It’s been just about a year now that I left my home in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, USA. It’s been both a surprisingly eventful and often deadeningly dull year for me, eventful in that i sold virtually all of my belongings, rented out my home, began a new career, lived in three different countries, and was hit by a taxi cab in downtown Seoul three months ago on my way to work. The last event necessitated three weeks residency in two different Korean hospitals, both before and after surgery, and lastly three weeks convalescence at home. Hence some of the boredom.
I was pretty excited and nervous the night I flew in to Seoul, South Korea. The airport was easy to navigate and soon i was cruising east in an airport bus through the cold Korean night. The juxtaposition of that quiet cool dark rush through the night, with the streets of Seoul, crammed with light and people, neon signs everywhere crawling up the sides of the densely packed buildings, leggy Korean women severely underdressed for the weather and men in suits or knit caps and baggy pants walking in groups past street vendor after vendor selling ties, dvd’s, sunglasses, clothing, cell phones and aromatic spicy food unlike any food I’d ever had before.......was startling. I had never seen a city put together quite like this before, a crazy quilt of low buildings, shanties and high-rises, carts and plastic food tents everywhere, cars and motor-scooterists muscling through the throngs of people, music and lights pulsing up stairwells coming up out of the ground and under it all the hum of 10 million people buying, selling, eating and drinking, It felt more like an amusement park than a city. The knowledge that my new life had begun, a life radically different from the bucolic, remote and peaceful life I’d known in my little mountain valley back home, settled in me in a most unsettling way, and it was late before i finally fell asleep in my motel room.
I spent my first month in Seoul trying to figure out where to buy a table and chairs. My apartment was a square room with a kitchen at one end and a bed, the only piece of furniture, at the other. There are different areas in Seoul for buying things; 10 city blocks of buildings devoted to all things electronic, another area solely for furniture, another for fish, another for shoes, etc. A great system if you know the city or speak Korean or have a Korean friend, otherwise, difficult indeed. In addition, there are no detailed street maps of Seoul because there are very few streets in Seoul with names or numbers. Most people find their way around by landmark buildings and extensive use of cell phones. So, my first few weeks were spent......foraging. Discovering what to buy, what to eat and where to find it. I also began teaching at English Channel, a language institute, working a split shift, 7am-11am, then back again from 6pm-10. Doesn’t sound too bad, but it actually is a very tiring schedule, at least for a middle-aged westerner like myself. All the Koreans I have met so far are all, by my standards, severely sleep-deprived, but they continue to function and to remain, seemingly, quite cheerful and kind.
As individuals, that is. On the street or worse yet in the subway, they’ll walk right over you or shoulder you aside without so much as a by your leave. If they don’t know you, you don’t exist. And whatever you do, don’t get in the way of some old codger trying to make it onto the train before the doors close; he’ll run you down and give you a filthy look besides. Seoulites are always in a hurry and focused on their destination and they either don’t notice or don’t care if they just trod on your toe in their rush. One morning around 9am I was in the hall of an underground mall before much had opened yet. Suddenly a flock of forty to fifty Korean women of varying ages but all wearing heels, came skittering down the hall towards me. They were running as fast as they could in their short tight skirts and their high pointy heels, looking like a herd of lacy gazelles, and the clatter of tiny heels on marble was thunderous. Who says there’s no wildlife left in Korea?
By the time another two months had gone by, I had acquired a bike, made a friend, lost some weight and was starting to feel pretty fit. I’d made it through my birthday and Christmas without feeling too terribly home-sick. I was getting around the city pretty well, clocking an average of 16 miles a day on my bike and getting along well with my co-workers and students. I found that I enjoy teaching English and I’m pretty good at it for someone who doesn’t know her grammar very well at all. I can identify a problem, but to explain it with the proper terminology, well, not my strongest point. I was getting less fearful about ordering food in restaurants and could even order some things in Korean. But I didn’t care for Seoul much. Too big, too dirty, too rude, too ugly, too.....incomprehensible. Most of modern Seoul was built after the war, at a time when speed and economy and utility were key considerations. Aesthetics didn’t begin to enter into the equation, and as a result you have a city that is extremely lacking in architectural or artistic terms. In fact, it’s an ugly city, with one area looking much like another, crowded, jumbled, grey and grimy. Much of life takes place inside or even underground in Seoul, and it was hard for an outdoor lover like myself to adjust to such an interior life-style. The rain is purportedly acid and Koreans protect themselves from both rain and sun with umbrellas. Even the slightest of drizzles brings out the umbrella, as no one wants to get their hair wet or wear a hat. Still, there are places and moments of beauty to be found in Seoul, and getting around by bicycle helped me discover them.
One day I was riding home from a friends house, feeling a little lonely and blue, when I rode past a gathering of people with tables, flyers, music, etc., a sort of rally but with different organizations there, Christian proselytizers, Buddhist drummers,etc. It was the drumming which caught my attention and I stopped to have a look. The drummers were almost all women, dressed in ceremonial garb and two men who played brass gongs and seemed to direct the drumming. There was a bit of dancing and leaping going on as well and it was all quite colorful. I stood there watching and listening and then someone came up to me and gave me a cup of some sort of fermented rice alcohol and insisted I drink it, so I did. Then one of the drummers came up to me and handed me a big drum and indicated that I should drum on it and who to try and follow. So I drummed with them for about an hour and a half, a deafening rhythmic cacophony of sound that was quite exciting and exhilarating to be a part of and by the end I was even attempting some of the leaps. It took me right out of my funky mood and reminded me that I came here alone, fully expecting to be alone most of the time and yet still hoping to have adventure and cultural experiences. Earlier in the week I went to a temple just to look around and got pulled into a meditation group with a buddhist monk, which was also quite uplifting and calming to my dissatisfied heart. I meant to go back, but the next day on my way to work I was hit by a taxi-cab in a crosswalk and everything changed.

Barcelona

Hola Barcelona

What makes a relatively contented middle-aged woman with a satisfactory life leave home and go live abroad? I had excellent friends, a sweet little house in one of the most beautiful places on earth (northern Idaho in the United States), a sweet little dog, a bountiful garden, praise and admiration from the community for my talents as a performer, clean air, clean water and excellent health. It's true that I had no mate and hadn't had one for quite a long time, but I don't think that this is what sent my feet tripping down this path. My life just felt so.....predictable. I felt too young at heart to be so damn settled. I hadn't seen much of the world and I wanted to, before I ran out of time. So, I sold almost all of my household belongings, sold my car, my truck, found homes for my cats (my dog died the winter before), made my goodbyes to friends and family, my son, packed my bags and headed for Barcelona and a TEFL certificate.
Barcelona, or rather my reaction to Barcelona, was a shock. A place I had fully expected to adore, full of passionate people and beautiful buildings, i found myself hating initially. It was frightfully hot and humid, difficult for a girl with northern blood to take. The city was as beautiful as I had expected; stunning and unusual architecture, public art, free concerts, picturesque parks and magnificent churches, but terribly dirty and reeking of garbage and dogshit. Every other person in Barcelona keeps a dog and in the evening they all get walked and they all relieve themselves. Well, who can blame them? They live their days in cramped, hot apartments (very few people in Barcelona have air-conditioning), hanging their furry heads over the balconies along with the bougainvillea, waiting for the stroll and a bit of air at the end of the day.
Catalunyans love their dogs and their children, but one thing they do not love is visitors who speak neither Spanish or Catalan. I was not prepared for how rude people would be to me, having lived for the last 18 years in a backwater where everyone behaves with civility towards friends and strangers alike. On my first foray into the subway I was yelled at by the ticket taker for not being able to figure out how to get through the turnstile. Yeah, I was behaving pretty stupidly (there's something that happens to me when I don't speak the language; my IQ actually gets lower), but still....she came flying out of her little booth, angry catalan spitting out of her mouth and hands waving at me....I was quite undone. The first time that a person actually smiled back at me in the street felt like a personal victory against the pervasive contempt most Catalans feel for anyone not fortunate enough to have been born into this elite group. Plus, Barcelonans don't believe in customer service. They'll get to you when they're good and ready, and if you're in a visible rush you can expect to be kept waiting even a little longer. Spaniards don't hurry and they don't kow-tow, a quality I came to admire eventually, but at first mistook for unfriendliness. What with the demeanor of the natives and the unbearable humidity, i felt for the first few weeks that I had made a dreadful mistake in leaving home, that I wasn't cut out for this nomadic life at all. Most days saw me reduced to tears at some point, usually having to do with some technological or linguistic dilemma that I found myself unable to sort out. My cell phone, for instance, was in Spanish and I simply could not get the damn thing to work for me. My computer also caused me to weep and when I shrunk all my clothing in the washer I was about ready to get on a plane home. Only, that's right, i no longer had a home, I'd rented it out, and oh yeah, I no longer had my job at the bookstore, and oh yeah, i'd sent all my massage clients to another masseuse....
Seven weeks later Barcelona had metamorphosed into everything I had originally envisioned, an enchanted and elegant falling down, vibrant city of marble and red tile, of crooked streets and narrow ill-lit stairwells that go up forever, of whirring fans and good cheap red wine and late nights with friends on roof-tops, of music, art and festivals, celebration, danger and dionysian revelry. Barcelona is like an aging beautiful courtesan who is showing the ravages of time and hard living, but who hasn't lost her looks or her ability to charm and mesmerize.
I left Barcelona reluctantly, having fallen thoroughly under her spell and that in spite of having been robbed in the street, something that happens eventually to everyone in that city. But I couldn't work there legally and wasn't willing at my age to live hand to mouth on private lessons and illegitimate school posts. I know how to get by on little, but didn't feel like living so uncertainly at this point in my life, and so, I bid Barcelona adios and set my sights on Asia. I hope to go back to Spain and perhaps will return to tour Catalonia with an English educational acting troupe in a year's time. For that experience i would happily beggar myself for a while.