Day by Dae-jeon

Yesterday, I was hiking alone along a ridge line high above our new town of Daejeon, in South Korea, and I come upon a sign. The giant wooden billboard tells me something I hadn't realized before, that I can effectively circumnavigate the periphery of the entire town via mile after mile of forest trail.

The Trailhead - 15 minutes from our apartment

How had I not realized that before? Our new home is ringed by a natural walkway. I begin dreaming of walking for days, of making my way around Daejeon, step by step.

Two locals, a father and daughter, walk up to me and smile. They want to help. We talk in limited English, pointing to the sign and maps. I don't have my Thai language to fall back on now. It's English or nothing.

Our back-and-forth is so confusing, and even though our conversation is filled with “yes's” and “understand,” I'm barely better off than I was before, but at least they've confirmed a few things for me. I know where I am on the map, and I know the trail across the road leads to a major mountain overpass. I still don't know how to get to the lake down below.

It's about moving forward day by day. Putting all the little pieces together. Learning on the go.

Baby steps.

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We are three weeks into our new country. It has been confusing, yet comfortable, alien in language yet familiar in context. South Korea is a country in love both with its traditions and with all the trappings of modernity. There is order here; this third culture seems like a bridge between the United States and Thailand.

Tan and I know only a handful of phrases in Korean. “Hello,” “thank you,” a few numbers here and there, but we'll need more. The English signage in Daejeon leaves a lot to be desired as does the level of spoken English. Even people who work the tourist information counter at the town's main train station try to get us to speak Korean, and restaurant menus in many restaurants feature row after row of picture-less food choices.

The Usual Suspects

We order the foods we love the most and keep our fingers crossed that the restaraunt has them - “Gimbap” (the Japanese-influenced rice and vegetables/meat roll encased in seaweed) “Bibimbap” (vegetables stirred into rice), “Mandu” (Korean dumplings) and “Soondubu Jjigae” (spicy tofu stew). If the restaurant doesn't have them, we get treated to something new. More often than not, it's cheap and tasty.

At least we learn a new word and can connect it to something.

One woman, who runs a simple restaurant up by the trailhead and who has taken a liking to us, usually has a vegetable buffet spread, which is particularly filling after a Sunday morning hike. She asks us questions using a language App on her phone, Genie TALK, and we have a quick back and forth. She knows I work at the university, and that Tan is Thai. She likes to give us little extras like fried eggs.

We want to ask about her family, get details about her, but we constrained by the basics. The Genie TALK is good, like google translate, at giving the gist of things, but it ain't the miracle translator we need. At least we figured out that she wasn't doing the buffet during Korean Thanksgiving.

Dish by dish. Meal by meal. App by App.

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There are so many logistical components to my new job, never mind the teaching.

I have to access and fill in Korean language attendance sheets, an English-only class register and grade-sheet, and tick off the boxes of the Korean “newbie”: health checks, contract signatures, housing logistics, passwords and ID's, and meeting immigration requirements. Luckily, the university is ahead of the curve about helping with all this. A Chinese girl, nicknamed Candy, taxies over with me to immigration and walks me through the first steps of the all-important Alien Registration Card (which will allow me to get bank accounts and phones).

And we have the largest apartment we've had in some time, a 12th-story three-bedroom place with washing machine, heated floors, and at-the-ready cable TV. We can see the mountains to our left and the city to our right from our huge back porch. One day, we even witnessed the gigantic crane device outside our apartment, something I haven't seen anywhere else, a portable delivery truck device which can lift stacks of things up to the top floor

Our huge apartment complex

It took us several days to translate the water heater instructions and the washing machine language. I exchanged some Korean language help for an editing job on a script (a woman applying to be a nanny in the States).

The TV is a bounty of good stuff in the morning, American movies (mostly Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns for some reason), and other randomness, including the fascinating reality drama “Let Me in,” in which a slew of Thai women audition for free plastic surgery in Korea. In the end, two of the daintiest, least-deserving, women are selected (who have slightly protruding jawlines as opposed to major facial scarring or deformities). It's fun to hear the Thai after three weeks in the country, but we also practice our Korean exclamations of surprise as we watch the exuberant hosts.

Inch by inch ... scene by scene ...

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These ten statements are all true and what I know in less than a month:

Crosses in the sky

1. Korean men smoke like chimneys, especially male students.
2. The three major American imports - baseball, spam, and rock n' roll - are all taken very seriously, assuming you consider K-Pop to be rock n' roll.
3. There are churches seemingly on every block, and sometimes more than one.
4. In order to exercise (and/or hike) in Korea, you need to have your own portable music-making device, or radio.
5. If you pass something to somebody and want to be polite, you should do it with both hands, or do the “one hand holding the arm” position.
6. The Korean concept of “Han” is sort of a national ethos of angst and suffering, which even features in the country's national anthem.
7. Taxi drivers don't accept tips of any kind. Before I can make any move to tip them, they've already handed over my 300 Won change.
8. Korean drivers are maniacs, but usually don't drive on the sidewalks.
9. Public Wi-fi options are all over the place and easy to find, and usually pretty fast. I haven't had to wait through “buffering” on a video clip since I've been here.
10. A restaurant is judged not only by its main dishes but by the quality of its “extras” (servings of kimchi, radish, and other things that are served as side dishes).

I'm sure are plenty of other things I've forgotten, but I'm still learning.

Day by day ... baby steps ...