Have a stellar new year!: Seol-lal, 2nd Start in Korea

I am a big fan of do-overs. They can be used to cheat in card games, apologize to a friend, earn a better score on an exam and salvage a bad home haircut. My new favorite do-over strategy has to be the Lunar new year, or as the Koreans call it Solar. Koreans have in more modern years, begun to celebrate both the calendar new year (January 1) and the Lunar new year (falling on February 14 this year) but as the lunar new year nears it is clear to see that the preferred celebration date is the latter. The holiday, also referred to as the Chinese new year, dates back to 2600BC and 2010 marks the year 4708 on the lunar calendar. Festivities vary country by country but here in Korea that day is devoted to family and worshiping ancestors by visiting a nearby temple and spending hours upon hours preparing traditional food.

On February 1st, also an important day because it is the first day of the lunar month this year, Matt and I hiked up munsu mountain in Ulsan. About halfway up there is a large temple and on this day the temple was serving a traditional Buddhist meal to all the temple visitors. Along with many Buddhist traditions comes a very strict vegetarian diet, something that I was interested in subscribing to after seeing the flawless skin and healthy lifestyle of the monks in Munsu temple. We huddled under a pagoda in freezing January weather, eating rice, seaweed soup and kimchi in the company of about thirty monks and Buddhists. The temples in Korea maintain a still silence, broken only by the echo of drumming or the loud gong of the temple bell. On our February 1st visit the only sound coming from Munsu temple was flakes of snow gracing the bald heads of the monks.

It could be the “do-over” new year fast approaching this week, considering we celebrated the calendar new year a mere month ago, or the fact that we have reached our six month mark here in Korea, or even this week’s English lesson: Setting goals; but I have been thinking about resolutions a lot this week. When we first arrived in Korea back in August our “to-do” list could have been mistaken as the life accomplishment list read as part of Marco Polo’s eulogy, filled with plans of conquering every possible unknown. The physical list itself is hard to forget or avoid considering it hangs on the ceiling above our bed, with enough light streaming in from the street lamps outside that we are forced to lie awake at night and wonder how on earth we will ever “settle down” having such far reaching ambitions and wild imaginations.

It is surprising however that quite a few of the items on the list have been checked off. Some of these include: Attend a K-pop concert (reference our post entitled “K-pop and circumstance”), Eat live octopus (posted in late January), sleep in a Korean bath house, master the use of chop-sticks, hike through Korea’s national parks, join a Korean dance studio, join a Korean rugby team and sing in a nore-bang (singing room) in front of my principal (this was accomplished just last week.)

Next are the goals on the list that have evolved into something new either out of practicality or necessity, including: Feed stray cats in the park. After a month of crying over all of the stray felines roaming Ulsan’s streets I realized I had not only spent a fortune on canned tuna but I was becoming known as the crazy lady who was trying to save Korea’s least favorite creature. Our prayer for something to add to our little family and bring some life and sense of charity to our apartment was answered with a little black and white bunny, courtesy of some middle school boys who found him in a park and were using him as target practice. Learn Korean. HA! Well we can now successfully read all of hangul’s 24 characters and are proud to say that we were two of only a small handful of teachers who stuck out the Korean class offered to us by the ministry of education. We expect fluency sometime in early 2045. Travel all of Asia, Russia, Eastern Europe, Australia and New Zealand…this year. The world starts to feel smaller when you study a map, hop on a plane and arrive on another continent. I don’t think Matt and I will ever stop travelling, it has been a source of conversation that we have engaged in for almost five years together. As far as the remaining six months are concerned, we leave for the Philippines today, have Japan and China on our “for sure this year” list and travelling the rest of the world exists on scraps of paper detailing our life’s timeline.

Finally are the accomplishments that were tentatively on our list for the year, the one’s whose completion has snuck up on us without even realizing it. Some of these include: Earn a master’s degree. Matt came here with little intention of working full time and attending school, but after researching and getting accepted into a program he is attending the American college of education, an online master’s course in administrative leadership. He should be finished with the program in June 2011. Learn how to teach. I didn’t want to be a teacher, in fact I somehow thought I could come here and avoid my job all together. Once I started teaching…I wanted to be a teacher even less. This is hands down the hardest job I have ever had. More challenging then arranging flowers at 1am the night before Valentine’s day, volunteering to teach elementary students science through a 45 minute, high intensity, modern dance routine, or catching chickens in three feet of snow when the power in their hutch has gone out and their owners are in the Bahamas. Matt makes this job look easy, because he is really good at it, and come to find out I might actually be too. I am becoming more resourceful, better prepared and less preoccupied with trying to save the world through education. Above all the greatest tool I have learned to use in my teaching is the Korean tradition of respect towards your elders. This swings both ways and has resulted in an utter terror of my principal, but it also works in my favor because according to tradition, my students admire me…go figure!

In general Koreans spend their lives admiring and worshiping their elders and ancestors, and on the lunar new year children greet every member of the family with a deep bow. They are then rewarded with crisp, paper money and rice cakes. This idea that as children we learn by example and are grateful to our elders for their leadership and advice is interesting because it exists today outside of a Western tradition. In a Western culture we watch our parents, we swear to never emulate them and then usually end up following some if not all of their characteristics and advice, but rarely with any admittance. In Korea, the more you show your loyalty to your family and respect for your parent’s decisions, the better.

I am looking forward to the second semester of teaching this year. I am also looking forward to tackling some more of our to-do list. Near future items to be checked off may include: Run the Jeju-do island marathon in June, learn how to make traditional mandu dumplings, visit the Busan orphanage once a month, teach the bunny to enjoy walks on his leash, and see Japanese cherry blossoms in full bloom.

For now we are off to soak up some sun in Palawan’s Calamian group of Islands to re-charge before another semester of teaching, travelling and playing in Asia. Have a stellar lunar new year and a very happy Valentine’s day!!!                             -Matt and Emily