Moving Right Along (Kuala Lumpur, Penang)

I saw pretty much all I wanted to see in Kuala Lumpur in one day. I didn't go up the Petronas Towers. I've been up Taipei 101 and while the view of the city would have been nice, I just didn't care that much. I did see a performance of different Malaysian dances, including representation of other resident ethnic groups (the indigenous tribes of Borneo, Chinese, Indian). I took a few videos. It was really well done; they were great performers with great dances. Talking to Jacki from Alaska, she asked me if they were smiling. I said yes and she said then they weren't really traditional dances because these things are serious and solemn usually.

I spent a day getting to Pulau Perhentian Kecil. I expected to have to stay the night in Kuala Besut where the boats leave from just cuz I got in a little late. There was a later boat though. I met Jacki on the boat, she's Alaskan Inuit and a diver. I hung out with the divers, then, and picked up a lot. I hadn't allotted time and money for a diving course but I wanted to go snorkelling. I was so stoked because the sites around the islands are said to be some of the world's best and they guaranteed I'd see a sea turtle. The next morning it began to pour and it didn't stop until two days later. So I didn't go snorkelling. I mean I could have stayed an extra day and shortened my stay elsewhere like Kota Bharu, which in retrospect might have worked well because I was bored after the first day in KB. It's made me seriously think about getting SCUBA diving certification. I'm meeting divers everywhere. It's like a cool club and I feel left out!

Kota Bharu was neat though. It's a fairly conservative Muslim city. "The Islamic City." They have their own sultan and businesses close on Fridays, a mosque or prayer space on every second block. There are signs around providing words of wisdom in Arabic and English. Most signs are in Arabic and Malay. It's not an exciting city but it prides itself on its Muslim-ness and promoting Malay heritage. They have a lot of little museums and a cultural centre where they do free shows: shadow puppets, martial arts, different music. I saw a shadow puppet show and took a couple videos. I also saw a coconut drum performance. The other thing is the promotion of handicrafts, especially batik and weaving (like baskets and stuff). The trouble for me was that there was all this gorgeous batik cloth around but the only clothes with batik were the ugly Muslim equivalent to moo-moos. :P Well, you know the long flowing tops and shirts they often wear. Not my style. There was also a really interesting market.

I made it to Penang/Georgetown with no problems too. I really liked it there. I could have stayed even longer than the five days I spent. There was a lot to see and do and the hostel I was at was really comfortable and the manager, Kenny, was excellent to chat with. I saw a lot of heritage buildings and sites; a fort, shophouses, mansions, colonial style buildings, cemetery, the usual. But there was a neat temple outside of Georgetown that they call the Snake Temple in English. It's a Chinese temple, I can't think of the deity just now, but they have live pit vipers hanging out inside. They just sleep on these sort of wicker stands in the day. I'm not sure what they do at night. It was kinda neat. There was a "snake farm" on site as well where you could see a lot of different kinds of snake. I kid you not: a huge King Cobra, an 8-meter long python, a baby anaconda. The guy took out one monocle cobra so we could see what it does when it's pissed off. They had a couple pythons just crawling around and a monkey. When they brought the pythons near the monkey she'd grab onto it and stand on it, put her face to it. It was weird but cute and I got some great pictures. The snake would just move out of the orbit of the monkey's chain if it got sick of it.

I also took a short hike in the National Park on Penang out to a place called monkey beach. Indeed there were groups of wild monkeys around. Long-tailed macaques. They were really neat to watch. Of course I went into many temples. The food on Penang was so excellent and so varied. I met an Australian woman who was staying at the hostel. The ATM ate her debit/credit card! We explored together for a couple days. I like meeting people to hang out with. I don't think I expected I'd be so social, cuz I'm not usually. It does get a little lonely sometimes, which is strange for me to say. I usually like being alone. Anyway it's been good, then, meeting people. We checked out a fruit farm, and it was the first time I'd ever seen a woman in an Iranian burqa. It was a neat change of pace to get a glimpse of Muslim tourism throughout Malaysia.

I got to Bangkok in a more round about and expensive way than I should have but now I know for next time.

There are way more things I saw and did and heard about. This is the super abridged version. It'll be too much to recount at one time by the end. It already kind of is. I'm a bit grumpy just now because my attempt to burn pictures onto a CD was a failure. I know how to fix it but I'm just irritated.

The Early Days (Singapore, Melaka)

Someone I met in Melaka said sort of ominously "It's always good at the start." She's been traveling for over six months. She's from Norway and started the trip in Brazil. She's had some interesting adventures for sure. I hope I don't have her adventures though.

Singapore was what I would have been looking for in Shanghai I think. Very visible European heritage, pizazz (pizzaz?) and cosmopolitanism. But thinking on it again, I doubt that Shanghai would be like that. Hong Kong wasn't like that for me.

Anyway, the neatest thing about Singapore is how modern it is and how, well, cosmopolitan it is. The major groups are Chinese, Malay, and Indian and they let it all hang out. But I got tired of the pizazz. Can't I just spend some time at a WWII site without there being a super audio-visual guided tour? It was also quite expensive, comparatively. I would recommend anyone to visit though. EVERYONE speaks English.

Melaka was really great. It didn't take me long to see the main sites but I liked just hanging out in my really great guesthouse. Part of it was a 100-or-so year old blacksmithy and the other part a Chinese medicine shop. It was very airy and open but safe enough. There were four single-traveller girls staying in the dorm. It was right in the heart of Chinatown which has some beautiful old houses. I was across the street from a Malay style mosque and a Hindu temple, and down the road a bit was a Chinese temple. One night we awoke around 3:15 am to drums and music and shouts and lights. There was a procession to the Hindu temple. I scrambled for my camera and ran outside. A whole crowd of people dressed in their saris and whatnot were in the street around a big electric-lit garlanded shrine housing some statue which they brought into the temple. The guys were handing out some fruit it looked like too. It was so surreal. In the evenings you get Muslim calls to prayer blasting and echoing through the narrow streets. And then the smell of incense from all manner of shrines and temples everywhere.

And what makes me happier than a ruined church and very old grave markers? Melaka was at its prime in the 1400s under a muslim sultan, then fell to the Portugese who were then defeated by the Dutch who then ceded the town to the British in a treaty. The ruined church was originally Portugese. Inside they have displayed Dutch and Portugese grave markers as early as mid 1500s. There's a statue as well of St. Francis Xavier whose "incorrupt" body was temporarily buried there en route to his final resting place in Goa, after he died on Shangchuan Island (China, not far from Macau). What a friggen interesting guy. Buddy went all the way to Japan in the late 1500s.

So I made it to Kuala Lumpur today with two of the girls I met in Melaka. The Norwegian girl will probably travel with me to Pulau Perhentian on the east coast in a couple days. I miss the quiet and chill of Melaka but I'm sure KL has cool stuff to see. Massive mosques I think.

It's been just a week. It's still hard to believe I have over two months more. I love hearing stories from other travelers. Everybody is so different. I hope I don't feel agitated and sick of traveling by the end. I don't want to be bitter. It feels so good to just do whatever I want whenever I want and to not be cold. I don't mind the heat.

Trip Summary

Here is my projected itinerary for my 3-month South-East Asia trip. It has gone through many revisions over the 6 or so months I've been planning it but I'm happy with it for now. It looks pretty rigid but it's not. The only fixed events are the flights and the time spent with Brad in Cambodia. I know that without this guideline I would spend too much time in a few places and I'd be angry with myself for not seeing things I know I want to see.

I scoured online forums and tourism sites, I asked friends about their own trips, and I read through two publications of LP's SEA on a Shoestring (an old one and a new one...they have slightly different suggestions believe it or not). I spent a lot of time researching and working out a budget. I should be a travel agent. It's a lot of money and an uncertainty of ever getting to do this again so I want to do it well and not be a complete flake about it. But it's also in my character to research and attempt to be in control.

I get squirmy-excited everyday now in anticipation. So, eat your heart out:

SINGAPORE (4 days, Mar. 4-8)
-Singapore Zoo & night safari
-Asian Civilizations Museum
-Bukit Timah Nature Reserve
-East Coast Park
-Colonial District, CBD, Little India
-Raffles Hotel
:
March 8: bus to Melaka, Malaysia (4.5h)
:


MALAYSIA (17 days, Mar. 8-24)
Melaka(3 days, 3 nights)
-Dutch & Portugese areas
-Muzium Rakyat
-Villa Sentosa
-Chinatown
:
March 11: express bus to Kuala Lumpur (2h)
:
Kuala Lumpur (3 days, 2 nights)
-Colonial District
-Chinatown, Little India
-Golden Triangle (Petronas Towers)
:
March 13: Night bus to Kuala Besut (?h)
March 14: ferry to Pulau Perhentian Kecil (1.5h)
:
Perhentian Kecil (2 days, 2 nights)
-island, beaches, snorkel, jungle
:
March 16: ferry to Kuala Besut (1.5h)+ bus to Kota Bharu (2.5h)
:
Kota Bahru (2 days)
-night market, mosques
-cultural center demonstrations
:
March 18: night bus to Butterworth (7h)
March 19: ferry to Georgetown
:
Penang Pulau
-Georgetown (2 days)
-Teluk Bahang/Penang Nat’l Park (2 days)
:
March 23: ferry to Butterworth + night train to Kuala Lumpur
March 24: flight to Bangkok, dep 13:40/arr 14:40
:


THAILAND (19 days, Mar. 24 –Apr 11)
Bangkok (4/5 days)
-Ko Ratanakosin area (temples, palaces, etc)
-Chinatown, markets, whatever
-day trip to Kanchanaburi (Kwai River)
:
March 28: Night train to Phitsanulok (6h?)
:
Phitsanulok (1 day)
-base to check out Sukhothai, UNESCO ancient city
:
March 29: Night train to Chiang Mai (5h)
:
Chiang Mai (2 days?)
-I’m sure there’s tons to see. If not, move on
:
March 31: flight to Mae Hong Son, dep 16:10/arr 16:45
:
Mae Hong Son (1 day, 2 nights?)
- chill out, look around
-Thai/Burmese/Shan temples, architecture, food
:
April 2: bus to Soppong (~4h)
:
Soppong area (4 days) - chill out, trekking, caves
:
April 7: bus to Pai (~1h)
:
Pai (1 day, 1 night) - chill out
:
April 8: bus to Chiang Mai (~4h)
:
Chiang Mai (1 night) -stop over
:
April 9: bus to Chiang Rai (3h)
:
Chiang Rai (half day) -Hill Tribe Museum
:
April 9: bus to Chiang Saen (1.5h)
:
Chiang Saen (2 days, 2 nights)
-hang out
-bike to Sop Ruak (Golden Triangle & House of Opium Museum)
:
April 11: bus to Chiang Khong (2h) + ferry border crossing to Huay Xai, Laos
:


LAOS (17 days, Apr. 11-29)
Huay Xai (1 night) -stop over
:
April 12: bus to Luang Nam Tha (~5h)
:
Luang Nam Tha area (6 days)
-ecotours & treks, hang out
-Muang Sing
:
April 19: bus to Luang Prabang (9h)
:
Luang Prabang area (6 days)
-UNESCO town, temples etc.
-Nong Khiaw, Muang Ngoi
:
April 25: Night bus to Vientiane (10h)
:
Vientiane (3 days)
-temples, monuments
-French architecture?
:
April 29: flight to Siem Riep, Cambodia dep 06:30/arr 09:25
:


CAMBODIA (10 days, April 29 -May 9)
Siem Riep (4 days)
-Ankor temples
-Cambodia Landmine Museum
-Brad arrives May 1st
:
May 2: flight to Phnom Penh dep 19:50/arr 20:45
:
Phnom Penh (3 days)
-Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda
-Tuol Seng museum (Khmer Rouge stuff)
-Choeung Ek killing fields
-Wat Phnom
-Brad leaves May 4th
:
May 5: bus to Kampot (3h)
:
Kampot (2 days, 2 nights)
-French architecture
-caves, brick temple outside town (Phnom Chhnork)
-Bokor National Park, Bokor Hill Station?
:
May 8: bus to Phnom Penh (3h)
:
Phnom Penh (1 night) -stop over
:
May 9: bus/boat package w/ Capitol Tours to Chau Doc, Vietnam (?h)
:


VIETNAM (14 days*, May 9-24)
*vague plans; around Mekong Delta (not w/ tour), a few days in HCMC
Chau Doc
-various religious buildings
-nearby Sam Mt. w/ cave temples
-Ba Chuc, KR massacre site? Cham village?
:
bus probably to Can Tho (?h)
:
Can Tho area
-floating markets
-Ho Chi Minh tin statue
:
bus probably to Vinh Long (?h)
:
Vinh Long area
-floating markets?
-villages, ruralness
:
bus probably to My Tho (?h)
:
My Tho -look around briefly
:
ferry to Ben Tre (20 min)
:
Ben Tre
-markets
-Phoenix Island
:
May 20?: ferry to My Tho (20 min) + bus to HCMC (2h)
:
HCMC (3 nights?)
-Reunification Palace
-War Remnants Museum
-religious buildings, esp: Notre Dame Cathedral, Jade Emperor Pagoda
-markets
-day trip to Ta Ninh/CuChi tunnels?
:
May 24: flight to Fukuoka*, Japan dep 01:30/arr 08:00
*visa run, maybe Nagasaki, back to Daejeon via Busan on May 27, I hope

Wise beyond my years

One of my kindergarten students was in a fight with a classmate. She was being sullen and refused to participate in class activities and would lash out at the offending boy in Korean occasionally. The time came for the class to go upstairs to the playroom for gym class and Ally (the offended) shut herself inside the classroom after everyone left. This sort of thing has happened with her before. I went back in and tried talking to her, trying to coax her upstairs. "But I'm very sad and angry. Luke and David are always touching me and the girls." I told her Luke makes me angry too but that we can't be sad and angry all day. We should try to be happy. And she said, "But Teacher, I'm a kid."

Yes, absolutely. One reason why I know I shouldn't make teaching children a lifelong career is that I keep wanting them to make rational adult decisions and take responsibility for themselves and I sometimes get really frustrated when they don't. Rationally, I know I can't expect that of them but I haven't been able to totally shake it yet. My immediate response to moody kids is to ignore them partially cuz I don't want to deal with them and partially because I think giving them attention is just perpetuating the behaviour.

But I mean, it's not always that they're acting out. Like with Ally, she was just pissed off at a jerky boy, for good reason. She showed me that I'm both right and wrong. They're more mature sometimes than I give them credit for, but they're just kids. They can be wise beyond MY years.

Sokcho and Seoraksan

October 3-5/08, Friday to Sunday.

I got to Sokcho no problem Thursday night, at like 1:30am. I went into a little motel behind the bus terminal, luckily they were still up. It was perfectly located for me and get this: 20 000w/night (~20 CAD). The room was small but with bathroom and TV and small fridge with water and Vita 500 (vitamin C drink). It worked out SO well. I stayed there all three nights.

So on Friday I just started walking. I had had vague plans but I woke up late and laid them aside a bit. I saw some beaches, and fishing stuff. There was squid drying EVERYWHERE. I saw some squid boats with the special lights. I even came across a little squid cleaning plant. Shallow concrete vats with ajummas sitting on pails cleaning squid. They have this specialty that I didn't try, it's squid sundae (sausage). Instead of meat and stuff stuffed in an intestine, it's stuffed in a squid tube. I came across some in a market but I had already had a feed of raw fish. I really wanna try it though. I did have a squid deop bap though, just squid and veggies in a spicy sauce with rice. I had to complete the squid cycle: live squid in tanks, squid boats and fishing gear, squid cleaning, squid drying, squid packaged for sale, squid eating!

I went on this 100-year old cable ferry across one of the harbours to this village which is featured in the hit Korean TV show Autumn of My Heart. Never heard of it. Ugh what a lame title anyway. The market I saw was pretty cool. Right on the port, dry fish vendors on the land side, live fish and food venders on the water side, alongside fishing boats. I saw this little out of the way something too. Probably an old scholar's house or small shrine of something. It was deserted and locked up. It was up a little hill through some old houses and near some military "don't come in here" place. Sokcho is really likeable: pretty laid back, on the ocean, fishing-ness, Seorak nearby. Korean Newfoundland maybe. Why am I working in Daejeon again?

So I walked all along the coast and then got a bus to Naksan (part of my earlier plan) which was like 10 minutes away. I saw a very small insectarium. And, one of the best temples I've seen in Korea. Bested maybe only by that one in Songnisan with the Big Jesus Buddha (Brad's moniker for it). It's on a hill right on the ocean. It's main attraction is a big white statue of the goddess of mercy. You can see the Seorak range from Sokcho and so you can from Naksan. There's a little shrine for her just down the hill a bit dug into the hill with a window so that when you are in there venerating you can see the top part of the statue: her head and shoulders, through the window. It is SO neat. That's not all. The main hall has a big gold Kannon statue (Kannon is the Japanese name, dunno what the Koreans call it) and six other multi-limbed and multi-headed deities, and many many small statues in gold colour and wood in behind and a gold coloured embossed scene of something or other I dunno but it's stunning. I took as many pictures as I could until they told me I couldn't. I'm a bad person but it was so cool.

Next day I slept in later than I wanted but I was ready to go at 8:30 but the next bus to where I wanted wasn't til 1030. So I went to a lighthouse. There were some exposed rocks with ppl fishing and magnificent waves crashing (nothing like Cape Spear of course) so I took some pictures and chilled out. I went up the lighthouse and got some cool pics of the town and mountains. Then I got the bus to Osaek.

Lonely Planet said the quickest route to the peak of Seorak, Daecheongbong, was from Osaek. I started my hike around 11:45. I had packed fairly light except the 2L of water. My GOD the first 1.3 km was HELL. I kept doubting myself, I didn't think I was gonna make it up, I kept stopping, I was worrying I was going too slow to make it back down in time to catch a bus back to Sokcho, I was cursing myself for not being fit, I was thinking how I've let myself go physically, I was thinking that if Brad were there I woulda pushed myself harder. But that was the worst. I was fine for the rest of the way up. I was wearing my waegukin (foreigner) shirt and good lord did the Koreans ever fucking love it. Every third person I passed the other way would comment and laugh about it, give a thumbs up, joke with me about it ("Are you a foreigner?" "Yes, how did you know?"...*points at himself* "Hangukin (Korean)"), they'd say "right on," "very good!" "wonderful!" It was a riot. I felt like the whole mountain was talking about me. I think they get that the joke is the redundancy but I think they like that waeguk is wearing a hangul (Korean language) T-shirt. You don't see that everyday.

I fell in with a couple from Daegu. He spoke English well enough, is an automotive engineer. She was cheery and nice, only spoke Korean though. They shared their lunch. I didn't have much to offer. Crappy kimbap. Didn't wanna insult them.

I reached the peak in about three hours from the trailhead. It was all clouded over so there wasn't any view. It's not that spectacular a peak, if you remember, unless there was a view I think. I got the pictures, built my inukshuk and flew down the mountain. I almost ran most of the way and didn't stop til halfway. Then I stopped and refuelled. Calves were getting shakey by then. I had recalled a story my coworker Jeff told me about a man he met on the Chuseok weekend on a mountain, can't remember which one, but near Chungju Lake. He had said it's best to go down the mountain like water, follow the path of least resistance. Easier on the joints and everything. So that's what I had been doing. But then I arrived at the pitch of hell again (I went up the way I came). I went over a bit on each ankle and that scared me into snail pace. It wasn't as hard as the way up but man it was hard. 1.3km of uneven rock stairs. By that point no one was passing anyone unless they had stopped. We were all taking our time. It was almost 5 o'clock so the light was fading a bit, which added to the anxiety a little. I was so relieved when I made it to the entrance and it was still light out. I duck walked a little down the sloping road. Very slowly. I got some hydration and ramyeon and got the bus back.

The colours were out alittle, especially near the top. But this particular trail was straight to business and there were no vistas to take pictures of because of the tree cover. I didn't mind because I planned to go to the more famous part with the bare rocky bits the next day. But when I inquired about the bus to Daejeon there was only one at 1145am. I didn't wanna muck around with many kinds of transpo and it had rained the night before I probably woulda had the same cloud issue and risk of more rain, and I may not have been able to make it anywhere the state my legs were in. So I took the looooong bus ride back, which turned out to be through a gorgeous mountain river valley most of the way and through idyllic farming villages. I was so proud of myself though. I made it up and down on my own steam two hours short of the Lonely Planet estimate. I really want to go back to Seorak to see the really scenic places and a temple within the national park but I feel like that'll be easy and I can do it anytime since the mountain and I have come to terms.

Visit to an Oriental Doctor

From my journal Sept. 6, 2008 (abridged):
Joy, my boss, took me to see an oriental doctor for my back. I was having pain and restriction of movement. She had to translate on the spot and go through a diagnostic survey with questions about my toilet habits, whether I sleep and digest well, whether I like to drink cold or hot water. Very different from home; not least in the fact that this was my boss being privy to this very personal evaluation.

So the doctor, once I went into his office, poked and prodded. It didn’t bother me, but he did touch areas where Western doctors won’t touch without alerting you to it and the intention, and receiving permission. Nothing scandalous, and always professional. Just different. I noted but was not phased that my boss was present all this time. The doctor did a bit of chiropractic, but not as sort of firm and assertive as doctors I’ve seen in Canada. He also used a hand-held massage thing on my back.

I was still having pain so he brought me to a table surrounded by a curtain and left me there for 10 mintues. This table, though was a massage table with little “fingers” moving up and down my back. Cool. He came back and gave me acupuncture. He used a few needles on my back but took them out quickly. Joy had told me before that he uses “medicine” on the needles. I assume it’s a mild topical anaesthetic or something. Then he turned me over and put two needles in each of my hands, two in each of my feet, and one on each calf. He left me like that with a heat lamp directed on my feet.

Soon a woman came and rolled up my shirt to expose my belly. She put some material over it, in a donut shape, and a towel over my hips. Then she brought this smoking circular pot thing and put it over my stomach, resting it on the donut thing, over my bare belly. It had burning herbs or incense but it wasn’t sweet-smelling. She pulled down an adjustable silver vent from the ceiling and put it over the pot to catch the smoke. I guess it was meant to warm my stomach in a particular way as well as provide some sort of aromatherapy. Some of the hot ash fell on me.

After awhile she came and took everything off, cleaned up the ash and took out the needles. Then she brought this big complicated machine. Picture the pneumatic armband they use to take your blood pressure but big enough to cover you torso. One by one a lateral tube (there were maybe six) would fill up with air thus giving a sort of squeezing massage/chiropractic. Pretty cool. And that was it. They took me out of it and sent me on my way. When I walked out I was almost in tears because my back felt no better. It only cost about $33 but I had been really hoping I’d get some relief. But after about 20 minutes I started to feel better. My back hurt less. They had suggested I go back for more treatment. A couple days later, I remembered a trick that my chiropractor in St. John’s showed me. She’d put pressure on a muscle knot for 60 seconds and it would loosen. I did this on the worst knot in my back and it worked like a charm. Such a simple thing.

I had tried to be prepared for anything, and take everything in stride. I found myself analyzing everything, with my very limited medical knowledge, in Western terms and not thinking in a Korean way, not accepting the Korean way. And I thought myself to be open-minded. I suppose my impression of oriental medicine going into it was not much beyond that “witch doctor” image. I didn’t quite expect a straw hut and rooster entrails but I didn’t expect a sophisticated pneumatic machine or special sensor to measure one’s aura. “Scientific.” They were playing Western classical music the whole time. Korea is weird sometimes.

The Church of God

Thursday, Oct. 9/08
I didn’t want to be combative and I didn’t want to argue. I was genuinely interested. I wanted to know more without attracting unwanted attention.

There was a knock on my door on Thursday night, around 8:30 I guess. I thought it was strange, since no one at work actually knows where I live except Jamie and Joy. Maybe it was them. Maybe it was Glenn or Krista. It was a couple of women with a survey. One look at the survey and I knew why they were there and they wouldn’t just be waved away. So I answered questions about what I believed about God, Jesus, and some specific Bible citations. The last question was something like “What do you want to know more about from the Bible” and the answers were even more constricting than the previous questions: the Bible is true, the existence of God, the image of God … Heavenly Mother… so I left it blank. They questioned this.

Them: “Have you studied the Bible?”
Me: “Yes I’ve read it. I was brought up Catholic so I’m familiar with that interpretation and I studied Medieval History and so have studied a lot about Christianity.”
Them: “Then you know about Heavenly Mother.”
Me: “The Mother of God?”
Them: “No, the wife of Jesus.”
Me: “Mary Magdelen?”
Them: “No.”

Wouldn’t you be intrigued? Is this some new feminist mother-goddess cult? God as woman? Genderless divinity? I should have known…I am in Korea after all. I had heard indirect comments about coworkers and friends being accosted by these evangelists. They are called the Church of God. They snagged me with a survey, spoke perfect English. I asked for reading material, they produced a Bible. Then one asked to use my bathroom and then we were sitting on my floor and I was being shown Bible passages. But not against my will. Like I said, I was interested. They were sly and not annoyingly pushy or preachy. They didn’t say until near the end they were Church of God, perhaps knowing their reputation among foreigners. And indeed had they mentioned it first off there’d have been no conversation at all.

So most of their evidence is semantic and metaphoric, and much of it comes from the Old Testament prophecies and from Revelation. They also pick and choose from Paul and stretch some Gospel stuff a little thinly. First off they are Christian. They believe in the Trinity and the death and resurrection, and transubstantiation, the whole bit. They believe that Jesus IS God, not just the Son of God, and this is one of many ways around the mathematical magic trick that is the Trinity. But each member of the Trinity has a female counterpart, a wife. The first citation they showed me was from the end of Revelations, something spoken to John by the seventh angel about “the Lamb and his bride.” They point out Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast, how heaven is like a wedding feast and wonder how can you have a wedding without a bride? They refreshed my memory of the basic structure of social interaction is the nuclear family, mother, father, and children. Without children there is only man and woman, and how can there be a Father without a Mother? They showed my sections of Genesis and other books where pronouns and possessive pronouns referring to God are plural, in the original Hebrew they assured me. This last thing of course is usually explained in terms of the Trinity, but given the other evidence, they must conclude that God was not alone at the time of Creation.

So according to Revelation and the OT prophecies which lay everything out so cleanly and clearly, they believe that after the Second Coming of Christ, the Heavenly Mother—the wife of God or wife of Christ or whatever—will herself be made flesh and come to Earth. This will be at the end of the Seventh Age (the Age of the Holy Spirit which is heralded by the Second Coming), and of course precede the Last Judgment soon to follow. It gets better. Guess what: Jesus has been and left again. In Korea in 1948. We are living in the Age of The Holy Spirit and we didn’t even know it. And within one generation from 1948, they figure about 100 years, Heavenly Mother will come as well. And the Apocalypse. But they didn’t dwell on the Hellfire at all actually, unlike Jehovah’s Witnesses.

They have an interesting symbolic theme regarding Passover which I found very interesting, theologically. The first thing is the blood. If you know the story of Passover you know it’s bloody. They explained that how does a mother who has lost her child early on recognize her own after many years but through a DNA blood test. So how do the Heavenly Mother and Father know their own but through their own blood running through us. (Oh this sounds juicy, please tell me how we’ve got a bloodline and who’s got it!) Through the Eucharist, though they don’t call it that, we can receive God’s blood and be recognized. (Darn, that was no fun!) They only take the body and blood once a year at Passover, which for them is fittingly the anniversary of the Last Supper, what Catholics call Holy Thursday. I think they said it was the thirteenth day of the first month of the Jewish calendar or something like that. There is of course the prophecies of Jesus being the ultimate sacrificial Lamb of all the lambs killed in the Jewish Passover tradition, and indeed Jesus was killed during Passover. Jesus thus made void that practice among others. The Church of God says this is the “new covenant” spoken of at the Last Supper, basically the abolition of Jewish Passover.

One more thing about Passover. The first Passover happened during the Exile in Egypt, where the Jews, God’s Chosen People, were enslaved. Moses said “Let my people go,” Pharaoh said “Hell no,” and God said “I’ma plague your ass” and sent the seven plagues. The last plague was the Angel of Death and the Jews were instructed to smear lamb’s blood over the door of their houses so that the Angel of Death would “pass over” them. Now true to his word for ever more, disciples who have been marked by blood will be spared from plague and disaster. These women told me that over a million people are part of the Church of God and apparently they have never had disaster befall them. Even the ones in America during 9/11 or Hurricaine Katrina, even the ones in the 2004 Tsunami, they said they were not personally harmed. Now don’t get me started about why that’s bullshit.

There are some key ideas of Christianity that they didn’t highlight at all but maybe that’s because they understood me to be Christian. They do not have female ministers but the ministers are allowed to marry. Tell me what kind of church that believes in a Heavenly Mother wouldn’t allow for female ministers? I don’t like the emphasis on and sanctification of the heterosexual nuclear family unit. I find it difficult to believe that this has much of a following outside of Korea mostly because of the Korea-as-the-New-Jerusalem thing, and I guess it doesn’t because like they said, “over a million” people.

They stressed the importance of getting baptized quickly, first thing, and *then* learning about everything. (Ahem) When I pointed out that I had been baptized in the Catholic Church they showed me a passage in the Epistles about some Jews having been baptized by John the Baptist and how that didn’t count anymore after Jesus because they had to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. So I’d have to be baptized, they said, with the knowledge and acceptance of the Heavenly Mother. One of the women in fact said she was baptized three times in three different churches, chuckle chuckle, so it doesn’t matter how many times you are baptized, she said. (Bit of a pattern with her, is there?)

I haven’t given a whole lot of thought to my specific views on religion and spirituality in order to intone a creed for those who ask for a number of years. I like learning about religion, I like talking about it, I like experiencing it (for example attending a Baptist mass, or visiting a contemporary Buddhist temple). But I do actually steer clear of debate, with atheists especially, but also with any faithful. I ask probing questions more to to see if they can give me intelligent answers and satisfy my own curiosity, not for the purpose of their concession to any view I hold. (And I went nowhere near the issue of homosexuality and other such touchy subjects with my guests). But tonight I came to understand and be able to communicate something about how I think about spirituality. For the Church of God the way of salvation is to join the team and get others to join the team. You get on the team through baptism, and stay on the team through the Eucharist and evangelism. Lots of religions and sects and denominations are like that. This is not news. Some are more exclusionary than others. The other thing is about mindless ritual. Well, not mindless: there’s just plain too much mindfulness of it. It’s another way, along with joining teams, to convince yourself that you’re doing some good for yourself without actually doing anything. I don’t believe in life after death and I don’t believe that joining religious teams and having team meetings and performing team rituals is going to ensure any sort of benefit beyond a feeling of social belonging and, in the case of rituals, a sort of calming meditation.

Not revolutionary or particularly revealing to you; momentous for me to be able to begin to consolidate, understand, and be confident in myself. The conversation with the Church of God women was a catalyst I guess. They made offers about getting baptized and learning more (I don’t think they usual speak that long with anyone because they were almost at a loss when they finished preaching) and they invited me to a gathering next week at the church. I won’t go and I won’t answer my door for awhile unless I’m expecting someone. I feel bad for having led them to believe I was interested in becoming part of their church. I didn’t outright lie, I just didn’t show all my colours. My friend and former roommate Matt Sheedy was always talking about the importance of positive dialogue between representatives of different faiths. That was sort of the spirit I invited the women in with, but I failed because it was one sided. I assumed there would be frustration and negative feelings if I opened up about my non-belief and leftist social views. They may have been patient and reasonable if I had. They may also have spent more time on me, trying to plain old convert me to the Light of Christ.

Trip to Democratic People's Republic of Korea

NORTH KOREA (June 14-15 2008):

Brad and I did an organised tour with a company called Adventure Korea. All foreigners. Two bus loads full. We left Seoul by bus on Friday night and drove to the East coast, to Hwanjinpo beach where we watched the sunrise (nothing special, it was cold and rainy) and had breakfast. So I touched the Sea of Japan--er I mean East Sea. We got our "passports" sorted out at the Hwajinpo rest area along with at least 30 other buses of Korean tourists then went north a bit to the Goseong Inter-Korean Transit Office to go through security and stuff. Once through we had to get on our assigned bus and the huge bus convoy (like I said, 30 or so) drove out in assigned numerical order. We couldn't take pictures on the bus from this point onwards because we drove through a military area on the South side and we just aren't allowed to take clandestine photos from buses at all in the North.

We drove through the militarized zone on through to the demilitarized zone, being waved farewell by a couple soldiers. The DMZ was nocitably demilitarized. The coastline within 10km I guess of the DMZ on both coasts is lined with hard core barbed wire and some guard posts. The DMZ was disturbingly quiet and clear of any development save for the road and a railroad. I read in my guide book that the lack of human activity in the DMZ has created an accidental nature preserve, better kept than many in the world. They hope that when/if Korea reunites it will continue to be preserved. The DMZ if you didn't know is the no-man's-land between the North and South; it technically belongs to neither though there are some special farming villages within it, and Panmunjom is a town in it as well and these are under South Korean jurisdiction I think.

The crossing into DPRK was unceremonial and unmarked except for the guards at the road block and the occasional soldier standing at intervals along the railroad or in guardboxes at small intersections, each holding a small red flag which they wave to let you know to stop whatever you're doing and frig off. While the South Korean Inter-Korean Transit Office was new, modern and huge the North Korean version was four small hardshacks each with an x-ray scanner with its computer, metal detector and desk, all under essentially a big sort of tarp tent. Port-a-potties outside. Blasting over and over was this catchy, boppy, synth-y, drum machine-y, happy song which we found out later had something to do with reunification and togetherness. We had to go through security in order of bus number and within the buses each person was assigned a number as well. We didn't even show them our proper passports, we had these special cards with our photo, name, nationality, place of work, occupation, that kind of stuff. They stamped that (unfortunately no stamp for our proper passports except the South Korean "departed" and "entered" stamps from Goseong). Our guides kept reminding us that we had to take care of our "passports" because there was a fine if they were damaged. But we were also supposed to wear them all the time. One guy from our group damaged his somehow, like a little rip or water damage or something and apparently on our way out of the country the guard was "very upset."

So we were in North Korea. All the North Koreans we met had the small pin of Kim Il Sung over their hearts, the train station had a big portrait of him on the outside. We weren't allowed to take pictures as I mentioned, so I haven't any pictures of the small villages in the distance we passed or the people working in the field or the many many bicycles going up and down the dirt track a short distance off. Every so often there would be a guard post at a road junction which lead off to a village or military something or other. The soldiers hats look disproportionately large, and the soldiers, while mean looking, were rather slightly built. They told us that we shouldn't take pictures of anyone without their permission, but unfortunately no one seemed to want to oblige.

The first day we went to an area called Manmulsang. There was a heavy drizzle and a heavy fog but Brad and I went all the way up to the craggy peaks. It happened also at the hike the next day that many of the other foreigners only hiked part of the way, and I kept thinking if you know this is a hiking trip, and you know that you aren't fit enough or willing to do it, why on earth would you shell out that much money to mill about the base of a mountain, even if it is in North Korea. Go on the Kaesong day tour for that. The hike wasn't easy, though. It wasn't that high up but we were like mountain goats clinging to iron rails and ladders and stairs, dodging ajummas and adoshis (middle-aged women and men respectively, of a certain character), all shrouded in the mist. Near the top it got so that all you could see was the person behind and in front of you, the path below you and the rock beside you. Otherwise it was like we were in a cold, wet, white void. It was at the bottom of that mountain that I bought the postcards.

We got back to the tourist village and got settled into the hotel. This area, Onjeonggak, is owned and operated by Hyundae-Asan, a South Korean company. There is a small South Korean bank (incedentally the one I have an account with) some restaurants and a bar, and convenience store (Family Mart), a "Korea Sparkling" (South Korea tourism) duty free store, an auditorium, a hot spring, and a few hotels. They are nice hotels, with South Korean TV stations available. Fucking weird, this is. A little capitalist oasis surrounded by the simple calm of farmland DPRK.

After we got cleaned up and changed we headed over to the auditorium for an acrobatic performance. The Pyeongyang Acrobactic Troupe. They did a lot of the Chinese/Russian (as far as my limited impression goes) with spinning plates, bicycles, climbing poles, etc. Some of it was spectacular, some of it didn't dazzle me. Not that I could do any of it. *shrug* I'm glad I went though. They played that song from the check point. The ajummas were lovin it, waving enthusiastically at the performers.

We had some basic food court kinda meal because all the restaurants were booked up, made a reservation for the Northern style restaurant, bought some stuff at the duty free (candy, liquor) and had a bottle of Taedonggong mekju (mekju = beer). We went to bed early because we essentially hadn't slept for two days. We woke up early for breakfast then we were on the buses again to the Kuryong Pokpo (pokpo = falls) hike. As we left the tourist village the hotel and "Korea Sparkling" staff were all in a line waving to the dozen-or-so-bus-long convoy. Weird.

The day was clear and gorgeous this time. We had the option of doing a light walk around Samilpo lake as well, and some people opted for that. But again, we wanted mountains. There were relatively less people on the trails this time and the paths were wider so we could pass the slowbies. There were a few children's groups, girl scouts and taekwondo classes and that sort of thing, and a busload of particularly older people. The main route was a pretty easy climb, following a beautiful crystal clear, pale rock bed river with little falls and bigger falls and pools. We were told that we would be shot if we touched the water---no not really. We were told we would be fined if we touched the water, but that didn't stop the ajummas from bathing their faces and filling their bottles, and it didn't stop me from stealing a handful to taste. It tasted like water. I'm sure if I had had the guts to fill my water bottle I would have found it to be as sweet and wonderful as the spring water I had at Top of the World park in the Rockies. The main path ends at a pavilion with a good view of Kuryong falls.

We back tracked a bit and went off on another trail, more precarious, that took us up the water way even further so we could see where Kuryong begins to fall. It was there I built my tiny inukshuk. Not all the foreigners went up that high but they should have because the wider view over the mountains was stunning. Literally breathtaking.

There are a number of trails all over the place, but we had to stay on certain ones. There was always someone standing at junctions and branch-offs. It was interesting because they'd be decked out Korean style with the height of mountain hiking apparel--plus Kim Il Sung pin. We saw some workers, general labourers I guess, closer to the trailhead all wearing the same thing, which was also the same thing as the workers we saw randomly on bus rides along the roads or in the fields: something vaguely reminiscent of a Mao suit. These guys looked rougher. Also all along this hike were all manner of Korean and Chinese writing in the rock. Some were accompanied by sophisticated-looking reliefs, others looked like ancient graffiti, some were haphasard, some were official looking and probably just telling us to stay on the trail, or telling us a legend for that spot or the name of the falls, and some were just GIANT. These mountains have been a place of pilgrimage for a long time. There are a lot of Buddhist legends and sort of hagiographic stories that take place there. There used to be temples and hermitages and whatnot before the war. So that would explain a lot of the writing. But I don't actually know because I can't read Korean that well and Chinese not at all.

There were shuttle buses ready to take us back to the tourist area whenever we were ready. We still had a few hours before we had to leave to go back south, and we had a lunch reservation at Okryukwan the northern style restaurant. 'Ok' is 'house' I think and 'kwan' is pheasant but I dunno what 'ryu' is but it might be a kind of food. We had kwantang (pheasant soup). Pricey and pretty basic but delicious. Then we went to check out the big portrait of the wee Kim dynasty in which Jong Il looks much taller than he actually is, and less weird-looking. We could have our pictures taken by a staff member of the adjacent hotel. As far as we know it's to ensure we don't take an inappropriate or unflattering picture of the picture. So this either means they haven't quite caught onto photoshop or they haven't figured out how to get around it without enraging the money givers (tourists). I dunno. The picture turned out pretty good of us in front of the picture though. Only after the fact did I realise that we should have mimicked their poses but they may not have let us do that.

After that we mostly just strolled around. We did get a personal shuttle bus (only because we were the only ones wanting to go) to the seaside. I wanted to touch the communist East Sea/Sea of Japan. The shore was built up with hotels and things so there wasn't a good view but I touched the sea and we saw some small villages in passing, and workers fixing a sort of bunker, and workers in the fields and cyclists. Nothing jarring at all though. At the tourist village they had a big tableau of pictures from the past few years. They all had to do with some celebrations having to do with inter-Korean cooperation and brotherhood and solidarity. They were handing out little Korean flags (this is just the whole Korean peninsula in blue on white) but I didn't manage to get one. They had some photos covered up and we learned as they were uncovering them as we drove off in our convoy (as we had guessed before) that these had Kimmy J in them. Too bad. Woulda been nice to see them properly. That weekend seemed to be an anniversary of something to do with inter-Korean cooperation. Maybe the tourism deal, I dunno.

The way out was pretty much the same as the way in but backwards. The South Koreans were very concerned about illnesses on us, as they would be. The North Koreans as far as I know didn't check anyone's cameras for illegal photos. I figured they'd pick us apart, being foreigners.

I'm definitely glad we went. I'd still like to try to get to Kaesong and Pyongyang someday. The mountains were absolutely beautiful. Nothing like you can find in the South. There was a feeling of calm and quiet because there isn't so much development, neon, cars, etc. Idyllic in some ways. You're always thinking "communist this" and "communist that." And we would always make fun of Kim Jong Il under our breath. Brad and I watched some documentaries about DPRK; the one about the gymnasts, and a CNN one about clandestine video footage by North Koreans. To remind us.

I posted a BBC article on Facebook about how a South Korean woman was shot dead in the Geumkang area for being in a restricted area. It was probably by accident that she was there. This was about a month after we were there. They sent all the tourists packing and they aren't allowing anyone in for awhile. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7501126.stm

Anyway, there it is.

Mokpo/Jindo

Here is a story of a weekend in May. I hope to post some more stories once
I get them written.

"I'm in a PC bang (internet "room") in Mokpo in the southwest of the country. It's a long weekend because today is Children's Day. Why didn't we have that growing up I wonder? Brad and I and a crowd of other foreigners from Daejeon took the train here on Friday night right after work. We stayed in a motel near the train station. Brad and I had plans to meet up with our friend Matt Cooper who just arrived to work and live in Mokpo a couple weeks ago, to make our way to one of the many islands on the coast, and to go to Jindo island for their Mysterious Sea Road festival aka Moses March aka Sea Parting festival. Once a year the tide at low tide is low enough to expose a path to another much smaller island. The thing about Korea is that there are SO many people. It makes it hard to be spontaneous sometimes because everything gets booked up and full really quickly. Luckily we bought our train tickets a few days in advance, for there and return, because they are full up today. We tried to change our tickets to an earlier time. The boats out to the islands we originally wanted to get out to were booked up as well. But we met up again with the Daejeon foreigners who had found another island to go to called Oedaldo.

So we went out to that island. It's only a couple klicks long, a tiny fishing village type place with an outdoor pool resort type area that's only open in July and August. So the place was sparsely populated with tourists by Korean standards. We walked over to the beach. On the way I had noticed some women collecting some sort of shellfish from the shore so I went to investigate. They were some sort of oyster or something, all stuck onto the rocks. The women were cracking them open with hooks and scooping out the meat. I mean the rocks were covered with these things. After I watched them for a bit they offered us some. Raw. Yep. I love it actually. I've had raw oysters a few times in Korea and it's great. They usually serve it with this excellent red sauce. Anyway, these were like naturally seasoned with sea salt. Some university students we met later on offered me some as well.

The water was quite cold so we only waded a bit. Then a crowd of Koreans challenged the boys to a game of soccer. I was taking pictures and watching the little snails crawl around on the beach. Brad and I got the boat back to the mainland but the others stayed the night. We had already paid for the motel room again and meant to meet up with Matt. We ended up not meeting up with Matt. We had this excellent (but so spicy!) cooked octopus meal on the harbourfront while the table beside us had an excellent LIVE octopus meal. Yep. I haven't tried it yet but I wanna! We had a bit of maple soju (soju is the local ubiquitous poison, but not actually that bad to drink, and super cheap) and decided to climb Yudalsan Mountain. At night. It's lit up for most of the way. The view was amazing once we got up. There are a couple pavilions lit up and two painted relief rock carvings lit up as well, and the peak of the mountain (which you can't actually get to...safely). We wound our way down through tight little alleyway collections of houses hugging the mountain and walked back to the hotel.

Next day we went to the bus station to secure tickets to Jindo for later then checked out the National Maritime Museum. It seems Korea has some excellent underwater archaeology on the go, and excellent preservation/restoration methods. They've got two remains of shipwrecks from somewhere around the 11th and 14th centuries respectively on display as well as tons of beautifully restored celadon pottery (http://www.korean-arts.com/about_korean_celadon.htm) from the wrecks and other sites. Next we walked along the shore and saw some rocks that are supposed to look like monks with hats or something. They're cool rocks but not really monk-like.
We got a hold of Matt and arranged to meet. Brad and I had an excellent steamed crab meal (so fresh!) with a vinegar kind of dipping stuff instead of North American butter and garlic then we went for coffee with Matt. I knew Matt from MUN, we did some history courses together and we know a lot of the same people. We all took the bus to Jindo. We didn't have much of a plan.

They had a concert on the go for the festival in town, we ran into other foreigners from Mokpo that Matt knew. All the hotels were booked up so we decided we weren't gonna go to sleep, and were going to try to walk to the sea parting place. So the three of us went looking for this fortress wall that was supposed to be around somewhere in town (we did have a map) and ended up climbing a mountain. At night. The path was lit but it had been raining so there was this spooky mist everywhere. It's a rural area with old abandoned traditional houses, and little fields. At the head of the trail there was a spooky traditional lion monster thing statue. The trail was just straight up and completely deserted. We came to the top and there was a dirt road with lights continuing in one direction so we thought we'd try to get to somewhere that way instead of going down the slippery mountain the way we came. We eventually came to a really creepy monument with two rearing horse statues. There was mist all around and one yellow street lamp sort of light, and that's where the lights ended. It was so weird. We started to keep going anyway, but it was too dark and misty so we turned back and went back down the mountain, all the while discussing how we should deal with criminals, and freedom of will in those situations and stuff. Sort of random convo but not really considering the participants. I should mention that at this point none of us had consumed any alcohol.

It was only around midnight and we figured we'd get some beer and find a pavilion to sit under (it is legal to drink anywhere in Korea). We found some of our Daejeon friends again. They had a hotel room and had been offered a little room of their own at a bar nearby so we brought our booze there. But there was a bit of a foreigner crowd there of people we didn't know, and two of the girls were piss loaded and like spitting up (not puking...) their beer onto the floor, lolling around. It was kind of a bad scene. We ended up just sitting at the tables in front of the store where we bought the beer.

One of the drunk girls came out and sat with us. She's from Kentucky. Works in Daegu. She was whining about how the others she was just with told her they hated her, and how she tries so hard to be a good person, and she doesn't know why they hate her, blah blah blah. So we got her talking about something else. Matt's friends turned up again, and a couple from Brockville working in some place like Yoseong, or Yosun, I dunno, and a guy who actually works in Jindo town (we didn't figure there'd be an English school or anything there). We had bought a bottle of the local liquor called Hong ju because Brad and I like to try the local specialities of food and drink everywhere. It was GOD AWFUL.

We at some point learned that it's really far to walk to the sea parting, and we decided we were going to get a cab when the time came. A bunch of us went to the hotel room of the pair from Mokpo and we played cards until it was time to go. We made our very drunk way to the sea around 4:30am. People had gathered and were waiting. We were told that the tide would go out around 5, and our coworker Jeremy had actually seen the path around 430pm the previous day so we were set. The Koreans were waiting too, and as a general rule the Koreans know what they're doing. But we waited. And waited. And it began to get light. And the tide seemed to be coming back in. And I think I must have had more alcohol because I got drunker and don't remember really what happened next. Brad told me that Jeremy our coworker started knocking on peoples doors or something to ask for a ride back to town. He somehow convinced an Irish couple (I don't know the circumstances of their being there) to get out of bed and drive us into town. Brad paid them well. I was quite out of my tree and was stumbling and crying apparently though I'm not sure why and there is photographic eveidence which I later discovered of my biting Jeremy's leg because I didn't want to leave yet. We ended up in Jeremy's hotel room that he got with some of the other Daejeon foreigners and slept for a bit. Matt disappeared back to Mokpo I think. Jeremy and the others left to go back to the sea parting place to hang out or whatever and left us the room to hang out in until we went back to Mokpo (you pay for your rooms ahead of time so it was taken care of).

So Brad and I slept awhile longer and caught the bus back to Mokpo. And here I am at the beginning again. We tried to find a DVD bang (a place where you get a room to watch movies in) so we could sleep or something but the one near the train station was closed. So we've been watching youtube videos and doing other random internet things while Korean children blatantly lean over to examine my exotic internet wanderings and exotic ear piercing.

That was a long story. That was only the third night I went drinking like that since I've been here so my weekends aren't usually that ridiculous."

Well the weekend in Gyeongju was almost that ridiculous, and this upcoming
mud festival weekend is bound to be at least that
ridiculous.

Salmon and Tolkien

I know it's the wine and the excellent food, making me heady. I made some amazing salmon with a flax-sesame-dill-ginger crust made crispy with corn meal. Brown rice and tomato sauce poured over everything completed with Reisling (which I was drinking all through the process of course). As I ate I read the "Siege of Gondor" chapter of RotK. Just as I took the last bite of my meal, Grond, the fell ram forged in the Black Land, was bashing the Gate. Then the Lord of the Nazgul strode past the walls that had never been breached but Gandalf was there to withstand him. A cock crowed from the city and was answered by the horns of the Rohirrim. I think the author became enraptured by his academic experience here because the pace and diction is so much like Anglo-Saxon oral epic. It grabs the reader as well; it is a heavy moment and then it releases you to let cry a cheer for the coming of the horsemen. Dinner is one of the most looked-forward-to times of day for me.

I have a lot of reading to catch up on. I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind and it did not leave opportunity for fanciful literary advancement. From Clanchy and Davies, Geoffrey of Monmouth and St. Augustine, Foucault and Carr I now turn to Cornwell, Ondaatje, Allende, Whyte, Rice, Atwood, Kafka, Coehlo, et cetera ad infinitum. I scanned half a dozen "100 best novels" lists from the twentieth century, from Science Fiction, from Fantasy, and those deemed the best ever. I made myself a very short (comparatively!) list to get me going. Many of these I'll take with me to Korea, but I hope to get through a few before then. I managed to devour three or four books over xmas.

I usually avoid re-reading books at this stage because I've felt my time has been too precious to spend other than on new material. But as many of you will concur, LotR is different. I hadn't read it since before the movies came out and I've so saturated myself in the movies and video appendices, and indeed in medieval literature, that it was far passed the time to get back to my roots, as it were. You see I credit Tolkien for my medievalism. You can credit Tolkien for the silly lofty speech I'm using right now as well. I'll sound more hip and edgy when I swallow another Ondaatje.

Back to the wine.

Between my dissertation, MUCEP work, and the long emails to Steve I haven't really felt like typing any more lately.

I am so glad that I decided to volunteer for the Classics conference. What an incredible experience. I learned and affirmed so much and not just the content of the papers being presented. It's an experience I'll probably never have again because I'm not an aspiring Classicst. I can't wait until I have the opportunity to attend a medievalist conference. I think it'll probably blow my mind. I got to hang out with and get to know a little better some of the Classics types that I didn't know as well as others, which was awesome too.

I've been working a lot the past couple weeks but I'm toning it down a bit next week to work on my paper and to delve into this Women's History thing more (That's my MUCEP thing, getting electronic source materials).

So much has been going on over the past two weeks it seems like so much more time has gone past. I haven't spoken to Steve since Monday because he's in Berlin right now going to operas and symphonies and whatnot. That makes the time go by a little slower too.

I read through my old poetry last night. Bernard asked me recently if I had been writing recently and it seems that it's been a year and a half abouts since I last wrote anything. Strange, considering how prolific I used to be. I have 130 poems from a 4 or 5 year span. Only 40-something are even remotely acceptable though. Who knows, maybe I'll start writing again in the near future. I think all this academic writing over the past couple years has beat the poetry out of me for awhile though.

I think I'm gonna have a movie night with myself tonight and eat ice cream and/or chips. No, I'm not feeling depressed. I just like those things. :P

A long and fairly directionless ambulation

So it's been awhile since last I posted. I'm afraid that I've discouraged people from checking up here. Anyway an update is due.

I'm finished all of my courses for undergrad and now I have only to write my honours paper. I am a little excited and anxious to get it on the go because it is a really interesting topic (at least I think so!) and I'm anxious to pick up the slack which I collected this semester. I'm working at Omnifacts again, but am on the hunt as well because many of you may very well know how reliable it is to live off of Omnifacts. I have a tiny research job pretty much lined up this summer as well with Valerie Burton, in which I'll be gathering up course materials for a new women's history course. That'll be pretty cool I think, actually. I'm also moving at the end of April and I am kind of sad to be leaving Victoria St. It's been a good run, but I need a bit of a cheaper place and it'll be nice to just hand over money to someone else for a change. I hate feeling like "the Man" taking everyone's money away.

I feel like now is the time to write the obligatory "finished my degree" reflection journal. The end of this semester was pretty anticlimactic. I just feel like it ended and didn't affect me much beyond not needing to grieve over marks or agonise over papers anymore. It just sort of passed away noiselessly. It really is bittersweet partly because of my fear of not "making it" in the real world, partly because after all that I still feel mediocre (I blame all of you, friends of mine, who are brilliant and make me look bad by comparison! :P), partly because there is so much more I want to explore in the university context. I think that last point is a foreshadowing of things to come. I can't imagine my curiosity ever being satiated. The four years I spent at university can be characterised as "the era of changing my mind about everything almost weekly." My devotion to the medieval period remained consistent at least if not my romantic life, living arrangements, or plans for the future. And that is encouraging I think. I think if I can hang onto that, I'll have some sort of guiding light.

People ask me all the time why I came to Newfoundland. I give them the tripartite explanation: tuition, archaeology, curiosity. Of the three, the latter is probably the most important. It was a whim. There has never been any contemplation about whether it was the right choice. It reminds me of what Rob used to tell me about how I needn't worry about the choices I make cuz whatever it is, it'll be the right one. At the time there was no real value attatched to where I went to uni. It wouldn't have mattered where I went, anywhere probably would have been a "right" choice. From my present stance, though, there could never have been a more correct choice than to come here. [insert sappy soliloquy about the beautiful land, people, and experiences]

I don't really want to leave. I don't know where else I feel like I should be. It's tricky to talk about belonging, because I'll always be a CFA, I'll never be a Newfoundlander in the true sense which includes a lot more than birthright. It's maybe cliché or lame-sounding or whatever, but I certainly belong in the little bit of space I occupy in St. John's, whether it agrees or not.

In terms of having a bachelor of arts (completion pending) it sometimes feels like just another hoop I've come through rather than a major achievement. Maybe that's because most of the people around me went through the hoop too, so we're all nothing special in each others' eyes. And sometimes I think of all the sleepless nights and migraines and tears and cursing in order to get some numbers on a page that apparently summarises my worth as a human being, and I wonder: "why the fuck?" It's pretty useless to try and assess whether it was worth it or not. It was obviously worth doing, getting a degree. I don't understand how it could ever have been not worth the struggle. What else would I have been doing with my time? I have clearly gained a great deal besides numbers on a transcript. And it's not a matter of right choice/wrong choice as we've already seen. [insert internal existential debate]

I feel suddenly exposed. Now that I've got this feeding into my facebook profile, a lot more people are gonna see what only a few people would have previously. 140 people of varying degrees of connection to me are gonna make varying degrees of assumptions about me, and that's kinda unsettling. Damn BlueKaffee getting me in the habit of rambling on the internet. These things are always necessarily self-conscious and therefore usually pretty intentionally fabricated. And then there's that stigma of emotional weakness or something that seems to come with revealing too much about yourself to too many people.

I'm not truly feeling poor self-esteem by the way. I'm not meaning to be self-depricating. These are just things I've thought about. Everything's pretty excellent with me at the moment. I've been feeling pretty good for a number of reasons.

Soon I'd like to write up something heartfelt about my next life goal, which will hopefully precede the realisation of my other next life goal. And there will be pictures and scholarly and historical references, and other cool things. I'd also very much like to finally catalogue and organise into a binder my coin collection this summer.

I really do feel like a peregina all the time.

Sign, signifier, signified

In my second year of university a took a Folklore course about Material Culture. It was taught by a flamer with awful shoes. He was a proud owner of two Billy dolls ("Billy is sculpted in a very realistic sense, anatomically correct in every big way! So real, in fact, you'll probably be jealous!"...here's another link. I suspect that they don't make some of them anymore. I couldn't find an official website). I met some friends in that class, didn't often go to that class, and received a B in that class. Most of the readings were incredibly dull to me at the time. I had a difficult time drawing the information I was supposed to from them and from the lectures. I had it in my head that this was a strange other academic field that I just wasn't going to "get" at the moment.

There were two very important things that I took away from that class, though, which have very much fuelled my academic interests and shaped my theoretical framework and methodology for doing history. One: I was introduced to Roland Barthes and semiotics. I haven't done much reading on it at all even though it completely fascinates me. It's had a part in this whole deconstructionist, postmodern intellectual trend. It's a very big thing to explain at the moment, maybe I'll get into it another time. It deals a lot with language theory; how words are arbitrary and stuff like that, among other things. This stuff isn't new. Again, it's a big thing to talk about it so I offer you a cop-out: Wiki'd.

But the most important thing I took away from that course (aside from the knowledge of the beautiful existence of well-endowed, gay, male Barbie dolls) was the simple idea that a non-textual object can be a text. Once you learn how to "read" such a text as a chair, an arrowhead, or a stained glass window, it can act very much like a map, a ledger, or a medieval chronicle. In fact you also have to learn how to read textual sources, I mean really read them beyond the explicit content, in order for them to tell you anything.

Since that realisation, "it" has all made sense. There need not be such a clear division between archaeology, paleography, anthropology, philology, history... I've been a little preoccupied with the idea of studying "texts" and "stuff" instead of merely piecing together a story. I like to take one text, or a group of texts and see what I can glean from it or them instead of seeing if it fits into a theory. When I was studying in Harlow one summer I chose my primary source and then wrote a paper around it. I began with stained glass windows and ended with some insight into the medieval pilgrim's experince and education in Becket's cult. For my honours paper I started with histories written in around 12th century England and am coming out with contemporary perceptions of the past and of ethnicity. I've spent very little time in archives. I've never had to read microfiche. I don't do stats or demography or economic theory or political theory or even social theory. It is my chosen subject area, Medieval England, that makes me an aspiring historian mostly, rather than a uh...Historical anthropologist maybe. But really, what's the difference? The distinction is made for a reason, but it's not a very strong one.

Leave it to me to be the odd duck. I wasn't trying to be! I blame it on that Material Culture course and on starting out doing archaeology and on Jerry Pocius for encouraging this style of research in me in Harlow. The rest of my Historiography class seem to be proper regular historians who can relate a lot more to the more traditional conceptions of what history is and what history does and how history is done. I'm pretty sure no one else in the History department is a cultural historian, really. Jennifer Connor maybe. Maybe that's why we got on so well. However no one's ever told me I'm wrong, and they've had plenty of opportunity to. I know Dr. Bryan, my honours supervisor, is completely supportive of my looking at mentalités. She says it's so interesting because we can never truly know. I might, and many others have, argue that we can never truly know anything about the past regardless of your approach. I enjoy the way I do history and I think that this kind of history is worthwhile. I'm only now beginning to be able to find the language to explain my own work and ideas, taking this Historiography course. I can't help but feel intimidated by all these "proper" historians though. I wonder if grad schools will be as welcoming of this flakey cultural history stuff as MUN has apparently been.

Something different:
Can the past truly be reconstructed? Is it really like a jigsaw puzzle just waiting to be put together in spite of how many pieces are missing? Is the past real? Really, the past no longer exists. It's like a spoken word and exists only in the moment it is uttered and heard. You could write down that spoken word but that bit of writing is not the spoken word. Think about Pompeii for a second. People used to live in Pompeii; things happened there. Vesuvius erupted, killed and covered it. People, food, furniture, everything was trapped in the ash. When archaeologists excavated the place some things had been preserved but the human bodies had rotted away. Even though we praise this site formation miracle for "freezing" a moment in time, it is not that moment in time. The bodies have rotted away and we cannot have them back. The spoken words are long since gone. There is nothing, no reality, to reconstruct. The only reality is the present and it is fleeting.

It doesn't mean the information carried in a given document (textual or not) is not useful or meaningful. It's just a subtle difference in perception of the past. It still remains a matter of habit I suppose to talk about the past as if it's still going on, just in the past; a sort of parallel universe. We still use the imperfect tense as if the action is still happening: "I was going" is an incomplete action, but when the person is telling the story it had been completed. What I'm saying is all very precise and theoretical and not very practical. It's just interesting to consider. It's like sleeping the oppostie way in your bed than you were used to.

Ramblings about historical theory and method

On the first day of class my Historiography professor told us to get angry with the material we read throughout the course. He said this rather forcefully. I interpreted it as his way of telling us to not be passive about reading the stuff, to interact with it, to have opinions about it.

We've only had to prepare two readings for tomorrow's class. The first article I was fairly content with. It had to do with one social historian's journey towards writing cultural history, and explaining how one must approach the sources and the research in general. In my own research I tend toward this cultural history or history of mentalités, so the article was easy enough to swallow, and I agreed with most of what she had to say.

The second article had me scribbling furiously. This may have had to do with the large coffee that had finally kicked in, but mostly I was interacting with the thing. This one emphasised the discipline of History as a social science where conclusions can be more or less "proven" through statistical tests. History as explanatory rather than descriptive. History as empirical rather than conjectural or inductive. For the author unverifiable conclusions or conjectures are a part of an "abyss." Historians must learn to begin with a fairly firm theory or hypothesis, framed in such a way that it can be empirically tested. "Out there--beyond the individual--there are mechanisms that ensure stable and predictable results on the average" and it is the historian's job to find these mechanisms which essentially explain what has happened in the past.

She does not ignore the human aspect of the past. She claims that through the primary sources she "becomes" an eighteenth century farmer (he studies New English economic history). She, rather dramatically, writes history "from the tear drop next to a young girl's signature when she was forced to surrender the keepsake her dead young lover left her in a will his parents contested." She calls this "authenticity" and insists that it is elusive. It is not "authenticity" it is "humanity" and it most certainly is not elusive! History is created by human beings. History IS human beings. Even when something seems essentially out of the control of the specific group in question, with the arguable exception of physiological and environmental/meteorological happenings, humans are still the primary agents on the macro and micro level. This is somehow lost in the author's descriptions even though she says that "prices are not a phenomenon of individual decision-making, but are themselves a collective 'fact,' the resultant of a social process" (my italics). But even this statement suggests that the social process has some empirically provable universal "law." Economics, here described as a social process, is not a separate entity independent of human agency. There is no universal or eternal "law" of economics, and certainly not of history, independent of human agency.

So History as a discipline can be, and in some cases must be, approached as a social science. There is no doubt that in fields such as demographic and economic history the historian must try as he/she might to come to an empirically, statistically irrefutable explanation for the given problem. This is not the only way of doing History, and I say again that there is no universal or eternal "law" which can explain the entirety of the past.

This is my understanding anyway. I'm probably way out in left field, missing something, or misinterpreting something. Any "colleagues" of mine, fellow students, wise elders and whatnot who feel that I should be put in my place, please speak up. From what I'm told I'll probably get an ear full from Dr. Curtis tomorrow if this is all bullshit.

Historians I find are often sneaky. They cover all their bases and rarely say anything definitive or radical. There is often some very precise rhetoric to this end. Rarely will you see an historian say "always" or "never" (see, I'm doing it too!). Even if they believe there is an ultimate Truth to be found, these days they usually will not presume to have found it. This is an important aspect of the love-hate relationship of historians, classicists, archaeologists, et cetera with their sources.

See, I'm terrified that I haven't covered all my bases here...

It's like moving out on my own...

So I've decided to set up my own blog thing for family and friends to check up on me. I wanted one separate from Blue Kaffee because I figure the people I know who don't use that site likely feel strange poking around it. It is a strange place. It's more of a sort of gathering place than a journal. My intention for this site is to give updates (don't worry family, it doesn't mean I'm going to stop calling!) and to go on rants which I hope might generate discussion. I may go on about an interesting discussion I had in class or about a news article I read. I hope NOT for this to become a place where I whine about things or gush about ever-mutable emotions.

I can't say how often I will able able to or will wish to update.

Cheers.