#11 - Shopping for a New Life

"Try to tell the truth and stand your ground. 

Don't let the bananas get you down."

~Kris Kristofferson

For those of you who know me, you've heard me get fixed on an idea.  

It comes up in conversation diffusely and I will hint at it when we are talking about something unrelated...like cheesecake.  

The latest idea is the idea of 'transnational' as a take-off of trans-anything coinage (transgender, transatlantic, you name it).  A 'transnational' by my definition is a person who does not feel at home in their own culture so they go searching for one that better fits their own set of values.  This person attempts to live in various cultures to find the anthropological counterpart to their personality.  Most of the time, they fail miserably.

This would make a good one-woman show of tragio-comedic value.  

Unrelated to my personal experiences in life, of course.

Because I am always cool as an autumn breeze.

I hope you are not disappointed when I tell you that my new identity is neither as a minion nor as a unicorn.  

I am still searching, but that does not mean I can't pretend to be someone else for our Feinschule Halloween. In the meantime, whilst I pretend to be someone else, the idea of where I am heading next in my life is on the backburner.  

I just hope I remember to turn the burner off before the idea is set on fire.  Because then you can't eat it up.

One of the subjects I teach at our kindergarten is Game Class.  This week I had a kind of deja vu moment in the class when I began teaching a game involving finding animals underneath magic hats.  

I miraculously knew how to play the game.

It turns out when I was learning German/English at my German kindergarten in Dortmund, I had played the same game.  

The reason I remembered it because it was a source of mild trauma.  I remember not being able to play because I couldn't understand either language.  I felt so alone and no teacher offered the support I needed.  It was like being in the Diving Bell & Butterfly movie, without the physical handicap.  For those who have not seen the film, it chronicles a journalist post-stroke from his altered perspective.

The Corner of the Room became my best friend.  Now, I have the chance to rescue my little pumpkins from Mr. Corner.  This is how you can change the past, by making positive choices in the present.

You can be sure that I never leave a single step of the game unexplained.

However, it has gone too far.  They care too much and the level of competition is anxiety-inducing.

Sundays away from the competition-rattled kiddies have found me shopping at the local markets for my week's supply of calories.  These markets are beautiful in their unaltered food supply - you can see hanging fish heads, tentacle breasts, pig parts galore, whole ducks primped up in flowery baskets, fresh fish, and men with nose plugs in so that they can do their 9 to 5.

"On the sleepy city sidewalks,

Sunday morning coming down..."

 

Korea is full of all the contradictions that involve a traditional way of life meeting the modern Seoul-lite existence.  You can wander down a market and wonder if the food is dead because it looks so alive and ugly. It reaches out and touches you sometimes.  

That same day, you can visit a DUNKIN' DONUTS and see a special category of donuts that has been categorized as "Unpretty Choco Fritters."  The attention to appearance here is a bit hard on the heart, but I would eat these donuts anyway.  

As long as they are not labelled "Ugly."

By the same token, I stumbled upon a coffee shop that is so over-designed it looks like a furniture store.  

But they have lattes somewhere in the back between the loveseats and computer chairs.

As a way to embrace the traditional, a couple of weeks ago I embarked on a weekend harvesting acorns and sesame seeds at Gimcheon Farms.  This was a retreat organized by someone who also believed it was a good idea to do a juice cleanse and outdoor yoga three times a day, so I got into a yellow van at 8 a.m. on a Saturday morning and embraced the adventure.  

Of course, I like to challenge myself stubbornly, so I became a mule going up the mountain.

The most valuable part of the experience was getting a meal cooked from scrach by an old Korean woman in a hut at the base of the hill.  

It was not on chicken feet.  

But we did have to call her an hour before the meal so she could begin cooking.  We then climbed down the mountain with our flashlights and wandered into her small house, the half of which had been converted to a restaurant.  You wouldn't know it was a restaurant unless someone told you it was okay to knock on a stranger's door and beg for food.  Aside from the delicious outhouse romantically concealed in vines, the experience was gentle and heart-warming.  

That night, while we slept in our tents we became surrounded by animals that slowly started approaching us on all sides.  They sounded like belligerent howler monkeys.  Suddenly, just when I was about to think of what people do in action movies when they are surrounded, the noise subsided and they jolted in the opposite direction.  

I was glad to have had a warm meal and enough soju beforehand to numb my senses.

No one in the village knows what those animals were, which is frightening and also inspiring to the imagination.

    Our "Hut on Chicken Feet"

Sesame

Persimmons, deathly cheap and delicious in Korea

In the spirit of the end of summer, we took the students to a Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability Center.  They watched a 30-minute animated segment on the importance of earthworms and spent the day playing outside.  

I am continually amazed by how aware Koreans are of the potential damage they could do to their environment.  In my neighborhood of Dang dong, if you are walking down the street and drop a candy wrapper, people on the street will stare at that wrapper as if it it were burning a hole thru the Earth.  

Because it is. 

 Being here in the last segment of my stay is quite humbling.  

As I decide where I go next in my adventures, I am changing my approach to work and travel.  

Instead of thinking about where I want to be, I am deciding what kind of opportunity I would like and casting my net as wide as the Earth.  It's not what I want to be, it's where what I can offer can be of use and serve its purpose.  Thinking this way requires a certain abandonment of control, and in many ways I am an autumn leaf.

 Where I land is a mystery.

The surer I am of what kind of leaf I am, the more likely I am to find the base of my tree.

Otherwise, some kid will find me and make me into an arts and crafts project.

We wouldn't want that.

That's reserved for macaroni.

With the changing of the seasons,

Sabina Teacher