Visitors and Holidays

The timing of this year’s Chinese New Year – or Lunar New Year (Seol-nal) to those of us not living in China – granted us three full days off work; a practically unheard of length of vacation around here. Sweet. Most Koreans celebrate by visiting family (at the cost of looong drives home) and eating rice-cake soup among other dishes. Young people perform a traditional bow to pay respect to their elders and for their trouble receive “Sae-Bae Don”: money. For my part I did eat the soup but beyond that my holiday was just about spending time with anyone who didn’t go away (of course the most popular way for foreigners to spend the holiday) and showing around some very special visitors!

Clearly the highlight of my month was the visit from two of my favourite Laurier grads: Mairin and Laura arrived in Seoul bright and early Wednesday morning and we spent the holiday in style! Between touring Seoul/Suwon, dancing the nights away and spending every other spare minute on a couch/heated floor in pjs, we managed to catch up on the last 6 months and then some. Some things never change, and how nice it was to be reminded that time and distance make no difference to true friends :)

This past weekend saw some more exotic visitors: Saturday night I spent a few hours with the one and only Bjork and her incredible voice. In pink frills from head to toe, Bjork rocked the crowd for nearly 2 hours, pausing only to squeak out a ‘think you’ to everyone’s delight. She shot streamers from her palms, wowed us with her black light esthetics, and ended with a billion little pieces of paper raining down like snow. It was brilliant and I remain in awe. After that, a couple of us switched gears juust a bit and headed to Hongdae for some wicked DJ’ing and hip hop a la Slum Village. In a city that truly lacks music, I’ve been doing pretty well lately.

On Sunday I met up with the old Busan crew and we had a delicious chicken galbi lunch followed by some shopping and a visit to Namdaemun Gate, the site of a recent arson. It was a sad day last Monday as Korea watched it’s ‘National Treasure #1’ burn to the ground, c/o a 70 year old man upset over a land settlement case. I feel for his suffering and lack of sympathetic listening, however to me (and I am sure about 44 million Koreans) this seems a rather dramatic retaliation. The gate had seen 600 years of Korean history, survived the Korean War and all post-development, among other things, and it’s a sin it had to meet its end this way. For more information see A Memorial to Sungnyemun at:

http://www.rjkoehler.com/2008/02/11/memorial-to-sungnyemun-gate/

Peace out til next time.