travel – Page 2 – An Accidental Vagabond

Come to Prague the City of Architecture

Published on June 17, 2018March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

“Of all the triumphs of life-haters today, of fun-haters today, of beauty haters today, of thought-and-love haters today, of the Forces of Satan, if you will, the one that most troubles my heart is the inducement of some Czechoslovak politicians and police to behave like cannibals toward the most humane and generous and gifted members of their society. […] These people are rooted like the saplings in a tiny nation whose people have created a major fraction of the Earth’s most important architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, imaginative prose and most recently motion pictures. […] If a flying saucer person were to ask me what Earthlings considered to be their most habitable city, architecturally speaking, I would reply without hesitation: Come with me to Prague.”

Kurt Vonnegut- Taken from an archived article in the Czeský Rozhlas

Prague truly is a beautiful city. Architecturally speaking, I agree with Kurt Vonnegut (RIP). I will admit that I haven’t been to all of the cities of the world, and that there may be others more beautiful than Prague, but it would be hard to beat this city of spires. Even on a bad day it kept me going; I had a difficult time losing myself into the depressive depths of me because Prague’s buildings kept grasping my senses, and I couldn’t get away from how lovely it was to walk through its streets. I’ve been to Prague four times. Twice to visit and twice to live. The first time was in 1997 with two of my friends. It was a bad trip to tell the truth. It was filled with a lot of fighting. The kind of fighting with friends that I think you only experience in your early twenties. Your twenties are much more difficult then anyone ever lets on. We are supposed to be adults, but adult-ing can sometimes take a lifetime to figure out. You think you know it all, but you still have little control over your emotional reactive responses, and you haven’t picked up the many communication skills that can ease an argument. It’s just a lot of yelling, and the word bitch get’s thrown around a lot (or some other pejorative). Still, the arguments are filled with learning points. What kind of friends and people do you want to surround yourself with, and what kind of person do you want to be? Where do you focus your self-reflections? Do you reflect? It’s all learned as we grow (hopefully) or perhaps it’s learned in Prague. Even amongst the fighting, Prague still left a huge impression on me. How could it not? Its spiraling towers touch the clouds, and its angels reach for the soul.

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I went again in 1998. A much better trip, and no fighting with my travel companion. It was a very short trip that also included a visit to Budapest. In 2000, I moved to Prague. It was while I was there that I was inspired to write about this city in a book. Again, I returned to Prague in 2015. This time may have been even more powerful than the last because I felt I had built a family in Prague. A family who is still there. It was the only time I cried when I left a place. In my heart Prague is another home.

What is it that is so spectacular about Prague? So resplendent? Much of it has to do with the architecture. Prague was fortunate to not be bombed and destroyed during WWII (except for the snafu bombing by the U.S. military in 1945- way to go U.S.A) and because of this it has been able to retain the history that has been embedded in its streets, buildings and houses. You can find gothic, romanesque, renaissance, baroque, rococo, and if you visit the Spanish Synagogue in the Jewish quarter you can also see Moorish revival which was influenced by the Alhambra in Spain (another must see).

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Nearly every part of Prague has some incredible sight to see, but it isn’t only a walk through the histories of the far past, if you visit the Dancing House or any of David Černý’s strange and fascinating pieces hanging throughout the streets, you will be awarded with architectural modernism, post-modernism and contemporary designs. This building, The Dancing House, which is a hotel and hosts art exhibits, is an amazement of deconstructivist architecture. It was built in 1996 and is the site of the accidental allied bombing of 1945. It is also call Fred and Ginger as it sways like the two famous dancers. It’s crown is a metal birds nest.

Most people when they visit will stick to old town, and head up to the castle district, but in every neighborhood from Vinorady, to Mala Strana, and from Vyšehrad to my favorite neighborhood Žižkov (my heart belongs in Žižkov) there is beauty to behold. So please, take my hand, and come with me to Prague, because I plan to return.

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Hlavní Nádraží’s station was stunning. The prodigious dome, with its illuminated stained-glass windows, and the colorful matted walls with winding plants that undulated in whips of movement had caused me to pause for a moment. There were statues leaning from the corners of the walls. Their faces with carved blank eyes, all more than a century old, stared down at me. I was crossing platforms that had been crossed by hundreds of thousands of strangers. People just like me, and people nothing like me, but we were all traveling. The colossal doors with sweeping archways were framed by statues of supine women draped in stone fabric that looked to flow and breath. The marble women, with their down-turned mouths and closed eyes, curved like open yawns over the arched windows of the doors. The station was a reminder of a time when travel was ostentatious and reserved for the wealthy. And here I was. I had decided to move to Prague because someone had told me that the Prague of the nineties was like the Paris of the thirties, and I was a romantic.

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Let’s Take Teacher to Kaifeng Part 1.

Published on January 14, 2017March 3, 2024 by An Accidental Vagabond1 Comment

I left Portland in the summer of 2013, to begin a new adventure in China as an English Literature teacher for EFL Chinese students who were prepping to move to the U.S., and Canada to continue their educations. It was really a whim. I had been feeling trapped and stunted, doing my usual, what am I really accomplishing in this life lamentations. This a usual lamentation that I’ve been singing since I first left college in 1997. It’s a familiar song that is on a fairly continuous loop kind of like when a horrible pop song gets stuck in your head. In truth, I’m sick of the song, but at times it can lead me through interesting doors, albeit I’m generally singing the same tune too loud to be able to pay attention to my immediate surroundings. Surely, more then once I have missed an opportunity to grasp some enlightening notes to help me in the great quest of purposefulness. Regardless, if I had the overwhelming desire to be a great teacher or to experience China, or to be an avid traveller (all of which I have at one time or another felt) I ended up in China. It was more a case of who I knew than what I knew, but the outcome was the same; I was in China.

As I write this post from a coffee shop in Busan, South Korea, the days tick away from my time in China, and four years have past. Since China I have moved to the Czech Republic and traveled to parts of Eastern and Western Europe then returned to Portland, and now I sit in cafe called Coffee Farm in Saha-gu in Busan. This post will remain static on this page, and the days will continue to tick. Perhaps you have stumbled across this blog while looking up something on China, and as you read, five more years have passed since I’ve posted, and who knows what I’m writing and where I’m writing. Will I still be traveling? Will I be writing? Will I be alive? I haven’t posted much about my experiences because thoughts have been in the way, more personal, more emotional thoughts and feelings that have been an impediment to sharing my general experiences in China, and in the other places that I have been since then. Occasionally, I am able to force myself to the page, but the moments are far and fewer between. Yet, that need to record my life, maybe in some attempt to have some relevance beyond death, is still there; small as a wisp, but still there.

There are moments when my thoughts are drifting and some brief yet strong memory from my year in China resurfaces. I never know what triggers it, but it always brings a smile to my face, and a slight nod to my head, which at times baffles and amuses me because I struggled in China. It goes to show that things can become better when nostalgia sets in. Even though I discount my pleasant experiences there I will state that it wasn’t all a struggle or at least that there weren’t moments of joy in the experience of struggles. I do hope that in the coming years that I can and will devote more time to the practice and art of writing so that one day I can accurately and succinctly convey the emotions, and the experiences that triggered those emotions, in a way that can take my readers to China. Can I reach the ability to tell my history like a poetic story? Can I transport you with my words to this place without sounding sentimental or whiney? I honestly don’t know if I will ever be able to do such a thing, but if it’s true that practice and deliberate practice bring about true growth, then I have to look at each post, be it about an event from the past or this current present, as a step toward learning to create that transportive storytelling.

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Here is the beginning of one such deliberate practice of a storytelling:

Once upon a time, I had a complete and total meltdown at school, number 47 middle school, where I taught high schoolers, in Zhengzhou, China. I was in the office talking to one of my best and favorite students when one of the staff dropped a little bomb on me. On all of us. In a typical Chinese administration fashion, a set holiday was taken away from the teachers and the students in a very last minute non ticket refundable manner in order to use the school for Gaokoa practice testing space. Gaokao is this brutal future life determining test that all Chinese students who want to attend higher education have to take in order to have a hopefully prosperous future. It is considered one of the most difficult tests in the world. Post test results are the top students have their photos in the national papers, and a number of suicides which are not reported in the same papers. It is stressful, and also status building. So it means nothing to the administration to forgo much needed and desired vacation time for students and teachers in order to be the poster school for testing. I, of course as can be determined by my current tone, don’t think this test is the be all to life, and at the time pretty much lost my shit at the knowledge that I just lost my vacation-days days before they were to take place. I had no concern for mianzi or guanxi. These are Chinese words for saving face or keeping up appearances and relationships that are far more complex, yet central to Chinese society, then I can effectively explain. Needless to say, my “face” exploded. I lost it in full view of my student and my Chinese co-workers.

When I think back on this 20 minutes of pure fury which I experienced in some bizarre out of body fashion, I wish that I had a camera rolling so I could watch the horror that my co-workers appeared to show on their faces and in their bodies, and the shear madness that I was unable to control. I really went mad. I was a thin line of consciousness from physical destruction. It was this outer body entity of myself that was watching me lose it that was the only thing that managed to keep some small about of sanity about me. I screamed and railed about how this was the very reason why people hated China; and no wonder they don’t return; and how the administration and the bosses treat people like shit even their own citizens; and it just keep going. I’d grip a desk with a blinding passionate need to over turn it, but this calm voice of reason would wash over me and say, “you look crazy, right now, and this is not their fault, and your student is standing right there. Let go of the table.” So I would release my grip of what ever object I had in my grasp with a rapid snap of force, and scream out, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I know it’s not your fault!” And, immediately my wrath would return, “BUT this is bullshit!” and I would frantically pace the room seething and looking for something to destroy. It was truly a moment of madness where my personalities had split. I would even begin laughing at myself at the ridiculous irrationality of my behavior. I would laugh thinking, oh my god you can’t un-do what you are doing right now. The terror on my co-worker’s faces would only mildly pause my raging. It was only my student who was able to calm me. Unlike my adult co-workers who couldn’t move and just stood in shock staring at me, it was my 16 year old student who threw her arms around me and pulled me into an embrace, and held me in her arms. “It’s okay teacher. It’s okay.” I wanted to cry and collapse into her arms, but a new I needed to pull it together and be the adult I was supposed to be. “We won’t let this happen.” She said, and then she ran from the office.

I slumped into my chair, my head drooped forward over my desk, tears heavily forming into the base of my eyes. “I’m sorry.” I whispered to the still stunned Chinese staff. “It’s just…it’s just not fair.” I sighed, and looked at them. “I know it’s not your fault. I know it ruins your vacation too.” The head teacher held her hands up in a calming manner and said, “just, just wait, I will talk to the President, maybe something can be done.” And she left the office.

I don’t remember much else except that my student returned to the office to declare that her and the other students had decided to protest the change and that they would refuse to go to school on that day. “And if that doesn’t work teacher, we’ve decided that we will take you on a vacation after school is over.” I smiled lightly at my student. I had just incited a tiny revolution, which although oddly charming could result in me getting arrested for subversion, but what a story that would make. This mini-revolt didn’t take place because the President of the school decided to allow our department the day off. I assume that the head teacher painted a very clear description of the foreign teacher’s utter decent into raving madness. It ended up making me a minor hero among my Chinese colleagues because they were able to maintain guanxi yet keep their vacation time. One teacher came in and spoke to the lead teacher in Chinese and after a moment leaned toward me and whispered, “Thank you.” I may have been permanently marked the unstable one, but I had my uses. I know that other foreign teachers had had outrages, but based on the frozen fearful faces of my co-workers I was fairly certain they had never seen anything like what came out of me on that day. Hell, I had not experienced that level of a tantrum soberly in a long-long time, and it was more than I had ever released. I knew it stemmed from the pressures of work but more so from the repressed grief that I had been carrying over my mother’s death. Still, I was shocked by my behavior. I didn’t know that I had an actual demon possession lying dormant inside me.

I suppose in all other circumstances I would have been embarrassed, but China had a way of taking bizarre events that would have what you would think to be a predictable outcome and flipping it into an unpredictable result. Everyone went on vacation, and at the end of the school year, six of my rebellious students took me on their mini vacation which was a complete surprise and a contradiction of expectations.

“Teacher.” My student said during the last week of school. “We want to take you with us on our holiday. Will you come. You just pay for your room and we will do the rest.”

It seemed a little unprecedented to me a teacher going on vacation with students–not as a chaperone, but as invited guest on their trip. It would never happen in the states. I said yes. My students took me to Kaifeng. It was me, six teenagers, and three e-bikes.

First Impressions of Busan, South Korea

Published on August 7, 2016March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

CIMG9592 The day is August 9th, and I am sitting in my hotel room to avoid the sweltering heat in Busan. A heat that I am not accustomed to as of yet. I’m not certain one truly acclimates fully to heat and humidity, but people do live in it.

My first days in Busan began with angst. I had flown from Portland to San Francisco on Virgin America, and then from SFO to Beijing to Busan on Air China. Two transfers, two airlines, three security checks (China’s was the toughest) and because of the time difference it seemed like it took me two days. I had left on the 4th and I arrived on the 6th. What happened to the 5th? But, more importantly, what happened to my luggage? Somewhere in all of that transferring my luggage was lost. I wasn’t calm about it, but also there isn’t much I can do. It felt like a big loss, and not the best way to arrive in my new foreign city.

I’ve moved to Busan for at least a year, and I was feeling apprehensive about the move. I can’t say why I felt or feel apprehensive. This will be my third time moving out of the U.S. on some crazy adventure that I don’t plan well. It’s the fifth foreign country I’ve moved to, and my second Asian city to live in. One would think that by now I would feel more comfortable with the whole affair, but apparently I don’t. Apparently, I have a hard time doing it, but by the time I return to the states, I no longer remember my trepidations, and I do the damn thing all over again. I’ve never lost luggage before though so it is an added challenge. I tell myself, as my friends also tell me, “I have to believe things will work out. It will come back to me.” I try to put my faith in this thinking, but it didn’t stop me from crying my eyes out thinking about certain things I had in the case. That awesome jacket. My shoes; the one’s I loved. My brand new external hard drive that I had meant to put in my carry on, but forgot to. Then of course, my travel journal that is filled with pictures of my mom and home- it is something that gives me peace. That’s what really hurts. That can’t be replaced. So, I cried my first evening in Busan. I cried because my luggage was lost, and I cried because as per-usual, I don’t know what I’m doing nor do I know why I decided to go this route, and I’m afraid. That’s all normal for me. The thing is, I do know what I’m doing. I know more now this time then ever, but it doesn’t stop me from doubting myself or my choices. That too seems to be normal.

A friend met me at the airport. I was very grateful. I had felt uneasy on my arrival, what, with exhaustion, loss of stuff, and second-guessing my life choices. It was good to have a familiar face greet me in an unfamiliar place. Nikki, who I had met at Angloville in Poland a little over a year ago, guided me onto the subway and into the city where I am am being put up in a hotel near Nampo district. I’m to be in this hotel during my training period for my school. It’s about two weeks. I am not officially hired until I successfully complete the training. So who knows, maybe I will be back in the U.S. in two weeks more broke and in debt than ever, and with no clothes. Let’s hope not.

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Nikki and I wander a bit in the heat till we found a little restaurant where we ate cold noodle soup and kimchi and other delightful Korean snacks. As we walked around in the district of my new Asian city, I couldn’t help but compare Busan to Zhengzhou. Asian cities are so different from European cities as they are different from American or New World cities. The smells are different. The architecture, and the urban planning is all different. I don’t know a lot about Busan yet, but I believe a lot of it was destroyed in the Korean War so much of the urban planning is post- 1960’s. Also the land scape is hilly so that creates a different type of planning. There are some similarities to Zhengzhou in one particular smell and in the people, but they are only subtle similarities, and there were differences in what seemed familiar. Immediately, I noticed that it isn’t nearly as crowded here. In fact, the side streets were often empty. When it comes to the hustle and bustle of the subway people seem to be more polite here. There is some pushing, but nothing compared to China. If someone pushes past you they seem to be from the older generation and not to aggressive about it. In China, I found it to be very aggressive and all ages. I felt a bit like there was a sense of panic in Zhengzhou like a person needed to push everyone out of the way or they’d be left behind. Plus, in China there was the whole cutting in line (which really annoyed me) which I haven’t encountered here at least not in my one day. There was a similar smell. It wasn’t all over or as potent as in Zhengzhou, but it was the same smell. It is a terrible sewer smell that is sharp and pungent. It was very prominent in Zhengzhou, but I would only occasionally catch a whiff of the smell in some alleyways in Busan. Sewage actually smells different in China and Korea (in the two places I’ve been) then in American cities. It all smells like shit and bad, but it also has a different kind of bad. A sour kind of bad. Oddly, I find that fascinating. I imagine it is what we eat and how we live.

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After Nikki left I returned to my room, and cried a little. Then stared out at my view. I do have a nice view of the port from my window. I am far from the popular beaches but I can see the bridge that lights up like a rainbow bridge at night and connects the Yeongdo-gu island to the mainland. I can also see Mt. Bongnaesan and all the lights from whatever and whomever is living over there. Looking out the window calmed me some, and my exhaustion overwhelmed me. I tried to read a bit before going to sleep, but I was out before 9 p.m.

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In the morning after struggling to contact Virgin America, and not getting much help via chat (I have no phone right now so it adds more to the difficulty) I had another cry, and then told myself, I needed to get it together. I’m here. There’s not much I can do but hope. I can cry all I want, but it isn’t making anything better. Although, it did feel pretty good to cry. I ate the complementary breakfast offered in the hotel. It was kimchi, and rice, and some quail eggs. There was also some cakes that I think may have been fish, and a finely grated white cabbage salad. It wasn’t amazing, but it was fine. I am already a big fan of kimchi. After eating, I was determined to try and explore. I wandered a bit through some streets until I found my way to Yongdusan park.

Immediately upon stepping under the trees of the park I was surround by a cacophony of buzzing and caterwauling. I can only guess that it was insects. For a moment, I had thought the caterwaul was coming from strange birds, but the consistency and pattern of repetition and tone matched with the other buzzing which I knew to be beetles. So I’ve concluded, that indeed, there are some monstrous bugs living in the trees above us. There were subtle things that captured me as I wandered melting in the humidity that was already high by 10 am. The insects that I could hear, but not see. The bark of some of the trees that seemed to look as if it was melting, and the soft shapely pinecones that sat delicately side by side in a tree as if they were siblings. They are siblings. I enjoyed the Busan tower, and the various Korean design of some of the buildings, but really it was the nature in the park that was the most interesting part. I took some photos, and as I did a man offered to take my picture. I’m sure he wanted money for it, because he was trying to pose me. I’ve never been all that comfortable with strangers taking my picture- especially when they offer it. I don’t think I photograph all that well so I’m pretty awkward about the whole affair. Still, he took them and I walked away. I began to feel damaged by the heat and I gave up my exploration. I felt a little better, and I was glad I got myself away from myself.

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As I wandered back to the hotel I discovered art and murals in various alleyways and I saw a numerous amount of coffee houses. I had thought I would be giving up coffee for a year, but it appears like Busan has more coffee places in just this neighborhood than all of the city of Portland. It is good coffee too.

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Stopping to Visit the Peonies of Luoyang

Published on April 28, 2016March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

In Luoyang every year from mid-April to mid-May when the peonies are in full bloom the city celebrates the Peony Festival. There are many peony gardens to visit in the ancient city that was once the capital of China. The most famous and main garden is the Luoyang International Peony Garden. It is one of the oldest peony gardens in all of China.

I did not go to this garden. I couldn’t tell you which garden I visited. All I can say is that I was in Luoyang during the Peony Festival.

It was May of 2014, the morning after I had just hiked Mt. Hua with my friend Sean, and his friend Xiang Kai. We had hiked for 14 hours the night before, ill prepared and with little experience, on one of the most dangerous mountains . I’m talking about myself as far as the experience hiker part goes, but I didn’t think Sean was an expert, and I knew Xiang Kai had not hiked many mountains. Hiking in China is different than hiking in the U.S. In the U.S. hiking is a solitary experience. You climb with one other person maybe a few people and perhaps you cross the path of another hiker or two, but mainly it is you and the wild, and the animals who ignore or watch you. In China (or at least on Mt. Song, and Mt. Hua, and the other mountain I hiked) there are no animals only hoards of people. I never saw any animals, not a squirrel or a lizard only a bird or two. I’d never seen so many people on a mountain at the same time except at a ski resort during a holiday. The day we hiked was rainy and cloudy so it wasn’t nearly as crowded as it could have been. Even on a bad weather weekend there will still be hundreds of people climbing. It doesn’t matter if you go early in the morning or late at night it’s still crowded. The key would be to go off season during the middle of the week and definitely not during any vacations or weekends, but when you’re a teacher you have the same schedule as all of China, so either you don’t go at all, or you experience it like all of China-crowded. I had decided that day that I would one day return to China, but not to work only to travel so that I could plan my visits to ancient sights and geological wonders on the off times, but those were and are daydreams for other days.

It was Sean’s idea that we stop in Luoyang to attend the Peony festival. Xiang Kai had to work that evening so he would not be able to join us. I was exhausted. My body felt worn and broken and I was irritable and still fuming about Sean’s comment that I was too old to climb a mountain. Ignorant boy, my mind ruminated on his off handed remark about my age that only an ignorant boy would make. I had hoped his feet were still suffering from his badly chosen climbing shoes. The wise thing for me to do would have been to go home, eat something nutritious, and then go to bed, but when Sean made the spontaneous suggestion I felt I needed to go. Life is an unexpected ride and you never know when it will stop and where it will start and many times an opportunity is a one time only opportunity. When would I be in China again for the Peony Festival? I had already decided not to renew my contract. I had already decided to leave China. I could tell myself I would be back, but I didn’t know for certain. Some days I hated China, and would think, never again- never again will I return to this country. It had been a hard year for me, and not all China’s fault, but I was in China when my mother died. It was in China when the most important person in my life left this world. My worst fear had been awakened. How many times had she told me that she would not be able to live without me? How many times had I promised I would never let her die alone? How many times had I told myself I would return and take care of her? China was to be my last experience, my last galavant as an explorer of this world living a life style that I didn’t believe was meant for me. I had never imagined I would ever be able to travel, that I would have lived in foreign countries. I was an accidental traveler and it was time to return to my “real life” whatever that was meant to be. I was going to go back to California and going to care for my mother. I didn’t want to live in Chico because there wasn’t anything for me there, but she was there and she needed me. I had been too slow, and too selfish, and I had failed her. I failed as a daughter. I suffered through that guilt alone in a foreign country, a country so foreign from my own that even our process of grieving was different. My mother died alone, and I had not been there to help her. My anger, and my guilt, and my pain all manifested into my frustrations about a country that was so incredibly different from my own. I did have Sean though, my friend with his choppy english and his oh- so Chinese ways of thinking. Sean my friend who stayed by my side the best he could and tried to show me the things he loved most about his country. Sean was an impatient Chinese teacher, and impatient about many things, and he expressed much frustration about where he was in his life, but through it all he taught me a lot about patience and how to deal with frustration and how to accept that where you are is where you are, but that change is always around the corner whether you want it or not. Uncertainty is the essential part of this life experience and in the uncertainty lies the choices.

This was life, and I was still living, and I had to take the opportunities as they came no matter how much my body hurt, and how aggravated I had felt when would I have another chance? I agreed to stop in Luoyang and to see the Peonies.

My body was not in full agreement with my mind or my heart. As we wandered from the train station to the nearest garden my body began to pull rank and my brain switched sides and together they caused me to grumble and slouch and move among the flowers like an impetuous child snapping bored pictures here and there waiting to stop to take a nap. Once in the garden all I really wanted to do was lie down in a bed of purple peonies among all the butterflies and drift off into a deep sleep. I did my best to not unleash my grumpiness on Sean, and I allowed him to tell me stories about the history of China and the symbolism of the flowers. He was gracious enough to understand that I was not feeling my best, yet still seemed to enjoy my company. In the end I knew I was not fully present in the moment, and that my body and exhaustion had won this battle, but simultaneously I was aware of the value that the day, and the weekend held.

We are gifted moments in life and too often they only come once. Some are large and noticeable, but most are small and subtle and too easily we miss them. We don’t take the chance to strike up a conversation with a stranger or take the path that no one is following. I know no other person from my life, as of yet, that has hiked a sacred mountain with friends from China, and eaten prepackaged chicken feet and teriyaki marinated boiled eggs, and then stopped off at a Peony festival that had been celebrated for two thousand years. When I do meet someone who has experienced this it won’t be the same as I had experienced it. We all experience our lives differently, we are similar, but still we are each unique.

I didn’t get to enjoy the Peonies to the fullest of my capacity, and I wasn’t able to collect the memories of the day here in a nice well packaged form to share with others as to the best way to see the Peonies. I didn’t have to because no matter where I go in the world I am going to be me. That means me in a bad mood, me in a good mood, me irrational and me aware. Me wonderful and me not wonderful. My goal is of course to lean my life more towards the awareness and wonderful, and to be in the presence of my life and embrace the moments. Some days work and some days don’t regardless if I am climbing a sacred mountain in China or washing laundry in a laundry mat in Portland, Oregon. Years later I can think back on my hike and my visit to an ancient garden with my friend from China, and look at the pictures I took of flowers that had been planted and cultivated for two thousand years. I can accept the fact that flowers and gardens are not top on my bucket list, and I can say to myself, I did that, and I went there, and I was in a bitchy, irritable, and grumpy ass mood, but I was there. I took that moment and received all that it offered me even if the gratitude came a week after some solid rest.

Returning to Asia

Published on April 8, 2016March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

After waiting for nearly four months, my criminal background check finally arrived last week, and with it came my permission slip to look for a new job overseas. I had originally intended on leaving in February, but sometimes things don’t go as intended. I’ve decided to look at these extra months as a time for me to get healthy and to really focus on what I need in my life to give me happiness.

It had taken about 3 months to get on the Oregon Health Care plan, but thankfully it exists because I have been able to go to the dentist, and to the doctors, and get myself back on track for a healthy mind and body. As the saying goes, “if you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything.” I hadn’t been feeling very good for awhile. I’m pretty certain I can guess the cause, but the point is that I’m back on a mission to feel strong again, and just in time too because I will be returning to the proverbial road.

I have been vacillating between applying to work in China and working in South Korea for a few months now. Many of my friends have been saying that Korea is the way to go, and have wondered why I would even consider China.

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“You hated China.”
“You were miserable there.”

It’s true, I did hate much of my time in China, but aside from China there were other factors to my hating it; my mother dying, conflict with the director of the program, and culture shock all contributed to my hating much of my time in China. It is not easy to live in China. I do believe some people may thrive there, but in truth, I think it can be a tough adjustment for a multitude of reasons. I do believe all of those reasons can eventually be overcome if you want to stick it out in China, and that you can learn to accept things, and even grow to enjoy them; all but one that is.

Although, my time was difficult there, I had also gained a strange love for China. It’s difficult to explain, and maybe if it hadn’t of been a year it may not have gotten under my skin, but it did. It took about seven months of being away, but I slowly began to miss it. I missed certain things like food, and the crazy traffic, and riding my bike in that crazy traffic. The insane rides on e-bikes, babies in pants with bottoms, old ladies dancing in parks, kites everywhere, are among the few things I’ve missed. There were things there that mattered to me, and left an impression on me that I will carry for the remainder of my life. My kids mattered to me, they mattered a lot, and they were such a huge part of my experience in China. I spent more time with 15 to 18 year old Chinese kids than any other group of people, and the experiences with those kids which included a special trip to Kaifeng, really shaped my view of the country. The Chinese people I became friends with mattered to me. In China it can be difficult to know if Chinese people are really your friends if they actually like you as a person. There are so many people that want you to be around because you are western, and it is about status to call a westerner a friend. You will not ever be Chinese, and you will never be truly accepted into the culture, and because of this it can be hard to ever find that bond that we all crave in our friendships. Perhaps I am delusional, but I feel blessed in my belief that I was able to move beyond this barrier with very little effort with some of the Chinese friends I had made while there. I felt a real kinship with the people I called friends, even when we came up against massive cultural differences. There are Chinese people I do consider to be genuine friends, and I feel that they look on me as the same, not as a “western” friend, but as real friend the kind of friend that accept the whole cultural and enigmatic package that makes up each and everyone of us.

CIMG3838 — Xiang Kai and Sho Boa (Shawn) hiking up Mt. Hua

I have been fascinated with Chinese history since I was a little girl. I remember stacks of National Geographic magazines with images of China. I remember watching the student protests in Tiananmen Square live on television. I had taken a course in the history of Eastern Civilization in college and I had become immersed in the ancient history of the dynasties. When I was a girl there were only three things in the world I had wanted to see: The Pyramids of Egypt, the Acropolis of Athens, and the Terra Cotta Warriors of China (I can mark one off my list). Chinese films are among some of my favorite, and the dissidents of China are some of the bravest people in the world. There is much to be fascinated with in China, and there is a lot to grab your heart and keep you there, but for every amazing thing Chinese there is also something insidious. A drive for cultural success that is so strong that corruption and lies are an accepted part of the society norm creating at times a dog-eat-dog world. The repressive regimes from the cult of Mao to the current CCP that smothers the real strength of what is hidden in China. The annoying and ridiculous firewall put in place to control and suppress the people, and the denial of terrible events by erasing them from history. The horrific pollution that had for too long been acceptable in China, and ignored in the majority of the world. These are things that are difficult to live in, and I believe it is difficult for many Chinese too (judging by various conversations). China is a land of great contradictions and it is these contradictions which constantly push and pull at you. At me.

CIMG0926 — Some of my kids rehearsing for “The Outsiders”.

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So, what are the deciding factors, what did it come down to when choosing between China and South Korea? The main motivation for China was a school. A drama school where I would be a theatre teacher, and where as part of my work I would be required to direct my own children’s plays. I contemplated this school for nearly a year. It would be a job that combined my theatre, my literature and my teaching skills. I would finally be working in a creative environment and for that I was willing to move to the polluted city of Beijing. Yet, it was during a bike ride in Portland that finally solidified my final decision.

It is now spring, and the sun is out and the sky is a clear blue that bends over the city with only a smattering of cumulus clouds dotting the sky like paint on a palette. The days have been beautiful and easy going. My moods have been hum-drum and dark, and sometimes this happens even when things are going well in my life, I need these beautiful days to help lift me from my internal darkness. I knew at that moment under the blue sky in the face of mount Tabor, the small extinct volcano covered in the rich green of white-cedar and poplars, that I needed to live in a beautiful place. As much as I had wanted the theatre school and as much as I was willing to return to China, I knew in my heart that returning to an over-populated, dirty, and congested city with air so bad that there were red alert days not allowing us to go outside, was not a good idea for me. I knew, no matter how great the school, my sadness would overcome me, and I can’t live like that.

I have started the interview process for jobs in South Korea, and I’ve focused my attention on applying to schools in places where the sky is blue and the ocean is near-by. The job matters, but the environment matters more.

As I had mentioned before I believe that most of the challenges of being a foreigner in China a person can overcome, but one. That one for me is the pollution. China is a geological diamond and a natural wonder of nature, but the coal and the money made on cheap labor and unregulated businesses that damage the country is more important then the jewel. I will one day return to China, but maybe as a visitor. Till then I will be in South Korea.

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The Yellow River Park in Zhengzhou

Published on April 2, 2016March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

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The Yellow River is called “The cradle of Chinese civilization”. Chinese dynasties were built along this river, and in the early periods of Chinese history the regions around the Yellow river were the most prosperous. It is the 3rd longest river in Asia, and the 6th in the world. It is a life giver and referred to in Chinese as the mother river, but it has also earned the name, “China’s sorrow.” This river has has taken well over a million lives. The river’s flooding from it’s constant changing of course from erosion has earned it the world reputation of being the only natural disaster in recorded history to kill more than a million people.

In the years between 1332 and 1333, seven million people were killed from theYellow river flooding, and the subsequent famine and disease that followed after. In 1887, 900,000 to 2 million people died, and in 1931, 1 to 4 million people died. The most interesting of floods happened in 1938 during the second Sino-Japanese war. The Chinese military decided to break the levees and flood the valley on purpose as a way to prevent the advancing Japanese army from reaching their goal of capturing Wuhan where at the time the temporary Chinese Government was set. The idea was to have “the water be a substitute for soldiers”. 5,000 to 9,000, Chinese civilians were killed in the floods, and an unknown number (but most likely not as many Chinese) of Japanese soldiers. The flood stopped the Japanese from capturing the city of Zhengzhou, but they still reached their goal of overtaking and capturing Wuhan.

A river that has birthed a civilization and taken away such a multitude of life is not going to continue in modern China with out a park dedicated to it. The Yellow river park is located in the northern part of Zhengzhou, and can be long trip on a bus, but we were lucky to have a friend with a car, and he drove his family, and my friend’s family, and myself to the park for the day. This happened near the end of our stay in Zhengzhou so it was a nice way to end a year in this Chinese city of Northern China.

It’s a huge park with five sections. At the time of the visit, we were not informed of where we were or the significance of any of what we were looking at so much of it was just interesting for the sake of its existence, and carried little historical reference for any of us foreigners. Aside from the massive statue of Mao, I had to look up the names of other statues and buildings on the internet, and I wasn’t able to find the names of everything, but I was able to find some bits here and there.

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We first ascended a small mountain, and that is where we found the giant statue of Mao. The children quickly preceded to climb him in order to race to the top to see who could tag Mao’s mole first. It is considered good luck to rub the hands of Mao. The infamous leader is known for saying, “We must control the river,” which resulted in building dams and levees. The view from the statue of Moa looked down on the the wide and literally yellowish brown river. Looking down from the mountain we could see areas for rice paddies but most of the area is now used for the purpose of the park, and transferring the water from the river to Zhengzhou.

We crossed over a bridge called the Luotuo (camel) bridge which led to the Yueshan temple on Yue Mountain. There is a great view of the statues and the monument that they built below. I didn’t know the significance of much of what I was looking at, unfortunately, but what I’ve gleaned from the internet is that the giant statue on the mountain measuring 59ft high is the connected heads of Yandi and Huangdi the great ancestors of China, and they face the river in a symbolic reverence for this giver and taker of life. Information pretty much dies out from there.

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At the base of the part of the park that is called the Five Dragon Peak there is a statue of a Mother cradling her son. This statue is to represent the mother river and China, and their harmonious relationship (they’ve yet to build the statue of the mother dropping and shaking the baby to represent the times not so harmonious). The park also has statues of very famous calligraphy writers- non of whom I knew of, but calligraphy is an art form in China, and to be called a writer in China means that you do calligraphy. It was in this area of the park were we found a man who painted a quick drawing for each of us (for a cost) and then wrote a poem. I had asked my Chinese friends what the poem said, and they all replied, “It’s too hard to translate,” which I found to be the common response when asking for the translations of certain things.

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Our tour guides drove us around to parts of the park where not all tourist were allowed to go which is the advantage of having your driver being a Zhengzhou cop, and he took us to a quiet area near a sharp curve in the river where there seemed to be people disgusting the construction of something. A woman rode out on horse back to deliver a message to people working, and then she quickly rode away as if riding back into the past. We were warned not to stand too close to the river, not because it can jump up and pull you in, but because the soil and silt is very soft and can suddenly crumble under your feet. It is this soft earth that causes the rapid erosion and the continuous changing of the river. Although, the river has not changed much since Moa exclaimed that it must be controlled.

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We ended at the base of the figure heads of Yandi and Huangdi where many Chinese were ringing giant bells, taking pictures and a couple of men were swinging whips over their heads to make giant cracking sounds that reminded me of firecrackers or gunshots. We watched the sun set behind wires and trees, and took the long traffic flooded drive back into Zhengzhou.

The Travel Limbo

Published on February 19, 2016December 17, 2023 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

Funny thing about this post is that it was posted before I finished writing it. No title, no tags, not even a complete thought, and all kinds of editing mistakes, and it’s had more traffic than most of my posts. Go figure. This is the completed post with an ending and a new title- well an actual title.

A couple of days ago I had to contact both of the schools I had applied to (one in South Korea and the other in China) that I was not able to attend the upcoming school year. It wasn’t because I had changed my mind and things are falling into place here in Portland. Things are exactly as they have always been for me here in Portland; nice, but I’m not doing anything that gives me call to stay put. No, it’s all because of the parts of life that I can’t control. Visas. Well, not even my visa, because I haven’t been able to apply for my visas because I don’t have the documents. I’m waiting for my Criminal Background Check from the FBI and some health insurance so I can take the necessary health test that China requires. In a funny way they’re both kind of silly things to have to wait around for. Oh, I get it, I’m going to work with children and obviously people want their children to be safe, but it is only required that I have an FBI check from the United States, a country in which I have not lived for the past two years. So, of course my record is clean, but all those crimes I committed in Europe are not even on the radar. I didn’t commit any crimes in Europe, I’m not that exciting. Czech Republic had a funny visa rule too. If I had come directly from the United States, I had no need to do a criminal background check from the U.S., but since I came from China, I had to get a criminal background check from China. So, again, I could be a criminal from the U.S., but not in China or any other country I had been living in for six months or longer. In a weird way, China of all places is easier in that sense then the Czech Republic because I just have to wait for the FBI, but to get a background check from China- is absolutely impossible. I mean, the Chinese people at the police station tell you, “Not Possible.” A fairly typical response in all areas of requesting necessary information for any kind of government paperwork.

The FBI’s been backed up. Seems that many people are trying to leave the country, and get jobs that require Federal Background checks. What in the past took 10 to 12 weeks has now been pushed back to 12 to 15 weeks. Three months has now turned to 4 months. This is difficult for an impulsive person like myself. It’s kind of like China, “not possible” to plan a trip in less than three months. Now I’m wondering what to do with my time and how much time I have here actually.

Now what? Well, it’s waiting time. Once the background check comes in then I can reapply for jobs and I’ll see from there. In the meantime, I’ll need to look for some work. A part-time noncommittal job in a city where it is difficult to find work in unless, of course, I was in the tech industry. It certainly gives me more time to research travel blogs. In a brief update, I’ve gone through 23 of 42 blogs, and really only managed to cut out two blogs. I have put them into categories, but I’ve slowed down in my research, which is totally my style.

Update: I finally got on the Oregon Health Care plan which means I can get the health check I need for the Chinese visa application.

The Trouble with Me in China, and Why I’m Returning

Published on November 27, 2015February 28, 2024 by An Accidental Vagabond2 Comments

It has been about two months that I have been back in the U.S. If things work out I will be back in China by February. I have all the necessary trepidations collected and percolating in my brain preparing for all the appropriate anxieties of “what ifs” and the “I don’t knows”. I feel quite prepared in that capacity. Some people, my friends who know me well, may wonder why I’m returning to China when I had expressed such a deep hatred for the place. The public, like my youtube channel and this blog space or even my Facebook, didn’t know I had such a hatred for the place, but I’m laying it all-out-on the line here people; I hated it. I think it is difficult to be truly honest about your feelings on social media and in a public forum because there is/can be so much backlash to everything you write. Honestly, I think it is okay to hate a place. The important part is to understand why you hate it and then to figure out if it is a fair reason to hate it, and if it is really something about yourself and your preconceived ideas that make you hate it, and again, is that a fair assessment. You know the: “It’s not the place it’s you,” effect. ETC…

I didn’t feel the need to express my true feelings to the great big world because it was too early. It took me a full year away from China to appreciate China, but while I was there it was difficult. It was difficult because I had culture shock. Part of the shock had to do with the experience of being, to sound cliche, the stranger in a strange land or to be more succinct, “the other”. It was difficult because I wasn’t used to being the only one that looked like me. I grew up in a white town with white people. America is a society that caters to white people even though America doesn’t want to admit it, it’s true. White people are everywhere; in the movies; in the magazines; on the news; everywhere. It’s so white when you’re white you don’t even know what it feels like to not belong even when you’re a misfit and you don’t belong- that is if you live in a white society. I also spent 13 years in Portland, Oregon, and Portland during the time I was there was voted one of the whitest cities in the United States. My point is, is that when you are the majority you don’t notice it even when you feel lonely and out of place, and yes, even when you feel cheated and misrepresented. You might think you don’t get any of the benefits of the majority because you are on the bottom of the heap of the majority, but you still pass as the majority and that passing is bigger than you think. Bascially, you don’t have to think about being white you just are a person (that by the way is part of what people mean by privilege: you are a person not a person with a skin color other than white). I had never thought of myself in the sense of “otherness.” Often I had felt like I didn’t always connect or fit-in with white America or even the American Dream because of what I felt internally (sometimes based on my experiences as a woman and as being raised poor and on welfare), but that is not the same as being “the other”. Then I moved to a place where I was the minority. Then I knew. No, to know is too strong a verb, you don’t know, I became sensitive to it; to skin color, to color and to race.

I’m not going to get into the conversation of racism in China versus racism in America or express some kind of kindred “I understand discrimination” because woes me I was a poor lonely white woman in China. Being white in China is exponentially different from being black (or latino, or native American…) in America, for one thing, a black person in America is an American (which I think some people have seemed to have gotten confused) while a white person in China is an American too (even when you are not) but you are also 100% not Chinese and nor will you ever be Chinese. The experience of white male versus the white female are different too and I’m not writing here to expose the great secret of the white man’s success with Chinese women, as well as there are many different nationalities and races of people who live in China and experience their own kind of foreigner experience. My point is to express the feeling of being a minority when you come from a world where you were the majority (even if not in actual numbers, but in power of a social system) and what that felt like to me and how it contributed to my experience of culture shock. My heightened sense of sensitivity and growing awareness and openness to listening to the words of American people of color (and new immigrants) is just a positive (I think positive) by-product of my experience, but it can never compare to what it feels like to grow up feeling like “the other” in a country that is supposed to be your home. When I use the word minority as applied to me in China I mean a minority by the definition of small in numbers: As in smaller less seen, and therefore standing out; not invisible; and a bit like a zoo animal. In my ignorance I had thought I would like the attention. As if I’d be like a movie star. But, I didn’t like the attention, and the attention wasn’t like being a movie star it was more like being a freak. Now, I’m just writing about the negative culture shock moments to build toward the positive ending in this post so hold your possible anger and go along with it…

The stares, Jim! The stares!

It was disconcerting. At first I tried to smile at people who stared hard at me, and occasionally someone would smile back, but most often a smile would only make the stare harder. I, of course, didn’t and couldn’t know what people were really thinking, but to me it was that I did not belong there. Not that people were going to push me out, but just that I was not a part of the community, and I could not blend in. I was noticeable everywhere I went. Some people wanted to take my picture, some people just wanted to stare at me, and children pointed and screamed. They didn’t scream in terror, I mean they screamed in delight, It was like: “MOMMY! LOOK AT THE CLOWN, MOMMY!” And, that was what got to me. Of course it was charming when a large group of school girls walked by and yelled out in english, “I love you!” But it wasn’t charming when a group of men would circle me and examined me like I was something to purchase, and yes that happened too. I will hands down admit I was not good at handling the attention, but I am also grateful because for the first time it made me feel, really feel (minus the violence) what it is to be a minority, and to be looked at for your skin, your eyes, your hair. Even though people thought I was beautiful or exotic it still made me uncomfortable because I was being examined. I have a rather extreme example of what I mean by examined: Once, I had to pee in a public restroom at the train station, and this bathroom was like a trough. It was open stalls where you would squat over this narrow little trench with the piss and shit running like two little rivers as if you were a giant straddling the land and defecating into the canyon below. I felt uncomfortable, not only because I sucked at the squat and because all this human feces was so close to me, but because there were no stalls, and I knew, I just knew someone was going to try to look at my vagina as I peed. How did I know this? because I had already been examined in a public shower before, not by everyone of course, but it only takes one person feeling completely fine examining you to make you feel awkward; but I had to pee. Most women walked by not caring, but then it happened. She saw me squatting, and she slowed down and tried to take a peek, but my attempt to gracelessly hide myself while simultaneously not pee on my feet or slip into the river of stench did register to her that she was violating my privacy, and dropped her head and quickly walked away, but the very fact that she would have felt okay trying to do it in the first place is what I mean about being examined.

At the school where I taught, huge groups of new potential students were touring the classrooms. There were hundreds of students. It was near the end of my year in China and I had already been accustomed to people being excited or surprised to see my skin and my hair, and my very American looking face. As I saw the large group of students walking towards the windows of my classroom where I was teaching, I could see some of the eyes of the kids light up as they saw me, and I knew it would be a matter of minutes till the cameras came out. I moved down off the podium as I was talking and into the thick of my class, as I did so the cameras began flashing. Many of the visiting students had pressed themselves up against the window to get a good shot. My own students, who looked at me like I was old news, and had had plenty of exposure to foreigners, gasped at the disruption, and a couple of the girls screamed in that very teenaged annoyed way, “Oh MY GOD!” And, some Chinese expletives were yelled as well. A few of them ran to the windows to lower the blinds.

“It’s like they think we’re animals in a zoo!” One of my students yelled.

I loved my students, even the students that would frustrate me. I wish I could have given them more. One day some of my students were telling me that if I went to a certain historical place, on a public holiday, I would be mobbed by the crowed because I was a foreigner, and a lot of villagers go there, and they may never have seen a white person or any foreigner before. So I said, “I’ll wear a hat and cover my hair”. My student shook her head, no. “I’ll wear a hat and sunglasses to cover my eyes”. My student shook her head, no. “I’ll wear a hat, and glasses, and a scarf around my face, and I’ll wear long sleeves and gloves to cover my skin”. “No,” my student said, “You’ll never be able to hide that nose.” (For those of you who don’t know Chinese people think foreigners have big noses. Some do.) It was difficult to be the only one who looked like me, but then there was the language too. Not only couldn’t I blend in because of my physical appearance, I also couldn’t communicate. I was surrounded by millions (literally millions) of people, and I was isolated. This was hard for me. This was just the beginning of the culture shock, then there was the actual culture- so different yet sometimes eerily familiar to my own; and then the pollution which was like the apocalypse (no joke); and the construction; and the population; and how education is conducted; and business is run; and the the shitty hierarchy of the work place for Chinese people; and so many nuanced things. And then, there was my mother’s death.

I sometimes think if my mom had not died, suddenly while I was in China, that I may have gotten past the culture shock phase, but because she did die, I was thrown into a despair that I couldn’t grasp, and with no close friends to turn to, friends who knew my relationship with my mother, and I felt lost. I felt an isolation I had never experienced before, an isolation that changed me, permanently. There were other things too: stress at school, and friendship loneliness, and just basic life stresses. When I was about to leave China I couldn’t get away fast enough. I thought to myself I fucking hate this country and I’ll never return, but I was lying to myself. I just didn’t know it.

It took me almost a full year away from China to finally appreciate it, and that appreciation first came through food and e-mails from a friend. I missed Chinese food. You can’t get Chinese food anywhere in the world other than China. That food you’re eating that you think is Chinese is nothing; it’s crap. Go to China, eat the food, you’ll find the food gods. It’s that good. Sure there’s crazy stuff like bird heads and tongues and testicles and yes some places still eat dogs and cats, and you’ll probably eat a rat thinking it’s chicken, but you don’t have to eat those things (if you know what you’re eating), there is so much to choose from so many amazing noodles, and spices, and broths, and vegetables…food ecstasy. The spices! Oh, the spices! Then there were my friends. The Chinese friends I had made who missed me and sent me e-mails hoping to not lose touch, and hoping that I would return to visit them again one day. And my foreign friends that stayed or returned and still sent messages and shared stories “of crazy life in China”. In all that isolation and loneliness and cultural shock I had made friends. Foreigner friends and Chinese friends. Good friends. I missed my students (who I will most likely never see again). Then there was Xi’an.

I lived in Zhengzhou. I can say, still, today as I write this, I didn’t like Zhengzhou. It wasn’t my kind of city, and the pollution was too much, and the construction was too much, and it wasn’t culturally interesting to me. I think maybe you have to be Chinese to appreciate the city, or maybe not, I don’t know why foreigners like it there, you’d have to ask them, it wasn’t the right place for me. If I had only spent my time in Zhengzhou which is where I spent most of my time, I may not have ever wanted to return to China, but I went to Kaifeng, Luoyang, and to Xi’an. All those places were just as polluted as Zhengzhou (don’t underestimate this pollution. It’s bad the world should care) but the beauty of the other cities and their cultural heritage helped me to overlook the pollution (to an extent). They were filled with history and were so exciting for me to visit. Then there was Xi’an. I had wanted to go to Xi’an since I was a little girl. Xi’an was one of my “before I die” places. I loved the city, and it was my last impression of China. China that is so huge and vast that I merely stuck my toe in the ocean of it. This last impression reminded me that I had wanted to visit China for a long time and there was so much to see and experience.

I am returning to China. This time to Beijing, and this time for the job not just China. My strongest interest is in the job. I’m not going to try to conquer China, to go back and say: “Yes! This time I made it!” I’m going because there is an opportunity for me, and also because there is so much more to see in China than Zhengzhou. I will be on the coast. In a new province. In the city of the last Dynasty. And, I’ve been to China, and I have a better idea of what to expect. It may be more difficult. I don’t know, but I’m not blinded by magazine articles and illusions of ‘What is China.” I find a humor now in the things that caused me stress. Not that I’m into people examining me peeing, but I also know that is not an everyday occurrence, and I’m mentally prepared unlike I was before. Plus, being able to tell a story about someone trying to watch you pee because you know they’re wondering if a white woman’s pee or vagina is the same as their own can be a pretty funny story to tell— afterwards, long afterwards. Beijing will be more crowded, and more polluted, but I won’t be arriving this time like a wide eyed idiot with the innocent thinking, “oh, it’ll be like I’m a movie star.” That was just a stupid thing to think. There are just somethings you can not know without experiencing them. I’ve experienced China once in one small part. This time I hope to do better. To feel better. To leave thinking, “Oh, I could visit again.”

A Day in Seoul

Published on November 9, 2015March 3, 2024 by An Accidental VagabondLeave a comment

When my contract was up, and my visa expired I decided to not renew. Instead, I decided to leave China. I was ready to leave China. I had experienced the greatest loss of my life while I was living there, and that was the loss of my mother. Not only did I go through my experience of grief, which I still deal with, I had also simultaneously experienced culture shock. Culture shock is a strange beast and can be a bit difficult to recognize, but looking back on my time there I can say with certainty that I had had culture shock. Some days were worse than others. One would imagine that with death and shock that I would have been ready to run home, but for me there was no home. My mother was my home, and now that she was gone there was no place to call home. I did not want to return to America, but I didn’t want to be somewhere as challenging as China, yet I wanted something foreign; foreign to me. I decided to move to Prague in the Czech Republic.

My flight went first in the direction of South Korea and then towards Europe. I had decided to extend my layover to 24 hours and used the opportunity to see some bit of South Korea. I literally had 24 hours, and so I used that time to try to see as much as I could in a very short amount of time. There are many palaces in Seoul, and fortunately the Gyeonghuigung Palace was close to the hostel where I was staying. I can not for the life of me even begin to imagine how to pronounce the name of the place, but my single day in Seoul was a silent one anyway.

I wandered around the palace and walked around the district where I was staying. I had no idea of what kind of district I was visiting. Was it expensive? Was it where the foreigners lived? Was it a college area? I didn’t bother to figure it out. I only had two goals. One was to see something like a palace, and to get a small perception of what South Korea was like, in case I ever would want to return, and two, to find some food.

It was a solitary and quiet visit, and I can honestly say that a day is not enough time to spend in Seoul. It is a huge city with many different districts, and even in a single day I was not able to see the entire palace. Still, I’m glad I took the opportunity to take a peak. Compared to Zhengzhou, China, Seoul was a clean city. There was no trash on the street and the air was more clear although they did receive some of the pollution from China, and like China it felt very safe. So as I wandered through the streets I never felt worried that I would turn the wrong corner. There is so much freedom in this feeling of wandering.

After I left the palace I decided to find somewhere to eat. I had wandered through the district for about two hours before I got lost in a market and then wandered down an alleyway. Here I hesitated because I was very hungry at this point and my hunger was clouding my ability to pick a location. It was at this moment when a Korean woman ushered me into her tiny little shop and she served me the special of the day.

I cannot emphasize how much I love Korean food. I love the textures, the spices, the colors, and I love how it is served. Every food item has an individual plate and it is all served in a sensible portion size. You feel full, but never stuffed.

After eating I returned to my room that had pastel dots and square on the wall, and prepared for my long flight to Prague, and a new chapter of my life.

I am writing about all of this in the past tense because it is past. It has been over a year since I stepped foot onto a sidewalk of Seoul, and at the time of typing these words it has been almost two months since I’ve left my beautiful Prague. I currently sit in the dining room of my friend’s house where I am staying as I plan my next move. A dear friend of mine asked me recently, “So what is your plan? You always have a plan.” I wasn’t aware of this, but thinking back on my life and the choices I’ve made, I think it is true. I do always have a plan. I don’t always succeed in that plan, but it doesn’t matter because when one plan fades or fails I’ll soon have another.

So what is the plan? I plan to update this blog with the thoughts and memories and photos from the last two years of my life. I plan to return to my revery and release through writing, and I plan to have all of it documented here before I leave again. I am leaving again. At least that is the plan, and while it seems fairly strong that I will be returning to China, (and I’ll write more about that later) it is not impossible to imagine that I will also be returning to South Korea. I have too, because now I have a friend there, and I owe her a pillow.