The Expat Tipping Point

This past Saturday, Tyler and I met a friend at the Great Korean Beer Festival, where there were (shockingly) about 100 different Korean craft beers and micro-brews.  About two-thirds into the night, there was a Halloween costume contest, which was part fun and part awkward for everyone involved (including the audience).  At two different points during the contest, someone in costume (essentially, a sore loser who didn't make it to the final round) jumped on stage and let everyone know just how they felt about Korea.  Screamed a girl wearing a homemade punk rocker costume: "G-market!! G-market!!  I'm so sick and tired of this stupid country!!" (the former being a reference to the local Amazon here -- basically saying that the winners bought their costumes instead of making them from scratch).

While I joined the booers in getting the naysayers off the stage, I later considered the various tipping points that all of us expats have when living in another country.  I remember spending Christmas 2005 in Rwanda (my first Christmas abroad), spending the holiday with Americans who just seemed so bitter living in Rwanda ("So why don't you just leave?" -- I remember asking them in my head)

Of course, that was essentially us during our last years in India -- which is a large reason we decided to stay in Delhi our fourth year, to round everything out and not leave India feeling like a bitter old expat.  We all have stories from India on exact moments we wanted to jump into a cab and just head for the airport, no looking back.  When I was in Hyderabad, I heard about a Peace Corps morale curve that basically shows volunteers being through the roof their first year ("Everything is incredible!! What an amazing ADVENTURE!!"), crashes sometime in the first year (appropriately called "mid-service crisis" and as the graph below warns: "You may feel homesick, depressed, and helpless"), and starts to level off towards the end.  We each like to think we're unique, but we generally all follow a similar curve.

So perhaps because of that, I'm now hyper-vigilant and attuned to my feelings about Korea (it doesn't help that a friend told me over the weekend that a popular saying amongst Samsung expats is: "Korea: It's Where Marriages go to Die")  This morning was a tough one, only because I've become so accustomed to everything here in Korea being generally so easy.

I ordered something on Amazon last week, feeling extremely excited and joyous about how easy e-commerce is in Seoul.  I get an email politely asking that I input my PIN number from customs along with a link.  Well, unfortunately the site is entirely in Korean, with Google translate not being much of a help.  I email some friends who have been here a while, who all essentially say: "Yea, the Korean authorities didn't really think this through since it's aimed at foreigners but the site is only in Korean".  One friend sends me a flow chart for how to get a PIN, which includes needing an official "certificate" that can only be obtained by going to see a customs official in person (not exactly how I'd like to spend my day here).

The rest of the morning consists of small errands between work, all of which require fluency in reading Korean websites.  Of course, clearly the answer is getting fluent in Korean! (or at least learning how to navigate sites).  But everyone reading this knows I'm more impatient than that.

I think I'm taking a quick work break to book tickets to see Malcolm Gladwell speak in Seoul next Friday (incredible, but true!!)

Sure enough, the site is only in Korean and is too "fancy" for Google translate to work.  So I call the phone number, only to be given another phone number.  I speak to two different people, asking how I might buy the tickets.  The second person tells me she will text me with more details in ten minutes.  When half an hour has come and gone, I start to get frustrated.  While I'm far from my own expat tipping point, the difficulty of doing relatively "easy" tasks starts to wear me out.

And then all of a sudden, I get a text:
Since we don't have a separate English site, we're setting up a website for you now... I'll let you know the URL through email tomorrow -- Thanks.

Seriously?!?! -- they are setting up an English site because of one call?  Amazing.  Just when I start to feel incredibly frustrated, Korea does something to remind me how special it is, after all.

Our Diwali Date

After leaving India two years and five months ago, I've finally started craving Indian food!  So with Diwali this week, last night seemed the perfect evening to have our first Indian meal in Korea.

Well, as I'm starting to learn, things don't go always as planned.  Turns out there's both a "Sinchon" and a "Sincheon" metro station that are both on the same subway line.  And they are incredibly far away.  Of course, I thought I was being so smart about it.  While the English is spelled "Seocho", it's pronounced "So-cho", so I didn't think anything of directions saying "Sinchon" but actually getting off at "Sincheon".  Ah well, it seemed too good to be true that the #1 rated Indian restaurant in Seoul was actually only one subway station from our apartment.

As I continue to learn, it's always good to have a back up plan.  For last night's Diwali date, we instead head to Asia Luna by Coex Mall, which all the Indians in Samsung rave is the most authentic Indian food they've had in Seoul.  Sure enough, when we enter, there's a Bollywood movie playing and a fridge full of King Fishers.

I was shocked when I found my heart skipping a beat reading the menu.  I couldn't believe how excited I was about the food!  We proceeded to order way too much, but reasoned that this is a celebration, after all!

We reminisced about our Diwalis in India.  Tyler's favorite was when he was living in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Orissa, whose name (I just learned) means "Lord of the Universe."  He and our friend, Jack, rented motorcycles on Diwali, passing hundreds of lit candles along the way.  All I remember from my first Diwali was how loud all the firecrackers were well into the night, and of course the city being lit up like Christmas.

The word "Diwali" actually means "rows of lighted lamps."  The holiday celebrates the return of Lord Ram from 14 years of exile and his victory over the demon, Ravan.  Essentially, a celebration of good triumphing over evil.  The primary gods represented in Diwali are Lakshmi, goddess of light, wisdom, and fortune, and Ganesh, god of new beginnings.

We toasted to our own new beginnings here, and to India, where this adventure all started.  Who could've guessed at that first Diwali in India the wild ride we'd be on now...

Just for kicks

Speaking of things likely to take a while, here is my new favorite video that my cousin, Jeanne, sent me.  I've watched it about 20 times already.  It's a Korean mother teaching her daughter what to do if a strange man approaches and offers her treats... my favorite is her answer to what happens if he offers her ice cream -- look at how her shoulders wiggle and shake with excitement!

If that doesn't work, link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZchbVotJPg

Good night Seoul

I gotta say, I've become a huge fan of personal challenges.  Just finished my 14 day SLEEP challenge yesterday.  For 14 days, my goal was to get at least 7.5 hours of sleep for five nights each week by going to bed by 10:30pm as often as I could.

Our journal entry on Day 6 of the challenge:
It seems that we have discovered the secret to amazing and productive days: SLEEP!!

That first weekend, we went to bed each night by 10pm and found ourselves waking up gloriously on our own with no alarms.  Ironically though, the more sleep we get and rested we were, the harder it's been to go to bed by our self-imposed 10:30pm "rule".  But with this as my priority, I managed to get 7.5+ hours of sleep for all but three days over the last 14 days.  And 13 out of 14 days logged 7+ hours (the obvious outlier was last Thursday night's Chateau Margaux wine tasting, where we got home at around 2am and had to painfully wake up early for our Korean class... There is an urban legend at Samsung that if you go into work hung over, you can go to the Samsung clinic and ask for an IV for your "headache".  Tyler was about to check it out, but then got called into meetings all day.  That's certainly a blog post waiting to happen...)

If I were to ever write a book on happiness and purpose, making sure you meet your basic needs of sleep, water, and nutrition would be the first chapter.  It sounds so obvious and silly, but I can't believe how good we've been feeling with good night's sleep!

Of course, sometimes it's easier said than done.  For the first two and a half weeks living in our new apartment, we had been sleeping on a mat of the floor... basically until I found out that Tyler's colleagues thought this was super weird.  It seems like the conversations have gone basically like this:

Colleague: Hey man, how was your weekend?
Tyler: Good, getting the apartment all set up.
Colleague: Oh yea? What's left to do?
Tyler: A lot... we still need to get a couch and a bed.
Colleague: A bed?!  What have you been sleeping on?
Tyler: Oh, a mat on the floor.
Colleague: [Incredulous look]
Tyler: Yea, my wife wanted to sleep like traditional Koreans.
Colleague: [Long pause. Confused look, can't tell whether Tyler is joking or not]
Tyler: And we're excited about the heated floors.
Colleague: [Still confused look; seriously, is this a joke or not?]
Tyler: And it's supposed to be good for your back...
Colleague: Um, yea -- well, I should go.  Take care!!

The plan was to try this out for a month.  I liked the minimalist look and feel, and planned to set up the room a bit Korean/Japanese style with bonsai trees and Asian artwork.  But the truth is, after half that time, the real bed in the guest room proved too alluring.  At least now we're making use of each room in the apartment!

It's also hard because Tyler and I don't have naturally similar sleep cycles.  I love waking up early, and he likes going to bed late.  It's especially hard since he now has Korean class from 7-9pm three nights a week, so by the time he comes home and I'm done with work calls, it's technically time to go to sleep but we're both so wired and chatty.

Determined that I'd get at least seven hours on my last night of the challenge, I proceed to go to bed anyway. Tyler quickly finds a replacement.  Siri.  I can hear him in the living room asking her all sorts of questions into the night:

• When will it start snowing in Seoul?
• Who's the best player in the NFL?
• How many calories are there in kim chi?

This is going to take a while.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Just came back from dinner at my neighbor's house.  That's probably one of the first signs that we're not living in NYC anymore.

About two weeks ago, Tyler and I met a woman in the elevator of our building.  We were shell shocked from our first experience of taking out our trash (which was no less than a two hour affair... more on another post).  I'm sure we smelled like trash and we certainly didn't have smiles on our faces, so I'm pretty certain we've made better first impressions.

But this neighbor lit up when we also hit floor 29 on the elevator, introduced herself in Korean (quickly reassessing as we sorely butchered her name, adding, "My American friends call me Sunny"), and said to come over anytime.  Just like in NYC though, we don't see our neighbors much, and we hadn't run into her since.

Then early this afternoon, I saw her as I was meeting a friend for lunch (actually, Tyler's boss's wife -- the expat world is small that way); this time she was seeming a bit disheveled from taking out her trash and asked if I wanted to come over later that night.

At the appointed time, just as I was about to leave my apartment, I heard a bell ringing.  Oh, she must be coming to my place, I thought, as I opened the door.  No one.  It rang again, and I followed the noise to our high-tech living room screen that I still haven't figured out how to work.  "It's Sunny!" -- the voice said (whoa, how is she calling me on this screen?! -- I think to myself).  "Come over for dinner in an hour!" she says, announcing: "I'm making bim bim bop!"

Now this is something that doesn't just happen in NYC, so I can't refuse.  I head over to Sunny's apartment an hour later and meet her daughter, Myoungin, and her husband (who both appear extremely confused and perplexed that I call her "Sunny").  Dinner is delicious and the company is amazing.  It turns out that Myoungin is about our age, and the family had lived in Stonybrook, Long Island for a year while Sunny's husband taught physics.  We had a super interesting conversation about life as an expat in Long Island versus Seoul, as well as how all of us met our significant others (causing their daughter to laugh in hysterics as they explained!)

About midway through the conversation, it comes out that Sunny is learning Korean drums (janggu), which as synchronicity would have it, I just happened to be researching this morning to figure out how I could take lessons here! (was utterly enthralled by the majesty of them the first time I saw a Korean drum performance at last week's social enterprise conference here... not a great pic below, but you get the gist!)  As it turns out, Sunny just performed at Olympic Park a few weeks ago -- she was the only amateur out of a group of eight professionals.

These serendipitous moments are what I love about living internationally.  It's not like they can't happen in NYC -- it's just that we tend to be so over-scheduled that it's nearly impossible to just "stop by" someone's place who has invited you over just a few hours before.

Before leaving, we connected over Kakao, which is how everyone texts in Korea -- complete with cute noises and emoticons.  We told each other we'd come over each other's places often, and I think we really mean it too.

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PS: Here's the drum I really want to play.  Not the pretty little ones in the front, but the enormous drum in the back.  Will find a way to make it happen.  This is Korea, after all.

Shower Insights

For the last six months, my friend Blake has been asking to me to describe my ideal day.  I'm not sure what made me think of this today.  I got bad family news this week, the kind where you want life to just rewind and choose a different sliding door... which has made me sad and reflective on life, I suppose.

I tried a few times today to journal this out -- during lunch, on the subway ride... in "borrowed moments" as Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) calls them.  Each time, I had to close my notebook, overcome by a sense of sweeping anxiety about the "perfect" ideal day.

So of course it's only natural that it all comes gushing out during my hot afternoon shower, this ideal day of mine, I'm gonna let it shine:

I want to meditate
and move
and write
and dance
and sing
and create
and connect
and be inspired
and inspire
and wonder
and laugh 
and love
and go to sleep feeling the healthy kind of tired, energized to wake up the next day and do it all again.

Seocho, thanks for the memories!

"Well, we're movin' on up,
To the east side,
To a deluxe apartment in the sky."

Modern Asia living, here we come!  Up on the 29th floor, we spent one of our dinners last week picnic style, eating on the floor with all the lights turned off, looking out into the city lit up all around us.

Our first piece of furniture came this week!  A long wood table with a bench, which gives me joy just looking at (let alone eating and working and reading on it!)

But in the process of really starting to settle here in Jamsil, we can't help but give a nod to Seocho, the neighborhood we called home for the first three weeks of our stay in Korea.  We always say that we have a special place in our hearts for the first neighborhood or city that we live at in a foreign country, and Seocho is no different.

Seocho District (which is about 15 minutes west of our new apartment by subway) is one of the 25 local government districts (called "gu" here) that comprise Seoul.  Considered part of the greater Gangnam area, it's where the headquarters of Samsung Electronic is (which made it really convenient for Tyler!)  It's also where the Supreme Court is located, along with our favorite karaoke place (Cube!) and -- we just learned -- a French enclave called Seorae Village (where we're heading to for lunch today!).

So within each "gu" are "dongs", or neighborhoods, and a bit confusingly, Seocho gu also has a Seocho dong (as well as other dongs" that comprise it).  Here's a map of Seocho, with the Han River dividing Seoul into areas north and south of the river.

The history of specific neighborhoods in Seoul is shockingly hard to find.  More generally, the areas south of the Han River only started to get populated about 60 years ago, with the Korean War (before that, the area was primarily farmland).  With the threat of North Korea, the government told Seoul residents to move as far south as they could, beyond the river.  Once they did, the government blew up bridges to prevent the north from advancing.  So that's how the areas south of the river started to develop.

I did hear a really interesting fact this week when I went hiking with a new friend who has been living in Seoul for the last four years.  Her parents went backpacking for three weeks in Korea, with her and her brother (about 1 and 3 at the time) in tow -- talk about impressive. That must have been about 30 years ago or so, and apparently there was essentially nothing but small huts and houses south of the river.  Her parents recently visited and were shocked to see all of the tall skyscrapers that started to be built with the "Miracle of the Han" in the 1980s.

Here are some snippets of our every day life in Seocho, starting with our hotel room in Art Nouveau, breakfast in the cafeteria (always comprised of rice, meat, gim (roasted seaweed) -- and whatever left-overs we brought from the night before, and our 10 minute walk to Korean class (which we usually used to finish homework from the day before...)

And our favorite Seocho things!!  Soup dumplings from Din Tai Fung, the famed red bean donuts that had easily become my daily habit, and what I easily consider the best mochi I've ever had -- a single fresh strawberry wrapped in a pocket of goodness and happiness (on one of my first days in Seoul, I had coffee with a friend of a friend... his advice to adapting to life here was to "find your pocket of happiness each day" -- he meant things like meeting a friend for coffee mid-day like he was doing, or taking a walk along the river... But to me, strawberry mochis have become my literal pockets of happiness and goodness each day).