on saturday, i finally had the opportunity to do one of the things i was most anticipating on my non-bucket list: gamcheon culture village. i say ‘finally’ because, even though i have been here for a month (an entire month! imagine!), lately i had been feeling like i hadn’t really seen anything. i mean, the beach is fine and beautiful, and adjusting to a new job, language, and country takes a bit of time, but i was itching to make my way around the city.

chuseok, the korean version of thanksgiving that took place last weekend, gave me the opportunity to do just that (an early birthday gift from korea, perhaps?). presented with a four-day holiday, i thought gamcheon would be a colorful way to start off my wanders.

gamcheon is a suburb that saw explosive growth when countless koreans fled to busan during the war. they made these houses out of whatever they could find, and in the...

a couple of weeks ago i finally tracked down korea’s take on the dollar store, daiso.

and it changed my life. not in a huge, let’s-move-halfway-across-the-world manner, but it has made my quotidian life a million times easier. essentially, it allowed me to purchase so many things i was missing, helping to make this apartment a little more mine, and less like a box with a bed.

suyeong station.

i took the subway, which i later found out to be unnecessary, as apparently daiso is but a fifteen minute walk away from my place. however, i wound up being glad i did, as i walked out of the store, two hours and ₩50,000 (think $50) later, with two bulging bags.

and this:

hurrah!

this was easily the best thing i found. since buying my yoga mat, i have finally felt more like a human, instead a jet-lagged, watered down version of a person.

i also found:

korean oreos.

and about a million...

or, at least, busan does. i’d first thought that these green bars running alongside the subway stairs were decorative.

then i took a closer look and saw a small drawing of a bicycle:

as it turns out, they’re mini lanes so you can walk your bike instead of working up some muscles and carrying it. genius.

as i’ve written before, it’s small, thoughtful details like this that continue to amaze me. in many ways, busan is not unlike other cities in the world of its size. the presence of things like this in everyday life calls to mind the fact that there really is a very different way of thinking here. it’s about comfort, convenience, and making life a little easier.

and yet, it could also be the fact that there are no escalators leading the way out of the station.

the path home from the metro.

some uncategorized observations about korea:

• their subway system is phenomenal. little violin music plays to announce a train’s arrival, and i always know i’m at my station because the carts will start to fill with the sounds of seagulls that represent the beach.

not to mention these guys:

why aren’t platform barriers a universal standard? no more hovering by the wall for me.

• koreans love love love wet naps. they’ll come with every meal you order, and are found at all establishments. my students call them ‘water tissues.’

• in general, a ‘more is more is more’ attitude prevails. koreans don’t do anything halfway.

• you’re not likely to ever lose your keys, because they seem to be obsolete here. this is the pad to enter my apartment building:

• on the other hand, you might be at risk of walking into doors. most of them are clear glass, and slide open with motion sensors.

• receipt...

after a first not-so-long week of work (it was liberation day on friday), i got a chance to go out and explore my neighborhood.

supposedly it was to rain all weekend, but of course the weatherman lied and it turned out to be beautifully hot and humid. my kind of weather.

so i decided to head down to the beach.

after a very short walk, i was there. it’s a little crazy how you can be amidst large buildings and shops, a completely urban picture, and then suddenly be by the ocean.

gwangalli beach is amazing. nestled against dozens of hotels, restaurants, bars, cafes, and little shops, it curves into a half-moon and faces gwangan bridge, which has nightly light shows.

i kept going along a boardwalk that starts at the beach and hugs the water, with a lane for pedestrians and another for bikers. so many people bike in busan! although it doesn’t come close to the numbers in bike-dazed...

i must have seen dozens of these types of posts before leaving for korea, so i would like to keep it short.

i could write about how the bathroom has a shower head that turns the whole room into a shower (fun!), or about the kitchen having no oven, only burners (no problem for someone who subsists on breakfast cereal), or about not having keys to the building but codes, which you punch into little number pads located beside the doors, but you have only to google ‘korean apartment’ and you’ll easily see pictures of those things.

instead, i want to share a slice of my living space. this is where i live:

ceiling light.

the view from the kitchen window.

what really matters, and is infinitely more exciting, is everything outside the apartment doors (like the beach!), which i’ll be writing about next.

i’m going to take my failure to write since i left canada not as a marker of lacking sharing abilities or as infidelity to those reading, but more as a side effect to having been running to catch up with life since the last plane landed (mercifully) on land.

it’s actually been rather like this:

much like korea, the road runner goes a million miles an hour and speaks a language that is incomprehensible to me.

the trip was not as terrible as i’d expected, considering i was sure at least one of the planes would inevitably go down. i suspected it would be the thirteen-hour one from chicago to seoul, because how can a flight last that long without the machine running out of fuel? or accidentally flying over ukraine?

chicago airport train terminal.

in the end, none of them did fall, or even experience rough turbulence, which i’m still so thankful for. although they’d never know it, my...

there are two kinds of people in the world: those who enjoy packing and those who don’t. maybe that’s not entirely true. there are also people who don’t really care about what they bring on their travels and are content with just throwing things in a suitcase and figuring everything out later. they don’t make lists, or tearfully distribute belongings among friends and family (you’re welcome, victoria!), much less write about it.

i belong in the first category. boiling down what to bring for a year-long sojourn has been difficult to say the least, but ultimately, so freeing. getting rid of things i haven’t used or even looked at in months, and being able to say “i don’t need this” to nearly everything i had hauled to my parents’ home from montreal.

while rain boots and dulce de leche snacks are important, i’m happiest about bringing along my favorites:

hitchens, bukowski, carver...

i’ve always hated the term “bucket list.” it sounds like a very impersonal, generalized, and soulless way to describe the things one would hope to do before kicking said proverbial bucket (incidentally, as of five minutes ago i learned that the term originated from this very expression). also, it is such an ugly image to associate with such a beautiful idea - the thought of putting one’s experiences in a cold, hard, metal receptacle that’ll one day tip over and spill them…where? wouldn’t it be nicer to think of the things you want to do as an extension of yourself, as parts of you that have yet to be realized?

anyways, over the past months and weeks i have been doing a lot of research (and, to be honest, maybe a lot more imagining) about the things i will be able to do in korea. i’ve compiled a lot of ideas, and these are a few of them:

i. if there was ever a time to release the inner...