Goodbye Apples

A Letter To My First Group of Students

Dear Apples,
I was only your teacher for four months but today you graduated and I was surprised by how genuinely sad I was to see you leave. The previous teacher left a very big shadow for me to fill, and I realize some of you will always prefer her to me. I realize that and I love you anyways. I don't know how to write this letter, so let me instead encapsulate you all in writing so that someday, maybe, I'll figure out the words that convey the feeling I am experiencing right now.
Sweet Duri who would not allow me to take a single picture of her but who loved to come up to me when I was marking papers and press her cheek to mine. There's Claire, my monkey girl, who can shimmy up anybody's legs and back with absolutely no assistance. Jason has one of the greatest, driest sense of humors I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing first hand- and he's only 8. Eric can laugh at himself with the greatest ease and I love that he's already figured out how to do that. If there was anybody I wish I could hang out and be friends with it would be him. Cindy is a bit of any ugly duckling. She's two heads taller and twenty pounds heavier than any other student at Kids College, so the slightest tap of her elbow is enough to send a kid flying and into tears. But witnessed the great enthusiasm Cindy has for life as well as seen her gorgeous mother and know she's going to grow up to be a beautiful lady. Her BFF, Jerome, is my wunderkid and the student I'll probably miss most. He's the most sponge like human being I've ever met. Say something to him once and he'll not only remember, he'll start applying it instantaneously. He also has silver dollar eyes that convey so much emotion and were always an indicator of how successfuly my lessons were going. Sharan is a new student and while she's slow as molasses, she is one of the happiest people I've ever met. Jack is also new, and a bit of an odd duck. But he's smart. And in a couple of years he's going to be fluent in English. Bless Robin. That kid will never suceed as a student, but there is nobody at Kids College quicker or more capable at putting together science and art projects. Whenever I was confused I would ask him for help. Michael. The world is not going to be easy for Michael, but he's got a great laugh. Joshua, everything will be much easier for you once you get this hygience thing figured out. I missed you this last month because you were such a nice kid. Earnest, diligent, and an alroud great student. Chris and Harry: I hope that someday you two develop some sense of compassion. For the rest of Apple Class, I loved you all so much and will never forget my first teaching experience as your teacher. You locked me out of my classroom. Showed me the importance of wearing leggings with skirts. Were a walking, talking batch of birth control. Showed me my own capablity. Made me want-possible for the first time ever-kids of my own. And I loved you.
Megan Teacher

Service

Whenever you travel there are several things people just don't tell you that turn out to be pretty important. For Korea that would be a little phenomenon we like to call service. When you order food at a restaurant, you are paying for whatever it is that you ordered, but not the plates of steamed egg, gimchi, popcorn, fruit, etc that the owner of the restaurant sends over to you at what seems like arbitrary times throughout your meal under friendly smiles and a word recognized in both languages: Service. One time, after ordering only a pitcher of beer, we were sent over a platter of chicken wings. At another it was a big (and around 40,000 won) piece of edible ginseng. Today, while picking up groceries at my local market, I was rewarded with a few washclothes for buying eggs and tofu. The overeager sales lady just put them straight in my purse and when I tried to see how much they cost she brushed my handaway and insisted it was service. It is such a great method. They know I am buying something from them and to thank me, they give me something in return. It gives a whole new meaning to the word "service." I've never traveled to another country where we are expected to tip waiters and waitresses and-usually- you receive far superior service than anything you get in the States. Here, in Korea, it extends beyond the walls of restaurants to your corner stores and department stores! I spent a year as a waitress. I really want to support all the struggling actors and actresses who earn their living replenishing my never ending basekts oftortilla chipa but now that I've been to Korea...the bar has been risen.

Eh?

It's funny, but I think the culture I am learning most about here in Korea is not the culture that exists 8,000 miles away from my home, but that which exists only a few hundred. Canada. Maybe it had to do with growing up in Southern California, where Mexico was our closer neighbor but I've never really given that massive country due North much thought. Until I came to Korea. Last night I ended up hanging out in a sports bar in Itaewon- a very foreigner friendly area-to watch a hockey game with a bunch of co-workers. Everyone of them with the exception of myself and one other, are from Canada and it just realy hit home how different that culture is from our own. I mean they speak English. But they also speak French. Do you know theres a tradition of pieing their prime ministers? As in taking a pie and shoving it in the face of the leader of their country? Or that they, technically at least, still look at Queen Elizabeth as their monarch. She's still on all their currency. I learned about Don Cherry, a former NHL coach and now a pop culture mainstay who is known for wearing absurd jackets when doing his half time commentary and who is so iconic that the room was silenced and the volume raised when he came on. I tasted my first Ceasar, a ridiculously popular Bloody Mary type drink with clam juice, that I had heard about for weeks but which the bar had not been able to serve because of their lack of clamato juice. As soon as the owner entered- all decked out in his hockey paraphenelia- the bar erupted into joy and at least 3 people at every table in the bar started ordering them and kept them coming until the game was over. Best of all, I got to see how incredibly caught up everyone got with this game. I mean, hockey? In the State's we're all about football all the time. In Europe it's soccer. Korea seems really into baseball. Canada, however, fulfills every stereotype and is ALL about hockey.

Today I stepped so far out of my comfort zone I ended up in a situation I swore I would never find myself in while I was in Korea: in a steam room with a bunch of naked women. It's called a jimjabong and they're just like the bath houses of Rome, except it's not Italy it's Korea. And being a foreigner in Korea is always going to be a bit more obvious than being a foreignerin Italy. Such as when we were walking around, buck naked, in Korea and were the only people in the room that did not have ink black hair. And were from a culture that puts personal grooming on a higher level than their own did. But once I got comfortable with the aesthetic, I found it a wholly entertaining, supreme cultural experience. After showering, there are 3 tubs of varying degrees and a really intese steam room. Most locals only spent a few minutes in the tubs then went to a scrubbing station where they sit in front of a mirror and scrub so roughly and for so long that I feel quite certain that Korean's molt. The greatest to watch were the older women-the ones whom gravity had started to pull down, if you know what I mean-and when they couldn't reach certain spots on their backs. Other women would come over, squat behind them-still completely naked-and go to town on those hard to reach spots. Quite humorous. As were the mom's who brought their kids with them and set them all around the tubs with toys to entertain them while mommies bathed and scrubbed.

Our 3 Cameras Took Over 1,000 Pictures

There were lots of lantern pictures.

Maranda and I in front of Bird's Nest, the stadium where the opening and closing games of the Olympics were held.
Maranda and I doing the Lady and the Tramp moment.
Slippery Little bugger
Maranda enjoying candied strawberries.

A steamed dumpling shop we happened upon.
We had many experiences with food on a stick.
Tea.

Me playing in one of the nooks on the Great Wall.

Michele playing in another.
Michele and I doing lunges up the steps. Note how there's nobody around us. Our own, private Great Wall.
Maranda participating in a game that combined jump roping and running.
Michele jump roping Jingshan Park
Jingshan Park
Maranda and I in front of Chairman Mao Memorial Museum
My favorite picture of the 3 of us taken in front of the Forbidden City at sunset. I love how empty Beijing was.

Michele and I chair skating at Houhai Lake... one of my favorite activities that we stumbled accidentally upon.
Maranda and I in Tiananmen Square, just before the cop cars started herding everybody out. It was really cold.

So I Ate in China

Maranda was a vegetarian and had been having a lot of difficulty eating in Korea. I’m sure eating as a vegetarian in China is just as limited as eating as a vegetarian in Korea, but the options are totally different and therefore she fell in love with the culinary world of China which was great for Michele and I- as ravenous carnivores we really wanted to eat Peking Duck when actually in Peking (or what used to be called Peking.)- and we could all go to restaurants and all order great food off the menu. The very first restaurant we entered in Beijin was a vegetarian restaurant...that served duck. Or soy duck. But it looked like a duck, tasted like duck, and you know what they say about that...It was actually a very memorable meal due to a tricky noodle soup that consisted of one very long, thick, and slippery noodle that the very rounded Chinese chopsticks could not get a good grasp on. It ended up on the table...in my lap...nearly everyplace but my mouth. This restaurant is also notable because Maranda and I both ordered Cream and Mushroom Soup. Stupidly, we thought it would be cream of mushroom. We didn't realize the importance the "and" would play. Because this soup was literally cream. And mushroom. Very, very weird. The rest of the meal is a blur of squeals and giggles as none of us could really get past the soup that consisted of a single noodle and a soup with actual cream. We also got the opportunity to get a closer look at Chinese currency (called both the Yuan and the RMB) and every single unit has the same picture of Chairman Mao.

Our favorite places ended up being random holes in the walls we happened upon. Michele decided we should walk a different way back from Starbucks (…yes…we got coffee at Starbucks, but in our defense it was the only coffee/tea place opened on the holiday) and we found this fantastic tea house where we spent a good hour drinking tea (after coffee... which made me have to literally run home to pee because I was tired of using the public bathrooms that are located every 30 meters in China. Oh, I could write an entire blog on the bathrooms of China…) Later that day I begged the other two to forgo the bus and to walk to the park we were heading to. We came across this steamed dumpling shop where we ordered 3RMB (about 50 US cents) platters of dumplings. They were filled with scallions, pork, carrots, beef, mushrooms, eggs. They were fantastic. Later in our walk we found eggs on a stick, but the fascinating thing about them was that they were tiny little bird eggs, about a quarter of the size of a chicken egg. We couldn’t resist and had to try one. Who knows what little winged creature we ate… Later that same day, (I know!) we each ordered a pastry from another roadside stand and she was so thrilled at our presence (3 young white girls attracts a lot of stares and squeals and pointing in Asia) that she gave us a half a dozen extra and a cup of ginger tea at no extra cost.
And these pastries were good. Think of drinking a great latte, turn it into cream, and then transport that into a small little pastry puff. Mmmm.

We did go to a duck restaurant and had some great duck (it just melts in your mouth, mmmm) but the restaurant itself was kind of odd. Firstly, half the items on the menu (including water) were not available. The food was good, but because we didn’t want to order a whole duck we had to order a la carte and therefore got a 10% service charged added on. After we left, we went to the bathroom just outside of the restaurant and spent five minutes inside, tops. As soon as we exited and set out to leave the building we saw that the restaurant was black. Dead. Not a single person was inside of it. The doors were locked and the lights were off. We couldn’t help but wonder if we had imagined the entire experience. Was it an allusion? Had we really just eaten a meal there? Who knows, but it was really weird.

We seemed to eat at one restaurant a day and spent the rest of the day filling up on street food and snacks. Some of the street food we loved were corn on a cob, giant sweet potatoes, and sticks of candied fruit. The candied fruit vendor at one place took his art very seriously and literally screamed at us for taking his picture. We figured he overcharged us so it’s a wash.