post from inside a cloud

Well, it only took three planes, four airports, and two bus rides to get here, but we've arrived and are staying in the Park Meudung Hotel in Gwanju (though, each city I've seen has an average of three different spellings, depending on the map, so don't take any of my spellings as fact) and have begun our orientation with the Jeollanamdo English Training Institute. It has become quite clear that our being here is actually a very big deal. We knew this, to a point, since our airfare was something like $1,500 a piece and there are 35 of us and the provincial government is picking up the tab. But, we had no idea how big a deal.

Yesterday, we met the Jeollanam-do Governor, a Mister Park Junior if I've got that correct, and there were news cameras and lots of photography. We have become the defacto ambassadors of Portland, Oregon and we are slowly discovering what exactly we are to do here. And, it's turning out, we are to be much more involved in the teaching than we were led to believe. We will be running one booth for the duration of our work at the Jeollanamdo English Camp, which means we will teach lessons on art, music, nature, science, math, etc. to elementary and middle school students every day. We think they have lessons planned and supplies, but we don't know for cerrtain yet. I know they thought we would have chosen which booth we would be working in, which we have not, because we didn't know. Obviously, the language barrier is presenting a bit of confusion, but they are taking this whole thing very seriously and are otherwise very organized, so I don't think it will be a problem. Besides, this will not be the first time I've had to do any sort of improvisational teaching. Still, wish me luck.

I've almost adjusted to the time change (16 hours ahead of home, so most of the time, I'm on a different day than most of you) and the weather is hot and sticky. We are literally walking around inside a cloud most of the time. Looking out at the sky, through the air out in front of me, it reminds me a bit of Ireland, in that the air is just different, thicker. You can see it and feel it in a way we don't usually. You can feel it as you inhale it through your nose. Looking out over the city at night, one might think it is a smoggy haze, but it's not. They are clouds. I'd seen paintings that give this sort of dreamlike impression, which I mistook for artistic license, but this is actually what the surrounding countryside looks like. We are almost always inside a cloud. Even when it is sunny. And, did I mention it is hot? It will get hotter in August. By about 10 degrees I think. I will be glistening and sticky for weeks yet.

Last night Abbye (one of the other girls here) and I were in the hotel gym looking at the back of the TV to see if I could plug B's iPod into it to do some yoga (thank you again for that B, I have already used it!) and then we caught sight of something interesting outside the window: a snack shack with moving chairlifts shooting out of the back. We decided to explore. Of course, not speaking much, or really any (hello and thank you are very limited in their use, but we've used them a lot) Korean, it took a while to figure out what the deal was. After much charades and broken questioning (imagine me waving my hands in a circular motion, then pointing up the mountain and making "look out at the view" motions, saying the Korean word for "where") we determinied that the chairlift took us up to the top of the mountain and back. Of course, we missed the part about us being able to get off at the top and look out at the view from up there, so we stayed on and came right back down. It was still an amazing view.

We traveled up through the trees, the sun had just set, and the higher we went, the more incredible the view of the city lights spread out behind us in the distance. A large bird flew out in front of us and the trees were alive with the singing of what I think are cicadas. So loud. The Koreans call this sound crying. Birds cry, crickets cry; they do not sing. South Korea is also a very philosophical sort of place. We had visited a garden earlier and were told to discard our pragmatic thinking and to use our imagination. They believe that to cultivate the mind is one of the highest and most important pursuits. We also happen to be in the province best known for it's cultural heritage, specifically for it's poetry and literature. I learned about sijo (short form poetry) and gasa (long form prose poetry and/or novels) at the Museum of Literature yesterday. So, as you might imagine, I am enjoying myself quite a bit. We find out what city we are going to today when we meet our Korean teacher/partners. We meet our host families this weekend and will stay with them for two weeks and two days before being transferred back to hotels in our respective cities. I am still hoping to make a weekend trip to Jeju-do, off the southwestern-most coast, near Haenam, which is said to be the Hawaii of Korea. I am also considering doing a temple-stay one weekend and living like and among Buddhist monks for a spell. It will surely all be interesting.

There is more, of course, and I'm still digesting it all. They call the vegetarians among us "the different ones" and assume that this means we eat fish. I am doing better than others in this regard, since I am no longer a strict vegetarian, but it has been interesting. I'm feeling sorry for the meat eaters, because apparently the rest of the world thinks Americans are extremely fond of beef, and so far they've been served it twice in one day, once as something resembling salisbury steak, and again as what we think may have been chicken fried steak. The meat eaters are wishing they'd get Korean food and not the Denny's special as the Koreans here have interpreted it. In any case, I am off to discover what we are having for breakfast today and then to begin our training.

Much love to you all.