen huts and mountain gear outlets, dogded through the crowds of florescent jackets, and made our way to the ticket booth.

The trekking itself was pretty enjoyable, the trail was nice, the trees still had a hint of fall foliage, the air was chilled and felt really refreshing once the heart got pumping adding a nice flush to the cheeks. But at some points, weaving through the throngs of other hikers felt like standing in a line at Disney World. And it was very difficult to achieve a sense of youthful vigor and accomplishment when you're constantly making way for elderly couples as they hobble up the path, or mothers toting their toddlers along. Yep, hobblers and toddlers and me, all making our way up Dobongsan on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

After a while we just got used to the constant traffic and enjoyed the stream of smiles and greetings from our fellow mountaineers. Toward the top the trail became much more challenging and we actually attempted some bouldering and wall climbing (with the assistance of some aptly placed cables and Korean men with chalk bags hanging from their belts). At one point I was literally wedged between a rock and a hard place (that "hard place" being another rock) I took a moment to reflect on the proverbial nature of my position...but then began to lose feeling in my lower body and decided to move on. The peaks were an impressive series of jagged faces and boulders, jutting out above the treeline. By the end of the day my hands were well-soiled and my knees were sufficiently scraped and scuffed to deem the adventure a success.

Near the bottom we passed a Buddhist hermitage where, curiously enough, a woman offered us some the fruit left at the base of the statue. But we felt it may be inappropriate to take it an we didn't feel like incurring the disdain of any deity that afternoon, so we politely declined and sought out other sustanence. We found it in a cart of apples sold by a man in the subway station and split a kilo. Once we finally flopped down on the subway car we all felt that lovely heaviness of exhaustion and waited for our numb little digits to regain color and feeling. I chose to ignore the fact that I was once again seated next to a little girl in a Hello Kitty outfit, and that she had also just completed a day fo hiking on Dobongsan. But I bet she didn't get wedged between boulders or offered Buddha's fruit.

I'm still more hard core.

Oh Korea, Korea

Arriving in Seoul went about as expected, mundane and with out incident...so I feel it necessary to elaborate:

I boarded a plane in Saigon atthe unGodly time of 1:00am (speaking as a religion major I have the qualification to declare such a departure hour blasphemous) and when I stepped off the plane my sole met Seoul. Yes folks, international travel really is that simple. My only struggle was trying to block out the incredible nostril orchestra that surrounded me on the way over. Asians may be small but their nasal capacity and proneness for sinusititis congestion and obstructive sleep apnea should not be underestimated. But despite the exceptionally high rate of deviated septums in my particular section of the airplane (yes, it was coach) I was able to get a bit of sleep. I disembarked at 7:56am, fresh and ready to take on my newest conquest: Korea.

My first impression of Korea was "Wow, this looks strikingly similar to all other international airports I have found myself traveling through in the past few months." Shall we count them? Let's : Logan, Heathrow, Dublin, Shannon, Paris De Gaul, KCI, LAX, Taipei, Saigon and now Seoul. And I will add another this Friday when all the teachers make our visa run to Fukuoko, Japan. Maybe I should start collecting something...perhaps the change bowls at the metal detectors. That could actually prove to be a lucrative hobby...I'll let you all know how it goes.

Sapa III

Our second day of trekking through Sapa brought an unexpected challenge. In the mountains I had come across such obstacles as roaming waterbuffalos, thorny foliage, even a 3 foot bright green poisonous snake (killed and presented to us on a stick by some H'mong boys). But what I did not anticipate in my traveling was having a drunken guide leading me through the hills.

Before we were even beyond the fields of our homestay, I could tell Quan was having trouble negotiating the trail. When hiking, typically skills such as balance...agility...depth perception are fairly important. But despite complete lack of all these (and several other) motor-skillls, Quan fearlessly and gracelessly trekked ahead at a rather quick pace. At some points I felt like I was chasing after our plastered pathfinder, other times I felt responsible for catching him as he teetered perilously close to the edge of the terraced fields.

About 20 minutes into our hike we came to a small rest stand were there were chairs and Fanta to ease weary travellers. I didn't think our brief stumbling walk had really meritted a rest stop- but, well, Quan insisted... he can be beligerently persuassive, as we had experienced all too well. We sat sipping our colas and shaking our heads giving eachother sideways smiles and glances, when we noticed that we hadn't really seen Quan for about 10 minutes. Looking at the small H'mong woman who ran the rest stop, it didn't take long to follow her giggling nods toward the back of the stand...where we saw some familiar boots hanging out from under a tapestry. Our sloshed chaperone had passed out on a cot. It took a full 20 minutes and physical force to rouse him- and then we hit the trail again. This episode repeated itself twice more before we reached our final destination around 3:00- an hour past our scheduled time to meet the jeep.

We discovered once we'd finally reached the village that our story had spread throughout the land "Quan the tanked-tourguide and his pitiful band of 3 lost foreigners". We were thankfully received by a lovely couple in the village who cooked us lunch and gave Quan an hour to rest in their guest cot. Then we made a final push up to the road were Quan exasperately informed us "You miss the jeep- we take motobike." I could have strangled him, but the thought of pummeling a drunken Vietnamese man seemed too much like kicking a lame sheep...and plus he was the only one who could tell the motorbike drivers where to go.

Tanya and I had to squeeze on the back of one together, 3 to a bike plus my backpack- it was no way to ride a motorbike- most of my posterior was hanging off the back and I was made acutely aware of every bump in the road...and by "road" I mean rock and gravel slope. Garret and Quan, each on their own bike, had sped ahead with their drivers, leaving the much heavier three-some far behind. Twice the engine failed under our weight and we had to walk up the slope to a level ground. Then we ran out of petrol, then we sprung a leak in the oil...finally we abandoned the bike completely and found another. Then we were caught behind road construction - a backhoe that was clawing into the side of the mountain and spreading the broken rocks onto the road as a driving surface...let's just concede that I have a new found appreciation for the Missouri roads.

Seeing the outskirts of Sapa, I couldn't have been more happy had I been pulling into my driveway on Belinder. I was glad to assume this story had come to an end...but wait there's more, one closing finale. Readers beware it's not for the modest of faint of heart.

Arriving dusty and disgusting at the hotel, I was quickly ushered into the staff dorm to get a shower before catching the bus back to Lao Cai. While rinsing off the day and nights worth of grime that I had coated myself in- I thought I heard a door open outside. I called out, and heard a shuffle and a mumble and then thankfully and exiting door shut. I moved cautiously out into the room to dress and arrange my bags. It was rather difficult in the room, crowded with 4 bunks and several big backpacks, quilts, cleaning buckets and general clutter. After dressing the hotel consierge came to tell me the bus was waiting, then turned toward what I thought was a lump of blankets on a bed and shook his head..."oh, Quan..." WHAT?! what I had seen as a harmless pile of laundry was actually Quan, passed out not three feet from where I had been changing. I have never made a more urgent exit from a room. Once safely on the bus, making our way back to Lao Cai- only then was I able to finally sigh and begin laughing...all the way home.

Sapa II

So where was I?...Ah yes, in a modest house, in a remote village, in the mountains of Northern Vietnam- just about as far off as you can get. That's where I was geographically at least, in my story I have much further to go.

So we had dinner with the family that night, gathered around a table on those ubiquitous little plastic stools, underneath the lumination of the single bulb in the house- suspended from a wire that snaked it's way out a hole in the room and up the hill to the village generator. Under that modest glow we shared at least 12 or 15 plates of delicious fried and sauted vegetables and ...less identifiable yet highly mouthwatering foods. (My vegetarianism may have been compromised, I'm not really sure, but it was worth it to try everything.)

Then after we had all given the international sign of "Full tummy" -a satisfied pat on the belly and leaning back on the little stools- our guide Quan invited us, on behalf of the family, to drink some rice wine. A lovely custom we felt would have been impolite to have declined....if only we'd known.

Our single cheers (or "xo!") soon turned into several rounds of the thin strong vodka-like liquor and it wasn't long before we were singing and clapping to Irish, Norwegian and Vietnamese drinking songs. Incidently, if one is ever visiting Norway they may find themselves doing a jig similar to the hokey-pokey while taking shots.

Needless to say, by the time we finally were able to convince the family to stop pouring the wine (coincidently when the bottle was Finally empty) I was quite ready for my cushion and mosquito tent in the loft above the house. The next moring we were all groggy but ready to hit the trail again for a half day more of hiking, then to lunch and a jeep ride back to the hotel at 2:00- or so we thought.

Having planned to leave by 9:30, our guide Quan didn't actually rise until some time after 10:00- leaping bolt upright at first out of his netting- giving us a bleary-eyed look and proclaiming "I make pancakes and we GO!" He was still rather..um..smashed. Yet even in that state, and with the most basic fire and skillet he was able make the most delightful banana crepes, that I would not be able to match even given soberiety- so he had that going for him.

After finishing our crepes we got up to find Quan and start the trekking. We found him with the family in the cooking area with a familiar green bottle. "the family has invited you to drink with them rice wine to say 'goodbye and good luck'"...are you serious?..at this point it's 11am.

We were duped into thinking this was a single invitation for a good bye send off and as I raised the small glass to my lips I nearly lost my banana crepes to the haunting smell of the pontent stining alcohol- it really hits you between the eyes. If only we had just walked away then. But Quan insisted. All that kept going through my mind was "When in Rome...God, how I wish I was in Rome" I was able to convey to them my abstinence by simply raising the glass to the (Several) "Xo!"s and setting it back down- can't refill a full glass. However Quan was not quite as restrained. By 12:00 we were inquiring about our departure time that was crawling further and further into the day, and after hearing "11:30 ok, ok"..."12:00 ok,ok"..."12:30 ok,ok" we decided action had to be taken, or we risked spending the Entire day in that little rice winery...in a modest house...in a remote village...in the mountains of Northern Vietnam.

...oh yes, there's more, this story is to be continued.