SUNDAY WITH DAVID

At 6 a.m. Sunday morning we hauled ourselves out of bed to find rain falling. Nonetheless we got up, dressed, and shortly after 7:00 were perched at the airport bus stop near Sookmyung Women’s University Station. We were waiting for David who was dropping in for 13 hours, a stopover in his flight home from teaching in Papua New Guinea. Few cars on the street, not many people about, most of the shops closed, but buses hurtled by in waves, stopping to let people on or off. Blue buses, green ones, even the occasional long-distance tour coach, an airport limousine bus, all came and went as we waited. The rain came and went too.

View from the bus platform (my photo)

Shortly after 8:a.m. a dull-gold airport bus stopped and David stepped out. We surrounded him with chatter, herding him towards A Twosome Place for their morning set (scrambled eggs, yum!) only to discover it wouldn’t open till 10:30. So we settled for Starbucks—David’s first caffe latte in months—and good blueberry scones instead, Then a quick walk through the campus where David spied a black-crowned night heron sitting on a stone in the pond. We’ve seen those herons often back in Toronto but that’s the first one here.

Our next plan was to catch the Changing of the Guard at Deoksugang Palace and then wander around downtown. Downtown was pretty quiet. Was that perhaps the aftermath of the soccer loss the night before? The square in front of the Palace was surprisingly empty when we arrived—and then we saw a sign that the ceremony was cancelled because of the rain. So we walked David past the controversial Van Bruggen/Oldenburg sculpture “Spring”, to Berlin Square. After peering at graffiti on the Wall we walked beside the Cheonggyecheon, a stream that runs for some four miles as a narrow park through the centre of the city.

Graffiti on the Berlin Wall (my photo)

David contemplating Mobius by the Cheonggyecheon,

We left the stream and caught the subway to Itaewon, where we threaded through the crowds and looked at shop windows and carts offering souvenirs, t-shirts, very beautiful scarves, fine suits, leather jackets, antiques, splendid ties, shoes, hats, cosmetics, etc. It was lunch time and we prowled up a couple of alleys finding Italian, German, Persian, Thai, and Nordic restaurants as well as lots of pubs—but we wanted to give David a Korean meal. Then he spied a sign for Korean barbecue—at a restaurant called Don Valley Beef & Pork Korean Restaurant! So we were meant to eat there. The menu included vegetarian dishes and bibimbap and I devoured the dol sot bibimbap. The others liked their food too. Cass beer washed it all down and kept the talk flowing.

Back on the street we headed for the Berlin Café to hear Robert Harwood play--but found he wasn’t on till evening. The view looking out over the street was wonderful, the breeze coming through the window fine, so we ordered a good bottle of wine and before long Nancy joined us. Talk and laughter flew around the table till it was time for David to catch his bus back to the airport. It pulled in as we were crossing the street to the stop, he stepped on, and after a bit of confusion about the money—was that a PNG bill he pulled out of his wallet that freaked out the driver?—the fare was paid, the door closed, and away he went for his 14-hour flight home.

FOOD IN A NEW ALPHABET 2

Peter and Maureen learning a new alphabet ... (Photo: Nancy Kim)

Following our visit to the Berlin Café a week and a half ago, Nancy led us through the streets of Itaewon to The Foreign Food Mart where we bought our breakfast peanut butter. We dropped into the Foreign Book Shop next door for a few minutes, and of course each found something we wanted: Korean for Dummies (Peter) and Soul in Seoul (Maureen). Nancy had loaned us a copy of S in S, and we both enjoyed the writer’s tone: individual and opinionated!

Though we’d snacked at the café we were growing hungry. We walked a little further to Sigol Babsang, a country-style, or rustic, traditional restaurant, in a small building we’d never have realized was a restaurant without Nancy’s say-so. Stepping through a low door we found ourselves in a small room divided down the middle: to the left an area with about 3 tables and benches, to the right a raised platform for traditional (sit-on-the-floor) Korean eating.

The “menu” was a flat wooden spoon with rows of Korean characters on it. Nancy explained the selections, and we ordered steamed egg, rice cake and bulgogi cooked in an earthenware pot, and soybean stew. Almost immediately a young man began placing tray after tray of small side dishes in front of us till the table was nearly completely covered. We ordered chungha (rice wine) to accompany this feast (Peter also had his beer), then settled into talk and eating, eating, eating. Nancy told us there was no particular order or way in which the dishes were meant to be eaten, we could each browse as we pleased. What an array of tastes—some startling (those little anchovies, the chillies), all delicious! In the end we simply couldn’t consume it all, though we tried hard.

Left: The full table ... (my photo)

Below: a closer look at some side dishes (my photo)

BASKING TURTLE

In the pond at Sookmyung Women's University, 23 June 2010

(Photo: Maureen Scott Harris)

LIFE AS SOOKMYUNG SUMMER FACULTY

Dear Readers. It's Wednesday, 23 June here in Seoul, just after 3:p.m. Forgive the manic posting during the past couple of days, but I've fallen far behind the events that have unfolded. Time flies when you’re having fun…

Last week flew by in a kind of dream when summer school began, and today Peter is halfway through his teaching! Last Monday afternoon we met the other faculty at an orientation session that included a tour of campus highlights. The particular highlight I liked was an exhibition of Canadian and American poetry in the World Literatures Room of the library. What a delight to see Don McKay’s Vis á Vis alongside the Wilfrid Laurier selection of his poems. After the tour we were hosted, with the international students, to a very good dinner.

Peter teaches for 3 hours each afternoon and so our lives have assumed a somewhat routine shape. We usually eat breakfast at home—fruit and/or yoghurt, toast and peanut butter, washed down with (believe it or not) tins of iced latte we buy in the local groceries or convenience stores (take your choice: Starbucks, Maxim, Cantata, Angel-in-us, Holly’s, Denmark Milk, the list could continue). About twice a week we go out for breakfast—lattes and scones or muffins usually, but one day soon we’ll head to a waffle café for breakfast—they are almost as ubiquitous as the coffee places. Peter then does class prep while I take care of small housekeeping things (laundry) or read, write in my journal, compile suggestions for yet more things to see and do before we leave.

Shortly before noon we walk to campus, about 7 minutes away along a lane, to eat a very cheap and good lunch (7000 won for the two of us, roughly C$7. 00) in the Faculty Cafeteria. There we often catch up with colleagues—who usually have yet more suggestions for things to do. While Peter teaches I sit by the pond, or come back here and read or write or stare out at our lane, where there’s always something happening. When Peter finishes teaching we meet for an iced coffee, and sometimes a walk in the park behind the campus. Evenings are more varied—we eat out most of the time, still feeling our way through the maze of Korean foods.

Thursdays at 5:p.m. we attend an informal research forum, where 3 of the summer faculty talk about their current projects or major research interests. Here’s the poster for the first session, when Peter spoke.

Research Forum I, Sookmyung Women’s University, Summer School 2010

Organized by Albrecht Classen (University of Arizona)

Faculty members of the Summer School 2010 present their research.

Colleagues, students, and the public are invited

to attend this free event.

Thursday, June 17, 2010, 5 p.m., room tba

Sharon Weiner (American University, Washington, DC): “Organizational Interest and Nuclear Proliferation”

Purnima Bhatt (Hood College, Frederick, MD): “’The Woman Factor’ in the Stepwells of Gujarat, India: Relationship Between Women, Water, Art, and Religion”

Peter Harris (University of Toronto): “The Reichstag Building: From Imperial Monkey House to Republican Glass House”

FENCES AND A GLIMPSE OF KO UN

Korean poet Ko Un came to Toronto in 2008, to receive the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award. I’d never heard of him though he’s perhaps the major 20th-century Korean poet. Last night I finished reading his poems in The Three Way Tavern (University of California Press, 2006). This morning I want to start the book at the beginning again.

Also this morning I was sent a link to photographs of Toronto’s downtown streets, occupied by heavy chainlink fences and uniformed security people for the Prime Minister’s indefensibly expensive road show of the G20/G8 meetings that will take place this next weekend.

Here are the opening lines of Ko Un’s final poem in The Three Way Tavern—I offer them for their notion of a different kind of fence:

Coda: The Thuja Fence

Because there are few reasons to come and go,

the road is often bare,

like a man after weeping.

Soothing sadness,

the dark blue thuja trees

have shot up since last year and

seem to be hiccupping among themselves.

Some parts of this earth are made

of unfinished business.

So sadness has brought us here, you and I.

Even a man with breathing heels

knows the sun is setting on earth’s unfinished work.

…

By Ko Un. Translated by Clare You and Richard Silberg. Copyright, University of California Press, 2006.

Thuja by the way are a family of cypresses.

For more poems by Ko Un go to: http://jacketmagazine.com/34/ko-un.shtml

To hear him read in Korean, with Richard Silberg reading the English translations of a few poems from The Three Way Tavern check out his youtube site: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHb_fQiVT_Y

SITTING BY THE POND

Below the Queen Sunheon Building on the Sookmyung Women’s University Campus there is a large rectangular pond. It’s bisected by the central stairs and walk leading downhill to the rest of the campus. Fountains on both sides of the walk spray, cooling the air and making a fine sound. Plantings surround the pond. A line of mature trees stands on the uphill side, a viney groundcover flowing down among them to the pond’s rocky edge. Benches are set at intervals along its length, making good places to sit and get out of the generally hot sunshine. Sloping up behind the benches are large hosta beds, blooming now.

I’ve taken to sitting on one bench or another for some time after lunch on those days that we eat in the Faculty Cafeteria. Sometimes I write in my little yellow journal, sometimes I just listen to the water, stare at the varying greens of the plants and trees (few of which I can name) or watch the incredibly large fish in the water, sometimes I manage a blank mind. Occasionally birds appear—Eurasian tree sparrows, magpies, pigeons, possibly Oriental turtledoves, twice something robin-sized and dark with a longish tail resembling no bird I know. Except for the magpies they are often too backlit or quick to be seen clearly.

On a hot afternoon last week I sat looking at one of the large trees almost right in front of me and noticed that the vine covering the ground had swarmed up its trunk well into the branches. I leaned back to see, if I could, just how high it reached, and suddenly the tree looked like a dancer with outstretched arms wearing a lacey green cloak.

INTERSECTIONS, CONJUNCTIONS ... ETC 2

Berlin intersected our lives for a second time, on Sunday, June 13, when we met Nancy to go to Itaewon and the Berlin Café for an art opening. The show featured work by three expat artists—and here’s an intersection within an intersection—one of them Anna Phillips from Hobart, Tasmania, where I spent four months last year.

(Photograph: Peter Harris)

Anna has been living in Seoul for five or six years, studying bojagi, traditional Korean wrapping cloths*. These cloths were/are used as food coverings, gift wrap, and to transport things. Anna uses traditional bojagi patterns and methods in her work, but not traditional materials. In an interview with The Korea Times she said “`I have attempted to use the traditional art of bojagi with Korean plastic bags, which have such dynamic motifs and symbols printed on their surfaces. With my latest art pieces, I am trying to reflect and comment on modern life, and our relationship to the past, both from an international and personal perspective,'' Some of Anna’s pieces seemed nearly transparent, with a linen-like finish to them. Others were complex patchwork.

One of Anna's patchwork hangings. (My photograph)

Anna will return to Hobart shortly where she’s been commissioned to do a piece for the Kelly Garden, the sculpture square beside the Kelly Steps. She showed me photographs of a wonderful and large crocheted (from plastic) throw hung over the wall there—an earlier commission. I climbed those steps many times during my stay in Hobart, and looking at those photos made me homesick for that city. It was lovely to talk with Anna and trade names of people whom we knew there.

Another treat that afternoon was hearing Anna’s husband, Robert Harwood (a famous surname in Hobart if you’re a writer) who provided guitar music. Robert was a rock musician for many years and plays a mean blues. He is now teaching social geography to high school students here, but in the fall will teach English as a second language to older students in Saudi Arabia.

Robert Harwood at the Berlin Café (Photo: Peter Harris)

* For more information about bojagi see: http://www.koreanculture.org/06about_korea/symbols/19bojagi.htm

PETER BROOK IN SEOUL

It’s 9:30 p.m. Sunday (June 20) here in Seoul and I’m abandoning the chronological principle. At least a week is unaccounted for, but we’re just home from a fine afternoon and evening—under Nancy’s guidance of course—that’s filling my mind.

At 2:30, in the company of two of the other folks teaching here for the summer, Carrie Paff and Jeremy Sabol, we headed to the Metro and our longest subway journey so far, a combination of 2 lines and about 10 stations. We were to meet Nancy at the LG Arts Center, south of the Hangang, for the closing performance of 11 and 12, directed by the legendary Peter Brook.

With 7 actors (of various colours and ethnicities), some large pieces of fabric, and a few props, Brook told a true story of the escalation of conflict growing out of insignificant differences. The actors created more than a single character each, using their bodies with such skill—shifts in stance or ways of moving that were subtle but breathtaking in their effect. Music by Japanese composer Toshi Tsuchitori drew an emotional thread throughout. I was engrossed by the performances and the powerful moving story. Such luck, to see it!

Brook creates a space on stage that is somehow both indeterminate and specific, where stories unfold. Watching this play, and remembering his Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, I found myself thinking of Winnicott’s transitional space, what I think of as a middle ground in which both the personality and art are formed. Perhaps that space is what we designate by "imagination".

We left the theatre full of excitement and wandered out into an area known as The Wall Street of Seoul. The air was soft, the garden beside the building a patchwork of large hydrangeas. Because it was Sunday there wasn’t a lot of activity on the streets and most of the restaurants were closed. But we found a Nolboo open and enjoyed a fine meal of Bossam—small slices of pork served with various kimchees that you wrap in a lettuce leaf to eat. Of course assorted side dishes came along with it, including soup and a large bowl of cold buckwheat noodles mixed with lettuce and egg. We washed it all down with ginseng rice wine—very good and very good for you…

Carrie, Jeremy, Nancy, Peter, Maureen at the Nolboo --thanks to our server who took the photo.

Bossam dinner -- 3 kimchees beside the port. Photo by Peter Harris

For a review of 11 and 12 that gives a good outline of it see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/feb/11/11-and-12-review

For an interview with Brook and some images of the play see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB-6WuDVEB0

INTERSECTIONS, CONJUNCTIONS, CONFLUENCES, VENN DIAGRAMS, ETC

I’ve been thinking about intersections in the past few days—by which I mean the odd unexpected and interesting conjunctions and overlaps (neither linear nor logical) that occur as one goes along. Take our discovery of Berlin Square here in Seoul. Berlin is the European city we’ve visited most often, Peter for professional reasons, me for the pleasure of it. It’s a city he loves and I find endlessly fascinating, not least for the layers and layers of text that you see in it. I certainly didn’t expect to encounter Berlin here, but it turns out that Seoul and Belin are sister cities.

Berlin Square, Seoul, Korea. June 12, 2010. Photo by Peter Harris

Berlin Square, photo by Peter Harris

The square is the street corner where stands a surprisingly large chunk of the Berlin Wall. If you approach it from the “wrong” direction you could be forgiven for thinking it a piece of detritus left from a construction project. But on the other side you’ll see the graffiti. A painted Berlin bear (but for its blue colour more actually bear-like than the ones I saw in Berlin itself) also stands there, seemingly paused in mid-lope.

The Bear forms an interesting intersection between the two cities. It’s been on Berlin’s coat of arms since about 1920, perhaps because Albrecht 1, who founded the Margraviate of Brandernburg was nicknamed “the bear”, but more likely because in German Baer echoes the first syllable of Berlin. According to a Korean legend the country’s founder, Tan-Gun, was the son of a bear whose wish to be human was granted. In the story I heard she became a beautiful woman, so beautiful the god who transformed her fell in love with her and they had a son. For a couple of other versions and more details check out:

http://www.lifeinkorea.com/information/tangun.cfm

http://www.imjinscout.com/Foundation_Myth.html

I don’t know when the Square was established, but I found the following announcement (dated August 25, 2004) about it:

With the hope of reunification of the Korean Peninsula, the Berlin Square is to feature the Berlin Wall that will be moved from a German city, and German-style street lamps and benches. German trees will be planted along the square. The city of Berlin will financially support the establishment of the square.

The city government hopes that the Berlin Square will improve the relation between the two cities and provide a place for citizens to pray for the reunification of Korea.

http://english.seoul.go.kr/gtk/news/news_view.php?idx=204&cPage=163& (accessed 17 June 2010)

Ironically, perhaps, the square’s function as the starting point for the Pride Parades has generated the most notice of it, so far as google is concerned.

Intersections will be continued ... at intervals ...

A FEW PRIDE PICTURES

Maureen at the Pride Parade

Balloon traffic barrier

The rain and the float we followed

Still raining

Photographs taken by Nancy Kim. I've only sort of figured out how to manage these -- they aren't in the order I intended but I don't know how to make that happen ...

FOOD IN ANOTHER ALPHABET 1

Food has proven to be one of the most overwhelming, confusing, exciting, worrying, and satisfying experiences of our adventures in Seoul. I hardly know where or how to begin writing about it—just as I hardly know what to order in a restaurant or for that matter what restaurant to go into when I’m hungry. I’m without vocabulary and many restaurants lack a vocabulary I can understand. Even the picture displays in front of eating places aren’t much help since I don’t recognize what I see. I could just march in and point at something … if I weren’t allergic to shrimp and anxious about their potential lurking presence.

When Nancy suggested we have dinner together after the Pride Parade we said yes instantly. Korean barbecue (gogi gui) was on our minds. We didn’t have to wander far through the lanes to find a restaurant where we were seated at a wooden table with a hole in its centre and a length of metal pipe dangling over it. A man placed an iron pot of burning charcoal into the hole, and a round convex grill on top. Seaweed soup, a basket of greens (red leaf lettuce and beautiful sesame leaves) and chilies arrived, with small side dishes, kimchee of course, seasoned chives and onions, ssamjang (a red paste) and garlic grilled in sesame oil; then came a plate with pieces of marinated pork.

Nancy started the pork sizzling. A server kept her eye on the process and after several minutes replaced the grill top with a clean one.

Nancy Kim minding the pork.

There's something about meals cooked at the table that makes for pleasurable conversation as you wait (think of fondues, for instance) and we settled into talk over beer and chungha (a delicious rice wine, the Korean equivalent of sake) while the pork cooked.

When the meat was ready we each took a piece and wrapped it in a lettuce or sesame leaf with whatever we wanted of the side dishes and devoured it. Yum! In no time the pork was gone and we were full. But apparently we ate only the appetizer portion of a standard barbecue meal. As we walked out into the twilight Nancy explained that no Korean meal is complete without rice--the next stage would have been a bowl of rice with an entree accompaniment.

The barbecue spread ...

RED TIDE

Sunday, 13 June 2010. If you think World Cup mania reaches a fever-pitch in Toronto, along College Street for instance, or St. Clair West, think again. South Korea played its first game last night, and in the hours leading up to it a red tide swept over the city: thousands of fans wearing red t-shirts of many designs, waving red scarves, hats, banenrs noisemakers, were everywhere. their enthusiasm wildly infectious and lots more fun than a flu virus. We’re on the lookout for our own red t-shirts because we’re definitely fans of the Korean team now.

We were downtown with our friend Nancy after the Pride Parade as red washed through the streets and alleys. Nancy led us to a Korean barbecue restaurant, commenting that the place would empty out quickly as people left to claim space in front of one or another of the giant outdoor television screens mounted all over downtown. And she was right—in about half an hour we were the sole (!) diners still there while the staff settled at a table near us and ate their own meal. But I’m not blogging about food here—though it was fabulous—but mania.

When we strolled out of the restaurant alley onto Cheonggyecheon it was twilight and we had to thread our way around sidewalk tables crammed close together and sheltered (somewhat) under awnings, with red shirts all facing towards televisions. Many people sported illuminated red devil’s horns—“Red Devils” was the original name of the cheering squad for the South Korean Soccer Team. Now they are known simply as “The Reds”, in deference to Christian discomfort at alignment with a devil of any colour.

With other walkers we headed towards City Hall and Seoul Square, the most desired spot to be. The crowd thickened till we were worming our way through a surging mass of people (astonishingly, no pushing or cursing), as we snaked behind bleachers completely jammed. Occasionally over heads we could glimpse a football field on a huge screen. Rain misted down, noise crescendoed, more and more people crammed onto the narrow walk, lights made misty halos, it was harder and harder to keep moving. When we made it to a street crossing opposite a subway station, we headed downstairs for the train. But that didn’t free us from the red tide. Hawkers of all sorts were lined up on the stairs and along the sides of the passageway, their noise and excitement almost as extreme as at the Square. We were offered t-shirts, noisemakers, banners, souvenirs, Cass Beer (“that’s so illegal” Nancy said), and lord knows what else, on our way to the ticket machines.

Back at the residence we tried to pick up the game on the snowy tv—no luck. Then I noticed it was being projected onto an enormous building many blocks away. The image was partly masked by a leafy tree next door and some buildings, but Peter used the binoculars to watch for a few minutes and saw the beautiful Korean goal scored by Park. (Now he wants a t-shirt with Park's number 7 on it.) A great roar of glee went up all over the neighbourhood at that moment.

It’s made me happy this morning to find Korea won the game—the weight of gloom from Seoul Square, had they not, might have been enough to alter the earth’s axis a degree or two.

PRIDE--SEOUL

On Saturday afternoon I joined our friend Nancy Kim in downtown Seoul, to walk in the Gay Pride Parade. The rain was pelting down, but the air was warm. I carried my new green umbrella and wore my Tassie Parks water-resistant jacket. The crowd at the mustering point—Berlin Square (where there’s a large chunk of the Berlin Wall—who knew?)—was wet and boisterous. Singer-dancers performed on a flatbed to loud music, only heads and arms visible above the crowd milling about in raincoats or under umbrellas.

The Seoul Parade is 11 years old this year. It’s a small event compared to Toronto, its route a short loop around several blocks and back to the starting point, The street it travels is normally closed to traffic on weekends but the cross-streets are not and so the parade slowed and then stopped for the lights at a wide and busy intersection—when we finally surged ahead we crossed through an alley created by young women holding a great string of balloons on one side and a stretch of rope on the other. Initially Nancy and I followed a float with two fabulous wigged and lamee-bustiered dancers on it—then we dropped back to walk behind the Amnesty International banner, where “Love is a human right!” was being chanted. Towards the end of the walk a small fleet of “Dykes on Bikes”—mostly Caucasian—came up behind us, addiing a bit of lively ruckus.

The Parade doesn’t command a huge turnout of watchers—though numbers have been increasing year by year. Yesterday the crowd was thin, likely because of weather. Most people were there to walk rather than watch, and I wasn’t the only Caucasian by a long shot. In spite of 11 years of parades, the situation for gays and lesbians here is complicated. For instance, Nancy told me all the people she knew who were walking in the parade were straight; her gay friends can’t yet risk being seen publicly. Families feel it’s a terrible disgrace if someone comes out. There is a gay nightlife section here, however. And after the parade city officials or celebrities like Hong Seok Chun make speeches about diversity and rights—in Korean, so we didn’t stay to listen.

NAMSANGOL TRADITIONAL VILLAGE

Yesterday (that was Friday here) we rode the subway downtown and caught the Seoul City Tour Bus (www.seoulcitybus.com) intending to ride it round its 2-hour loop. But Peter is a little large for the seats and so we broke the tour at Namsangol Traditional Village, nestled at the foot of Mount Namsan more or less cheek-by-jowl with Seoul’s financial district.

The site of the village was a popular resort outside the city until early in the twentieth century. Now it’s a combination of park/garden and historical site, with a compound of five traditional style Korean houses dating from the mid-nineteenth-early twentieth century surrounded by park. Some of the houses are partly reconstructed from original materials, some are reproductions. They housed the well-to-do, including the family of a Queen. All of them are very beautiful structures, their interiors tranquil and calming.

Outside the compound two men doing traditional crafts were working, seated cross-legged on thatch-covered platforms, weaving baskets and making rope sandals. The sandal-maker was dexterous and concentrated—his hands seeming to know what to do on their own. The basket-maker sprinkled grains of some sort for the sparrows (Eurasion tree sparrows, very similar to our house sparrows) who were hopping about alertly. Samples of the work —a basket for chickens to lay/nest in; eggs bound in a long line; baskets that functioned like dust-pans or grain scoops; lots of sandals, including assorted tiny ones made from coloured plastic rope—hung across the front of the platforms.

The grounds were full of daycare children, groups wearing identically coloured t-shirts of yellow, bright pink, pale blue, red. The children were enchanting, and mostly so young they were engrossed in their own doings—hunkered down patting the sand for instance—and not paying much attention to what they were seeing or being told. In the compound we watched older ones playing with traditional toys—whipping tops, rolling hoops, and jumping up and down on something like a low teeter-totter (not anything I’d want to try!).There was also a large group of green-vested volunteers pushing people in wheelchairs through the gardens, all enjoying the place and settling to picnic lunches.

We left the village and hopped back on the Tour Bus to the end of its route, more or less where we began, then walked along a short stretch of the reclaimed Cheonggyecheon Stream that runs through downtown—past dummies dressed in military uniforms, part of a display labeled Peace for Korea 2010. Then “home”.

I haven’t figured out how to add pictures to this blog yet, but Peter has assembled a trove of them into an album at photobucket. If you want to see them go to:

http://s993.photobucket.com/albums/af58/pharrisutoronto/seoul1/?albumview=slideshow

FINDING OUR WAY

It’s a rainy Saturday morning here in Seoul. We have the windows open instead of the air-conditioner on, and the sounds of rain, birds chirping (sparrows?), tires on the wet street, and from further off the low mutter of trains wash into the room, all of them soothing. Such a pleasure to have no place one has to go! We even laid in breakfast supplies last night.

Experiences pile up, confusions clear, then more arise. Consider the subway: we figured out how simple it is to buy subway tickets from the machines and get our deposits for them refunded at the end of the trip, but why tickets sometimes don’t open the gates when we try to pass through remains a mystery and occasions a thump on the legs as the gates swing shut against you. The trains run very smoothly, at least for the distances we’ve ridden them. The cars are spacious and air-conditioned so we step into them with pleasure even when no seats are empty. Stops are announced in Korean, then in English, as well as flashed in both languages on liquid crystal screens hanging from the ceiling, so it’s hard to get lost.

Well, hard so long as you can remember the name of the station you’re heading for—we did get off at a wrong one once. Getting the hang of names is a real challenge. They are multi-syllabic, don’t come with pronunciation keys, and our ears have no context for them. Having mixed up names of stations beginning with “j” and “n” (don’t ask how…) on one trip it was a delight when a woman attendant who was helping us work a machine that didn’t have an “English” label to push (it did have a US flag but we didn’t see it) started looking for City Hall stop under “S”.

Have I mentioned there are few street names on signs, and fewer still in English? We make our way on foot through lanes and narrow streets that run off at all sorts of angles, turn here and there, slant up and down, threaten to become cul-de-sacs then open out again. So far we’ve managed to get where we’re going, thanks to Peter’s ability to navigate by rooflines, light, and who knows what landmarks, as well as to read maps.

And we’re slowly managing to find the things we need—my coup being the plug adaptor (eodaepteo according to Lonely Planet) for my computer. I bought it two days ago from a small dingy shop crammed with electrical cords, boxes, plates, etc. No English spoken, except for numbers to do with voltage—but I’d remembered to take the cable with me to show its plug. Oh, and the dishcloth in the basement of the large convenience store at the corner was a good find, too. So was my new umbrella.

IN SITU

Here we are, in room 309, International House 1 of Sookmyung Women’s University—a room that is actually two rooms, far more generous a space than we expected. We have a bedroom (with a desk as well as a king-size bed) and an everything-else-room that includes another desk. The television is snowy and the phone doesn’t work, but the air conditioner does. The weather generally is hot and humid, the air hazy with pollution. I realize we’re almost exactly halfway round the world from Toronto. We’ve traded night for day—it’s 3:30 a.m. there when it’s 4:30 p.m. here. Perhaps this explains the oddly dreamlike quality of our lives.

As it happens we could be cooking meals—there’s a 2-gas burner, a toaster oven, and a little fridge. But we haven’t worked out how to light the gas, and there are no pots or dishes in the cupboard except the two plates and two glasses we bought when we discovered the Lotte Market at Seoul Station—and besides there are at least a hundred and one restaurants/cafes/coffee houses/take-out places within a few minutes walk. Even if we can’t figure out what most of them are cooking (no English menus or signs) we are finding good cheap food.

The street our building is on is narrow (by Toronto standards); it rises and falls along a hill, winding here and there. It feels more like a lane than a street, except for the astonishing number of cars and trucks that manage to drive along it, skirting the fairly steady stream of pedestrian traffic. Looking out our third floor windows I’m reminded a little of Siena by the street’s incline and the way the houses/buildings sit right at the pavement’s edge.

It’s perhaps a five-minute walk to the larger commercial street that leads past the entrance to Sookmyung Women’s University. Along that walk we can buy fruit, groceries, baked desserts, housewares, and clothing, or sit down with a coffee and sweet, order a meal, get clothing dry cleaned, take a hot yoga class—and who knows what else in the buildings and shops with only Korean characters on them. On the larger street we find drugstores, cosmetic shops, lots more clothing stores, tons of eating places, an optician, a phone shop (I think that’s what it is) and a stationery store jammed with file folders, portfolios, notebooks (Sponge Bob covers anyone?), letter paper, wrapping paper, rolls of ribbon, paper clips, hair clips, and racks of socks. From mid-afternoon the street is jammed with people, mostly students, and their numbers increase steadily at least until 8:30—which is about the latest we’ve managed to stay out so far. We’re waking about 6:30 a.m.—the sun already high in the sky, but the street then quiet, nearly empty. Except, one morning, for the corps of women wearing broad sun visors and wielding brooms and dustpans clearing rubbish into little carts.

ARRIVING

Our flights to Korea are over. The most stressful part was the lineup to clear security in Toronto, the longest I’ve ever seen it. “Just a standard Monday morning” the woman at security told me. The first leg, to Vancouver, went by in a flash, as I sank into the manuscript of a fabulous novel by my friend Kelley Aitken—hope it finds a publisher soon so you others can read it. We were off the plane for about an hour and a half in Vancouver, then back on for the long leg—which was long, but astonishingly smooth, T less than an hour of bumpy ride (that I noticed between dozes and reading) and the bumps were small. My, they do feed you a lot on long flights—two hot meals, plus a snack and then a “noodle service”—which we skipped.

It seemed as if the sun was shining for the whole trip. As we descended I put up the blind to glimpse a landscape of what looked like treed hills with cleared areas between them. Small buildings were scattered about. A couple of hills looked as if they might be terraced. I saw a quarry or gravel pit and a couple of other stretches of land that had been “worked” in a major way, but couldn’t tell by what. The soil was sandy-coloured. We flew low over the sea—the Yellow Sea I think—as we neared the airport at Incheon. I love the look of small islands seen from the air, floating like magical kingdoms. (Is this a hangover from South Pacific?) A haze hung over them. The shores we flew over looked like mudflats, perhaps it was low tide.

Once off the plane we caught an automated shuttle to the passenger terminal and immigration. The lineup for foreign passport holders was very short and we were through quickly, then had the usual long walk to baggage, followed by the usual wait as suitcase after suitcase trundled past. Ours turned up eventually, quite close together, and we exited the sliding doors, wondering how we’d be found. A ring of Korean men holding placards with names confronted us, and a sign saying Peter Harris answered our question. The man bowed and took command of the luggage cart, wheeled it over to some benches, and said he had two more arrivals to wait for. They turned up within the hour—a student from Pittsburg here for some summer law courses, and a professor from Cornell College in Ohio who will be teaching something to do with gender studies.

On the taxi ride into Seoul—over an hour long—I was struck by several things: a big sloppy stick nest on a double lamp standard; large square green areas near the sea that I finally realized must be rice growing; climbing red roses draping white metal fences at the toll plaza; many good-sized trees with a framework of supports around them—new plantings perhaps; stretches of bare sandy or pale red soil; some conifers, perhaps pines, a gray-green in colour; the Han River coming into view, its far bank a long stretch of high rise buildings, many bridges leading over it; a complex of apartments with DREAM RIVERVIEW in a column along the edge of one building; another complex of handsome apartments called “Brown Stone”.

In the city our driver pulled over to set his gps and we plunged into traffic, and eventually through gates at the University. Jake, the student, was dropped at an enormous building, its front stairs framed by bronze statues of women wearing veil-like robes. Then we entered a warren of narrow hilly streets, where it seemed impossible a car could get through, the driver checking the locator again and again … and finally we were dropped at International House 1, where we were taken to room 309, our home for the coming month.