Gonna Make This Garden Grow

Earlier this week, I felt a sudden urge to connect the dots between last year's travels and my current life. If I wait much longer, the urge will fade and then reappear too late for me to remember it enough. So I think I'm ready to tell those stories now. And to keep myself in the background. This may be my last post on Korea for a little while, so I will gather experiences in the meantime.

Winter has bid us goodbye, not to return for a good six months. It's hard to believe it. Soon it will be summer swelter. I'll be super glad not to live in heat-rising-from-the-pavement Seoul. At the Lille house in April last year, we painted this on our garden wall:

To me, this is as much about cultivating a healthy spirit as healthy soil. Despite many setbacks, I'm still working on this goal. I love Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie's 1981 version of "The Garden Song" and I like to play and sing it a lot during this time. Only this year, I haven't had the opportunity. I taught it to my French students, but haven't yet found a way to incorporate it into a lesson this year. It's somewhat ironic that I had a big beautiful garden in the middle of the city, but not in a rural mountain town.

Nevertheless, kale and mustard leaf seeds are sprouting on my balcony. Every time I pass fields with old Korean men and women digging in the soil, I want to jump off my bike, out of the bus, off the train to kick off my shoes and join them. But I also know that many of them have been working the land all their lives and their backs are permanently stooped because of it. As mentioned before, Gangwon-do may be known as the province of backwards farmers, but they're not actually producing much. This land is not food friendly and needs lots of work. So I gathered together all the possible options for WWOOFing in this and other parts of Korea. I've decided that I will devote as much of my summer vacation to it as possible, which should be at least 2 weeks. A stay on Jeju island sounds like the most intriguing option, especially if I can bike down there to catch the ferry. However, since I'll be at the Jisan Valley Rock Festival for the last weekend in July, it may make more sense to find a farming community around the west or northwest before heading south for a while.

Last week I did Earth Day lessons. Some were more successful than others, because they were extra burnt out from studying for midterms this week. Besides learning "Big Yellow Taxi" - they got to laugh at Joni's voice - I had them make "My Earth" books, with some cool results. The challenge of teaching low-level high school English is finding activities that are both age and level appropriate. Artistic projects seem to always be a win, except when they're super tired. I get to see their different personalities come out through creative expression. Plus, I like seeing what the kids are aware of in terms of environmental problems. Using less detergent and shampoo and a focus on picking up trash surprised me a bit. I even got an anonymous text over the weekend - I did one lesson where some students had to guess my phone number - asking me the name of the "song about the environment." That made me smile.

I haven't gone on many decent bike rides in the past two weeks, unfortunately. Last weekend, it rained like crazy so a BBQ was cancelled but since I had the bus ticket, I still decided to head to Chuncheon, Gangwon's province capital. An hour by train to Seoul, this is a decent-sized but not-too-crazy "lake" city, with tons of bike paths. I itch to go back there on two wheels. Besides walking down to the lake, the best part was staying at the big 찜질방- the infamous elaborate Korean sauna where we all get naked together. But separately. It was a spontaneous decision after walking too long in the rain and it was funny to be the only foreigner, getting stared down. Ha ha. I went in the early evening and the wake-up call is around 8 a.m. so the next time I will go to some town and spend the day there. I wanted to stay for hours in those heated baths, even surrounded by chatting naked Korean women of all ages, sizes and backgrounds. And curling up on a mat in PJs. Most awkward moment was waking up next to a random middle-aged Korean guy at 3 a.m., probably drunk. Stealthily creeped downstairs and found myself a nice replacement mat. I had dreams about farming in New Zealand and awoke to a nice program about the Caribbean. 

We had even nicer weather this past weekend and I ended up at a famous festival in Yeongwol with my bike which quickly turned into a drive and lovely steep walk up to Hwanseong Cave, clear the other direction near the Samcheok coast. This is the biggest limestone cave in Korea, but we enjoyed the journey there and the surroundings most of all. For the Koreans I've seen, enjoying the outdoors is no casual matter - you gotta dress the part, bright pants and jackets, visors and hiking poles, even on a hot day. And you can get cheap, delicious and relatively healthy food and cold beers wherever you go.

Major bonus points for that. The day ended with a night on the town in Yeongwol, where I had my fill of late-night drunken conversations with Western guys, surrounded by partying Korean college kids. I always like to argue with guys, especially when they get to talking about how it's "natural" to dominate women, but it's also interesting to be in on those talks.

This week, midterms mean I have virtually no classes but still have to come to work. Time to brush up on Korean, play basketball on the courts, and...not go to Seoul for May Day. :(

A friend of mine expresses herself through short comics instead of long-winded posts. I wish I had a talent like that. Mostly, things are going well, but as an INFP personality, there is a world on the surface and then there is a whole 'nother world below the surface. That internal world tends to take over a lot and it is there that I'll find nagging discontent and a need to go beyond just the way things are. This week, I also began to have the old spring freakout. You know what I'm talking about. Restlessness. Less sleep. Desire to jump up and down and all around...and frolic through fields...and get touchy with beautiful people.











I came to Korea for more teaching experience, saving money, getting away from city life and experiencing a new culture. While it's certainly meeting all of those expectations, I'm not sure it's what I actually want, as opposed to telling myself it's what I want. My happiest moments have come from staying in a big house with several people and a big garden, riding my bike all the time, cooking, eating and sharing tons of vegan/vegetarian food, having a decent job, lots of places to explore, live music and community events. Instead of moving towards this ideal lifestyle, it seems I keep purposely moving away from it. For what exactly? Financial security? A constant need for changing location? Nevertheless, I'm sticking it out and seeing what it has in store. It may, in the end, prove to be the best adventure yet.