Jon stars in Back to School

Since graduating college, I've never stopped considering myself a student. I assumed that this self-branding would wear off with time and better things to think about, or whatever else makes us change our self-identity with age. But I just re-entered university to study Korean full-time, so this must extends my lease on the title, yeah?

Not that it matters, but its funny. I have an 18 year-old for a roommate and Korean friends who are at least three years younger than me.



About three weeks ago I started an intensive Korean language program at a tiny Cheontae Buddhist university called Geumgang University. Its almost the complete opposite of the environment at the University of Pittsburgh. Suddenly I've gone from an urban campus to one of the most rural campuses in Korea, a 17000+ student population to one less than 300, and a vibrant campus-life on the weekends to one that stops dead friday afternoon, as kids go off to the big cities.

But its an interesting situation. Everyone here gets a free ride, courtesy of the University. They specialize in language training, so there is a constant switch back and forth between Japanese, Chinese, English and Korean. And the environment here is amazing: built on the side of a national park famed for its "energy" this area is a hotbed for Korean shamanism. If a building isn't a farm here, its most likely a shamans house. Outside my window is a shamaness's house, and there's often pots and pans and drums being hit together as they carry out their ceremonies. Also on the other side of the mountain is the Korean equivalent to the pentagon, where they carry out trainings. So, when it isn't pans and drums being beat in the night there's the occasional sound of gun shells going off during rifle practice.



While I'm making it sound like this noisy and bizarre area, its really quite peaceful and one of the most beautiful areas I've been to in Korea. I have a constant view of the mountains, long stretches of green rice fields, some historically very important temples nearby, and wonderful hiking with trail heads right behind the school. I also brought a bike along with me when I came back to Korea, so its made for some awesome sightseeing along the country roads that wind back through these parts. I'll post some stuff about my trips thus far when I get some more time.

Oh yeah, and my mailing contact for the year will be this:
Jon Farinelli
Geumgang University-- dormitory room 309
14-9 Daemyeong-ri Sangwol-myeon, Nonsan City
Chungnam, Korea 320-931

Geumgang Art Biennale

Korea's landscape works in two extremes. Either there are the mountains, where building becomes too costly, with large breadths of largely undeveloped forest, or there are the tracts of flat land where every bit of space has been parceled out for monstrous high rises, storefronts, or agriculture projects.

The Geumgang Art Biennale is an art exhibition that takes place every two years on a mountainside in the ancient Baekje capital of Gongju and finds a middleground between these two extremes. You can visit the exhibition's site here. I had a chance to go with two of my friends that I've made here at Geumgang University.

Here is one of the shining stars right here:


Most of the projects at the Biennale explore how art and construction can blend with natural environments to work symbiotically with them, while planning for the changes that the normal processes of plant growth, decay brought on by the weather, and whatnot will have in transforming their pieces. Alot of it is in the vein of Andrew Goldsworthy stuff.

We had a chance to talk with a dutch artist who made this thing.

Its a big chimney made from unfired bricks that she is gradually firing from the inside with a months worth of constant fire. Its not doing the job a normal firing process would do, but gradually hardening it up. She said that the work will be interesting for her to see in 3 or 4 years, when the elements have worn down the chimney and the foliage grows up around it to make it a normal addition to the area.

While Korea has a lot of mountains, one of the most amazing things about the whole exhibition is that the mountain is a permanent site for the biennale and these projects will stay up indefinitely after the biennale officially closes in November.

Some other things I really enjoyed looking at: This is a cliff made out of old newspapers.


And here is some more of the works, that don't need any more of my comments:

Over Ohio and High Water

After teaching a two week intensive English camp for Fulbright, I returned back to the United States for a 3 week jaunt around the life I left a year ago. Throughout this year I never really thought I would have trouble adjusting back to life in the United States -- doubting I would get the "reverse cultural shock" that everyone seems concerned about on returning -- and, truth be told, I didn't. What I did go through, however, was the strange realization that I have been gone for an entire year from my family, friends, and peers. I'm realizing now that having full interactions with people (ie. speaking the same language and having some common understanding about where each individual is coming from) has helped me throughout life to take a mental note of time while I was living in the United States. Time seems long when there are a lot of these interactions and short if there are few. Without them here in Korea, the past year flew by as if it had only been three months.

Coming home to see how time had changed my family, to hear how diseases have developed or been eased, and how people have gotten married and moved into a much different stage of their life, has made me realize how long I have been gone. But, that is a feeling I would have had even if I was still living in the states, even as close as a state like North Carolina.

All of that aside, it was nice to come back to an environment where I don't have to be as conscious about my etiquette (not that that was a big deal here, but something I did have to pay attention to), to wear my old worn-in clothes, and to eat salads in the grass. My friend Elaina also got me into seeking out wild herbs and greens: my personal favorite being Mullein, which has helped clear up my constantly-blocked sinuses. And I had a chance to go sailing, bike alot, go to a drive-in, catch up with lots of people from in and out of town, and just generally bask in those things that have come to seem genuinely American in their absence.