Domestic Life

Last Friday the F-bright orientation came to an end with a large ceremony held at Yonsei University, that the F-bright office has hyped into something slightly less than a national holiday. "Yonsei Day", as they call it, is a formal introduction to our principals and co-teachers. Our schools sign our contracts and we say goodbye to the 69 other English teachers that we've lived with for the past 6 weeks of training. It was an 8 hour ordeal of polite bows and awkwardly pronounced Korean formalities, a traditional dinner, and intermittent periods of sneaking in goodbye hugs to friends. After everything was wrapped up I was shuttled two hours south of Seoul, past growing mountains and a hint of salt water breeze as we drove closer to Sudeoksa -- a mountain-top buddhist temple near the coast that is surrounded by a street of small
shops and restaurants. Here, my co-teacher Shin Su Yan and Vice Principal pulled off and we sat down with my host family for a traditional meal of many herb pan chans (side dishes), soup, and milky rice and herb wine served from a bowl with wooden spoons.

From there I seperated from my co-teacher and vice principal and loaded my bags into my host family's van so that we could drive back to their home in a small rural town called Hongseong. When I first came to Korea I said I would jump from the balcony if I ended up in one of the ugly, white high rise apartments that pock up the otherwise beautiful landscapes fo every town, big and small, in this country. But i'm now living in one and its not so bad at all. What aesthetics are sacrificed on the exterior are made up for within, and I've been making myself comfortable in my family's small, but efficiently organized home.

Details about my family: my host father is a public school teacher and my host mother does something with insurance claims through Samsung. On sunday I went on a hike on a nearby mountain with my host father's coworkers, an event that takes place once a month. Afterwards we ate Sam Bap (rice wrapped in cabbage or lettuce leaves and stuffed with other vegetable odds and ends) and I met my friend Emily's host father and watched one of the teachers smashed the back end of his car after a few drinks in the restaurant. Which actually brings up an interesting point about driving here -- per capita Korea has one of the worst records for auto accidents in the world. Whereas in the united states wearing a seatbelt in the backseat is just seen as a personal safety measure because people realize that driving can be dangerous, in Korea the back seat belt is seen as unnecessary and its actually borderline offensive to wear it. The few times that I've tried to put it on, I've been told "we just don't do that here." If I say that I like to wear it, I get the hint that I'm making some unspoken comment on their driving. Confucianism pervails!