Gratitude

If you read my very first entry for this blog back in September, you may remember that I said that, in coming to Korea, I hoped to experience things so completely foreign that they “would turn my worldview on its head.” To be honest, looking back on that statement, I’m not even sure what it was supposed to mean, or what my expectations truly were.  Was I expecting to be consistently shocked, fascinated, or appalled by the unfamiliarity of things?  Was I expecting a mythical land of shrouded mystery and dragon-filled folklore?  Exotic adventure?  Enlightenment?  I’m not entirely certain.  At the very least, I think I was expecting something unexpected – cliché, I know, but I don’t know how else to say it.  I think I had some pretty hazy notions of what Korea would be like before I got here – a fusion of the ultramodern and the exotically traditional.  Generally speaking, that perception is pretty close to reality.  But what I hadn’t anticipated was how quickly the novelty of it would wear off, how quickly I would adapt and begin to perceive the things around me as ordinary.  The unfamiliar has become familiar.  I’m reminded of an episode of Father Ted, an Irish sit-com from the 90s.  Ted and Dougal are on vacation, standing at a tourist site called St. Kevin’s Stump, looking very bored and unimpressed with the anticlimactic experience.  Dougal asks, “Are all holidays like this, Ted?”  Ted forlornly replies, “Actually…yeah.”

 Now I’m just living my day-to-day life more or less the way I would back home – I go to work, I come home, I make dinner (granted, what I eat and drink may be a little different, but not always), I play guitar, I might get together with friends to watch a movie or have a drink.  Is this really why I travelled all this way?  It feels like I should be doing more, like maybe if I took more initiative I could make my experience more meaningful.  But I’m not sure how to go about it.  I guess, in the end, the adventure of merely “traveling abroad” yields different results than the inevitable monotony of “living and working abroad.”

Every once in a while, however, Korea completely surprises me and presents me with an experience that instantly reminds me that I am, in fact, in a foreign country.  Take last week for instance.  A new wing of our school, which had been under construction since before my arrival, was finally completed and ready for a grand opening.  So during seventh period, my co-teacher Mr. Jung told me and two other native English teachers to come with him to the conference room downstairs.  All he said was, “Formal ceremony.  We go downstairs, eat tteok.”  (Tteok is a sort of chewy cake made from rice, and I’d had a light lunch, so I was instantly on board).  We followed him downstairs, totally unprepared for what we were about to walk in on.

When we arrived at the conference room, the ceremony was already under way.  It took me a few moments to completely take in what I was seeing, for at first I was sure my eyes were playing tricks on me.  I saw a bunch of people standing around, silently looking in the direction of a low table, lavishly set and laden with candles, bowls of fruit and dried fish, and, surprisingly….a severed pig’s head.

“Is that what I think it is?” mumbled Wiley, my co-teacher from Indiana.  I’m sure he took my stunned silence as an affirmation.

Before the table, spread out on the ground, was a mat.  One by one, the school’s top administrators and several teachers approached the table, bowed to the pig’s head, then kneeled on the mat.  They then took a bowl of rice wine (I think) and carefully spilled a little on the ground to each side of the table.  Next, they began prostrating themselves on the ground like Muslims at prayer time.  Once….twice…three times, each person brought his or her forehead to the floor before this strange display.  In the final stage they would rise, take money out of their pockets, and stuff it into every available orifice in the pig’s face.  I was at a loss for words.

I soon learned that this ceremony is called Gosa, and it’s a ritual for giving thanks and requesting blessings, safety, good fortune, and prosperity.  It’s a shamanistic tradition that is usually done at the outset of something – the opening of a new business, for example, or even moving into a new apartment.  In this case, the ceremony was expressing gratitude for the safe, successful completion of the school’s new wing, and it was also a wish for the continued prosperity of the school.  It is my understanding that this ritual is observed more as a folk tradition than a strictly held belief, more superstition than devotion.  Personally, I had not yet witnessed anything of this nature in Korea.  The sight of respected professionals in nice suits prostrating themselves before a grotesque pig’s head seemed oddly incongruous, but upon reflection, I’m not sure why I was so surprised.  Hadn’t this been exactly the kind of “completely foreign” thing I had expected to encounter here?

After the ceremony, we took a brief tour of the new facilities.  We then returned to the conference room to find the tables laid out with plates of tteok, fruit, bottles of makgeolli (rice wine), and thin, bite-sized pieces of unidentifiable grayish-pink meat.

I nudged Wiley, indicating the plate of mystery meat.  “What is that?”

His response was another question, “Uhh…what happened to that pig’s head that was in here before?”

Yep, you guessed it.  The unidentifiable meat was indeed the cut-up remnants of the pig’s head – I think it was mostly the ears we were eating. I watched the principal pick up a piece with chopsticks, dab it in some salt, and pop it in his mouth.  He then smiled at me and gestured toward the plate.  My turn.  I didn’t let my reluctance show, even though the sight of the stuff, frankly, grossed me out.  I wasn’t sure if it was even cooked or not because of the color (turns out, it was steamed).  I made sure I rolled it around generously in the salt before placing it in my mouth.  First impression:  cold and clammy, the flavor initially overwhelmed by the salt.  Then I began to chew.  It was simultaneously chewy (because of the fat) and crunchy (because of the cartilage).  When the flavor came through, it was pretty bland and porky, but not unbearable.  The texture was the real killer.  The worst part was that it required quite a bit of chewing before I could swallow it.  I got it down as fast as I could, before the gag reflex had a chance to kick in.  The best part of all this was watching the look on Wiley’s face when his turn came.  I hope I was better at masking my displeasure than him.

Despite the unpleasant snack, I was really happy that I was present for this ceremony.  Once I moved beyond my initial shock, I did find the whole thing extremely fascinating.  It was a great example of that whole “modernity meets tradition” aspect of Korea that I mentioned a few paragraphs back.  It was also my first encounter with shamanism.  Plus, being a part of the ceremony with the other teachers made me feel more like a part of the staff rather than an outsider.  And that was nice.


Anyway, on to other things.  Tis the season to be thankful.  Or so they say. I tend to think of myself as a fairly reflective person, but if I’m being honest, I have to admit I usually allow Thanksgiving to come and go without giving much thought to anything other than food and football.  This year was different though.  Every Thanksgiving of my life has been spent with family and close friends, and there’s nothing like spending the holiday thousands of miles away from home to put it all in perspective.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t miserably homesick there for a few days, missing my family, craving pumpkin pie, getting all nostalgic looking at the photos posted on facebook of my Washington friends enjoying their feast.  But, honestly, I still managed to have a great Thanksgiving.  The weekend prior to the actual holiday I met up with a bunch of friends (other foreign teachers I’d met at orientation) at Nate’s place in Yesan.  A majority of those present were Americans, but there were also some Brits, Kiwis, and Aussies -- some them enjoying their very first Thanksgiving with us.  Our feast lacked some of the Thanksgiving staples (like pumpkin pie, sadly), but we still had stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes (with cheese and bacon because, hey…it’s the American way).  And I showed up with a hefty supply of sweet potato casserole, my mom’s recipe, which I’ve managed to make myself at every single Thanksgiving that I’ve celebrated away from my family.  The whole affair was like a little slice of home.  It was comforting and awesome.  Margeaux, who’s from New Zealand, even brought a homemade pavlova – a delicious NZ dessert which I hadn’t been able to enjoy since I was there in 2006.  It was like icing on the cake (pun intended, I guess).

Pavlova!

My somewhat traditional, yet still
pretty foreign, Thanksgiving dinner.

My birthday dinner with friends at
Mt. Fishtail Indian Restaurant in Cheonan

So this year, I’m acknowledging that I have a lot to be thankful for.  I’m thankful for having a loving extended family, who is always so supportive of me, even when I’m hatching crazy plans to leave them behind to chase adventure in far-away destinations.  I’m thankful for the wonderful, loyal friends that I have scattered all over the globe, some of whom I’ve not seen for many years but nevertheless feel a strong kinship with still.  I’m thankful for the awesome people that I’ve met here in Korea – many of whom traveled on trains and buses to come to Cheonan and take me out for dinner and drinks on my birthday a few weeks ago.  I’m thankful that I finally have that full-time teaching job I’ve been trying for years to procure.  I’m thankful that I’m here in Korea, living out my desire to travel and my dream to teach in a foreign country, especially because there were so many circumstances that nearly prevented this experience from happening.



It occurs to me that the Gosa ceremony, which I initially found so bizarre, is not actually all that different from our American Thanksgiving.  Swap the steamed pig head stuffed with money for a roasted turkey stuffed with stuffing, and the spirit or sentiment is pretty much the same.  So, I am especially thankful for this moment of clarity, for I think there is wisdom in the realization that, no matter where I go or who I meet, certain things seem to be universal:  friendship, love, gratitude, hope.

I’m also grateful for this opportunity for self-examination, to reassess why I’m here and what I hope to gain through this experience.  And I’m thankful that I have plenty of time left to figure it all out.  I’m sure there’s a lesson somewhere in this lull I’m experiencing at the moment.  I’ll continue to search for the deeper meaning to my journey here in Asia, and I’m confident that I will find it eventually.  Clearly, I’ve got some work to do.