A little under a week after arriving at school I began my classes. My classes run the gamut from Korean Language to Mechanics of Solids. This gives a wide range of different experiences to engage in. In some ways, classes here are very similar to classes back home: there are lectures, problem sets, reading assignments, even some essays. In other ways, they are totally different, from the way the classes are run to the way that the students act. The first difference I noted was that at the beginning of class the teachers all take attendance. At the first class they even warned that being late X times equaled one absence and that Y absences would cause an automatic failure in the class. I can’t remember any of my professors back home taking attendance. For some classes this makes sense. It would be very easy to skip out on my hundred person design lecture. It would be much harder to skip my twenty person Korean class. In addition, I’ve always been under the impression that failing a lecture based class was pretty inevitable if one skipped over half the classes. More importantly though is that I couldn’t skip a class if my life depended on it. In many of my classes I’m the only guy without a Korean name, and if the professor just looked up he would almost certainly notice the absence of the dark blond mane of hair sitting about 6 inches above the level of the rest of the class. Perhaps it’s not just a Western prejudice that all Asians are hard to tell apart. Who knows? At any rate, the first few minutes of each class are taken up with roll call. The rest of class is often taken up with a lecture that is entirely independent of any student input. I’m always concerned that asking for a clarification on some point is in bad form, largely because I’ve maybe seen two or three Korean students speak to the teacher during class. This isn’t to say, however, that they don’t speak. They talk to each other nearly non-stop. In many ways Korean college is like American high school. I have never seen a collection of such intelligent “young adults” (this may be one of the worst phrases in the English language, just short of “anal fissure” and “last call”) act so much like a collection of pre-adolescent stereotypes. From non-stop texting in class, to complaining about even the smallest assignments, nothing escapes them. I’ve honestly heard entire classes moan over a one page essay with a due date 2 weeks later, as well as a two problem long p-set due a week later. Neither of those assignments took over half-an-hour. Because these aspects of my classes are all so similar, it is the professors that make the difference. And, you know, the entirely different content, I guess.
Within the first few weeks, nearly all of my professors have managed to leave a mark in my mind in one way or another. For one it was a ten-minute lecture on how Eastern cultures put the family name first, whereas Western people put their given name first, in the same vein as “Black people do this, White people do that” comedy. For another, it was the definitive statement that “Pointillism was a failure” that seems to be a rather overly-objective view on a very subjective field. For yet another it was the discussion of how important clearly labeled buttons on a remote are. He illustrated this point by using the example of watching a “raunchy” late night TV show and having to change the channel quickly when one’s young child walks into the room, rather than accidentally increasing the volume. It turns out that this scenario is much funnier when an old Korean man uses the term “raunchy.” This is not to say that any of these professors are bad. On the contrary, these things give me something amusing to think about while I am in class, which is certainly more than most PowerPoint presentations offer to do.
After leaving the fake-carpet linoleum of the classrooms, I tend to retire to the fake-wood linoleum of my dorm room. My room here is a major step down from the one I left back in Massachusetts. While being slightly smaller it contains one more bed, bringing the total bed size up to that which I sleep on at home. The warped flooring and strange strip of extra, differently patterned, fake-wood running down the middle do little to bring a homely glow to the place. The pink, purple, and yellow blankets that were given to us upon arrival unfortunately don’t match the seafoam green door, nor the off-white drapes. Hell, even the bare fluorescent lighting doesn’t help. The outdated calendar hanging over my roommate’s bed is one of the only touches of décor in the room. This is not surprising though. I have found that most exchange students’ rooms are left pretty bare. Honestly, the effort to take the extra Spice Girls poster over from America is rarely worth the effort. Three is usually enough. The other problem with my room is my degree of disorganization. I have managed to turn my desk into a useful wardrobe, mainly by strewing my pants across it. The books I have read, as well as those I have yet to read, are shoved into crevices whenever I finish one, so they tend to be left all over. Basically, it looks like a shitty college dorm. Even the location sucks. Being both right next to the stairs, bathroom, and front door, means that there is a constant clomping parade of Koreans marching past my door at all hours, making as much noise as humanly possible. This is on top of the concussive blast and booming noise of people slamming their doors, which is not unlike that of a small gas refinery explosion. Also, my next door neighbors talk and listen to terrible music until ungodly hours, which I can clearly hear through the vegan-thin walls. In addition, exiting my room subjects me to a blast of freezing air, as pretty much every door in this country is designed to be propped open, and they almost always are, even in sub-freezing weather. As for the proximity to the bathroom, you can probably guess the downside.
The amenities are also not particularly cushy. So far as I can tell, there is no lounge frequented by students. There is a gym in the basement, but it is missing a lot of necessary equipment and is unheated. As for the bathroom, my main complaint is about the shower. It is of the variety that could pleasantly be called “gym-style” and realistically called “prison-style.” The room has 6 shower stalls, most with the standard American showerhead coming out of the wall, but also a couple with the handheld faucet favored by Europeans and others who clearly have some objection to being thoroughly clean without spraying water all over the damn place. The main issue is that of dividers. The people in charge were smart enough to put some in. This is nice. What is not so nice is the material. One would expect something along the line of brushed stainless steel, perhaps aluminum or some cheap plastic. Instead, they settled on glass. While glass is certainly solid enough to block splashing on other people it does have the fairly obvious drawback of being transparent, a seemingly enormous oversight. Guys are often unhappy or even unwilling to piss next to somebody in a line of urinals, even with chest-high dividers. I feel that the societal mores around showering next to somebody in plain view are a bit stronger, but clearly I’m the outsider on this opinion here. The nice thing is that even though the showers serve around 50 people on my floor, I almost never encounter another person in there. This is because of the rather strange habit people here have of skipping showers entirely and washing their hair in the sink. Two of the sinks have handheld showerheads for that very purpose. And while I couldn’t get away without showering for days on end without hanging dozens of those pine tree car fresheners around my neck it seems to not be a problem for the Koreans. Actually, despite the fact that I grow the amount of facial hair in a day that people in this country grow in a week, shaving supplies are sold everywhere here, but it is nearly impossible to find deodorant. I don’t know if the reason for this is that they truly don’t smell, or if it is due to the fact that I haven’t been snuggling up to anybody, but I am glad I knew about it before I got here. Perhaps the best advice I could give to anybody coming over for an extended period of time would be to bring ample supplies of whatever it is you use to keep from stinking and leave the shaving cream at home. Strangely, while avoiding showers and washing their hair in the dorm sinks is commonplace, brushing teeth seems to be a group event. I have seen both girls and boys brushing their teeth in academic buildings at all hours of the day. Some people even bring their toothbrushes and toothpaste with them in their backpacks. There are clearly some things I may never understand about this place. Despite all of this though, I can’t really complain about my dorm. Not considering the total cost of my room for the semester is about 250 bucks. Suck on that every other college ever.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Taxis, Bars, and Basketball Skills
The first thing I asked at my orientation was the name and location of the nearest ex-pat bar and where I could watch the Super Bowl. It turns out the answer to both questions is a place called “Santa Claus Bar,” about a 15 minute walk from the edge of campus. I had looked for directions online, but directions in Korea are not like anywhere else I have ever been. The directions on the internet said to hail a cab and ask to go to the Lotteria (a store that no longer exists) in the Gung-dong district. The reason that the directions were given this way is because with the exception of major thoroughfares and highways, streets are not labeled or even named in Korea. In London, cab drivers have to take a between 2 and 4 years studying the layout of the city and suburbs before taking a test in which they must give directions between two randomly selected places in London from memory, with every turn and street name given. This is very clearly not the case in Daejeon, or for that matter, anywhere else in Korea. To get somewhere that is not famous or randomly well known by the cabbies, like, say, a closed down convenience store, you need to know the place’s distance and directional relationship to a better known landmark. On top of this, many cabbies have difficulty understanding the English pronunciation of areas. In fact, the first taxi driver I gave tried to give directions to simply waved his hand in a manner indicating that he was not going to drive some incoherent foreigners anywhere. The second one took about 3 tries before finally understanding us and saying “Ahhh, Guuung-dong” showing that for some unknowable reason I had been butchering the pronunciation the entire time.
After being dropped off at what turned out to be an eyeglass store I found the sign for the bar that I had seen online. One thing about Korea that instantly popped out to me as being different is that most of the business establishments, be they restaurants, gaming rooms, or bars tend to not be at street level. I had never really thought about it, but it is rare to go to a store that is not at street level in nearly all of the US. In addition, those stores not at street level tend to have some extremely sketchy nature to them, such as being psychics, strange barbershops, or adult bookstores. The Santa Claus bar is actually located in the basement of its building, which continues the Korean trend of putting normal businesses in strange locations. Upon entering Santa Claus Bar I was hit with a wave of air so smoky as to be reminiscent of a combo Wu-Tang Clan/Dispatch concert. Korea is not a place with no-smoking policies. Smoking indoors is acceptable pretty much anywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if the churches here had ashtrays in the pews considering how much people light up here. This means that I return every evening smelling like the bottom of an ashtray, and my sweatshirts tend to retain this wonderful odor for days. While Koreans may not be as civilized when it comes to relegating flaming tubes of plant remnants to the outdoors where they belong they are far more cultured in a different, but perhaps more important, area. Alcohol pricing.
Booze in Korea is cheap. Much cheaper than in any establishment in the US or Europe, at which I’ve had the pleasure of being gouged for over 5 times the retail price for a bottle of beer. Even at the noticeably more expensive ex-pat bars’ alcohol is still quite affordable with 2-for-1 deals and cheap pitchers everywhere. This is of course only true for local beer. I had known that whiskey is insanely expensive in this part of the world, but I am still astonished by how expensive Japanese beer is. Paying 12 dollars for a bottle of decent Japanese brew is highway robbery in my book. I know that the two countries have serious feuds dating back hundreds of years, with the Korea being routinely invaded, plundered, and torched, but that is no reason to punish me and palate. This is all pretty OK though, as most people here tend to head away from beer anyways, and towards soju. Soju is the Korean alcohol of choice. It is a vodka-like liquor traditionally made from rice, with an alcohol content around 20 percent. It also costs less than 3 dollars a bottle in a bar or restaurant. There is a reason that people here drink it, and it’s not the taste.
The most obvious upside of drinking at a foreigner bar is getting to meet people who speak English as a first language, refer to the sport where people kick around a black and white ball “soccer,” and use derogatory remarks that remind you why you don’t miss the assholes you left back home. Also, talking about sports is nice. It turns out that walking up to anybody and enquiring where they are from is entirely acceptable behavior, and a good way to meet new people. The first night I actually met somebody from the Boston area by asking about his Red Sox hat. We talked a bit about watching American sports in Korea, and then he invited me to a weekly basketball game in the area. I was very excited to meet other Americans, so I gladly agreed to play the following weekend despite my crippling lack of ability in jumping, dribbling, shooting, and general basketball ability.
I’ve noticed that it is pretty easy to tell who will be good at basketball just by looking at them on the court warming up for about a minute. Some people look like basketball players. I look like their agent. Basketball is one of the unfortunate sports that conspires to make me look good to the uninitiated (“But you’re so tall!”) while requiring every single skill I don’t posses, and none of the skills I do. Hell, if it required people to do math while ranting about political philosophies and awkwardly running into doors and table corners I’d be golden. However, I’m not so lucky. Even though I proved to be a total bust on the court, there were noticeable upsides. For instance, the people who play are all really nice, and diverse enough that I doubled the number of non-White-or-Asian-people I’d seen since arriving in Korea. One of the guys who plays is a former international basketball player. He is a very nice guy, but also very physically imposing at 6’10”. If it were possible to stand out even more, he is also Black, which as I mentioned is shockingly rare in this country. This brings me to the other upside of playing basketball. I normally stand out like the smelly kid in middle school in this country. On the other hand, next to some of these guys I look positively native. Sometimes it’s nice to blend in.
After being dropped off at what turned out to be an eyeglass store I found the sign for the bar that I had seen online. One thing about Korea that instantly popped out to me as being different is that most of the business establishments, be they restaurants, gaming rooms, or bars tend to not be at street level. I had never really thought about it, but it is rare to go to a store that is not at street level in nearly all of the US. In addition, those stores not at street level tend to have some extremely sketchy nature to them, such as being psychics, strange barbershops, or adult bookstores. The Santa Claus bar is actually located in the basement of its building, which continues the Korean trend of putting normal businesses in strange locations. Upon entering Santa Claus Bar I was hit with a wave of air so smoky as to be reminiscent of a combo Wu-Tang Clan/Dispatch concert. Korea is not a place with no-smoking policies. Smoking indoors is acceptable pretty much anywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if the churches here had ashtrays in the pews considering how much people light up here. This means that I return every evening smelling like the bottom of an ashtray, and my sweatshirts tend to retain this wonderful odor for days. While Koreans may not be as civilized when it comes to relegating flaming tubes of plant remnants to the outdoors where they belong they are far more cultured in a different, but perhaps more important, area. Alcohol pricing.
Booze in Korea is cheap. Much cheaper than in any establishment in the US or Europe, at which I’ve had the pleasure of being gouged for over 5 times the retail price for a bottle of beer. Even at the noticeably more expensive ex-pat bars’ alcohol is still quite affordable with 2-for-1 deals and cheap pitchers everywhere. This is of course only true for local beer. I had known that whiskey is insanely expensive in this part of the world, but I am still astonished by how expensive Japanese beer is. Paying 12 dollars for a bottle of decent Japanese brew is highway robbery in my book. I know that the two countries have serious feuds dating back hundreds of years, with the Korea being routinely invaded, plundered, and torched, but that is no reason to punish me and palate. This is all pretty OK though, as most people here tend to head away from beer anyways, and towards soju. Soju is the Korean alcohol of choice. It is a vodka-like liquor traditionally made from rice, with an alcohol content around 20 percent. It also costs less than 3 dollars a bottle in a bar or restaurant. There is a reason that people here drink it, and it’s not the taste.
The most obvious upside of drinking at a foreigner bar is getting to meet people who speak English as a first language, refer to the sport where people kick around a black and white ball “soccer,” and use derogatory remarks that remind you why you don’t miss the assholes you left back home. Also, talking about sports is nice. It turns out that walking up to anybody and enquiring where they are from is entirely acceptable behavior, and a good way to meet new people. The first night I actually met somebody from the Boston area by asking about his Red Sox hat. We talked a bit about watching American sports in Korea, and then he invited me to a weekly basketball game in the area. I was very excited to meet other Americans, so I gladly agreed to play the following weekend despite my crippling lack of ability in jumping, dribbling, shooting, and general basketball ability.
I’ve noticed that it is pretty easy to tell who will be good at basketball just by looking at them on the court warming up for about a minute. Some people look like basketball players. I look like their agent. Basketball is one of the unfortunate sports that conspires to make me look good to the uninitiated (“But you’re so tall!”) while requiring every single skill I don’t posses, and none of the skills I do. Hell, if it required people to do math while ranting about political philosophies and awkwardly running into doors and table corners I’d be golden. However, I’m not so lucky. Even though I proved to be a total bust on the court, there were noticeable upsides. For instance, the people who play are all really nice, and diverse enough that I doubled the number of non-White-or-Asian-people I’d seen since arriving in Korea. One of the guys who plays is a former international basketball player. He is a very nice guy, but also very physically imposing at 6’10”. If it were possible to stand out even more, he is also Black, which as I mentioned is shockingly rare in this country. This brings me to the other upside of playing basketball. I normally stand out like the smelly kid in middle school in this country. On the other hand, next to some of these guys I look positively native. Sometimes it’s nice to blend in.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Campus, Leftover Tigers, and Creepy Checkups
After my beautiful drive from Seoul I arrived on campus in Daejeon. The first thing I did was fill out paperwork and then run around campus with my friend, while trying to complete all sorts of boring bureaucratic tasks. While going back and forth between buildings, and having people who didn’t speak English attempt to explain to me that the form I needed had to be completed at the bank before the security team could give me my key, I got my first view of the campus. Many colleges try to keep a standard aesthetic around campus, like with Harvard’s red brick buildings, Wellesley’s Hogwartsian towers, and MIT’s cement cubes. That is clearly not the case here. It is apparent that groups of buildings were built at different times with drastically different styles. This isn’t an issue at a place like Harvard, where if they feel like importing bricks from the original kiln that fired the bricks in their oldest building, they just rain money down on the factory owners like they were Lil’ Wayne. Korea clearly didn’t have this luxury at the time this school was built. Most of the old buildings look like they were covered in a façade of pool tiles. Some of the buildings currently under construction, however, are beautiful modern edifices of stainless steel and glass that nearly any institution would be proud to call their Sports Center.
It was during this walk around campus that my friend and I crossed over a pond in front of one of these new buildings. My friend alerted my attention downwards to a group of swans swimming around. He told me at this point that the swan is a symbol of my college and that the penalty for catching and eating one is immediate expulsion. This indicates what my friends think of me. It also made me wonder who first found out the consequence for breaching this unwritten rule. Whoever it is, I admire his ambition. Most schools have pigeons or squirrels that own the green patches of the campus. This school has swans. Oh, and cats.
It is impossible to walk around the grounds here without coming across cats. They live everywhere. They’ve even been given the nickname “leftover tigers” because of their noble status and tendency to eat garbage. I have never before seen a college where the primary animals were cats. My school has hawks. I used to think that was badass. I had no idea. I want “leftover tigers.” Oh, and yesterday I saw a bunny. Seriously, what the hell is going on here?
After my exploration of both the bureaucratic underbelly and natural fauna of the campus I finally brought my bags to my room. I was hoping for a good dormitory situation. That was not what I got. My dorm is in one of the older buildings on campus, in an area known as “bachelor housing.” I’ve never before thought of myself as a “bachelor.” Perhaps single, maybe desperately lonely even. But it has never even crossed my mind to define myself as a bachelor. I’m pretty sure you can’t be a bachelor until at least the age of 30. You have to have a cushy job and a sweet loft in some cool city. I am currently residing in a dirty cramped double with a shared shower room in the nerdiest city in Korea, and I don’t have any crappy art prints or HD TVs anywhere in sight. In addition, I’ve always understood the best part of being a bachelor to be the endless parade of beautiful women promised to me by television and movies. Instead I have a group of three old Korean men whom I have collectively titled “Mr. Anti-fun” whose sole job, as far as I can tell, is to watch people coming in the door and make sure they don’t have any women with them. That’s it. I do not think this is a fair trade.
The day after moving in my stuff all the exchange students had to go to the local hospital for a checkup. I assumed this would be a normal hospital and a routine checkup. I was immensely wrong on both counts. To begin with, we were all led down to a cafeteria in the basement and groups of about ten people at a time were led upstairs to see the nurses. As group after group left but didn’t return even after 30 minutes I knew something was amiss. Eventually, I was called upstairs with the second-to-last group of students. As the doors of the elevator opened I was shocked at the scene in front of me. This was easily the nicest hospital I have ever seen. There were cushy chairs, carpeted floors, and wood paneled walls. If a normal hospital waiting room is the Holiday Inn this was the Ritz Carleton. After changing into the hospital top and slippers I was led into the hall where my other schoolmates were seated. There was a bevy of nurses attending to everyone and soon I was being shuttled to a room where the attendant made me open my mouth and say “ahh.” I had no idea what was taking everybody so long, as this seemed like an incredibly routine checkup. And the first few tests were. Looking at my throat, taking my temperature, even bloodwork and a chest x-ray seemed normal. I figured they didn’t want me brining in HIV or TB to their country. They wanted to make sure I didn’t have Swine Flu. I got it. And then it started to get weird. The next test was a urine analysis. I was asked to pee in a cup, but not just any cup. This was not a standard American sterile plastic container with lid. This was literally a Dixie cup with my name written on it. And at the end I was asked to leave it in a tray next to the toilet. This actually proved to be a problem for some, as I was told by some girls in my exchange program that they had to do the test again after the janitor threw out their cups. I am not even joking. At this point I was getting a bit weirded out. The only reasons I could come up with for this test were that they didn’t want me brining gonorrhea or chlamydia or some new form of contagious diabetes to Korea. At this point they asked me about my family medical history and if any of my family members had died, which seems useless unless they are under the impression that twenty-somethings spontaneously develop cancer or heart disease or plane crashes based on family history. Next I had an eye test, then a hearing test. Finally, they hooked me up to an EKG before sending me off. At this point I am working on the assumption that this is like a plan out of a bad sci-fi movie where the Koreans are desperate to improve their national basketball ability, so they need tall outsiders who are free of any physical or genetic defects for a forced breeding program. If that’s true, I had better get something out of it. All I ask is that it isn’t some artificial insemination program. That would be a total rip-off.
It was during this walk around campus that my friend and I crossed over a pond in front of one of these new buildings. My friend alerted my attention downwards to a group of swans swimming around. He told me at this point that the swan is a symbol of my college and that the penalty for catching and eating one is immediate expulsion. This indicates what my friends think of me. It also made me wonder who first found out the consequence for breaching this unwritten rule. Whoever it is, I admire his ambition. Most schools have pigeons or squirrels that own the green patches of the campus. This school has swans. Oh, and cats.
It is impossible to walk around the grounds here without coming across cats. They live everywhere. They’ve even been given the nickname “leftover tigers” because of their noble status and tendency to eat garbage. I have never before seen a college where the primary animals were cats. My school has hawks. I used to think that was badass. I had no idea. I want “leftover tigers.” Oh, and yesterday I saw a bunny. Seriously, what the hell is going on here?
After my exploration of both the bureaucratic underbelly and natural fauna of the campus I finally brought my bags to my room. I was hoping for a good dormitory situation. That was not what I got. My dorm is in one of the older buildings on campus, in an area known as “bachelor housing.” I’ve never before thought of myself as a “bachelor.” Perhaps single, maybe desperately lonely even. But it has never even crossed my mind to define myself as a bachelor. I’m pretty sure you can’t be a bachelor until at least the age of 30. You have to have a cushy job and a sweet loft in some cool city. I am currently residing in a dirty cramped double with a shared shower room in the nerdiest city in Korea, and I don’t have any crappy art prints or HD TVs anywhere in sight. In addition, I’ve always understood the best part of being a bachelor to be the endless parade of beautiful women promised to me by television and movies. Instead I have a group of three old Korean men whom I have collectively titled “Mr. Anti-fun” whose sole job, as far as I can tell, is to watch people coming in the door and make sure they don’t have any women with them. That’s it. I do not think this is a fair trade.
The day after moving in my stuff all the exchange students had to go to the local hospital for a checkup. I assumed this would be a normal hospital and a routine checkup. I was immensely wrong on both counts. To begin with, we were all led down to a cafeteria in the basement and groups of about ten people at a time were led upstairs to see the nurses. As group after group left but didn’t return even after 30 minutes I knew something was amiss. Eventually, I was called upstairs with the second-to-last group of students. As the doors of the elevator opened I was shocked at the scene in front of me. This was easily the nicest hospital I have ever seen. There were cushy chairs, carpeted floors, and wood paneled walls. If a normal hospital waiting room is the Holiday Inn this was the Ritz Carleton. After changing into the hospital top and slippers I was led into the hall where my other schoolmates were seated. There was a bevy of nurses attending to everyone and soon I was being shuttled to a room where the attendant made me open my mouth and say “ahh.” I had no idea what was taking everybody so long, as this seemed like an incredibly routine checkup. And the first few tests were. Looking at my throat, taking my temperature, even bloodwork and a chest x-ray seemed normal. I figured they didn’t want me brining in HIV or TB to their country. They wanted to make sure I didn’t have Swine Flu. I got it. And then it started to get weird. The next test was a urine analysis. I was asked to pee in a cup, but not just any cup. This was not a standard American sterile plastic container with lid. This was literally a Dixie cup with my name written on it. And at the end I was asked to leave it in a tray next to the toilet. This actually proved to be a problem for some, as I was told by some girls in my exchange program that they had to do the test again after the janitor threw out their cups. I am not even joking. At this point I was getting a bit weirded out. The only reasons I could come up with for this test were that they didn’t want me brining gonorrhea or chlamydia or some new form of contagious diabetes to Korea. At this point they asked me about my family medical history and if any of my family members had died, which seems useless unless they are under the impression that twenty-somethings spontaneously develop cancer or heart disease or plane crashes based on family history. Next I had an eye test, then a hearing test. Finally, they hooked me up to an EKG before sending me off. At this point I am working on the assumption that this is like a plan out of a bad sci-fi movie where the Koreans are desperate to improve their national basketball ability, so they need tall outsiders who are free of any physical or genetic defects for a forced breeding program. If that’s true, I had better get something out of it. All I ask is that it isn’t some artificial insemination program. That would be a total rip-off.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Scenery, Slogans, and Wastewater Processing
After my exploration of the city of Seoul it was time for my journey to Daejeon, where I’ll be spending the next 4 months. My friend and I both needed to bring all of our bags to school, so to make life easier my friend’s father hired us a truck to drive us and our stuff to our school. I thought this was a very nice solution, and imagined a small U-Haul truck or van pulling up to the door and we would pile our bags in and be off. I did not expect a very small old Korean man and a dirty pickup truck, but who am I to complain? This looked like how I imagine a guy would appear if you hired a “man with a van” from Craigslist. He certainly wasn’t sketchy, but it absolutely looked like some dude running a “business” from his garage. I was wrong. Apparently he was working for a real company, and judging from the faces of everybody around me, this was a perfectly normal activity in Korea. The man piled our bags in the truck bed, threw a blue tarp over them, and lashed them down with a long elastic band that was clearly made of smaller elastic bands tied together end-to-end. All three of us then crammed into the cab and drove off to Daejeon.
The drive from Seoul to Daejeon takes about 2 hours. The first hour is spent making your way out of Seoul. I expected the rest of the trip to meander through suburbs and countryside vistas. Again, I was wrong. First, it is worth noting that this part of South Korea does not have scenes that would be described as “vistas” during the winter. I am assured that it really gets quite beautiful during the spring, but the lack of evergreen trees here leaves the distinct impression that somebody has been waging a very successful defoliation campaign. The scenery would best be described as “bleak,” “depressing,” or perhaps “butt ugly.” Importantly, there isn’t actually much of the gloomy landscapes as, just like in Seoul, you come across apartment mega-complexes very frequently. It is like the exact opposite of driving across the fly-over states. When driving across Nebraska you see nothing but fields occasionally punctuated with a tree or small hamlet. Driving from Seoul to Daejeon you see nothing but towering apartment buildings occasionally punctuated with a tiny tract for growing rice or leafless hill.
Arriving in Daejeon is interesting. You drive by the Expo Science Park which is essentially a science themed amusement park built in 1993 as part of the Daejeon Expo. To the best of my understanding, this was simply a huge attempt by the Korean government to develop Daejeon into at technological hub. It also worked fantastically. The Korean government is unlike the US government in that when it decides to do something huge, like drastically changing one of its cities, it just goes out and does it. In the US, a congressman would introduce a bill called something like “The McCaskill-Reid Small City Technoligization Bill” which would then sit in committee for a few months before being passed in two different forms by both chambers of congress before eventually being altered in a conference committee and finally being passed despite only offering to build five parks over a ten year period in upscale neighborhoods. In Korea they make laws that enable cities designated as Special Cities to take land from the surrounding cities so that they may grow in size. Basically, they get a ballsy idea like turning a small backwater city into the Silicon Valley of the country and then make it happen. However, this impressive display of grand thinking does not necessarily mean a well thought out plan on every front. Take for instance Daejeon’s city catchphrase.
Across the river from the Expo Science Park you see a big sign displaying Daejeon’s captivating slogan “It’s Daejeon.” What it lacks in creativity and inspirational quality it makes up for in factual accuracy, because clearly nobody can claim that it is not, in fact, Daejeon. In an effort to give the best impression of their city this sign was placed directly across the street from the beautiful Daejeon wastewater processing facility. At the very least, this seems to be a fair representation of the city. Daejeon is not a city that would ever be described as “beautiful” or even “pleasant.” If pushed, I would describe Daejeon as “a city.” For some reason bleak cityscapes surrounded by even more bleak landscapes just don’t do it for me. The dreary winters and smoggy curtain that tends to hang over the city doesn’t help matters either. It was under these wonderful conditions that I arrived at the place I’ll be calling home for the next 4 months. On the plus side, I imagine it’s a good sight better than Nebraska this time of year.
The drive from Seoul to Daejeon takes about 2 hours. The first hour is spent making your way out of Seoul. I expected the rest of the trip to meander through suburbs and countryside vistas. Again, I was wrong. First, it is worth noting that this part of South Korea does not have scenes that would be described as “vistas” during the winter. I am assured that it really gets quite beautiful during the spring, but the lack of evergreen trees here leaves the distinct impression that somebody has been waging a very successful defoliation campaign. The scenery would best be described as “bleak,” “depressing,” or perhaps “butt ugly.” Importantly, there isn’t actually much of the gloomy landscapes as, just like in Seoul, you come across apartment mega-complexes very frequently. It is like the exact opposite of driving across the fly-over states. When driving across Nebraska you see nothing but fields occasionally punctuated with a tree or small hamlet. Driving from Seoul to Daejeon you see nothing but towering apartment buildings occasionally punctuated with a tiny tract for growing rice or leafless hill.
Arriving in Daejeon is interesting. You drive by the Expo Science Park which is essentially a science themed amusement park built in 1993 as part of the Daejeon Expo. To the best of my understanding, this was simply a huge attempt by the Korean government to develop Daejeon into at technological hub. It also worked fantastically. The Korean government is unlike the US government in that when it decides to do something huge, like drastically changing one of its cities, it just goes out and does it. In the US, a congressman would introduce a bill called something like “The McCaskill-Reid Small City Technoligization Bill” which would then sit in committee for a few months before being passed in two different forms by both chambers of congress before eventually being altered in a conference committee and finally being passed despite only offering to build five parks over a ten year period in upscale neighborhoods. In Korea they make laws that enable cities designated as Special Cities to take land from the surrounding cities so that they may grow in size. Basically, they get a ballsy idea like turning a small backwater city into the Silicon Valley of the country and then make it happen. However, this impressive display of grand thinking does not necessarily mean a well thought out plan on every front. Take for instance Daejeon’s city catchphrase.
Across the river from the Expo Science Park you see a big sign displaying Daejeon’s captivating slogan “It’s Daejeon.” What it lacks in creativity and inspirational quality it makes up for in factual accuracy, because clearly nobody can claim that it is not, in fact, Daejeon. In an effort to give the best impression of their city this sign was placed directly across the street from the beautiful Daejeon wastewater processing facility. At the very least, this seems to be a fair representation of the city. Daejeon is not a city that would ever be described as “beautiful” or even “pleasant.” If pushed, I would describe Daejeon as “a city.” For some reason bleak cityscapes surrounded by even more bleak landscapes just don’t do it for me. The dreary winters and smoggy curtain that tends to hang over the city doesn’t help matters either. It was under these wonderful conditions that I arrived at the place I’ll be calling home for the next 4 months. On the plus side, I imagine it’s a good sight better than Nebraska this time of year.
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