Thoughts and Observations of an Evening's Walk

Just came back from a walk to bask in the full moon. I thought Professor Lupin was my favorite Harry Potter character because he's smart, sweet, and competent, the irresistible trifecta, but it may just be that I'm a complete lunophile, so who better to attach to than the werewolf? It's been a wet, blustery week in Seoul...glad things cleared just in time.

A couple of thoughts from my meanderings:
Korea has way too many cute cat things, and I have more money than willpower. Just bought my second pencil case. I've resisted this one before, but it wore me down. I did manage to leave the adorable journal & pen behind. This time.

If you need a surgical mask or a 20-lb bag of rice at 10pm, you've got choices. Bread? Good luck.

Saw a couple holding hands, walking across the KHU campus. He was wearing a business suit, she was in high heels & pajamas.

One of our frequent trainers here signs all his correspondence and has as the motto of his website the quote, "When one teaches, two learn". I think he's got the numbers exactly right.

Jon Stewart was ON FIRE tonight interviewing Ken Blackwell. Wish I could assemble thoughts at a moment's notice like that!

This is midterm week (Korean kids have a midterm and a final for each semester), which is hell on the kids, but heaven for me. I get to sit by myself in the office, planning (or not--though that's coming back to bite me and I have homework now), and leave at noon. I checked out Seoul National Cemetery today...not listed in any guidebook, but I saw it on a map. It's a fantastic place for a walk. I saw it from the subway a couple weeks ago when the cherry blossoms were out and it was breathtaking, but the plain ol' green I saw today was not half bad. The cemetery itself is amazing--it's huge and the graves and decorations are all uniform, so you can stand in a pathway and see the same image repeating endlessly to infinity in all directions. it's like being in an Escher sketch.

I saw the graves of a couple of presidents. One had a Winnebago covered with flowers and fitted with a picture window to drive him around the country after he died. Once his farewell tour was finished ("pinishee"), they parked it in the cemetery and walled it in with glass, and there he lies to this day. Another president and his wife are up on top of a hill (everything on Korea is on top of a hill) with the usual acoutrements--stone lanterns, a big totem, and massive grass mounds. There was also a golden carved incense burner with an urn in front, and people would grab a handful of something from the urn and toss it in the burner. One couple brought flowers, and a college kid in a booth came out to make forbidding gestures at them. They didnt' take the flowers back, though, and he didn't do anything either, although he continued to lurk rather than going back to his tiny glass office, and I didn't stick around long enough to see it resolved.

All in all, it was nearly as nice to walk as Mt. Hope. Nowhere near as interesting--uniform military graves don't tell their stories--but hilly and green and peaceful (if you ignore the construction equipment). A couple random bits: Korean birds look as bedraggled as Korean cats. What's with that? There was a bell that was dedicated by the Korean Veterans' Association. The sign says it's rung on June 25 (the Korean 9/11) and for the "staff's monthly bowing ceremony". I noticed in the tributes, they refer to Korean soldiers & patriots dying for the "Fatherland". Wonder what that says about cultural differences.

Tomorrow, we have a district workshop. I'm rather looking forward to it. It's some kind of culture education thing (the teacher responsible for me couldn't work up the courage to tell me about it, but Terrie, my old wrangler, was asked to help out with it, so she filled me in)--I think we're going to learn to bow, make kimchi (as long as they don't make us eat it...), and try on hanbok, the Korean traditional dress (glad I didn't pay to do that at the various tourist spots I've visited). It'll be nice to be on the receiving end of a class.