Overnight in 원주

My friend Lauren G., an ATE in Wonju, was singing in a concert featuring her church choir, so I thought I’d spend Sunday night there and come in to school a little late Monday morning. No big deal. I don’t teach Mondays anyway.

Stacey C., the other ATE assigned to Wonju, was of course there as well, and our friend Jenna N. was also visiting for the concert. I haven’t seen her since Yonsei Day, so it was nice to catch up on homestays and Korean learning and teaching. The nice thing about visiting people in Korea, I’ve found, is it’s not necessary to go out and do a lot of flashy things. Mostly you just want to sit and talk with them, compare notes and experiences and generally catch up. Lauren’s step-cousin was also visiting, and though they’re not related, I thought they looked very much alike.

Lauren had to warm-up and otherwise prepare for the choir performance, so Jenna, the Cous, and I all headed over to Stacey’s apartment for some liquid refreshment (fermented, but non-alcoholic, rice something or rather) and then went out to see a movie. Upon arriving, we found that Borne Supremacy was showing in about 10 minutes. I was super excited about seeing it, as I’d already heard good things from home about it, but it was sold out, so we went late to a showing of The Nanny Diaries. It was actually pretty interesting—an anthropological study of New England high society culture, and if there’s a book, I’m reading it. The fact that it starred Scarlet Johansson (who is my wife from when I played M.A.S.H. with the kids) probably helped my interest level, of course. I did notice that there were a few jokes that were probably only accessible for Americans, as no Koreans laughed at those jokes, or even cracked a smile. In general though, Koreans do not laugh in public preferring a stone-faced smile if something appeals to them, so that may have been the problem instead of the comedy’s efficacy.

After this, we sat at a café and talked until the concert. Lauren’s cousin, who works for a counter terrorism manufacturing company and especially on marketing biometric face recognition systems, picked up the check. We met Hwi Kyun, an RA from our days in Chuncheon, and proceeded to hear beauteous Korean words (and Latin words in the case of Vivaldi’s Gloria) set to traditional Western hymnody. I was actually quite pleased with the selections from Vivaldi’s Gloria section of the performance. Sure, their final consonants were a bit off as one might expect from people trained in a dialect that doesn’t recognize final ‘s’ sounds, but overall the nostalgia for those days when I was singing the Gloria in H.S. displaced any technical musical errors that may have displeased my ears. I actually had to restrain myself from singing along…

It really was a nice concert though. There was even an interpretative dance in the middle that acted as a sweet sherbet to cleanse the pallet in between choral sets.

Afterwards, Lauren’s host family took us out for 샤부샤부 (shabushabu), a combination of Korean beef and seafood served in a soup, followed by 쭉 (jjuk), rice porridge made from the soup’s broth. The host father greatly appreciated having someone to drink with, and I apparently have a standing invitation to visit whenever I like, an invitation which the host mother quickly cautioned me about, since she apparently does not want her husband drinking as often as my visits.

At some point during the meal, Lauren was once again scolded by her host family for not being a good friend, saying that our eating dinner so late was her fault and that if we were Korean friends we would have been very insulted. I told the host mother in Korean that it was different in America, that one’s friendship does not depend upon eating food. In other words, I tried to defend Lauren, but to no avail apparently. Ah, well. Lauren, who speaks Korean decently well as her dad is Korean, told me that she was impressed I had managed to get that much out in Korean though. I was more surprised that the host family had understood me.

I slept at Lauren’s host family’s apartment along with Jenna that night and took the earliest bus out (8:00 am) the next morning proceeding immediately to school. A bus ride was not exactly the way I wanted to start my school week, but for a friend’s concert and good company, it was definitely worth it.