Déjà...

As usual, this blog thing is getting away from me, so here's a recap of the best parts of last six weeks or so, in chronological order:

Italy: I took a whirlwind 12-day train journey around Italy over the Toussaint (All Saint's Day) vacation with my friend Leslie. We started in rainy, confusing, gorgeous Venice where we stayed in a chilly, noisy hostel with a staff member who distinctly reminded us of Jack Sparrow. Next we got drenched staring at Juliet's Balcony in Verona, found Parma surprisingly pleasant after we missed a train and got stuck for two hours, and finally climbed to our comfy hostel in Manarola, Cinque Terre well after dark. After a good night's sleep, we strolled along mountainsides among olive groves and vineyards, stopping to gaze out across the smooth, blue sea below and to indulge in cups of gelato in four of the five tiny, colorful towns that make up Cinque Terre. Pisa underwhelmed us the next morning, though we took photos holding up the tower, just like all the other tourists. I fell in love with Florence visiting my old friend Michela in her beautiful city, wandering the streets, climbing to the city's best views, ogling David and taking hundreds of pictures of the Arno and The Ponte Vecchio. Siena gave us a day to rest with a particularly medieval view from the terrace of our charming, Rick Steves-recommended hotel. By the time we got to Rome we were exhausted, but not too tired to explore The Forum, make wishes in The Trevi Fountain, lie to The Mouth of Truth and injure our necks looking up at The Sistine Chapel. Throughout the journey, we indulged in entire pizzas, red wine, tiramisu, huge plates of pasta, cream-filled cannolis and daily helpings of gelato.

Mini frigos: Cheese and yogurt can only be bought in bulk, and our humble abodes here at Résidence Condorcet are without refrigeration, so all we English assistants have been forced to purchase mini frigos to keep our extra gruyère cold. Leslie, Claire and I went to Lille one rainy, windy Thursday afternoon to hunt down some frigos we'd found on Le Bon Coin (French Craig's List). We wound up wandering the streets and metros of Lille each carrying a mini refrigerator with a lot of personality: hot pink, electric blue or panda shaped. What better accessory could you ask for?

Zin Zin: At long last, my merry band of anglophones and I have started to make friends with the students here. Students mean parties, even engineering students. Finally, we've found the parties — once a month on Thursday night, in the lounge/bar of the dorm where we have dinner. Students dress up with safety vests, wigs, various flags, fur coats and sometimes jock straps. We made a handful of friends from Lebanon, India, Brazil, China and even France at the last Zin Zin and now they've become the hilight of our months — we talked about the last one for three days straight, and we're already anticipating the next one, two weeks away.

Jess's visit: For the first of what I hope will be many Yeosu reunions all around the world, Jess came down for the weekend to see my charming town. She brought cupcakes, which meant another joyful reunion for me. We strolled around the beginnings of Christmas Markets in Lille, snacked on sweets from the famous Meert pastry shop and pondered the translucent marble facade of Lille's most distinctive church. We spent an evening drinking wine in Becca's dorm room (though this one was different because we incorporated some soju), then Jess admitted she'd never seen Paris. We took off for a quick Parisian tour (Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, Notre Dame de Paris) on Sunday to remedy the situation. Whatever Douai's faults, I can't complain about being an hour away from The City of Light.

Lyon: One more exciting Yeosu reunion took place last weekend with Katie at the Arcade Fire concert in Lyon. Through the snow I traversed France back to my old stomping grounds in Rhône Alpes, the region where I studied in Grenoble. The train whisked me past quaint villages with prominent church steeples and snow covered fields with snow covered cows, who were all white anyway unlike our black, brown and patterned varieties in the US. In Lyon, I stayed with a nice girl I met at the French consulate in L.A. last summer. She lives and works in the best high school in Lyon, Lycée St. Just, a castle-like former monastery perched on a hill overlooking the old quarter. Katie and I visited Le Marché des Soies (silk market) where merchants from centuries old workshops draped the tables with acres of gorgeous scarves, ties and raw silk at the lowest prices of the year. My pink, green, gray and violet scarf was still 38 euro, but it was too warm and pretty to pass up. We munched on hot pink, sugary lyonnais croissants flavored with pralines and indulged in a fabulous raclette dinner prepared by Katie's host, Hana.

Now I'm back in Douai, shivering in intermittent snow and sub-zero (Celsius) temperatures but generally in better spirits. I have plenty to enjoy: weekend trips, Christmas markets, connections with teachers, improving French abilities, a warmer coat in the mail and another Zin Zin on the horizon.

Friday nights in Douai

Tonight my merry band of English assistants sprinted through fog and strobe lights, dodged between graffiti-covered walls, crouched in corners and screamed at the sight of each other. We have discovered possibly the funnest place in Douai: Fortress Laser. For the low, low price of 4 euros a head, we got to spend 15 minutes shooting at each other in a war zone. And it was awesome — a sweaty, adrenaline-pumping thrill ride. I even won, probably for the first time in my entire laser-tagging life.

To say that Douai is small doesn't give an accurate description. Certainly, 50,000 inhabitants make up a small town, but it's more than that. Starting from 7 p.m. the streets are empty, the shops and cafes are closed, and once the sky gets dark the atmosphere feels as lonely and creepy as 4 a.m. — even if it's only 8:30 p.m.

We're all trying to give Douai a chance — how well can you possibly know a town after less than three weeks? Last Friday we found a concert by Les Anges Guardiens (The Guardian Angels) at a rustic little Irish-style pub across La Scarpe (the canal) from our building. The music was loud, the air was warm and we started the evening drinking delicious 2-euro wine at a long table outside in a square with plenty of French people. The bar is cozy with rough wooden tables, stone floors and banners for various beers and liquors. We had a quiet Friday night there the week before as well, sitting in a corner sipping white wine.

Part of Douai's somewhat-empty atmosphere comes from all the buildings that are, well, empty. Entire streets seem to be full of closed shops with "For Rent" signs plastered across their windows. Even on busy streets as many as 30% of the store fronts are without stores. I can feel the current economic troubles often in Douai — unemployment, people seeking social services, bars and shops going out of business. The eighteenth-century buildings are beautiful, and the people live up to their nice reputation, but I sometimes feel a certain sadness here. Signs proclaim Douai as "une ville qui bouge!" ("A town on the move!") but most people don't seem too proud to be here or too keen on staying.

All that said, I'm optimistic about this place. Travel opportunities aside, (And they are amazing travel opportunities.) I've found parts of the city I really like. The belfry, for example, the intricate carvings on the doors, the colorful shutters and trim on some windows — I love really looking and appreciating that every-day beauty. I've found a little cafe as well, called L'Equitable. They sell fair-trade, responsible coffee and tea, along with delicious crêpes and soups. I've made friends with the owner, a short, rosy-cheeked man with a huge smile and a welcoming demeanor. L'Equitable welcomes average Douaisiens and misfits alike, and I'm slowly getting to know the staff. I'm going to become a regular, because that's the way to enjoy this town — I have to embrace it for what it is, and get to know the people who are happy to be here.

La rentrée

Douai is home to some 50,000 French people, the most beautiful belfry in Northern France, between 10 and 20 foreign language assistants, and as of one week ago, yours truly. Eighteenth-century buildings with tall windows and sloping red roofs line the streets and canals. Clouds in various shades of gray cover the sky more often than not. Everyone can tell I'm not French, but they smile and say "Bonjour!" when I pass. If I hold the door for someone I always hear "Merci!" and Douaisiens, as they're called, always hold the door for me.

A few square kilometers of 3- and 4-story buildings surrounding the belfry and a cathedral make up centre ville (downtown), just five minutes walk from my home in La Maison des Elèves, Résidence Condorcet. My room is about 10x12, including the bathroom. I live on a hallway with five other English language assistants from the U.S. and England, tucked away at one end of the 4th floor. All the French students know we're here, and we eat beige food together in the dining hall, but so far we haven't had much interaction. We are constantly formulating plans for how to meet some French people our own age, but have yet to put any into action.

Yesterday we took the train up to Lille to poke around in the big city. More beautiful old buildings (some with cannonballs still stuck in their walls from old assaults) with boutiques, cafés and patisseries lining cobble-stone streets. I ate the Belgian/Northern French delicacy moules frites (fries with mussels) and a sweet, crumbly blackberry tart.

On our way home we had a little adventure... we saw there was a train leaving at 6:05, and the train to Douai was at 6:05, so we got on. For about 30 minutes we sat around making dirty Harry Potter jokes until Kate mentioned that she didn't recognize the countryside, or any of the towns we'd passed. We searched unsuccessfully for them on our maps until a man came by to check our tickets.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"Douai," we replied.

"Well then you have a problem," he said, "because this train is going to Belgium."

We wound up in Tournai, a small-ish town with a towering cathedral whose spires dominate the skyline. In the 45 minutes before our train back to Lille, we found some mystery kebabs with chicken marinated in an unknown greasy, yellow sauce. We returned to Douai unscathed, if two hours later than we'd intended.

Back in the old country

I've been home for about six weeks now and that has led to a resounding silence here on the old blog. But what can you say about coming home from a year and a half in a place so different as South Korea? A lot, I guess, but the exact things are harder to put my finger on.

Reverse Culture Shock, first of all. When I came home from a semester in Grenoble, France three years ago I wrote an article about reverse culture shock for a feature writing class. Even as I read up about the unsettling feeling of returning home when you've had profound, self-changing and self-discovering experiences abroad, I didn't anticipate the way the shock of coming home would leave me floored for months. Reconnecting with old friendships proved more difficult than I ever imagined and I was at a loss to answer the simple yet epic question "How was France?"

For whatever reason, this return has gone much more smoothly. I geared up for it, remembering that much as I was ready to come home, I would probably be bored here and have some trouble adjusting. I've spent time with close friends who were genuinely curious to hear about my travels, and friends who I kept in touch with pretty well while I was away, so they already knew some of my stories. I've traveled extensively in the US while I've been back, from visits to friends and family to cross-country road trips on various errands, so I never got bored. (So far I've visited Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City, Austin, Seattle, Las Vegas and San Francisco. This weekend I'm headed to Chicago before I hit France.) And I've found myself more appreciative of what I have here, the parts I missed and the parts I criticized while I was away.

The one place where I really encountered culture shock was the Flatirons Crossing mall in Broomfield where I worked at the movie theater in high school. Asia is crowded, sure, but the crowds at this mall overwhelmed me. The din of all those English conversations I understood every word of deafened me. And I had no idea where to turn in the sprawling stores with rack after rack of clothing in all different sizes. Not to mention those spendy price tags. I was reeling and uncomfortable in 5 minutes flat, and after 20 I had to leave.

Other than that it's mostly daily inconveniences like spending $7 on a cheap meal instead of $3, and having to obey traffic laws when I'm driving that have me muttering about the U.S., much in the same way I cursed Korea. I don't really mean it in either place.

In fact, I find myself missing Korea quite a bit. I've visited Korea Towns wherever I can in my travels and sought out Korean barbecue joints. As anticipated, every third sentence I speak starts with "In Korea..." or even "In Japan..." or "In Vietnam..." And the fact that bars kick you out at 1:30 a.m. instead of, essentially, never is a constant disappointment. Truth be told, while I'm enjoying home I find myself missing noraebang, K-pop, my scooter and all my friends even more than I expected. And the more I enjoy home, the more I don't want to leave. France will be great and I'm excited to go, but once I get back, I'm also excited to find a place I can stay for awhile, somewhere I'll have a few years before it's time to say goodbye.

Bathing with Strangers

Before I came to Korea I avoided nakedness to the best of my ability. Locker rooms made me uncomfortable. Even having my roommates getting ready in the bathroom while I was in the shower took some getting used to. Once I arrived, all of that had to change in a flash because of one relaxing and quintessentially Korean group activity: public bathing.

A jjimjilbang is a gender-separated public bath house where Koreans (and brave foreigners) go to soak, socialize and scrub themselves raw. Tess told me about them long before I arrived in Yeosu, and I was very curious to give it a try before I arrived. Going to Asia was all about new experiences, and baring all in a semi-public place was certainly new to me.

One of my first nights out mingling with Yeosu's wayguk (foreigner) community, I met a nice girl named Kerrie who offered me the chance to try a jjimjilbang on my very first Sunday in Korea. After a harrowing taxi adventure across town (harrowing because of the packed and terrifying driving conditions as well as my inability to communicate with the taxi driver) I met her and two of her friends outside The Ocean Resort, a towering hotel/public bath/water park built along the coastline in preparation for the 2012 World Expo to be hosted in this fair city.

We paid, dropped off our shoes and headed for the locker room. As you might imagine, the first moments of stripping down are the strangest, but a few minutes after you've folded up your clothes safely in your locker and wandered into the bath house you stop noticing. Everywhere around you are women of every shape, size and age completely exposed with no concern for hiding flab, cellulite or stretch marks. So many Korean women appear perfect on the street, sitting around in community with them at this bath house made me feel connected in a way American locker rooms never have. Granted, the connection was not perfect — we foreigners definitely caught a few stares, but it made me wonder if seeing all those women's bodies just as they are would do something for self images back home.

But the jjimjilbang process is not all sitting and contemplating. First, you sweat out all those impurities in a series of super-heated rooms. Some jjimjilbangs have little igloo-shaped rooms covered with crystals, each heated to 35, 45, 60 or even 70 degrees Celsius. One of my most embarrassing moments happened with Kerrie in one of these rooms, but more on that later. Once you are sufficiently sweat-drenched, you rinse off in the shower, then return to hot hot heat to soak in similarly scalding pools. Each pool has water infused with a different herb or mineral, such as jade or green tea. Finally, when your skin is completely pruney, you head to the scrubbing lines, rows of benches in front of mirrors where you exfoliate away all the dead skin on your body, and help your friends or nearby ajjumas (older Korean women) with a back scrub if they can't reach.

Now for my embarrassing story: in addition to having an aversion to public nudity, I am highly heat sensitive. Kerrie and I were sitting in one of these 45-degree-Celsius rooms on that first fateful jjimjilbang outing when she started telling me a story. As I listened to her I felt my head start to spin, but I was determined to hear her out. When she finished, I confessed that I needed to step outside. We stumbled out the door and suddenly my vision went black and I found myself crumpled on the floor. That's right, I fainted, butt naked to the floor in a room full of strangers with only a girl I'd just met to help me. Fortunately she was nice and brought me water without so much as a giggle, but it was still pretty darn embarrassing.

Periphery

I find myself struggling with my list of the best things about Korea.

This doesn't mean what you might think it means. Korea has plenty of great qualities mixed in with some bad ones, much like anywhere else. The problem is that I keep trying to write about deep cultural aspects — yes, even deeper than food or pop music. As I try to explain culture here, it becomes more and more apparent that I know nothing about it. I've observed it, sure, living here for 18 months, but the life of foreigners in Korea is totally peripheral. I don't talk like a Korean. (I don't even speak Korean.) I don't look like a Korean. I don't think like a Korean. My perspective is entirely different in such a basic way that I'm at a loss even to describe it.

Maybe foreigners who stick to their foreign communities feel like this in every country. Probably, even. I feel like in Korea this alien feeling is further amplified. Korea, like Japan, is one of the few places on the planet where the borders of a country align with a nation of people — a group that all identify with each other, not divided based on history, culture or ethnicity. All the emphasis here seems to fall on sameness. Even fashion and hairstyles all fit in the same category, following the trends beyond anything I've noticed in the States. So much sameness makes every little difference stand out ten fold — and we do, all foreigners here.

You never get used to the staring. You train yourself not to notice it unless it's too blatant, but the comments and conspicuous glances of passers-by are always there. Some of it is innocent enough. Children look up at you, eyes wide with nerves, before calling "Hello!" Old women, hunch-backed and weathered-skinned, call "ipuda" (beautiful) as I pass. (It's not just me, Caucasian looks, pale skin and light eyes are the sought-after standard of beauty here, along with being tall and thin.) Some of it is obnoxious, like teenagers screaming "hello" and then erupting into cackles, or lewd lingering gazing from drunk old men. Sometimes it's frightening and offensive, like when a Korean man on the street asked me for sex, assuming that foreign women are easy, or that I was one of the Russian hookers you sometimes encounter here.

I have enjoyed my time teaching at Yeodo Middle School, but I find that when I'm not teaching a class, I spend most of it alone, or interacting with other Americans and Brits through cyberspace. Of the school's 800+ inhabitants, I am the only non-Korean. That's what I signed up for, not a cry for pity, just one more example of isolation.

The attention can be nice sometimes, a friend of mine loves living like a "D-list celebrity" here. I confess it's flattering that strangers call me beautiful when I trudge to the convenience store in my glasses on an unwashed Sunday morning, but I'm ready to get back to fitting in.

I had a conversation with a 15-year expat in a bar in Tokyo last October. He told me he'd been so excited about Japan when he first arrived, and so successful in business and learning Japanese, but he'd never been able to integrate. You'll always be a foreigner here, he said. Go home. I never expected to stay here, to become Korean, but I miss fitting into a community larger than the band of 100 foreigners in Yeosu. Reverse culture shock or not, I know in three weeks coming home will feel just right.

Swimming with sharks

Two months ago I swam with the sharks in the biggest tank at Busan Aquarium. Here's an account of the experience:

The Busan Aquarium is buried under the wide, yellow strip of sand that makes up Haeundae Beach just before the landscape drags the eye upward to the tops of the hi-rise hotels across the way. I’ve been here four times in my lengthy tenure in Korea and this 65-degree day in the middle of May is by far the warmest I’ve seen. Heather, Tess and I are waiting for Michael Jones, shark dive instructor extraordinaire, to show us how to survive an hour in the shark tank, an experience we've each paid 90,000krw for (less than $90). I’m wistfully remembering the potato burrito with real guacamole and the clean, minty flavor of my mojito from the Mexican beach bar the night before.

Michael, a portly Canadian who’s been in Korea 15 years and leading dives at the Busan Aquarium for 7, turns up on time and leads us down the stairs into a classroom in the belly of the aquarium. He talks about Lemon Sharks chewing on fish, human skulls found in 200 kg groupers just like the ones in the tank, equalizing air pressure, and how many fingers we’re to use when we wave at the school children on the other side of the glass. We sign papers saying we won’t sue Michael or the Busan Aquarium if the Nurse Sharks (better referred to as Sand Tiger Sharks when picking up dudes at the bar that night, Michael advises) decide to stick their jagged, curved teeth into us.

We wrestle with the thick rubber of our wetsuits, tugging, pinching and rolling them until we’re panting. Then we wait, looking in small tanks in the training and treatment area above the surface of the big tank, guessing how a three-legged starfish being nursed back to health by aquarium employees lost its missing limbs.

Now the rest of our gear. Masks first. We hold them to our faces and suck in through our noses. If they stay without us holding them, we have a good fit. Next, weight belts. We place the orange strips of fabric dotted with heavy yellow squares on the ground before us, swing them behind us and hoist them up around our waists. Last we get our air tanks, nestled in huge black backpacks with tubes and regulators spilling out of them. After Michael helps us strap them on we’re reeling from their weight, crouched slightly forward to avoid over balancing and falling back. We traipse between tanks of sick animals, narrowly avoiding tripping over water pipes on our way to the training lock. Today we share it with four sick Eagle Rays with pitch black tails nearly the same color as the floor of the lock, so we shuffle along the bottom, precarious because of our tanks, trying to avoid treading on the patients.

“Now my favorite part of leading these dives,” Michael jokes. “Divers, on your knees.”

We laugh and kneel in the lock, water up to our elbows, grateful it takes some of the weight of our tanks off our backs. Following Michael's instructions, we lean right and swing out our arms to capture the tubes of our dive regulators, slip them into our mouths and begin breathing tank air. We review hand motions for OK, go up, go down, come here, there’s a problem, stop. We ease into it, first breathing with our eyes above water, then lying on the surface looking at the shells and bits of kelp on the bottom. Finally, we sink down, all in a line with Michael in front of us. He motions to us in turn, asking first if we’re “OK,” then having us demonstrate removing and replacing our regulators and emptying our masks in case a little water seeps in as we dive.

None of us can do this quite right at first. The combination of letting in some water to demonstrate, then pressing the tops of our masks into our foreheads and breathing out our noses is somehow complex when we try it underwater with regulators in our mouths. Tess panics, wide eyed, looking defeated and terrified. She’s embarrassed more than she should be. We’re all a little scared. Breathing underwater through a tube goes against the most basic instincts. We should be unnerved and we are. Michael holds her hand, tells her she’ll be alright. Then, once we’ve all adequately de-watered our masks, he tells her she executed a demonstration-quality mask emptying in the eyes of the Professional Association of Dive Instructors and makes her his partner for the dive.

Finally, it’s time to really get wet. I lead our shuffle-kneeling journey across the lock, out the gate and onto the clear plastic tunnel filled with spectators. Michael tosses me the rope and tells me to start descending the side of the tunnel into the tank. Lean back, keep your legs a little apart for balance, equalize every two fists or so, he reminds me. I lean. I set my feet a little more than shoulder width apart. I lower myself slowly. Right fist. Left fist. Breathe. Pinch my nose and blow softly to equalize the pressure in my ears. Repeat. Breathe. The pressure builds. I wave at Michael, point to my ear. Something’s wrong. I look up to avoid the glass-bottomed boat touring around the surface, then raise myself a bit and try again. Again. Equalized and the pain in my ear subsides. Two more fists down it returns. Equalize. Right fist. Left fist. Equalize. Trouble again. I blow on my pinched nostrils four times before I equalize. Right fist. Left fist. On the bottom now, feeling the crunchy white gravel below my bootie’d feet for a moment before my ears are screaming again. I wave to Michael. Something’s wrong. He hoists me up to his shoulder. I try to equalize. Almost there. Once more and I’m alright. Back on the bottom my ear still hurts. Michael guides me to my knees to wait for Tess and Heather. I try to equalize again but the ache persists, so I get used to it.

My surroundings make a worthy distraction. Currents and the weight of my tank throw me off balance as I float-swim-stumble through the cool, thick water. Sharks dart past me – the tank holds twenty or so – their mouths overflowing with sharp, white teeth that are scattered across the rocks and the bottom of the tank as they shed them. They swim toward me, staring, and past with their eyes sticking to me. Families on the other side of the glass flash peace signs and wave at me. We snap each other’s photos as the sharks or schools of fish swim between us. My ears still ache. My mouth is dry as I focus on breathing slowly, steadily, constantly through my regulator, just as Michael instructed. The mask restricts my vision to the oval in front of me. When Heather points to the shark just beside me or above my head I have to twist unnaturally to see what she’s looking at. I hear the jangling of Michael’s bell ringing to catch our attention. He signals to us to stay together, to follow him closely. Tess, Heather and I pass the underwater camera back and forth as we float around each other waving at children beyond the glass, staring down the sharks, gazing back into the tank. We try and fail to keep our hands close to our bodies, remembering that the animals are hand-fed by scuba divers and we shouldn't confuse them unless we want to wind up armpit-deep in the mouth of a grouper.

Then, suddenly as it began, the dive is over. Michael beckons me back to the rope. I pull myself up to the top of the tank, remembering to keep my mask on and my regulator in when I inflate my buoyancy control apparatus at the top so that if I slip I won’t fall all the way to the bottom and if I do at least I’ll be able to see and breathe while I’m there. Michael calls me a Teacher’s Pet for my trouble. I s’pose it fits.