Biking Vietnam, The Courage to Fail

I met Rose when she convinced me to stay in one of the bungalows she owned. She convinced me before her glasses broke, but once they did I knew we would be friends. Covered head to toe in a burka and a floral shirt with a flowing pink skirt, her expression was cheeky. “Shit!” she cursed as the pieces fell into the grass. I happened to find one and, unable or unwilling to pronounce my name correctly, she said, “Thank you Anker Wat.” The next day when I asked if I could borrow a book from the collection of discarded ones in the corner of her office, she didn’t hesitate.

“Some people see no more in climbing mountains,” Walter Bonatti writes in the prologue of The Mountains of My Life, “than an escape from the harsh realities of modern times. This is not only uninformed, but unfair. I don’t deny that there can be an element of escapism in mountaineering but this should never overshadow its real essence, which is not escape but victory over your own human frailty.”

I read this in Malaysia a week after Max, George, Ewan and I ended our two months in Vietnam by climbing Mount Fansipan, the tallest mountain in Indochina. I sat in the shade of a palm tree as two monkeys pillaged the coconuts above, remembering the small trek we had just completed.

Coming off that mountain, and for the first time in my life, I knew how it felt to be truly proud of something I’d done. Not necessarily in the hike, but in all the days, and all the months and all the friendships leading up to it. I’ve realized that it’s the things you’re most afraid to do that allow you to become the type of person you want to be.

Just yesterday, through the sterile aisle of a supermarket, Max helped me get some last minute things for my next trip. That’s when I confided in him that I was afraid to go. He told me fear’s a good thing. He said fear means you’re doing something that’s important to you.

Travelling to me isn’t about climbing a tall mountain so that I can say I did it. It’s not about the perfect picture of me driving my motorbike off into the sunset. (These, of course, are the perks.) But travelling to me is about overcoming my greatest weakness, which is self-doubt. Sitting on the summit of Fansipan with a beer in my hand surrounded by three people I’ve grown to love so sincerely was worth the going up. It was one small victory in a long line of others over all the limitations I had set for myself.

As Max and George high fived my hands through the window of the airport bus, I realized the weaknesses I’d overcome and the new confidence that serves as my sole companion on this upcoming journey. Now all those people—Rose and Max and George and Ewan-- are elsewhere in this world, and still, I don’t consider myself alone.
I am with myself.

Of all that nature has revealed to me throughout these months-- sleeping under her torrential weeping, seeing the sky of a different night, the moon from a different angle-- the lesson that had the greatest effect on me was not the realization that really I am nothing. But that I should make the most of it.

So I’m writing from a plane that’s landing in Australia’s Gold Coast because for two years I’ve talked about becoming a cowgirl, and there’s cowgirl work in the Land Down Under. I didn’t think I would ever actually do it because somewhere lurking inside me was something present and barely visible and solemn, and it was fear.

In the same way the perfect words can line themselves up at the perfect time in someone’s life, the book Rose lent me voiced truths I hadn't myself put words to: “Fear has many aspects and facing it demands self-control. For me, it has often proved a spur to courage, including, if necessary, the courage to accept failure. ”

If I’d set out to feel this way and complete these tasks, I’m not sure I would have had the confidence to do it. But I had the confidence to buy the ticket and sit on the plane. That plane took me to so many places I didn't know I was going and it showed me the importance in having courage-- the courage, if necessary, to accept failure, but the bravery to try anyway.

Biking Vietnam, Destinations

Technically it wasn't my fault, although I did quote Robert Frost when I sensed they were swaying.  In their silence, those who did not dissent agreed and as we sat on the side of the road debating the better choice, I quoted the poem. "Two roads diverged in a wood," I said-- and Generous picked it up from there-- "And I, I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference."

Instead of heading back to Da Lat and finding the main road which would lead us easily to lake Lak, we chose the road that "wanted wear;" the one we thought would lead us the scenic way to the same place."Tis the nature of the adventure," I said enthusiastically, as I so often do. Jessie narrowed her eyes in annoyance. ('Tis the nature of our relationship.)

Three hours later and having gone less kilometers than that, I emerged frantic from the jutting rock path entering the same pavement I had only recently exited. It was relief that filled me when my wheels squeezed the paved road and my engine stopped coughing as loudly.  Oil dripped in my wake-- my bike had suffered a hard blow. I needed a mechanic.

I tried to explain all this to Enri that night-- about the cutting rock roads, the deep water holes, the thin, rickety bridge, the decision to turn around and then the suctioning mud that eventually led to my ruin-- but with his limited English, he couldn't understand.  Instead he simply put his finger up for me to stop talking as his phone rang a country tune, interrupting all conversation.  It rang about every two minutes, plucking high notes on a synthetic guitar. He'd answer and pretend not to hear the person on the other line. Holding the phone out, he'd look at it questioningly then decide it must be broken and put it away, continuing the conversation.

Enri is the brother of Joseph and Joseph, having met us while my bike was being repaired, invited us to his house for wine. Throughout the night, Enri continued ignoring his wife's calls as his young neice poured water into a jug filled with fermented root. She handed the long straw made of thin bamboo and a plastic tube to Jessie first and then to me.  Its taste was sweet and bitter, the color of honey and once consumed, made your body temperature rise immediately. 

"I'm sorry," said Enri after putting his phone back into his pocket. "But we talk about me now. How do you like Vietnam?  America is my paradise." This surprised me less when I discovered his sister worked for the US army during the war (and now lives in North Carolina). Later, when I tried to speak to him in what little of the language I know, he said his tribe does not speak Vietnamese.

As Ri  began to explain how his tribe is a minority to Vietnam, his brother took out their Latin Bible and began singing Spiriti Sancti and Generous, quite sincerely, tried to sing along, mouthing the notes a half step too late and bending an avid ear to the singing man.  Looking on, Mekong's mouth got wider as he listened to Generous' poor attempt. "Whhot is he doing?"

An hour later, we were drunk dancing to twist and shout and Mekong was debating whether he should take the neice up on her advances.  In my attempt to explain (quite beligerently) how that would not be the best way to thank the family, Generous stepped in, called Mekong a twat and told me if I were a man he'd hit me in the face and then we all fell asleep.

Now, there are many ways to wake up after a heavy night of drinking.  Sometimes it's with a sore head, a heavy tongue, a physical hangover or a moral one.  But this wakeup was much different. Enri walked in, short and confident and said, "Good morning. I've lost my motorbike and I've lost my wife." As we sought for responses fresh from sleep, his attention quickly turned. "Oh! Come see," he said motioning for me to come out to the porch.  "There they are."  I looked out onto the light blue lake that stood a stark contrast to their bright green coffee plants, bushy on the bluff.  As I watched the two water buffalo cross gracefully-- their backs and horns reflecting in the early morning sunlight-- the mountain air,cool with the smell of wood smoke--I wondered about his wife..

"Before you go, we get fresh water." Ri insisted.  "Just a short kilometer for fresh water."  We agreed and stopped at a cafe along the road (where Ri also speculated he left his bike) and a  waitress brought out four large Pepsi's and popped the lids.  Ri motioned for us to drink up.

"Fresh wata!?" said Mekong.  "Oh, you ah a legend!"

Ignoring the statement, Ri revisited the matter of his wife leaving him.  "If she divorce me, I take my water buffalo and go live in the hills." I noticed him considering this possibility and his eyes began to sparkle gleams of appeal.

Two ignored phone calls, three hangovers of a higher evolutionary order and four "fresh waters" later, we hit the road that just yesterday led us to this lovely family: fresh pavement of another road leading to another destination. Our next immediate destination wasn't anything epic though.  And as a jackhammer crumbled the sidewalk outside, it wasn't particularly choice either. But as destinations so often are, our lunch spot was misleading as to what it actually contained. It was over lunch while scanning a copy of Lonely Planet when we realized where the road less traveled had truly taken us the night before.

"...While french-colonial rule recognized the Montagnards as a seperate community," Generous read aloud, "South Vietnam... attempted to assimilate them through... abolishing tribal schools and courts, prohibiting the construction of stilt houses and appropriating their land....In the 1960s the tribes were courted as US as allies against North Vietnam and were trained CIA and US Special Forces."

We spent the night with the Montagnards.

Generous, Jessie, Pete, Me, Ri, George, Joseph

Jessie drinking the rice wine

Biking Vietnam, Payback's A Female Dog

The sound of the rooster strikes me awake so astutely that I must not have been very asleep.  In the distance it sounds like someone's dragging furniture across the clouds and the night flashes bright. I know a storms coming and then the drops start and its here-- the drops being inside my tent. Cursing the bulky camera that I'm too tired to take out of the purse I'm sleeping on, this isn't what I had romanticized when we said "camping."  We're in the side yard of a cafe where a family lives, sleeping on a bed of gravel.  I can hear the distant hum of a television.  I can hear the not-so-distant shrill cry of a rooster.

The best way to travel also turns out to be the cheapest: make friends with the locals, drink the liquor as long as it flows, and accept when they insist you're too drunk to drive anywhere. Be grateful and remember it usually pays to say yes. Flies swarmed and landed on the best seafood I've ever eaten. The second best suctioned itself to the side of my mouth, flailing it's tentacles in a last ditch effort. 

I touched my heart as small Boa did the night before when I gave her a coconut cookie.  Her young mouth could only form the sound "ah," and I can speak only a fragment more Vietnamese than that, but still I said thank you—Cam on. I touched my heart, looked at her grandmother and said "Cam on... for letting us stay the night." We paid for our coffees, packed our tents and started our engines.

It's really something following a group of friends on a journey through crumbling back roads, the sharp curves revealing each person in turn. Slate dark cement washes up onto the deep brown foliage and the mountains peak and dive as we drive up and down. We're burned by the stinging sun then cooled by the rains.  We rest in the warm shade and bundle in the cold night.  In one day, we experience all seasons.

"Alright George," says Mekong once we arrive in DaLat.  "Call the Fuck. Tell em to sheet oaff." He looks at me and snickers and I know we're gonna have fun with this name.

Mr. Phuk is an Easy Rider who takes tourists on his bike through hard-to-find destinations. He's offered to escort us on the back roads across the central highlands for an exorbitant amount of money and apparently all his beer bills. Collectively, we decide not to do it and now Generous has to tell him.

"But I kind of like Mr. Phuk."

"I don't care if you like em.  For $15 per person per day, Mr. Fuck can sheet oaff!"

The fun we have with his name is only second to the fun we have with the name of Generous' motorcycle. Her name is Sally and she's a bicycle.  Any key turns her on and anyone gets a ride. Mekong says when he's finished with his bike, Jessica, he'll dig a big hole in ground and bury her.

Here lies Jessica.  At least she's not a SLUT lok SALLY!

Mekong slams Jessica into Sally's rear and snickers.

"At least she has virtues," argues Generous.

"She does not! Sheet off! Anyone can ride her in any direction therefore she has no virtues."

The demands of concentration silences everyone on the road and hunger makes our decision hasty as we pull over for lunch.  Each bike parks-- Sally, Jessica, Black Betty, Ariel and Ursala.

We sit down and order quickly.  Ga Pho.  Chicken Pho.  It doesn’t take too long to come out and I can't wait for the broth to cool before burning my tongue on it.  The meat must be pork because it smells like pork.  It looks like beef though and Mekong, wide eyed claims it's "exoctly lok the mystery meat I had in Saigon." But Mekong makes a lot of claims. The other night, he claimed his toe was falling off. “Look at et,” he says in astonishment.  “Et doesn’t look hewman.”  And then his tone changes to indignation, “Well I don’t know what Om gonna do when I get back to England and Om not suffering from puh-menant disease.  Oll have to razor maself in the arm just to feel normal.”

The thought of his toe-- which looks like Wyly coyote dropped an anvil on it-- still doesn’t put me off my meal. I don't care.  I'm starving.  I use one chopstick to hold the meat in place and the other to pull it from the bone. 

As the soup gets lower and lower, its contents reveal themselves with ease and I can't believe what I'm seeing. No.  I hold it up between my chopsticks and everyone starts laughing.  I’ve spent two years in Korea having avoided it and not one month into Vietnam and  I've just eaten dog.  It smells like pork, looks like beef and tastes like dog. Hanging between my chopsticks is its severed jaw. Oh God, judging by the extent of his cavities it must have been quite old.  The owners laugh at our discovery and claim it's monkey. Lying bastards.  "It's dog!"

Pete having just paid says resolutely, "Yep, it's dog.  They're charging dog prices."

Mr. Phuk! It turns out the cheapest way to eat can also be the least enjoyable.  Although, In all honesty I can’t say I don’t deserve it. After making fun of Generous’ beloved Sally:

And gloating in the face of Pete’s sea sickness:

And turning hysterical at the site of Mekong’s pulsing red toe:

...I can’t say in good faith that it was undeserved. But on the upside, it didn’t cost much.  Unless of course there's a Judgement Day and I pay for it then.

Here lies Anne-Claire.  She ate dog once.  But at least she’s not a SLUT like SALLY!

Biking Vietnam, The Struggles Finds Its Humor

We arrive in Mui Ne along with the rain that followed us the entire way, slithering and snaking alongside the coastal road.  Every hour found us pulling off to meet Jessie on the shoulder, her face red and fuming with frustration, her bike red and wheezing with exhaustion.  "Fuck!" she says after she's screwed on the gas cap and strapped back on her bags. "Shit!"  I begin laughing.  I know what she's done.  She's locked her keys under the seat.

Along with Generous' bike-- which we've found can be started with any Honda key-- Jessie's seat lifts easily to fit a hand underneath.  This proves convenient as we resolve the problem, but Generous is still furious about his discovery-- not only because any Honda key will open his bike, but specifically because Mekong Max's will.  Seeing the scheming behind Mekong's eyes and the way the cheaky bastard snickers as he considers the possibilities, I understand why. 

Jessie stacks her bags back on the seat and straps down the bungees while Generous makes a new discovery. "Fuck!" he says: his keys have fallen out of the ignition.  Apparently, once started his bike can continue working without any key at all. Apparently, it fell out a few meters back when he had to re-start the bike after it puttered out up a hill.

We laugh and resolve all the problems and my headlight guides me the rest of the way to Mui Ne, affording me .3 seconds notice before slamming me violently into potholes.  Once at our destination, we meet our friend Ewan at his guest house and sleep hard to the sound of crashing waves against a cement coast.  In the morning, Jessie awakes Mekong and Generous abruptly:  "A cat was killed on the road and it was convulsing and there was blood everywhere. It was so sad.  Okay, get up, ya'll.  We're leaving.  This place is too expensive."

"Hurry up," she says to me as she stuffs clothes into her bag.  They said if we're out a minute passed 11:30, they'll charge us for the day."

I rush to gather my things and decide to spite their inhospitality I'll steal the comb in the bathroom. Pete-- being my only witness—conspires. "Get the bob roll too."

Twenty minutes later I'm staring at the receptionist and insisting there was never a comb in our room.  Mekong comes to my defense, eager for argument; angry himself over the principle of having to pay for hot water that didn't work and a presumed complimentary drink.

"Who would steal a fucking comb?!" he argues, extending his arms straight and his fingers wide in indignation. Gesturing to me, haggard and barely awake, his bottom lip protrudes in bewilderment, "Does it look like anyone's brushed their hair?"

I walk back to my bike and quietly tell him in fact, I've stolen the comb.  Since I'm not going to pay $1 to replace it I open my bag and feign surprise at its discovery while casually covering the stolen toilet paper. "My bad,” I say. “I guess I accidentally packed it."  The receptionist doesn’t feign surprise.

We move down the street to a place of similar quality that fits our budget. The clouds clutch at the coast and a storm quivers and shakes as drops meet the ground.  Mekong and I sit it out under a tin roof and read as I sip coffee.  Mekong drinks too much tea and vibrates as he tells us he can't join us for dinner.

"I ock-shully feel ill!"

I get home with a wine bottle and ask our new friend Nyet if he can open it for me. As he pushes it in with the dull end of a wrench from his repair shop he says, "Mok" and I twist my face to show that I don't understand. "Mok. You friend Mok."

As Mekong giddily walks up wide eyed and jubilant we learn that once he left us-- too sick to eat-- he drank rice wine mixed with banana wine all night with Nyet. "Ah! And the family made fish. They insisted I eat it.  It was luh-vely! You should have tried it!"

Along with Nyet, we all stay up drinking and listening to music.  Nyet tries to teach me to count to five and Mekong-- to the tune of "Na-ny Na-ny boo boo"—sings to Generous: "Oh'm gonna steal ya bi-ike.  Oh'm gonna steal ya bi-ike." Night becomes morning like late becomes early and everyone goes to bed and the freedom feeling of travel continues: the stuggle finds its humor. 

Before sleep, I lay back and glimpse at the sky in time to catch a shooting star. And I wish for nothing.

Biking Vietnam, The Beginning

The alarm goes off at four in the morning and the beeping sounds more like laughter.  It's laughing right in his face. He's not going now.  “Pouring” doesn't describe the type of rain we're hearing.  It sounds like we're all sleeping under a tin roof beneath Niagara Falls.  The water is incessant; constant like a faucet.  He's not starting his journey now.  He'll have to wait.

In Vietnam the natural is only a little more foreign than the unnatural.  Walking the busy, buzzing streets feels like being in a bee hive-- motorbikes zoom around you, cutting in an angle into oncoming traffic, barely missing you.  Like schools of fish, hundreds of Vietnamese on motorbikes make sharp turns simultaneously.  One moment you're looking at their backs and the next you're looking at their sides.

Ho Chi Minh is the city we're starting from-- "we" meaning my family away from home.  It's me, my best friend Jessie, Pete who we met at the start of our travels and have been with since, Generous George (nicknamed for his giving heart) and Mekong Max (nicknamed for the wounds he let fester in the Mekong). The first time I met Mekong, I rushed him in a tuk-tuk (a cart that's pulled by a motorbike) shivering and shaking to the hospital.  As he looked at me wide-eyed and desperate, his mouth slightly ajar, I told him he probably had the dengue fever.  "But it's alright," I said. "You should be fine." Meanwhile, I couldn't get Dylan out of my head.

When he died
I was hoping
that it wasn't contagious.

It turns out he didn't die.  And that's how I got the nickname Dr. Dengue.  So there's five of us. Jessie, Pete, Generous, Mekong, and Dengue, and we've all bought motorcycles.  And we're travelling Vietnam from south to north.

Of course, with our limited budgets, the haggard (made in China) pieces we were able to talk off the ledge of a twenty-story building aren't the most reliable. They come with missing mirrors, downhill starts, and spare parts, "just in case."  So we come anticipating break downs and stunted trips in the blister-hot sun as sweat drips from our noses and hope diminishes.  It's also the beginning of the rainy season here and when it's not raining, the world resumes its underwater effect, melding the straight lines with sweltering heat.

While watching a program of three men attempting the same feat, one man cursed the lightening while acknowledging its dual purpose-- his light was out.  By the end of the trip he said he'd done something like 1000 km on a bike, 100 on a train and 50 on his face. So far we've been lucky though and only had a few casualties to account for-- two people with three muffler burns.

Then again, we start tomorrow.

Wish us luck.

A Night on Gili Trawangan

The clouds pulled back their curtains on Gili island and I felt as though I knew they would. In the same way people are, life is beautiful when you accept it.  Boat rides taught me that-- that when you fight the current, you get sick; that when you don't, you don't. So me and my friends stayed for the duration of the clouds and now I'm sitting in the sand looking up at the stars, inhaling a clove deeply, breathing out, and getting buried by my new friend.

Zeus (Zay-oos) is a local who works at the bungalow on the stretch of beach we prefer.  When he laughs, it's husky and clear, deep and genuine. He laughs as he sweeps out a blank page on the beach and I watch his hand sink softly to write. Upside down, I can read ZEUS LAVES ANKER.  He looks up at me, revealing the bashful whites of his eyes and of his smiling teeth, then he breaks into laughter-- husky and clear, deep and genuine. And I do the same.

I teach Zeus words like moon and friend and I love you.  He teaches me boolang and teman and oonka cinta kamu. That's when I realize I've made a friend in the sandbox and remember what it felt like to be a kid-- to talk to someone because they want to play beside you, to do things you want to do and for no other reason, to be too curious to pay attention to all the distractions.

Zeus grabs a handful of sand and I watch it pour out between his fingers and spread over the mound I'm buried under.  He pushes it around and then pats it down and teaches me something I never knew about it. I never knew that when you pat sand down it becomes heavier.  You don't have to add anything to make it heavier, you just have to pat it down.

I lay back and look up at a moon that seems to stare at me from an angle it's never seen me from before.  It seems to be the moon of a different planet.  Inhaling the clove deeply, I taste the sweet of the filter and smile as I wonder why I've never seen the sky like this before.  Zues grabs another handful of sand and sifts it through his open fingers.  As he pats it down, I revel at the beauty that was always there.  Waiting to be felt.

My Father Maced Your Cashier

My last year of college, I lived in an area in Knoxville where the asphalt cracks and roaches scratch across the sandpaper cement. Orange lights drew circles on the streets at night and didn't hide the occasional prostitute that would open the door of a slowed vehicle. The money to restore downtown had washed up just one block from my apartment, so the I-40 overpass that traveled along the border seemed to separate north side from south perfectly. I would look out onto that overpass from my apartment, which used to be a hotel. A chandelier in the main hall and cracked tiles leading to a drooping wooden staircase, Sterchi Oaks hadn't seen "guests" since the time trains carried passengers through the city.

The year before, I lived south of the overpass in a tall building that had once been a furniture warehouse. The sidewalks there had lights underneath and police officers who punished you with parking tickets for the city's lack of spaces. The tenants of my building consisted mostly of college kids and the occasional professional who didn't know the tenants consisted mostly of college kids. I liked it alright, but I liked the crummier part of town better. On one end, you could see the drunken frat boy teeing off in the middle of the street with a nine iron and a beer bong, on the other you could watch a homeless man talk to a "No Parking" sign. This side was a little sinister, yes, but just enough to make for a good story. I didn't know then how good.

My dad came to visit on one of those summer days that are so bright, you can't look directly into anything. Pulling around back to meet me at the fire exit we used as a staircase, he stepped out of the car onto broken glass and tried not to laugh preemptively at his own joke.

"Geez. Nice place. You’re really moving on up, huh?"

I brushed off his insult and took him to an expensive restaurant for a free lunch.(As a side note here-- most parents do everything they can to make sure their kids don't have to pay for college. My dad did everything he could to make sure I did-- although admittedly, he didn't make me pay very much)

On the drive home, we passed under the I-40 overpass and my dad did a double-take into his rear-view mirror. "Is that the same guy from earlier?" he asked.

"Yah," I said.

"Is he talking to that sign?"

"Yah."

As he pulled up to my cracking curb, I gave him a hug goodbye and reached for the doorknob. "Hey," he said before I could get out. "Next time you come home, let's get you some mace."

The next time I would go home came pretty quickly. I can't remember exactly when it was, but I remember it was still warm because we were able to drive around in my dad's answer to the mid-life-crisis. I remember him coming into the living room and announcing that we would be taking the motorcycle to get the mace, then he shoved his helmet onto his head and his cheeks gasped for air, squeezing their way out of the fleshy mass, smothering his nose and puckering his lips. He tried to conceal a smile as if to convey he didn't know how ridiculous he looked.

"Okay," I said, ignoring his silent invitation for me to make fun of him, "But this time you can't yell at me for sneezing."

"Don't move around so much," he whistled, "and I won't yell at you."

On beautiful days like this particular day was, it's hard to resist the allure of a motorcycle ride-- the wind blowing in your hair and the shadow of two people flashing on the flowing fauna, country roads bending and rolling like rivers, sunlight flickering through the shade of trees, your future in front of you and your past, behind you. But this was different. I was on the back of a Honda clutching my dad's love handles and going thirty in a fifty-five as cars passed by honking and making rude gestures. I watched the front of a Ford Taurus slowly roll beside us, grazed my eyes over the windshield and then onto the white, muffled head of an elderly lady, barely visible above the driver-side window. As the car edged along, I followed the hood all the way to the trunk and then onto the forgotten right turn-signal that blinked at me ironically.

"Dad," I pleaded. "Please go faster."

"Quit moving around back there!" he snapped.

While my dad's helmet cut off his circulation, it was lucky for me that my helmet cut off my peripheral. It kind of worked for me in the same way blinders work for horses, blocking out any scenes that might alarm the horse, in an effort to keep it calm. When we finally pulled into our destination and parked, I took off my helmet and the reality that confronted me was horrifying. It made me want to retreat, to blow heavy breaths out my nostrils and buck in the air, angle my feet into the ground. I'm not going in there, I thought. Not with him.

We were in the parking lot of The Police Supply Store. Actually, we were in the parking lot of a Subway sandwich shop as, more often than not, entrances elude my father. But for all that my helmet concealed while it was on my head, it revealed one thing when it was off-- this was a store full of toys my dad was going to want to play with and had no idea how. Nervously I asked why we couldn't just get it at Wal-Mart.

"They don't sell them there," he said, waving me off as he giddily began climbing the grassy median.

"What about K Mart?'

"They only sell them here. Come on."

I could see by his jovial step what was going on. He must have been planning this for weeks, maybe months. And I was his scapegoat. I envisioned him passing it on the highway and thinking, man I want to go there-- that's where we'll get the mace. This was his goal and I was the innocent victim along for the ride. As my dad neared the entrance, I had to make up my mind-- would I stay outside or would I run the risk of accompanying him in? On the one hand, he would make a scene. On the other, I could possibly hurry him out before he had the chance. In his excitement, he was yards ahead of me and his hands were reaching out for the door handle. I ran to catch up. The bell chimed as the door closed behind me and a man looked up from the counter.
"Where's the mace?" I said as my dad veered toward the gun rack. The man walked out and pointed me to a spinning display then broke into a sales pitch.

"Now this one is good, but this is pepper spray. The difference between pepper spray and mace is--" I caught a view of my dad between the gaps in the rack. What was he holding? It could be a ball or it could be a hand grenade. Time was running out.

"What's your most lethal mace?"

He spun the rack around and pointed to a purple bottle. "This here contains mace, pepper spray and a neon liquid that shows up on the culprit under a—”

"Good, good, good. This one." I grabbed it off the rack and walked the short distance to the checkout counter where a pre-pubescent boy was ringing up and old lady. My dad was in an aisle pulling the triggers of guns. The old lady was making slow, careful actions. Just buy the damn thing I thought.What are you waiting for? I glanced up to see my dad pointing a gun and looking through the scope.
The woman slowly stuffed her money into her wallet and I scooted her aside and put my mace on the glass counter, loud so my dad would hear it. "Dad," I said as the bell chimed behind me, the door closing behind the woman, "It's time to pay, come on." I looked nervously at the cashier who took my cue to scan the barcode. In the distance, my dad was poking at something. "Dad, this guy has rung me up. Time to pay." I could tell by the way he eyed me in annoyance that I was taking him away from something he found particularly interesting. But he started to walk toward to me anyway. I couldn't believe it, he was walking toward me. Maybe we'll get out of here without making a scene.

"How do you work this thing anyway?" he asked, handing over the money and eyeing the purple tube in its plastic casing. The cashier reached into the glass case and pulled out an identical tube of mace.

"You flip this switch here and you push this button," he said as he began placing the cash into the register. I could hear my dad repeating the steps under his breath. "You flip this... switch and then you..."

Limbs began flailing and breaths were being gasped, the store erupted into sudden chaos as people formed a twenty-foot radius around my father. He pushed the button. He maced the cashier. And there he stood, examining the tube and exclaiming in mild bewilderment, "Well, I thought it was a demo."

"My eyes!" screamed the cashier.

"I thought it was a demo."

"Go to the bathroom! Wash out your eyes," someone yelled.

"What's going on out here?" screamed a tall man who came out of the back room, hurling open the curtains. "Holy shit!" he said, looking at the boy's red face. "Go wash your eyes!"

The boy fumbled through the gun aisle and felt his way to the bathroom as the tall man demanded an explanation.

"I'm sorry sir," I said—poising myself for that inevitable next sentence—“but my father maced your cashier."

"What?"

I looked at the wall to his left and scanned the pictures of those caught in the act of thievery in hopes that I could find one of a middle aged man squirting a tube of mace into a cashier's face. None. "Please sir," I begged, outside of myself and scrounging for any remaining hope of dignity, "Please tell me this has happened before."

"No," he said, not quite politely. "This has never happened before."

As we walked out my dad offered up one last, "I swear I thought it was a demo" and the door ringed closed behind us. We walked away and the last of the remaining customers scattered out, regaining their breath in the fresh air and getting into their cars.

Back on the road, we rolled slowly along as I held onto my father begrudgingly. People honked at us and made rude gestures and a translucent white baggy with a purple tube within it dangled from my hand. I wasn't talking to my dad but that didn't stop him from talking to me. "I thought it was a demo," he said, and then tried not to laugh. "Really."

Fears of a Foreignor Living in Seoul

Standing on the edge of winter, on days like today, I don't feel far from North Korea.  This land lacks something in the winter that you can't place your finger on.  And then you realize what it is. It's color.  The gray of the mountains is only a little deeper shade than that of the sky.  The identical apartment buildings, standing high in clusters, provide only a subtle contrast in their whiteness-- dull numbers stamped on the side to distinguish them from the others.  In the pale blue morning, it can't be much different from the physical reality of the north.  But life here couldn't be more different. North Korea is close in proximity and yet it is as far away and as accessable as the Sun.

On my transfer in the subway last night, I searched desperately for a pen.  In my mind, I had something I wanted to write down and after three stores and not seeing any pen for sale, I asked if I could buy one off a shop keeper.  "Chun won," I offered her-- about $1.  She said no and smiled, refusing my money and pushing the pen into my hand.  I wondered what that pen would get you in North Korea.  I've read North Koreans sometimes don't even have the luxury of paper.  I read an account once of a police officer scribbling an inmate's sentence on a chunk of wood.

This is the North Korea I've thought of the past few mornings when lightening and thunder has woken me up during the first blue light of the day.  I think about those on the other side who might be experiencing the same weather. I think about the thunder and how it disguised the first shots of the Korean War only 60 years ago.

But despite last weeks artillary fire on Yeonpyeong Island, fears of an actual war occuring are futile. Those fears will get you exactly where you started, much like the Korean War itself.  Since a war would destroy the South Korean economy, it's unlikely they will retaliate. 

So it's not fear of war that I feel in those mornings with the thunder; it's a closeness to those far away, a shared experience with those whose experiences could not be farther from my own. Because when you read about North Korea, you start to seperate the people from the Party-- from their first doubts, to their realization that their reality is a lie. Accounts of defectors  read eerily like Orwell's 1984-- spouses not trusting each other to their real thoughts, child "heros" denouncing their parents, people disappearing or being "vaporized" in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again.

Most of what we see of North Korea is from journalists who are only shown Pyongyang, the capital city where the elite and most loyal live.  Living in Pyongyang is the aspiration of many North Koreans, as residents there live the best lifestyle.  In an excerpt from her book, Nothing to Envy, journalist, Barabara Demick, relives one visit there:

"Floodlights bathed Kim Il Sung and garlands of tiny white lights illuminated the main streets.... Dinner was a multicourse banquet of salmon, crab gratin, lamb, sliced pheasant, and Viennese-style chocolate cakes.... I spoke by telephone to the U.N. World Food Programme's representative in Pyongyang... who told me "As soon as you guys left, it was pitch dark again."'

A look into the real North Korea is manipulated and stifled by the government seeking to improve its image. But some North Koreans are risking their lives to provide footage of the voices the government doesn't want us to hear.



The redemomination of the wealth discussed in the video refers to a new currency the North issued in 2009.  Food was being sold on the black market and the success of this private, "free market," was undermining the principles of the government who should be the sole provider for the people. It was also creating inflation. To counteract this, the government reissued a new currency, placing a limit on how much people could convert of the old currency,often times depleting savings and limiting wealth. This led to even more hunger and desperation. 

In Nothing to Envy Demick reports that one of the hardest realities defectors face is the memory of what they did to survive. A North Korean teacher painfully recalls watching one after another of her young students die from ailments  caused by starvation, as she herself did not go hungry. Successful defectors live with the memory that their family most likely starves in a work camp as a result of their decision to defect.  But just south of the DMZ, life is much different.  Lights are on and people are heading to work.  Women bobb in their high heels and chat over coffee. Men with biased hair, fo-hawked to one side, carry briefcases and listen to ipods. Perhaps, in all our abundance, we lose something.  But I think back to that woman pushing the pen into my hand, her smile and adimant refusal of money.  Abundance allows you to be human.  Deprivation does not.

And that's what I feel in those mornings amidst the thunder and lightening.  It is not a fear of war because that reality is simultaneously as close and as far away as North Korea itself. It's just a feeling of fear-- that a whole country can live a nightmare to preserve a dream.




I welcome any comments you have on the issue.

For access to the full video from above, click here.

Trying to Find a Japanese Restaurant in Korea, In Pictures

This place could be good.



No, I'll try that Japanese place.  I know it's around here somewhere.  

Ah shit. Why is that dog so angry?

...Who does he remind me of?

Newman!

....No, not Newman.

Uncle Leo!

Yah, yah Uncle LeOH there's that Japanese Restaurant. 

...I hope they're still open.

Damn!

Musta just missed it.

           

A Month in Music

I listen to Country every Fall.  The good kind. In other words, I don't listen to the kind that would make me want to "Garth on my Brookes" (to quote my friend Marc). Fall to me is the most beautiful season.  Nature seems to go back to its roots.   The whole world seems to go country.

One of my favorite songs is "Unknown Legend," by Neil Young.  It's the kind of song girls listen to and pretend it's about them-- or the kind of song I listen to and pretend it's about me.



It always takes me back to something I've forgotten. Inevitbaly though "Helpless," comes on and then the line, "all my changes were there" finds me completely in the moment, revealing how I feel about this place.



This year has been the hardest one I've faced in a group-oriented culture built on formality; where work is number one, where I can't address my co-workers by their names because they're older, where everything is about "face" and making someone lose face is the ultimate crime; where maintaining relationships often means biting your tongue. It's been hard but it's also been rewarding.

I now work with a woman who is 40 years my senior.  Understandably, she doesn't like listening to me.  She doesn't like that more responsibility falls upon me than her.  Unfortunately, we can't work through some of our problems, and the more success I enjoy, the more she dislikes me. Her anger voices itself in hateful attacks on my character.

Recently, I had a conversation with one of my best friends who just spent some time with her mother whom she doesn't always get along with.  She said she didn't know whether she was under so much stress or just had so many other things on her mind, but the things that would normally irritate her, didn't.  I thought about my situation at work, at feeling constantly attacked and the suprising ease I've had with biting my tongue, and I realized-- there's something to be said for stress. If nothing else, it can prioritize.

While I've had good times equally as intense as the bad, I would lie if I said I wouldn't remember this year as stressful.  Waiting for a taxi the other night, I kept being passed up by one after another because I didn't live far enough away.  Then a boy shouted out of his window, his buzz-cut leading me to believe he was a US soldier: "You can jump in here if you wanna fuck!" I thought of Kris Kristofferson's, "Just the Other Side of Nowhere" and how "everywhere I try to go here seems to only bring me down."



So I search for meaning, because it helps.  I know that  I'm becoming well versed in the art of restraint-- a lesson, admittedly I could have used.  I'm learning to see things for what they are-- to recognize the truth behind peoples actions; those who love and those who hate because they want to be loved. I'm learning with my students that "the love you make is equal to the love you take." (A Beatles quote outside the genre of Country that I couldn't resist) I see them listening to cd's I've made them, or handing me their art work to put on my wall, or getting an answer right and giving me a high five, and I feel rewarded.

As I balance the tricky reality of office politics, I'm learning when "to hold them... when to fold them... when to walk away...and when to run."



And when I really feel beaten up by circumstance, when one more taxi driver has taken me for a ride because I'm female and alone, when a sleezeball yells something sleezy out of his window, when someone hatefully attacks my character, I turn on Kris Kristofferson and listen to him tell me that "I knew there was something I liked about this town.  But it takes more than that to bring me down."

How Much I Hated Eat, Pray, Love

I have been anticipating Eat, Pray, Love the movie since last year when I read the book.  Don't judge me.  I have.

I read the book, I went to Bali, I had my palm read by Ketut.  I passed the book onto my aunt and then I waited for the movie to come to Korea.

Last Thursday, it did.

In the movie theater, I've never seen so many people playing on their iphones.  Julia Roberts screams, "I don't need to love you to prove that I love myself!!!" and the guy next to me looks down, slides the lock off his iphone and checks his facebook.

There wasn't even a sex scene-- thus solidifying the unfortunate trend that absolutely nothing in the movie climaxes.

But what surprised me the most was how true to the story it was, and how I found myself constantly thinking how petty and self-centered this woman is-- something I had never thought while reading the book.  But when you see it there in front of you, in a two hour and 13 minute-- or more accurately 7,980 second-- drama form, it's hard to ignore the fact that it's really just a story of a woman acting like a child.  And in the end, you're actually kinda pissed she gets what she wants.

So all in all, I hated Eat, Pray, Love.  It pissed me off.  I would rather watch Mama Mia-- which is like watching your mom dance on a bar. Actually, I would rather watch the Mama Mia sing-along version with a theater full of Claymates:

example of "Claymate"
click picture for detailed image of homemade Clay Aiken doll

That's how much I hated Eat, Pray, Love.

When It Rains In Seoul, It Pours

It has rained in Seoul for the past three days-- the kind of rain that makes the land vibrate; where full fields look like they're boiling.

The saying goes that when it rains, it pours, and for me-- this week-- the saying is true.

So in accordance with that damn saying, my computer crashed.  It was my lesson in supplimenting a lonely weekend by downloading the entire series of Sex and the City.

Stupid, stupid!

So now I'm at a PC Bong fulfilling my baser desires by browsing facebook.  And (in Carrie Bradshaw style, as tribute to my weekend) I couldn't help but wonder-- in a digital world, where lives are picture perfect (thanks to the "untag" option) is everyone really as happy as they seem?

For me, these days I'm experiencing the lonely side of travel.  The side where you're looking back on what you once had and realizing it's gone and you're living in a small apartment in Seoul, South Korea in a certain shade of neon from the pay-by-the-hour Honey Motel across the street, watching Sex and the City and wondering what the hell you're doing with your life.

The reason I always wanted to travel is because I always wanted to put myself out of my comfort zone. I felt like in travel, I could find something-- whether it be something about myself, something about the world, or something about what I wanted to do with my life. Actually, I wanted to find all three. But it seems all I'm finding is that I had already found it.  And now it's gone.

A friend of mine says that's just a drawback of travel-- it can be unstable and at times, it can make you miss what you once had.

So is that how we're supposed to live out our lives-- cursed by having been blessed?  Or is learning the lesson that we didn't appreciate what we once had, the only way to learn to appreciate what we have.

Recently I haven't been able to tell if the weather fits my mood or if my mood fits the weather.  But life has shown me-- and I know-- that both will always get better.

In the meantime, there's music.  And here's something one of my best friends Megan sent me; ignorant to how I feel, and all too perfect. Let me know what you think.

Religious Freedom in a Muslim Country

"You know, I hope you have a daughter just like you someday."

The line played in my head on the tale-end of my flight. Her tone revealed this wasn't a compliment. Instead, it was my mother's reaction to being told I was going to a Muslim country alone for my vacation. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that popular media refer to Muslims as terrorist or jihadists, but like many Americans, my mom doesn't want her daughter traveling alone to a Muslim country.

“You shouldn’t go,” she said.

I looked up as a voice came over the intercom.

"We are now preparing for landing. Fair warning: drug and human trafficking are forbidden in Malaysia. Penalty is capital punishment. Enjoy your stay and we hope you enjoyed our Malaysian hospitality."

It's not every day you hear the phrase, "enjoy your stay," prefaced with, “penalty is capital punishment.” For that matter, it's not every day you hear "capital punishment" prefaced with "fair." But I couldn't think about it; a comparable fate awaited me in my near future. I had a 12-hour long layover at KLIA.

After too much time spent looking at my shoe laces and getting ideas, I walked around and learned that the KLIA was voted the best airport in the world in 2003. But don't get too excited (dare I say you didn't), it’s still an airport. Everyone is like Sisyphus, pushing their burdens around; seemingly no end in site. I waited in line at a free internet kiosk in order to e-mail my mom to tell her I was safe. An Indian man, dressed in business casual, stood at the only working computer, apathetically scrolling through an article on Wikipedia. The woman in line in front of me voiced her frustration through heavy breathing. When she finally gave up and walked away, the man on the computer followed her irreverently with his eyes before returning to his article. I eventually gave up too, unsure if this was the type of guy to defend myself around.

I spent the night in the airport so that I wouldn't have to buy a hotel room-- that, and apparently because I'm a masochist. At 4 a.m., I was woken up by a guy playing his ring tones in my direction. As I walked away, he turned them off.

Through one bloodshot eye, I made it to immigration where the immigration officer looked around me toward the empty line.

"You're going alone?" he asked.

"Yes, why? You think it's unsafe?"

Validating my mothers warnings with one long, audible hesitation, he finally said, "Just don't take a taxi."

So I walked outside and actually considered turning around. But I didn’t. Or I couldn't. Instead, I stepped out on faith and took an airport limo from KLIA to the LCCT terminal where I was to fly to Kota Bharu.

Nervous being an understatement, at this point I was checking every street sign, checking the rearview mirror, waiting for the driver to look back at me with a head full of ideas. But he never did. Instead he dropped me in front of the airport where the mysterious Malaysia, shrouded by night just a few hours before, was finally revealed to me.

I got out of the car hesitant and also surprised. There were women wearing heals and short dresses, travelers with their traveling hats, Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians; a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, a KFC, a McDonalds and a Starbucks. This place wasn't scary. My nerves started to settle. It seemed less conservative than Korea--women were showing cleavage.

Once I arrived in Kota Bharu, I was greeted by a man holding a sign with my name on it. I piled into a bus, surprised to find myself surrounded completely by Europeans.

I wondered if Mariah Carey and Martina McBride know they've been to Malaysia. I wondered why everyone seems to be traveling in pairs. I wonder why the only empty seat is the one next to me...

Not one for subtle hints, it was only after a speedboat dropped me on the Perhentian Islands at Coral Bay and I saw not one person who wasn't holding the hand of another that I realized-- I am alone on a freaking island of honeymooners.

But at least I'm not on Nancy Grace.

That evening I walked to a nearby restaurant and stopped dead, horrified to read this sign:

"ABSOLUTELY NO BEER, LIQUOR OR WINE SOLD HERE."

Damnit my mom was right!

Something about the words 'absolutely no' in reference to alcohol, in capital letters, conjures up more fear in me than 'capital punishment.' But after visiting the dive shop to figure out a schedule, I inquired if there was any alcohol on the island and, thank Allah, there was.

So that night, I got to know the dive instructors who work there. We took some beers and the island liquor, called "Monkey Juice," and trekked through the jungle up to some abandoned chalets a few of them were squatting in.

And there, in the quiet candlelight under a jungle canopy of trees and stars, a Danish girl passed me a joint and I pondered the meaning of the word "trafficking."

She had lived in Malaysia-- in Kuala Lumpur-- most of her life.

“It’s funny,” she said, exhaling as she changed the subject back to its original topic, “You go into a bar where Indians have taken over and it’s all this Indian music and everyone's bopping their heads. You go to a bar where Europeans go and it’s all house music and cigarettes. “

“Yah,” agreed another, “This place is strange-- so many different groups and never any real problems. It’s a great example of tolerance.”

In the company of my new friends, over the next few days I went diving; I wandered around the island, smoked shisha (hookah) and jumped off jetties way passed my bed time. Alone in the evenings, I would snorkel out to the coral and watch the fish come in to feed; so thick in some parts, I felt I was crowd surfing. I swam in the calm ocean at night and watched the plankton sparkle neon around me in the moonlight. I didn’t know it could do that.

A boat and then a bus would eventually take me back to the airport where on the way, I would wonder if Dido and Rihanna know they've been to Malaysia. As we drove, we passed open-air mosques with brightly colored Muslims, kneeling and praying for Ramadan. Some were inside and some were talking on the path outside. Other, non-Muslims were smoking cigarettes, casually watching from across the street during pauses in conversation.

The arm of the driver stretched across my field of vision and motioned to a tall statue of Buddha standing stark white over the palms.

"Look there," he said. "It's a free standing Buddha. Beautiful isn't it? Many Chinese live here."

The Hindu god, Rama, danced from his rearview mirror to the sway of the road, a little out of synch with Dido’s “Thank You.”

"Yes," I said. "It's beautiful."

Korea and Abroad Video Collage

This is a video collage I put together from last year teaching English in Korea.  It also includes pictures from my travels to Japan, Indonesia and China.  To much sadness and despair, I lost the video of my mother forcing down an alive, baby octopus while maintaining a look of panic so ineffable, only a video could do it justice.  The only thing that compares to the joy I received from playing and replaying that video is the emptyness I felt at its absense on my memory card.  But the video is still pretty good-- if I do say so myself-- without it. 

Hansel And Gretel

In case you're ever left doubting the effectiveness of your lesson plans, just ask your students:

"What's the weather today?"

If they answer, "It's Friday!" you know.

If it's Monday, well, you can be certain.

You'd think this answer, so early on a Monday morning, would cause me to lose all hope in my students. But I persevere, knowing they'll catch up. Because in this country, hard work and long hours is the status quo.

Think about the US and how, at the end of the day, school buses take students home.

In Korea, they take students to other schools.

So each day at 2:30, the bell rings and children run excitedly to the buses like little Hansels and Gretels running ignorantly into the oven.

"There's no candy in the bus! But there's no candy in the..."

Slam. Lock.

Their work ethic is ineffable. The only way it could be given proper justice is if it were given a rhyme scheme and set to the tune of "I'm a Woman."

Well I get up at 8 and start the day by studying before class. I study Korean, science and history. And then I study math. I do my homework 'til midnight and then play computer games 'till I win. I wake up at 8 and wash my face and then start all over again. (jazz fingers) 'Cause I'm Korean. K.O.R.E.A.N.

...Whatever. I thought it was funny.

So in the midst of breaking up a fight one day, I come upon a complaint that I feel is uniquely Korean:

"Stop fighting!" I say. "Why did you hit her?!"

"I said I already know this and I want to learn something more. So she called me a jackass and hit me."

Ah, the old I-want-to-learn-more complaint.

My co-teacher interjects. "You want to learn more?"

Uh-oh.

"Yes."

"Something different?"

"Yes."

"Something new?"

I sense a trap Hansel, I sense a trap...

"Yes."

She smiles.

"Then you can learn consideration."

How I Met My Spouse

Koreans in general meet each other on blind dates set up through friends. In Busan, a popular first date spot is a restaurant called, and I can't make this shit up, Guess Who-- a name so appropriate, it belongs in the same category with Alexis' autograph from the famous track star, I-Perfection.

"Yah, yah, yah. We just called him Harris."

My good friend Marc recently wrote me on the topic of his upcoming blind date, in which his skepticism clearly outweighs his excitement:

"It's like going to the thrift store to find the perfect pair of underwear. Or something."

But when you ask most Korean couples how they met, they usually say it was this way: A friend set them up with someone he or she knows. Pictures were exchanged. They said nae or annio.

Which gives me an idea-- today's subject for my adult conversation class: how you met your spouse; sure to spark interesting dialogue where we branch off into different topics, filling the entire class period; all the while leaving me to plan nothing more than:

"How did you meet your spouse?"

"Blind date."

"Blind date."

"Blind date."

"Same."

Foiled again!

But now I'm curious. Searching for a more interesting story, I probe a happy expat couple I know here.

"How did you two meet in Korea?"

"We met at a bar and had sex. Same as most expats."

Drinking On The Job

You have to respect a country where old women take shots of soju with every other bite of food at dinner. Soju, by the way, tastes and feels like watered-down vodka.

I went out with my co-workers the other night and watched a 63-year-old Korean woman slowly develope eyelids.

Respect.

On the subject of drinking and work my brother, whose an expert at the former and amateur at the latter, has this to say:

"They told me at work. Oh, this is embarrassing. They told me not to come into work sober anymore."

This is unsurprising from the man whose current facebook status is "take me out to the curb... I'm trashed." (spelled suspiciously accurately)

But getting trashed is something that happens more often than you might expect in this country of overachievers and amatuer professionals. In Korea, the more you drink, the better you're thought to be at your job. Unless you're a young woman. Then you're a lush.

If you are a man, after work you are pretty much required to go out with your co-workers and drink. And not just a simple cocktail to enjoy while complaining about your other co-workers. No, you get trashed-- taken to the curb-- drinking everything from beer to soju to beer mixed with soju to CABOOMS! as my boyfriend so excitedly revealed me.

Car bombs he meant to say.

Driven to the curb.

For these business outings, I'm told one can always opt out, but will run the risk of being seen as a condemning jerk, risking even more the possibility of ever being promoted. And so, one of my earliest lessons on Korean culture was as follows: If your boss offers you a drink. Drink it.

Check. And check.

So I think back to the United States. Have I been gone so long? Is this how it is at home?

I reminisce on scenes from the summer my college friends came home. I wanted to skip work to drink with them and so, doing the only logical thing, I called up my boss and feigned a voice paralized by novacaine.

"I jussss wen to da denis and I ha too much nodacin in ma mout to come to wuh."

"Okay," my boss says. "I'll see you Wednesday."

"Okay! Thanks!" I say excitedly. "See you then!"

And I didn't have to work Wednesday either because it turns out if you're lieing about being paralyzed by novacaine, you can't articulate your excitement when you realize you've been let off the hook because you lied about being paralyzed by novacaine.

No. No, I remember now. Wanting to drink, drinking, or having drank the night before always made me worse at my job.

But, ah! I'm struck by a novel concept: What if you don't like to drink? And so I pause our walk and throw my friend the curve ball.

"But what if your boss doesn't like to drink and therefore doesn't require you to go out after work?"

"If that were the case," he says, "he wouldn't be my boss."

Beach, Bitch, Sit, Shit

So I'm teaching the lesson on how to order food in English. Key sentences: I'm hungry. Can I have some..?

Easy right? But where was the little birdy to tell me not to include a picture of a dog with anything edible in a country where dogs are something edible?

Oh. I was supposed to know that.

Oops.

I pull up a picture of an old woman scowling at a begging dog as she eats ice-cream. Cue the class in unison:

"I'm hungry! Can I have some dog?"

Ah, can I have some dog. I'll file that one away under things I never thought I would experience in a classroom, right after all the other things I never thought I would experience in a classroom:

"No, not shitty. City. Sssssssssity."

This dog experience is second only to the time my co-teacher said to me: "Good Morning, Anne! Should I teach the difference between beach and bitch?"

What? Twenty minutes prior I was searching for berryholic yogurt. Now I'm searching for a senario where beach and bitch could fall into a context where they run the risk of being misinterpreted.

I think of an ill-informed Korean kid: "Where can I find a phat beach?" Slap.

I think of my co-teacher saying, "One, two, three, look at me. Quiet please. Okay, this is a bitch. Bitch. This is a beach. Beach. Different. Understand?"

Ah, the sheer entertainment. I'm tempted. I want to say yes. I want to shout yes. YES. YES! I THINK YOU SHOULD TEACH THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEACH AND BITCH!!!

"Anne! What do you think?"

"No."-- restraint making its brief cameo into my life. "Damnit, I don't think it's neccessary."

But apparently here is where a Siegert missed a golden opportunity to be innappropriate-- and we never miss those!

Apparently-- a friend informs me-- fowl mouthed Korean boys grow up to be-- yes-- fowl mouthed Korean men. She tells me of her latest date with one:

"I need to shit," he says.

She inquires further, hoping she's heard wrong. "What?"

"I really need to SHIT." Now he's looking around. "Do you see a good place to shit?"

"Wait, you need to what?"

Pantomiming with a squat he says, "Shit."

She smiles nervously, turning her head to the side. I hope he's saying 'sit' wrong and not 'shit' right. "I don't see a place to..."

"Ah, let's shit," he says, pointing to a bench.

And thus, relief so tangible you can shit on it: he was saying 'sit' wrong.

Monday morning rolls around and I say, "Good Morning, Seosaegneem. Should I teach the difference between shit and sit?"

Single in Seoul

So... yesterday was Black Day in Korea. No, Alexis, you didn't miss the Sistas&Brothas of Seoul's annual throw down. And no, it's not the day after Thanksgiving where Koreans buy a bunch of shit.

Instead, Black Day marks the tragedy of being alone and single on Black Day in Korea-- a country, apparently where they take their self-loathing seriously.They mourn the death of their sex lives by wearing black clothes and eating black food.

I'm going to repeat that because it bears repeating. They eat black food.

This is a day where people are supposed to celebrate something they're unhappy about. As Lewis Black would say: don't think about that too hard or blood might shoot out your nose! It boggles my mind to think of how this tradition got started.

Hey, you-- single, lonely person, incapable of attracting the opposite sex-- you have nobody. Here's some R.E.M, track number 4-- "Everybody Hurts." Put on this black shirt. And here's some black shit. Eat your feelings.


My co-teacher excitedly holds up her new little black daily planner.

"Nice," I say. "Where'd you get it?"

"Yesterday, the bookstore was giving them out for free if you wear black."

"But you weren't wearing black. Anyways, you have a boyfriend."

"I know. I told him 'wait in corner.' I take my camera. It's black."

I scold her for stealing from the bitter and self-loathing. But I guess it's just as well. Giving out little black books to self-loathing singles is just a mean joke.

This Is My Life

Imagine this: A classroom full of students is let out to go to their English class. Everyone is walking. One child slowly picks up the pace. Then he gets a little faster, and a little faster still. A slow jog and boom; he's running. He sees the school gate. He goes for it.

About ten minutes later, I'm teaching the class. Three boys come in out of breath, cheeks flushed, sweaty head. "Why are you late?" I ask. "Where is Young Min?"

"English class. He see. He run."

Seeing their flushed cheeks, I realize-- this kid literally ran away from my class, and they literally tried to catch him. But this is not the running away we're used to. This isn't telling your parents your gone forever, packing a few pairs of socks, sneaking off to the playground, envisioning them forgetting about you and moving away, and then going back home.

No, this kid straight ran the hell away.

My co-teacher stares at me for a second and gives me the go-ahead-with-the-lesson look. This is probably around the time Young Min has slowed to a light jog and just performed one last look over his shoulder.

Then I'm interrupted: my co-teacher is waving her arms and yelling out the window: "Young Min! Hello!! Come in, we miss you in English class."

Young Min, apparently having been caught and turned around, is walking heal to toe to make it to my class.

This is my job.

My days are spent almost entirely with another Korean teacher. She is known as my co-teacher. We are alike to a fault in that we are both a tad unorganized. Actually, we are more like a tad organized. A drip even. Two peas in a pod and the only thing we disagree upon is which one of us is dumb and which one is dumber. For the record, I'm dumb.

This morning, we both forgot our key to the english wing and I told her if I could just get a wire hanger I could easily break in.

"Bendy stick?"

"Yes. Yes! Bendy stick."

I finagle the bendy stick through the door and a few near misses later, I've lifted the scissors that are jamming the lock. (Credit to older brother).

I update my status on facebook: Anne-Claire Siegert just broke into english wing using a wire, also known as bendy stick.

My new friend Alexis comments: ha..had a date once wit a guy who wanted to show me how to steal my own car!!!!

This is Alexis.

Alexis is my new favorite expat. Expat is a word I didn't use last year because I felt stupid saying it, but now I give up. Expat. My new favorite: Alexis.

We go out on the weekends and in the mornings we get breakfast with my other favorite expat, Caitlin. Alexis tells us about the new black guy that is obsessed with her. Because all black guys are obsessed with her.

She says, "Girl, it's one thing to have a foot fetish, but it's another thing to ask for pictures of my feet."

I say "Alexis, it's one thing to have a foot fetish and it's another thing to have a foot fetish."

Thought interrupted: my co-teacher has elongated a music stand, taken presumably out of her Mary Poppins bag. She has busted out a random flute. She has begun playing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." I'm singing along.

Children are racing in streaks behind me on the playground. First place goes to their stomachs; followed by their feet. Their heads come in last.

Now she's playing another tune and asks me what I invision. I get a hint: skylark, tiger, fish.

"A tiger is hunting fish and so is a skylark?"

"Really? That's what you invisioned?! Oh, It's my playing! You were supposed to invision a skylark flying gracefully up and down."

I've been in Korea long enough to know not to ask about the tiger and the fish.

This is my life.