I watched 포화속으로 (translated literally as "Into the Gunfire") today after class with a friend of mine (my "cousin," actually). The story is of a single battle that occured during the Korean War. Due to the lack of troops, a group of 71 student-soldiers were charged with defending a strategic point against the advancing North Korean army making its way to Pohang, a shipping port in the south of Korea. As this summer marks the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, there's been a lot of films and dramas being released that deal with the war; this is one of them.
I swear I haven't cried so much in the last five years as I did in one two-hour span today. I used to really enjoy action movies, though war movies weren't ever really my thing, but at some point I stopped cheering at all the explosions and started thinking about all the collateral damage they cause. Watching a movie that is based on an actual historical event just multiplied that feeling a hundredfold. Everything is a thousand times more tragic when you stop to think about the things that don't show up on the screen -- all their mothers, their little brothers and sisters, their fathers, their sweethearts, the children they would have had, the things they would have done, the innocence they lost and all the terrible things they had to do and live through.
I'm not doing a terribly good job of saying what I was feeling. Ideas and feelings that seemed so impressive at the time really lose all that when you try to put them into words. Suffice it to say, it was a good movie, one that made me think, and remember.
I love eating on the floor. Actually, I pretty much just love the way Koreans eat food, period. I love eating with chopsticks. I love having my bowl of rice, and eating out of the common dishes that fill the rest of the table. I love having a 찌개 (Korean soup) and five million kinds of 김치 (kimchi), or just the one common kind with rice and 김 (roasted, salted seaweed). I love eating fruit after every meal. (The only exception to this is when the fruit happens to be tomatos with sugar sprinkled on them. I've changed a lot of my thinking since coming to Korea, but I'm afraid that I'll always see tomatos as a vegetable, despite their actual classification as a fruit.) I love that so much of Korean family life revolves around food.
I love that people love that I greet them in Korean. It almost never gets old, that little start of Oh, I wasn't expecting that when someone tries to pantomime something to me and I speak back to them in Korean. Or the way they exclaim, "You're so good at Korean!" when all I've said is hello. Sometimes this grates, but usually not.
I love the Korean emphasis on the family. I especially love Korean little kids. I think I want at least one of my very own. Still working out on how to swing that...
I love Korean floors. I love that no one wears shoes in the house, and that the floors are always spotlessly clean. (This is important when you use it not as just a surface to rest other things on, but as your living space.) I especially love that Korean floors are heated in the winter, instead of uselessly heating the air in the room. It makes winter mornings much more enjoyable.
I love Korean pop culture. So much more enjoyable than its American cousin.
Two weekends ago I went to Busan to visit an old companion of mine. She was my only Korean companion, and she was also my first junior companion. She's literally an angel -- I've never known a sweeter, more generous and giving person in my life. I was sad that I was with her for only a transfer before I got transferred to another area.
Busan is about three and a half hours away from Jeonju by bus. We decided that I'd take the 930 bus and she'd meet me at the terminal and we'd figure out our plans from there. No big deal, right? My first stroke of bad luck was getting to the bus terminal in Jeonju and realizing that my phone hadn't stayed on after I turned it on that morning. The battery had died the day before, but I'd been sure to plug it in that night, and hadn't bothered to drop my charger in my bag, because I was only going to be gone for the weekend, right? It turns out that my phone hadn't charged, I'm not sure why, and I was headed to Busan to meet my companion without any way to contact her -- because, of course, the only place I had her number was in my phone. I didn't have anyone else's number memorized, either. I got on the bus and hoped that she'd be there waiting for me when I got to the station like she said she would be; otherwise, I wasn't sure what was going to go down.
I made it to Busan and into the terminal. I walked along slowly, looking all around me: no luck. I headed upstairs, looked outside, waited for twenty minutes; no sign of her. I started panicking slightly. The only person I knew in Busan was her; and unlike Seoul, I didn't know my way around, I'd never been there before, and I didn't even have her address so I could try to make my way to her house and wait for her there. I prayed. I looked around some more. Still no luck. I prayed again, a little more earnestly. Dear God. I know this is my fault for ignoring that little niggling in my mind this morning that said to put my charger in my bag. I know this is my fault for not having the presence of mind to keep a written copy of her number with me. But God, I really don't know anyone here, I have no way of getting in touch with her with my phone dead, and she's not here. Help. Please.
I tried turning on my phone, to see if that would be the answer to my prayer. Maybe it would miraculously stay on long enough for me to retrieve her number, and then I could call her from a payphone. After a few tries it wouldn't even turn on anymore. Strike that idea.
Before I could completely abandon myself to despair, a tiny little thought niggled its way into my brain. What if I called the missionaries? My companion was a return missionary, and missionaries love return missionaries. Surely they'd have her number. The phone book would probably have the number for the church, and it was lunch time so maybe they'd be at the church making copies or something...it was the best shot I had. I went downstairs and found -- miraculously -- a phone book in one of the phone booths. I looked up the name of the church -- 예수 그리스도 후기 성도 교회. There were some fifteen entries, at least. I had no way of knowing which was her ward, so I just started from the first one and decided to work my way down the list. No one answered at the first number, so I tried the second. Success! Someone answered, but I could barely hear him. I asked if the number was for the Haeundae Ward. He said no. I asked if he knew the number. He said yes, but asked me why I wanted to know. I explained what had happened, and added that I was trying to get ahold of my companion. He asked who it was. I told him. Ah! he said, I know her. Would you like me to give you her number?
I gave her a call, and after a few minutes of searching for each other, we discovered that we were in competely different terminals. Turns out there are more than one, and which one you end up at depends on where you leave from. I left from the only one I knew about, and she went to meet me at the only one she knew about. If I hadn't been able to get in touch with her, I would have had to turn around and go home -- I never would have found her, no matter how long I waited, and she never would have found me, either. I have no idea who it was I called on the phone. I found out later, after I told my companion the story, that it really was miraculous that I was able to get in touch with her -- a little while before, she had switched phones and her number had changed, and most people didn't have her new number. Even if I had reached the missionaries, for instance, they would have had the wrong number. Somehow, I got in touch with one of very few people who had the correct number.
We had a great weekend together, even though it did rain. (The area she lives in is very famous in Korea for its beaches. We walked along one for about five minutes, and then the heavens opened in a very Noah-like fashion that lasted all weekend.) I was able to charge my phone and got home without any further incidents, but now I have a really cool story about personal revelation and listening to the Spirit and a firmer conviction that God loves us even though we're pretty much always screwing up. There was nothing I did that made me deserving of the miracle I received, but I took God at His word that if I asked in faith, I'd get an answer, and He did. I hope all of you will have an occasion to do the same -- but perhaps in a less dramatic fashion.
...and mine is in Korea. To tell the truth, I was worried before I came back. Everyone (oh, nebulous Everyone, cousin to They!) told me that it's different when you're not a missionary, that I would find it very different and not to be disappointed. Plus, this time around I'm not in Seoul. Nope, this time I'm in a "small city" of only 700,000 people. (I keep trying to convince Koreans that this is, in fact, quite a large city, but they don't buy it.)
But to tell the truth, I'm more in love than I was the first time. Well, by the end of the first time. Of course it's different when I'm not a missionary, but everything I love about Korea is still the same -- the food, the people, the culture, plus, this time around I get to add in an obsession: dramas! And noraebangs! (Basically, it's private karaoke where you only have to sing in front of your friends.) And, I don't have to walk around all day in the summer heat, so that's definitely an improvement. The truth is, in some ways I feel more comfortable and at home in Korea than I do in the States. I'm not sure why that is, exactly, but maybe it's because somehow I blend into the rhythm of life better. Maybe it's because I blatantly stick out that I feel more like I fit in. I don't know. I just know I love it here.
I wish I had some pictures to post, but my camera has pretty much bitten the dust. (This is in addition to my computer and my iPod. This is not a good year for my electronics.) So instead I'll just write a little bit about what's going on right now.
I'm in Jeonju, South Korea, studying at Chonbuk National Unversity. I get up every morning around 645, get ready for the day and eat the (very hearty) breakfast my 이모 (it means "aunt") makes for me, then head out around 750. I catch the bus about 805, make it to the classroom by about 830, and have four hours of classes starting at 900. There are three classes, beginning, intermediate, and advanced; I'm in the advanced class. For the first two hours we have 유승섭 선생님 (Professor Yoo Seung-seop), who is our grammar teacher; for the last two hours, we have 이숙정 선생님 (Professor Lee Sook-jeong) for speaking and listening. She's pretty much the bomb. I want to grow up to be just like her. On Friday afternoons and Monday mornings, instead of our regular class we have 김병용 선생님 (Professor Kim Byeong-yong), who is...well, he's supposed to be our writing teacher, but he mostly just lectures for two hours about whatever he wants, then gives us massive, ugly, really-difficult-even-for-Koreans articles to translate into English.
At one pm, we let out for lunch, then have the rest of the day to do homework (this is Korea, after all, the land of much homework and constant studying). We also meet with our peer tutors. Mine is particularly awesome. Her name is 김경숙 (Kim Kyung-sook), and she's a year younger than me so she calls me 언니 (the term for a girl's older sister) and we're not actually friends by Korean standards (only people the same age can be "friends" -- everyone else is a "close [fill in the appropriate relationship term here]"), but we are good friends in the American way of looking at it. I usually come home in the evening around 1900, sometimes earlier and sometimes later, depending on what activities we had in addition to class that day. My family -- my 이모, my little sister, 민경 (Min-kyung), and my little brother, 준영 (Jun-young). I do have a dad, but he lives and works in Seoul during the week and only comes home on weekends; since I've been gone every weekend except the first one, I haven't seen him in about three weeks. But we're going on a family trip this weekend, to Seoul, to a waterpark, so that will be fun. Anyway, after dinner (which is very yummy; my 이모 says she's not a good cook, but all the food is wonderful), we usually do homework, watch TV (DRAMAS!!!!! In real-time in KOREA!), tease each other, ask various language questions, or I get quizzed on my day. It's a very relaxed, family atmosphere. I'm getting spoiled, too, because my 이모 does everything and won't let me help. It's very different from my family, that's for sure. But not bad. ;)
Next post: my cool adventure in 부산 (Busan) and some more about what I'm doing.
