Tag Archives: South Korea

Yes, Let’s

March 18, 2020 By in Daily WP, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

This is week four of virtual school. At lunchtime I leave the apartment. I walk or bike to a nearby café where I order an iced latte and teach my afternoon classes. Today I biked to Shinsegae, ordered my latte and looked around. I started class. Afternoon shoppers got in line for a coffee, or bought pastries, or sat at a table for a late lunch. The space hummed.

For the third day, South Korea reported fewer than one hundred new cases to the WHO. Maybe the sense of urgency lifted? After class I scrolled through the Korea Herald, wondering if there was an announcement to get out, go somewhere, meet a friend, support the local economy. I miss a lot in Korea, for lack of language. And a few days ago I shut off emergency notifications to my phone – the texts announcing COVID19 cases in my area – because I was tired of the small fear that followed reading the names of my neighborhoods.

But maybe I’d missed the go-free-be-well text.

The Korea Herald headlines worried about travelers returning with coronavirus infections. (Our school, and others, asked faculty and students to return this week to begin the government mandated fourteen-day period of self-protection and health monitoring, limiting contact with others to ensure coronavirus is not unknowingly spread in the community. The idea is we’ll all be ready to be on campus after spring break). The Korea Herald also reported another delay to the start of the Korean school year, now pushed to April sixth. And another headline mentioned coronavirus clusters in Seoul: a call center, a church.

So nothing about tossing caution.

I heard five people cough during the four hours I taught and wrote at Shinsegae. I washed my hands four times. I wondered if there would be a Jukejeon cluster next.

At a table near me, three women in their forties and fifties were talking. “Do you speak English?” I asked. One nodded. She wore thick rimmed cat eye glasses. I asked why so many people were out. I explained that last week when I came here in the afternoon, there was hardly anyone out. “Did the government say it’s okay to be out again?” The cat eye woman laughed. She said, “No! It is not recommended to be out.” For a moment the four of us looked at each other, all of us out. “Then why are you out?” I asked.

I know why I’m out. I’m out because I cannot stay in my apartment day and night. I’m out because I want to go for a walk or bike ride midday and get an iced latte. I’m out so I can teach while not glancing at the pile of dishes in my kitchen sink.

But maybe I should stay home.

Last week I took the subway into the city for an appointment and the carriages were Sunday morning light during rush hour. People work from home if they can, and students too.

Should I also stay home? I don’t know.

I like to get out of the apartment.  

I’ve appreciated the lack of panic in South Korea. The response to COVID19 is measured. Informed, thorough and transparent: and because of this, I haven’t felt panic. Caution, yes, but not animal panic. For a couple of days people stocked up on milk. And then a few days later, it was ramen. But we shop as we need. Walkers and runners and bikers are on the river path. By late afternoon most cafes are full of friends catching up, or students and professionals telecommuting.  

But today was the first day I registered a greater volume of people out, moving through public spaces, touching counters and buttons and rails and doors.

To my knowledge, public health officials here have not imposed a social distancing rule as suggested in the States, to keep individuals a certain physical distance apart. So when I stand in line at the grocery store or bakery, the next customer is right behind me, breathing. But I think the worry is somewhat removed by the assurance that we know if a case is near us, or if we had contact and need to quarantine, because South Korea is vigilantly tracking infections, warning citizens and residents, and ensuring proper testing and medical care.

Today at Shinsegae when I asked the women why they were out, we all paused. Then the cat eye woman laughed again. She said, “We are bored of being home!”

Which makes me wonder how long we can go along with the recommendation to social distance, self-quarantine, work from home, attend virtual school. Because when things begin to look good, when it feels like we can all head out for the day, that is when we need to practice social distancing for another week or two. Or three.

I wonder what happens in South Korea as the coronavirus circles the world. Does East Asia wait for the curves to flatten on other continents before we start commuting into work again?

I did not worry until cases in Iran and Italy spiked. Watching Italy, I sense the care we’ve had in South Korea. Watching Italy, I fear for the States. In January and February I read about China, Japan, Cambodia, the cruise ships, and now I read about Iran, Italy, France, the States.

When I called home, my mom gave the rundown of closed schools, my brother’s canceled AP Government trip to D.C., the likely upgrade of internet service to accommodate work and school from home, and my grandma’s report that people really are stocking up on toilet paper. When I talked with Kate, she sent me photos of her trip to the grocery store, the produce and meat gone. My sister joked that homeschooling makes social distancing a little easier.

People talk about living history. Living through history. Yes, let’s.

But after, we live too. We should consider what that might look like.

“Tracking the Coronavirus: How Crowded Asian Cities Tackled an Epidemic” from the New York Times
The Korea Herald
“The Coronavirus Called America’s Bluff” from The Atlantic

I Touch My Face A Lot

February 27, 2020 By in Daily WP Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

Mid-January, I connected in Hong Kong on my flight back from the States. Within days there was conversation about coronavirus and within a week our school asked any faculty member or student who traveled to mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau over Lunar New Year to remain off campus for two weeks. When I woke up in the morning I checked the WHO situation report before getting out of bed. Korea held steady at twenty-some cases. I read about quarantined cities in China, and the cruise ships docked and waiting. (For so many reasons I will never take a cruise). Teaching friends who left China for their Lunar holiday resettled in other parts of the world while Covid19 spun through the country’s population. Korea asked universities to push back the start of the spring term, to delay the expected influx of Chinese students.

(Read more about this elsewhere, but East Asia is a tightly connected region – Korea and China have important diplomatic, economic and educational ties. A swift travel ban on all Chinese could have caused long term harm to their relationship).

Each morning I’d lay in bed and read another expert counter the effectiveness of closing borders or scroll through the search results of “south korea coronavirus” before returning to a page listing symptoms of Covid19, reassuring myself that for most people (for eighty percent of those infected!) the illness is akin to its more popular cousin, the common cold. There was comfort knowing that only a minority of those infected experienced serious, hospital-visit-worthy symptoms, and that around two percent of infected people die.

Covid19 favors killing elderly men. I am not an elderly man. But I am the favored age of the 1918 flu, the pandemic that killed my great-great grandmother and her infant son. So I am glad it is not 1918. For weeks I woke up like this, with these thoughts.  

My nose was a little runny. Grant had a cough. At school a student would sneeze or cough and another student might shift in their seat. I wore a mask on the subway. The masks – and we should all know this – are best worn by ill people to catch sprays of fluid. Covid19 lives in snot and spit and can survive on surfaces: so wash your hands. And quit touching your face.

I touch my face a lot. I just touched my face. I may as well lick all the surfaces near me.

The comparisons to SARS and MERS did not help me. SARS and MERS are more deadly coronaviruses, but less contagious. Covid19 spreads through a population quickly, perhaps because its symptoms may be mild and dismissible by eighty percent of us. Or perhaps because the incubation period is two weeks and we may be contagious before exhibiting any symptoms. So I only appreciated the two percent mortality rate of Covid19 for a few days. Then I looked at the tens of thousands infected, the hundreds (now thousands) dying. But how many people are exposed who do not get sick? Millions in a city do not catch the virus, or do not get terribly ill, but we fixate on the hospital lines and empty streets.

Please don’t die, I whispered to my husband one night in bed. Okay, he whispered back.

Monday night I could not sleep. I lay awake at midnight, at one. I sat up and cried. On Monday our school prepared to launch virtual school. All day on campus we learned online platforms to facilitate teaching classes linked by screens. I whispered “fuck.” Not because I am uncertain about manipulating the tech, but because I worried what the shift means to classroom dynamic: what is the dynamic when you are together apart? I am a month into covering a maternity leave and I still mix up a few students’ names. I wondered how to ensure the academic integrity of an in-class essay. How do I teach while parenting my own kids who are home too? So I also whispered “please” because I need help to accept more change.

Teachers and their families started booking flights out of Korea. Justin messaged me about a couple more departing families. I’m fine staying, he texted. Some people worry about the stress Covid19 places on Korea’s medical infrastructure – if you have a small child or baby who needs care, will you be able to see a physician easily or safely? Some people worry about home country borders closing or quarantine times. I understand the decision to leave Korea.

But I am also fine staying. When the SARS and MERS comparisons were no longer reassuring to me I thought about how viruses just do this to a population. Covid19 will carry on and we might get ill. The unlikely could happen too. On Monday I was more overwhelmed by the change to our daily routine.

Our school is on a synchronous schedule which means I see my students during our usual class time. So I am trying to do what we’d do in class. It takes more time to share content or generate discussion because we aren’t physically present to read cues. Today I let a few long pauses sit until a student filled the gap. This will work!

But while I am teaching and Justin is EdTeching (and teaching) we have two kids who are doing school. Claire is on the same synchronous schedule as me and has set up a camp (lair) under her loft bed. Twinkle lights, lots of pillows and blankets, and one hot laptop. During a lull in my work I peak into her room. On the first day the novelty of being allowed unfettered screen time for eight hours was a marvel and she balanced her device on the kitchen counter while cutting an apple at lunchtime, laughed at something her friend chatted. She is occupied by her teachers and classmates, all of them meeting virtually each block.

But Grant is free range. Or neglected. We have to figure out how to do Grant’s school, I said to Justin this morning. Yes, he said. Next week, I said.

In the morning Grant shows me his Google Classroom posts. The kid has quite the schedule, all of the tasks connected to a pdf or video or doc. Yesterday I thought a change of venue might be nice so he and I headed to a favorite café after lunch. While I taught two classes he sat glassy eyed, hunched over his device at a nearby table. I checked in with him a couple of times. Did you watch the video about student-led conferences? Can you listen to the read aloud? How about writing? You can do math when Papa gets home. And then I gave up because I had grading and planning to do and I am not a person who thrives on doing more than one thing at a time. I don’t feel efficient or accomplished or #hustle when I whack-a-mole life.

This morning I did not check the WHO situation report. Last night at eleven an emergency alert interrupted my sleep to tell me via Google Translate that a man with coronavirus had visited our neighborhood. I touch my face a lot. More families are flying out. Justin texted me: I’m fine staying. We are fine staying.

This afternoon I biked to run class from Shinsegae. I asked my advisory students to give high/ lows of the week. More sleep is a high. No morning or afternoon commute is a high. Autonomy is a high. My latte from Baekmidang is a high. Where are you Ms. Marslender? one of them asked. Most students are sequestered in their bedrooms. I walk ten steps a day, a sophomore told us. I tell the group to try yoga, if you can’t leave the apartment.

I started yoga at the end of December. I wake up and move my body through an hour of held poses. My feet are stronger. My left side is finding its balance again. When coronavirus headlines began showing at the top of a scroll, I told my kids to wash hands, drink water, sleep. The idea that if we keep our body well, our body has a better chance at resisting Covid19. I quit thinking about this during yoga. I am quiet. I breathe. I go through the poses and wonder if I could live in our apartment for a month. I make a note to buy more soap and pick up dishwasher tabs. Outside today the air is clean, the sky unseasonably colored.

WHO COVID-2019 Situation Reports
Reuters Graphics: “The Korean Clusters”
“Why the Coronavirus Seems to Hit Men Harder Than Women”
Baekmidang coffee is a definite high

Busan

October 29, 2019 By in Thirty-Nine Stories Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

A couple of weekends ago we took the train to Busan. Our friend Sarah organized a get together with a group of Kuwait friends. We met at the beach. The kids spent the afternoon in the sand and water. We talked and laughed. The next morning I walked to a Starbucks and sat looking out at the sea. I miss the Gulf in Kuwait. I wrote about that. I wrote about how simple it was to sit next to friends I haven’t sat next to in years. That weekend was essential: I needed to know there is a place in Korea that gives me the Gulf, and I learned again how perfect it is that we remind one another who we were, or who we are, with stories, sharing memory.

Back in Seoul, I drafted a thousand words quickly. I let the draft sit a week. Today I took thirty minutes to halve the piece. The idea is to work swiftly. Develop editing intuition.

In my notebook I am turning over the idea of friends gathering after years. I will likely pull together an essay about that afternoon gathering on the beach because there was a moment when Angela remembered us and I saw how she saw me, and I thought that is such a gift, to remember one another to each other. (I wonder who I am, if composed from the memories of others). I may also work that beach afternoon into a fiction piece.

Below, the revised excerpt (447 words) and the quick draft (1006 words). Thirty of thirty-nine.

We took the train to Busan for the beach. I told my husband that we should spend a Saturday in Busan, just to find a place away from Seoul, a place easy enough to get to by train. Thirty minutes into our trip south, the countryside and smaller cities passing by, Justin said, Good idea, dear. And a few hours later, walking down a side street in Haeundae, I decided Busan is our second place in Korea: we turned a corner and there was the beach, a long run of sand, the sea.

The week before, I laid on my osteopath’s table while he manipulated, coaxed my body into alignment. I began seeing Dr. Joseph after a running injury. My left side was weak, arch to hip. Progress is incremental but my body is more balanced now, stronger, and Dr. Joseph tells me I need to run again. It is like I must teach my body it is healed. At that appointment, Dr. Joseph asked, What is your emotion? 

I miss the Gulf in Kuwait. I miss our Friday walks along the corniche, the kids biking ahead, pausing at playgrounds to climb, jump. I miss the wind and choppy water, the heat shimmer on stone, the occasional and welcome gray day. I miss the palms and grassy spaces families settled, spreading blankets and unpacking carafes of tea, the kids running out from these hubs, and back again for a juice or ice cream money or an afternoon nap. The pace of our walks along the Gulf was only unhurried. 

Our bodies are so much water. Our bodies respond to the presence of water. Dr. Joseph pressed one palm at my back, the other on my hamstring, and held. He said, You should go to the sea. The water calms. I know this from the Gulf, its undulation a meditation. I am finite. I am finite but God is more than sea and sky. 

I did not grow up near an ocean. I grew up with lakes of the midwest. Quiet, mirror surfaces at dawn. Lake Michigan was the wildest water I knew and at oceans after I recognized the belly pull to be near a body I could not contain. I do not need to surf or sail, but only be near the sea. And so at Busan. There was a ledge, a small leap down to the sand. I sat. I rolled my neck, turned my face to the sun. Claire crouched next to me. Mom, she said, We have to come back here. Grant was already at the tide line. Claire jumped to the sand and I watched her return to the sea too.

First Draft

We took the train to Busan for the beach, and to visit with friends. To visit with friends at the beach. I wanted both when I told my husband we should go spend a Saturday in Busan, just to find a place away from Seoul, a place easy enough to get to by train since we do not own a car. We like not owning a car, but for two years we’ve been hemmed in by the subway system. Thirty minutes into our trip south, the countryside and smaller cities passing by, Justin and I decided we should do this again. And a few hours later, checked into our hotel and walking down a side street in Haeundae I thought how this could be our second place in Korea. We could belong here too. We could take the train on a Friday afternoon, sleep, wake up and walk to the beach. 

I miss the Gulf. I miss our lazy Friday or Saturday walks along the corniche, the kids biking or rollerblading ahead, pausing at the playgrounds to climb and jump. I miss the wind and choppy water, the heat shimmer on stone, the occasional and welcome gray day. I miss the palms and wide grassy spaces families would settle, spreading blankets and unpacking carafes of tea. I miss the kids running out from these hubs, and back again for a juice or ice cream money or an afternoon nap. The pace of our walks along the Gulf was only slow. 

Busan is more relaxed than Seoul. I heard this from Koreans and expats. We turned off the side street and there was the beach, a long run of sand, the sea. The water relaxes Busan. My osteopath told me to go to the sea, to be near the water. Our bodies are so much water. Our bodies respond to the presence of water. The water calms us. I know this from the Gulf, its undulation a meditation. I am finite, and this is a reassuring truth. I am finite but God is more than the sea and sky. 

I did not grow up near an ocean. I grew up with lakes of the midwest, swimming the width of one at summer camp. Lake Michigan was the wildest water I knew and at oceans after I recognized the belly pull to be near a body I could not contain. I do not need to surf or sail, but only sit, be near the sea. And so at Busan. There was a ledge, a leap down to the sand, and I sat. Claire crouched next to me. Mom, she said, We have to come back here. 

Our friends arrived. The day was warm, bright. All week was cold, they said, We had rain. We sat in a line on the ledge, talking about the years in Korea, or remembering Kuwait, naming old friends and where they were now. Our kids and the Nelson kids reacquainted themselves and chased after one another, built a sand city below the tide line, looked for crabs, collected shells and thought they found a shark egg. We filled in the years. Iain and Angela’s child was a toddler when I last saw him. There were two children whom I hadn’t met before, belonging to a couple who moved to Brazil after Kuwait, and then to their hometown in Canada. Why did you leave? I asked Scotty. He laughed. Years of dinner conversations about when we should move abroad again, he said. So they sold their house. We’re international now, he said. Sarah set out snacks on the ledge, and Justin went to the GS25 for beers, and the sky moved to early evening.

For a time I sat next to Angela. I remember going to your apartment, she said, And setting Jameson down in a little chair. Grant was there. I remember your baking, she said, and asked if I still bake. In Kuwait I baked bread, cakes, bars, cookies and carried plates to neighbors. I once spent eight hours baking a single cake, whisking salted caramel and remaking the ganache, whipping buttercream that didn’t break. But I don’t bake often now. It was odd to sit on a beach in Busan and remember that in Kuwait I sifted powdered sugar and fine almond meal half a dozen times before folding the ingredients into macaron batter. Remember me back to me. When I think of Angela there are a handful of vignettes I keep, but one I go to first, of an evening I stopped at her apartment because I thought of her, due soon. We stood in the arc of the open door. She kept a hand at her belly. I’m ready, she said, or, I am so ready. Her son was born the next day, and at his doljanchi a year later, I watched him lean forward, reaching for his future. 

Later at dinner, Christy looked at our four children drawing together. Look at them, she said, and I did. Two years is not so long. We ordered hommos, tabbouleh, fattoush, kebab, shawarma, curries, Lebanese bread and naan. We ordered what we missed from Kuwait.

Before we parted that night, Christy said, You know what Elsie remembered about Claire? She remembered a kitty cat game they played. Claire would be the mama cat with all her kittens. I looked at Elsie, two years taller with more of her father’s expression on her face now. The kitty game, I said, I remember the kitty game! When would I have remembered the kitty game if Elsie had not remembered it first? How good to be with people who give us our stories. We said goodbye, promised to meet again, and soon. The next day we met the Love family at the same beach and I thought again how long and short the time apart is, how easily we can slip into conversation again, how simple our kids are about reestablishing a dynamic. We spot the easy change. We recognize the core of friendship.

Special Event Story

December 14, 2018 By in Daily WP Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Here is my third piece of thirty-nine. Yee-haw! (Already working out how to modify this project because I am not made of as many words as I first thought. More on that soon). This essay ends on an idea I want to explore more. 

A couple of months ago I was at a Special Event in the basement marketplace of a department store. Special Events – usually street food stalls or specialty foods and wines – are a great way to sample what I will likely never cook. I have two favorite snacks I look for when I see a Special Event sign. One is hoduk, a griddle-fried flat, round pastry filled with seeds, nuts and brown sugar. The other is a Korean pancake sandwich: shrimp or bacon stacked between two small cabbage pancakes, sloppy drizzles of brown and white sauces and a scoop of papery fish flakes on top. So good. And a couple of months ago I was just returned to Korea after summer in Wisconsin (nary a papery fish flake to be found), when I saw the sandwich vendor. Two, please, I said. When the server picked up a single sandwich container I thought he misunderstood. I gestured to the sandwiches again and said, Two, please. Then I pointed at the bigger box next to the small containers. At this, the server made a small x, crossing one wrist over the other, and said, That is for three.

Ah, I said, Two will also fit. I smiled, but he looked distressed, emphasized the x. I said, I don’t think it’s impossible. Two will fit!

An aside: Not long after this Special Event exchange I attended a workshop about understanding Korean culture and the speaker addressed social microaggression. As in, don’t engage. I thought of my cheerful bullying, a thin cover for irritation at the very idea boxing two sandwiches in a box that fit three is impossible.

To my small credit, I didn’t say to the server, This will blow your mind, to break the three sandwich rule, but go ahead! Try it! Two fit! But I also didn’t relent. I could see he was upset. Boxing two sandwiches together in a box made for three sandwiches was not allowed. I briefly thought of ordering a third sandwich, but I didn’t want a third sandwich. And I preferred later discarding one paper box to two plastic tubs. In the middle of this moment, and now, I did not like who I was. I smiled and gestured how two sandwiches would fit perfectly. Perfectly! The server sweated. We were at a moment of decision. He reached for the box, put two sandwiches side by side, doused both with sauce, added papery fish flakes. He did not look at peace with his decision. He remained conflicted. I bowed my head in thanks, walked away thinking this is how neighbors end up slaughtering each other. This is how the Nazis kept on for so many years. Because of rule followers.

Yet. Following rules has also worked dramatically in Korea’s favor as the country catapulted its economy and grew its infrastructure in only three decades. Men, women and children were told what to do for the collective, and they did it, and though Korea is now reconsidering the (recently) traditional long workday, following rules by way of memorizing academic texts at school, snapping to attention in the military, forging strong business relationships, developing innovative medical techniques, and relentlessly pursuing more and better made a way for Korea to climb from the devastation of its war.*

Every place I have lived, I bump against my most awful bits. Unexpected rage, judgement, hate. In Colombia I shook a fist a truckful of men who hissed and hollered as I ran up Cañas Gordas. In Kuwait I brake checked an SUV flashing its lights to pass. When I moved here I wanted the grace of cultural acceptance. But I moved here. I am not yet as gracefully accepting as I might be one day. During our first year in Korea I cried to my husband because we keep doing this on purpose – we choose to live and travel in places we don’t know until we’re there, figuring out how to turn the heat on during the first weeks of winter, or looking for an ingredient we miss. To mitigate the shock of a new home, I learned what I could about Korea in the months before our move.

I called my friend Kate. I called Kate because we grew into adulthood together, hundreds and later thousands of miles apart, but checking in via long emails or wandering phone calls. I also called Kate because she studied Asian languages in college, married a Korean American, and had actually traveled to Seoul a few years earlier. When Kate visited Kuwait during my last spring in the desert, we talked about two different places. I told her about the Middle East I grew to love. She told me about the Korea I now hope to love.

One night we went to the old souk in Kuwait. We ordered two platters of rice and fish, and lemon mint drinks. On the drive back it rained and the traffic slowed. Over the few days she visited we dropped and picked up conversations easily. Looking ahead at the red taillights, the rain falling, I said how fortunate I felt that Korea is so safe, you know, with the kids. Our Kuwait neighborhood was increasingly unsafe and I didn’t feel comfortable walking alone with Claire and Grant anymore, so moving to South Korea where the crime rate is low answered a want I didn’t know I had. Well, it’s a shame culture, Kate said, No one wants to bring shame on their family.

I still think of that revelation. We all know shame. And shame serves a purpose. But I hadn’t thought how shame might serve to bring the behavior of a whole population in line. The upside of shame culture is good norms are enforced. When I run in the morning, it’s dark and I am not afraid of being attacked under a bridge or being killed by a stray bullet. In the afternoon when my kids want to spend their allowance at Dream Depot, I send them on their way without worry and they come back to me with art supplies and gummy candies. The downside of shame culture is the limitation of expression. Coupled with adherence to hierarchy, everyone stays in their place. My understanding is small, mostly circling education, but I ask questions to understand better. In Kuwait one of our neighbors was a Korean woman who occasionally shared fresh kimchi with me, and enrolled her son, my son’s friend, in a  Saturday Korean class. Only after nearly a year in Korea, when Joohee and her son visited Seoul and we met for brunch, did I ask about her education experience. It was awful, Joohee said. Grades were posted so everyone could see who was doing poorly.

That pressure first learned in school years carries into the military and business world. Young men serve two years in the military and abuse, though addressed and lessened today, remains a concern. After a workday, there is a tradition of bosses taking employees out to dinner, and subordinates drinking to keep up, drinking to stupor and vomit. Gender inequality and harassment are issues as well. All of this, and a pressure to excel despite (or more likely, because of) the strictures of shame.

When we were living in Kuwait, my brother and his family was living in Seoul. You should move here, they said to us. You’d like it. I very much doubted I’d like it. Liking sushi (Japanese) and Pocky sticks (also Japanese) is just not enough of a reason to move to Korea. I had in my head only a couple of scraps of information about Korea, lifted from living in the international dorm during college, reading, and knowing North Korea exists with a desire to obliterate South Korea (it’s more complicated than that). And as my philosophy of education developed, I didn’t believe my approach to teaching or curriculum would match what I perceived about East Asian education.

Yet here I am. And where I am I learn. During our school orientation I marveled at the ingenuity and resilience of the Korean people. I wowed the satellite photo of the many dolmens dotting the country. I wiped tears at the story of men and women giving their gold and jewelry to stabilize the economy in 1998. I wanted to know this country, fastrack my love for the new place, people and culture. One morning I was running along the river path. Dragonflies! Tall grasses! Water over rocks! And many people weaving. As a runner, I made myself as a deer, leaping and bounding to the side as men and women listed from one side to the other. I thought of the Japanese building crooked little wooden bridges and wondered if this was similar. Were these men and women evading evil spirits? I asked a couple of friends who’d lived in Seoul longer than me. No, no one was evading evil spirits. They just weren’t walking in a straight line. I liked my conjecture better, especially as the year went on.

When I run a crowned surface – path or road – I alternate sides to keep my body from taking on unnecessary muscle imbalances, tilts, injuries. So on the river path. I run alternating sides. Usually this is totally fine. I am not the only person walking or running on the wrong side of the path, but I am often the only foreign woman on the wrong side of the path. So during the first year running in Korea, several old men stopped me to say I was running on the wrong side of the path. When I see another person coming my way I guess if they are moving to the inside of the path or the middle of the path, and adjust my approach. Usually, this is totally fine. But when I see an old man walking my way, I gauge the situation differently. Sometimes the old man looks to make way for us to pass and at the last moment, he turns to cut me off. I stop and listen to him tell me, Wrong side! Wrong side! Then he points to the other side of the path and says, Right side! Right side! A few times I’ve tried explaining why I switch sides to run on, only to be waved off or shouted at again. Right side! Right side!

Once I stayed my course until I was an arm length from plowing into an old man staying his course. That time I was the one who spoke loudly and gestured. Why? Why? The old man did not understand me. He was only out in the cold winter for a quiet morning walk and now I was gesturing my own incomprehension: why do we not move for one another? Why must I be the one to give way to old men? After that I decided to be kind, or try, to just move over for all the old men. But even making way does not work if I am still running the wrong side of the path and some old man wants to make that point.

I am thinking about getting tiny cards made up, to explain why I alternate sides, to emphasize my joy at living in such a lovely land as Korea, and to wish a best day. I could carry these cards and produce one for the next old man who cuts my stride. But I doubt tiny cards are an answer.

I bend.

In Kuwait there was a Sudanese man named Adam who shepherded the expat teachers through the many pieces of paperwork needed to keep a visa, get a driver license, obtain a marriage or birth certificate. Once he and I were shuttling between different government offices after my passport was confiscated at customs. I needed to get a chest x-ray, the record showed. I’d been pregnant with my son so requested a deferral for the x-ray, and then in the space of about one year, I had three chest x-rays to ascertain I didn’t suffer tuberculosis – the first was this time, to satisfy my visa requirement. Adam waited while I stood in line, my breasts leaking. We took the paper showing my x-ray was clear to another office. There I saw men drinking tea at desks. I saw a pile of passports on a table. Adam sensed my panic and sent me out of the room. From the hall I watched the casual gestures of the men sipping tea, the slight bow by Adam. Back in Adam’s old Pajero, I asked how he did it. I thought I was going to lose it, just seeing the pile of passports and nonchalance of the officials. Adam said he made himself small. You make yourself small, you be kind, he said to me. When I talk, he said, I let them be bigger than me.

Small. Kind. I continued to chafe in Kuwait even as I grew to care deeply for the country and region. Appreciating a culture is not to acquiesce. So now in my second year in Korea, having pushed a Special Events server into giving me one box for my two sandwiches, and actually considering having tiny cards printed to explain why I am on the wrong side of the path, I wonder what the balance is to be open and closed in a new place. I do not live in Korea to make it my way. And though I had no great affinity for Korea when we chose to come, my respect grows as I learn the stories of this place.

Kate told me that her mother-in-law was a little girl during the Korean war. Her family house was commandeered. Executions took place in their courtyard. The family ate acorn soup to survive. I think of the suffering and resilience and I soften toward the old men and women who still walk without deviating from the right side of the path, and those who stand bow-legged at bus stops. Soon after arriving in Korea, I went on a school trip to the eastern shore. Each morning I woke before the students to run a road along the beaches. I stopped to take a photo of the sunrise. Chain link fence topped with barbed wire snaked along many of the beaches and later I asked someone why. Because in the seventies North Korea sent small boats to coastal towns, conducting midnight kidnappings – I want to know more about this, but even a sketch of why barbed wire is strung along beachfronts points to the civilian good of adherence to rules. I soften. But I also think of the protests in the eighties when workers wanted fair pay, and when people questioned the ruling order, and I wonder if the old men cutting to tell me I am on the wrong side of the path were the same old men who lockstepped with the military to put down student uprisings, to take people off the street, to ruin a woman. Or did they look away. Or were they on the right side, then. This whole country tells stories to keep children in school until late at night, to ensure more children are born, to secure prestigious work, to keep the streets clean, to keep the air polluted, to honor the elderly, to keep a faith in their own people.

Sometimes I consider if I chose this life abroad to lift away from the stories of my own country (the stories I don’t like), or to escape the stories of my own self (the stories I don’t like). But stories follow. Stories collect. When I drop into another country, I reckon with another set of standards, learn through different stories, see how I am not so far from where I started, and despair a month or several before deciding to keep on. I still might get the tiny cards printed. But next time I order two sandwiches I’ll take however I am served.

Three of thirty-nine! 2573 words. Started in November, first draft finished 14 December.

* This paragraph is added after Kate’s thoughtful response to the initial post. I am very interested in how the Korean War has nettled the psyche of the country, and what different stories are told to explain even present behaviors. For example, the old ladies who push past me at a grocery store shelf may be pushing because that was just how you got food during shortages, by pushing past the person in front of you. Or they may be high on being old and revered, supposing I’m unlikely to bodycheck them in response. Or they may just be impatient that I’m taking too long deciding if I will really use a bag of bean sprouts this week.