The Factory

Great as a sauce, too!

The only thing shorter than my time remaining here is my attention span these days. I think about leaving and traveling and my last days in Korea so often that it's hard to think of much else. There's a lot going on and more to come. I'd stop and reflect, but I've got a mirror for that.

Saturday we headed to the Andy Warhol Factory exhibit at the Leeum Art Gallery. It was great to see some of those famous works first-hand, still thick and shiny with globs of ink and silkscreeny texture. Pictures of the exhibits themselves were forbidden, with lots of meager-looking Koreans in conservative suits ready to ask nicely / kick ass if anyone dared. There were, however, a few Andy things around, as well as general little doodads of weirdness to photograph.

After than, we headed to Yongsan, where Ben picked up a camera (like mine) and I picked up a dashing new lens (a nice zoomy one to take better pictures during my travels).

Speaking of those travels, I've got my tickets for the Fuji Rock Festival. That should be a bit of a trip, since I'll be camping alone at Japan's annual version of Woodstock at Mount Fuji. A weekend of loud music should be a nice way to toast-off the end of my Asian travels.

But back to the present (or recent past, as it were). After purchasing new photo gizmogadgetrons, we ate sushi and headed to a patio-ed bar to cool-off with cool coppery drinks. The warm sweaty thick air makes the inebriating kind of heat relief the nicest.

If you stay in a bar long enough in Korea, they normally bring out some sort of food-snack menu item for free. This night it was a nice, full, half-dried squid. I've mentioned before how these ten-legged swimming nuns go hand-in-hand with drinking in Korea, and after a year, I'm still not quite sure why. I guess it's the salty-chewiness or whatever. It would take more than beer, however, for me to overlook the fact that the stuff tastes like a bicycle tire soaked in sea water.

Begrudgingly, I'll admit that salted, dried, shredded strips (or as I call it - squid jerky) in gochujang (Korean hot sauce kinda thing) are actually pretty decent. Neglecting that one exception, I refuse to understand why the stuff is served next to the popcorn at the theatre.

It's hard not to take a picture at night here without it looking interesting. There's a weird combination between the neon and the flashy and the old and new that just leaves this wonderful confusing clusterfuck of interesting. I know the texture of this place so well now, and I'm excited to see what other places 'feel' like.

Although I certainly won't have a year to absorb the atmosphere. In the run of about a month, I'm looking to visit about seven different countries; five of which I've never seen before. Despite the rushed schedule, I'm going to try to travel by land as often as possible. Crowded boats and stuffy trains and the back of pickup trucks and scooters and such are a much better way of seeing a place than the quiet, cloudy bird's-eye perspective you get by jetting above it.

Back in Seoul, though, I'm already dealing with the loss of my life here. So are my Kindergarten students. I finally explained to them today that I'm leaving in a month. They understood, and they got all little-kid sad. They cried and begged me not to go, and asked me why I had to - it was all a bit heavy. For a moment, I even asked myself why I was leaving - how could I leave this wonderful bunch of kids? But I realized they won't be there forever, and I can't keep teaching them forever, even if I stayed.

Even their drawings have progressed a lot in the last year. Another teacher showed me some of the pictures the kindie students drew of me for a project. Interpretations ran from giraffe-necked to balding to completely bald with stubble and some sort of forehead cross.

After I warned them about my departure, the kids were telling me that their moms all really liked me. "Mommy likes Peter Teacher" "Mommy says Peter Teacher very good!"

Then William says, "Mommy says Peter teacher (bunch of stuff in Korean I don't quite understand)"
"William, stop speaking Korean and do your work, please."
"No, Peter! My mom says Peter teacher... very handsome!"
"Oh, thank-you William, that's nice of her to say."
"Peter teacher..."
"Yes William?"
"My mom is crazy."

I had another funny moment when Melonie was showing me her toy cellphone. I asked her why pushing the buttons made no noise, so she told me...
"Me this..." (she pushes the buttons - a lot of them.)
"Then mommy this..." (she puts her hand on her head, giving her best Tylenol commercial frustrated headache impression.)
"And mommy this..." (she mimes opening the phone and taking out the batteries.)

"Oh..." I fully understand.

Rosa asked me for suggestions for 'inspirational' phrases to put on the wall of the classroom. I knew it had to be something really bad-slogan school-lame, and the only thing I think of was a line from the theme from School House Rock.



And speaking of power, how exactly does Korea meet the power needs of its technological, dense populous? Surely the power grid fueling Seoul must be among the most advanced on Earth. Right?

Well, check out these power lines around my neighbourhood.


It seems that Spiderman is not only skilled at busting bad villains and box office records, but he's also a skilled electrician. The biggest issue is not really about the potential for electrical fires in these tangles, but rather the risk of small animals nesting in the wires.

Luckily, the air quality in Seoul has rendered the few surviving birds practically flightless. Once again, pollution saves the world.