cooking lessons

On the last Saturday in June I met the two receptionists at my school for our planned cooking lesson. Namhi, Amy and I were joined by another teacher at Swaton, Moon-jeong, who was the oldest, though we are all in our twenties. We went to the grocery store to pick up food and when I realized we were walking to my house and not one of theirs (because they all live with their parents), I sprinted home on my bike to tidy my one-room apartment. We cooked rice, some cold glass noodles and a thick bacony meat for dinner. They also showed me how to marinate bulgogi (beef), which I cooked later in the week. We ate, and they had picked up a couple of bottles of soju, which is Korean whiskey that tastes like vodka. There were multiple toasts and multiple empty bottles of soju and beer (large plastic "pitcher" sized bottles). Along with the soju and beer, I drank buckets of water because I had a soccer game the next day (but more about that in a moment). They seemed to enjoy themselves, and I finally got them out the door around 1 a.m. We had been cooking since 7, so it was a long visit.

I was scheduled to meet one of the members of the soccer team at 7:30 Sunday morning. I was to catch a taxi to the main police station, where he would pick me up. I was pretty tired, and a little worried. Sonia, my boss, who had arranged for me to play, mentioned the word "Brazil" when describing the team to me, but didn't know anything else about it. I think it's the way she plucks her eyebrows or the unsure cadence of her English: everything she says sounds ominous.

It turns out I had nothing to fear. I met my new team, a crude bunch of 35 to 55 year-olds and though none of them spoke English, they seemed glad to have me on their side. One player was my age, a hot shot, Carlos, so-named because he spent time in Brazil. I decided that Sonia must have been referring to him. The field belonged to a school and was composed of something between ash and clay, the color of beach sand. Aside from the small building that stuck into it near the halfway line on one side, it was acceptable, even better than the one I played on in Zimbabwe. There were three teams, and each would play half a game and then rotate, until each team had played two full games. The general rule was that these men were more skilled than physically able; given the choice, I think that's what I'd prefer. The pass didn't always make it, the runner didn't always get on the end of my cross, but there had was communication and understanding, so it was never frustrating. What was frustrating was the obscene blister that my new shoes placed on my left heel. I changed into someone's running shoes and was able to help out with a couple of goals.

While my team was sitting out, one of the subs of the home team brought over a huge watermelon for us. Then, when the games were over, my team ordered this ice cold noodle soup--delivery is amazing in Korea, anything is available, anywhere, at any time--and we sat cross-legged in a circle slurping the stuff from between our knees. Some of the team went home, but the really hard-core members, of whom I was made a part, walked several blocks from the field to a convenience store, where we sat outside at some plastic tables and had beer. I got the feeling that for some of these men, the fraternizing was the reason they played. Finally, at 4 p.m. (I had been with them since 7:30 a.m.) I was dropped off at my apartment with the dirty #20 jersey and the promise of a ride to the game in two week's time.

For the next weekend I was to visit Seoul, and this is how the trip went: totally swell. Tami and her friend/aide Bo picked me up from the Seoul train station. I had taken the slow train, called mugunghwa, even though it takes more than twice as long as the fast train, the sleekly named KTX, because it was half the price. Tami, for those of you unfamiliar with the geopolitical regions of my family, is basically my aunt, and she's lived in Seoul for something like 18 years. She's now in charge of the American Chamber of Commerce, and I get the impression that she's feared (professionally, of course) by many people. I haven't been as excited to see anyone as I was to see her when I got off that train. We had lunch and ran some errands. I could sit for ages in the back seat of her new-smelling (perpetually, I'm told) Chrysler Mothership and listen to her stories about this General's run-in with the local police or that time at the Blue House (Korea's White House) or the time she pretended to get drunk with this or that government minister or when her insider at the ambassador's residence told her about walking in on George W. smoking a Cuban (a Cuban!) in his undies, which are briefs, apparently, and not boxers. Tami's great for a story, and she's also immoderately generous. She insisted that I take home with me a new cell phone with which I can call the U.S., a toaster oven, some new books and a couple of other things (including girl scout cookies and selections from her DVD collection). She also offered her Harley, which she can't drive at the moment because of her neck, but I don't have the correct license (when she said this, the first thing I imagined was pulling up to soccer games on my hog, to the astonishment of my teammates and awesome dread of my opponents).

One of the girls who works in Tami's office is from Daegu, and she's going to come down one weekend and introduce me to her cousin, who lived for a while in Canada. It will be nice to know him, because I've been spending quite a bit of time alone. It used to be that I jogged when I needed to think, because it was a good way to rid myself of distractions. But now I'm alone most of the time, and I run for the distraction. I've been listening to my mp3 player, and it's a nice way to hear music. I've accidentally discovered that I can calibrate my outside running speed while listening to a certain song on the treadmill: if a foot falls on the snare beat, I'm going exactly 11 miles per kilometer. Mostly I run outside, around Suseong Lake, and then work out at night in the gym. The contrast is fascinating. I've always associated health and exercise with fresh air, sunshine, breezes, a shadow that jogs along with you. But the mirrors, the padded floors, the air-con and the machines all packed together with humans twisting and bending over and around them, none of this is natural (the Korean pop music they play, highly so). The price of convenience, which is the very reason I go to the gym rather than search out some remote cliffside over which to perform calisthenics. It's on the ninth floor of the same building as my fifth floor school, and my membership includes a locker and a fresh shirt, shorts and towel every visit. The biggest problem I've encountered has to do with these cloths in the shower. They serve the same purpose as washcloths, only they're meshy. Men use them and then hang them up in the shower, and for a long time I couldn't figure out if they were supposed to be reused. I have decided they must, though the language prevented me from asking, and you might imagine the hazards of observing too closely the personal habits of other men in a communal shower.