Last year on this day, Tod and I celebrated by watching tv. Drumming teams pounded out a rocking version of the traditional Korean folk tune Arirang. Dancers swirled in brightly colored hanbok (tight bolero jackets for women with full, flouncing highwaisted silk skirts; long front-closing jackets for men over loose fitting trousers, tied at the ankles). Ordinary Koreans, foreign residents and tourists packed Jonngak Square, the Korean equivalent of Times Square in New York, as traffic was redirected from one of the busiest corners in Seoul. Celebrities counted down the final seconds of 2007, the numbers some of the few words I understood in the broadcast. Officials lined up to swing a huge dragon clapper, striking a huge ancient bell to ring in the New Year. We fell asleep to the sound of continued celebrations in nearby apartments - people playing guitar, striking gongs, laughing.
Our celebration will be far less exotic this year, and will likely be preceded by some serious snow-shoveling, an activity I never missed while in Korea. However you celebrate, may 2009 bring you all good things - and the chance to explore and enjoy something new and unfamiliar.
December 31, 2008
Greetings. It is hard to believe it has been six months since my return to the United States. I have often thought of posting a blog entry, but it simply has not happened. As 2008 ends and 2009 begins, I would like to start a series of blog entries on being back home. I want to take some time to think about the reentry experience, share some observations, and catch up on some stories. I have missed writing to all of you.
These posts are less likely to have great pictures or the excitement of life in a foreign country. If you would like to unsubscribe from this mailing list, please post a comment or send an email saying so and you will be deleted from the list; we all have to make hard decisions about what we have time to read. Everyone can of course still follow the postings on line at http://blogs.saintanselmcollege.net/bethsalerno.
For those who have not heard, Tod and my trip back from Korea was long. We left my apartment at 6 am to catch the bus to the Seoul Airport. Our flight left at 10 am and arrived in Chicago at 9 am the previous day. We then had an 8 hour layover, which could have been reduced to 4 if an airport employee had properly answered a single question. Thunderstorms then delayed us further and we flew standby on the last Manchester flight out of Chicago, arriving at midnight and driving an hour home. Our luggage arrived late the next day.
The flight was a fitting metaphor for my year abroad - full of the unexpected and the disorienting, and the delightfully surprising too. One of my fellow Fulbrighters and his family was in the airport and on the plane, eating up all the exotic things from their refrigerator that were not permitted entry into the United States. Yet the flight and the year left me in need of some recovery time.
The most pointed lesson of the flight was the reminder that even when everyone speaks English, misunderstandings and frustrations are possible and common. The goodwill everyone showed me in Korea was not quite so in evidence at O’Hare airport. Clearly, being back in America was going to take some getting used to. So was being ordinary and “one of the crowd.”
December 31, 2008
