Korea winter break

Although I thought I was done with college apps after last year, I spent bulk of my vacation and especially the New Year’s Day (as college app due dates are Jan 1) reading my friends’ and my brother’s apps. On my last night in Korea on the night of the New Year’s Day, I was reading apps, but some of my friends called me at midnight to save me. They told me they were at a club in Gangnam (one of the hang-out areas for youth in Seoul), as Jan 1 was the first day which we (those of us born in 1990) could go clubbing legally, and told me to come right over. (Korean age works funny in that you don’t age until January 1 regardless of your birthday). So after dutifully editing all my friend’s apps at 1:30am, I took a taxi and went to a club for the first time in my life. It wasn’t too different from what I expected, and it was also weird to be there because my two friends and I were the only eighteen and everybody else seemed like they are at least in their mid-twenties. But I have fun sort of dancing by myself anyways and after downing some beer, my friend told me I turned a little predatory (I disagreed). But I had fun anyways and it’s also true that all men are wolves. The whole club thing seemed like a big courting ceremony with fancily-dressed guys trying to win girls. But it was a good way to spend my last day in Korea with some of my closest friends, and after getting back home around 5am, and reading more apps, I headed straight to the airport with no sleep for my 8:50am flight to Hong Kong

I slept all of my ride to the airport and all my flight from Seoul to Hong Kong, but during the few moments I was awake, I reflected on my last three and half weeks in Korea. It had been busy period. My first memory back in Korea was how depressing it was. Because of the financial crisis, many of the Korean buildings and bridges across the Han River than usually shone brightly had their lights off. It was the first time that I experienced the brunt of the financial crisis, and I heard from my friends in the US that there are Koreans who are taking semesters off or going into the military because the tuition is now 1.5 times more expensive than it used to be. Anyways, for the first week, I had Zoe and Chinese and Japanese students at my place (not together but one after another), and I was being a tour guide in Seoul for the first week. I was looking forward to hosting some people after experiencing so much hospitality in China, but I also realized that it’s not so easy being a host because towards the end I was tired of having guests and wasn’t as good of a host as I should have been. We visited my family botanical garden, DMZ, National Museum, Samsung Art Gallery, COEX and the Buddhist temple next to it, some of royal palaces from Choseon Dynaasty in Seoul, and all the historical places we visited I heard something along the line of:

‘this building was built during early Choseon Dynasty in 15^th century, and then it was destroyed in 1592 during the Japanese invasion and the reconstructed and destroyed again during the Japanese Colonial Rule in the early twentieth century and today only about 10 percent of the structure remains standing”

As much as I love and am fascinated by the Japanese people, it was a little depressing to see my culture destroyed by a foreigner military power multiple times. In addition, Japanese people had used Korean women as ‘comforters’- sexual objects- during the World War II, and also tried to decimate the Korean language (which is so closely tied to one’s culture). Of course we should not dwell on the past, but it upset me that my country had been a scapegoat for superpowers throughout the history. When I went to the DMZ and faced North Korea, it was so weird to think that I was not allowed to cross the river to the other side that seemed so calm. Birds flew across, but I couldn’t. Thanks to the Cold War and Americans and the Soviets vying for power, my country was split in half against our will and I have to give two years of my life to the military that I don’t really believe in. Perhaps I should be grateful that I’m at least living in South Korea and not North, but it still upset me that we’re in two pieces.

This winter break, I also had a chance to go out snowboarding with my uncle- who turned out to be a good person to snowboard with as he had a pretty good form. He also treated me to a nice drink of hot sake (Japanese liquor that is interestingly served hot) which was nice and I felt like an adult J. After that, I had a three-day road trip with my granddad (it was supposed to be longer but we’ve postponed longer one for the summer). It had only dawned upon me recently that I only had one granddad and one grandma left, and one of my priorities this break had been to spend time with my granddad because he always offered to show me around various parts of Korea. My granddad is also a great resource to learn about Korea because he has lived in over eleven locations all around the country because he was an elementary school teacher for close to half a decade. We spent the first two days hanging out with a monk he was friends with, and that monk was really cool. He was also a writer, photographer, painter, an environmental activist and ornithologist with a ton of birds at home. He was so chilled out and treated me to a nice cup of green tea in the lounge, and it was interesting to see Korean tea tradition. He lived alone on a mountainside in a gray container with three rooms- one study, one lounge and one bedroom, and he said he never locked his lounge so anybody can come hang out and drink tea even when he’s not around. And then we went to go crane watching, which was really cool and it was those migratory birds were absolutely beautiful. I don’t remember the details of our conversation one month past our encounter, but I still remember his peaceful aura and he told me how he was just sick and tired of living in this competitive capitalist society, so decided to be a monk. He let me kiss some of his tiny birds (not in a sketchy way- when he placed a little food on my lip, his pet birds flew and snatched the little food. He also told me one of his goals is to build an aviary park with a lot of plants and trees that attract birds, and I told him that perhaps his vision could be realized within my family botanical garden. I gave my parents and the director his contacts, and I think I’ll follow up on him when I spend more time at the garden this summer. Whenever I see priests or monks of any religion, I wonder if they really have all their lust and desires erased. And is this necessary a good thing? At least for now, I want to live a passionate life with a lot of ups and downs and the idea of serenity and peace of mind doesn’t appeal to me too much. I love chaos, as shown by my room and hairstyle. (but my mom didn’t so we had a lot of arguments about that this break as well). Afterwards, I went to a place called Chuncheon where there were some beautiful rivers and lakes, and also visited Morning Calm (another botanical garden that is a rival of my family botanical garden) and Nam-I Island with my granddad. Namyi Island was really cool as the new CEO created a cultural theme park that was a perfect place to hang out for couples. The place also received a ton of visitors from overseas which was interesting

My last week was spent mostly hanging out with the fam & friends, packing and reading apps. Although finding specific flights took a long time, it was not actually that hard to figure out the route for my round-the-world trip. (oneworld.com is the greatest invention by the way- as my round-the-ticket is just over $3000 US (well, I had to pay another $2000 in tax but still cheap). I contacted my friends in various countries and organizations like wwoof that I’d like to work at, and eventually I came out with an itinerary that covers almost all of the places I wanted to hit- which is India- New Zealand- England- France- Spain- Italy- Kenya-Tanzania- Egypt- Israel- USA- Mexico- Japan- back home

On my last night, I also made my dad some tea that I bought from China and he absolutely loved them. I made him Puer, Longjing and Tieguanyin, and he loved them all and kept asking me for more although as a doctor he was also saying that too much caffeine is bad for him. Although the tea demonstration I gave in front of the head chef and other restaurant staff at the botanical garden didn’t go so well as I had not quite mastered the Tao of tea, it was still good to pique their interest in tea and I bought them several books on tea. My mom told me she also received an offer to be on the board for a tea shop that grows & sells Korean, Chinese and Japanese teas so hopefully I can get somewhere with that too. It was nice to have a brainstorming session with my mom’s best friend who has been making documentaries for over 20 years and is an advisor for national heritage preservation office (she gave me a wonderful tour of the Korean palaces during spring break but unfortunately she was sick now). She has also made a documentary on teas in East Asia so that was really helpful to hear from her on my tea-café idea and other entrepreneurial stuff. I was also excited that the new director at my botanical garden is more excited about the idea of mini golf than my parents were. I thought it would be really cool to have a ‘mini golf garden’ integrated into my family botanical garden and I’m looking forward to learning more about designing and constructing mini golf courses when I go to the UK and the US. I have already exchanged extensive emails with some companies and looking forward to meeting them in person. For my online .com start-up ideas, I also received a crash course on website design from my mom’s friend who is a computer science professor (my mom knows everybody in Korea) and that was really helpful too. I’m refining my ideas for a website that connects runners and that allows one to lend their stuff that they’re not using (like bikes) and although I’m postponing my entrepreneurial activities for my Round-the-world trip, I hope I can get started on them soon.