Coffee Helps

It’s a year today.

One year since the fighting and shouting and door-slamming stopped. One year since I sat in a bus station in Estonia, my possessions spilling out from a collection of tattered bags at my feet. One year since I blindly climbed on to the night bus to Latvia with my heart broken and my plans in tatters and my Eeyore clutched tightly to me. One year since I cursed myself for ever loving or trusting.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the pain, and I’m troubled by just how long it took for it to start to ease, but of course everyone was right. I knew they were, it just didn’t console me much. Time is always a healer… and in the meantime, you just have to hurt and hope.

A wise woman left a comment on that first heartbroken post, saying: It’s hard to keep going when things look dark, but you never really know what will be around the next corner – keep moving, keep looking, keep experiencing and in a years time you could end up looking back and thinking this was the best thing that ever happened you….

I remember exactly where I was when I read it. I remember the isolation and fear and rejection and loneliness I was feeling. And I remember thinking, oh God, I hope so. I hope so. I didn’t think it possible that I could ever feel good about it… I could only hope. And now, after that year has passed?

It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I wouldn’t wish to go through the heartache again for anything, but I’m glad I did, because it has made me stronger. (Bitter, too, for a while, but I think that’s mostly gone!) I am independent now, and I don’t need the approval of someone who’s never going to give it  in order to feel confident. I’ve gone from being a struggling writer with major self-esteem issues and no sense of self-worth, to being a teacher on the other side of the world, seeing the effects of my hard work and seeing just how many people like being with me when I like myself enough to let them.

I am happy. I still think of Riho, and I still occasionally feel sad or angry or even bitter, but those moments are now few and far between. It’s in the past. I’m free, I’m happy, I’m more confident, I’m even wiser, in some ways! I mingle, I have a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. And although I will admit that I’m very reluctant to let anyone come too close (having decided, if you recall, that I wanted to be a rock and an island), one or two of them have somehow managed to sneak past the protective walls and start to really matter to me. It makes me a little nervous… but it’s also nice.

So Mr. Happy was right, as we all knew he would be. It was only for a time, and I had to feel it before I could leave it behind me. It was horrible, and it was painful, and I couldn’t see the end of it, but here I am today in a pretty damn fantastic place that I would never have reached, with people I would never have met, experiencing things I would never have done, if things had not gone the way they did… one year ago today.

You must learn that it is OK to be sad. The Sad is not to be ashamed of. The Sad is a part of life. But it is to be a ladder to greater things, not a stone that is thrown at you and makes you fall. You must take The Sad and let it grow you. You must climb up. You must let pain make you stronger and wiser. The Sad is not your enemy unless you let it attach to you and choke you, and pull you down. You must feel The Sad before you can leave it behind you. Everything happens for a reason, it is true. But that does not mean you cannot have The Sad, for a time.   

- Mr. Happy.

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So, having spent a day in the sun on Saturday, we headed back to Seoul station to find that we had just missed the last train home. It was for this reason that we ended up in a jimjilbang - my first experience of this famous part of Korean culture.

Jimjilbangs are everywhere, but I’d never been to one because, well, there’s a lot of nudity involved. It’s all very well to strip off for a sauna or something, but I really feel that there can be few things more awkward than wandering around a completely unfamiliar place in the nip, trying to read the various signs in Korean and not being able to communicate with anyone. Still, the volume of wine and beer consumed at the braai would be enough to settle anyone’s nerves, I’d imagine.

A jimjilbang is a 24-hour establishment designed for rest and relaxation. It only costs about 8,000 won (less than a fiver), which makes it a great option for budget travellers, as you can sleep there and avoid going to a motel. When you go in and pay, you’re given loose-fitting shorts and a t-shirt to sleep in, a couple of small towels, and a locker key. Then you enter either the male or female door and put your shoes in your locker before continuing through to the next room – a large locker and changing area.

Once you’re as naked as the day you were born, you proceed through the glass doors to the baths.

There are loads of showers complete with soap and cloths and brushes, each shower with its own seat and mirror area. There are hot tubs of various skin-peeling temperatures, saunas and steam rooms, massage tables, and cold pools to plunge into after sweating it out. Once you’re all pampered and dried and in your pyjamas, you go through to a mixed-gender area, where you can eat at a snack bar, surf the net or play games in a PC bang, watch TV, or just go to sleep. You just grab a sleeping mat and find a quiet spot to lay it down on the floor and sleep.

I loved it. I was hot and sweaty and uncomfortable by the time we got there, and it was such a relief to scrub away all the grime and then plunge into that cold pool! Being a naked foreigner on the large side is a little off-putting when you’re surrounded by impossibly small and beautiful Korean women, but I’m so used to the staring now that having no clothes on didn’t seem that much different – I might as well be walking down the street naked sometimes, going by the stares I get.

Waking up was slightly disconcerting though. When I went to sleep, I was curled up in a quiet corner of a large, fairly empty room. When I woke up and headed to the bathroom, I was surrounded by bodies, all lying motionless on the floor. I had to carefully step over them to get to the toilets. It seems that a lot of Koreans use the jimjilbangs as a cheap and convenient place to crash after a night out partying.

But everyone being dressed in matching outfits did make it look awfully like some kind of cult suicide pact had just been carried out!

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An unexpected consequence of coming to live in Korea has been the opportunity to learn about and experience cultures other than Korea’s. By far the most interesting of these to me so far has been South Africa, having had virtually no information about that country until recently. But then I moved to Korea, started working with a South African girl, met several other South Africans through her, and this weekend I even got to experience the real South Africa for a day… albeit in Seoul, but still!

Excitement about the World Cup is mounting in Korea. Koreans are mad about football, or soccer as it’s known here, and I have very much enjoyed seeing merchandise and t-shirts appearing with slogans such as “Let’s together go to the Africa!”. And although I’m not much of a football fan, I must admit that I’m getting into the spirit of things – particularly because the South Africans around me are obviously wildly excited about this one.

And so, along with some other Irish friends, I was made an honorary South African for the day and headed off to Seoul to spend Saturday at a pre-World Cup braai in Nanji Park. A braai is a traditional South African BBQ, involving meats I’d never heard of, which the South African population of Korea had imported especially for the occasion. There must have been about 500 people there, all eating boerewors, biltong, and the most amazing lamb chops I have ever tasted in all my life. All washed down with cool wine and beer in the blazing heat of the afternoon… lekker!

Ah yes, the heat. It’s getting a bit silly now, by the way. 25°C by breakfast time and in the thirties by lunch, not bothering to go down to a sensible temperature so that you can get to sleep at night, that sort of thing.  And it’s only the start of June! (Still trying not to think about July and August.) A few of us were overheating horribly by the time we actually got to the braai venue, thanks to walking in the scorching heat whilst trying to carry all our supplies for the day. Sitting in the shade of the gazebo, sipping on wine and fanning ourselves, we felt much better, but it was still seriously hot. Dancing in the sunlight as if it were a dance floor in a night club probably didn’t help, either, but we were saved by a child who mischievously sprayed the crowd with water from his water gun. No doubt expecting to be told off, he was both amazed and delighted to be given a hearty cheer of approval from a crowd who turned desperately towards him and held up their arms. He spent the rest of the day spraying water over dancers.

A great time was had by all, and I had the wonderful experience of being on the “dancefloor” when everyone spontaneously started singing the national anthem. I’d never even heard the South African national anthem before, and there I was surrounded by all these passionate people with their hands on their hearts and their glasses/tumblers/entire bottles of wine waving in the air as they belted it out in a way that made goosebumps appear on my arms. In Korea.

I fall in love with this place a little bit more with every passing week.

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The latest incident in my “I’m allergic to the country that I so love living in” saga has been eye problems, starting with an impressively ugly burst blood vessel in my right eye last week.

Although it healed very quickly, my eye has been scratchy and sore ever since, staying shut in the morning until I wash it, giving me blurry vision, watering, and causing me to feel headachey and tired.

Hang on, it’s still giving you trouble? exclaimed Terri this afternoon as I wiped away another irritating tear and mentioned that I would’ve thought it would be better by now. I nodded sheepishly, sensing a lecture, and she put her hands on her hips. You don’t want to take chances when it comes to your eyes! Why don’t you go to the doctor?

I explained that, had I been back at home, I would have gone to the doctor at the point at which I burst the blood vessel. But here… I just feel so helpless! Any time I want to go to the doctor, or even get medication for something as simple as a cold,  I have to get someone to take me and be my voice. It’s incredibly humbling to stand there helplessly as the nurse or whoever asks about your symptoms and you can only look blankly at them, while your boss does all the talking. I like to be independent. Having to take someone with me to do the simplest things just makes me feel like an infant, and a burden. My school director is a genuinely lovely woman who insists that it’s no trouble, and that she’s happy to take me to the doctor rather than find out that I’m struggling to get through the day due to some easily treated illness. But still… no one likes to have to rely on someone else for things that they could previously do by themselves. I hate being babysat!

That’s all very well, said Alex, who’d wandered into the office as I told all this to Terri, but if your eye’s still sore and blurry after all this time it could be something far worse than an infection.

Go to the eye doctor! added Terri sternly. Which sounds like the better option: being babysat, or going blind?

Suitably chastised and more than a little alarmed, I went to the eye doctor. Thankfully, I’m not going blind and he told me (well, my boss) that my eyes are just dry due to air conditioning (get used to it, eyes) and tiredness. He gave me a prescription for drops, we collected them, and my boss drove me home. The whole thing took about 20 minutes from leaving work to arriving home, thanks to the crazy see-it-to-believe-it efficiency of the Korean healthcare system. They might have an annoying reluctance to dispense medication in large enough volumes to allow you to have a medicine cabinet at home, but it’s very cheap and very fast to see a specialist of any body part – you don’t even have to make an appointment, and the visit plus eye drops cost me a total of 6,ooo won (about £3).  If I spoke even slightly better Korean, my frustrations at the need to go regularly to the doctor for what we’d call over-the-counter drugs probably wouldn’t exist, as it really doesn’t take any more time than it would have taken me to drive to the nearest chemist from my house in Ballymena. It’s just the fact that I can’t do it without burdening someone else that makes it a hassle – I’d rather pay the extra money for medication just to avoid having to disturb someone else in order to be able to visit a doctor.

Still, I suppose, philosophically speaking, it’s good for a person to have to depend on others now and again. Keeps us humble and grateful! But still doesn’t make this damn language any easier to learn…

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Someone on Facebook recently asked the question: “In which ways have you been Koreanised?”.

After a bit of thought (and some inspiration from the replies he got), I came up with these Koreanisations – things that are now natural to me but which I know might seem strange if I were to continue with them when in my own country…

• The bowing. I bow a lot – I do it to say hello, goodbye, thank you, and sorry. Sometimes I catch myself bowing to the children, even though I’m not actually supposed to do that.
• I give and receive objects using two hands, and money with my left hand on my right elbow. Not only that, but I actually see it as disrespectful if a child accepts something from me using only one hand, and I will even go as far as reminding them that they need to use both.
• A grunt is now an acceptable form of communication to me, and I often respond with one instead of speaking.
• I cross my two index fingers in an “X” when saying “no”.
• I cross my arms in a huge “X” when saying “NO!”.
• I drink soju instead of vodka.
• Automatically removing my shoes at the door of an apartment, school, a restaurant… and actually noticing when characters in Western TV shows and movies fail to do this, and thinking it weird and unnatural.
• I don’t quite know what to do with a fork any more, and on the rare occasion when I am given one, go on about how clumsy and awkward it is.
• On that note, I can successfully dissect and consume a fish of any shape or size with chopsticks.
• I answer negative questions in the opposite way from how I used to, saying yes when I mean no and no when I mean yes. (e.g. “Don’t you like it?” – instead of saying “no” (no, indeed I don’t), I nod and say “yes” (that’s correct, I don’t!). I now know that saying “no” would be interpreted as “no, you’re wrong, I do like it!”.)
• I notice when someone at the table has an empty glass, and immediately refill it for them. I also hold out my glass when someone makes eye contact with me and raises the bottle. There is never any spoken communication over this process, and conversations are uninterrupted.
• I don’t notice when people are openly staring at me.
• I put verbs at the end of the sentence, rarely use articles, say things like “change-ee” and “size-uh”, use extremely basic vocabulary, speak in the present tense regardless of whether I’m talking about the past, present or future, and often forget words. This is all in English, by the way!
• I make the ‘v’ peace sign in photos. I can’t help it. I detest it, and yet I just can’t stop. I would only have done this back home if I was purposely trying to be corny or a bit dopey-looking.

• I speak in a strange dialect with my friends:  English(ee) with bits of Konglish and several recurring Korean words thrown in.
• I don’t consider it a meal if there’s no kimchi with it. I will demand kimchi if it’s missing at my table in a restaurant, and I eat it with my meals at home.
• I have an oversized decorative phone charm.
• I’ll comfortably yell “yawgio!” to get the attention of a waiter. “Yawgio!” basically means “Here, you!” or “C’mere!”, and seemed outrageously rude to me when I first got here.
• I find it appropriate to settle all disputes and make all decisions using rock-paper-scissors, chanting the Korean “gawi-bawi-bo” at the start – even with my foreigner friends.
• I carry a tissue in my bag at all times in case I need to go to a public toilet.
• I freeze in horror if I’m writing someone’s name and realise I’m using a red pen.
• I mime everything.
• When walking along pathless roads, I nimbly skip out of the way of scooters and casually dodge cars without having to stop talking to the person I’m with in order to concentrate on not being hit.
• I don’t get offended very easily any more, and am much more direct and blunt with others, too.
• After a night out, I go to a 24-hour Korean restaurant and eat a good, hearty, healthy bowl of kimchi jjiggae and rice instead of going to McDonalds or a hotdog stand.
• I expect free stuff with all my purchases.
• I am unsurprised when I have to leap out of the way of a speeding motorbike (or even a car) on a footpath.
• I leave my handbag unattended and have stopped being on guard against pickpockets in busy public places.
• I find myself covering my mouth when I laugh.

I’m sure there are many more, and I’ve only been here for 8 months! It’s quite strange to think of how natural some of these things are to me now, and how difficult it will be to stop doing them when I’m not in Korea. Just shows you how quickly your perception of what is “normal” can change…

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