Smudges

We tried to peek over the gray, rusting, metal fence but all we could see were make-shift roofs, insulation poking out and occasional tarps strewn over the cinderblock walls. We moseyed out of exit two of the subway, wondering where the village was.

We were in the southern part of Seoul, still in the city, yet we were looking for a small village, unlike the rest of the city. The gray, rusting, metal fence, secluded a third world village. We approached the fence, rounded the corner and the entrance to this village was nowhere to be found! After some searching, the 30 of us disappeared through a two-foot wide opening in the fence.

This tiny village in southern Seoul is called Hwa-Hwe. It is almost hidden from the map. Our leader tried to find it on her GPS, yet it could not be found. The village did not even take up a whole city block. Our jaws dropped as we walked in, noting the third world living conditions. A single dirt alley (main street) wound through the village, passing in front of 150 homes, primitively made of cinderblock walls and tarp roofs. Remnants of insulation draped across the outside of the make-shift buildings. Dried seaweed decorated fronts of houses, as it hung to dry from the clotheslines.

The village is made up of just over 200 people, 85 of which are elderly and 40 physically disabled. Most of Hwa-Hwe does not have electricity, therefore they have no heat this frigid weather. Forty-five of these families use briquettes to heat their homes. A briquette (Yeontan, in Korean) is a melon sized piece of coal, burned to keep a house warm. One of the families told us that a typical family goes through about 4-5 briquettes each day. The families who do not use briquettes are simply left to fend for themselves, using only thick blankets to keep warm!

We arrived and were ushered to the community center, which was a building similar to the homes. This was a common place for the elderly to gather, probably simply because it had heat. There, we tied on aprons, slipped on arm covers and pulled on rubber gloves, wondering what we were getting our self into. Delivering 1, 600 briquettes had not seemed such a big task, until we saw the heaping pile ahead of us! Our group had raised money throughout the Christmas season to purchase the briquettes to donate to the village.

The village head stood before us, explaining the process. We were to split into two groups, in order to make assembly lines. We passed the briquettes down the line to stack into piles. Our assembly lines kept moving as we went down the street of houses, piling 200 briquettes at each front door. The village head observed us carefully, making sure we did not go too fast, which would risk dropping a briquette. One less briquette, meant one less house with heat. We joked and laughed as our arms got weaker and weaker. Thirty people allowed the work to go quickly. Within two hours, all of the briquettes had been delivered and the village head nodded his approval.

By the time we were finished, our clothes were dirty, our gloves black, and smudges of coal streaked our faces. We laughed at each other’s smudges as we went to the community center to wash up.

Supposedly, there are many villages similar to this one, throughout Seoul. We would not have even seen Hwa-Hwe, if we did not know what we were looking for. I wonder how many other villages like this throughout the city we have passed and did not notice. These villages are hidden right in the middle of the city, swallowed up by sky scrapers on each side.

South Korea as a whole, is very concerned with its appearance. The booming economy and culture strive to show the world its wealth and power. This is a stark contrast to what we saw at Hwa-Hwe. This village, and others like it, are viewed by many as a smudge on South Korea’s appearance. It hints at the poverty of South Korea’s past, before the country developed, just over 30 years ago. The city developed so fast that parts that did not bloom, were left to wilt. The city highlights the beautiful parts, but seems to forget the folks of Hwa-Hwe and villages like it.

Though this village has literally been forgotten and hidden from a casual observer, its people showed no hint of resentment. As we were washing up, the village head commented, “We are curious why foreigners would want to help a country that is not even their own…“ As we worked, an occasional villager would stand to observe, excited to see the much anticipated briquettes arrive. Though these briquettes will not radically transform this community, and likely the briquettes will not even last the whole winter, it will heat a home. To a cold family huddled under a blanket, it will make a difference tonight. Tonight, they were not forgotten.

This is how I celebrate Lunar New Year

Lunar New Year (Chinese New Year) is a time when families leave the city to go visit their Grandparents. Many foreigners go on a vacation, but for those of us left behind, we had to get creative.

The first night, I decided since everyone else was on a vacation, I would go to a hotel for a night. All I really wanted was a bathtub. Yes, I realize I paid way to much for a good soak...

Apparently this hotel has problems with furniture being stolen. I brought my wireless router to use my laptop, thinking I'd be pretty tech savvy. Wrong. I went to move the (very heavy) solid desk to get to the computer jack and the sirens went off! In a scurry, I tried to move the desk back, but nothing was turning off this loud siren! Finally, after a good shove of the desk back to the wall, the alarm stopped, just in time for a knock at my door. The alarm had notified the staff downstairs that I was trying to "steal the furniture"! I sheepishly opened the door, holding the computer cord, trying to explain that I'm not really a thief. Thankfully he helped me fix up the wireless router and got everything going....even though I could have done it by myself! :)

Everything was closed on Monday, the actual holiday, so there was nothing to do in Seoul. Everland, the amusement part outside the city opened especially for foreigners like us, who also had nothing to do. What better way to spend Lunar New Year than at the amusement park!? It was 8 degrees when we left in the morning and we just about froze solid throughout the day, but it was really fun.

We went to three shows. The first was a dancing character show, in which the huge frog was entirely too into it! We could not stop laughing... The next was a circus with acrobats and Chinese dragons. The third was a show with sea lions doing water tricks.

We went through a safari in "Africa," yet shivering the whole way. We saw lions, tigers and bears. The bears performed tricks right up next to our safari bus. I'd never seen a bear walk on it's hind legs before!

We went through the Korean version of the "It's a small world" ride at Disney. Each country had a section that showed it's landscape, traditional clothes and culture. The Korean dolls were wearing hanbok and carrying fans. The African country's dolls wore tribal clothes in the jungle, the German dolls wore lederhosen and were yodeling...and the American section was a football field of players and cheerleaders. How incredibly sad! That's pretty embarrassing that we have no traditional clothes and our culture is football.

In between rides, we were asked by many people to take a picture with them. Philippino people, Myanmar people and Chinese people, all wanted a Caucasian in their picture. We never saw any other Americans, until we boarded the bus to go home.

One attraction in the park was sledding. Surprisingly, sledding in Korea is much different than in America! After we were given a sled, we were hooked onto a tow rope type thing, to slide us up the hill. Why has this invention not made it to America yet?! This takes away the only bad part of sledding, climbing up the hill :) At the top, we sat down on the sled at gates! There was an announcer who pushed a button to open the gates, so that everyone would go down at the same time. A little too organized for me :)

We were hoping to find caramel corn on the way out of the park. Turns out all of the booths for snacks had already closed, except for one. We jogged over to the last booth to join the 20 person long line, until we figured out what they were selling. Peanut butter fried squid. After a good long laugh, we passed on the squid, waited for the bus for 30 minutes in the freezing cold and headed back to Seoul.

All in all, a fantastic Lunar New Year!

Job ideas?

I now have a job in writing! My first published artcile is on the Speaking Globally website, http://blog.gale.com/speakingglobally/. If you're interested, you can check it out. I'm able to write about any cultural or political events in Korea. It's nice to have some freedom to make it more personal. It's been really fun writing these articles!

I've been thinking more and more about jobs in the writing field. My dream would be to be a social justice journalist. I want to write about big topics that make a difference. Human rights, refugees, human trafficking...etc. These jobs seem to be a little bit few and far between. Anyone have any ideas?

Her Smile

It wasn’t the world’s ideal of beauty that made her beautiful. Her skin was wrinkled, she wore no makeup, her old clothes were mismatched, and her hair clearly displayed that she’d been laying down in her bed all day. Though all of these “signs” of beauty from this woman were absent, it was her smile that caught my attention from across the room. She eagerly waved me over to her dinner table.
Her name is Shin-ae. She is a resident at the Dong-bu Nursing Home in Seoul, Korea. She is an 87 year old Korean woman who unlike many other elderly people, continues to shine. I met her on my first visit to the nursing home. She is one of 350 residents in the home.
Even before I walked in, I was impressed by the huge modern building I viewed from the street. When we walked in, we were asked to take off our shoes. We placed them in little lockers, to the left of the entryway. In return for our shoes, we were given slippers. This is a common custom, both in Korean homes and some restaurants.
After watching many of the Koreans I was with, I soon discovered in order to greet Shin-ae, I would need to bow deeply from my waist while saying the formal “hello” in Korean. In daily life, the bow to say hello is simply a dip of the neck. This was the first time I’d ever bowed from my waist. This bow shows deep respect, a respect of elders that is ingrained from an early age.
She opened her mouth to speak and even mouthed the words, but had not enough strength to make a sound. Knowing she could not speak, she decided smiling would suffice. For the three hours I was with her, I never once saw the smile fade from her wrinkly mouth. I tried to use my basic Korean to make small talk with her. She occasionally nodded or gestured. To her, presence was enough.
I was with a group of 20 other foreigners. We spread ourselves throughout the five floors of the home. At one point, when taking a stroll after dinner, we came upon a concert! The performers were a local bank’s volunteers, singing Korean hip hop music, karaoke style! Strange choice for a nursing home, but one of the old ladies enjoyed this strange karaoke so much that she refused to go to dinner until the concert was finished!
I was amazed at all of the visitors to this home. The number of volunteers that day (over 50) was impressive enough, but I was pleasantly surprised to see so many families visiting their parents/grandparents. The halls were sprinkled with moms, dads, brothers, sisters and babies. All seemed happy to spend a Saturday afternoon with their parent/grandparent. I have been to a few nursing homes in the USA, yet never has a nursing home seemed so joyful!
We were told by the staff, a little bit of the history of this nursing home. She said that years ago, only the elderly with no living family would be placed in the home. In Korea, there is a great sense of responsibility for the elderly. Traditionally, when the parent becomes too old to live alone, they move into the grown child’s house and are taken care of. These days because many families have two working parents, the grandparents are put in nursing homes.
As I sat there and smiled back at Shin-ae, her friend across the table offered me a bit of her dinner. Rice wrapped in seaweed did not sound the most appetizing, so I kindly declined. She would have none of it! She pushed the seaweed bundle into mouth, while commanding me to say “Ahhh.” I thought I had appeased her, but after unsuccessfully refusing seaweed bundle numbers two and three, she called me a crazy American, and chuckled to herself!
Shin-ae invited me to take a walk with her by motioning across the room. She lead me down a winding hallway, to a living room. There, I parked her wheelchair a few feet away from the couch where I sat. She wheeled herself closer to me and gently reached for my hand. There was nothing gentle about her grip on my increasingly numb hand! She had individual attention and she wasn’t going to let go! I don’t know how many visitors she gets regularly, but I can’t help but think how lonely she, and all the residents are.
After 20 minutes of watching Korean game shows with her, it was time for me to go. The same smile remained on her face, yet a hint of sadness glossed over her eyes. I bowed at the waist again and said goodbye. Though she probably had pain in her body, feelings of neglect and reason for grouchiness, she smiled instead.

What I miss

On Tuesday, I got off work a couple hours early. I decided to enjoy the snowy day. It doesn't snow often in Seoul, so it was fun to take a walk around the lake and watch the huge flakes fall. To the adults, snow seems to be an annoyance. They carry umbrellas or sheild themselves with a paper to avoid the snow falling on them. The kids on the other hand, love it! All last winter I was curious when they said they made a snowman. I wondered how they even found enough snow! Turns out, their idea of a snowman is about 6 inches tall! Haha! All of the store owners either sweep the snow off their sidewalk with a broom, or a cardboard box. Seems like a shovel would be easier, but to each his own!

I finally had time to journal about my time at home. After a busy week at home, a busy week back at school and trying to catch up on sleep, I had been putting off my thoughts. These are some of the things that I miss:

Things I miss about America, when I'm living in Korea:
- Family
- Friends
- Bathtub
- Driving (and for that matter, traffic laws being obeyed ;))
- Open space
- Sidewalks
- Understanding everything (I found myself eavesdropping on every conversation, simply because I could! I was constantly aware of what was going on)
- Food (especially my moms!)

Things I miss about Korea, when I'm in the States:
- Friends
- Church
- Culture
- Food (surprisingly I missed rice!!)
- Safety
- Public Transportation

It's too bad I can't have both at the same time...

My sister, Beth, gave me a job opportunity this week. Her old roommate is an editor of an online publication, in which she has different people post blogs about current events/culture around the world. She asked me to write 6 blogs for this website, until I leave Korea. Then she would like me to write 2 about Thailand before I come home. I will even get paid quite well to do it! Wow, what an awesome opportunity! I will get paid, to do something I love! Pretty cool that it just fell in my lap :) Who knows, maybe it could even lead to something else!

A seat partner can make or break a 14 hour plane ride

Well I sure got a doozy of a seat partner on the way back! First of all, my seat partner was late to get on the plane. All of the overhead compartments were full. She was SUPER upset because there was no room for her (very large) carry-on over our seat. She didn't speak any English, so she began to yell at me in Korean because my bag (which wasn't even my bag anyway) was in her way! The flight attendants rushed over when they heard her yelling, "HEY! HEY!" to try to solve the problem. They told her she would have to put it somewhere else. She pushed me out of the way (literally pushed) and marched over to some other seat to put her bag there.

The whole way, she hummed (very loudly). The whole way! I thought about shushing her, but that probably would have caused trouble. I felt like my parents probably used to when we went on trips in the car and I would sing. They said something like, "Sara, lets take a nap now..." haha! Sadly this old woman wasn't tired. Then she would look at me every half hour or so and bust out laughing. The scary cackling kind of laugh that creeped me out!

If I was watching a movie, she would lean over, practically in my chair to watch my movie. She did this to the girl on the other side of her too. Me and the other girl were so amazed at this lady's behavior, we started to giggle each time we looked at each other in sympathy.

This one takes the cake. During a meal time, she decided not to put down her tray table and put her trash on mine! I didn't know what to do! Surely she wouldn't leave it there! Yes. So, I gently reached over her and pulled down her tray for her and moved her trash to her table.

Oh boy...long ride! But I'm back now and headed to school. I think I'll go to bed really early tonight! I'll write more about my time in the USA later, after I have time to process it all :)