Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged. Also, You Know, Some People Are Super Cool and You Just Don't Realize It Yet. Also, MOTORCYCLES.

A woman got on the bus dressed entirely in denim. Her too-big jacket was denim, her skirt that swept all the way to her ankles was denim. She even wore a stiff denim scarf. I couldn’t tell how old she was, but she seemed too tired and old for her face. Her eyes (dark blue like denim, of course) were sunk into her sockets, loose skin around them sagged over her cheekbones.  “This lady,” I thought, “Is really weird.”

Another lady got on the bus, even older and more tired than the first. She walked with a cane, and her hands fluttered as she gave the bus driver her fare. She shuffled next to me, and I could see foundation caked on her face, fushia lipstick, and dark brown eyebrows penciled with a shaky hand. Underneath the mountain of cosmetics, I could still see her river-like wrinkles, spreading out in hundreds of estuaries across her face. “This lady,” I thought, “Is frail and sad.”

The two ladies began to talk to a college student on the bus. He told them about how he was taking off of school to bike across the United States, from Boston to Portland. The woman in Denim spoke up, “I know about the body’s need for a wilderness exploration,” she said. “I canoed from Chile to California. I needed adventure, so I did it.” I looked up from the floor, sat erect to listen to everything the woman in denim was saying.

“The biggest adventure was Skydiving. I always landed in cornfields in Illinois.”

The college student asked her if she had sky-dived more than once.

“About five times,” she said. “Each time I went a little higher up, you know, one thousand feet, then fifteen hundred, then a mile. The last time was the best, because I had so far to fall. It was just me, flying by myself in the sky.”

The frail woman spoke up, “I’ve always wanted to sky dive,” she said. “My whole life. I haven’t done it… yet. All I’ve done is hang-gliding.”

All this to say that people surprise me all the time.  People defy my labels, my judgement, my expectations. My dad once told me a story about sitting at a gas station listening to classical radio while his tires filled with air. A burly motorcyclist began to make his way to my dad’s car. The biker had leather chaps, no shirt over his big, hairy belly save a leather vest. Tattoos covered his arms, his neck. His long beard had been knotted into two twisting braids that hung from his chin. As he approached my father, my father felt nervous. My father’s hands tightened on the wheel; he looked for an escape. The motorcyclist stuck his head in the window and said, “Is that Rachmaninoff playing? I love this piece.” Like I said, people defy expectations.

My conception of most motorcyclists is like that of the man I described: Big, hairy, tatted up, and very scary. When I was in Korea, I was shocked to find everyone rode motorcycles. Businessmen would ride to work on their motorcycles, dressed up in three-piece suits. Crazy ajummas rode motorcycles with furniture on tied perilously on the back (remember that Seoul is built on the mountains—imagine having a motorcycle with a couch tied to the back barreling down the mountainside path you walk to your dorm at!). Every young, barely pubescent pizza delivery boy rode a motorcycle. Every biker challenged my preconceived notion of what a “biker” is or should be.

Speaking of, I rode my first motorcycle last week. My brother Josiah (who’s huge, somewhat hairy, and awesomely tattooed) took me to a restaurant in the Loop on the back of his motorcycle. I was dressed up like a little kid, in a neon-pink shirt with golden lace trim and an oversized sweater. When we got to the restaurant, I skipped in and said to my waiter, “Guess what? I just rode on a motorcycle. It was my first time ever! I was riding on a motorcycle! It was awesome! Isn’t that cool? A Motorcycle.” Other people in the restaurant began to glance over at me, beaming and babbling about riding a motorcycle. And you know what? Maybe I defied their expectations of what a biker should be.  

Previously Unpublished Vlog #3! Woo!

3rd Vlog from Renee Badenoch on Vimeo.

Untitled from Renee Badenoch on Vimeo.

Words and More Words

Tonight I stayed up really late with my friend brilliant friend Heesung talking about the differences between the English and Korean languages, the way that culture shapes language, and the difficulty of translating from one language to another. During the conversation Heesung taught me a couple of phrases in Korean that had no direct translation into English. Two of them, “Een-yun”(인 연) and “Han” (한), I want to tell my blogosphere about, because I was so excited to learn them. Basically, while Heesung talked to me, I frantically scribbled messy notes in green marker all over a blank piece of paper I had brought from my room. I wanted to learn everything well enough to be able to retell it accurately. Unfortunately, as much as I tried, my notes are not as complete as I wish, so my explanation may sound a little vague. However, I will do my best to tell you about what I learned, and I hope that you share some of the enthusiasm that I caught staying up late tonight and having my understanding of the world enriched through new words.

(인 연)“Een yun” is a word of Chinese etymology, where the two syllables “een” and “yun” mean a direct force or power that leads to a certain result, and an indirect force or power the leads to a certain result. Een-yun is a concept word that is based off this principle that some people have invisible strings tying them together. If you have this invisible string (인 연 een yun) tying you to another person, it means that you will meet them again. The term could be translated into English as “fate” or “destiny,” but the meaning in Korea is more nuanced than those terms. To help me understand the phrase, Heesung gave me some examples of ways that it could be used in Korean speech.

“We've tied een yun”-- A person would say this when leaving a person that they believed they were meant to meet again.

“We've cut een yun”—A person would say this to someone they believe they will never see again.

“Our een yun was tied before our lives began”--this one gave me a thrill of romance to learn, because it's the idea that two people were destined before time to meet one another.

Heesung also told me about a Korean novel Man Nam (만남, means The Meeting), about two people who keep meeting under crazy, bizarre circumstances. The protagonists of the novel keep meeting even when it seems impossible that they should ever meet again. Anyway, the novelist described them as having “five hundred years of een yun,” an een-yun powerful enough to keep drawing them together even when it seems impossible under normal circumstances. When Heesung tied the meaning of the word to this epic story, I was so moved and excited I shook in my seat. I laughed happily. I said out loud, “five hundred years of een yun,” and repeated it softly, “five hundred years of een yun.”

The other word that Heesung taught me about was “han” (한). Han is such a complicated word to understand that Heesung told me about it first by telling us the story of a move called Sopyonje (서 편제), and a style of singing called pansori (판 소 리). Pansori singing is a kind of singing where a female singer sings a story out loud. Pansori songs usually last several hours and take a lot of training to be able to sing. They are very long, and the singer has to memorize the whole thing. She also has to sing with the highest part of her voice. Heesung said Pansori singers described the say they sing as, “choking the vocal chords,” or even, “bleeding inside your throat.” The painful imagery of what it takes to be a Pansori singer is perhaps indicative of the intuitive grasp on sorrow that a pansori singer needs to have-- to sing pansori, you must have han.

The movie Sopyonje tells the story of an orphan girl who is raised by a pansori master. The master's one desire for her is that she can become a great pansori singer, but she can't learn because when she sings her voice lacks han. The pansori master takes the girl to a remote village and feeds her poisoned food that causes her to become blind, and then abandons her. The girl spends years and years wandering from village to village trying to find the master who is like a father to her, and the only way she can know to find him is to sing pansori. One day, when she is a grown woman, she is taken before a town magistrate and asked to sing for him, because she sings the most beautiful pansori ever heard. The magistrate is actually the very same master who poisoned her years before, but after she sings, he does not reveal his identity because to do so would take away the girl's han and she would not be able to sing pansori anymore. Heesung said if you closed your eyes and imagined what life was like for that girl, the emotions of abandonment and betrayal, sorrow and ultimate longing, then you would understand what han is.

If the idea of han you get from the story of Sopyonje is confusing, the dictionary definition is more so. Han is such a nuanced idea that the dictionary that Heesung used to tell it to me had at least four different ways of describing han. “Han is a grudge, han is sadness, han is the feeling an innocent person has when blamed for something they didn't do, han is the feeling of something hard located in your heart, han is wanting something badly and never getting it.”

I mentioned earlier that pansori singers described singing with han as “bleeding in your throat.” Koreans use many visceral descriptions of han that link the metaphysical concept of han into the physical reaction of the body. “Han is deeply absorbed into our bones,” and “Han is like an embrace to the heart,” are two such descriptions. Other descriptions are even more metaphorical, “Like a room that gets so hot and humid that water droplets appear on the walls, so han forms in the walls of the heart;” “Like frost that grows on a window pane, so han forms in your heart.”

The wonderful thing about han though, is that it's impermament. If one achievess the thing they long for, one's han is resolved. Heesung told me a Korean might say, “I've fulfilled my wish, so even if I die today, I have no han.”

Ever since I've had this talk with Heesung, the words and their meanings have been rolling through my head. I think.... I think that Korea and I have een yun. That when I say good-bye it won't be forever. I think that because even at the thought of leaving, I feel a pang in my heart, a slow sadness that grows heavier each moment. In short, once I go back to America, I think I'll have a han in my heart that will grow and grow until the day when I can come back. So maybe, when I leave I won't say good-bye. I'll say the last thing that Heesung said to me when he left, “See you again.”

The Soul and Seoul part II

My last four days in Seoul I've been trying to rapidly fulfill my entire Korea wish-list while also finding time for good-bye parties and packing. Yesterday, I visited the Coffee shop where First Shop of Coffee Prince was filmed. Monday, I'm visiting a Jim Jil Bang (public bathhouse—it feels a little Austenian to me, rather than just Korean). Tonight, I went to Namsan tower, a 246m tall observation tower on top of a mountain in Seoul.

The tower is set up with a circular disk observatory with paneled windows that allows one to walk around and see the city in every direction from above. When I first walked up to the edge of the window, I put my head against the cool glass and felt overwhelmed with sadness. I've always been susceptible to beautiful things, felt moved to tears when something lovely catches my eyes, and tonight I was especially vulnerable when my heart was already shrouded in the sorrow of saying farewell. Standing there, looking out at the city lights that spread beyond the horizon, I fumbled to find the words to describe the scene before me without using tired comparisons to stars or Christmas lights. Of course, to me the lights “glistened like tears” as my own eyes moistened, but even that description did nothing to capture the full glory of what I was seeing.

Before I went to Namsan tower I had told a friend that I wouldn't miss Korea the country so much as I would miss the people. I had said I could be happy anywhere, and that the thing that made a location special was the people you knew there. Tonight, I realized that it wasn't true. I thought about all the things about Korea that I love, like the street vendors selling bread shaped like goldfish, and the truckloads full of tangerines, the ridiculous fashions of high boots, sheer leggings and mini skirts that girls wear even in the dead of winter; I even love minute details like the sidewalks put together with pale green bricks. I once said that sometimes cities have their own personalities that you come to know gradually. If that is true, Seoul revealed a secret to me tonight. Looking at the city from above, I saw a loveliness beyond anything I could have imagined, and that loveliness from above made me long for the life below. No longer to I think I'll miss only my friends in Seoul, but know that I'll miss the city itself. For I saw the city stretched before me, an endless ocean of lights, each light like a life of the people below, eleven million lights flickering clear and sharp in the black night.

Awkward Signage

I promised to write three blogs this week, so by gum I will, even if it means a double update today. The second blog will be much less soul-searching than the first one, fortunately or unfortunately depending on your view. While I have been in Korea, I have seen a lot of what I call "Awkward Signage." Some of this has come in the form of Engrish, badly translated foreign language texts in amusing or incomprehensible ways. Other times it has come in the form of acronyms that would never be used in the U.S because of the connotations specific to Western culture. (KGB bus transportation system is a good example of this). The final has come from advertisements that are just-- lost in translation I guess I'll say. I would describe them to you, but some of them have to be seen to be understood. So, without further ado, I will present to you my favorite found Engrish, acroymns and symbols, and the "lost in cultural translation" advertisements.

Engrish

This was a bag I found in a subway station by the Insadong immigration offices. Cat Cat Can May Ican you? Cat Cat Cat Cat Any thin to you day? CAT In the city.here are?  This is not the only Engrish I have seen, just the only Engrish I have taken a picture of. However, I did steal a picture of the press badges from my friend Heesung. Even though the press badges don't reach the hilarity levels of the Cat bag, they are a little funny, and probably a little confounding for the confused press members wearing them.

G-20 press badges.

Acronyms/symbols 

Maybe this is not funny to anyone but me, but this company's acronym is PMS. When I first saw it, I laughed and laughed, and then promptly repeated my favorite joke from Prairie Home Companion: Q. Why is PMS called PMS? A. Because Mad Cow Disease was already taken.

 

 This awkward sign makes me blush to see it--and I see it a lot. I always think, aren't there enough foreigners in Korea that people should know not to put a swastika as symbol on their shops? This particular shop sells some cheap lingerie, thereby dubbing itself in my mind as "The Nazi Underpants Store."

Lost in Translation

 
I have no idea what this is advertising-- All I know is it is a picture of a bearded ladyman in a strangely suggestive pose. I think I prefer never knowing what, precisely, it is advertising. It's more fun to speculate, no? (Leave your speculations in the comments, please)

 This weird statue is essentially funny to me for the same reason the mysterious hermaphrodite advertisement is. To me, this is the most horrifyingly ugly, bizarre statue I could possibly imagine. If it was in a store in the USA, I don't think anyone would ever go to that store ever, and in fact, some people (myself among them) might actively campaign to have it taken down. This weird girl-man is also posed in front of an underwear shop, and the only good thing I can think to say about him is "I guess in the end he's less offensive than a swastika." 

Oh the horror.
   
 Well. That is the end of the Awkward Signage.
Here is a picture of me wearing empty glasses frames,
a generous gift from a student who knows me well! 

 

 

 

Good-byes

Yesterday was a day of good-byes. It was my last day teaching at Jun-dong Elementary. When I woke up in the morning, everything I did had a special significance knowing that it would be the last time I would do it. Tying my shoes I thought, "The last time I tie my shoes before going to school," walking down the stairs each step echoed in the hallway, "last step, last step, last step." The whole way to school, I felt the same, with an ache in my heart even for things I've never enjoyed, like waiting at the chilly and crowded Cheonyeongri bus station.

My students in the 2nd grade clasroom threw me a good-bye party. When I entered the classroom, the lights had been turned off, and in the center of the room there was a soft glow from a candlelit cake. The students stood in a circle around me and sang a good-bye song. My teacher filmed me while they sang. In the video, I see myself fluxuating between elation and holding back tears. At the end of the video, my students shout the same thing they always shout at the end of class, "We love you, Renee Teacher!" When I watch the video, I once again feel needle pricks in my heart, throat and eyes as my voice catches and I shout back (for the last time), "I love you too!"


Untitled from Renee Badenoch on Vimeo.

Of course the day wasn't all sad. My students showered me with gifts as they left the class. Some of them were professionally wrapped, and held store-bought items like chocolates and green tea. Others were more simple, but still very precious because they were given out of the child's own small collection of things--two girls gave me all of their origami paper, a small, dirty toy panda bear, and one dum-dum lollipop with a bent stick. My favorite gift of all came from a boy named Wun Chae. Wun Chae is a rascally epitome of boy who's talent for the performance my students gave was making a long, bellowing burping noise. He handed me a thin, delicately wrapped box about the length of my index finger. Inside was a tube of expensive "Kissy Kiss" lip gloss.

After 2nd graders left, I taught my afternoon class of 6th graders. I gave a power-point presentation lesson on metaphors and similes. I ended the class by giving my girls roses, saying, "I am giving this to you with a simile, because you are as pretty as roses," and all of the students chocolate bars, "another simile, because you are sweet like candy." I waited around in class to take some pictures with my students, and left, skipping down the hill jubilantly, thinking of students and gifts, and the promise of snow in the air.

At the bottom of the hill, that old reverence came back bitingly. "You'd better appreciate your last walk home," it whispered. I stopped skipping, and walked slowly, covering my face in my hands. My untied shoelaces clicked against the asphalt, "Good-bye, good-bye" and I thought, "This is the beginning of the end." Now, I approach my next week--a week that is an extended last day of packing up presents and saying farewells--and every moment holds a melancholy mixture of sacred and sad.

Second ever vlog

SECOND EVER VLOG from Renee Badenoch on Vimeo.

Gyeongju

Dear Friends,

It's been a while since I've updated. Last week I went to Gyeongju province of Korea, about two hours south of Seoul. It's a pretty neat area, where the archaeological remnants of Korea's history (up to 2000 years old) still remain. On the long train ride back to Seoul, I started two write a blog saying, "Unfortunately, I can't post any pictures yet, because both my camera and video camera were kaput this weekend. Doubly unfortunate, I won't be able to post this blog until late Sunday night, breaking my once a week blog update that I've kept since I got here."

I got back at 10pm that Sunday night, and promptly fell asleep, not posting anything with pictures or otherwise. All week long, I thought about getting around to finally finishing my update (Some wordy ramblings about the beauty of the countryside and the transience of life), but I was so busy with school that all I really did was post a blog poll on what people wanted to see more of--it seems to be more blog updates, which makes me feel even worse about not posting for two weeks. Anyway, in the interim time between the complaint that I had no camera and the posting of this blog, my classmates who went on the trip with me all posted pictures of the trip to Gyeongju. I stole some of my favorites and will post them here in no particular order and with my own commentary.  

This picture is funny to me, because I am being excessively polite.  I had had dinner the night before with my principal and vice principal.  My teacher had instructed me before hand, "You need to be polite--deferential. Hand the glass to principal with two hands." So here I am handing my glass to my Bonnie with two hands, averting my eyes and bowing my head.  I didn't even realize that I had done this until my friend Young posted the picture with the caption, "Here's Renee, being really polite for no reason." 

These pictures were taken by a temple and palace (I don't remember the name) that I visited last Saturday. In this tiny courtyard, people stacked hundreds of piles of flat rocks. Every stone that was placed was to make a wish.

My friend Crystal said, "Man, I should take a picture of someone stacking rocks. Quick Renee, make a wish."

"I wish someone would take my picture," I whispered, as I made a rocky pyramid.  Later, with the group we stood marveling the all the tiny hopes of hundreds of tourists.  "Look at all these wishes," said Smarmy Craig.

I grabbed my rock, "Yeah, but you know what? This one, this one right here, it was my dream, my wish and it didn't come true. So I'm taking it back. I'm taking them all back."

No one else laughed. But even a week later, I am still laughing.

I don't remember exactly who these guys were. They were statues of gods that protected the temple, and each of them had a different musical instrument as a weapon, and each of them had differently color-coordinated undergarments. The tour guide made a point of mentioning that, probably to endear himself to the group of fourth-grade boys on the tour with us. I remember feeling a little dismayed that the statues were so old and withered, that nobody had brushed the dust from them or painstakingly given them a fresh coat of pain in many, many years.

These were two of my favorite things we saw. The first one is a 100+ year old observatory, the oldest in the world. I liked it especially, because it was built by a queen in a time period when women were considered intellectually inferior to men. After she built it, she was respected amongst the intellectual elite of her time, and is still remembered today, over 1000 years later. When I first saw the observatory, I was mildly interested, but hearing the story about it awakened the feisty feminism in me and I growled, "Yeah, that's right," and glared at all the men in the tour group.



The second picture has a pretty interesting story as well. The stone figure you see is a "floating pool" on the razed grounds of a king's "pleasure grounds" palace from the Silla dynasty. The phrase "pleasure grounds" conjures up all sorts of images of debauchery for me, but the king in question apparently used the grounds to have musical sessions with his friends. They would sit by the pool and float cups of water, and challenge each other to compose poetry. Anyway, the Japanese came in one day during one such poetry session and burned the palace down and murdered every nobleman EXCEPT for the king.  They looked at him disdainfully (I imagine him sitting there with a drooping beard, his clothes torn from running, and burnt along the edges. His face is covered in ash, with little bleeding cuts, and his eyes are still bewildered at losing his friends and everything in the blink of an eye), and sneered, "you're a worthless drunk that's not even worthy to kill."

It's interesting that after hundreds of years, with relatively little known about the daily lives of people, this story has still endured with such detail that conversations are recorded. Anyway, upon hearing such an overwhelming burn, the king grabbed a sword and cut off his own head, thereby proving (if only to himself) that someone (if only himself) thought he was important enough to kill. 

Here's the last group of photos. You can see the whole group sans Young (who took the photo). From left to right is Craig, Renee, Hyunkyung (the graduate assistant at KU), Crystal and Bonnie.  The other two shots are just because I wanted you to see how unbelievably beautiful the fall in Korea is. The pictures are like looking backwards through a pair of binoculars, and seeing the beautiful magnitude of everything diminished to tiny pinpricks. Still, in the following week many of the leaves have fallen, exposing the black, naked limbs of the trees. During the cold winter, I cherish every pinprick of the glory of autumn that I can get.

Anyway, to end this blog I just want to thank those of you who replied to my poll. Next week I will try to have a three update week (probably Monday, Wednesday and Saturday). I will try to make one of those updates a vlog, but no promises. Love you all.
-Renee Badenoch

Sorry for Another Blog about Super Junior, I Still Try To Make These Intellectual and Stuff

Having grown up disdainful of American pop music, especially of the boy-band variety, I never realized until tonight how loud and resonant a stadium full of screaming girls can be. That is to say, I finally saw Super Junior perform.

Perform is the key word. I did not see them sing. Tonight, just before I went out with my English coteacher, I noticed a long, long line of teenage girls stretching up a hill, and then down a hill, and then up part of a third hill by my house. “Good gracious,” I thought, “I must be near the pubescent girl factory.” I asked my friend Megan what was going on and she replied nonchalantly, “Free Super Junior concert.” Friends, never have four words had such an immediate impact on my plans. The next part of my story is pretty boring, but it involves me running up and down hills for a while and then standing in line for an even longer while, only to find out that the “concert” that I was attending was actually a five-year celebration party/variety show.

What does a five year party/variety show look like? Well... it involved some sorts of competitions that I didn't understand because I don't speak Korean, and also some question and answer time that I didn't understand because I don't speak Korean, and finally some tearful speeches that I also didn't understand for the aforementioned reason. It also involved a lot of screaming.... Friends, it may be hard to believe (it was hard for me to believe myself), but the excitement of being in the same room as tanned and dapper Choi Siwon wears off. After about an hour of confusion (interrupted by occasional video medleys with pictures of Super Junior over the past five years, interrupted by the sound of 10,000 girls screaming, I was beginning to get bored. I started going over my school assignment in my head, and realized, with a fright that at that moment I was procrastinating from watching Super Junior by thinking about homework—an exact reversal of my pattern for the past two years!

I think the strangest part of the night for me wasn't going to the performance and actually finding myself disinterested, but it was more people-watching girls after the concert. Super Junior fan girls are rabid, to put it mildly. All of them were pushing and shoving, moaning audibly and screaming as Super Junior passed by in their cars. A group of about twenty girls chased after the cars, throwing themselves at the windows and banging on them, screaming words in Korean that I couldn't understand not because I don't speak Korean, but because they were rendered unintelligible by the sheer volume of desperation.

The nature of their affection was a little alarming to me. I mean, it was clear to me that Super Junior did not have the same affection towards the girls as the girls had for Super Junior. Super Junior was not waiting out in the cold to see them, nor were they buying posters with the girl's faces to hang on their wall. Even I was not entirely unconvicted as I sat their waiting with a friend-- I realized that Super Junior was never going to trowel the internet searching for cute pictures of me (incidentally though, if they ever did, I hope they find the one beneath this paragraph)

I actually recognized a little bit of myself in some of the girls. I remember in high school I once wrote a journal entry about wanting to fit in with my peers. I wanted them to know me and like me, but every time I spent time with them, I felt myself to shy to talk to them, or presenting myself to them in a way that felt false and left a sour taste in my mouth. I wrote, “I just think that if they knew me, they would like me. I don't know how I could show them my true self hidden beneath this skin, but I wish I could just inject myself into their blood like a heroin. Suddenly, they would understand deep inside who I am and they would like me.” That same longing for acceptance that I felt so poignantly was seen again tonight in the girls chasing after the band.. Their screaming and arrhythmic pounding against the car windows was unintelligible, but wholly understandable as, “If you only knew me, you would accept me!”

PS: Hey guys, this is Renee's fangirl side speaking. Most of this blog is really introspective and thoughtful, but just so you don't get fooled, it's still Super Junior for lyfe! I just wanted other SuJu fans to know that Kangin came from military service to make a final speech with the band. 11 members reunited! It was touching! Also, I mentioned on facebook the other day that somehow I got 20 views from this blog from a link on Choi Siwon's twitter account (how did it ever get there?). I am totally going to pretend one of those views was from Siwon. Dear Siwon, if you are reading this, I want to hang out with you and talk about Africa. I have a pretty tight schedule here in Seoul, but I think I would make accommodations for you. Love, Renee.

How Super Junior Changed My Life (a blog with pictures!)

I love Super Junior. Super Junior is a fifteen member Korean pop group that I've been listening to for the past two years or so. I first heard about Super Junior from my flamboyant friend Simon, who went to China with the goal of finding, "The cutest boy band imaginable." What he found was Super Junior, whereupon he promptly posted the following music video on his myspace page:

Sitting up late at night watching it for the first time, I had no idea of the future impact it would have on my life.

Super Junior does not play good music. On an purely intellectual level, their music offends my sensibilities. They don't write their own lyrics, and the backround music is a mash of synthesized chords jumbled together in sterile studios for maximum mass-produced enjoyability. The members (all fifteen of them!) do have some talent, but their primary selling point seems to be not their singing, dancing, or showmanship, but rather their clear-eyed smiles and dazzling good looks.* Somehow though, despite my better judgment, that blend of cheesy lyrics, studio-produced computer beeps, and unspeakable attraction (multiplied by 15) won me over, and I found myself feeling insensibly happy.

So how did this all "Change my life" as the title of the blog proclaims? Even as an avid fan, I think the majority of their music is too vapid to have a lasting impact on my life. I suppose that if you calculate hours lost to my sister and I browsing the internet for details of their life ("Carissa, look, Heechul has a cat." "Look, Carissa, I just found a PSA SuJu did on Saving Engery." "Siwon's religion: Christian. It looks like he's OK for us to marry now, Carissa."), there is probably a minute impact on my life. But in the end, Super Junior is what introduced me to Korean popular culture, and made me notice the brochure for the program to teach here. Before Super Junior, all I knew about Korea was the bullet points of the Korean war, and that I really liked the kimchi and bibimbap served at the delicious, albeit greasy diner down the street from me. After Super Junior, I wanted to live in Korea... and now I do.

I told my friend Su-Chong today that I feel like I'm living somebody else's life. The sort of adventure that I'm having here feels like the sort of think I've only ever wanted. Every morning when I wake up, I have this slow groggy transition from the messy world of sleep to the realization, again and again, that I'm actually living in Korea. Little things excited me still, like seeing black squirrels, buying kimbap and waffles from street-side vendors, or bowing my head as a greeting. So much of Korea still has the flavor of the utterly exotic to me.

Even better than the exotic are the things that have now become like home. Just like in America, I have friends that I love, a multinational church where I worship, and school full of students whose futures are being shaped by the things I teach them. In ten years from now, I probably won't still listen to Super Junior. But ten years from now, all the people I've met here will still be indelibly stained onto my soul, giving me pause before I say or do or think.

-Renee Badenoch

PS: For those of you who are interested, here is a Super Junior playlist my sister compiled on youtube. It is a great way to get introduced for the uninitiated (although I would have included "Dancing Out" and "Victory Korea"), and even includes songs by some of the Suju sub-groups. http://www.youtube.com/user/lazygamingcook#p/c/3715C926FA642841/0/R8AZ1NLd-mk


*Super Junior is not as blatantly exploited for their good looks as other Korean boy bands. Big Bang recently released a music video that was nothing Taeyang--a member with a physique that would put Edward Cullen to shame--singing shirtless in an inexplicably raining warehouse. I don't speak enough Hangul to understand the song, but I imagine that the gist of it was, "Did you notice my pectoral muscles? What about these chiseled bricks of abdomens, eh?" I couldn't watch the whole thing, because I felt bad for the guy singing it, like I feel bad for prostitutes.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

Shambles

I was just about to write a blog about Super Junior, and how they began my twisted journey along the path of Korean pop culture that eventually led me to Seoul. Until I sat down at my computer and heard someone singing outside. By my open window, I could hear someone singing an opera. I think that it was a person singing, because they would start and sing a few bars, and then stop again. I ran down the steps to the courtyard outside, hoping I could find them. When I went out, it was silent.

"Hello," I sang into the night. "Hello. I heard you singing. Your voice tore through the air, and also tore my heart." I was quiet, and listened. No one responded.

Now, I came back and decided to write down things that I've thought of lately, but haven't written down.

First, another open letter:

Dear 100,000 dissolute looking smokers at KU,

Today I passed you in the cold morning. No longer did you look tough, rustling quietly in the cold. Instead, as you shivered, you looked like tiny moths, fluttering toward the all-too-brief flame of your lighters. Your hands trembled as you drew your shaky cigarettes towards your lips.

Your breath and smoke froze suspended in a white sheet around you. Walking through that ethereal haze, I saw you huddled together like old mystics, and I had my own moment of clairvoyance. I closed my eyes and saw you, loves, your bodies still twitching like moths, and your festered, blackened tongues lolling from your lips.

Friends, you and I are both lovers of beautiful things. Sometimes I sit in my room and light a stick of incense. I watch as the smoke rises in whorling eddies toward my ceiling. Imagine you step now from your dreamlike haze and come with me, to light incense, or candles, or anything else.

-Renee*

... Sometimes I think about meeting Super Junior. (This would have made more sense to my un-K-pop-initiated readers if I had written the blog I originally intended to.)
When I first started listening to them in 2008, even in my most unrealistic day dreams, I couldn't help but imagining meeting them with awkward blushes and stammers. Now, I don't really have crushes on them any more, but sometimes I can't help but wanting to meet them to become their friends. Celebrity is interesting that way, isn't it? Because it gives us a false sense of intimacy with people, so that part of me feels like I know Super Junior, even though I don't and probably never will. Part of me feels like we are already friends, even though we aren't, and probably never will be (I'm holding on to those probablies--I'm at least in the same city now, so there's no telling what could happen :)I think that the nature of celebrity is that they are mostly faces that people can project whatever they like upon. So basically people can project intimacy or friendship or whatever they want on the celebrity, and feel connected because of what they created that person to be in their minds. Then companies can use the celebrity to sell things like Kyo Chon chicken, and people put the projections they have of the celebrity on the product they are buying (i.e, "Kyo Chon chicken wants to be my friend.")

Anyway, when you read the following dialogues between myself and Siwon (my favorite SuJu member), you will probably notice a lot more of Renee than Siwon:


I especially want to meet Choi Siwon. I would say, "Siwon, you fufilled one of my dreams when you went with the U.N to Africa. When you were at the orphanage, did you see the sun reflected off of the children's faces? I live for that moment, when I am with children, and we clasp hands and spin together in the sun. When we stop spinning, and the world slowly comes back into place, I see the light catch and glow on the tiny hairs of their face, and it's the most beautiful thing in the world. Siwon, when the children laughed, did their heads tilt back? Did their teeth glint like diamonds? Siwon, when you held the children, did you smell their hair? Isn't that a nice smell, the smell of baby-oil and coconut lotion? Siwon, when you held hands with the children, what did their palms feel like? Did you trace the labyrinthine paths of lines on their palms with your finger? I've done that before too."

Sometimes I imagine that Siwon tells me about the girl he is in love with. He tells me how he feels reverent when he approaches her, as if she were made of glass. "I cannot believe her frailty," he says. "Her eyelids are like butterfly wings."

These conversations never last long, because then I start to tell Siwon about when Danny and I met, and I get lost in my memories of last summer. In my mind, I am spinning with children in the sun, and when I stop, there is Danny, spinning with me.

*OK, so this letter sounds insufferably preachy in some ways. I actually don't think that informed adults should be told whether or not they can smoke. It's their decision. But I like some of the language of this so much, that I'll share it, despite the things I dislike.

Open Letters

I have long been a fan of open letters. I like people, and inanimate objects, to know exactly what I am thinking. Sometimes, even if there is no one else around, I will find myself composing letters in my head of things that simply must be said. Here is a collection of letters I wrote today:
Dear thick black plastic horned rimmed-glasses,

I have seen approximately one million of you since I came to Seoul. You are very in vogue right now, and you should be very proud of yourself. From the most hunchbacked grandmother, to the long-limbed, stylish baggy sweater wearing teeny boppers, to the infants made impossibly wide-eyed by your wearing, you make everyone look awesome. One might think that repeated exposure to you (I see you about 90 times a day on the bus rides alone) might make me grow tired of you, but it's not true. I like you more than ever right now.

Can I tell you something personal? When I was a little girl, I used to pray that God would blight my eyesight, so I could wear glasses. Later on in life, I laughed about this... But Oh, beautiful big glasses, you make me want this more than ever.

Longingly,
Renee

Dear 100,000 dissolute looking smokers at KU,

Men: I understand the desire to look disreputable! Some days I look in the mirror and think, "I wish I looked a little bit more disaffected and misunderstood. I wish I looked a little more dangerous." When I feel this way, here is what I do: I wear plaid pants and combat boots. Instantaneously, I feel like a miscreant.

Please stop smoking! You so nasty! Just wear some scruffy looking leather and scrunch your shoulders down a little, and you will look so rakish and tired of life that all the girls will want to ride motorcycles with you.

your friend (and fashion advisor),
Renee

PS: Also, some of you dissolute smokers wear gold chains. Don't. I'm just sayin'.

Dear Renee,

Oh my goodness, you have the brains of a fermented squid. Please stop losing your crap.


Dear Kyochon chicken,

You make me want chicken more than I've ever wanted any chicken in my life.

Except for Ginger. That was an evil chicken that woke me up at repeatedly earlier times every morning. I had a bloodlust out for that chicken that outweighs any lust I've ever felt for Super Junior. But seriously, every day when I pass your store I whisper, "Dear Siwon, I'd buy chicken from you anyday."

Your buddy,
Renee B.

The next open letter was a particularly special one, because the item that I addressed the open letter to wrote an open letter back to me:

Dear Sweater,

I thank you for keeping me warm this morning when it was cold, but now you are hot and itchy. I am going to walk behind this apartment complex and change into a stripy shirt that I just bought because stripy shirts are almost as popular right now as those eighties throwback black plastic glasses.

Love,
Renee

*Said in impossibly stuffy British accent*

Dear Renee,

It's quite alright for you to discard of me, and even for you to put me into a small and sweaty bag as I know you intend to do. Please look fetching in your striped shirt.

Cordially,
Sweater Smithson-West the third.

Dear Sweater,

Thanks so much for your understanding. I promise to don you again once the weather warms up a bit.

Love and hugs,
Renee

Dear Renee,

I look forward to the occasion.

-Sweater.

A poem

I keep telling myself that I'm going to be better at updating this blog, but it looks like another week has gone by without an update. Today I just looked at my list of blogs that I want to write about and picked the shortest, easiest one.

The blog today will be mostly comprised of a poem I started writing spring of 2009 called "Hipsters Don't Have Any." I finished writing it recently, but there are some things about it that I don't like. The poem was originally written as a means for me to explore some of my feelings about weight and beauty. The poem is addressed to hipsters which I think is a very subjective term that means different things to different people. I guess when I think of the word "hipster," an image comes to my mind of a thin and shaky person. A person who drapes themselves in expensive, flimsy layers of clothing. A person who knows how to put on eye makeup to make their eyes look dark like "hollows of madness." A person perpetually wrapped in an impenetrable, damning ennui... gah. When I try to describe it, it sounds vague even to me. I guess "hipster" to me just personifies the sort of person who makes me feel insecure about my looks and interests and personality.

I guess that this blog doesn't have a lot to do with my international travels, except that I sometimes feel painfully aware of my weight in Seoul, because so many women here are all small sinews and muscles. Intellectually, I understand that I am not overweight, and not unhealthy. However, it is a pervasive myth of both my culture and South Korean culture that happiness is synonymous with beauty and beauty is synonymous with diminutive waistelines. Even recognizeing this myth as a myth, I still find myself staring in mirrors and flattening my hands on my stomach, pressing my belly toward my spine until my reflection looks more like a woman I would see smiling hungrily on T.V.

So... I wrote this poem, perhaps to reassure myself that hiplines matter so little, and no slender waif-like fashionistas need to make me feel otherwise. As far as poems on insecurities and weight go, a brilliant poet friend of mine recently wrote a much more poignant one than the following, and I urge you to read it and be moved: How Shall We Speak of Weight? Finally, as far as poems about hips go, I defer to Sandra Cisnero's magnum opus, The House on Mango Street

Hipsters Don't Have Any

Hips. They do have stomachs, flat like pancakes or Kansas,
long slender fingers with small knobby knuckles,
and the gentle press of clavicle against tightly wrapped T-shirts.
But they are Hip-o-crites, because they lack any
Hips. Me, I've got hips
like hippos, with their globular, bulbous, sensuous curves.
God knows, I've longed for your necks,
the jut of your shoulder blades,
but never the distorted hips bones that lurch at jangly angles.
God knows how I've wanted your jawline and hairline
the black sheet of hair that falls over your eyes,
its shadow soft against the pale bone of your cheek.
But I've never wanted those two concave polygons
between your atrophied wasteline and skinny jeans,
where the whole world can see
your hips can't hold belts or babies or hands.

An Unexpected Meeting.

Dear friends,

Do you remember the first week I was here (dear friends: has it really only been three weeks)?* I wrote a blog about how some unpleasant things are the same everywhere and some pleasant things are the same everywhere. In the blog, I mentioned going to a grocery store and meeting two little girls with mice who proceeded to follow me around the entire store, and left me with bountiful hugs when I finally had to go. Well, today I went back to the store for the first time in months, and I ran into one of the girls again!

Here's how it went down: I went into the store with Nikie, my roommate, and Heesung, our Korean buddy. Nikie and Heesung went to buy groceries for Nikie, and I went to buy markers to color with--aside note: And did I ever color! Tonight I made a "friends poster" for me and the security guard, an old man named Mr. Lee who won my heart week number one when he gave me a can of pineapple juice and shared my secret stash of jelly beans-- Since I only bought one thing, I checked out much earlier than Nikie and Heesung I sat down to wait for them, and began drawing pictures with my markers and playing "Where's the Baby" with a a laughing baby. A group of kids came over and we had a brief conversation in limited English and Korean.

They left me with a, "Good-bye, Renee Teacher," and I went back to coloring. A few minutes later I heard a happy gasp, as the kids came back with my friend from week one. She ran over and hugged me and showed me her mouse, now grown much bigger (A note: As far as I can tell, this girl's mother works at the store and so the girl spends a lot of time at there). Anyway, we reacquainted ourselves in much the same way, with smiles and giggles, limited communication and exaggerated facial expressions. We also drew pictures on a pad of sticky notes, and she wrote "Sah Rang Heh Yo," which means, "I love you," on her hands. Heesung snapped a picture of us and we left.

I know I say this quite a bit but:
It was the best day ever.

*I'm not quite sure if I punctuated this sentence correctly. I've always had some problems with parentheses. Grammar nerds, can you tell me where the punctuation is supposed to go when using parentheses? Neil, Carrie Jones, or Kathy Rice, I have a feeling one of you might know.

English Books

To me, a library is like a sanctuary. When I walk into a library, I feel a wonder and peace and hope growing inside of me. When I go into a library, I like to do it when I have a lot of time, so I can walk around the whole library, my fingers brushing lightly across the spines of books.

When I finally found the library at Korea University, I thought I would cry. It's enormous, reaching up five stories high, and has "Great Glass Elevators" and marble floors that echo the clicks of shoes. I entered the library as I normally do, just walking around feeling the weightiness of the assembled books. On the fourth floor I sat with my back to the wall smiling like a lunatic.

After a while, I began to wonder if the library had an English section. It did, tacked on awkwardly to the back. The English section is not nearly as well kept or grandiose. The walls are dirty, with layers of handprints that I imagined went back for the hundred years since the library was built. The lights are dim and flickering, the windows non-existant, and the books dog-eared and underlined. I wasn't dissapointed though, because, o rapture of my soul, I found five floors of English books! I walked agitatedly around the library, clasping Salinger to my heart and putting my fourhead against a shelf of British poetry. Finally, I sighed happily, sat down with Suzanne Collin's Catching Fire and for the next four hours, the whole library from the loudest echo of tapping against the tile floor, to the very last ancient and dirty thumb print, faded away and into nothing but the ink in front of me.

Nothing New Under the Sun

What has been will be again
What has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

Sometimes I despair that things never change. One of my greatest fears in life is becoming a person who reaches a point of stagnation, whose days blend seamlessly into the next in a bland, gray sameness.

The flight to Korea was surreal. During the 16 hours on the plane, I traveled following the path of the sun, so when I got to the Incheon airport at what should have been 1 am in American time, it was 3pm in Korean time. It was strange to experience that sameness, when the modes of my body told me that the sun should be setting, to look out and see it at the same point in the sky, in a never-changing constant daytime.

Once in Korea, I got to see how other things are unpleasantly the same as in the U.S. Today, all day long I sat in small, cramped offices, waiting for inefficient bureaucracies while I got my bank account and student id card and passport photocopies. Looking around at the faces, I noticed the same claustrophobic irritation that are hallmarks of any waiting room in any office in the U.S. Funnily enough, at the bank the television was playing CSI: NY, as if to show me that even here, in Korea, people still watch the same bad tv shows.

Walking down the streets, I noticed all sorts of things that I was surprised about, like litter, traffic jams, public displays of affection, and loud arguments between taxi drivers and passengers. It sounds silly, but in my mind I've built Seoul up as such a paradigm of modernity and wonder that it never occurred to me that it would have the same nasty elements that plague all mankind.

Later, when I was in a Korean departments store that I was told was the equivalent to Costco (which, being a place of no natural light and a plethora of plastic, is not my favorite place). Two girls in the store had bought live mice. When I saw the mice, I dropped to my knees and motioned that I would like to pet them. I cooed and smiled and thanked the girls in Korean and left. Later, when I ran into them again, they cheered and hugged me. For the rest of the time I was there, they followed me around the store, shoving the mice in my face, talking to me in Korean, trying to imitate my laugh, and exagerating the way I saw "wow" by turning it into a multi-syllable, "Woooo-aaa-ow." I was struck how much their enthusiasm and acceptance reminded me of so many other kids I've taught, laughed, played, and said wow with. Sometimes the things that stay exactly the same are good things.

-Renee