On the Way Over

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June 5, 2007
6.24p PST
Northern Pacific Ocean — Over the Aleutian Islands

This is a hasty and doughy (I haven’t written anything in awhile), but I wanted to have a portrait – any portrait – of myself before I start my trip. And before anything else, thank you to the Richard U. Light Fellowship at Yale and the Richard U. Light Foundation in Kalamazoo, as well as my wonderful teachers and advisers in Yale’s East Asian Languages and Literatures, East Asian Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies departments, for giving me this fantastic opportunity. Thanks to the Light Fellowship at Yale for putting together such a well thought-out program, especially the SAC, forums, emails, orientations, and reviews. Before starting at Yale, I never would have dreamed that I would end up in Korea, studying the language and culture that I discovered I couldn’t stop thinking about, but these people are in the business of dreams. As importantly, thank you to my family and friends for being as thrilled about this trip as I am.

It started last May. I had some five days between my Spanish and Korean history finals, and trying to read over what my notes, a terrible need to get to Korea washed over me. I spent hours looking for funded trips, my mind suspended on the parallel train of living that procrastination builds, somewhere between what I’d learned all semester and my urge for homecoming.

So while my parents prepared to come down from Providence to meet me and head west, while I struggled to coax Oberdorfer, Chunhyang, Shin & Robinson et. al., the YMCA Baseball team, Kang, Clark, and even Hwang into a story I’d tell, a singular tender suspended fact took root in me: plan among endless plans since Yale that would stick.

I’m sure that no matter what I had done, I’d be unprepared for this trip. (Still, had I been able to make time for study among the endless sunny errands of home, I may not have felt this anxious about dialing Kim Mun Nam’s number from Incheon and hoping that he knows what I’m talking about when I tell him that I expect to see him shortly to begin my three month stay at Shereville Livingtel, provided that I can make it through the bus rides and the walk.) Since last May, I’ve simply known to go to Korea by hook or crook, so when the Light Fellowship offer came, I was overjoyed, and spent plenty of time thinking about how different the world was going to be. Looking at pictures of the KLEC building (I hope!) on Sogang Dae’s site, it hit me that for the first time, I was going to a place where my familiarity with the language of the signs was something short of a kindergartener’s. (My mother teaches kindergarten, so I thought it was a useful comparison.) Yet, it’s only in recent days that my thinking has reached this crazy pitch, and everything – continuing West over the ocean from LAX for the first time, printing out trip emails, listening to my Sogang dialogues to mute the crying baby down the aisle – turns my previously general thoughts of “Wow, this BCD House dining room bubbling with Korean at all different speeds – that’s what my summer is going to sound like,” or “Jane, I couldn’t remember which way the international date line pushed time,” into “I’m about to lose my day. I’m about to put a larger security deposit of time than ever down on my mind, eyes, and tongue working in conjunction.”

There’s no need to get carried away – but all of this – heading West beyond the shore, losing a whole day, the expectation on how I deal with sound and everything that builds it – is new, so I’ll allow myself some thinking about how to think about it. I told Ailya in the car this morning that I was nervous about my phone call to Mr. Kim and my trip out to Shinchon not because I doubt that I’ll be able to do it (I don’t), but because there’s something a little more at stake than just making it out there. It’s how well I use Korean to do so. I expect that how I look at my interactions, likely rife at first with inopportune han beon dos and bluffed yeses, will be something I bring up a lot this summer.

I’m not sure that I would have or could have done anything about it had I not read this in the SAC guide last night, but I will have to find Grand Mart for some bedding and a thin robe when I get to Shinchon tonight. I’ve heard that Seoul runs around the clock, and I hope that this is not an exception. I also hope to change money at the airport to pay for all this, and for rent so I have a place to sleep tonight. In the morning I hope to find my way to Sogang unscathed, and that placement goes well. Being here without experts like Kaila or Jane will be a bit tricky, but I’m glad that I’m getting started by myself, as bumbling as I might turn out. I hope I can get my bearings quickly, and find some suitable exercise and volunteering opportunities for the summer. I hope I can make new friends, though I’m not sure how my life is going to work, much less how I’m going to meet Korean friends.

During my phone interview, the teacher from Sogang asked me what I would like to do once I got to Korea. “Thinking” on my feet, I told her that I couldn’t wait to try samgyetang. She laughed at my odd choice with a “Keurae?” Ne. Afterward, I thought it must be a fun job to call people all over the world who knew only enough to be simple, earnest, and hungry.

I think I’m about to lose my day now.

Please keep in touch.

8.04p PST
Bering Sea, Southeast of the Gulf of Shelekhova and the Sea of Okhotsk

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