the long winter

What to say to you, dear reader, at the end of a 2 year journey?

I'm sorry for the months I didn't post.
I'm glad I had you to help me stay aware of time passing.
I love you, as I loved you from the day I first freaked out at Johannesburg airport because I had to unpack my luggage in front of the lady I had just met who was giving me my passport. Maybe more since back then.

I'm flying out tomorrow at 5:30 and I cannot wait. I am honestly not sad to go. I am nothing but excited and overwhelmed and humbled by the love waiting for me when I land. I cannot imagine the joy of arriving home to my friends and family after not seeing them for so long.

Korea has been a life I did not expect to have. A world I did not expect to explore. I have seen new things, felt new things and heard some really strange stuff from my students, you wouldn't even believe. I have grown and I have learnt things.

Here is my wisdom from the east:

1. Long, quiet walks in nature really do have restorative properties. 
2. The internet is no place to start fights.
3. Being by yourself is everything you need, once you've mastered this being with other people is no longer like scratching an itch, it's a lot more like having your cup overflow with blessings.
4. Human beings are hard to kill, hard to break and hard to swallow.
5. Anything you can do Koreans can do better.
6. Distance means very little.
7. Tea: always tea. Just tea. It's a wisdom of it's own. 
8. Little Korean kids are easy to bribe with English games and candy.

I cannot wait for face time with all of you. Put me in your calendar. Invite me out, I'll come I promise.
Can you believe it's been 2 years!
TTAAABBBLLLLEEE     MMMOOUUNTTAAAAAAIIIIIINNN


Love in buckets
The now unemployed Bashti Teacher

Luncheeee!

Hello,

This week I will show you what meals I eat at school and give you some links to Korean food sites cause I don't feel comfortable critiquing food. I'm sure not many of you know that I don't really taste food. I mean I do, but the taste of food is not that important to me. I can eat almost anything that doesn't cause me physical pain. I also don't think the names of food is important, it wasn't until Sinclair laughed at me that I found out the difference between a steak and a chop. I still cant tell with chicken thighs and chicken breasts. I don't really taste the difference between full cream and low fat milk, cabbage and cauliflower are the same thing, they just look different. So while I like chocolate and  carbs, I think it's more of a physical reaction of pleasure in my body than my taste buds doing any work. Hence pictures and names will be all you get and that's if I can remember the names.

Basic meals have three things in common.
1. You will almost always get rice.
2. You will almost always get kimchi
3. You will almost always get three sides with your main meal.

The basic tray, chopsticks and spoon combo looks like this:

Monday:

Today was Bibimbap day :-) YAY! Every one loves bibimbap. It's rice with veggies and red pepper sauce that you mix together to make deliciousness. There is seafood and egg soup on the side. A juice. 2 cold pastries and kimchi.

Tuesday:

Today was Samgaetang day. I love Samgaetang, but not everybody does.

It's chicken in rice porridge and that greenish orange thing in the top is the kinchi. The sides are a plum a juice and a rice cake.

Wednesday: 

Today we have rice and soup. The soup is beef soup but I was not surprised to find a octopus tentacle or two. The top left sidedish is a chicken and mushroom stew thing. The middle it a cold prawn and marrow salad on todays portion of Kimchi. the top left is a cold pastry filled with cold icing sugar stuff. Yum!

Thursday: 

Beef and seaweed soup! It's more delicious than it sounds. there is also rice as usual. The top left side dish is kimchi (surprise!). The middle is a fish cake. and the left or cooked veggies with baby anchovies as seasoning. Baby anchovies is a good salt replacement since they're filled with protein and naturally salty :-)

After the mean we hand in our cutlery and crockery for the cafeteria ladies to clean.

We throw our left over into this massive drum (I'm not gonna lie it gets pretty gross, but you get used to it.)

then you move over to the mandatory green tea staion. The green tea is in the urn, the little cups are in the cup sanitizer. then you wipe your mouth and go off to the staff room to brush your teeth. 

Koreans brush there teeth after ever meal and you can get really stylised toothbrushes here. All the teachers leave there toothbrushes in the staff bathroom. I think it's really nice. I hope to continue doing this when I get home. 

For our last day I'm gonna show you what a teachers dinner looks like. Cause we eat out together as staff quite often. 

Friday:

So on this day we wend for a school dinner in Buyeo. We don't always go to Buyeo but today we did. The meal was delicious (or I liked it, I don't know the difference between those sentences) my favourite part was the rice cause I have not had seasoned rice wrapped in lotus leaf before.

A before picture...

YUM!

That thing in the middle is a slice of pumpkin that adds flavour to the rice! there are also beans and other leaves, most likely not basil. 

The pink and brown flower like things are flavoured lotus root (or stem, I don't exactly know)

An after picture with too much flash

An after picture with too little flash. Merge them in your minds.

I feel like I should have posted this earlier. In truth I started this post months ago but now that their is time pressure I'm gonna try to push out as many of my incomplete posts as possible. I'm better at starting things than seeing them through. 

I'm mostly ok. The homesickness passed like a bad flu. I seem back to my old spirits again. Still eager to come home, annoyed with Rerron and Ryan for aging without me (like they couldn't wait the 36 days it will take me to get home).

  

                                    36!

See you all really soon. Except of course those of you who have not responded to single email. I've written you guys off as bad friends and you'll have to pay a penalty fee to get back in my good graces. The fee will consist of a "traditional" meal from my culture so...macaroni and cheese or butter chicken or koolkos will do(you get the gist). I must be invited by phone call or sms (or mxit/whatsapp) and allowed to bring up to 3 friends of my choosing. If there is a single lotus root(stem) on the table I will double disown you and you'll have to beg Sinclair to convince me to leave you on our wedding guest list (or you can just not come... these penalties are made up, my mother wont really let me kick people out).

The point is, see you soon and you have to be nice to me when I see you :-)

Love from a distance
Vasti

homesickness

There is a tightness in my chest today that makes it feel like I will do nothing right. I have missed my bus and had to pay a lot of money for the taxi here. I had planned to start my week well, I haven’t. My apartment is dirty and my mind is messy. I feel on the brink of crying as I write this. I don’t know how honest I should be with my reading list, with you. I don’t know what people don’t want to know. I’ve never been good at knowing this, I mostly pretend it’s not important. I thought if I got back into my good habits the good feelings would follow. So I opened up this email and started writing. I still don’t know if I’ll click send.

Anyway. Homesickness is:
Feeling like you’re in the wrong place, at the wrong moment. Feeling like you’re going against the current of your fate.
It’s loneliness.
It’s the weird idea that physical distance constitutes much more than just physical distance.
Reaching out to people and feeling like you can’t feel them, or they can’t feel you.
Knowing with certainty that the only light you’ll find is waiting for you at home.

I don’t really know what homesickness is. That’s just what I’m feeling. I don’t even want to google it. I don’t want to have google tell me that homesickness is less severe or more severe than what I’m feeling. I don’t want to open my mind up to the idea that this is possibly more than homesickness. Maybe it’s... the awful darkness that has consumed me before. No. I don’t think it’s that. Better stay away from google, just in case.

Better spend my time lying in bed and watching Breaking Bad, The Mentalist, Supernatural. Focus on things that I can feel.

Anger that the crap series I watch all have male leads.
Anger at that I haven’t washed my dishes, none of my dishes are clean. Yesterday I drank milk out of the screw on cup thing that came with my blender. It was the last of my milk. This morning I was miserable about having to drink black coffee.
Misery. I guess I can feel misery.
Annoyance that misery comes so easily.
Sadness that Joy doesn’t come as easily as it used to.

Hey, at least I’m feeling stuff. Highs and lows right? Sometimes dark corners. Sometimes sadness. This is ok. Sadness is ok sometimes.

Maybe Homesickness is unfortunate idea that you don’t have to be sad if you’re at home. A problem that’s only really a problem when a far off ‘home’ is an option. When ‘home’ is a place other than where you lay your hat. Maybe I didn’t really have homesickness for the first year and 8 months cause I didn’t really allow myself the option of coming home. I came to Korea to pay off my debt. Now that I’ve done that. All of a sudden I don’t have to be here and so in my mind, ‘home’ shifted back to Cape Town. Maybe I’m just bored of Kimchi and children.

Anyway. I haven’t really been in the mood for writing. As you can see, all that comes out I this sludge. The gross stuff at the bottom of my mind. I don’t mind sharing it. I just don’t know if you mind receiving it.

It’s getting warmer. Less layers. No gloves. I’m not sick anymore. I was sick for the last two weeks.

I’ve got a roof over my head, food in my fridge, a job to keep me busy and people to love. I don’t really need anything, but i’d like to feel the sun on my face. The midday South African sun. Hot and gentle and harsh and yellow.

60 days. I’ll be home in 60 days.
I love you all

Happy New Year

Happy new year my lovelies!

2013 is going to be great, I can feel it in my freezing bones. This email may seem a little late, but in all honesty my year just started. I had the misfortune of having to work right through the festive season. I was making crafts and teaching new vocab on boxing day, while in my heart I longed for warm beaches and picnics and Jan 2nd (twede nuwe jaar) was even worse since i was both physically and mentally exhausted. But hopefully it's the last time in a long time that I will have to work on Jan 2nd.

Korea is about 25% Christian, 25% Buddhist and 50% non-religious. Most of the non-religious people subscribe to  Confusionist principles, but then again so do some of the religious people. What this mostly means is that because Korea is not a majority Christian country they treat Christmas a little differently.It's not really a meaningful national holiday, so while it's a public holiday I still had to work the day before and the day after. It's recognised everywhere, like in shops and stuff but it's really romanticised. Christmas is very much considered on the same wavelength as Valentines Day to most Koreans and people go on dates and stare into their partners eyes under Christmas trees.

This is the image Christmas evokes in most Koreans

In the same breath New Years day as we see it is not the most important new years day in Korea. They celebrate the Lunar New Year so while I had to work on December 31st and Jan 2nd, I will get 4 days vacation in February for Lunar New Year.

Today how ever I am on holiday. It's the official day 1 (since weekends technically don't count) and I've got you on my mind.

Happy New Year

My wish for you is that you do something this year that you enjoy and that has a product.
Record yourself singing your favourite song, paint for the first time ever, write a book or a screenplay or poem to someone you love, no matter how bad it is. Buy a colouring in book and colour in all the pictures. Teach your child to knit, knit dolls for kids less fortunate. Dance and post it to Youtube. Do not, I repeat, do not die your hair green. Cook a delicious meal, your favourite thing, invite me over and I'll grade it! imagine and design a family friendly alternative to Monopoly (that game disgusts me). Make something damnit! And enjoy making it! This is the year, after all, that you and I will be reunited and we might as well have something to show for it.

Ice cold love in buckets!
Yours
Vasti

Snow stuff

Sorry that this has taken so long to put up, I know I said you'd get it last week but I've been busy/lazy.

This first bit is me and some Buyeonites Making a snowman. The girls are all South African, how cool is that. 

Snow man building!

The boy is American. All the girls are South African, how wonderful is that :-) 

We started small, snowmen are actually hard to make.

Tim is used to the cold so he isn't really afraid that his bum falls off. I worried for him. 

We used a dustpan to shovel snow, i complained all the way through this by the way. I do not like the cold.

We made two balls (a head and a middle) and a base..

Tim made the head.

I was trying to take a picture of the sun, you cant see it though. Glum. As a consolation that three is kinda pretty.

I know this picture is on it's side but i think it's an important pic and I didn't want to leave it out and blogger wont let me flip it! I'll try to fix it some time in the future when i have my camera and the original and what not!

FROSTBITE! That's what I named it. The others named it something else, something boring!

Awwww, the happy freezing family.

These are photos from my trip home. A daily mission. 

The sports field at my school!

The playground at my school :-)

No joy! Because snow brings no joy. In every other season there are beautiful kids frolicking around as only kids can frolic! A sad empty playground...

A sad empty field. 

The bus stop! Soon, I will start my beautiful journey home. 

A frozen washing line on my way home...

These animals don't belong  here!

This is what you think snow looks like!

This is what it really looks like.

And this...

I made those eyes, nearly lost a finger doing it. walked the rest of the way with my hand in my mouth. 

frosted epiphanies

Weather for Buyeo-gun, Chungcheongnam-do

-16°C | °F

Fri

Sat

Sun

Mon

Clear

Wind: W at 0 m/s

Humidity: 92%

-6°

-19°

-2°

-12°

-3°

-15°

-4°

-12°

"Welcome to hell" reads the sign outside my apartment every morning. As the snow crunches underfoot a voice speaks down from the heavens "Many people think that hell is hot, that fires burn your skin and sharp glowing metal rods draw blood as they piece the flesh. THIS IS NOT TRUE. It is a lie passed out by our spies so that you will be wholly unprepared when you get here. This is hell. Feel the dull silence that fills the air. You are alone.  See the pollution clearly as it escapes the back of cars. Where will you breath now puny human? How were you gonna breath anyway. The air is cold and hurts your lungs. Your nostril hairs are frozen. Your destination is the bus stop. It is at the bottom of a slope. Watch you step now... Mwahahahahaha!" The maniacal laughter follows me all the way down the slope. I have to place my foot steadily but carefully. If I fall I might break a hip. Why did I get out of bed this morning? no one made me. Hell is just that, choosing to suffer. I can't even wallow in self pity, I put myself here. Who can I shout out against? I should go home. A single tear makes it's way down my cheek, fearing the cold will catch it.It's cold by the time it reaches my chin.

Apart from all of that I'm feeling fairly good. Homesick as crap! Missing the food, the people, the food. Korea has excellent winter food. Spicy soups and veggies. If only someone would climb into my bed with me and feed it to me. I want nothing more than a cuddle buddy. Living alone was wonderful, but it's worn off now and I'm ready to come home to more than dishes in the evening. Or at least stop talking to myself as I do the dishes, a little company wouldn't hurt.

Bleh, let me stop complaining! I have little to complain about. I'm wealthy, healthy, loved and freezing cold.
So, here's the thing. I had an epiphany. And I know what I want to do with the rest of my life! Can you believe it! Isn't that the best news you've had in a long time? I am thrilled! I was floating about the day the epiphany happened and I will float everyday till it's done! Well probably not everyday... here's the low down.

About  2 months ago I was feeling very homesick and thinking about young me. I had a lot of stories in my head, things that (if you've spent more than a day with me) you'll probably know. I've always been a very open person, over sharing rather than under sharing. Over sharing is, of course, over caring. Why would anyone under care? But there are still things people don't want to know. Or don't want to hear again. Or don't think constitutes "polite conversation". You can also only tell a joke so many times before people stop laughing. Thanks Ferron for telling me this :-)

Anyway, as a story teller I almost always make stories in my mind. I'm sure some of you have had the experience of spending time with me and then later, hearing me retell our experience together and thinking... "that's not what happened. I mean technically that is what happened but it didn't happen like that. In fact the only true bit is the timeline...and even that (suspicious face)" My version of events is almost always infinitely better than what happens in the actual world. Only Sinclair has a problem with this, muttering nonsense about how hyperbole is a subtle way of lying. Things in my brain, how I remember events arrange themselves into a story and if this story is even remotely worth hearing, it harrasses and harrasses me until I have to get it out, sometime once, sometimes a million times.

Korea has been good to me in that it gave me new victims to inflict my old stories on and new stories to inflict on my old victims(yep, that's you).

Anyway, so about two months ago I started writing my stories. I wrote about finding out about my dads death, some stuff about my depression and just about people I knew. Mostly dead people, so as not to offend the living. I guess that's one good thing that comes out of having so many people in my life die. Less family to offend with my strangeness.

The more I wrote the more I thought about who my audience was and how useless English was as a language for conveying my lived experience. Yuck at the word 'colonisers'. Why do we say that? Why don't we say invaders? No one came and politely asked if they could build a colony, maybe THEY migrated and built a settlement, but the rest of us were invaded, slaughtered, robbed. 'South Africa was colonised' my ass, and what's worse is that I learned that crap in school... Okay, I have been side tracked.

Back to my stories, so I started reading up on African writers. Yuck again, at my inability to speak anything abut English and pitiful Afrikaans. Yuck at how this cuts me from so much African literature. Yuck at how the language corrupts everything it touches! Colonising my ass! Yuck!

What I found said a lot about African history and, unfortunately, women writers are poorly represented. Worse so are women's stories. Just stories that I would tell me friends, my family. Women's versions of events. Women's struggles. Women's jokes, and by that I don't mean jokes about vaginas.
GRUMP! Someone has to do something about all of this! And that person is ME

So that's what I'm doing. I'm writing 1000 word stories about any South African woman willing to tell one. Tell your mothers and your aunts. Tell your sisters and your cousins. Tell the lady that does the hair in your street. Tell your managers daughters and your boss. Tell your friends to tell their people. I'll be in Cape Town in May and I'll probably do some travelling to get this done right. So tell your aunty in Kimberly too. Obviously it's gonna need me doing all sorts of prep stuff; learning to spell, having interview skills, finding out stuff about people who are in charge of all of this (hopefully me). And even though I know I'm gonna have to find a bill paying job, this will be my passion work. EXCITED!

That's all for now. I know it's not much about Korea. Which is sort of what this started out as about. But Korea has lost it's novelty, and if you want to know something about it now you'll have to send a topic or a question. My life has taken precedent. I'll send some pictures of me in snow later today or tomorrow. 

Yours in joy
The soon to be Vasti Hannie
(bet you guys thought I forgot I'm getting married. Sinclair, my fiance has graciously allowed me to have my own life on the side. Which is why I'm marrying him. He thinks my stories are great. Which is why he's marrying me. Stories on tap!)

Day 30 - Self Portrait

Can't really take credit here, one of my kids drew this. The likeness is uncanny though.

You can see the worksheet I gave them at the back of this picture. I used to get so angry when after they finished a worksheet they would scribble all over it. I used to be so mad that they didn't care about my precious worksheets, but I think it's because I'm used to working with underprivileged high schoolers and not entitled little kids. I'm more relaxed about it all now, I even found this cute.